Is this the feeling I need to walk with?

... The past month, as I have been walking, I keep having dreams of rehearsing, and making a fool of myself in performance. Either I forget my lines, or my cues, or something. So last night I lay in bed and gently looked at this fear in the face. Just the thought of performing had an immediate visceral response: my heart area knotted up.

As I didn't want to wake my roommate I stayed in bed and wrote a letter in my head to Bonni and Sean [from Theatre du Pif]. That completed, I mulled over an imagined conversation with Thomas Prattki (the main teacher of LISPA, who auditioned me); and then a letter to Sally and Sharon [my dance teachers from Swarthmore].

I think I came to the conclusion that I am doing the best thing I can by confronting this fear and going to LISPA. The reason I need to do so is because whether I am "any good at performance" is irrelevant compared to the problem that I have a block on some area of my expression. And until I deal with it, I will be living less than fully.

Later that morning I wrote an actual letter to Sharon (in the abbey before morning mass), and in the process of doing so, realised the anger in me towards the Lecoq school. I have a tendency to take responsibility for things, and think very much in terms of "what can I do now" or "what I might have otherwise done." In doing so, however, I have overlooked the anger and hurt that I do (did?) feel. Now I see how my fear has is roots in my hurt and anger, and until those feelings are acknowledged, remain fungi in the dark.

Some other images came to mind: (1) the necessity of confronting this fear is as daunting as playing chicken with traffic or staring down an ongoing train. Yet somehow I trust that the reality is a lot less scarier than my imagined fear...

(2) In this month of walking I have managed to walk beyond what I feel I want to or consider physically possible. and the way I have done it is to slow down and walk consciously, in conversation with my protesting feet or ankle. It might take me much much longer to get there but I do get there. So if I can negosiate through and traverse physical pain I also have the capacity to do this with psychological fear...

More than anything I need to be patient and gentle with myself...

With all this things feel better, and if not yet all good, certainly processing for the better. I feel very lucky to have all these friends and mentors I can invoke - even in my imagination! - to get me through things. Yes I think we've felled a forest between us...

-- Edited excerpt from a letter to Christine, in Moissac, the last stop (for the time being at least) of my Compostela walk this summer