Let’s begin at the end.
I relish in rituals. I believe in heart-squeezing goodbyes. I find great soul-comfort in encircling the finale with devoted attentiveness, a presence purified for deep listening.
And for me to catch the answers, I receive an inspirational cue from the vultures that follow me here in the heated gloss of Texas skies.
Lift up.
Lift higher.
Lift and lead the introspection with an objective gaze.
And with this lifted perspective, I see the start of my September: I sit tall on a purple yoga mat adorned with handprints from years of downdogging practice, and in this glimmer of a memory, I pray for clarity.
And by starting at the end, the beginning burns bright. I now can trace her prayers along the tapestry of a September that glowed hot from Kentucky to Texas.
From this height, I discern the threads of intuitive inklings trusted and initiated, and the ones feared and neglected, and how the routes and reroutes complete in this flight on the edge of a month that must start at the end to make sense of the beginning.
In flowing backward, I reemerge into the dark theater.
Perched on the back row, I watch absolutely riveted by the improvised scene. I abandon the task of dutifully taking notes on the youth auditions for troupes. I release into witnessing the seamless and joyful interplay between a teen improviser and the youngest player, a six-year-old standing her ground backstage. I know in every swiftly met beat that this is an on-stage moment that will leave an instructive and illuminated impression on me.
The revelatory brilliance of the scene exudes from the older player, the teen, who generously utilizes and smoothly directs her comedic skills to endow and empower the shy six-year-old into the sensational star. The clever teen turns power-dynamics upside down, and the hesitant child, reluctant to step out onto the stage, becomes the president refusing to come out of her office.
The teen improviser pleads with the child-president to please leave her office; and however the child-president responds, the teen improviser instantly adapts and readjusts ensuring an enlivened and engaging dynamic that is improv at its transcendental best: unconditional support that co-creates with the actual realness readily presented and propelled forward on stage.
The comedy organically occurs. Pure gold. There’s a confidence and selflessness that sustains and serves the players as they explore this make-believe world where the president’s mother must be called to summon her to open the door.
Like water.
This is my secret mantra I say before a show. I hide myself away before I perform and I breathe myself fully into my body, reigniting an innate and physical connection to intuition, to trusting feet that have a pulse for solid comedic timing. Like water. Take shape to whatever unfolds. Perpetually rinse and recycle what just happened to move into the ever-changing next. Hydrate a presence that listens and responds, responds and listens to the now, not as the should be or how I wish, but to the now.
I am still a selfish player, and my selfishness squirms from fear.
I second-guess, I react, I stumble into insecurity.
I learn, I listen, I receive, I proceed to the kindest and most courageous of my ability.
Here is what I want for myself as an improv player: to be relaxed in a secured knowing of good enoughness that elevates the playing to be focused on the collective, on the player waiting in the wings who brims with talent, too.
In my late-night tossing and turns over improv (because yeah, I late-night toss and turn for improv), I return to my WHY.
In revisiting my WHY, I rise in a reflection that reveals the intuitive nudges that place me here.
And I’ll start at the beginning. I stand barefoot in the bungalow kitchen and stir pasta as I intently listen to a German love-therapist who teaches improv to refugees, and I feel an internal click, a recognition of a vision that is about to come into full-fledged fruition.
The WHY relates to service, through harnessing creativity and the connective power of comedy to uplift humanity.
And the WHY plays across the stage where a gifted teen and a six-year-old president remind me of how I want to evolve as an improviser and what I really want to do with this spontaneous spirit of theater.
Like water. And let intuition be the tides.
And in following the invisible tides of intuition, I rediscover Maryam Hasnaa’s Instagram account on a Monday morning, my first Monday morning back after my best friend’s wedding in Kentucky.
And on that Monday morning, I sit tall on a faded yoga mat that holds the impressions of practices centered on cultivating a sense of grounding in this uprooted Kentuckian. I grant my homesickness air to grieve, because my visits to Kentucky cocoon me in a kindness that hydrates the roots of my being.
I pray for clarity. I breathe into my spirit-word of kindness to integrate the refreshment that is the love from Kentucky. I ask for insight to gracefully guide me into a transition that signifies and shows a new blaze of a life here.
Every September in Austin burns me into a new iteration.
My schedule shifts.
Opportunities pop up.
My imposter syndrome sizzles.
The tendency to overhaul my instinct in favor of an external opinion shows once again that I need to reinforce my own trust in self, in my capabilities, and in voicing my intuitive readings in the exact moment.
I design a Monday morning that treats me to a cappuccino in a quaint coffee shop that displays tea cups and sells scones, where I can meet my fall schedule with a rose-patterned planner and neon-inked pens. And in the curation of a morning, there’s the friend who tags me on a post in Instagram and I spiral into a social media rabbit hole that drops me into the account of a teacher who elucidates on energy, manifestation, healing and power for highly sensitive souls.
Oh, hello, Maryam Hasnaa.
I land on a particular post about reinstating intuition as the governing authority. And here I feel that inner knowing expressing through an expansiveness blooming from the depths to open up my heart.
I rewire my tendency to look outward instead of inward. I retrieve my power. I reestablish my self-agency.
“Intuitive impulses. Show me what I need to know.” Maryam Hasnaa’s counsel on cultivating greater trust in intuition prompts daily journaling. I start at the end.
I note the serendipitous occurrences from the day before.
I revisit my interest in drama therapy and later that day, after teaching yoga, I casually ask a student if she’s done improv and she shares her theater background, and her drama therapist training at NYU.
On a whim, I decide to step into a coffee shop for a minute of work and the timing reunites me with an improv friend who shares my passion for social justice storytelling. We converse; we scheme.
I arrive early at a new yoga teaching gig, all nerves and then exhale in spirited relief when I see my winged friends, three of them, soaring in elegant ease around where I am to teach. My fears dissolve as I receive the message to trust, flow, just be.
Slowly and steadily, I reintroduce intuition as my guiding force. And it’s like navigating a trail at night with only the winks of lightning bugs to hint at the next step. Those heart-thundering, heart-hoping decisions to gut-trust and follow whispers and glimmers reveal grand synchronicities that bring me to the end of a September that shined power back into intuitive intelligence.
We are at the beginning, and the beginning unfolds in a Kentucky that flirts with fall and romances with the nostalgic lightness of spring.
The end of summer here is a gentle affair.
I drink in the evening air to meet my butterfly nerves and harness the fluttering energy into steadiness for my soon-to-be wedding speech.
Minutes before my best friend’s wedding and the bridal party waits in long black gowns on the repainted farmhouse’s porch. Gold lightning bolt earrings devilishly dangle from our ears, gleaming in between ringlets and wisps of perfected and sprayed curled hair.
I feel elegant, a Kentucky enriched elegance that echoes from the misty childhood memories playing across the field. As a child, my friend’s farm shimmered in the vivid possibilities of other worlds, and together, out of those woods, we co-created other realms. In one particular rabbit hole, we reinvented ourselves as members of an all-girl rock band that traveled the world on sold-out tours. But really, this was a disguise, because in fact, we were undercover spies. The daylight championed on our advocacy and social justice pursuits, and the pretended night hours cradled our adoring fans as we sang from a loud stage.
Watch now, from the farmhouse porch, stationed at the end, how the beginning presents the passions and curiosities and softly suggests destiny.
In our world of make-believe, my Sagittarius best friend displays her exceptional generous spirit and genuine empathetic nature that makes her an advocate for human rights today. She shows her innate and intuitive understanding for music, and that knowledge and admiration launches her into a career of band management and there she’ll meet her Alabama Prince, the drummer for a rock ‘n’ band. And as I gather my bouquet, I smile thinking that her interest in playing the drums matched the rhythm of a man who honors and loves the blaze of my best friend. And he stands at the end of the aisle, and she takes a few moments to recenter in her beginning source, her childhood home.
And I slip into the procession, and now release the wedding speech. The script I’ve rehearsed and rehearsed and now I release to let the moment inform and energize my love letter to my friend, to her soon-to-be husband.
And as for me, as I take careful steps down the porch steps to the serenade of The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love,” I see my younger self hoisting herself up on the fence, and she’s always nervous about climbing that fence, but she does it anyway. I see her eagerness and curiosity, too, in using the creative arts – that rock ‘n’ roll gal-empowered band – as a platform to do greater good in the world. Protect the innocent and jam out at the end of the night. A mantra that still holds sway. My jamming is not singing, but the intuitive urgency to catalyze voice and performance to shake up the world continues to propel me.
And so, I’ll start here. I’ll start here at the end which is the beginning for my best friend. I’ll begin in the Bluegrass field where I fancied myself to be a rockstar, and will speak about the awe-aching beauty and tremendous power of every day moments that create a love story.
When I lift up I see – and what an exhalation of sweet relief to be granted this vision of clarity – that the ends, the beginnings, all the intuitive threads illuminating the in betweens transcend time out of time and heart-hum in the purpose to bring us back to love, back to our oneness, back to love consciousness.
Start at the end. Lift up. Lift high. Glance compassionately at the journey and all the ways intuition is igniting us to choose love to lead us forward, to lead us here.
I embrace you.