nature's zodiac

5,6,7,8! Shuffle, tap, hop, step back.

Deliciously dense old fashioned piano bar music filled the room as the students, all in tutus except for one, followed the steps of their teacher.

Syncopating the music was the fabulous clatter of tap shoes.

The one not in the tutu was Geo, the only boy in the class. Instead he wore his black dance pants and long-sleeved Luigi shirt. He looked to me, cinematically casual for a dance number, like Kevin Bacon in Footloose.

I reflected on what brought us here: one big wow.

Over a year ago, I casually mentioned to Geo that a dancer in a movie ran up a wall and did a full body flip. “No way” he said. So I showed him the clip of Donald O’Connor in Singing in the Rain singing Make Em Laugh, which ends with exactly that historic dance move.

He was spellbound.

What ensued was months of Donald O Connor and Gene Kelly adoration. He memorized the entire act of Make em Laugh (song and dance) and began to do ‘fancy footwork’ anywhere and everywhere. This became amplified with tap shoes, leading to impromptu shows in parks, particularly for his best audiences of stunned toddlers.

Here in the dance studio, I saw his focused look, his tentative moves gaining more confidence with each bit of effort. I began to reflect on the toroidal phenomenon of freedom becoming more free.

The philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte said, “To be free is nothing, to become free is heavenly.”

The wow moment of seeing O’Connor flip off the wall was an inkling, perhaps the most free thing in the world. An inkling is a glimpse, a hunch, a hint at something good. In my zodiac philosophy model, this is Jupiter, the quantum spark within us. It holds within it an invitation to a trajectory. In this case: “could I dance like this?”

What happens when a trajectory is taken seriously? What happens when one finds themselves in the right arena (in this case, a dance studio with a great teacher) so that they can pursue this avenue and gain the right skills?

That inner freedom, born from an inkling can become even more free as a real trajectory is grasped and pursued.

The flipped version of this buoyant expanse of Jupiter, with its limitless possibility of inklings, is Saturn, a sobering narrowing of possibilities for the means of achieving an aim (that began as an inkling).

In his book, “Neither Ghost Nor Machine: The Emergence and Nature of Selves“, Jeremy Sherman describes “aim” as a process involving the narrowing of possibilities, emphasizing that aiming is less about a mechanical, linear vector (as modeled in physics) and more about self-imposed constraints that help focus action and avoid indecision or dithering.

What inklings are alive in you? Can you feel the expanse? What aims and trajectories do they inspire? Can you feel a healthy narrowing or contracting sensation?

What arena might you need to move closer to for a natural discipline to take shape? Sometimes even the subtlest tuning of arenas (fresh air and natural light for example) can awaken renewed order and focus.

As the class transitioned to plies, Ms. Sam changed the music again. The song was a cover of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, a great cover of it in fact, by Jack and Daisy, and it filled the room again.

“You belong among the wild flowers. You belong somewhere you feel free”.

Happy nature pondering!