This September I turn 50!
Thank you to my parents for giving me life: my courageous, beautiful my mother and my grief stricken, brilliant father. Thank you to my steadfast grandparents and their brave parents, and all my ancestors — from Alsace, New Iberia and Iowa; Biddenden, Oshkosh and Bohemia; from Minnesota, Belfast and Schleswig-Holstein, and all the places in between I never knew or have forgotten.
This year, I have two dreams for my birthday:
MY BIRTHDAY PARTY: Come celebrate with me! On Saturday, September 26, Nia co-creator, Debbie Rosas, will teach for the first time ever in Ashland, leading a master class and a workshop at The DanceSpace. (Visit www.niasomoves.com for info and to register.) 
MY DREAM OF ALL LANGUAGES
When I was a little girl I had a dream — a dream of learning all all the languages in the world.
In our house on State Street in Brooklyn, we had a globe with brightly colored countries, deep, bright blue oceans — and best of all, mountain ranges in raised relief. I loved this globe. I would kneel, leaning my elbows on the wide, low map cabinet my mother had refurbished for my father to keep his photographs in, and gaze at it. I loved to touch it, spin it, feel it. I didn’t know the names then, but I loved to touch the Arabian Peninsula and dip down into the Reed Sea, up again into Africa, to touch the Himalayas, the Cacaucuses, mountainy Sumatra, and the spine of the Rocky Mountains down into the Andes.
I loved to wonder about each place on the globe and I tried in my mind’s eye to zoom into each place as though landing there from outer space. I wanted to stand on every spot in the world, or at the very least, go to every country, and imagined that some day I would. I imagined standing, simply standing, on the earth in each place, feeling and seeing the ground and what lived there — people, trees, grasses, animals, sunlight, shadows, roads — and smelling the smells of that place.
And as I imagined standing on the ground in the places we call south central Africa, Saudi Arabia, South America, Polynesia, I dreamed of learning the language of every place, because if I went to each place, I would need to know the language.
And in my imagination as I stood on the earth in south central Africa, I could feel the language of that place — and of all the places in the world — sprouting up out of the ground, up into my feet and through my body. And, without words, I knew this: The languages of the world come from the soil of the Earth herself. Like great trees, the languages rise from their web of roots beneath the ground and create over the Earth a canopy of branches which are filled with words and which make the air.
Like this:
And like this:
In Martín Prechtel’s school, Bolad’s Kitchen, we are asked to learn our ancestral languages, and the languages of our ancestor’s enemies, who usually turn out to be our ancestors as well. Maybe someday I will go to each place on the planet and feel the language of that place rise up in me. Until then, there is Rosetta Stone.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Sharry // Aug 14, 2009 at 6:28 am
Wow, Rachael. I loved reading this. I have a globe, too, and once had the idea (you know I get a lot of them) that every household in the USA should have one. The schools should give one to every child. Or someone could. May it be so.
Now, in class, when I hear you speaking another language I’ll know the depth from which that comes.
Hugs,
Sharry
2 Ruth // Aug 14, 2009 at 7:06 am
I am so touched, SO touched, my deeply beautiful daughter. You fly through the trees of our ancestors; you dance through the skies of my tomorrow. I feel blessed that your soul consented to come through mine. roots to branches, flying.
3 Doris // Sep 16, 2009 at 9:50 pm
So beautiful, Honey! May your already abundantly eloquent mastery of many, many languages of the earth multiply in a great undulating spiral like the seeds of the lion-headed sunflower on a stalk of well-nourished roots.
4 Rachael R. Resch // Oct 26, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Thank you so much to everyone who participated in The Body’s Way events with Debbie, my 50th birthday and contributed to my dream of learning all languages!
It was an amazing, abundant weekend. I’m grateful to each of you for making it happen.
I plan to start learning German, as well as brushing up on my French.
French is an ancestral language. German is both an ancestral language, and a language of my ancestor’s enemies.
Speaking languages that are both ancestral as well as languages of one’s ancestor’s enemies is one of Martin Prechtel’s methods of peacemaking.
I imagine bringing German to life through my body and speech will wake up those old people and get them together — both wrangling and schmoozing, hopefully comparing recipes, telling stories and telling great lies about their descendants.
Love,
Rachael
5 Mary Miller // Oct 27, 2009 at 2:04 am
Rachael, I think you have already learned all the languages of the world. There is only one – the language of dance – and you are the teacher!
6 Rachael // Oct 27, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Thank you, Mary!!! All blessings to you.
Leave a Comment