THIS WAS FALL 2013; NOW AT THE END OF 2014 I AM FINALLY FIGURING OUT WHERE I WANT DANCE IN MY LIFE—WITH FRIENDS.

“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” Thank you Susan Sontag. My sentiments exactly.

Time and Place (mneset.me) is my favorite blog. The oldest and, even to me, most interesting. The sad thing is I cannot travel all of the time so how to write interestingly about travel. That is the question of this last day of 2014.

Of course I have a plan. While Time and Place has been the blog name for a long time, my friend Panaibra Gabriel Canda’s beautiful dance piece, Time and Spaces, created from memories of his Mozambican father’s life as a Marrabenta musician, infused the name with movement and music and the passing of time.

Time(s) and Place(s). Journeying to and through them. History and Geography. I don’t know quite how to get those concepts all in the mix of this blog but if at first, you don’t succeed…

2014 was my first year without dance in a very long time. At first it was fine, good in fact. However, when I was in Johannesburg this fall, I realized that maybe I wanted dance in my life in some way. Then, after I went to Durban to see my friend Boyzie, I realized that I now want to follow my best friends’ dance lives after all. I say all of this to affirm that mixed up in the “…everywhere” that’s on my list, dance still might be one of the destinations! In the audience with my friends’ work on stage—work of which I know something of the creation. Yes. That’s it. Not part of a dance presenting clique (a good clique but nevertheless a clique) but as a friend who takes great pleasure in the sharing of your cherished pursuits whether making dance or writing poems or baking bread.

This means, apparently, that you, Boyzie and you, Reggie and you, Panaibra are part of my Destination Everywhere travel plans even though none of you have the faintest idea I’m writing this. And there are a few others whose lives and work I feel connected to…Stephen and Margy and some Scandinavian dance friends. If I am serious about this it means another trip or two a year. Why not, since most of you live and work in interesting places. And I can write posts and things that will mean nothing to the dance world. Just to me.

Honestly, this is how I felt most of my time as a dance presenter: “No matter where you are, you’re always a bit on your own, always an outsider.” (from Banana Yoshimoto, Goodby Tsugumi—found this on Good Reads—don’t know the book but love the quote) Now I realize I probably wasn’t a very professional presenter because I only cared about the work and the artists that said something of interest to me about life and the world. Oh well. That was then, this is now…almost 2015.

Interesting. I had no idea I was going to write that. So along with planning for Norway and Russia and drinking milk vodka in Mongolia as I ride the racing camel—I must plan a dance agenda. Really? I’m still surprised.

To go along with putting dance back on the travel map, I’ve all along known that ageing was part of what I was journeying through, a topic surely belonging in a travel blog. Part of 2015 should be how to do that gracefully (both the ageing and the writing about it), framed somehow as a ‘trip to yet one more unfamiliar place…’ perhaps. Research, selecting the destination, more research, selecting the route, more research, selecting the carrier, more research, selecting the habitations and sustenance along the way, more research, then calculating the expense, saving the money, feeling the fear and hesitation and excitement, embarking…  Seems a lot of those steps apply but not quite all. Still, we know it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. Right?

The goal for Time and Place 2015 is to try a weekly long-form post, meaning 1000 words minimum. So I had better be doing some damn good writing if any of you are going to read for a thousand words. Anyway, it’s worth a try. If you by chance do read one of these long things, let me know what you think please.

HAPPY 2015.

2015 … IT IS THEN…