Autumn Updates :: Winter Garden Healing Arts
In this newsletter:
Reflections on leaving Los Angeles
Announcing my Oakland office (& a discount offer)
Studies in Visceral Pediatric work
Referrals for my LA folks
Poems by Cedar Sigo
Greetings from sunny, autumnal Oakland, California. I have arrived after a seemingly endless month-and-a-half of frenzied preparation, chaotic home and office hunting, and way too many trips up the 5. A number of you have reached out over the past weeks with requests and words of encouragement, and I apologize for being checked out from all but my most immediate concerns. I am here now. Boxes are disappearing. Books are finding shelves. I am eating and sleeping on a reasonable schedule. Fall is a good time to find one's rhythm and to make a home.
This is my final regular email to my Los Angeles mailing list. If you would like to continue receiving occasional updates like this, please let me know and I will be happy to add you to my new Bay Area mailing list. I will reach out again if opportunities arise for me to work again in Los Angeles, but for now, this list will be dormant.
The photo above is from early 2021, taken above the 101 freeway at Vermont Ave.
Reflections on leaving Los Angeles
Emotions have a way of finding me after the fact. I think part of this comes from my own particular physical and emotional history, and part of it comes from the kind of socialization that is all too common among children being taught masculinity—the rules of whether, when, and how much it's appropriate to feel. All that's to say I'm not sure yet how I feel about this move. I look forward to deepening my relationship to this place that has felt like a distant home to me for a long time. I look forward to a more compact and accessible metropolis. And yet I know that I will be missing the people and places of Los Angeles. I will be missing the Los Angeles River; the deserts and canyons; the dusty, feral, interstitial spaces, always about to burst into flame. I will miss the relentless creativity of LA. And I will miss all of you. Thank you for being part of my LA story, and for making me look forward to going to work for the past five years.
Announcing my Oakland office (& a discount offer)
I'm happy to announce that I have a lovely and spacious new home for my practice here in Oakland. I am located in Uptown Oakland, kind of a hip area that's easily accessible to most of the city, and just a short subway ride away from San Francisco. The office sits up on the third (and topmost) floor of a cozy vintage office building. I have a glorious full wall of windows that look out onto tree-lined 17th street. It's about three times the size of my Silverlake space, and feels open and luxurious. I've had a nice time making it mine over the past week, and am ready to open it up to the world. My website is now current with scheduling for the new space, as well as on-site options for the East Bay and San Francisco. I am also in conversation about sharing a satellite space with an acupuncturist in San Francisco. Details will go up on the website as soon as I know for sure.
I'm also giving myself a raise as I reopen here (the Bay Area is expensive!). But through the end of the year, I'm offering throwback pricing on all appointments with the discount code UNIVERSE.
Please share this email with any friends and family you may have up here. Starting over from scratch is no joke, and I deeply appreciate any word of mouth referrals. And thank you so much to everyone who has sent me a new testimonial. I'm excited to add these to my site soon.
Studies in Visceral Pediatric work
I had a last minute opportunity to study Visceral Manipulation: Applications for Pediatrics in Toronto last month with one of my favorite instructors, Jean Anne Zollars, PT. I have been trying to get into this rarely offered course for the past five years, and so, despite the really unfortunate timing, I jumped at the chance to deepen my experience in this vital area. The class was both challenging and illuminating, and I couldn't be more excited to expand my work with infants and young people. Early intervention can make a world of difference in a child's development (not to mention the caregivers' quality of life and emotional connection with the child, as well!). Some new language and policy updates are in the works and will be up on my website soon, as I work on thoughtfully incorporating what I've learned in this recent class.
Referrals for my LA folks
As promised, here are a few bodywork people I've connected with around Los Angeles, whose work inspires me. I encourage you to check them out. Phoebe and Pamela now share my Silverlake office, so that location will be convenient for many of you.
Phoebe Lyman is a manual therapist, doula, and specialist in pelvic health and fertility. Phoebe is trained in Visceral Manipulation.
Pamela Samuelson is an embodiment coach, somatic educator, and manual therapist.
Megan Steele is an integrative physical therapist operating on the west side and on-site. Megan is trained in Visceral Manipulation.
Laura Horn is a manual orthopedic and pelvic health therapist operating in Pasadena. Laura is trained in Visceral Manipulation.
Poems by Cedar Sigo
I return for my literary offering this month to the Pacific Northwest, to the Suquamish poet Cedar Sigo. I alluded to Sigo's work as an essayist and educator a few months ago in talking about Diane DiPrima. Although now back in Washington state, Sigo lived for many years in San Francisco. His work is haunted by some of the ghosts of that city's poetic legacy. He moves easily between departure and return, unafraid to invoke or to pay tribute, but equally at home in his own skin. His 2017 collection, Royals (Wave Books) covers a lot of stylistic ground, such that a Cedar Sigo poem could be said to reside less in a set of formal concerns, and more in a way of feeling and of being among the things, the absences, the songs, the literary and cultural residue of the world. Setting Out Late, below, strikes me as an apt summation of a particular sort of West Coast urban American existence, of a rootedness that knows the fault lines all too well, and therefore makes its home someplace just above the earth, among the floating signifiers of an echoing modernity. But it also speaks of a permeability of the city, in a way that dissolves the ramparts of 20th century urbanity and returns the city back to the landscape. Poems for Saints continues Sigo's work around and through an alternate canon of friends, mentors, and inspirations, and weaves in threads of queer indigeneity that appear throughout his poetry.
Setting Out Late
The skyline and the sea blur
into smooth solid squares
I set out late
for downtown, a clutch of lights
that misfire, shaken
in the distance
Blowing all the bills
I set aside because
he tells me to . . . . . .
My gift poems this year
were impossible:
A mournful, Germanic
Orange Blossom Special
A silent film star
I hired to climb the walls and to
sulk in your bed
A silkscreen of a 1975 sunrise
Soundscapes for five separate cigarettes
There are no stairways,
no Sing Out reel to reels
Only blue grass and brushfire
racing the hills
your one night only rendition of
Two for the Road
Moon River wider than
my first poem/painting
pulled from the caves
Writing all my life toward
one stone print
2 RED HANDS
Poems for Saints
[1]
Who raised his dream forest
who managed to hand the cross
to the poet
just before the film burnt up
or the money ran out
[2]
Thrown
As a palm
Of breath
That is found
To be
A mirror
[3]
I would pluck
a strand, a wire
to paint your silhouette
in blazes
on a snuffbox
[4]
She was never scared straight
she was a pair of ladies' voices combing the cave
[5]
Bury my shoes
Gone to blood-red brown
Hanging down
Thirsty for fire
[6]
Farther on
starlight trembles
over the thought
of the act
East River strings
turnabout
in a green toned night
[7]
Her greatest works
were fired in gold
A stairway
with a single light
all
the way
up
[8]
Thin
strands
of
music
spike
to
override
all
life
outside
[9]
To boil the marsh tea
Eat carnation mush
Steam a rack of wool
To bend the wooden box
With care,
Wilson