It all started nine years ago with a flock of grey pigeons in Brooklyn. By observing them beautifully circling in the blue sky before landing on her apartment’s roof, Jennifer Monson started to think about the similarity between her work as an experimental dancer-choreographer and the animals’ migration, which resulted in a multi-year, multi-continental dance project called “Bird Brain”.

“The main goal of that project was to investigate migratory patterns of different animals - gray whales, ospreys, ducks and geese - as well as their biophysical and metaphorical relationships to humans as fellow travelers in the world, of course, through dance,” said Monson. “And that was my life-changing project.”

That might seem a little bit different from what she is doing here, in Illinois, Monson said, who herself has migrated from New York in early 2008 to join the U. of I. dance faculty. She just finished four outdoor dance performances of the current Mahomet Aquifer Project in October, which tries to examine human interaction to the underground water source that serves Champaign, Urbana and the surrounding area. “The Bird Brain and the Mahomet Aquifer Project – they may look different, but they’re actually the same thing,” said Monson.

They took her to the wild.
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Growing up in southern California, Monson was the youngest daughter in a three-child family. “I was a very shy kid,” said Monson. “Actually, I didn't really feel comfortable about talking until I was 30.”

“People always asked her to speak out,” said Jamie Monson, Jennifer’s older sister. “But what she really enjoyed is being in nature – camping, hiking, and spending a lot of time taking care of her small pets, which were mostly ducks and rabbits.”

Being in nature - that was what Monson wanted to do ever since she was a little girl. Her childhood role model was Jane Goodall, the animal behaviorist who studied chimpanzees in the wild for the most of her life. “That's how I want to spent my life, “ Monson smiled, ”sitting on an island watching chimpanzees – without talking to anyone.“

Yet she ended up becoming a dancer. “I began dancing at age 5. It was also a comfortable way to express myself because I didn’t have to speak. “ Monson said.

One of her dance teachers has a beautiful studio in southern California. It was a wooden frame structure surrounded by orange groves in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. “I remember walking up to the wooden deck and the high vaulted ceilings and the sense of freedom with all of the height and the smell of dirt and orange as we came out of the studio,“ Monson said.

The studio felt like a large safe space for her.
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After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College, which has a strong dance department, Monson began her career as a dance teacher in New York City.

New York is the dream of every experimental dancer and choreographer. But when she was riding around Brooklyn, where she lived, or lower Manhattan, where she often rehearsed and performed, Monson missed her life in California.

“Living in New York, I was feeling, you know, where is nature? All we have are those big concrete jungles, “Monson said. “I really missed these intense nature experiences I’ve had in the southern California desert.”

Sometimes she was even confused – maybe the two worlds didn't fit at all? It was either be an animal behaviorist like Jane Goodall in the wild or be a contemporary dancer in a big, busy city that never sleeps. But Bird Brain brought them together.

For almost 20 years, Monson performed her “very quite little solos” in these small Manhattan lofts, until Bird Brain, which headed outdoors to traverse five continents, put her back to the wild.

“We decided to literally follow the migration of these animals - gray whales, ospreys, ducks and geese, and that removed myself from the city and put me back into these natural cycles, ” Monson said.

For five years, she and her company travelled from Texas to the Midwest, from California to Alaska, from Mexico to Canada, to track animals’ migration. They danced for groups of school children, nature lovers and dance enthusiasts; they also held workshops and panel discussions with local animal scientists.

The most remarkable thing in that project happened when they were tracking, on land, the gray whale’s migration in Baja California. “When we were dancing along the coast, there actually were whales beside us – slowly spouting and blowing. It’s like a dream, ” Monson recalled. “And just like the whales, we ourselves became very slow – not only our dance, but everything. Until a local person told me, ‘you can't be from New York, you guys are so slow!’”

That was the magic of the Bird Brain Project, Monson said. “After that, everything changed.”

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Five performers, wearing brightly colored leggings and loosely fitted tops, danced like flowing water on October 14, at Vine and Illinois Streets in Urbana. A steel drum was playing in the background and a silver Airstream trailer, which displayed the visual images of the Mahomet Aquifer, was parked off to the side. That was one of the series performances of Monson’s current outdoor dance project “Mahomet Aquifer”.

“The main goal of the project is to enhance the public’s understanding of the phenomenon of the aquifer from many points of view – scientific, creative dance, visual,“ Monson explained. “The project involves not only outdoor dance performances, but also panel discussions and workshops. “

George Roadcap, a hydrologist at the Illinois State Water Survey who helped Monson with the research part of the project, said at first he was not very interested in it. “I’m a scientist, not an artist,” Roadcap said.“But after watching her dancing, something changed. Dance is such a powerful way to express and connect different things.”

The group - Monson and four other dancers - also took a trip down to the Shawnee National Forest in central Illinois for eight days of residency. “We walked through dry river beds and took our bodies through physical landscapes to feel the strong connection between human bodies and the nature, and also try to research the process of movement,” Monson said.

Stephen May, a 2008 graduate of the dance department at U of I, took the trip with Monson. “The trip was amazing,” Stephen said. “And Jennifer really enjoyed walking in the forest. She looked so relaxed and comfortable.”

Jeff Carpenter, a multimedia specialist who worked with Monson on the project, said: “I admire her commitment to not only dance, but to her subject matter. The fact that this isn't some new ‘go green’ faddism, but rather an ongoing pursuit of using dance to educate the public on environmental matters really resonated with me.”

然后你会慢慢发现，大家都是肉身凡胎，谁又真的有金刚不坏之身，刀枪不入之体？你的心，又怎么能容下一整个世界呢？那些曾经摔倒过的，都在我们身上留下了印记；而物离乡贵，人离乡贱，竟然是颠扑不破的真理。

曾日月之几何，而江山不可复识矣。多么悲伤的句子，是谁说能从里面看出豁达来？是谁说能从脸上长出的每一条细纹，每一颗斑点里看出岁月沉积的美来？

Depressed的时候，我只希望天降大雪，一夜封城。

一天矮脚虎抱怨，说上课的教室里暖气太足，长袖都穿不住，美国人恨不得穿背心就来上课。黑旋风说，他倒不觉得，他这两天都把自己办公室里的暖气开到60F以下（就是15度啊同学们）。

矮脚虎问：干吗开那么低？

黑旋风沉默了一会儿说：这样我在办公室里也可以穿新外套了。

矮脚虎：……

还有，谁说美国人读书不累的？我们有门课就是每周起码两次作业，每次作业分数出来都排名次，老师还不辞辛劳地做bell curve贴在网站上，让你看你现在在全班的位置，是A、B、C还是D ── B以下，第二年就没奖学金了。难怪我的同学天天对我抱怨：光这门课就是full-time了，何况我们一学期修三门……

除此之外，还在冻得半死的夜里参加了黑人白人大作战的council meeting，采访了市长、警察、黑人牧师和有色人种香槟分会的主席（这都是什么跟什么嘛……还有，黑人那是什么口音，我简直要崩溃了……）。晚上十点半从市政办公厅里冲出来，老师笑眯眯地冲着我的背影说，别忘了今晚十二点之前交文章啊，再加上一句：“have fun！” （我fun得起来吗我……）

现在终于明白为啥黑旋风同学读书时老做被老虎追和被大蛇压的噩梦了……现在这些梦也常常困扰着我……当然也困扰不了多久，因为第二天早上九点还有课，课前还有小测验──我两点睡的话，八点就要起来了。

当然，也有开心的时候。比如council meeting出来，发现黑旋风同学已经乖乖地在停车场边干活边等我了，他也知道我一个半小时之内要交文章；还有中西部的秋天──Main Quad里的树终于纷纷变了颜色，美极了，仍旧很绿的草坪上落了一地的黄叶。考完期中考从暖气十足的地下室里钻出来，突然就吸进一口冰凉潮湿的秋天的空气。手里THERMOS里的热茶烫嘴，那么，是秋天了。

其实买房大业进行到现在，都没有特别兴奋的感觉，倒是浮生若梦感不停袭来。直到今天下午realtor打电话告诉我们卖方已经签了合同，又偶尔看到了前任屋主拍的这张四月的后院，才渐渐明白，原来，这是真的，两个从小都没有过自己房间的小孩，就要拥有自己人生中的第一幢房子了。

小时候是多么希望自己能有一间独立的卧室呢，哪怕再小，再不起眼都好，起码是自己的私人空间。现在，终于有了，终于可以一人一间卧室，一人一间书房了，却不知道该怎么住了。

黑旋风同学正在兴致勃勃地策划着要把楼上那间形状独特的阁楼式套间改造成一间小小的图书馆，这样我俩可以在中西部漫长的冬季里，捂在一起喝茶看书。那么很快，我们就该想着从国内海运图书过来了吧。

还有很多琐碎事情要做，此刻提笔忘言，等尘埃落定，再慢慢写来。

按马小胖同学的说法就是：每天但见我骂骂咧咧地在闹钟声里起床，蓬头垢面，衣衫不整，横眉冷目，杏眼圆睁，夹起一包饼干就跑。某次课上小quiz，旁边的老美笑我，you're so serious。。。当时我就想把他胖揍一顿──要让你每周交三次中文作业（出去采访不算），起码三次随堂小测验，我看你serious不serious！

然后就是秋天倏忽而至。几场雨过后，校园里布满落叶。在酸奶店门口穿cardigan等马小胖来接我的时候，竟然已经冻得打喷嚏了，想来第一场雪已不远矣。西海岸应该仍然是阳光明媚的好天气吧。可我还是喜欢四季分明的地方──明天围上一条大围巾，上学去。

迄今为止，绿街和Illini Union还是我最常光顾的地方。不过自从这个学期的beat抽到了“艺术”之后，估计接下来要把Krannert Center for the Performing Arts掘地三尺了。

校园里建于19世纪的钟楼，让人想起《巴黎圣母院》。

盛夏时分的Main Quad，去往系楼的必经之路。有人在这儿举行婚礼，我在草坪上追赶松鼠。

同样建于19世纪的系楼，又老又凉，一股子狄更斯小说的气味。

Freedom of speech&press 是很严重的事情，我们甚至有课专门讨论为之立法的the First Amendment，讲课的教授一把胡子，以很少的A和很多的C闻名，喜欢一个接一个叫人起来回答问题。

玉米地本色，校园里保留至今的一块实验田。这儿的新生统称new corn，那么老生就应该是老玉米了，还蛮有自嘲精神的。

每天理一点东西，看一本过期的《TIME》，临睡前读一点亦舒。丹薇时期写的最对我的胃口，如果你要看，我推荐《城市故事》、《独身女人》、《衣莎贝与米雪儿》。

家里兵荒马乱，堆满了近两年来积攒的各种细碎小物。这样的时刻，最容易有浮生若梦之感。从上海回来之后，我便睡得昏天黑地，午夜醒转，仿佛仍能听见街坊市声。我在MSN上跟老公说，好像出门就又能开始逛7p路了一样。她笑。

终于要离开加州了，离开这座住了两年的海边小镇。我在17号公路上听最后一遍Hotel California，在停车场追赶一只吃得肥头大耳的浣熊。这两年，好像被很多事情推着前进，身不由己，前一秒仍然停留在巨鹿路汗津津的夏天，老公的桃红色小方桌上堆满果丹皮和白煮蛋，后一秒就已经是三藩机场，日光刺眼。进海关的时候，好脾气的官员说，welcome back。我竟愣了一愣。我这是算是回来吗？我一直以为自己是咬紧牙关含辛茹苦出发前往另一个世界。 

其余的，就怎么说也can't complain了。那就这样吧，整理行装，去往下一站。