37days

D is for dance

Every dance is a kind of fever chart, a graph of the heart. -Martha Graham

In 2008, I will come to be danced.

I had expected to write “D is for direction.” But an email from my friend, Nancy MacDonald, a few days ago changed my mind. She sent me this poem:

We have come to be danced

We have come to be danced

Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
But the claw our way back into the belly
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
The holding the precious moment in the palms
Of our hands and feet dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance
One two dance like you
One two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
Tearing scabs and scars open dance
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
The strip us from our casings, return our wings
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance
The shed dead cells and slip into
The luminous skin of love dance.

We have come to be danced
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
The mother may I?
Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
The olly olly oxen free free free dance
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.

We have come to be danced
Where the kingdom’s collide
In the cathedral of flesh
To burn back into the light
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced

We have come.

-Jewel Mathieson

Intentions: In 2008, I will dance in my car. I will dance like a four-year-old. Every day, I will dance a one-minute dance of how that day felt to me. I will do more than dance. I will come to be danced.

[This poem reminded me of krumping. If you don’t know what krumping is, find out. You can start with the fascinating documentary movie, Rize.]

From the last alphabet challenge: D is for dorodango. Speaking of which, I gave Mr Brilliant two dorodango for Christmas, created for him by dorodango master Bruce Gardner. Being the dirt collector he is, it was the perfect gift. They are gorgeous. As is he.

[Art from here and here]

If you've enjoyed this essay, perhaps you'd also enjoy my upcoming book, LIFE IS A VERB, to be published by Globe Pequot Press in the fall of 2008. For more info, click here! 

Follow your desire lines

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the park where we play, there are nicely laid out concrete paths, leading from the swings to the picnic tables, from the castle to the soccer field, from the water fountain to the bridge, from here to there, from A to B.

And then there are the real paths, the dirt ones, the ones that shoot out from the concrete to connect where people really go, to memorialize the real actions of children playing, to acknowledge the real patterns of living, of human purpose, of some honest destination.

Dip your wheels

“Be good to yourself. If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?”
- Kobi Yamada

Part I.

I went to my first Shaolin Kung-Fu lesson last Monday night. After 15 minutes, I was sweating. I think it was the full-body push-ups with feet up on a bucket and bare knuckles on wooden planks that did it. When the master reminded the group to touch noses to the floor with each push-up, I nearly passed out. “Is this natural?” I thought to myself. “This isn’t natural!” (Answering myself seemed the most expeditious solution).

When he let the group get water after 40 minutes of quad-busting lunges and v-shaped sit-ups (or, more appropriately, struggle-ups), I was the first one to the water cooler, spent, old, and painfully aware of the need for life insurance.

Imagine how exhausted I would have been if I were actually in the class and not just observing it, empathy-sweating at the very idea of all my ab muscles so tragically unprepared.

Own your typhoon

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.” – Alfred Souza

I found that quote by Alfred Souza in the most-read magazine in my mother’s house many, many years ago – way back in the 80s, that wacky decade of my youth now depressingly the subject of retro parties on college campuses (retro! the nerve!)

Being quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, New York Times, Fortune magazine—all that fluff and business blah-blah was nothing compared to the thrill for my mother when my name appeared in print in Reader’s Digest.

Let go of your legal pad

“The best things in life are not things.” – C. & J. Woods

On Sunday, August 28, 2005, as I cleaned Cheerios off the kitchen floor for the 59^th time, and just after the contents of a 12.5 fluid ounce glass bottle of maple syrup were ceremoniously unleashed onto that same floor by a 36” tall human tornado named Tess, I happened to look out the window into my backyard as I held the small of my back and stood up again. And as I straightened to a full stand and saw the orange and yellow lilies and happy zinnias and Tessie’s bright shoes and a swing set and a little red plastic chair on the deck outside—all in just the right light, that bold rounded yellow kind of light like the good people of Cadiz so often enjoy, it hit me in a rush of physical sensation: I have everything I need. I don’t need anything else, ever.

Dance in your car

“We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” - Japanese Proverb

While driving downtown last Wednesday, I was pondering the epistemological problems of social cognition and constructivism, the origins of values in transcendent functions, and Kantian categorical imperatives.

Okay. Well. Maybe it was Johnny Depp looking transcendent in “Pirates of the Caribbean” that was actually on my mind as I stopped for a traffic light at the intersection of Montford and Haywood. Suddenly, a flash of movement in the next car brought me back from the Black Pearl, my happy pirate ship.