The human body never ceases to amaze me. What some people can make their bodies do...it leaves me breathless.
Channel surfing I happened upon a production entitled "Dancing Upon Dangerous Ground." It was modern dance reminiscent of Irish dancing---lots of stomping and jumping, leaping and soaring. The women were able to glide as though not bound by the rules of physics and the men leapt through the air---even through the television I could feel the air around the dancers move. I watched as muscles flexed and bowed, writhed, in sheer synchronicity with one another. It was as if, at times, their bodies were fluid into one another, meshed with the stage, performing as one ethereal body. It was transcendent...
I have always wished for a body that was able to move with such grace. I have always wanted to dance. I remember as a child mentally choreographing sequences to my favorite songs, instructing my troop of stuffed animals in the proper forms, the ways their arms should float. But when I would see myself move, I was reminded that some people are born "soarers" and others remain eternally tethered by corporeal limitations. What should have looked like a slinking jaguar looked more like a loping rhinoceros. My body has never been able to achieve what my imagination would have it do.
I am drawn to the creative in others. I watched the dancers tonight bonding with them, moving with them, imagining the give of the floor as their feet solidly hit and drummed. I watch ice skaters and envy their ability to fly, to feel their bodies moving so quickly, so lithely...I long to create kinship with my body, to express through the body...unfortunately my gift is with words. My gift transcends the physical and yet I long to feel that creativity in my muscles. I do not need to know how to assume the positions to be a writer only to understand that my gift is to give voice...also important, but at times it leaves me wanting to be silent. While I describe the jaguar, I would rather feel the skin, the joints...
It leaves me wanting and yet, strangely inspired.Their bodies spoke to mine. Mine does not speak their language and yet it knows their meaning. I can imagine the strength in their calves, the ache in their thighs, the burn of their lungs. I feel them too. How I wish that I could dance instead of lope, glide instead of stumble...how I wish I were the jaguar and not the rhino...though the horn is a nice accessory;)
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Lisa, my love, you are the jaguar. It's simply on another plane of experience. The grace, movement, and emotion that the dancers convey with their bodies, you convey with your pen.
And there is a real physicality inherent in all creative expression; it draws upon the emotions deep within our psyches and boils over--onto the stage, onto the page.
I do agree that there is a mind/body connection that often triggers the release of those emotions that are buried most deeply. There are days when I get on my treadmill and run...and end up running through the tears. The experience is cathartic, healing.
There have been days, though, when I have sat at my computer and written through the tears, as well. When somehow, in plumbing the depths of a character's experience, I encounter some deeply buried emotion (grief, joy, passion) of my own.
And I can't help but connect this to the idea of perspective: when you see yourself, when you look in the mirror (literally or figuratively), you tell yourself what to see. When you see the loping rhino, it's because you're engaging in negative self-talk, judging yourself based on someone else's definition of grace, beauty, and flow.
Why let someone else define you? Shift your perspective. Be the jaguar.
Oh K...you took me too literally. I am the jaguar in every other area of my life and I did not mean to imply that I would give up my creative voice, I just wish I could dance...I wish sometimes my body would move the way I will it to...instead I look like Elaine in Seinfeld:0 tongue sticking out and everything...Sometimes I just wonder what it would be like to be so present in my body. I've never experienced that (even in childbirth...had c-sections ya know). I'm working toward a more graceful body, but I'll never have their gift...but then again I know that they will never have mine either...not an either/or...just the musings of a close to middle age writer who wishes she could move. I kinda like being the rhino most of the time (and I mean that without the whole they are gi-normous implication...only that I couldn't think of an animal who might move as clumsily as I do some times:)
Or not literally enough, apparently. I get it now: you really mean that you want to dance: no metaphors, philosophical nuances, or theoretical BS.
So...dance! Throw "Footloose" into the CD player, grab a broom, and go to it! Just make sure no one is watching, and maybe keep the "leaps" to hops so that you don't blow out a knee or something.
It's still all about perspective, though: if you "leap" around your kitchen to your favorite song, you may not look like a jaguar to the neighbor who's peering in (wondering if perhaps you've lost your everloving mind), but you'll still feel just like one! :)
Be one with the jaguar. [bowing head and folding hands, philosophically...]
Lisa, somewhere in my soul is a tap-dancer--and that's where she stays, in my soul. I am too uncoordinated to actually tap dance but inside, there's a part of me that not only can tap dance, but tap dances well. Did I say "dances well"? Ha. She's magnificent. And every time I see that big lobby at the library, I have a quick dream of tap-dancing my way across it.
Okay, that'd get me arrested, but if I tried it in real life, I'd trip myself by the second shuffle. So I'd either be in jail or the ER.
Hmmmmm.
Think I'll stay at the dreaming stage!
Janet, I'd love to see you give it a shot in some of your fancy flip-flops...or maybe not. ;)
Sooooo, what you're saying, Kacie, is that I'm (get ready---)
FLAP-DANCING????
[groan]...uh, that was pretty bad! ;)
You guys make me laugh! I would look like a chicken flapping when I try to dance, with or without the flip-flops
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