The girl who drove the Volkswagen bus plastered in Dead stickers fell off the face of the earth after graduation. West is what I heard. Community bordering on cult, new name. I pictured her in a homespun dress drawing water from the well for backwoods apostles.
She popped up on Facebook — as we all do — 25 years later. No bonnet, no copper kettle. Her profile shot is blazing female Gumby, bronzed flesh arched in a yoga bridge against the setting sun. The other photos are strappy heels, flashing sequins, rhumba beats and a man in a fedora testing the limits of her psoas muscle by pressing her stretched leg flat against his chest before dropping her into a dip.
She’s dyed her hair black and let it grow wild. It cascades down her back, frames coconut buttered cheeks, makes her diamond white teeth pop from inside that California smile. She teaches Zumba and places in Latin ballroom competitions. Her day job calls her just as much as the music. She’s a certified nurse who loves God’s gifts and bedazzles her posts with emoticons blowing kisses.
And she looks like this, only amplified by 10:
I’ve just come home from my own Zumba class. I had to hack and slog through inertia to go, which is a truly sorry state of affairs. Zumba is one activity I undeniably, unconditionally adore. No matter how few hours of shut-eye or how burbly the belly or how wretched the commute, I go. I dance.
For seven years, Zumba has been the straightest route from ennui to awake. Some days, I have to remind myself of this unfailing truth. Some days, I’m too enamored of my misery to follow my own advice.
The firm reminder is necessary today because the car failed inspection. Gamble on repairs? Junk it and wave my magic wand to conjure up the cash for a new ride? This, just after shelling out a several thousand dollar deposit for a home repair project. I’d been saving my pennies for two years. I thought I had enough. For windows and a patio door OR a new car, not both. And certainly not to repair the leak in the bathroom ceiling that greeted me when I came home from work yesterday.
The firm reminder is also necessary because I spent the evening in the company of plumbers and neighbors and ears to the wall, and went to bed with an unsolved but very damp mystery on my hands. Its uncertain cost lurked in the corner all night long.
I’m weary from walking the dull edge of this knife (dull because who has the money to replace it or the time to go get it sharpened?) The paychecks are so thin I can see right through them. They cast a scorched sodium tint over everything further down the road. The anger surges, sprays scattershot. Anonymous ones catch most of it because once familiar, they become too cherished to fault and too fraught with their own troubles to be responsible for mine.
So I peel myself from my desk, pull my hair into a ponytail and head to my Zumba class. I’ve barely stepped out of the car when I hear the rhythm hollering at me from the studio. I aim for it. My feet alight and slip instantly back off the earth. Soaring first then bouncing, I ride air currents whose striations are skimmed from the walls of canyons. I am somehow both round as sugarbowls and long as lightning bolts. I multiply. Animal cocktail. Chimera. I am the mixed and marinating DNA of heron, tamarind, bumblebee.
Back home and filled with the liquid pulse, rich with all the Yes and all the Can, and money will come, and solutions will doubtless generate from this most fecund form, I click open Facebook,
And there she is.
Silver icestorm crashing past her skin. Lats and biceps, lean meat, light. She is elements, she roars. On the polished floor, her tiny tarsals are hailstones, flashing as they meet gravity and ping skyward again.
She knocks me flat.
Never, I think.
Never will I be so breathtaking.
Just moments from my own dance and I deflate. The material me frays from its grip on the wind, sags, and puddles back to earth. I become stretch marks and scars, lipids and flatulence, a jellyfish washed up on the shore. My bulk bloats and wheezes, suffocating any sinew beneath.
If only I could channel such discipline, such bliss,
such erasure
such entirely someone else.
And then I remember this:
The shift makes an almost audible crack, physic chiropractic, and I can see
SEE
This ravishing galloping creature, this distant woman who has found a way to spin straw into light. Art twines with skill, and her form becomes sharp as kites against cloudless sky. I can see her
because I stop trying so hard to un-see me.
I see how she slips stillness between motion to punctuate the moment, how her neck swivels and snaps, how the smile opens, impossibly, even more.
I see
that she is her own entirely, and I my own,
and also that we on our opposite coasts and intervening decades can dance ourselves together.
Then I am up, my spine remembering the long stride between cells, how even bone is blood and air,
how always a beat
to unblind me
again
again
a beat here
carries me again
here
Shannon E. Williams 
“honey, you’re familiar like my mirror years ago”. I don’t know if it is this post that made me think that or if the song is just stuck in my head. Anyway, you’re a hell of a writer and I’m guessing people have told you that before but I haven’t and I don’t know how the comments run on this blog cause I’m just starting to read but I’m happy to have found it. So that’s that. In truth, it reminds me of going to kung fu class in Boston and taekwondo in Nashville and boxing in Ulaanbaatar. Okay, now I’m just trying to be interesting…
No need to try, clearly. Thanks for the kind words. Comments are welcome!
This is an important lesson that we all struggle with and should all strive for – to be happy for someone, to appreciate someone’s – beauty, skill, gifts, and good luck – without comparing and questioning our own. 🙂 beautiful post 🙂
It’s a welcome moment, the one where I can just see something as it is, free of the burden of judgment. Honestly, I think that skill of seeing is the source of any halfway decent art (not to mention any possibility of peace).
Write a book (for me) please
Or for you – that’s cool too
Could you patch a few extra hours into the day for me? One here, one there? That should be enough.
I’ll see what I can do … Have you considered casual writing each day from 3:03 – 4:01 am? Perhaps another seven minutes from 9:07-9:14pm. I think that would put you on track to finish in 2022.
As usual, you’re writing is perfect!
Geez, I hope not. That’s motivation’s death sentence. I’ll take moderately readable.
OK, you’re merely good…. ha! It doesn’t matter what I say – just keep writing!
sun breaks over the eucalyptus
grove below the wet pasture,
water’s about hot,
I sit in the open window
& roll a smoke.
distant dogs bark, a pair of
cawing crows; the twang
of a pygmy nuthatch high in a pine—
from behind the cypress windrow
the mare moves up, grazing.
a soft continuous roar
comes out of the far valley
of the six-lane highway—thousands
and thousands of cars
driving men to work.
“Marin-An” by Gary Snyder
Thanks for this, as well as all the others. I’m headed to a poetry group this afternoon (reading, not writing) and I’m always eager to look closely at a new poem, or reacquaint myself with a familiar one.
sure, not a writer myself but have a deep appreciation which i’m glad to share, was struck by the sense in yer bit and his of there being something lively left to tap into when the demands of modern life take their tolls.
from W.James
“The universe is a system of which the individual members may relax their anxieties occasionally, in which the don’t-care mood is also right for men, and moral holidays in order”
amen brer william
wow!!! I am amazed!! You have such a gift for writing, I am so inspired by you being inspired enough to write this!!
Amazing! Thank you ❤️❤️😄😄😘
You, lady, are one of the wonders of the world. Keep dancing that bright spirit of yours. I’m not the only one who can see better in your light.
Your mind is beautiful and no matter how any compliments you receive, I hope you keep writing 🙂 Never underestimate your ability to be that glowing Californian Zumba star for others.