Back in March, we knew it would be a little while. Night clubs shuttered along with gyms, studios, and all the rest of public life. No contra dancing at the Glen Echo Park Spanish Ballroom on Friday nights. No proximity to my absolutely favorite Zumba teacher at the rec center on Saturday mornings. We’d have to figure something out. For this old gal, keeping the spirit intact means movement. Dance is as much a necessity as toilet paper and reliable wifi.
The irony was clear from the beginning: the businesses keeping their doors open were not ones I wanted to support. A few of my more savvy Zumba instructors went virtual, offering Zoom workouts at no cost a couple days a week. It was oddly comforting to catch a glimpse into the kitchens and living rooms of people I’d only seen at the gym. I felt less alone in my own mess, swinging my hips in the tiny rectangle of space carved out in a condo which absorbed schoolroom, office, and the entire universe of entertainment options on two days notice last March.
That little while stretched into weeks. Then months.
The food in New Orleans, they say, is reason enough to go. Try telling a person you’re heading that way. “Oh my God, Cajun cooking.” They’ll put their hands to their face. They’ll touch their belly. You’ll hear a little moan.
Nine states in eleven days, and somehow we managed to have the worst food of our trip in New Orleans.
Not just mediocre bad. Not Applebee’s bad or hotel happy hour bad. But epically, comically, stupendously bad.
Don’t call.
That’s the only thing. Do anything else at all.
But don’t call.
Eat too much peanut butter. Water the plants. Walk the dog in the pouring rain.
Don’t call.
Empty the suitcase. Start the laundry. Place the new pottery dish in its place.
Think about him again.
Don’t call. Continue reading “Listen Instead”→
What young self didn’t know was that cool is a lid that screws down tight on the swelling delight of yes. From the edge of her ancient eye, older self notices women in the dark corners of the bar bouncing in their seats. Girls titter near a post trying not to sway — girls who are surely women but seem so far from their fullness.
The dude in an oversized plaid suit and orange ponytail hollers into a microphone while the bassist ducks his eyes under his fedora and yanks on steel strings. Two spaghetti-armed boys blow brass right through the back wall.
Older self stands and strips off her sweater. She steps toward the unnamed sister, the one in a cherry red tank top and spiked gray hair. She touches her arm and draws her onto the space in the center of the room. The worn Persian rug there is a far cry from a welcome mat, but carpet is no great challenge. Years earlier, she sent her young selves scurrying off to road-test every surface. Concrete, rooftop, mountaintop, pier. Boardroom, waiting room, snowfall, bed. Every floor is a dance floor when it’s time to dance.
It’s always time to dance.
She pops her hip and snaps her hand, beckoning to the one across the room who’s been having trouble sitting still. They are three now. Soon they are five. Soon nine.
Low ceilings press in on the battered cafe. Amateur pencil sketches hang crooked the walls. Light shifts and a gleam slices across the bowl of the saxophone. Soon it’s a glittering ballroom. Soon the pulse of the Cotton Club on a Saturday night.
The wall of dudes collectively holds confines itself to straight faces and non-committal postures until one man, pushing 70 easy, steps into and sheds 10 years. The young women form a ring of cool, turning their taut backs out for protection. The rest shimmy and grin knowing there is no outside and no in. Guarding one’s soft parts is a survival skill for certain, but the older ones have learned the taxonomy of danger. They can differentiate battlefield from playground now. It wasn’t always so clear.
Here, the belly is free to roll towards the snare’s smash and crack. That’s lightning for sure, but older self unfurls anyway inside the grounded body of her scars. She twists the lid loose and drinks the song’s bright rain. She is growing older still. Time is running out, so she runs out into it. She fills her bones until they spill over with dance.
Only after the herd thunders past, then the chewing snapping locust swarm, then the boulder storm, only after all of these have carried themselves off into the collapsing distance does the gesture peek out from its hushed cave.
The ribbon unfurls from my wrist. A glass staircase bears the weight of fear. A feral pup in its winter wool climbs to the cliff edge and readies its throat.
He walks the dog while I pull on tights and boots. He leads me to the car then drives us through mist and rush hour traffic to a studio were a purple chandelier glitters in greeting.
We stumble through box step and salsa until motion from inside carries us like small waves lapping. Slow, quick quick, slow. His elbow lifts just enough to suggest an invitation. I twirl once around a maypole of light before alighting one beat shy of our next shared step.
The instructor praises us on our gaze. He can’t know our determination to master seeing. We speak across night, three years of two homes, voice as proxy for proximity. When we are together, we sometimes sit near each other and pluck up the threads of formerly disembodied conversation and spin them around the shape of us, looking, looking. We fill our stores with images that will warm us later. These eyes are accustomed to bridging the gap.
On this polished floor, our bodies have a new exchange. Slow, slow, quick quick. While I listen through his skin for the lead, it’s his eyes that signal our direction. These lessons build on a language we already speak. When parted, we fall into step. When still, we are dancing.
The remarkable sifter and curator, DMF, over at SyntheticZero posted a comment to Everything is Music with a link to Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon playing Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes.
On the eve of an unwelcome anniversary and bracing for another night fighting off the devils that eat sleep, here I am in bed now, singing and dancing — yes, dancing alone in bed! — with the warmest thrill from smile to toes.
Now this word from Ernie & Bert:
Thank you for the most buoyant lullaby a girl could hope for, DMF. (And thank you, lambies.)
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.
Last night, I danced at my cousin’s wedding. Danced like a toddler does, right up front.
Like this.
I’m guessing everyone else out there enjoyed Sara Bareilles’ music video for “Brave” at some point in the past two years. I just today discovered it on About Face, a website promoting positive body image.
Just as she intends, Bareilles’ video shivers open a smile that leaks tears.
—
Remember the game you used to play in the doorway? You stand facing out and press the backs of your hands hard against the doorjamb. You push there, muscles working, and count. Twenty, thirty, one hundred. Then you step out, and after a breath, marvel as they rise.
As if invisible threads.
As if a secret deal to suspend the laws of physics.
For most of the hours in most of the days, I push hard against something. The clock, a hunger, my doubts, someone’s needs.
The deadline breathing fierce at the base of my skull.
The flashing cursor, the buzzing phone.
The undertow.
It seems a whole life becomes this pressed angle, wedged here in a narrow doorway. I barely recall the name for air.
Until song calls me out, and shows me again the secret to tricking gravity.
Even on a day that saps breath, beat
remains.
Night, home, a high whine
sears the deep ear. When veering toward bed
or bread or any
webbed polyfil
to muffle
the last throb of momentum, habit
is the last hope.
Turn towards
Calabria, thud and sway
into currents
already in motion,
churn flesh inside
out. Turn up
here like sleepwalking
to Messina, like emerging
at the first dawn.
Shannon E. Williams 