And then there was pain.
The push that balances the pleasure. Motion, perhaps, is a distraction. It is the pressure that is the energy of the act.
Hurt occurs from crudity. Deft pressure balances.
Balance is pleasurable. Balance is the stability that occurs when opposition changes equally.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Monday, November 20, 2006
Grace
It is through dance that I have discovered grace of motion through space, and it
Is through music that I have learned the grace of motion through time
Sound and bodies can coordinate or tumble
The difference between grace and folly is intent
It is the grace of motion through time that allows me to realize my strength of intention
Intention guides our progress through time
And despite the myriad swirling smokestacks of civilization whose billowing winds whisk through our senses
Making forward looking and determined behavior seem impossible, if not just very unfounded
It is the realization that life is nothing more than motion, in space and through time that allows me to
Advocate my grace as a possibility for survival
If not by the clear study of motion through time, then how is it that we are expected to build across this avenue of invisible motion
Its pitfalls occur in its subtlety
It can be seen most easily from a distance - the past or the future
And yet it lives as close as can be, in the invisible suction of change as vacuum is filled -- The articulation of change through space
As the entire contraption hurdles through some unknown place know as time
A place that does not exist in our place
A place where our place exists in its entirety
The basis of human culture, religion, social mores is nothing more than hearsay and fearful mass collusion
Every creed, every dogma, every practice moral, intellectual, or spiritual is a function of someone thinking
And someone doing, and in most cases a separation or at least a magnification of one of these elements
And in the end it is a shouting match among proselytes of their version of the story
Credibility becomes the basis of truth, of guidance, of style of motion
But every claimant has a story, and every defendant an argument
And I am assailed by their highly disputable spasms
Motion, however, is indisputable
And motion with grace is by definition how god moves
Motion means change in some dimension
Dimensions exist with respect to motion
I was born with hunger, with thirst, with a serious oxygen addiction
I was born soft, vulnerable, easily damaged by forced conflict with my space
I was born needy
And in motion
Need is the gravity of time
The singular force that interconnects
Need is the basis of motion
Motion is the basis of existence, awareness, life
In stillness there is no motion
Motion defeats stillness
Need is the suction that robs a vacuum of its stillness
I was born small and as I continued to nurse my needs I became larger
Space was my nemesis
I needed it, I would take up more and more of it
But as I arrived in it, it had all been claimed
The very ground on which I was ejected onto this planet had someone's name on it
The very building which protected my naked wet body from the cold evening wind of the bicentennial Florida summer
Had someone's name on it
The very people whose minds and hearts and bodies had rendered my infant form had someone's name on it
And so it went for all space I would ever come across
Named, sorted, claimed as though it could be
But what did it mean to be born
It meant motion
Motion of my parents bodies to grow to the age they could produce me
Motion of union, motion of gestation, motion of birth
I arrived with the lungy sound of fear
I greeted it all with the only motion I knew then
Writhing and crying as the struggle continued
With me unwittingly occupying a space that had already been claimed
My body is my prison if it always lives in someone else's space
Or is it my mind
As my childhood withered into my adolescence, and those sour fruit began to ripen into early adulthood
I would realize the more sinister undercurrent to all of the claim of space
I would realize that motion describes change over time
Change in the three dimensions that define space,
Or change over the four dimensions that define space and time
By aligning my intentions, focusing my present behavior on the present obstacles
That defeat them
That is to say, becoming aware of the pressures on my motion
The reality that as the land on which I was born and have on every day since lived
Belonged to some other consciousness in motion that claimed it
I now realize the equivalent occupation on my motion in time
Television arrested my intentions
Like a board smack in the face of a running gymnast about to take leap
Mass hypnosis through mercenary culture builders, cold, bleak, uncompassionate sorts
Who never realized they are their own motion, and thus they are their own space and time
Instead they found comfort in taking mine
"Sure, live in my space but pay me for it"
"Don't think for yourself, think for me"
"Surely the result of our collaboration will benefit at least one of us"
As a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Sikh, or a Muslim
I am a dancer with a troupe
My motion has been arranged for me
And I trample every field I come across with the memorized dance of the ages
To a beat out of sync with my own pulse
Oh yes rhythm, pulse, periodic oscillation
Can I deny that I am a polyrhythm of chemistry?
Could I simply observe my motion?
Could I learn to see what motion I have, where it goes
And perhaps follow it?
Could I decide that god is not found in the dusty pages of old texts
Or the hardened hearts of bead pushers and cronies
But rather in the lust of my own heart
In the passion of my own fingers
In the tears in my own eyes
Could I hear god in the curl of my laughter
Or in the synchronicity of wind from heat from light from stars and earth
The story of creation that examines what is as a sign of what is rather than something else
Could I recognize my worship in the choices of my every action
The compliance of my behavior with my intent
Instead of the rehearsed motions of some detached prayer
Could I define spirituality as the motion of my spirit
The direction of my movement through time
Could I look at and see light
Or must I sculpt a hole in the darkness and hope something good lies beyond its edges?
I am an arrow in flight that dies when it hits the ground
And yet upon me is no mercy from the air in which I move or the
Challengers that wish to rape my momentum
And so I surround myself with drums and things with tune
Dancers, poets, and songstresses
Lovers of aroma and hugs
Kindness and compassion
Plants and humans and stones that make music with light
And I view the environment - the ground and the air and all of its leeches
As a garden to be tended
It is a garden of community, of strength and cooperation
It is a garden of behavior
It is a garden of light and sound
It is a garden of touch and warmth and coolness to stir the still air
All around me I see a garden full of weeds
Plants whose boundaries lie gone or unchecked
I see a garden full of opportunity, full of spaces to fill with
Colors that bring their own bloom, provide their own sustenance
And freely help the needy
And I am so needy
So full of inability to cope
So full of necessity without ability
I can’t make oxygen
I can’t make food
I can’t make water
I don’t even own any space with which to dispose of my own body’s waste
All of it comes from some place else
Some other part of my garden that I’ve never worked
Some part of my field where the memory of persistence lives on
As the struggle for survival spins off looms of wispy fruit
That gets brought to me in boxes and bags via ships and trains and trucks
By weathered faces and chafed cuticles, parts of people I’ll probably never get to know complete
But what is my thanks for the masses that provide
What is my thanks for the ground that wombs the seed I found
What can I make that I need
Or am I destined to the mercy of the anonymous
The decision of what is self and what is not self is the basis of identity
To decide that parts of self are not self is an error
To decide that parts of not self is self is an error
Identity is required for motion
I am in motion
So what is my identity?
I am an instrument and a weapon
I can make ease and suffering
My breath can massage sound
Or rupture safety
My push can find order
Or topple it
My direction can be toward or away from
The light or my shadow
Like the wind that ripped holes in the roof
Of the house where I lived
Like the rain that entered those
New doors
Like Shiva's fungal army that climbed from the earth
To flourish and digest the white chalk
That walled my life's most early years
And reset everything to where it started
I am the soft limestone sand that kept me lifted
In the horseshoe with the screens and the pond
I am the sun faded garden hose that took my grip
I am the wonder that introduced the two
The hope that drove the conversation
The upset that remembers and revisits
I am 12 acres of jungle and cinder block and fear
I am the coward unable to listen to the trees
I am seashells and seabirds and water snakes and game fish
I am the master of yeast and bottles and bees
Is through music that I have learned the grace of motion through time
Sound and bodies can coordinate or tumble
The difference between grace and folly is intent
It is the grace of motion through time that allows me to realize my strength of intention
Intention guides our progress through time
And despite the myriad swirling smokestacks of civilization whose billowing winds whisk through our senses
Making forward looking and determined behavior seem impossible, if not just very unfounded
It is the realization that life is nothing more than motion, in space and through time that allows me to
Advocate my grace as a possibility for survival
If not by the clear study of motion through time, then how is it that we are expected to build across this avenue of invisible motion
Its pitfalls occur in its subtlety
It can be seen most easily from a distance - the past or the future
And yet it lives as close as can be, in the invisible suction of change as vacuum is filled -- The articulation of change through space
As the entire contraption hurdles through some unknown place know as time
A place that does not exist in our place
A place where our place exists in its entirety
The basis of human culture, religion, social mores is nothing more than hearsay and fearful mass collusion
Every creed, every dogma, every practice moral, intellectual, or spiritual is a function of someone thinking
And someone doing, and in most cases a separation or at least a magnification of one of these elements
And in the end it is a shouting match among proselytes of their version of the story
Credibility becomes the basis of truth, of guidance, of style of motion
But every claimant has a story, and every defendant an argument
And I am assailed by their highly disputable spasms
Motion, however, is indisputable
And motion with grace is by definition how god moves
Motion means change in some dimension
Dimensions exist with respect to motion
I was born with hunger, with thirst, with a serious oxygen addiction
I was born soft, vulnerable, easily damaged by forced conflict with my space
I was born needy
And in motion
Need is the gravity of time
The singular force that interconnects
Need is the basis of motion
Motion is the basis of existence, awareness, life
In stillness there is no motion
Motion defeats stillness
Need is the suction that robs a vacuum of its stillness
I was born small and as I continued to nurse my needs I became larger
Space was my nemesis
I needed it, I would take up more and more of it
But as I arrived in it, it had all been claimed
The very ground on which I was ejected onto this planet had someone's name on it
The very building which protected my naked wet body from the cold evening wind of the bicentennial Florida summer
Had someone's name on it
The very people whose minds and hearts and bodies had rendered my infant form had someone's name on it
And so it went for all space I would ever come across
Named, sorted, claimed as though it could be
But what did it mean to be born
It meant motion
Motion of my parents bodies to grow to the age they could produce me
Motion of union, motion of gestation, motion of birth
I arrived with the lungy sound of fear
I greeted it all with the only motion I knew then
Writhing and crying as the struggle continued
With me unwittingly occupying a space that had already been claimed
My body is my prison if it always lives in someone else's space
Or is it my mind
As my childhood withered into my adolescence, and those sour fruit began to ripen into early adulthood
I would realize the more sinister undercurrent to all of the claim of space
I would realize that motion describes change over time
Change in the three dimensions that define space,
Or change over the four dimensions that define space and time
By aligning my intentions, focusing my present behavior on the present obstacles
That defeat them
That is to say, becoming aware of the pressures on my motion
The reality that as the land on which I was born and have on every day since lived
Belonged to some other consciousness in motion that claimed it
I now realize the equivalent occupation on my motion in time
Television arrested my intentions
Like a board smack in the face of a running gymnast about to take leap
Mass hypnosis through mercenary culture builders, cold, bleak, uncompassionate sorts
Who never realized they are their own motion, and thus they are their own space and time
Instead they found comfort in taking mine
"Sure, live in my space but pay me for it"
"Don't think for yourself, think for me"
"Surely the result of our collaboration will benefit at least one of us"
As a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Sikh, or a Muslim
I am a dancer with a troupe
My motion has been arranged for me
And I trample every field I come across with the memorized dance of the ages
To a beat out of sync with my own pulse
Oh yes rhythm, pulse, periodic oscillation
Can I deny that I am a polyrhythm of chemistry?
Could I simply observe my motion?
Could I learn to see what motion I have, where it goes
And perhaps follow it?
Could I decide that god is not found in the dusty pages of old texts
Or the hardened hearts of bead pushers and cronies
But rather in the lust of my own heart
In the passion of my own fingers
In the tears in my own eyes
Could I hear god in the curl of my laughter
Or in the synchronicity of wind from heat from light from stars and earth
The story of creation that examines what is as a sign of what is rather than something else
Could I recognize my worship in the choices of my every action
The compliance of my behavior with my intent
Instead of the rehearsed motions of some detached prayer
Could I define spirituality as the motion of my spirit
The direction of my movement through time
Could I look at and see light
Or must I sculpt a hole in the darkness and hope something good lies beyond its edges?
I am an arrow in flight that dies when it hits the ground
And yet upon me is no mercy from the air in which I move or the
Challengers that wish to rape my momentum
And so I surround myself with drums and things with tune
Dancers, poets, and songstresses
Lovers of aroma and hugs
Kindness and compassion
Plants and humans and stones that make music with light
And I view the environment - the ground and the air and all of its leeches
As a garden to be tended
It is a garden of community, of strength and cooperation
It is a garden of behavior
It is a garden of light and sound
It is a garden of touch and warmth and coolness to stir the still air
All around me I see a garden full of weeds
Plants whose boundaries lie gone or unchecked
I see a garden full of opportunity, full of spaces to fill with
Colors that bring their own bloom, provide their own sustenance
And freely help the needy
And I am so needy
So full of inability to cope
So full of necessity without ability
I can’t make oxygen
I can’t make food
I can’t make water
I don’t even own any space with which to dispose of my own body’s waste
All of it comes from some place else
Some other part of my garden that I’ve never worked
Some part of my field where the memory of persistence lives on
As the struggle for survival spins off looms of wispy fruit
That gets brought to me in boxes and bags via ships and trains and trucks
By weathered faces and chafed cuticles, parts of people I’ll probably never get to know complete
But what is my thanks for the masses that provide
What is my thanks for the ground that wombs the seed I found
What can I make that I need
Or am I destined to the mercy of the anonymous
The decision of what is self and what is not self is the basis of identity
To decide that parts of self are not self is an error
To decide that parts of not self is self is an error
Identity is required for motion
I am in motion
So what is my identity?
I am an instrument and a weapon
I can make ease and suffering
My breath can massage sound
Or rupture safety
My push can find order
Or topple it
My direction can be toward or away from
The light or my shadow
Like the wind that ripped holes in the roof
Of the house where I lived
Like the rain that entered those
New doors
Like Shiva's fungal army that climbed from the earth
To flourish and digest the white chalk
That walled my life's most early years
And reset everything to where it started
I am the soft limestone sand that kept me lifted
In the horseshoe with the screens and the pond
I am the sun faded garden hose that took my grip
I am the wonder that introduced the two
The hope that drove the conversation
The upset that remembers and revisits
I am 12 acres of jungle and cinder block and fear
I am the coward unable to listen to the trees
I am seashells and seabirds and water snakes and game fish
I am the master of yeast and bottles and bees