Tough dance today.
Been dancing twice a week for the last three weeks including the Ancestors workshop.
It was all getting better and better.
Until today.
Sometimes it goes bad on the floor.
Got there a couple of minutes after 1030.
All seemed ok.
Then a wave of tiredness washes up from nowhere.
Lie on the floor for a bit listening to the slow, soft rhythm of the pre-wave music, just to chill out. Look up at the ceiling. count nearly a hundred rectangular panels.
The place was completed and opened in 1914.
Think about the carpenters who did the joinery work on the ceiling panels.
Get up and start moving when the Flow rhythm starts but cannot get into it.
Want to leave after twenty minutes, thinking it’s not going to happen today.
For whatever reason.
But keep dancing regardless, hanging back near the door leading to the fire escape.
Close to one of the speakers.
Avoid connecting with the other dancers.
They say keep dancing regardless of what comes up.
Don’t stop dancing.
The Stillness Rhythm, a slow version of Amazing Grace is playing, opens something inside, a door to let out the crap out or let the good stuff in.
Don’t know but it works.
Ride the second Wave all the way to the end.
Start to enjoy it, less shut down to the others in the space but still not fully there with them. Doesn’t matter, keep dancing.
The second Stillness Rhythm, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah towards the conclusion, lovely way to end.
Survive and live to dance another day.
Used to know the words of Amazing Grace.
Sang it once as the dawn lightened over Cavello Bay in Bermuda.
Couldn’t sleep with jet lag, got on a hired moped and drove around the island.
Stopping along the way to watch the ocean and sing.
That was back in ’02.
Stopped off in New York on the way back.
Visited Ground Zero, less than six months after the attacks.
Got the same heavy vibe off the place as in Dachau a couple of decades earlier, during a cold Bavarian late Autumn.
Sang something at the Manhattan site to ease the disturbed Spirits, so many of them seemed to be hanging around the site, dragged out of life in an instant.
Bewildered. Lost. Not wanting to be dead. But to be back with the living.
Think relearning Amazing Grace will be a good thing.
Try it out tomorrow evening at the singing lesson with Emily.
Coming towards the end of the Genre Short Story course with the Writers Studio.
The last of the four stories is to be in the Magic Realism genre.
Still got a week to finish it.
If the other three stories are anything to go by it will be written in the last few days before the deadline.
It’s a good genre.
Go to the Ocean on this the first Sunday of Advent.
Take the SUP board but don’t manage to stand much as the Southerly has come up, whipping the waves into a wicked chop.
Fall off the board on the first attempt to stand, into the waters of Malabar Bay.
Blown from the boat ramp down to the beach and then have to paddle against the wind and the waves to get back.
Can only kneel on the board, and then sit.
Hard Yakka getting back.
A flock of seagulls, wings tucked up, heads down, perched on a long rock, watch the slow slog of the rookie board paddler against wind and wave. If they think it’s funny, they don’t laugh.
Thinking of my late Godmother, Auntie Blaithin, died this day a year ago. Now resting in the County Meath heartland with her sister, my mother, who joined her there a couple of months ago.
The Southerly is still blowing outside in the darkness.
Wonder if the seagulls are still hanging out on that rock.
dancesingwrite 