impersonating martha graham

The word 'Olympics' is running amuck all across the guide page on my tv. i put the games on; i dont even know why really. i'm not interested in 98% of the sports being played; but i cant have silence around me when im down here all alone at night. i gotta have something murmuring in the background just so i dont sit here counting the beats of my own heart. somehow the olympics is the perfect air-filler for me right now; and there's always the hope that something truly historic will happen while im watching (or more appropriately, listening)....one of those 'where were you when' kind of moments...i suppose phelps' warp-speed world record shots back and forth thru water qualify as something like that. the man is a fish with lungs. its almost as if the water gets out of the way when it sees him coming--seeing the sheets of liquid skimming his back as he races is pretty incredible...

the women's gymnastics team final wrapped up a little earlier. we got the silver--oh joy. i dont really watch to see who will win. i watch for the sheer awe it inspires in me. i have always been one to have deep respect--and even a little jealousy--for those who are able to hone their bodies into true living machines capable of impossible miracles of movement. training for years so your muscles explode with power and stretch on demand until you get to the point where gravity means nothing to you. you can hurl yourself twisting into the air and still find your feet when you choose to come down. you can perform magic tricks with nothing but a bar or a few rings or a good, solid, clear floor before you. your body becomes an instrument--your limbs, your bones are tuned to defy physics and the supposed limits of human anatomy. what is it like to have space in the palm of your hand like that? to command your body through it as you please--the air at your mercy as you slice thru it at every possible angle, scissor blades for legs, machetes for arms.

ive fallen so far out of touch with my body. i miss dance the way i miss everyone and everything else that is dead to me. ive lost flexibility and strength--the ability to imagine a shape and command myself to make that shape with nothing but my own bones and flesh. to leave the floor whenever i want--getting just a few feet closer to the zenith before landing silently to cut lines thru the landscape with the tips of my pointed toes. in dance, you do not 'do' art, you become it--sculpture after fleeting sculpture--with every new second, another new movement is born and dies on the floor to allow the next and the next. you cannot frame it. you cannot fold it between the pages of a book. filming it just captures the images--the energy escapes all documentation. the only place it leaves its mark is on the heart of the performer, and the soul of the one who looks on. there are no archives for dance. no keepsakes, no copies, no templates. every dance that has ever been danced before has only been done that one time and never again. even if the same steps are repeated--it's the body behind the steps, the moment that claims the steps, the particular position of the blood in your veins--the heart in mid beat.

dance is physical prayer. and like all prayers, it drifts upwards after it's done, riding air currents stretching into space before it finds rest within the swirl that composes the ear of God. and there it stays, never to know the earth again.

...wow, what a tangent that was. actually, it's nothing for me...