The road we walk on is somewhat narrow.
At the end of where we stretch our arms is birth and death.
In the middle, where we are, is sorrow, life, teardrops, morning dew, mist, extravagance, purpose, fading sunlight, crystal moons.
We walk with others, but really, we walk alone.
We try to keep in step with others, we fake it for a while, then we fall, falter, fail, step on toes, collide with worlds.
Later in life, after several romances have ended, we see our own feet. They are bruised, they are naked, they are shy, they are hidden, hiding, holding on.
We have read somewhere, there is a dance, a dance that we can do. A dance for our very own feet, a dance our feet will know.
A dance our feet will smile about.
Last year, I took some dance lessons. It was “cha-cha”. It was a string of embarrassing moments of being intimate with strangers — a man in a crowd of women, a red-faced rock in a river waiting to flow.
After the complimentary drinks, nods and courtesies, the clamoring of feet began in several different languages. Over the course of weeks, trials & lawyers, the dance began to take shape, the river flowed past boulders forgotten. Dance happens, despite us, to right us, to re-unite us.
Our own dance is far more than a “cha-cha”. It is really what we’re made for.
The strivings and longings and knowings and waitings of life come together, sit down in a room, and sing. This is what I am.
From so early we can’t remember, we dance the dance of the Other: the mother, the uncle, the brother, the teacher, the lover, the children, the employer, the bank manager, the pet cat.
One moment in life, when we put on our own shoes, and our feet smile, and they begin that one dance, to that one song we know so well… that is the moment the music truly begins.
Play on Drummer, dance on Dancer.