Being always in a hurry takes two hours to write about

I wrote a pleasant reflection on Sunday night, entitled "Appetite and Apathy," including some of the usual navel-gazing -- quite literally, if not navel-pinching, a habit resulting in my resignation to a life-long love-hate-necessity relationship with my belly and the fat around it -- but also some quality instances of compassionate humanism. I wrote about Fabrizio, my two-year-old housemate, who laughs so shrill he jumps in the air to meet his pitch and falls onto his bottom in glee, an action which is now among my favorite of dances yet. I wrote about the ginger-haired Tempest-reader on the N-train home who had the Union Jack sewn into his boots. I wrote about the woman who cooks and serves at the New Beijing Chinese restaurant a few steps away from my apartment building who walks with a limp. Then, it got deleted. I here pay homage to the death of my good thoughts, knowing that there will be others, but in true character I am still reluctant to let it go ...

(breathe)

OK! So to today. It is sunny and not as bitingly cold, and I am able to gather together lost parts of myself by gazing at a clear blue sky. I look forward to the future again. I am in seated in one of the three locations where New York City happens for me: the dance studio (any of many), the subway, and Starbucks coffee, where I may buy a token beverage, but otherwise shamelessly bring in my pack lunch and soak up their electricity to feed my computer similarly. In the winter, it is hard to find a low cost reprieve in the middle of the day, especially one as ubiquitous as this. There are 150 Starbucks outlets in Manhattan alone, I dare say I have found at least seven of them in my four weeks here so far.

* * *

I have often wished that I could draw, but now I will simply paint with words. There sits on the couch seat next to mine an elderly man with beautiful, deep contours on his highly sketchable face. He sits with his left hand lightly supporting his head -- fingers to temple, thumb to cheek -- a ballpoint loosely fitted between. He may be reading from the loose leaf, hand-written notes on his lap held by his right hand, but from the gentle heaving of his chest I think he is asleep. He seems of good European stock, almost elfin ears that point at the upper tips, a narrow yet sculpted and long nose, a squat face (receded as it is into the folds of his lapel). His thumb moves and squeezes some of the flaccid cheek flesh against the bone. He has three distinct indentations on that cheek, or rather, three layers piled on top of each other. He has horizontal-wishbone-wrinkles marking the lower recesses of his eyes, and one strong crease down the center of his forehead that splices faint frown lines across it. He wears blue denim jeans, a black denim jacket, and a black beanie hat. I try to imagine what his voice might sound like – warbly like his chin, or strong like the history he seems to carry? He woke with a start and an inhale – I wonder from what alternate reality he has been carried back to this one? I smile at the thought of the universality – by this, I mean common experience – of waking just like he did, a reaction to impromptu, almost illicit midday slumber, so soon alert and present … so unlike the morning.

* * *

Quote:

"STARTING next week, working in an operating and grant-making foundation, I will have to retrain parts of my brain. That may not make me a big man on hippocampus, but it means less of the horizon-gazing that required me to take positions on everything going on in the world; instead, a welcome verticalism will drive me to dig more deeply into specific areas of interest. Fewer lone-wolf assertions; more collegial dealing. I hear that's tough.

But retraining and fresh stimulation are what all of us should require in "the last of life, for which the first was made." Athletes and dancers deal with the need to retrain in their 30's, workers in their 40's, managers in their 50's, politicians in their 60's, academics and media biggies in their 70's. The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.

... Intellectual renewal is not a vast new government program, and to secure continuing social interaction deepens no deficit. By laying the basis for future activities in the midst of current careers, we reject stultifying retirement and seize the opportunity for an exhilarating second wind. ... When you're through changing, learning, working to stay involved - only then are you through. "Never retire." "

-- William Safire, "Op-Ed Quartet: A Columnist's Farewell," New York Times 01/24/2005

Thoughts:

Firstly: “big man on hippocampus.” What a great line!

Secondly, as life philosophy: Safire’s mantra is pertinent to any packaging of time one may choose. A performer must “never retire” in their embodiment of a character (which may last the length of a play, say, two hours), in their execution of a movement sequence (which may last, with equal difficulty, any sum of minutes), in their commitment to it as a vocational choice (life). The question at hand is: How can I discover the process to productive longevity, of my mind, of my body, of my faith?

I have an attitude problem when it comes to this sort of perseverance, I have trouble being patient, I have a lot of residual and immediate internal stress, I find it challenging to maintain relaxed consciousness as opposed to violent discovery or its counterpart, paralysis. Whew. I had to pause. See, even then, writing comes as rambles and nothingness. I wonder where this frequent state of emergency comes from. As the positive result of this current self-realization, I bring with me to class the understanding that I no longer need to keep dancing as if the dance class at hand is my last. There is in haste a sense of wanting to get it over and done with, as if living can be got over and done with and then would come the comfortable stillness of death, the satisfaction of having lived once, perhaps intensely, but not now, not again. Rather, what I am looking to engage in is psychophysical training in the practice of living calmly, continuously. I would like to approach these movement arts as exercises in focus and concentration. What I may grow to accept in this renewed understanding is that I may not, therefore, actually be seeking a career in the arts. OR, that my approach to a career in the arts is maturing, and I just don’t know how to recognize myself yet.

On being a lone-wolf with pack-ties and likening the wolf howl to the human need for expressive arts:
“Lois Crisler has said, “Like a community sing, a howl is a happy occasion. Wolves love to howl. When it is started, they instantly seek contact with one another, troop together, fur to fur. Some wolves will run from any distance, panting and bright-eyed, to join in, uttering, as they near, fervent little wows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing.”
While the functions of howling are not fully understood … Once thing is certain, howling appears to be the glue that keeps the pack together and plays a role in the formation and/or the maintenance of strong bonds between other members of the pack.”
(http://www.wolfsongofalaska.org/)
On me? Maybe it's still OK (what is this constant mindplay of what is "OK" and correspondently, not "OK" to be, to pursue?!?!?! Obviously I have not yet grown out of the schooling mindset of right and wrong!) to approach expression with "fervent little wows"! I've been told in David Dorfman's class to relax and slow down; I've been admonished by Miguel Gutierrez to stick to the combination and not add anything extraneous (neither of which I was doing consciously). I respect both these statements as valid to accomplishing that which means excellence in their forms, and for finding calm in a torrent of movement. But something in me hungers also for the aliveness of fervent little wows and a big group howl!

Note:
“A wolf may spend up to a third of its time on the move.”

Note:
"Torrent" and "thirst" share the same Latin root, torrere, meaning to parch, to burn. Yet "Torrent" = 1 : a tumultuous outpouring; RUSH; 2 : a violent stream of a liquid (as water or lava); 3 : a channel of a mountain stream. I suppose the dryness inherent in the torrent is not so much its constitution (which is actually liquid), but it's destination; the initiation of the movement of the torrent, its quest, is to quench.