Show, Don’t Tell
When words pale in comparison to lived experience but words are what I do, it helps to return to the simplest writing advice. I learned it from Mr. Hansen in sixth grade and practiced it in BFA studios with Art Homer. Leave the path of explaining. Let the senses paint and sing and sway.
New ways of feeling the body from the inside out are re-forming my mind. Communication from helping energies arrives in an instant to a place in my brain barely adjacent to language. Habit wants to reach for words. Do I really need them? Do I even want them?
I nod my head up and down. I turn my head side to side. I affirm and negate at the same time and the movement becomes a circle.
When normal syntax fits large and and punctuation restricts, when the mind yearns to play and the body begs rhythm, there is poetry.
***
Image description: an oil pastel drawing on a dark brown background. A swoop of orange, white, purple, and green touches other curving lines of similar colors.
Image description: a pale-colored egg rests in a nest woven of grass and twine.
I - Places of Contact
Lying prone. Gravitied
to the floor. A mild smooch from each heel.
Calves like juice-infused grapefruits,
splatted down
but not split.
Sacrum
a superhero belt.
A wide, flat
basket—the dusty side of the ribcage.
Claws relaxed. Arms
smeared on with a palette knife.
A pancake-sized circle heavy as liquid mercury
pouring out
the back of the head.
***
II - Sota de Copas
Hat of blue ocean, of fins, of scales.
Eyes locked with blue fish’s.
Purple tulips at once bold
and shy: every green springtime ever yielded to
on this tilted, spinning Earth.
Hand on cocked hip, feet ready to dance.
Dialogue profound as blue depths,
tender as green shoots, orange as warm as
red as yellow.
The card calls out: …
I respond: …
Rolling blue and dancing gold and fluttering
you me us sweet playmate yes.
***
Image description: a tarot card rests on a bed of tiny rocks with strands of yellow grass overhead. The Page of Cups (Sota de Copas) holds a golden cup with a blue fish in it.
Image description: clusters of small, veined elm leaves on slender branches.
III - Neutral 0, Interest 1, Pleasure 2
Turning and looking: the solid blandness of what is here.
Long ridge of oaken windowsill: 0.
Foam roller leaning vertically, streaked lipstick pink, desert purple: 1.
Desk lamp half a sphere suspended on a question mark: 0.
The sound of family member X searching a plastic bag, returning contents: 0.
Parallel smears of blue, white, yellow on neon green paper: 2.
The pale smudge on the white wall where I always return to wonder when? how?: 1.
Straw hat, wide-brimmed, once threw ML’s face into deep protective shadow: 1, 2, 3…
Turning not just head but shoulders and
spine and
ribs and
pelvis and
ankles,
spiraling smooth as olive oil and
blandly dazzled
to be alive.
***
References
1 contact Sensing feedback body scan taught by Nicole Lindauer
2 basket “Treasure Chest” Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons taught by Tiffany Sankary
3 looking Orienting to the environment taught by Steve Hoskinson, Justine Porges
4 olive oil “Who Would We Be Without Our Toes?” Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson taught by Paul Pui Wo Lee
