There is a farm called Wild Meadows in western Pennsylvania, surrounded by fields, woods, and little else. An old barn built by Quakers has had minor improvements, including a black layer of mylar over the old wood flooring used as a surface allowing dancers to practice. I was there last week as part of a contact improvisation dance workshop, in the company of seventeen others, some with extensive dance backgrounds, many with little or no experience, ranging from 19 years old into their fifties at least.
When I was in college I had a short friendship with a woman who'd recently had a daughter. My friend was a very slight person with fairly small hips, but the birthing process had taken her around two hours and one really large squeeze, which broke most of her capillaries.
As she described it, the trick to avoiding a multi-hour ordeal was fairly simple: At the point when things seemed unbearable, she simply told herself "the only way out is through." And then she just squeezed, refusing to let up until it was over.
I am ten years older than my youngest sister. We have an annual tradition of visiting a cabin built by our grandfather in upstate NY. When my sister was a toddler, and I a teenager, she fell down my grandfather's stairs. They are steep, shallow, wooden. There is no carpet. As she sat at the bottom of the steps, her face moving from surprise to stormy, I came to her.
"Anything broken?" I asked, patting her arms, legs, ribs. She shook her head, having not yet decided whether to scream.
"It hurts." I said, "You can cry if you want, but you're okay."
She didn't cry.
I was a bike messenger for a little while in 2006. At one point I had an accident. I don't know how, except that I woke up in the middle of an intersection, looking at the front end of a car that clearly wanted to get by.
A voice was asking "are you okay?"
"No," I said, unable to get a sense of which way was up, "get me out of the street."
"Are you okay?"
"No..."
I started getting clearer, managed to drag myself out of the road along with my bike.
"Are you okay?"
"No. What happened?"
I sat on the curb, rested my head in my hands and tried to feel if anything had gone wrong internally.
"Are you..?"
I stood up, glared at the source of the question. "Clearly not," I said, my mouth and eyes full of disgust. I left on foot.
On the phone you ask "what kind of meaning do you want? What would satisfy you?"
"I don't know," I say. "I feel like I'm stuck in a movie and I just want there to be enough there that engaging my suspension of disbelief will actually lead to some kind of reward."
"You're so dark," you say, laughing.
After we stop talking I lay in bed, look at the ceiling. Tomorrow I suppose I'll get up early, make another attempt to do something relevant for someone, somewhere. Tonight I feel like I'm at the edge of the ocean at night. I wish I could dive into it, learn about the all the strange creatures living beneath the surface. Or maybe swim accross, discover a new continent. But I just have this tiny body, and I can't see very well now that the sun has set. So all I can do is look at the waves and wonder.
I am not sad, but I don't understand.