Gymnastics is not for tall people. I only took a few classes as a child, I think in a gym on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland. I still cannot do a cartwheel, will probably die this way. But I remember how sturdy the balance beam was, hard and durable. Walking on a balance beam, so many senses come online that usually aren’t, tiny muscles wake up; the heart races, something happens in the gut (center of gravity?), it sharpens perception, requires concentration.
G shared Mary Oliver’s poem, Dogfish, with me last week. I was particularly morose, exasperated. The poem is breath-taking (giving..) as a whole. The last stanzas have lingered with me:
And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.
*
And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,
they can do it.
Boy oh BOY do I spend a time wishing for an easier world, a different world, which is also to say an easier self, a different self (i.e. wHy aM I LiKe tHis? do you know that song?). I think this is a source of the hopelessness, it definitely bulges, can really consume me if I’m not careful. The poem was a record scratch, a disruption; it sent some oxygen into the dank room, stilled my hand wringing.
I don’t know why sometimes my suffering is devastating and sometimes it’s hilarious, has something to do with the amount of space around it, the distance I can wedge between me and it. That margin might be the same width as a balance beam, moving across it requires the same kind of muscle, attention and language. On either side it’s a long way down.
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