April 17, 2010

Dancing With Birth, Life And Death

It's not just a phase, is it?
Fleeting, fugacious, ephemeral... all words that depict limits, an end, implying a beginning. Where do we start, where do we end? To this, we fantasise about the dance of life and death. The slow waltz moving through gardens, wealds and marshes. The tango of tragedy inspiring the phantasm of such love that unites two people and only expands dreamily, revered, as they are separated. The quickstep set off by the emergence of a drop of sweat, the momentary ceasing of the heart, then a black trigger pulled back and fin; the curtain falls and the audience leaves behind popcorn, empty cups and straws. Desolace. This show will take place again, and crowds will again assemble and dissolve. There are tides of blood, after all. Whether we can see it or not, we dance together in shallow waters, splashing here and there the eerie.

What life is, I don't know. But the end is death... when the music stops, the steps cease, the couple becomes a statuette on display, and gently or not, they decay. When did they start? Not at life, but at birth - the first movement, that first smile, the first slice and glance. The dance itself is life. It started with our first breath, our first step, and ended with our last of both. Romantic, is it not?

Before, that last step, the end, death, was deemed an existentialist problem. You can't escape it, yet for some crazy absurd reason, we are lead to believe that we can keep on dancing forever. To some extent, this is true, because death has an opposite in birth - when they dance, they face each other - so life has no such end because it has no such opposite. Why then would we have a fear of death? Life doesn't end even if death happens... Is this because life never began (and so cannot end)? Birth results in death, yes. Rebirth results in death encore? Following the same logic, it would. Such thinking leads me to believe in the possibility of past lives, if life is one continuum. But life is not the line. Can I say what it is? If I were to say it's the space it would be excluding the continuum itself which makes this paradoxical, a yes and no question/answer. Neither. Or both.

So my birth has occurred, which means my death will one day occur. This can only be considered an existentialist problem if this was somehow thought to be avoidable. Things pass on, nature goes through cycles. We grow up, we grow old. Up down. Left right. Action reaction. Circles. Are we in the middle? Or the outside? Both or neither? Or all? This search for answers is out of fear. It feels scary. The possibility, the worry... the climax, the fall. All will pass through this gate and many other gates that are the same, until they decide to not take the same path, but take one path.

What is life?
A guitar melody. A choir of voices singing in unison a message.
There is the dancing.
The dance floor of the world.
Everyone stops dancing one moment then begin another dance.
Each step stops and starts. A moment of silence, then the heart beats, a moment of silence.
Is life this cycle?
Or is this simply the way our making is made ephemeral, unable to be attached to, fleeting? All our dreams, our aspirations, our lies arrive and depart, always in that order. And the space in which this occurs we call life, and it never leaves because it never came. Somehow, we are just here, becoming aware of the changes going on around us, and the lack of change within, but not because there should be change, but because there can be no change to life itself. Space is empty, space is clear, and its filling cannot be sustained because space cannot be filled. So then, I ask what is the point? There is none, because the space cannot be filled, as much significance and meaning as I would like to place on the journey, the experience, there really is none, because it's ephemeral, invented and therefore a lie. But life, is true, for it is unchangeable. This makes it real. And the meanings, the thoughts, the importance... are the different steps we make in our dances. Either which way our feet, our slender bodies, our hands move, dance happens, and we call it different things - jive, cha cha, Macarena. The differences are how we define the dance, which has no significance, even if we attribute it. If we cannot make any changes, why can we? But because changes don't last, what makes us think that we can make changes? Whichever way we move, little or more, we dance. Metaphor aside, this is life. The dance that is never will be and never has been.

Can I understand it? No.
I'm not the dancer, doing the dancing. I am the dance, because I am always here. You may say you hate dancing, or you may love it. But is either true? You are the dancing, and this whole text makes no sense, or maybe it makes perfect sense. Regardless, watching my steps keeps me not from dancing.

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