Dance Dance Revolution.

The strangest development occurred last night as I was falling asleep. Actually, I wasn’t falling asleep, having dosed myself with a trough of sugar not long before bed. As raw as I was feeling yesterday, eating for comfort seemed wonderfully acceptable, and I was permissive with myself around it.

That said, it was taking me a while to fall asleep with all the sugar running laps around my blood cells, and my thoughts began to wander. I began choreographing a ballet.

?? What? Yes. In the light of day, now, I see that perhaps this is the mode of expression for some of the more raw things that I have to “say,” – that writing actually is much too close a mode for me, and that when I’ve tried to write about some of this, it comes off so cold and distant, or so majorly personal that it doesn’t effect “good” writing. Or, maybe, dance is just the mode this particular set of events in my life wants to take.

And, I don’t think it would be that bad. In fact, I sort of story-boarded about 2/3rds of it last night; it wouldn't be long, maybe 20 minutes. I can see the lighting and the costumes, and the masks. Because there will be masks. The psyche always has masks. It will be haunting, and breakingly beautiful. And, I believe, it will be identifiable. As in, people will be able to relate to the experience, or if not directly, they will relate to the emotions of the experience. Most people have trauma. Unfortunately. And if not experienced at that level, most people can relate to heart-break, or the cycle of addiction that draws us back to recreate it again and again, attempting to change the outcome, or “make it work” this time.

Perhaps pipe-dream. Perhaps not. It was so out of left field, that it sort of feels divinely inspired – i.e. “not me.” Not my machinations. I also happen to go to one of the best liberal arts schools in the area, which has a phenomenal dance program. It’s not completely out of range or reach that this could happen, in some way or other. Perhaps even an addendum to my thesis.

My poetry thesis, I have decided, is a “tome.” When I said that word to my advisor, I didn’t actually know what the precise definition was, but it felt like the right word. I just looked it up right now, and it means a volume, one book in a set. And although that doesn’t capture entirely what I meant, it does make sense to me.

The thesis is basically a record of events and experiences from the first 25 years of my life. I don’t really expect anyone to particularly care about it. I don’t particularly care if they do. I said to my advisor that much of the writing that I was doing for it didn’t feel current. That it felt like this was old, ancient stuff, but that it was apparently wanting to come up and out, and to be recorded, acknowledged, and then set aside.

I don’t intend this book to be the thing that takes me around the world on reading tours. But that’s not its intention. Its intention is to be heard, seen, recorded. And laid to rest. This thesis (which per the requirements is to be a book of 40 – 80 poems), the process of this thesis is like a burial ritual. This is the getting ready of the body, preparing it for eternal and final rest. It will be the laying to rest of a long and sad and manic period in my life, and it will effect an acceptance and peace in me, that it will finally have been acknowledged, instead of stifled. (Acknowledged by me, that is.)

However, like I said, there is some stuff which isn’t making itself quite available to me in the written way. Which feels too big to whittle down to a few words on a stagnant page (which, ultimately is why I may never be a poet or writer by trade, I believe – or at least, strictly a “page poet.” I want my work to live, to work on you – though, of course, plenty of people and writers create the most enormous and powerful effects on the page, but it’s not my sole medium).

So, ballet. How odd. And yet, I already feel myself moved by it.

And by the purifying power of catharsis.