My Body, The Buddhist

18 my body is held in the present

18 my body is held in the present or, attending a dance performance in 2097 From the floor, I picked up what I thought was a seed. As it came to life in my hand, my thumb rolled it across my fingers and dropped it. The spider ran. My hand still knows that supple spider body. —Simone Forti, dancer There are no tickets or reserved seats. I don’t know where the dance performance is and I am not to look for nor anticipate the location. The choreographer whose work I am about to see suggests that the small group consisting of her audience/patrons apply her frame of reference for seeing dance before we leave home. In the humming quarters of a grooming tank, I am bathed, moisturized , and massaged. My clothes contain stimulants that heighten the sensitivity of my skin. I leave for the performance without locking the door. It seals itself shut when it senses my body crossing the threshold. Keys long ago replaced arrowheads as objects of the hunt for the hobbyist collector. After centuries of disregard, particularly in cities, the moon, stars, and fire have again become the primary source of evening light. Unencumbered boulevards are bordered with vegetable, flower, and herb gardens, and orchards tended and harvested by their respective communities. Tangy scents open my temples and nasal passages, and my salivary glands juice excitedly. Everything radiates, and my surface capillaries blissfully respond. Humans have learned to see life as scintillating composites of every conceivable combination of matter that has ever been, is, or will be. Through disciplined practice and guidance from early childhood, we Deborah Hay: My Body, The Buddhist page 99 99 Deborah Hay: My Body, The Buddhist page 100 100 : my body, the buddhist have unlearned the compulsion to judge life by a mere handful of facts. Our cultural commitment to embrace the unknown, particularly after the demise of the computer age, reminds me to breathe deeply and notice everything. The choreographer had one other suggestion. “Turn in place several times and then walk in the direction you face when you stop turning.” And so I do, glad to be going where I haven’t chosen to be. The act and object of seeing are now undifferentiated. I am the performance I set out to find without looking, alert to fleeting changes in and outside my physical body. Breathing feels planetary. My hands pass and turn like tropical vegetation before my eyes. People enter my visual field. We are interacting no matter what we do. Like that man sitting with his head lowered and his eyes closed. On one level, he does not register my presence. On another, we are including each other in our separate perceptions of the moment. I love this feeling. I love him for being where he is so I can see him in this context. A blind woman with ivory-colored skin and a downy layer of body hair moves along the street in tiny little steps. She is wearing a black bathing suit. Her legs glide over the surface of the boulevard. She is completely at ease, a smile turning her half-opened eyes into slits. Her guide, a young woman with fine black eyes and an aquiline nose, watches the blind woman from a distance, her patience and goodwill palpable. If the motion of the blind woman looks threatened by outside interference, her guide is immediately beside her to prevent harm. She moves so rapidly her work is invisible. A tall, broad-shouldered woman wearing an ankle-length cobalt blue skirt holds an edge of the skirt at arm’s length. Her head is tilted downward and she focuses several feet beyond her body. With the skirt edge in her hand, she thoughtfully steps forward on one leg, the other coming to meet it like an old friend. The poetry of being so close to stillness is hypnotic. She, too, has another person aligned with her. It is difficult to tell if this person is male or female. The body is small, fit, and fast-moving like a hawk. It swoops into place to ground the tall, blue-skirted woman. Blue skirt moves. Hawk flashes into her Deborah Hay: My Body, The Buddhist page 101 my body is held in the present : 101 field and becomes perfectly still. Blue skirt moves away. Hawk stays. It is impossible to read meaning into...