Grace

You can't see what I'm doing but I'm lifting my pelvic floor. You can't hear me but I'm humming. The hum sounds like a growl then graduates to a stutter as the vocal cords begin to get the message. I practice the vowels in my throat. I read a sentence without the consonants, then I practice the consonants in a whisper, then I add a bit of voice. When I get to conversation I am still stymied because there isn't enough air to get through more than a few words. I stop to breathe but my thoughts keep going, so I have to deal with the collision and make a choice, and then attend to the pelvic floor and make a note to remember to practice breathing, easy to avoid because it is so hard. 

Standing is even harder because of the weight of my head on my floppy spine, like balancing a bowling ball with a garden hose. I glance at myself in the mirror and I see an old lady. Don't look, I say to myself. Don't listen to the voice, I whisper to myself, just feel.  

From the inside it feels graceful. Google tells me that the word, graceful, was most popular in 1850. It was at its lowest in 1980, when I moved to New York, and is now on a tiny bit of an upswing. Sadly for me graceful is defined as "characterized by elegance or beauty of form." Form is usually thought of as something seen from the outside. I am sure that my form is neither elegant or beautiful. But modern dance questioned the classic forms, then postmodern dance challenged form itself. And in Zen we chant "Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form." 

My Feldenkrais friend came over to advise on my approximations. Well, he came over to hang out but I begged for help. He got down on the floor with me, mirrored my movement, felt my incapacity, then answered with his own body. My spine began to listen. Grace, yes?

Another friend writes that I'm the most graceful person she knows, and cites Feldenkrais: "Can a disabled person really not use his body properly, efficiently, gracefully? There are many cripples whose ability in this respect surpasses that of healthy people." I love that, especially because it appeals to my competitive nature. You can't see it but my ability is better than yours. 

Ah but my empty insides protest. Even that relative comparison makes me strive. Just breathe. Just open, like the peonies now collapsing.

May 28, 2021

Comments

[Caryn]

Elena, your soul is so full of grace