Today I needed...

Sometimes I do things solely because I must be reminded that my life serves a higher purpose than simply taking up space, providing fuel for the plants. I need to remember that I am unique in capability and function, and, most of all, that I am not alone in my continued existence as such.

Today I needed to salsa dance. I needed real, live contact with another creating being. I needed someone to show me, once again, that creation can be communal, can be spiritual. That rather than pulling teeth alone, it can be connecting—infusing energy and an awkward poignancy down to the bone.

Some Native American tribes have “sweats” where they strip down to the flesh and dance naked together around a fire as they pour water over it to create steam. They say that each stomp on the ground is an unmitigated offering to the gods. An entirely vulnerable, inarticulate prayer of things only the spirit can express. And they do it together.

Today I needed to be together. Forsaking all duplicity to form into something new. Something unified. Some one. To know that touch is pure communication. To take away all the assumptions, stigmas, presumptions, and theories to just be in a team presence. To move under the guise of drama with the underlying intent of companionship with the air. To contort and swoop and swing and step and look and change and lean on someone else’s signal just as they do mine.

Today I needed to dance.