February Blues

I feel sick. A cold has just covered my face and shoulders like sackcloth. The street outside the window glints in sunlight. The hazy blue sky promises to melt the snow caking the lawns. The day has a hopeful vibrance that I feel even through my mask. This is an aspect of January that I have not yet captured in my dance: the outside and the inside may feel starkly different.

In fact, the conflict may enhance the experience. As Ishmael notes in Moby Dick, to feel really warm, a part of you must feel cold. Thus, hot chocolate tastes extra dreamy when snow falls on the other side of your window. Merely stepping indoors is a delight when it's cold outside. Too, a sunny day seems more decadent when you are burrowed under a hill of tissues.

January has somehow managed to pass me by. I worked a lot: taught extra classes, began prepping an online course (bigger job than I suspected!), rehearsed, looked after Maya and Jen. I guess that's another way of looking at January, another busy month, another brief episode in the day-to-day function of life. There were bright spots. One class in particular was very successful. I spent many hours reading to my girl, or walking with her, or dancing with her. There were losses: Florencia moved on, an especially cold winter made for expensive heating bills. Yet January passed, as most of my life has, like a dream: I was intensely aware of my experience in the moment, but I retain little of it, impressions more than details, feelings rather than facts.

Life is much like a dance. We are around for such a short period. We live, then, almost immediately, die. Not being alive, we won't miss it. The past is not ours to hold. The present is ours for the briefest space, a single breath in time, to savor.

Human Landscape Dance and Anne-Marie Mulgrew and Dancers Co will perform in The Philadelphia/Washington DC Exchange May 29 at 7:30pm and May 30 at 3pm at the Painted Bride Arts Center, 230 Vine St in Philly. Come join us!