Vertical Space

I’ve been swimming a lot lately. No laps. Rather a water dance, piercing deep then spiraling up. I consider depth. From deep down, I look up the surface. I rise, my hands ahead of me. I see their reflection as I approach the surface until there are four hands wavering in water and light their fingertips blending into an anemone. My faces breaks into air where the world is broken into small pieces of rounded color filled with sounds. I dive down into thick quiet to get away. A smooth place.

Water Dance is all about vertical space, or, at any rate, that is the difference between it and land dancing. Being pressed at from all around, without gravity––just the struggle to stay under––I feel the equality of all directions. I am completely circular. The struggle to stay under knocks a shadowy corner in my psyche. I want to be that spherical in my consiousness, that quiet, that supported, that embryonic. Atomic. That last is heady, when what most appeals to me is the truth of the vertical dimension – the freedom that water gives me with what is normally so difficult.