Wednesday, November 11, 2009

I am a dream bellydancer

"We must remove the skin and burn it all for fuel," he sings. Later, "I don't feel like ever getting well, tell me the lie you're taking your time, over and over."

I dreamt last night I was a belly dancer. I felt free, beautiful, sensual, goddess incarnate. It was divine. I don't think anyone was watching. I was dancing near the ocean, then suddenly transported to a forest opening that led to a waterfall feeding into a beautiful expanse of trickling water. I was surrounded by rocky formations and the sun warmed me before setting heavy behind....then the sky was moon and stars only and still I danced, undulated beneath silvery lights. Movements were graceful, sinuous and almost snakey, a fluid mirror of the waterfall. I pulsed and released it all up into the sky and into the ground with arched back until I was empty of it and then I welcomed the good to fill the emptiness I had made. Wishing with all my might that I do right by it.

When I was a teenager, I went through a very short phase of breaking through my skin when I was in emotional pain, which back then, seared through me. I think teens react so strongly to the pain because they are new to life, and it's a fresh experience. Like an animal, we lash out from the gut so sometimes the resulting behavior following the alien emotions don't make any sense or have any root in a logical mind.

I stopped breaking my skin on my own after a month. I am weird that way. Habits die hard sometime but with me, sometimes they die abruptly with no warning, like smoking did. I remember it pretty well, not completely understanding why I was doing what I was doing and once I did, I stopped and began to paint (which unfortunately I allowed to die when mom died). Something like emotion is so abstract. We cannot see it, touch it, taste it, hear it directly. Something about not being able to express it, see it, examine it, handle it literally... made me feel like I had no control over it, that it had control over me. To regain control, I tried to make the abstract something visible to my naked eye, something I felt on a simple, physical level that I could cope with somehow more easily than on the complex level I had brought it down from. I still have one faint scar, like a whisper from the past. No one would notice it except me. I don't even think I have ever told Jessie where it is.

I think I yearn still to draw the emotions and thoughts that are building up inside of me to the surface, translate it into simple language, something more visible. There is comfort in witnessing a representation of the abstract. Somehow it assures that I exist. That I am real. I very much want to be real. Obviously I have this body with which I can express and experience myself sensually. I yearn to bring the beauty, the important stuff that MAKES me feel alive to the outside somehow. I think being unemployed I have turned to stupid outlets like Facebook which is entertaining and fine. But it's not what I really want or crave. I am reacting but not necessarily in the best way - it's not cutting or harming my physical body like breaking my skin from teenage years but....I see the parallel.

Maybe the dream was my mind/soul's way of expressing another way to release what's inside into more visible form that would satisfy my desire without harming. I am not sure if the end result should be bellydance but I think that is an good starting outlet for me.

And now I get ready to pick Jessie up for an early morning doctor's appointment.

No comments:

Post a Comment