There is a Contemplative Dance Practice
\nthat involves just the eyes:
\ndirect focus, eyes closed,
\nsoft gaze, and peripheral vision, or even
\nlooking at the spaces between things.<\/p>\n
This is a way to dance, when<\/p>\n
\u2014forget getting out of bed\u2014<\/p>\n
bravery
\nis staying awake,
\nis the willingness to continue
\nto draw breath through the static of pain
\nor the crushing weight of
\ni don’t know what, something raging,
\nsomething not
\nfunctional
\nis a loose term, anyway.<\/p>\n
Once I thought it was such a priority,
\nbecoming a functioning adult, a contributing
\nmainstreamer.
\nI tried hunching my shoulders and cracking the whip,
\nsucking in my gut until I could
\nno longer draw breath–
\nall this to fit it’s dictate.<\/p>\n
Then something broke;
\nand I began to celebrate my dysfunction, my
\ndisassociation making excuses
\nfor me,<\/p>\n
\nI am not like them
\nstay separate, out of reach or
\ngive up when it\u2019s hard to say
\nwhat I mean<\/p>\n
reducing myself to miscommunication
\nand imbalanced equations.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now I realize more about what my functions really are.
\nI function each day
\nas a conduit, a conductor, a translator.
\nOr a mirror.
\nA balancing agent.
\nAn answer.<\/p>\n
I can be functional while catatonic
\nbecause I am a poetic scientist
\nobserving \u2014peripheral gaze\u2014
\nmy own unresponsiveness.
\nI listen to the voices fire command after command
\nafter command
\nand answer with
\na blink at the edge of capacity
\nbecause today this is my dance.<\/p>\n
I function
\nas a lover,
\nusing the special nuances I know you like, filling page after page,
\nor making love for hours,
\nseeing only that darkness of my eyelids and
\nthe brilliant flashes of light.<\/p>\n
I practice listening.
\nI am trying to learn to stand myself,
\nto hear the bias and the slander and the poison
\nand not use it
\nbecause
\nit might be my function to sing a song about you
\nand I must be still so I can hear all the notes
\nwritten in the spaces between silence.<\/p>\n
I function as your muse,
\na friend
\nlooking directly at you, becoming that spark
\nigniting movement suddenly,
\nchanging behavior in wild fits
\nor driving you delightfully mad.<\/p>\n
I can be a functional fantasy,
\ninviting your gaze to slide over me I
\ndo things for you that you might not do for yourself.
\nI remind you of things and
\ndistract you from things.
\nI even let you close your eyes.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t possibly compensate you
\nfor all the time you have spent
\nbeing kind to me, for what you have taught me.
\nAnd I swear I will forget the tally marks as I learn
\nto relax into this economy
\nof caring for one another.<\/p>\n
And what if it were also my job
\nmy function
\nto be optimistic,
\nconfident
\nthat despite all of this appearance of brokenness
\nwith its clamoring symptoms and crippling side effects
\nI can soften my gaze, knowing
\nI am complete?<\/p>\n
What if we were to realize
\nwe work,
\nand we each get to decide
\nhow we fit together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a Contemplative Dance Practice that involves just the eyes: direct focus, eyes closed, soft gaze, and peripheral vision, or even looking at the spaces between things. This is a way to dance, when \u2014forget getting out of bed\u2014 bravery is staying awake, is the willingness to continue to draw breath through the static […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sterlingslyce.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}