Dance Archives - The Pure Life of Dreams

March 16, 2024March 16, 2024

Choreography in a Cave

I was out cycling with Liam in the old country. Large mock Tudor buildings surrounded cobble stone streets as we passed through the village. I was ahead of him on my little red bicycle, it was one of those commuter bikes with the small wheels, and I passed under an old stone arch into an open grassy forecourt on a bright sunny day, then cycled across a pebbled path.

I bore right, next, into a cavernous hall hewn from rock.

I wasn’t sure bikes were allowed in the cave but I continued along the right side of the hall and held to a rough hewn wall. The wall was smoothed down with age. It shone under the glare of a limpid pool in the center of the hall.

Because of the pool, there was a beautiful light that reflected around the hall.

Then I continued along the path by the side of the pool, even though it was bumpy and difficult to ride on, the way it blended and sloped upwards, melding into the wall; the way it narrowed until the path was no more than a foot wide between wall and water.

I got off my bike – I suspected that a superintendent would tell me off, “No bikes allowed” – and I continued on foot, walking the bike to the end of the hall, where the path turned sharply left along the far side of the pool. The path there was wider, some six feet wide.

Before the turn I had passed a darkened alcove inset into the corner of the cave, so I decided to return my bike to the alcove’s entrance, prop it there so that it leant against the wall just where the entrance began. Then I stepped back onto the wide path at the end of the pool.

The path ended abruptly, at the furthest corner of the pool.

As I looked across the water, children of various ages, started to pile in. They were walking along the path and lining up along the length of the pool. It must be half term, I thought, a lousy time of the year to visit.

Girls in dark gold leotards leapt into the pool. The sun reflecting behind them cast flecks of shimmering light around their poised leaps. They held their arms aloft in a V shape and held their legs astride as, from either side of the pool, they leapt into the water with choreographed jumps.

I held my phone up to take pictures, marvelous pictures that freeze framed their postures as they flew through the air.

One girl twisted in the air in stunning angled poses, her legs and arms bent one way in one shot, bent the other way in the next, frozen in a burnished spangled gold cape. I could not believe my luck.

Then another older team, adult women this time, in bright blue leotards jumped as well, and I held the shutter down so that the camera turned into video mode, capturing their choreographic beauty.

I walked back to the bike where Liam was hanging out. He was sitting on a naturally formed ledge to the right of the bike. I hadn’t noticed the ledge before. A superintendent was there, talking.

Liam held up his right thumb for him and it looked unusually large and wide. The superintendent pulled slightly at the tear in Liam’s thumbnail.

The nail was indeed long and broken enough to snag it badly should he not cut it.

“You need to get rid of it,” the superintendent said, “before you hurt one of the kids.”

The nail was snagged at the left side but as Liam pressed down on it I saw that the nail had more holes above the cuticle, holes that laced the surface like a torn stocking.

“Let’s cut it,” I said to him, “otherwise, if you snag it, you won’t have a fingernail.”

Then Liam stood up and from the pool his face was cast in a beatific light.

Photo by Oxalis Adventure via Flickr.

June 2, 2023June 29, 2023

The Frog and Cat – Part 1 At the Restaurant

I’m in Indonesia and we’ll eat over in the restaurant district. But before I leave my small single room for the restaurant, I notice that I have a cut on my belly. It is on my right side, just above the joint of my hip but I won’t have any time to do something about it.

We have arranged to meet at a small restaurant, the near side of the pedestrian zone, the one with the large inviting red trestle table outside.

As we finish our drinks, we notice on the other side of the street, on the second floor, there is an unlit neon sign for another eatery, two lowercase letters either side of three larger Kanji. We are trying to decipher it before we move on to get food. Only it’s already night, and late, and maybe we should just eat here after all.

We go inside and up some stairs to a small room with two bare Formica tables hastily pushed together. The waiters first cover them with white tablecloths, and butt the tables up against one wall; but there is not enough room until we shift the tables back away from the wall and open up the head of the table.

“Reed or Cameron can squeeze in then,” I suggest.

Elaine is already sat down as well as Mum, and Siobhan. And I sit on one side with two others there but I am complaining that I should be opposite.

“It won’t make a difference,” says Elaine from the head of the table.

“But our elbows will knock,” I reply, spreading out my arms to illustrate the point.

There’s an ache in my stomach that I brush off. Then I get up to squeeze into the space on the other side of the table. I can sit the other side of Mum as well, I point out.

As I sit down a group of Scottish dancers come into the room. They are prancing in a highland fling, legs with heavy stockinged plaid socks swirling, arms high. They troupe into the room as part of the entertainment. I can join them, I suggest, but I stay sat while the sound of bagpipes from the other room urges the dancers in.

A Chinese girl sat behind us on a chair flat against the walls, knees pressed together, is talking to a boy in the chair next to her.

“Shhhht,” and I motion to her, forefingers snapped across my mouth, Zip It, before pressing an index finger to my lips. My gesture feels unintentionally harsh.

And when dinner is done, and I return to my room and close the door for the night I return to my cut and notice how the vein underneath now traverses my belly and down to my groin where, on the right side, there is another cut. My groin bleeds slightly, a bright red star.

Then I pull up my shirt and the vein continues in the opposite direction, up from the cut on my belly, across and over towards the left side of my chest. It throbs purple and I daren’t pull my shirt up further to see where the engorged vein ends.

I pick up a glass that I left lying in the small sink by the side of my bedroom door and think to drink the water left in it, but there is a frog is in the glass partially hidden in its purple liquid. There are flecks of white mould as well, and I am about to put a lid on the glass to stop the frog bouncing out but I am too late. The frog jumps from the glass and splashes, a soft rubbery shape onto the linoleum.

“Damnit!” Then I begin to pour out the liquid from the glass, into the sink. But the liquid is already congealed into a messy white shape, another frog just in the nascent stage of growth. It’s a patchy white congealing shape, legs, torso and head barely discernible from the primordial goo, and it too splashes out onto the floor.

Quickly I open the hotel room door to get the frogs outside and kick them with a little poke from my foot until they hop into the hallway.

Of course, Artie is sitting waiting outside. In he comes at first until he notices the frogs crossing his path. And he is about to slip out again when I block him with my leg.

I shut the door, the frogs still outside, Artie inside, but he’s sniffing under the crack in the door, pawing underneath to get to the frogs on the other side.

Image created using Midjourney AI on Discord

May 5, 2023June 17, 2023

Cheerleaders for the New Guy, Join the Fun!

The office’s older parts of the building, red orange stone arches and brick walls interplay with modern smoky blue grey glass facades, overlooking green rolling hills. I am at a new place of work, or a new company or a company that acquired us.

And I have a desk in Lesley’s office at the end of the building, only she does not look like Lesley. She is sporting a brown, almost bronzed, bob.

They need to reassign me as the location is temporary.

When one man comes in, and hangs out in an alcove formed by the stone arch in our office, and starts smoking a cigarette, I realize it is probably time to move on.

Another man has also been promoted and they are reallocating spaces. Outside on a grassy knoll there is a whole fanfare for him. I walk out to where a group of workers are gathered, and in the center of the circle, is one of the higher-ups.

She is dancing like a cheerleader with angular thrusts of hips and high energy fist pumps to welcome the new recruit to management. She is dressed in a gold bodysuit which spangles against a clear blue sky backdrop.

I could never get that enthusiastic about work. It must be exhausting.

Behind both her and the gathering, a few young men in aqua colored tunics who were going to a football game, join in.

They have plastic water spray bottles in their hands. They make a dance out of the sprayers, fist pumping them too.

“I come from a foreign state,” I explain, “so I never understood what you guys do.”

The jocks choreograph claps and sprays from their bottles. Their tunics remind me of the car wash guys over on Connecticut. Then one of the jocks aims his sprayer at me, and jets water at my hair.

Instead of joining the hoopla, I try to get my new place aligned. One of the watching crowd tells me to ask HR or building facilities, but I cannot use some-one’s influence.

“I shared an office,” I start to explain, but then I cannot remember Lesley’s name. Was it Pamela or Nicole?

How can I get an office if I cannot even remember who I shared the previous one with?

“No, you will not be able to get an office.”

“Well I need a window seat, next to a window. Bright sun.”

One of the jocks pulls out a silver pointer from his back pocket, then he points it south to show the best sun facing location.

“Yes, we may have something for you!” he shrieks.

“But it needs to have sun,” I repeat. Then I add hopefully, “and be a window seat.”

Main photo by Conrad Poirier, pioneer of photojournalism in Quebec, via Picryl. Miracle sign photo by Dayna Bateman via Flickr.

August 23, 2022October 21, 2022

Return to the Dance

Returning to the flamenco studio I am excited to restart.

I find a seat on the steps in the audience. On either side of me, I place a white sock so that I can demarcate my space. Others come and settle down next to me. So I walk up the steps, to see if the view is better there.

I am dressed in a white cotton frilled shirt, my black, high waist pants and the flamenco boots with the high heels and pointed toes. They clack on the wooden floor as I walk. I am sporting a good 2 days stubble.

September 18, 2021October 22, 2022

The Hospital and the Swimming Pool Noodle

Siobhan and I are at a hospital. We both have a disease. Cancerous? Siobhan has psoriasis, she has it spread across her bare chest and towards her arms and shoulders. You cannot see it on me.

The nurse leads us to a waiting room, more like a shower changing area with a curtain. She tells us to sit on the swimming noodles, one each.