first we found our feet and took start’straightsteps on this ground. next we compassed curves with sidewardslimstrideswiftly un[der]wound . . .
—and it began with a sound, as a change in the breath was the first in a string of surprises this second of [st]ages would bring, as from greeting to freeing the time was spent seeing how now we’d change every last thing. so our warmups held more heat, and the gesture used to greet encompassed heart and mind in turn—a subtle expression of how our next sessions would challenge mindbody to learn.
the extension of each movement means inten[t|s]ional improvement, and each class in this level has led me to revel in how when we work out[wardly finding the moves], we play in[to the hands of a founding], which proves how our grounding’s been thorough; now we’ve cut our first furrow, opened our earth, shown what our work’s worth, revealing the richness of soil turned over with each days attention and [tr]action and toil.
even before it was known this turn’s testure would require responses to words—not just gestures—the sounds of the names had begun to lay claim to the parts of my brain that mark meter and rhyme, as a glimpse of the poetics in these poses-as-poiesis made it clear that how we learn here isn’t any mere mimesis.
and what wonderground words were here to be heard—though first they simply sounded and responses rote-rebounded, soon they resolved into language, co-evolved with the movements they conjured by naming: a new type of task for the taming. soon we spoke snakestrike and roundeflect joint, blockstep and oppostance, knuckledrop-point. later calls commanded turn and twist from hammer into [w]heel, and by the time we heard them they had lost their foreign feel; familiar was the phoneme that meant “use both hands together”, the syllable to say “extend-retract”—and with those pieces and othersuchlike, we trained and ingrained a word for each movement, a phrase for every act. so with|in few words we’d speak a score of steps and strikes and slinkling’slips, learning well our lines as we’d recite those clever clips and scripts.
but when we came to know the balance of a fight turned to dance, we started writing poems of projection and stance: on our first tries we faltered, but each since has altered how we talk the walk when we travel that way. to improvise, to play, to ad liberate and sway—these are hows we’ve been learning since we felt our cheeks burning with doubt on that first clumsy day. we face off, fade and foreground, find [af]front, take [a]back, peel off the sloweight and pull up lung[s]lack, acquainting ourhythms to the regularhymes of these first simple sayings, preludes to themes we’ll draw from dreams to test in time.
and now as we reach the end of this stage i feel ready for more steps with which to engage this [w]hole i fall into when my limbs reach out, this line that i walk on when circling about, this body of mine, this abode of my mind, this filling and thrilling of my every part, this breathing, this seething, this act of my [he]art. as these words have gone from syllables to sense, from poses to poetics, let new movements come and climb from copy to kinetic.
may their marks be made mine, quite as tight as these were taught. let them curve like plow’s blade or take shapes yet unthought, finding in their furrows fewer simplestraight lines; this ground’s no longer flat, but featuredeeply drawn by curves combined in_twinedesigns.
the earth’s been turned, made rich and ready; now it must be sown. we hearken to its hunger, take high heed; much we’ve learned, and yet—if we stay steady—more will yet be shown. soon will come the season of the seed.
- Udaboa, the Scribe
Boabom North