Image from Great Inspire, for the Day 5 prompt, only partially fulfilled. --- Come let us dance our discordant thoughts to calmness, joined by the rhythm of our joyful hearts, and a song welling up from deep within. Like a bird loosed from the tenuous grasp of gravity’s hold, let us float away. With the spring of defiant Freedom in our steps.
Image Credit Seb (Unsplash); for the prompt Rhythmic – In the wake of the rising sun comes the call of dawn; a song drawn from the chirp of birds, the flutter of leaves, the creak of stirring bones and the lap of waves carried on the breath of the morning breeze. Here on the edge of the morning in the quiescence of a lingering dream, the memory of the patter of your feet lives on. In the sumptuous symphony of nature’s call and response, the perfect fit of the lilt of your voice and the wind in the trees You return.
It was supposed to be the weekend that banished my 2011 troubles from memory and got me to let my hair down - something I admittedly do not do often enough. There was the small matter of needing to send in my passport to Mama Charlie’s lackeys for an extension to my residence permit, as well as navigating a week of water survival training (given my well documented aversion for large water bodies). ...
The final lingering vestiges of self deceit died today. Against the incontrovertible evidence, I had remained hopeful that I had the ability to transcend my well documented phobia for dancing. Sometime between Ose O Jesu and some other Yoruba song which has escaped my memory, I realized that my rather feeble attempts at ‘dancing’ - clapping rhythmically, nodding my head from time to time, and shuffling from side to side - bore as much resemblance to dancing as a bee buzzing through the air bore to a fish swimming.. My sense of unease was worsened by the fact that it was a thanksgiving Sunday and we had to dance to the offering box. Interestingly, if the number of dancing worshippers was a significant sample of the larger community, then I am fighting a lost cause in refusing not learning to dance.
I think I have never danced in my entire life - not in church, not on my solitary foray into a night club, not at all the birthday parties I attended as a kid, not ever. I don’t remember if it was a concious decision, or if it was/still is a result of a deep seated phobia even I am unaware of, or if I have always lacked that seemingly natural ability to coordinate the limbs in resonance with external tunes, or if I just plain can’t be bothered. ...