I’ve been seeing monsters everywhere and it’s not just because I’ve recently finished
reading The Girl In Between by Leakan Zea Kemp. That story was wonderfully odd
and slightly unsettling in a way so many of the books I’ve been reading lately
haven’t been.
The monsters have been around long before I began that journey. It has to do with
the construction going on everywhere. The corner of horses has been razed. Just
another casualty of progress. But I have found a tragic poetry in the removal
of their grazing grounds, now filled with machines, overturned dirt and cement.
It’s a huge road project that is turning over all the back country lanes and
transforming them into highways.
It will be pretty when it is finished, in that sterile, carefully planned and organized way.
They will plant trees and flowering bushes in the round-abouts and along the
road edges. There will be enough green to please the eye and dull the senses,
making one forget to even wonder what it looked like before, wild and untamed.
Beautiful and natural.
Getting around the traffic backups as a result of the construction means taking even
longer short cuts, through Akuedo- a name I love to say. Akuedo is a village by
Abidjan terms and the streets there are small, barely wide enough for two cars
to pass. There are no high walls hiding the houses. They have doors that open
directly onto the sidewalks. The windows are covered with wooden shutters
giving the place a quaint European feel.
I enjoy the disorienting aura of this small town all the while knowing
it is just lying in wait, a vulnerable victim of progress that is encroaching.
In a year, or maybe less, the monsters of steel and concrete will have arrived
to tear down houses, enlarge roadways and build row after row of apartment
buildings lacking character and history.
I am in the middle of this change and it is painful to watch. During the rains I ponder the
effect of all that cement working as a barrier between earth and sky,
disrupting the natural relation of water falling down and being soaked back up
again. I imagine the water as a living thing (and isn’t it really?) surprised
as it hits the once soft and supple terrain, shocked by hardness and forced to
scatter, searching for a place of comfort, soft soil to welcome it home again.
I see these monsters cloaked in a shadowy haze, like something from a Stephen King novel
and I wonder what will happen when there is no more soil left for the rain to
soak into. What will happen when every inch has been broken and defeated and
the world is covered in concrete? Maybe it sounds dramatic or extreme but I
fear most often that no one is taking it seriously enough.
The construction/destruction debate is not the only evidence of energy being devoured. Once the
metaphor is in my mind I begin to see signs of it everywhere. I search for solace in the world of dance and when it fails me, I blame it on the monsters. I've been seeking not just to replicate what I knew in lives past but to make it better. When my day to day fails or even when I want to celebrate, I turn to dance. Making art is generally something I do alone, a private exploration of my inner emotions and reactions to the world around me- but dancing? It's something I turn to for that sense of sharing and belonging. Its a creation made in multiple and seems to be most pleasing when there is a team of people sharing energy together. And that's what the draw is- that sharing of energy in community.
The past few weeks, however, I have been the only person in my dance classes. They've morphed into private lessons. While this seems like an amazing opportunity I have come to dread the moments I am there. They are stale and stagnant, slow moving and boring. My dance classes have suddenly become incapable of sending me off into that other realm of freedom and liberty of thought and simply just being. I remain rooted in agony.
It's because of the monsters. I've come to steal energy and it's not there. My dance teachers are tired and unmotivated. They know I will never dance like them and so they offer up watered down movements while they focus on easing their pains from the rehearsals and performances of the previous weeks.
I am tortured by this change because if I don't have dance to turn to then I have nothing and there must always be something. I know I am the monster that's come, not to share energy but to gnaw and gnash and gobble up all I can before making a hasty retreat back to my lair, where I will dine greedily on my treasure until it begins to wane. Only then will I venture out in search of more. The problem is the source appears to be drying up and I need to find a new well, a new village to plunder of its energy children.
Of course, in some stories, the dragon is remorseful- he doesn't want to be trapped forever stealing children and gorging until his belly is full, sleeping away weeks in a coma of digestion, rising only to be forced to steal and pillage again. He wants to be a happy dragon, living in peace with the villagers and using his fire breathing capabilities to light their cook stoves and share stone soup.
With this new metaphor in mind (not all monsters are bad) I set off for my dance class determined to reach deep inside and find some energy to share. It's been mostly successful. I am forcing myself to dance with enthusiasm and exuberance I don't really feel. I push through the awkward moments of feeling silly and frustrated by steps I cannot master. I demand repeats of what I do not know and add my own flourishes to steps I love. I try not to care that the drummers are sending out tsunami waves of energy with their rhythms and I know I can never repay them. Guilt has no place here. I dance to the best of my ability and hope they will accept it.
In the end I suppose it could be a matter of pretending until it's real, fake it until you make it. Though no amount of pretending or faking is going to save the green spaces. Maybe art is the first step to making that change, though at times it seems too small and insignificant a step. A beautiful quote from this school suggests otherwise.
There are many practical and physical things that need to be done - but
the problem is mobilizing people's will and purpose. Essentially, what
needs to change is our perception of the world and our relationship with
nature. A feeling of connection to the natural cycles and
interdependence of the world will assist individuals to see the cycles
and balances in their own life, and from there potentially move to a
community and worldview.
In essence, defeating the monsters within, our collective monsters.
