After quite a few loops, walking, walking, behind the rehearsal rooms. I don't know how many. Lots. Every time I think I'm breathing again I can hear my jaw clicking stubbornly. It refuses to move. One of our choreographers once said that the jaw is directly related to the hip joints and so you must hold your mouth slightly open to breathe while dancing. No tension in the hip joints. Free legs. No tension allowed.
I know things need to change when it gets all gristly in there, in the sides of my face. Sometimes it's more like cracking, even, than clicking. About twice I've been sure my lower jaw might just crack right off from my face and be hanging all loose in the bottom of my head-skin. It's not like that tonight. Still at the clicky stage.
I try to go back inside but now people are sitting eating dinner in the doorway. So I cross past them (so composed) and think that the workshop door might be open, but it isn't. I get angry that I don't know this place well enough to slip through a doorway around the side somewhere (where?). It is familiar and not familiar enough. I feel betrayed. By the venue? By people and by myself. By locked up buildings. I lie down on the concrete at the other end. It's right by Gillies Ave. Friday evening. There are cars going past parallel to my linear posture very near me. Two lanes in each direction. I turn my head to the left to see the drivers. They are all looking straight ahead at the road.
Then I am thinking about the fact that I am right by a metal gate. It is made of vertical bars. About ninety minutes ago it was open and a truck squeezed through and pick up a huge bin. So then I think about the cars going past diverting and coming in through the gate like the truck, but except while it's closed. I feel my head turn sideways to the road, through my neck and all the tendons in there, which I imagine as taut and brittle although they're probably quite tough and malleable. Like extremely thick wire or a plastic shoe-horn that's been sitting in a car for a while on a hot day. I feel the sun on me and especially on a small gap of skin between my too-stretched singlet and shorts. I'm lying on a diagonal slope and I feel uneven. I imagine a car coming through the gates as I hear them going past. They seem quite fast but must only be going around sixty. I know I get slower when I'm not good though. I keep imaging the stray car quick and sudden and loud and me on the concrete and then I am surprised at myself but I still keep playing the scene over and over in my head. It's a little short film on loop. There are no consequences of the car coming through the gate because it all ends then, there's nothing more in the movie after that. That's the end.
You are not allowed to watch that movie anymore, I tell myself, and I turn it off and turn my head back to the centre of my body. And then I turn my head to the left again and play it some more. I turn it off again. I listen to the sondtrack of cars going past instead but I don't see anymore images. There is no more sun anymore either but my eyes feel less stained than before.
'I could not do this', I think. I have no idea what the time is. I'm anxious. I don't feel capable. I feel like I am running out of time. I have things I need to do before seven o'clock.
My eyes feel sun-dried now but I don't feel real. And standing backstage I don't feel real. The audience don't feel real, they are so far away. The other dancers aren't real, I don't know them. The costumes aren't real. I would never wear that. I might wear that colour, I do, red. I have something in front of my face, I can't see anyone, I'm on my own.
When I try to keep up I can't. I'm in the middle. There's people in every direction around me to follow but I'm still going on my own. I have to slow down. I have to speed up. I'm just right for a small second. I miss out, I add on. I hurt, I'm depleted. I've gone too far in to this thing.
In the bathrooms there's still music. The same music in my head. It's in the changing rooms. It's on the stage. It is following me around and I could compose myself, I could if it weren't there. Go away sad song. I can't want you right now. I don't want it.
I know that if I could empty myself things would be better. But there isn't an end this time. This one feels longer and much more passive. It's passivity scares me. It seems infinite. I know it won't be. But it's settling in quite comfortable. I don't want to be so receptive anymore. I want some time. I don't want to sleep it's so uneventful.
I just want some time.
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