periodic pain
The vibrations in the earth are in my body. I've been saying I feel it for months that I'm always feeling it, now the dragons are awakening again. The ring of fire is activated. It's felt for days and months like vibration in the body, but shifted to becoming something I can no longer sleep through. It's like the menstrual cramps that kept me rolling on the floor in pain in the corner of the library as a teenager. Laying in the nurse's office or at home in the dark, painkillers useless.
I thought everyone had cramps like that. Like how it felt after the miscarriage that time. Like the insides of the body are being carved out, the cavity contracting in on itself. Something similar happened during childbirth. Precisely how a body cramps and contracts is difficult to describe. Humans spend so much time identified with their heads, with thoughts and concepts that it's difficult to even talk about the existence of a body. Some people take a daring leap into identifying with heart qualities, but many stay forever locked in emotional waves and tend to ignore what the rest of the body is communicating.
Below shoulders and breasts, the territory beneath nipples and above the genital area is almost entirely unexplored. Not untouched, I don't mean it like that. I mean felt into and through, identified with, as a means of communication and knowing. Beside sensations of hunger and digestion, pain or discomfort, the area isn't regarded as a source of wisdom and awareness. Who knows what goes on down there, all those organs inside. Many overlook it entirely until there's some kind of problem, disregarding growing polyps, ignoring the appearance of blood. It's one of the reasons why the birth process is difficult to describe. Unaware of how the body actually feels– unfamiliar with the intricacies, subtleties of sensation– the only way to describe the contractions that begin to happen is to say it feels like an urgent need to take a shit. Maybe that's the body urgency that makes most sense.
When I'm laying down it feels like there's a helicopter hovering overhead or a refrigerated delivery truck has pulled up out front, double-parked and stays idling. No one will cut the engines, quiet the noise, dim the lights and I feel it all radiating, permeating through this body. Connected, we pick up all the signals. The energy that flows through ocean waves and earth, through high winds blows through us as well. I didn't know two earthquakes just struck Venezuela and one off the coast of Japan. I didn't know until I knew. Prayers for everyone.
A few midi choruses from early video games play on a loop in my head. I step through sliding doors from the filthy city into some city simulacra with cold marble floors I feel with bare feet. Arriving too early before the restaurant is even open. What do I want? Are you even open yet? Is it ok for me to be here?