Zoom was not made for bodies

Zoom was not made for bodies.

It isn't set up for the quiet exchange of ideas, energies, and radiances that emerge from those bodies. It doesn't know about the mycelium, tentacling out, beneath the surface of the earth, where we all meet.

And no matter how many times I ask, zoom refuses to blur the line, disintegrate the boxes, or collapse the computer screen so that we can reach for one another, with our skin.

And yet, I've had experiences on zoom -- sometimes long and drawn out experiences that have lasted for a few hours -- where none of that matters and our work together transcends zoom and what it's set up for.

We take it over and we swallow it whole.

We touch skin.

This astonishes me.

Especially because in some of the Dog Dance zoom classes, people are gathering who have never met before, and some are coming to Dog Dance for the first time. And still, we are able to dance a dance that is about the quietest places in the body, through zoom.

I peek in sometimes, to see what everyone is doing in their windows, and I see someone, sitting on her heels, in the corner of her bedroom, behind a house plant. Her mouth is wide open, her head is back, her eyes are closed.

Someone else has draped themselves, over the arm of the sofa. Their head is buried in the cushions, their legs, dangling over the side.

Someone else is spinning, in the center of the kitchen. Small children scurry past.

Someone else has taken about 20 minutes to roll herself over to her side, and her face is now pressed into the computer screen.

People keep talking about what stories are going to come out of this time.

I think this is going to be one of the stories— how the people overtook a platform made for talking heads, and they danced right through the center of that platform, out into the universe.

May the mycelium we continue to grow in our dancing together, during this time of the coronavirus -- may it light up our screens.

Hope to see you on Wednesday. Also, Sunday.

xo
joanna