Lauren Levin's new chapbook, Song
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my somatics counselor asked me to sit quietly with her in the small, yellow room above Civic Center. of all places for somatic work (the puddles of pee, the needles, the weeping, the Dollar Tree bright red now with Christmas wares and the neabry buy XXX theater). she asked me to consider all the things thta might be killing me. because she knows i tend to hyper-perceive the futurity in which i (we all are) surely dying. she suggested that we just gaze at each quietly, comfortably, and think about how we were dying. with intention, while breathing together.
"that is easy", i thought, "because being with someone always saves me from the jaggedy clutching, always coats it over".
wrong. being with her is something else. she pressences in a no blushit sort of way. and wears hot lavender boots.
so it was terribly hard to sit with her without begining to shake and cry. which, i realized, was the point. and what did she do? she started humming, holding a note, a few notes really. in the space between us. and then, i REALLY started crying, because it felt like such an uninhibited, exquisitely small, intimate thing to do. and i want to keep getting closer and closer to that kind of practice. i do have lungs, so do you.
