Memories.
That’s the only way I can describe them.
Memories of the past, experienced as the future possible.
Bare feet stamping onto dry ground. Dust and ash mixing between my toes. The headdress fits loosely on my head, I have to keep facing the ground or it will topple off backwards. But that leaning forward posture is okay because the layers of cloth and stuff on my arms requires me to always be in motion. Always with my arms held outward. Always sweeping this way or that. Always moving.
The sound of fire.
The scent of sweat.
A language I can not bring with me but I understand it perfectly.
Sometimes there are many others. Standing far from the fire, far from the dancers, far from those that are more spirit than men, far from me.
Sometimes there are only a few. No words spoken between us. Only the sound of our sweeps in the air, our feet in the dirt, the sweat dripping to the ground.
Usually there is only one other. Where I am moving and silent, he is still and vocal. His utterings determine the path I stamp out. My feet determine what calls he cries. There is only one other. There is only the one that is us.
On rare occasions, there is only myself. This is dangerous. There is never just one. Because They are always there. They are always present. And when there is just one, it is easy to be lost in the dance. Easy to be lost in Them. Easy to become Them. Almost impossible to come back.
Memories of something I have never experienced. I come back to my plump body with a start. I’m in a cold sweat. I’m trembling. I devoured from within by a instinctual want that makes the rich food on my plate as desirous as excrement.
I want to feel my bare feet stomping the dry earth. Dust and ashes between my toes.
I want to feel my blood singing, my voice ragged, my hair caked, my sweat dripping to the listening earth.
I would give up every word I know, every trivial fact, every useless trinket in my life that only serves as a distraction from the gnawing hunger in me, to be that person stomping dust and ashes between her toes.