Toe Stretchers

August 14, 2014 by ClydeRae

Stretch away foot pains!

It Is I Who Must Begin
by Václav Havel

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try–
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
–to live in harmony
with the “voice of Being,” as I
understand it within myself
–as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.
Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

Capillary Prairie
by Carrie Routman, GYROTONIC® Trainer and bodyworker

grasslands
open meadows
of capillary
action
surround
contours
corners
crevices
cradling
shapes
within

all aspects of
life inside
beheld by
flow of
smallest
vessels

expansive
from
surfaces
to osteo
layers
deep

speak
bone
speak
messentary
speak
peritoneum
speak
perineum
prairie
capillary
breathe
to
life

Arrivals
by David Whyte

Imagine the confines of a long grey corridor

just before immigration at Washington Dulles

airport. Imagine two Ethiopian women amid

a sea of familiar international plastic blandness,

entering America for the first time. Think of

their undulating multi-colored turbans raised

atop graceful heads, transforming us,

a grey line of travelers behind them, into followers

and mendicants, mere drab, impatient, moneyed

and perplexed attendants to their bright,

excited, chattered arrival.

Imagine a sharp plexi-glass turn left and suddenly

before them, in biblical astonishment, like a vertical

red sea churning, like the waters barring Moses from

The Promised Land, like Jacob standing before the ladder,

a moving escalator, a mode of rising, a form of ascension,

a way to go up they’d never seen before, its steel grey

interlocking invitation on and up to who knows what,

bringing them and everyone behind them, to a bemused,

complete, and utter standstill.

So that you saw it for the first time as they saw it

and for what it was, a grated river of lifting steel,

an involuntary, moving ascension into who knows what.

An incredible surprise. And you knew, even through

your tiredness, why it made them raise their hands

to their mouths, why it made them give low breathy

screams of surprise and delighted terror. You saw it

as they saw it, a staircase of invisible interlocking

beckoning hands asking them to rise up

independent of their history, their legs or their wills.

And we stopped as we knew we had to now

and watched the first delighted be-turbaned

woman put a sandaled foot on the flat grey

plain at the foot of the moving stair and sure

enough quickly withdraw it with a strangled scream,

leaving her sandal to ascend strangely without her

into heaven, into America, into her new life.

Then, holding her friend away, who tried to grab

her, to save her, to hold her back, who pointed

and shouted, telling her not to risk herself,

not to be foolish, she silently watched her shoe,

that willful child, running ahead, its sole intent

to enter the country oblivious to visas and immigration,

above the need for a job, uncaring of healthcare,

pointing toward some horizon she had never dreamt,

intent on leaving only its winged footprint

for her to follow, like a comet’s tail, like an omen

of necessity, like a signaled courage, like an uncaring

invitation, to make her entrance with soul and style.

Because she looked up at this orphaned, onward

messenger with her eyes ablaze, threw off the panicked

clamboring arms of her friend, raised her chin

in noble profile, and with all that other hurrying

clamor of the world behind her, with a busy,

unknowing, corporate crowd at her back and questions

beginning to be asked out loud, she lifted her arms,

clapped her hands, threw back her head and with

a queenly unbidden grace, strode on to the ascending

heaven bound steel like a newly struck film star,

singing the old, high pitched song her children

would hear when she told the story again.

And as her friend below sang,

applauded, danced on the spot

and ululated her companion’s arrival,

we stood there behind her,

transfixed, travel weary,

and crammed into the corridor

like extras from some

miraculous scene in the Bible.

While

she ascended,

her arms straight out,

wide eyed and singing.

Into America.

GYROTONIC® Trainer and bodyworker

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