SHAKE YOUR ZAZENMAKER!

Today I left work and did my usual traipse down Hollywood Boulevard to the Metro train station at Highland. I had my iPod with me, and I was so glad to be out of the office and going home that when I got to the platform, I cranked the volume and did a little Raqs Sharqi---that’s bellydance--- to a little something called Würm (no, Yesfans, not the studio version. I was heretical and danced to one of the finest interpretations ever: Edmonton, 1984). For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the old rock group Yes wrote a song called “Starship Trooper”. The third part of this piece is called “Würm”, and it was originally part of another song that the group’s guitarist brought to Yes. It has three chords---G, Eb, C---and they go spiraling up and up for three minutes or so, over and over, till they crash into a cool little climactic guitar solo that pans back and forth between yer ears.


Did people stare at me? Yeah. Was my avoirdupois flying around? Oh, hell, yeah. Did I give much of a rat’s? Nope. Why? Because I was dancing again. I hadn’t done it in years, and it felt great. Sit down, kiddies, and I’ll tell you a story.


When I was a little kid, I was frail and sickly. I had anemia and had to have blood tests two to three times a week. I missed a lot of school from kindergarten to about third grade, but when I hit eleven years old my health improved and I decided to get active. I took platform and high-diving lessons, swimming lessons, and I also studied ballet. I loved doing all these things, and it was a pleasure to learn new skills and to feel my body grow stronger. I also studied belly dance on the side because it “opened” my pelvis, which subtly aided my ballet technique in turning and leaping.


Due to some sudden changes in my life, I stopped doing all these things when I was nineteen. I went through the next decade without much physical activity, but in my thirties I returned to my Raqs Sharqi studies with the same enjoyment I experienced the first time I learned how to do hip circles. I chose a dance name: Shaheen [Falconess], and decided to extend my practice with some props. These were a matching pair of steel scimitars which a Western Massachusetts blacksmith forged for me. I danced with them in all sorts of ways; balanced on my head, shoulders, hips, back, and stomach (I used to flip them from dull inner edge to sharp outer edge on my stomach, which was both great fun and stupidly dangerous).


More life changes…I moved to California and married my husband, and stopped dancing. We tried to make babies. This didn’t work. And then in late 2005, my body just collapsed. I woke up one morning and could not get out of bed. Everything hurt, and hurt on the screaming level. Eventually I crawled—and I mean crawled—to the bathroom to pee, crawled back to my bed, fell asleep again, and slept for forty-eight hours. Figuring something was not just wrong but totally fucked up, I went to my doctor, who sent me to specialists, who did a whole bunch of tests and said ChronicFatigueFibromyalgiaEpstein-BarrPsoriaticArthritisProbableLungCancer...
...AndYouBetterStopSmokingImmediately...
...ButIt’sProbablyTooLateAtThisPointAnyway.


Fuck.


Additional tests proved that I didn’t have lung cancer after all, but when the docs said That Word, I immediately put the cigarettes down and I haven’t smoked since. I may play with sharp things too much for my own good, but I’m not totally stupid. Why screw around?


Anyway, I was so smacked down by these conditions that I needed to use a walker, which wasn’t so bad because it was a bitchin’ candy-apple red and had hand brakes, a basket for my stuff, plus a built-in seat so I could rest if I got really exhausted. However, a few months later I went on disability because I just couldn’t physically make it to work and back. This was completely frustrating, as being at home all day made me stir-crazy. I also had my own ideas about treatment, and I didn’t want to take the drugs my doctor wanted to prescribe; most of my visits were spent in arguments with him over medications with really scary side effects.
One of my dearest friends (to whom I owe so much) sent me vast amounts of heavy-duty glucosamine/chondroitin to help me with the psoriatic arthritis; I took megadoses of this supplement daily. I also did a lot of research on fibromyalgia and practiced nutritional healing with garlic, oregano oil, CoQ10 and lysine. At this time I started to practice zazen; I wasn’t able to sit in full lotus position or even half-lotus, but I could sit in a chair and count my breaths. Slowly, and with much patience, I began to walk again; I had a few setbacks, but I could finally get about slowly and go back to work after a year.


Since then I haven’t felt nearly as bad, even with the relatively recent diabetes diagnosis…but I haven’t felt as well as I did last Friday night, when I got on a treadmill for the first time in two years and, during a slow walk, decided to run for about a minute. Yes, run. I cranked that basstich up to 6 MPH and almost flew. Sure, it was only for a minute, but damn if I didn’t do it. I can’t even remember the last time I did.


So, remembering how good that little run felt inspired me to shake my thang all over the subway platform while waiting for the 4:17 to roll in. As I danced, I watched people laugh, I saw some who were unnerved, and some others were clapping in rhythm to my steps. And it didn’t matter if anyone thought I was an idiot, or if they approved of what I was doing. I suddenly just saw a human family---my human family.


The Buddhist term sangha means “community”, and, as a rule, refers to the Buddhist community as a whole…or it can also mean any group of beings who are at a level of greater realization than are others. I think sangha is more than that. Those people on the platform---I don’t know if they were Buddhist or not. I don’t know if they were Republicans, I don’t know if they molest chickens for fun and profit, or if they’ve found the meaning of existence. And it doesn’t matter. They—we—all of us—are sangha. There’s no special membership, no exclusivity.


(Yeah, dogs and cats and iguanas and molested chickens and trees and everything in the universe, either “good” or “bad” are included.)