Interstice

Perhaps no one would think of Robert Fulghum’s message when reading these musings. Perhaps these wandering wonderings are not of the stuff learned in kindergarten. But I do very much enjoy the more perverse childhood writings of unlearning.

“To pervert” comes from the Latin meaning “thoroughly to turn.” An aboutface, perhaps. Dancing red shoed and red faced, pirouette supreme, our point of view turns on being inextricably altered.

Today I find myself humming from A. A. Milne. The life of balance I enact is not the Fulghum variety, but one of dancing mindfully, fully conscious of being watched by bears that “try to pretend that nobody cares whether you walk on the lines or squares.” Remember: Step on the crack, break your mother’s back. Children experience the full perversity, but without awareness or assent.

But I, later, still humming Milne, find myself in the familiar space, one which isn’t up and isn’t down. “Halfway down the stairs/ Is a stair where I sit. There isn’t any other stair quite like it.” More or less than an about-face, it is in the midst of betwixt and between, in the mist of coming and going, of initiation and cessation, in the miss of self and other. Perhaps it is all about the face of it, of facticity, of what you see, of what you get.

To pervert is to misinterpret. Got it?

All interpretation emerges out of context. (Get any lately?)

Then bears, bare in squares, barely there, a-lined, aligned, see. And their seeing maligns. And this is the conception of all suffering. We are deluded, for sure. We are the Danse Macabre.

What we need right here is to take a break. It is that simple, really. We need a short time between, a gap in the continuous, an intervening amidst the closely placed. We need a categorical vacation.

So come with me, into interstitial space. Be bathed in the sea surrounding the cell. We will be beyond failed prophecy and cognitive dissonance. Merely between, slipping betwixt line and square, we will not matter.

Here and there are still many mysteries.

Justus Hecker, a German physician and medical writer, studied disease in relation to human history.

In his writing about epidemics of the Middle Ages, he has collected reports about dancing mania, a social phenomenon that occurred in Europe during the 14th through 18th centuries. It is reported that over that time in various locations thousands were subject to extended uncontrolled fits of bizarre dancing. In many cases the dancing culminated in the dancer’s death.

In one incident, the Dancing Plague of 1518, a Frau Troffea danced continuously for some five days, in which time 34 others joined her. In a month, some 400 dancers were involved.

There is no agreement about etiology. Was it due to some kind of poisoning or virus? Or was it a mass psychogenic illness?

And what about the modern Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962? In Kashasha, on the west coast of Lake Victoria, a school was the origin of a fits of laughter of children and parents that spread to the village and beyond to the surrounding area. Again the question is raised: Was it toxicity or mass hysteria? And how to control the reported resulting pain, fainting, crying, respiratory problems, and gas?

I am forewarned, as are you. Who said the pirates’ life would be easy?  — Rx is the FloridaW eekly muse who

hopes to inspire profound mutiny in all

those who care to read. Our Rx ma y be wearing a pir ate cloak of in visibility, but

emanating fr om within this shado w is

hope that readers will feel free to respond.

Who kno ws: You may e ven inspir e the

muse. Make contact if you dare.