the waltz of polymatheia

It's been a while since we had a poem.  Buckle up:

The Unluckiest Man

It was the early morning, the sun too drowsy still

To do much more than streak the walls of the old dance hall,

When he mistook the door, entering but to see

That glittering, spinning dynamo, and lose his mind.

He lost it in a modern sense, handed off control

To her, who just innocently practiced her footwork.

She didn’t know how he fixed on every leap and turn,

Never saw his widened eyes or heard his quickened heartbeat.

Her bright blue dress’s hem traced curving rhythms in the air,

Its infinite swirl obliterating his defense.

And she alit with careless softness, her feet finding

Purchase in the grey and crooked wrinkles of his mind.

With each step, a synapse flared, turned his head to follow

Her, who took no notice of the man she had entranced.

He looked for the words, but even as he gathered them

She twirled again, scattering neurons like a sparkler.

Before he was ready, still too soon, she finished, stretched,

Stepped out of her shoes and left them, buried, in his mind.

I based this poem off of my experiences going to competitive ballroom dancing competitions.  My wife is an absolutely fantastic dancer, and she goes to these sorts of competitions many times throughout the year.  Occasionally, I tag along to offer support, but there isn't much for me to do except clap and be amazed by the incredible skill on display.

I am not a person who is naturally inclined to dance.  I've told you before that I lack much in the way of an aesthetic sensibility, but I'm afraid the problem is much worse with regard to my kinesthetic sense.  If I'm not fully focused on my motion, I tend to move less like a prancing dolphin, and more like a ship coming into harbor (specifically, the Costa Concordia).  You might think that one with so little grace as myself would be especially impressed by the smoothness of motion embodied by the finest dancers, and that's not a bad guess !  However, when you view a lumbering rhinoceros as a creature of refined and economical movement in comparison to yourself, it tends to make you a little too easily impressed.  So most dancing just kind of washes over me, firmly within the realm of "things that are so far beyond my understanding that I cannot even fully perceive them."

And yet, there are times when I'm watching a couple doing a routine, and somehow, the fluidity and synchronicity of their dancing clicks in my mind.  It's like, after you've spent many hours studying a difficult problem, that sense of suddenly seeing the answer.  For those few short minutes while they spin around each other invincibly, I somehow get it.  Not just the fun or the appeal of dancing, but the actual beauty and genius that can both go into and come out of it.  A couple times, I've been moved to tears by what I've seen.

I am a writer, and that means that I absolutely envy the ability to bring out that sort of emotional reaction in people.  Other emotional reactions are wonderful too, but the finest of them will always reduce your audience to a sobbing mess.  And so, in those brief moments of heightened dance-comprehension, I find myself filled with the powerful urge to become a better dancer.  To learn what it takes to get out and there and move others as well as myself.

Those feelings will last for a little while, and I might even find myself practicing some dance steps or something.  But, inevitably, I'll crack open a book, or listen to some music, or watch a movie, and that will produce a powerful emotional reaction in me as well.  And just like that, the intense focus I'd had on the one thing is shattered, replaced with the burning desire to excel as a writer, a musician, a director...or whatever other craft is needed to connect with people in the way I've most recently been affected.

Maybe I don't have the discipline to be more than pretty good at anything I choose.  Maybe I'm destined to never be anything other than a jack-of-all-trades.  When I was younger, the idea that I might never becoming absolutely excellent in anything would have been absolutely repellent to me.  Now that I'm a little wiser, I've seen that there are plenty of people who never even become pretty good at anything, choosing to fritter away whatever natural gifts they may have into an empty and purposeless life of parasitism and zero personal growth.  And I still have plenty of time to excel in many, many ways.  But the discipline has to come first, and I'm not sure that I know how to develop it.

all I ever wanted help with was you