What is the conversation between the them, in the silence at the center of things? They would speak it if they found it; they would find it if they did not look for it:

— The world is moving inside of me.

— I see the world moving inside of you.

— I am becoming a new, multiple me. The heart is growing toward every horizon. When I stretch toward one, I am pulled by the others. I am fuller than I have ever been. You cannot see all of me.

Except in my imagination, I don’t pretend to understand the permanent blackness of those who have lost their sight. Even less, those who were born without that faculty, and so have no access to even the memory of color: to sense red, they must feel red on their skin, the subtle variation in frequency from one hue to the next.

In the landscape of the never-sighted, I imagine certain words lose their texture, deprived as they are of connotation. When I say “red”, I see flowers; I see blood; I smell the perfume of a rose, or feel my pulse quicken with desire, or deflate in despair; I see a red balloon, recall a single frame from a French film; I smell the stink of post-War fear, I hear the ruffle of Chinese banners over some Premier’s visit to Harvard Square; I see her body where it blushes with life, and from that color, her scent.

For me, Contact Improvisation as a dance form isn’t concerned with how it looks to move – en pointe, arabesque, step step turn! – but how it feels to move. It is not about the surfaces of the body in movement, but the spirit that moves the body, as though under the skin and behind the ribs you could watch the heart beating toward and away, opening and closing, rising and falling to the earth, while the limbs and the torso follow that sprite where its delight might take it.

I returned late last night from the annual Dance New England summer camp near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire, and woke this morning with dancing tape still on a couple of toes, the echo of taut and trained muscle still in the sinews, and the ache of separation from that vibrant and affectionate community of dancers already wringing out some sighs.

A beautiful family event that has been going on for some 30 years, DNE Camp attracts top-quality teachers and chefs and musicians from all over, offering the best of what they have to upwards of 800 participants. The cost of classes, food and lodging is all part of the modest fee. This year, like most years, there were community elders in attendance, and adults who at one time were babies born to this once-a-year village; there were newly-inspired youth from all over the States and abroad; and toddlers to teens who arrived with their parents for this summertime camp.

In our naturally egocentric way, we consider our senses channels of information that bring the world to us. We scan the horizon to identify threat or opportunity, we read; we listen to what is hidden or to what is spoken, what is sung; we are drawn to scents and repelled from odors, and we delight in the flavor of what is pleasing, disgorging what is foul; we feel heat and cold, abrasion and softness.

…atrás dos corpos e das mentes que nós vestimos, para ter algo tangível que podemos tocar…

We spend so much time tied up within our thoughts and our bodies, we think This is It, I am here to avoid as much discomfort as I can, here to do what this skin tells me to do, now eat, now copulate, now sleep, something unsatisfying here, got to uncover it, got to feed it, to fuck it, to put it to bed.

The trail which brought Manny and me to Auroville had continued west from Pondy to Mysore, to the Tibetan Settlements near Kushalnagar, over Karnataka’s Western Ghats, to fall (rather heavily) to earth on Goa’s southern beaches. Good relaxation, if a little empty after the heights of spiritual and community travel we had engaged in to that point. Palolem beach was beautiful, and completely built out for the tourist season, about to break on the beach like a tidal wave.