Thursday, June 26, 2008

Everybody Freeze

        Do you remember that game "Freeze" we all used to play in kindergarten? The teacher would play some sort of music and everyone would be instructed to dance until "Freeze!" the music would stop and you were supposed to pause in whatever position you happened to be in at the time. Remember? Remember looking around at all your friends, their google eyes and spider monkey hands hung limp from arms spread wide, hips cocked out, do you remember the stumble of it? Then back into the music, unfreeze. Lately I've been trying to play this game in real life. 
          I've been listening to my Mama and her friends. They say, "Oh, what would you do if you had your thirty year old body back?" they say "It sucks to grow old" and I think about how I have a thirty year old body and I think about how to me, they are not old. But I know what they mean. The years are just wooshing by faster and faster. I get lost in the past sometimes, a smell, a song, and I'm 15 jumping naked into a sinkhole, I'm 20 riding shotgun down those long hot streets of Phoenix with the stereo on full blast, I'm 21 getting married, whoosh I'm 24 getting divorced and getting down and getting a sunburn and getting laid and giddy-up go, and I'm thirty. Thirty is good, I like thirty, but it's true, we don't pause to catch these moments as they pass us. We keep them as memories and they are so shiny, we were always so much prettier back then, more free, more alive. At least that's how we remember it so it must be true.
       So now, I'm playing Freeze. Not all the time, just sometimes. Walking down the street this morning the world was washed clean from last night's thunderstorm. The sky was so blue and the clouds were just flirting, and the sun was gentle on my face and bare shoulders. There were limbs down, the weak and the dead slung from the trees, but this morning the trees were still. So still and the birds were calling, taking inventory of themselves and each other. I pulled limbs out of the road. I thought about the cyclists and the man in the wheelchair and the lady with the walker who all use that sidewalk and I cleared that too. I felt the pings and pangs in my bones as I bent and tugged. I felt the elastic of my muscles and my skin. I paused. There it was, Freeze! Thirty years old, this is what it feels like to be thirty years old, right here so fine, so pretty, so alive. I looked around at the people in their cars with their google eyes and their monkey hands and it was a laugh to see what positions we were all in. Then Unfreeze! and I went on my way, swept up in the crazy music of the morning and the dance to get to work.
I hope I keep this game up. I wonder what position I'll be in next. I wonder what new game I'll learn if I keep listening to those wiser than I am. Till then I'm going to play the music, okay guys? And when the music stops, no matter what position you happen to be in, everybody ...... Freeze! 

10 comments:

Ms. Moon said...

Yum, yum, yum.
Here you go.
I love you so. In all the moments, frozen and un.
I can't wait to read all the words that pour out of you, my darling dear.
This is a lovely, lovely beginning.

That Hank said...

Man, we come from good writing stock.

Anonymous said...

That is a most excellent idea! I am listening too, may I join you?

Lazy Rani said...

hi. i just told your brother that i like your blog. now i'm telling you. thanks!

May said...

Oh Lordy, this is fun. Thanks guys! I wrote this thing last night and I was sooo sleepy and I didn't even set up pictures or anything. I thought, "I have just created the most boring blog in the universe" and then I fell asleep. I'm not technically inclined, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'll figure it all out soon. Maybe I need some of these amazing bloggers I know to come over and give me a tutorial. Thanks again, so much.

My Other Blog said...

Hello, Miss Maybelle, daughter of Ms. Moon!
Welcome to your 30's - they were the best decade of my life, I hope you have a wonderful decade as well.
Welcome to blogging!
I'll be back.

texino said...

Well said. There was an animated cartoon flying the airwaves 50 some years ago. It involved all manner of animals wildly dancing to a hot swing band fronted by a kitty cat. She was singing a song and every so often the lyric went "But when I say hold it, everybody hold!" Kind of like your freeze dance. Well yes, but with one little bit which has bothered me to this very day. At the end of the cartoon, when they show the graphic with the credits on it and the music is still playing, that cat would stick her head out out a circle and yell, "Everybody Hold!" Fade to black. I think they took that cartoon off the air because it inspired philosophical thought which causes Communism. Anyway, I am very happy to see you have moved on and brought your life with you, and that you tell such a good story. As for my self, I fear there is some part of me left in 1953 waiting for that cat to turn me loose. All the best.

May said...

Unfreeze! To freeze you must unfreeze. Texino, let's just assume that I am the reincarnation of that cat and I am starting the music again. Dance it up. And thank you for your kind words.

Juancho said...

What in the hell is going on over here?

May said...

Get on board Juancho! And come over here and teach me how to put pictures on this dern thing and not be so computer stupid. Are you in Mississippi?