Invite the Sick Person to Your Party, Even If You Think They Might Not Show Up

We lose out by not being worthy of a choice at all

I think of supportive readers (those who subscribe) as friends helping support chapters in an ongoing book, and those who cannot [but read and share for free] as equally important Word Nerds alongside…

But if YOU hate getting tons of emails and don’t like being spammed (same-same), you can always do what a supportive reader did:

“I still have my yearly subscription, but unsubscribed from the emails.”

My goal will always be to work VERY hard for your monthly support and never take it for granted, so I write every weekday.

I try to make sure most weekdays are open to anyone (for equity), some are still special enough that they’re just for subscribing Word Nerds… and ANYONE can ask for a year scholarship any time they want or need.

Thank you for supporting someone as much as you do!

Above, the video that makes sense with the words.

At bottom, the uncut choreography- the first time I did it- incase you want to see the unfiltered in full because you like messy dance thoughts

I wish we could talk less about “normalizing” abnormal things online because I’m sick of how normal the sentence “we need to normalize -“ but …

That’s what I’m about to do.

Because it’s oversaid but under understood.

I want to write more about the “cost” it takes to stay alive but it’s NOT to make someone feel guilty about what they’re reading, or to be a martyr…. It’s because for some of us: the cost IS worth it.

Invite the sick person to your party, even if you think they might not show up.

Hire the disabled person to do the job, especially if they’re telling you they can and will (if someone can work twice as hard at something: why AREN’T they a candidate who works twice as hard instead of valued at half?)

Try to include the hurt person in as much as you can, even if you know they’re in the hospital or nursing an injury or in recovery… because we don’t lose dignity and humanity and little pieces of sinking-sand soul because we can’t “do” the thing (though yes, that has its own separate detriment)…

We lose out by not being worthy of a choice at all.

Some psychos (like me, sometimes), do the health-math and would rather come up with choreography for a one time class, and then need to do her makeup laying flat in bed the next day because she woke up in the middle of the night from sheer pain because of her major concerns with her C-spine … than not have followed what her body and mind needed to express that day, and not danced at all.

I needed it like I need oxygen that day. Therapy. Medicine. I was unwell… and I HAD to do something to snap myself out.

Sometimes (most times), I can’t do the thing I want to do. But staying alive can’t always come at the price of being alive.

For many brave friends that I admire and wish I was like: putting all your energy into health IS life and it is dignity and it is as worthy as a dipsh*t like me dancing around because my whim propels me. That’s worthy.

For others, if we don’t sometimes “live a little” (in my case, seeing a friend, or driving down a windy open road autonomously, or creating creating creating): we lose the will to live.

Which is better? Is it better to get your medical checklists perfectly but struggle to stay on the planet through all this pain, or is it better to slowly learn and know yourself: and then use your own calculated to determine what you need on any given week.

I think whatever each person needs to do to stay here- so long as it doesn’t hurt others… is as critical as our sometimes critical care.

We take the hits by having to say “no”. By posting about an experience we loved but knowing the whiplash reality of pain we might be hiding on the other side. We choose what we show and we choose what cost is worth it but… without the choice, we realize that the price society ascribes an unwell person is next to nothing.

It’s no texts. It’s no invites. It’s no chance.

If there is no bell to ring or deadline on the whole… many of us find humanity’s tolerance, when we experience it ourselves.

We, as humans, like to win.

So if a battle “can’t be won”…

The hills and valleys grow empty.

In truth, the above choreography is meant to be about “gratitude” in broad strokes, but because this will be in a show that was “gifted” to me by Gemma (context)- the idea striking shortly after missing her funeral because our car was breaking down- and so I started to obsess over the idea of “when” does someone find peace and how do we honor their wishes and what happens when you feel like you’ve failed that.

Byegone- the show that she struck me with shortly after- has stayed one of the most vidid in my mind of the 12 we have planned for future Company Dance Theatre… And though I want to do it as soon as possible, moving in a simple way to a song that starts [what will be the show] Byegone (spelled wrong on purpose), made me think of what it means to me… Even though I want it to mean anything it needs to, to whomever dances this combo one day.

What does this make YOU think of?

I’d love to know, since we all see what WE need to see when we see the arts. (Even an imperfect combo such as this)

I haven’t danced “for real” (just barre here or a brief moment there) since before getting a “robot spine and pelvis” and a (frankly) very terrifying and lonely winter. Things were medically much more dire than I allowed it to seem online, and it felt so up in the air again and again. This sounds dramatic probably… unless you’re someone who knows this illness and how things can turn. I have decades in me yet (be warned), but winter was colorless

The song is an edit I made for this shorter combo purposes, but the uncut gem that is the song is: “Tomorrow” by Miner

The loose soundtrack for Byegone (which would, theoretically, have an inclusive expanded version locally and a more concise ‘touring version’) is here, if you like music.

As long as you know that the version of “State Trooper” by Bruce Springsteen is THIS edit because it fits the moment in the show better. Just trust me. Also, there is something SO guttural about this bizzaro edit that I am so curious how hearing friends think if you give it a listen. It hits somewhere inside my soul that makes that techno’tic style not just tolerable, but desirable (even though that’s not normally my jam)

Songs choose themselves for shows that way.

And sometimes shows choose their own theme because Gemma knocks on my head and says: “This is what you’re writing down today”

One day, Byegone will exist.

For now, thank you for sharing in this messy moment with me. Happy Monday!