Movement Currents

An array of possibility- on the cusp of every aggravation- every dead-end. In the extremity of a solo direction there is a necessary inertia- a running out of fuel- an abrupt atrophy. This limbless torso rolls in on itself probing into a depth for a slight flicker -a sign-  a provocation at the febrile level of nervous excitation- on the verge of nervous exhaustion- on the very verge of giving up- of reconciling to a self-referential that self-soothes in the habitual loop of oblivion. Can we use up all our energy in this way? The death-wish- either unto ourselves or by cascading and imprinting aspects of self on to other who simply play the part of this double enclosure? How to break free of this doubling and redoubling unto ourselves? The locked-in space outside of relationship.

It is scary to move out of this- risky- at the edge of need and abandonment- longing and betrayal. How to open up the relationality bit by bit on the cusp of an interior affect? At the very point where inertia and atrophy spasm into a ricocheting of distant echoes that seem then to break off from the main body- to go their own way- to become Other and to push the interior more and more in onto itself as a defencive blockade- a wall of circuits that keep travelling beyond the moment of touch into  the evasions of images of self and other that cohere and burst by their own excess.

How then to keep the tensile resolve on the edge of aggravation at the border-line where new growth- new proliferation takes place?

A body- what is that? A body curtailed in a wheelchair - in an excess of affect- in an assault of sensory impulse that hits it like flotsam from the sky onto its passive surface- and marks it here and then here. Psychological markings are abundant because the capacity for movement- for absorption and integration goes missing. The articulation is set in limbo-  in a vacancy of space where there is no definite ground- nothing to push against or pull towards. The gravitational flow of  drawing towards and away has become dismembered from action. And the thought about action- even the idea to act- which is a form of deep imagination flowing from body impulse to action- is curtailed in the body restricted from both internal and external response.

The border as interchange between different levels of affect; its very depth reading as co-existing in  the milieu of an environment is not foretold. There is no reading- no literacy at all which when it occurs is the exquisite delicate exchange between affect and manifestation. Without the clear signs of behaviour, there is no signs or impulses drawing towards potential care-givers, educators or play-mates. And so isolation ensues. Deep aloneness in the midst of the overwhelming bombardment of affect.

So there needs to be an intervention- a slight warp or waver in the line of demarcation. Where skin packages and enfolds flesh, blood and inner organs, then something, anything; just a slight indentation, needs to give. There needs to be a flicker, a ripple, a hesitation, the momentary holding and release of breath so that in this detour- this minuscule de-railment of habitual patterns of self-enfoldment, something catches in,  something splays out and in this minuscule roll, a slight questioning is opened; the gap between self-reference and co-dependence. Here time begins to move as and from the moment of each new affect. In the slight lapsing of time- into the neutrality of a pause, new life begins to configure at the interface of what before was a border of exclusion.

How does this actually look or feel in practise? Practises may be diverse- Gardening or farming for instance, building or demolishing houses, parks, schools and roads. Or the accumulation of marks and colours on a piece of paper. Or the excess sounds that interject and rise up through one another into un-foretold harmonics. Nobody summoned these up out of a set plan. They emerged in the relationship of beats and tones to create an exegesis that excelled the input of this tensile system to overflow into a new kind of adaptation- a new life-form- that is not representational of something outside the system but is the very composition of a life-form struggling on the verge of its own possible extinction; its own possible adaptation. Every line in a sketch is this- a limit point of a certain kind of pressing down- a certain type of temperature reading- only to bounce out of that deposited trough into an explosive rebound that configures as mark-making into a new area of whiteness- soon to be undone. So the image fashions itself out of the limit points of its own tolerance for touching/for any kind of contact; its own provocation where paper becomes skin and feels itself out from the inside into a face; an exposure face now flickering through. Individual lines and dots that ricocheted on and off of one another in the making- with no mind or plan of overall features or expressive content, suddenly bounce out and cohere as a unified expression; a configuration that is born out of non-local, non causal synchronic explosions. These are self perpetuating affects which tell back the story of how that face, diagram, map or territory was brought into formation through countless affects beyond the content and frame of what is there depicted. The viewer- and there may be many from all points of view- is the relational absentee partner of this facing whether human or non-human; not now a mere surface but a touching through into what is deferred- can not be directly apprehended or seen- out of the exclusion zones- the dead-ends; the curtailments and abrupt endings that any frame demands.

Can we use these frames; the frames of endings- abandonment's that we make of others and that others make of us- to tease through into a relational identification?

The lived body of a boy in a wheel-chair taken out and held briefly in my arms; laid down on a mat. The treatment is already there from the first apprehension even before touch. The touch a mere touching in, in order to release out. And I am reading through into the mobile body; the capacity for movement; the recollection of organs, these channels and neuro-circuitry leanings tilting into a totality that builds and dissolves like sands at the edge of the sea. The provocation becomes an accepted part of the internal milieu as warmth pervades and settlement ensues. The interior bulk of the body settles and lands and the torso begins to spasm - to lift minutely off the ground and to settle back down each time a little more.  This incremental re-settlement is sending through into atrophied limbs that curl and infuse back into the interior as M thrusts his whole fist deep into his mouth. And there is nothing for me to do; no sense at all in un-doing this knot through even  minimal force even with the best of intentions. For that is simply reinforcing the separation and the need to defend an interior self-referential system against an outside attack. Rather as the interior warmth pervades and the ripples of excess and redistribution escalate and release through the belly and spine, the neck and chest, the  face and the temples, the top of the head and the feet, something seems to tighten and then unfold in the hips and pelvis and this ripples out into the chest; it flows down through the arms and into the fingers that are sensitised; linked to the flickering questioning eyes that follow internally this visual, kinaestethic and visceral journeying of the senses. Organs uncurl out of the very spasm deep at the core of the body provoked and released in these first touchings.And then much later and as if of their own volition, fingers and hands uncurl and tap into the space just above the body- clasp my own hands in pulsar waves of holding and letting go. The rhythm builds and there is a playfulness of heightened contact that leads to a light spasm or rigidity and then its instantaneous release and unfolding into movement. Movement patterns begin to fashion themselves out of the sensorial   compression and relaxation that occur as waves and now become configured into a communicative link that is nearly play. This is on the edge of imagining the body in action that it then shapes itself around. Limbs, hands, feet, head, neck, throat and voice literally grow out of these imaginings.

And the boy becomes adept in playing through from passivity- to provocation- to tightening- to spasm- to release- to movement pattern- to functional use. And so he fashions his limbs and body- parts as composite growths out of a core reflexivity that is induced at the border between his body and mine and brings us both into this composed relationship where we are together with one another in the treatment room- and where I talk with him casually and he understands and gives me signals back. Or I hold a limb; an arm in a neutral floating position and I wait. And he shows me because he waits with me for long enough to have a sense of this limb hanging there in space- supported-as if in water- very lightly; almost invisibly. And then he spasms-really just on the edge of spasm- and releases the spasm into counter-flow, showing me the direction in which his arm begins to swim with a new-found volition all of its own- like swimming up-current against the tide- as I lightly support it but do nothing to direct it- for the direction is internally given- now beyond both his and my thought-about volition-and yes he has manifested this action- not by some prior intentional goal but by listening acutely to the impulses at the border of the contact and then using the provocation of that contact- not to habitually ward off the feeling of the contact and enter instead a recursive loop of continuing rigidity, but to use the initial rigidity in order to release into a movement current. This is how he sets his body free- incrementally- through use; by imagining it to be so in each particular detail of its manifestation. And so it becomes this to him- out of his own experience made possible on the very cusp of an inhibition- a fright- that would threaten to push it in the other direction, towards rigidity and inertia. This is the contact interface and by keeping open with awareness this place that is equally the place of curtailment and growth, limbs are imagined and are given life-vigour in the freshness of these imaginings. They are always linked to actual sensations; real provocations, real adaptations according to each emerging set of circumstances, describing  through affect the situation as it is unfolding. This is our felt experience; our pain threshold and its new given use into life-energy- into a sharing. The fear of abandonment, of betrayal has been reconfigured anew on each occasion into the use we put ourselves in according to our on-going relationship to one another and to the ground. This is love. It is at the basis of our capacity to communicate. This is based on us seeing and feeling the relevance of this communication in order to come more fully into being ourselves as a way of being with another. it evolves out of a continuity which is always changing in form yet is unbroken, whether we are physically near or further apart.

The contact then becomes a way of configuring these changing intervals and the space between becomes our grammar of continuing contact; always reconfiguring from moment to moment between Independence and dependence. A better way to put it perhaps is a continually up-dated style of interdependence. This is the playfulness of imaginings- grounded as always in real events- real experiences- real kinaesthetic and visceral movements of being drawn in and out of different levels of clarity and discharge.

It is the ability to alter the focal range or intensity that allows us to stay present with ourselves in relationship to other. This is a continuing attunement and it is durational - long-term-  through every interval that in a sense holds over and makes valid the point and intensity of each contact. This is how it is put to use floating and moving effortlessly, lightly configuring between the charges of more intensive contact. Movement is the natural overflow and discharge of this contact intensity. Where it is prohibited or disallowed it will create psychological repercussions. This is how physical contact, movement and the psyche are all interdependently linked. It is the imagination that links, transgress and translates one aspect of experience into another linking the physical and material with the virtual and transitory. Language and communication is the sign; the marked residue that points not to itself or to its representational aspect of denotation but rather to the apt placement of touch or feeling contact and its exchange into the realm of movement discharge. Language naturally fashions around this right consolidation of focus and its release into energy. This is also the pulse of  the in-breath and the out-breath continually replacing, replicating and re-composing one another into a unified presence whose aspects are inseparable but never fixed.

The Dam Release

A session with M today at the school. He is coming into contact. Getting stronger- I am feeling his presence. He is using his own jerks and spasms as brief excitations - just before release. I am using this same pattern- high-lighting  the blockage like a small dam build-up - then to let go- give space and let the pattern flow out as if from a nebulae that splays cylindrically all the way out. Shiatsu/Seiki touch is this- it is  the precision intervention of a blockage- not in fact a circulation or balancing act. For in and of itself it can do nothing- or perhaps nothing other than provoke and heighten a compulsion that has become a habitual gaurding into an interior. By piggy-backing on this same pattern it flips it back out- provoking the halt or seizure at a precise juncture then as the liquid flow builds up and builds up, it creates this momentary swelling- like an over-flow- and then as the contact is released there is a vacuum that immediately is flooded with a charge of substance that goes in a multi-directional way from centre-point both centrifugally and as an outwards dissipation. This double-move creates a momentary suspension- like a line drawn in the sand- a marking- an indentation- which is timeless, spaceless. Thereupon this void arises a back-swell back into livingness and - like a man choking whose channels are filled with water, there is a sudden eruption and the passages clear themselves out by the kick-start engagement  that this provocation and turbulance creates. Out of the ground-swell there comes a magnetic pull the other way like the pull of the tide back towards the ocean current and into its dark depths- sucking back into its own integrity and force from the sandy shores where it ceaselessly comes and goes.

So with M he is learning to orientate his limbs, his internal organs, his breath, his bowel movements, his heart beats and his voice all from the same source. This catching in and exposition out that occur simultaneously as a double-take that is extensive and recursive- that is manifest and deep within the fold; that is the point of contact- of communication- and the point of seperation; of reliance and independance, joy and pain, elaborate through one another becoming the play of one another; a dance of up and down, in and out that together create a small insertion- a pause-gap through which we glance back at ourselves with humour and kindness, then let it go and sow the seeds of this merging with other, as  the preliminary of our aperception of another.

Only in this unity where we get to feel the biting in of force and counter-force curling in and out of one another; upon the banks of one another- do we then have the imagination to interact with another- as a part of ourself that we hold apart - and then leap over through this man-made gulf to create emergant patterns- signs and symbols- communication networks- soundings and vibrations; the pulsar on-off vibrations of  muscular contractions and their instantaneous release. It is the release- the letting go- the streamng through which is the journey of our seeing/feeling/kinaesthethic volitional action. Yet it is set on the banks of a seizure- a near-death interiority- a contraction that seems endless- leading towards oblivion- until miraculouly it stops- glances back at itself like a mirror gazing at its reversed image- and then unfolds back into exposition. For this miracle of reversal is life- it is health- it is well-being.