Insects swarming over the fingernail clippings of god

a story about ants, DJs, the body, and the dance

It is my last day at the yoga retreat and I am walking to the dining hall. Something on the ground is moving and I pause to look. It is a colony of ants teaming together to lift something white. I lean down closer. It's the remains of a joint. The ants are coming together to lift the remains of a joint and carry it back to their... wait. What are they wanting with this joint, actually?

Now I'm riding the songtaew taxi to ecstatic dance, gazing out the back at the rolling jungle and ocean. When I get there it occurs to me that, with some distance, this place looks very much like an insect colony. A hundred hippies swarm around a pyramid structure. We are waving our antenna arms and doing mating dances and showing each other how heroically we have won against society's attempts to tame us.

Last week the DJ was ok, passable. This week the DJ is a fucking wizard. This DJ is weaving echoes of pure archetypal realms. First it's Egyptian then Indian then a remix of some indie pop song. He builds it up up up up up and then drops, I kid you not, a heavy metal guitar solo. It is perhaps the most badass flex I have ever seen from a DJ.

I fall into a trance like butter melting. I'm reunited with my full somatic experience. I feel everything I put my body through, keeping her places she didn't want to be, mentally abstracting away from her. I remember hearing my body, so many nights, telling me she was unhappy. Telling me she wanted nature, she couldn't take so much city. I didn't listen then, barricading her cries with logical reasoning. I listen now. I recall I didn't even bring her to her favorite park, I was so busy chasing shadows. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I will not abandon you again," I say. I dance holding her heart, eyes closed. She doesn't fully believe me, but she is happy to be here.

I drop deeper now. You might think I'm high on something, but I've only had banana pancakes, which were heavenly but not psychoactive. Music and space seem to merge. I see my body as a swirl of energy. Insights unfold about my life, people, and the progression of events.

A guy in the center becomes my anchor. I saw him last week and I like his energy, it feels playful and kind and joyous. I let my body be pulled to him. We share smiling moments mirroring each other's movements. It might continue but I feel tension rising in my body. I drop back to be with myself.

It's my first really good dance since California. That taste of the divine will hold me over for a while. Maybe that's what the ants were looking for in the ganja. Maybe we're all just insects swarming over the fingernail clippings of god.