Two parts of my brain are coliding. Part One: We are headed to NEFFA this afternoon, a huge dance and music festival in eastern MA. The festival FILLS the Mansfield High School as well as Middle School, the auditoriums, gymnasiums, classrooms, hallways, as well as the outdoor space between and around the schools. There is dance to see, dance to do, music to hear or participate in making, crafts people, vendors. All over. Just all over. I love that in a nook in the hallway you will come upon a handful of fiddlers, or under a tree outside, everywhere you look. People of all ages are there to dance and make music and socialize and have a joyful long weekend.

Contra dancing is my passion. With my back issues, I haven’t danced in ages, and this hurts my heart. My partner’s first love is international folk dance, especially Balkan. Both are well represented at NEFFA. There is this involuntary excitement I am feeling as we pack our bags with dancing shoes and water bottles. I am a dancer. I have to dance. I feel most alive and beautiful and vibrant when I am dancing. I am slipping into believing that I am going to NEFFA to dance. I want to dance for hours, without hardly a breath in between, and go back and do it again tomorrow. I have done that.  I have never danced full out since I have had a knee injury for a dozen years, but I know my back is going to be much more of an issue than my knee. My back hurts just sitting here at the computer. Part One: We are going to dance!!!! Yahoo!!

Part Two of my brain: Memories of last year. We went for one day. Jeff danced the whole day. I didn’t dance at all, not one dance. I brought my lawn chair and sat quietly outside and read, socialized a bit, and was glad I had pain meds. I got through the day without crying, either for the acute pain or the fact that I was in a sea of dancers and I wasn’t dancing. I just withdrew into a quiet place and held on. I so want to dance tonight and tomorrow. Dancer-brain says DANCE. Chronic-pain-brain reminds me that I will not last long. I do have a plan. I can do mostly folk dance and if someone is pulling on my arm, I can dance behind the circle on my own. Not as satisfying as being connected to the swirl of energy in the circle, but better than not dancing. And I intend to do at least one contra dance. I figured out that if I wear a decorative scarf like a shawl (so as to not pull on my neck) and stick my right arm inside the scarf, then no one can pull on my arm and I hope that prevents me from straining my back.

I want to enjoy the optimism that my plan will work and I will dance a lot. There is this speed bump in my psyche: Pain is going to come on sooner than I think. I will need to withdraw to the lawn chair, with book and pain meds, and just get through the day. My dancer-heart wants to fly and speed along on expectations of dancing. But I have pain even from vacuuming my little apartment. How can I expect to dance?

I have packed my pretty dancing clothes. I want to dance.  I want joy. Truthfully, I want ecstasy.