Face Down
I have this recurring image. A gut feeling. A deep urge to lie down on sidewalks. It’s been happening on walks lately. I’m usually walking uphill—no shortage of hills here. And I am overcome with the gravity of needing to lie down. Face down. To assume the position. Not so much chalk outline, but infant tummy time tinged with grown-up narcolepsy.
Splat.
I want to be lizard-like, poised in a precursor to a crawl. The splat of one knee laterally out, the opposite arm scratching forward, caught mid-swim. Cheek to the dirt, facing said knee. Spine mid-effort, but petrified like wood, forever or for the next five minutes.
Still, save for breathing.
This craving to hit the deck like a tumbling lump of clay definitely stems from so much of the developmental movement I studied in dance. How do babies go from squirmy worms to dancing toddlers? How do they know to work the planes of movement? To test things out like scientists or artists in the studio over and over until they can get from here to there under their own power. As babies move forward, all we want to do is move back—to a baby’s elongated spine, her head balanced beautifully on her neck, her limitless curiosity.
For a moment, on a floor or on a sidewalk, I am the baby, face down. Paused, but pulsing with potential. The lateral crawl pose like a paper doll poised. I am the bendy magnet Jaclyn gave me, a hinged figure dancing across my fridge. All eternity in a single pose.
Anyway, I just need to lie down.
This collapse happens when sadness meets exhaustion. My inner motor, running on autopilot, spurts out. The battery needs changing or the hamsters running the wheel pause in existential dread.
“Wait, what? What are we doing?” "I don't know...I thought you knew!" " I wasn't paying attention. Were you?" "Definitely, not." "Wanna wait here?" "Zzzzzzzzzz......"
There is a lull before I’m back online. In that lull, the fantasy is to lie down on the sidewalk indefinitely. It happened again today, the need to belly flop. Like an old-fashioned push toy held taut by strings. You just poke the button underneath to buckle my knees. I almost do it. I almost plop. But for a possible trace of dog poop or a neighbor’s concerned eye. Hello? Anyone out there?
I think a lot about sidewalks because I see a lot of sidewalks. I think a lot about lying down on them because they are inviting me. And we are on a collision course of emotions these days. Not sudden death, but a slow choking over years so you don’t even notice until you’re face down on the sidewalk.
And there’s a comfort in the sidewalk. Stay a while, ear to the ground. You hear me? Baby, you get up when you’re good and ready.