She actually saw it in terms of shapes (three dimensionally in space); her mind settled in geometry. She saw the pattern in the void, and it unified two completely conflicting paradigms into one model. She visualized them opening like paths that were funnels from a single point, and realized that there were actually two dilemmas she encountered; it was not that they were in conflict but that both existed, and both existed in a paradox. Sometimes she was caught by one, and sometimes she was caught by the other. Suddenly the patterns of debate, the fact that neither pattern could exist with the other, was caught in the geometry of two semi-circles that met at a single point, both at 90 degrees. And what she realized was that she had been so confused and so assaulted with both dilemmas because she often gravitated to the centre. The point where both semi-circles met, she fluttered around it. Because she was near the nexus of potential much of the time, centred on pure dance, she tended to be subject to both opposing trains of thought.
There were two patterns: creative dance and the mate dance. What she saw the majority of people imitating, rather lamely, was some watered down derivative of the mate dance. They were using it to get together. This often meant that the whole point was to dance ineptly, so that no one felt self-conscious and no one was deterring or embarrassing anyone by being too “good” for them to consider. It was a form of protectionism that everyone was involved in without realizing it. She realized the reason she used to stick out like a sore thumb was because she was involving herself in creative dance. Creative dance is the attempt to create beauty in motion, attuned to rhythm, so males tended to get their wires crossed on her anyway. She thought that because dance is based in rhythm, the beat, it tended to be inherently sexual no matter what, and this was inherently going to be amplified if you were actually any good at it. Her quandary had always been whether it was ethical for her to perform in a way that was inherently going to be sensed as sexual, how much she was obliged to sanitize it, and how culpable she was for affecting other people. At the same time she saw merit in the mate dance as a social vector that didn’t have to be used unhealthily, though as far as she was concerned that was not what was going on in her environment, where it was being used as a quick fix for sex. The scene before her tended to revolt her.
Because of the inherent sexuality in dancing she thought it was nearly impossible to avoid the mate dance, though she did not want to go there. At the same time she could also see, in terms of the mate dance, that what she or Phil were performing -maybe what they were performing was actually an evolutionary dead end, because they were dancing without purpose. They were dispensing with an incredible amount of energy that wasn’t being channeled into anything valuable in terms of any form of production. (In a sense four plus hours of a being a dervish dispensing with enough joules that could have been spent say, harvesting a field for a day, in other words, -was that energy as conspicuous consumption? -A mere by-product of our times, that would have otherwise been unaffordable?) Outside of being “conspicuous” (which was possibly vanity), the upshot was that neither she or Phil were overtly using dance to get hitched, which was the existing background intention of the majority, which felt like background static. They would never end up going home with anyone at the end of the night because of what they did. They were both on those speakers to be on those speakers; they were there to dance. In a sense maybe they were going nowhere, and seeing it this way used to creep her out some nights, like being socially dysfunctional and thinking that was somehow cool.
Conversely the only way she thought the mate dance was cool, was if the people involved in it were serious about each other, either each other, or, the dance.
From the alternate perspective, that of the creative dance, the mate dance was a joke, a pathetic terminus for something that could be beautiful. The tango et al, these are among the most beautiful coordinated expressions of unity. Being in a club was sometimes like watching the unconscious expression of the lowest common denominator, where everything was watered down in its race to the bottom; the crowd mind wanted to be inept to equalize “the field”. There is no interest in expression of beauty when people are just there grinding their way to what they view as “success”; get to the point. The means to an end becomes its own means. -Bald expression. Was it OK to be there? Was that being a participant? That was her quandary.
That winter she saw both paradigms merge into a singular pattern, seen as the two semi-circles that touched at one point. Where they went from there was not too much of a concern, the interest was in that one nexus point, and in the idea that while at first there was a minute area between the semi-circles where there was space, that space opened in a near exponential fashion so that at the edge of their respective arcs, all there was, was space. The two openings from the nexus were how she conceptualized the potentials that lay in the mate dance and creative dance, respectively. The left side was the mate dance, and the right side was creative dance. There was a small rectangle around the nexus where she felt most of the derivative behaviors involving these two dance patterns were located. She saw the area within the two semi-circles as the region where a mish-mash, or behavioral dead ends, were continually spinning off and ending up nowhere. Not to say that it's supposed to end up somewhere; it's more a matter of distilling patterns. All that useless, watered down, and otherwise terminal behavior, where the dance forms are abused by the users. Conversely it used to be that one could waltz and engage in these patterns and the purpose was an enjoyable evening. There was not near so prominent a pressure for an “outcome” as there is now, and if you look at it that way, the broad space of the funnel areas are blessed not to care; it's where you’d want to be. Naturally in that small rectangle around the nexus, the vast majority of the space is consumed in the void areas of the two semi-circles.
The point of contact was the nexus point, the point of potential where one could go either direction, entering into either the mate, or the creative dance. The point was unique because it was only at this point that you could see both full potentials, and had the option of participating in either one, but the moment you entered into either one you would no longer be at the nexus. So while the nexus is the only space where you have the potential capacity of possibly totally realizing either potential, in being in that space you are not actually realizing either of them, you are frozen in total potential, but really going nowhere. The amazing part for her of recognizing this pattern in dance and realizing that this was why she was in such an extreme conflict when it came to dancing, because she likely operated around the nexus, and felt precisely this way, that she was somehow frozen, not going anywhere, was that she recognized the same situation was a danger to her spiritually, and that being the nexus of the feedback had the capacity to freeze her the same way. This made her wary, made her conscious of the decision to get out of it, and two, it permitted her to think of being frozen in a potential in another way, as possibly a blessing rather than a curse.
Her great relief in terms of her sexuality was that with this model she could see that sexuality was safely and fully integrated within creative dance, because creative dance can be interpretive of everything real in the same way that theater or painting is. Therefore, she was fully within her bounds to render sexuality within interpretive creative dance without entering into the mate dance at all. It was art. The vector that is creative dance opened to infinite creativity, because in dance, especially improvisation, even if you have a formula of motions that you keep as a basis, you will never repeat exactly the same motion in the same space twice. -Infinite creativity with an infinite range of interpretive expression. This is what creative dance opens, and that was the vast space she saw at the right side of the semi-circles.
For her the mate-dance opened into something in the same way, but that required a little more background, starting with the nature of Christian marriage. Marriage in the Christian context reflects on something much deeper, the final unification typified as that of the Lamb and the Church. Christ called himself the Bridegroom in reflecting on this union, which is to come in the Last Days. Marriage has also typified the relation of God with his chosen people since the inception of the Covenant on Mt. Sinai. In most of the prophets they berate the Israeli nation as an adulterous wife to her husband, God the Father. This was the failed version (demonstrative of how attempted segregation of God’s people in the real world via a nation state constitution could not but fail), but the analogy hearkens to what shall be accomplished in the fullest sense, in the future. Marriage between two individuals (in this context), is a form of training ground, a dip into the commitment that must be learned in accomplishing a final, perfect union of love with God, in the body of the Holy Church, which is what the church attempts to emulate.
So with this context in mind what is being approached upon, in the context of a perfectly accomplished mate dance, is perfect union, which in turn reflects on the perfect union we must yet accomplish altogether, which is that of perfect and eternal Love. So in this sense, this narrow path or potentiality accessed the wide-open and infinite potential of perfect Love. That is how she saw the left side of the semi-circles. Viewing it this way was like viewing the narrowest sense or possibility of what the potential outcome might be, as its probability of ever happening is microcosmic. It was simply an existing potentiality (how she tended to think anyway), but the potentiality is in a sense accessible just by existing, like an infinitesimally remote access that nonetheless exists. The dance is a form of unity to express unity, implying or expressing sexual unity. So was anything emulating the mate dance heading anywhere in that direction? Was it compelled to be expressed by people who were engaged in unity, where everything without intention is a form of falsity? Her escape valve was recognizing that the mate dance was also captured interpretatively inside creative dance as true art. And whatever else the scene might be doing, she was safe within that.