A shape enters my view, it makes me happy. A connection between hands. A smile, a smile back. A limp, a shuffle. Concentration, sound, music, mess. The moves are there, studied, replicated, repeated imperfectly but perfect. Joy exudes, unselfconscious action, dancing, laughter persists. I laugh, no way it could be at - joy is joy, if it happens, it has happened. A lightness throughout my body, a response to your body occupying the same room as everyone else.
You are no longer here and I don’t know in what ways you will be missed. Are you dead, buried in the ground, in heaven, are you gone last week, a lovely man, a shame, a sadness, a young person, work, part of a project, a friend, an inspiration, a teacher, an example, a loss, an education, an income, a reason. The dynamics do a dis-service to you. Led in my response as I should, gone but not forgotten. Time folds in on itself, a memory can exist anywhere along the line and it is free to move.
All this tied up with a recent memory - a man shoots and kills 58 people because he is afraid. Afraid of what they might do, of who they are, of others like them. This man passed the test which surely would have been undertaken on his body before moving from another body - his mothers - into the world. He would have been tested for ‘defects’, ‘abnormalities’, ‘problems’. He passed. Through his journey through the world he thought he found defects, abnormalities and problems with others. Others agreed with him, or he found others to agree, or those others found him. He found these problems with other people so bad that he decided to kill them. He felt justified in his actions. Outrage, solemn outrage, disgusting, horror, we are all one, I am you, you are me, we are together.
Someone I know died recently, he brought joy into my life and countless others, the news of his death has devastated a community. He was taken too soon, died suddenly and far too young. Before his body passed from his mother's into the world the same tests on his body, that the man who killed 58 people passed, would have had a different result.
Someone close to me once said that if the body they were bringing into the world had failed the tests then they would have prevented it from entering the world. They said they would be too afraid of the life it would have. They believed the world is made for those that pass the test, not those that do not and the struggle in in fighting this would be too much.
Defects, abnormalities and problems might just show us who we really are. Are we one? Are we together? The horror of perfection, the disgusting result of purity. Those that bring joy and those that bring pain and suffering, there is no test that can seek these people out. Is this the test on all of us? Are you afraid of others? Should they be afraid of you? Like many others I will miss my friend, my life was better for his body in this world.