joy in motion...

the thought hit me while i was chatting online like a fast-acting poison from a shakespearean play - in through my ear and infecting my head. it was an old memory, and old hobby i've not indulged in for far too long. i knew i could still do it. the muscle-memory remains, but i'm so out of practice i knew i'd be rusty. fuck it. now i wanted back in, so i did a quick search online and found out that the only store in the UK that hasn't gone purely online was up in Camden Lock Market so i got dressed and bolted for the tube.

2 hours later i was in a park i'd found in Holborn back when i had one of my first job interviews called Lincoln Inn Fields, spinning my newly-acquired poi around my head like a madman, listening to a playlist i'd constructed on the go playing fast beats off my PSD. i can still do it, but at the same time i've lost it. the moves are there but the art of stringing them together with grace will take a while to come back to me. i kept tangling the strings together on the complicated changes, but i wasn't caring. i started slow, moving pattern into pattern until i was warmed up, waited for Less Talk More Rokk to come on, pretended i was performing again and went off.

and by fuck it felt good - the buzz from cranking some dance music loud and slipping into the groove. play, adjust the strings, play, adjust some more until the length was right for the low tricks and play some more until my arms turned to jelly. i used to be able to spin for hours before i got tired - it's just muscles i've not used like that for years. i kept playing, trying out some patterns i'd never got around to perfecting back in the day, smacking myself in the face and avoiding hitting small children and dogs, until a grizzled old guy gruffly moved me along so he could lock the gates. the idea of parks that CLOSE is a little foreign to me, but it's not my park so who am i to argue?

i hit the street and wandered east towards Leicester Square until i found a Costa on the southern (less fashionable) end of Regent St to sink some caffeine - it came out in a soup-mug with two handles it's so fucking big - so that i could do some writing while i waited for Laura to finish shopping before we meet up for a drink or food or something.

there's a park across the road from base-camp - an old cemetery-turned-children's playground next to the church, but it's grassy and i'm thinking that would be an ideal spot to get some practice in and exercise when i'm feeling stiff and sore. i'll build my arms back up to strength and with any luck my knees will continue to behave. i'd forgotten how good it felt to jump around and weave patterns in the air. give me movement and bloodflow, give me speed and grace, give me fire and peace. give me back a little of what i used to love and memories of when my car smelled permanently of kerosene, from back in the days when my world used to burn and spin...