miscellanneous

I get engaged with the Olympics in embarrassing ways.

Like a dog rolling tongue-out on its back in grass, I wallow in the large onscreen glowing faces of women who have just won and parents talking in tears about the child who has just won (or even just made it down the hill, in the case of the skier from Madagascar). I also fantasize about the sport in which I will finally make it to the Games, but I think these days I watch more for the clarity, simplicity, and strength of the emotion.

And then I return to my undisciplined life of writing on demand -- although now trying to feel what it would be to do this as though I were Sasha Cohen in the short program.

The emotions evoked by what I see -- the transfer to me of Clara Hughes's joy at winning the 5000m speedskate, the joy reduced, of course, but still visceral -- are possible because of TV. I will turn from watching all this back to my writing, and the emotions will carry over a bit, for a little while that I wish I could stretch longer and that will make me regret the end of this Olympics, but I can stretch it some by recalling Clara Hughes's body on the ground, heaving for breath and in pleasure after she won. I can also call to mind Sasha Cohen's fingertips spiraling out from her body so lusciously, and feel -- because of my own memories of various kinds of movements -- something of what that must be, to let the whole of a body succumb into the curves demanded by momentum. Something of that I imagine I am feeling, a little bit of it, enough to provoke and tease and distract me from how today's work on a little book requires much smaller hand movements and bodily embrace.

Because I am fighting with the other writing I must do today, I am happy that the the televised experience of the women can meet up with my bodily memories and make my cells feel.

And this is why, of course?, television and movies are so delightful and dangerous?