Thoughts After a Belly-dance Routine

I stand in front of one of the brass-flowered mirrors of the first floor, tracing the patterns that seeped out on on my translucent stretchy purple top. How interesting it was, to see how my sweat, my steam had mapped itself out on the fleshy, soft countours of my body. An eggplant lake embracing the rolling hill of skin below, an inlet bashfully trickling between twin slopes. and two seas furtively joined in a kiss midway on my back. It has been a while since I had the chance to truly pay attention and give my body her due.

The idea of belly-dancing for exercise came to me not through Regine and Andrea, but through a near-forgotten display of discounted VCDs in a nearby Mall. (When I say nearby, I mean a five-to-ten-minute quick walk distance.) Here were a couple of Aryan-faced ladies, twins to be precise, producing a series of bellydance for exercise circa 1992.They seemed serious enough about their craft, and were not high-profile enough to get Hollywood hot air into their heads, so why not? My previous three-mile aerobic routine soon bored me, and what Veena and Neena Bidasha had to offer was a very welcome change. So I danced. Every night. Every night I danced, and the floor practically pooled with my saline liquid self. it hurt, at first; I realized how heavy my parts actually were and how out of balace I was, but I learned and worked hard to work it off. Now, after a terrible two-month lapse of exercise, here I am back in the grind again, trying my very best to keep aloft on my toes and jingle the invisible coins on my hips and hold for a very long time.

The VCDs of the twins I own are designed to shape, strengthen and tone: the hips, buns and thighs for the first, the arms and abs for the second, and an over-all fat-burner for the purpose of sending you humiliatingly chasing after your own breath for the third. My favorite would be the first.

I believe I am beautiful when I dance.

One of my personal reasons for exercising (or at least, meaning to exercise) woud be because I wouldn't want to take up more space than I really should, as on a jeep or a bus seat. It's in my system, I suppose; I've taken it to be my civic duty in some silly, personal way. I can't help but always feel it's my responsibility why a frail old lady or gent, or a parent with a child in tow, or any kind of lady for that matter can't fit him or herself into the sliver of my leftover tarpaulin seating. They need the seat more than I do. Any little thing I can do to help the country. That, and wanting to look good naked, to myself and to my man.

It can be embarrassing and distracting, when you try to make love among the rolls of fat. If pleasure is subjective, I wouldn't want to subject it to visual torture. But then again, there's a reason why I love the way he manages to melt it all away with a single kiss, and how he turns a plumpish, derriered college girl into the nameless Fertility Goddess of lore.

Love can do strange things to pleople's minds.

This time, I hope to keep this and keep at this routine. It's terrible missing out on something I've sworn to myself I'd stick to through the aches and the inner whining. After all, I do this for my own improvement; it would certainly be a let down for myself if I broke oath along the way.

and oh god, think of the benefits.

This will be good.

Little Beauties Throughout the Week:

a couple of puppies in a pet store display, playing tag through the iron bars of their separate cages.

A field of green and yellow carabao dragonflies communing on the heart of the Sunken Garden a few steamy hours after a late afternoon drizzle.

A burgundy Toyota (or was it a Honda?) parked by a boundary gate with its hood, roof and rear festooned with tiny yellow blossoms from an impromptu shower. It reminded me of Indian festivals, and sacred saffron on painted elephants on their feastday.

A little boy building and destroying his secret city of circled wipecloths in the passenger's seats of a speeding, swerving jeepney. His crisp, wide open laughter was concentrated pleasure as he unmindfully wiped his runny nose with his bare arm.

A precious unexpected gift of a volume of Sandman: A Game of You from an Uncle who simply happened by.