What is pedestrian?  “Pedestrian” is a societal construct.  It is human action and behavior as sifted through a societal sieve.  These become evolutionary habits and norms – all conceived through the development and advancement of civilization.  Each socialized human body is a civilization.  We are born animals.  Our bodies, souls, temperaments are sifted through the societal sieve.  All excess sensation and awareness – unnecessary for survival in “civilized” society – falls away.  We are domesticated.   We become “civilized.”  We develop self-consciousness – a special hybrid of awareness – that latently monitors our behavior.  It ensures our devout adherence to societal norms – the behavior accepted and practiced by the domesticated – the “pedestrian.”

To be “pedestrian” is to be “domesticated.”  To be “pedestrian” is to yield to the immortal currents of the societal consciousness…or “self-consciousness.”  The act of walking on two feet is “pedestrian.”  Before we submit to socialization, we crawl. We are not yet “human.”  We are “animal.”   

The societal communal consciousness (the societal ego?) has been fed by humanity’s compulsive ritual offerings.  The human offers up his own body and soul.  Thus, the communal consciousness has grown in power and pervasiveness.  It is an immortal God that governs.  The human body instinctively and blindly yields to its manipulations.  It constantly trims and sculpts.  We are the moved.

- Waves pour over her, but do not devour her; her hair tangled in the bubbling foam. She does not die. She does not live. She’s just there.

The cyclic life of the dark, but illuminated water persists rhythmically without any acknowledgement of the alien life form in its midst. She is pushed abruptly forward with each crash of the waves: onward with each impressive surge of energy. As impressionable as seaweed she allows the power of the ocean to offer her some kind of destiny: some kind of assurance for a future. It will bring her - somewhere.

Aware that her presence very well may go unnoticed within the vastness and routine of the water, she occasionally experience a suffocating panic. At these times she frantically reaches with all of her extremities beyond the bubbling foam and the perilous security of the caressing water. She grasps for the cruelly desolate, empty space above the waves expecting that, this time, there will be something, somewhere, or someone.

To her fury there is nothing.  Still she battles what is real in the name of what is possible. Her wet skin meets the startlingly cold, dry air, adding penalty to her disobedient efforts. 

After some time, her body protests and her spirit tires. She has only been fighting herself. The impenetrable, ever-malleable space of water and air are immune to her feverish blows. The battle lives solely in her.  Injured and defeated, she is forced to succumb to the uncertain, fearfully monotonous existence within the unsettling rhythmic progression of the sea. 

She’s not drowning. She’s not floating. She’s just there.

She does not die. She does not live. She’s just there. –

I think some of us are aware of the societal consciousness that trims and sculpts…I experience them as currents…

Those that are aware occasionally dare to fight it.  It cannot be fought.  One cannot fight a God.  One cannot fight water.  We can only express it…we can dare to search for the animal that was lost – those sensations and awareness that was lost so we can feel those exhilarating surges of unfiltered, potent life. 

What is a neutral body?  This is the most confusing for me.  I am ambivalent.  Part of me feels that the neutral body is the “future body.”  The body that I strive to develop and cultivate – the body that defies and challenges the currents of societal consciousness.  It yields as one yields in Aikido.  It yields but to throw off the ever neutral- ever ready “body” of the society God.

When I think of neutral….I also think of negatives…like photography negatives.  There is something oppositional about neutrality…you’re both active and inactive. It’s a liminal state of being. 

I think of neutrality and I think of empowerment….a sphinx…something incredibly powerful and centered. “you will not move me.”