Tall grass waving in the trade winds. Illuminated by a full moon. It’s quiet except for leaves rushing against each other. Chaotic twists and patterns of shimmering green rolling across the ground stretched out ahead of me, behind it the Caribbean Sea.

-

A soft and continuous swoooosh is all I hear. My body tense, stretched out over a piece of wood on four wheels. Chaotic visuals contradict the persistent swoooosh the soft rubber produces going 60 miles an hour over the smooth pavement. Then, my body contracting, contorting. Shrieks of rubber sliding over the asphalt creating smoke in my vision, the smell of it adding to a sudden chaos of motion and stimuli. Elbows touching elbows, my body revisiting its stretched-out position and the return of the soothing swoooosh with the speed increasing after the hairpin.

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Sweat on my bare skin. Muscles tense and tiring, not from contraction but from holding them in place. Only micro-movements for extended amounts of time. It is late and my mind is clear. My body feels quiet now, it seems to settle, stabilizing. My hands brace the chair, barely touching it yet guiding a slow motion in its bones. Every touch is lighter and sends less force through the fibers of the wood. And finally, after many hours my body gives in and with it the chair. It stops moving. In negative stability.

-

When I sit quietly and I look at my space I can see my decade-long dance with Chaos and Balance. It is all around me. I committed to it a long time before realizing that fighting it is exhausting.