Two sided stories blog

(title linked) - in which case we will be set with this transparently useless Old Etonian leader after the next general election:

I had to turn off Radio 4 this morning as MR Education Balls talked on and on, repeating and interrupting the questioner, about how different his party's promises on education spending were to those of the Tories...
and I just quietly wept for politics.

If this man represents the best chance for following up the Brown disaster with someone who can talk properly and not hide, chewing his fingernails, when a totally radical approach is required to 21st Century politics then labour is sunk - and despite my best socialist loyalties I would have to say "Good".

I was temporarily taken in by Blair's abilities and the progress on the Irish problem, enough to vote for him once more - except he then bought into the Bush oil wars and lying about his intelligence - since then it has been nearly all downhill - and just looking at Tony now it is impossible not to feel betrayed by the Labour party who allowed him to get away with it for so long...

I thought Brown just might, just might...
start to redistribute wealth - you know - the fundamentals of labour party principle? - whereby those earning more than the five hundred poorest families in Britain put together are made to give up a decent proportion in order to stop those, and other families from becoming desperate criminals.

it seems that all the current batch of labour politicians are not only on the side of the rich - they are widely partaking of the criminal acts to make themselves as rich as these rich folks...

Today we also hear Paddy Pantsdown suggesting that we might have to scale down our nuclear ambitions in light of the "new" world of politics, the end of the cold war...
Wow - has he just discovered that we went past 1990?

The stark staring fact was that our "independent nuclear deterrent" was only ever an expensive bit of haute couture for to sit looking important at the top table of greedy violent generals that run the western world. Norway feels no need for a nuclear deterrent
- are they at risk from terrorist attack? - no, we are!

So please can anyone with a brain and a way of altering government policy do whatever they can to prevent either of these nuclear addicted, money grabbing, poor despising, educationally challenged members of the two top parties from
a) renewing our nuclear version of the emperor's very expensive new clothes and
b) from getting back into power in this country.

I shall be voting Green - they have some genuine socialist policies and seem to have grasped the idea that the well played out notion of the planet as a rich man's play thing, has got to go pdq.

The radio 4 announcer put it more starkly than this BBC writer,(title linked): "The public have lost faith in the Metropolitan Police following the G20 and other protests" - the reaction from the police was fiercely in denial, saying that the "kettling" and other aspects of the policing were "a great success in very difficult circumstances".
...still not seen the missing element?

I have a problem here. We should all have a problem here. We all saw the videos shot on mobile phones, we all heard them being caught out blatantly lying to cover up the police induced death of bystander, Mr Ian Tomlinson, we all saw the subsequent videos of other officers slapping or beating static and passive protesters...

There is room for some wriggling from the police and this committee on why officers may have over-reacted in the circumstances, not much, just a little. There is apparently some debate between the parliamentary committee and the police as to whether there were sufficient numbers of police and whether these police were trained to the necessary levels...?
point avoidance here is beginning to puzzle everyone surely?

these are "your pictures of the G20 protest" as now put out by the BBC.
How edifying that they have managed to edit out all the nasties!
- and ONE key aspect...
where I have the biggest problem and so should we all.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Where is the mentioning/photographs of the large number of police officers who covered or removed their badges before joining the throng?

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

and, where is there reference to the planned "surprise" from the evening SPG aggression as announced to the protesters by the afternoon shift as they departed from successful and peaceful policing of the crowd?

I have read that there was to be an internal inquiry into the removal of badge numbers since this is clearly a preparation for illegal activity by these officers. That is bad enough, but the reports of the time made it quite clear, this was no last minute removal by a few rogue officers, it was planned, with the full knowledge of the immediate superiors to these officers.

So the report should be investigating the conspiracy to commit acts of violence by the police...conspiracy to commit violence by the police collectively.
That is some weighty accusation - but one with evidence that is undeniably captured on videos and stills - none of which appear on BBC websites any more...

The abject politicians make their pathetic suggestion that all we need is better training and more police officers...how servile can you get? Politicians will never dare confront the behaviour of the police, they fear the reprisal!
- we are so much nearer to the blatant corruption, that spokespeople here publicly scorn, in so many other countries than anyone in a position of power has the guts to suggest.
Surely we will carry on with this aspect buried just below the surface but the Thatcher legalised free movement prevention and picket bashing was the first real giveaway. Back then, the BBC edited its news coverage of Orgreave into a pro-police pro-Thatcher lie, so if you are hoping for an objective media to help tackle this issue, think again, we can never expect them to challenge the masters of the police force.

Tony Blair was Maggie's proudest achievement.
- her shame, his shame, the shame of them all, is our country's democracy-sabotaging approach to managing the police force.

The cliche used to be that Soccer was a gentleman's game played by thugs whereas with Rugby it was visa versa. This was an arrant piece of class snobbery by those who saw Rugby as the sport played in a gentlemanly manner by the upper classes at public schools such as Eton, Harrow and...err, Rugby, whereas those lower class oiks played football and fouled each other hopelessly.

Having spent most of my adult life in Wales this cliche was very much not the case in the far more egalitarian hillsides of the Welsh Valleys. The few snobby boys who got sent off to public school did their chances of playing for Pontypool and Wales no good at all.

There was always a pride in being tough... playing the game in a hard, physically challenging way but not arguing with the referee, that was the rule. And so was shaking hands with your opponents in a manner that was often lacking at the highest levels of the, internationally more popular, but ignored in South Wales, sport of soccer.

The Springboks are just now celebrating beating the British Lions with the last kick of the game in the second test, and thus winning the series, in their home country. But they won it playing like animals, and they are not the only such malevolent participants in this modern game, full of gouging, kicking, throat tackling, punching, stamping and other forms of cheating, it is the rule not the exception at club and international levels.

It needs to change or die...
There is no point in waiting and hoping for the crowds to boycott this abomination of the old sport, the "professionalism" that is now central to the game is probably encouraged by the crowds whose blood lust is as likely to keep them coming to watch as flowing passing manoeuvres.

I gave up Rugby at school level because I was fed up with the growing permitted and dangerous violence. I also remember "the lads" ribbing of me and Jim Fletcher on our deciding at 6th form level to take the option of ballroom dancing instead, loudly calling us poofs, (Gay, to you young people). We pointed out the irony of such a shout from a group of men going off to clutch each others scrotums and thrust their heads between each others buttocks, covered in mud... whilst we danced chest to breast with 22 women (best move I ever made) but machismo and stupidity went hand in glove then as it still does now.

38 years later, I just wish all aspiring thugby players had to opt out of NHS treatment and pay for their own private sector injury treatment costs. The insurance might be prohibitive. After all, these are effectively self-inflicted injuries with each player only having the feeblest defence of being mentally unstable in making the decision to play this barbaric semi-sport and the current estimated NHS bill of £14 MILLION A YEAR is money we could do with in a more deserving part of our society.

It is a shame because at its JPR to Shane Williams style best the game can be a joy to watch, but the South African celebrations are of a cheated win, in a cheating game, played by cheating thugs.

After the recent MP expenses scandal there has been a kind of settling back - the "better" MPs have been talking about how the majority are motivated by the desire to serve the public - I have my doubts.

Let us start by asking if Banking executives are motivated by a desire to serve the public?
- clearly not, seeing as we need to pay them more than their entire family needs to live comfortably for 400 years just to attract them to the job in this country - heaven knows if we only paid them £1 million a year they might choose to be an Afghan warlord instead...

Lawyers?
not sure about the morals of lawyers - above or below those of politicians? - but then so many of the buggers are both, some still earning from both professions too...

and incidentally - with this new found demand that all public sector workers earnings and expenses be transparent, why stop at the public sector? what does PLC stand for if not Public? - as in all the salaries and expenses of these firms' executives and managers should be in the public accounts... available online.

Some people have no similar embarrassment about their levels of pay.

Charity workers... ahhh now here you may just see that people are clearly motivated by the desire to serve - just check out the (title-linked) pay scales for the management jobs available in the charity sector...

surely these are the pay scales that MPs salaries should be "benchmarked" against? - clearly those managers in the third sector are somehow managing to live on their pay of £25 - £35 thousand a year. The motivation of service must be attractive enough to make this feel worthwhile...

so come on MPs, stop trying to "benchmark" your pay against the rates paid to assholes in the private sector and start comparing yourselves to those who genuinely do wish to serve - if you cannot stand the halving of your wages that this represents I am sure some altruistic types can be found who will accept them - maybe they will come from the charity sector?

I shall be laughing at the big lunch on July 19th
- and encouraging a whole load of other people to laugh,
at the big lunch.

Not laughing at the concept of course... promoting laughter there, on Minchinhampton Common, as a therapeutic aid to living a happy life. In our local community there is still some sort of sense of this "together - in gift" meaning of community that has largely gone to pieces since Maggie Thatcher's generation of "me and my money is the only reality", came along and built the sad celebrity world ethic we see so much today.

On July 19th, another in the new sustainable world supporting initiatives, prompted by Tom Smits and others at the Eden Project, gives us all an opportunity to rediscover the soul of our community and the common sense of working together, (to maximise resilience in the face of the inexorably failing capitalist consumerism...) oooh, bit political I know...

What's that you say?
You love your SUV/4x4, fame hunting, drugs and retiring to your moated castle?
- fine -
but please don't breed, the species needs people who want it to thrive collectively, not drop dead trying to be individually famous...
like Michael Jackson.

I have been incapacitated with the flu for a week and now everyone keeps asking "Is it the Swine flu?"
...to the point where I am tempted to say "Yes, I went to Mexico while you weren't looking and now I'm going to sneeze on you..."
the fact that, of those who have so far contracted this "new" flu strain, some tiny number have died has made it is imprint on everyone's brain that this H1N1 is the flu that matters.
The fact that 15,000 people in the Americas alone have died of ordinary influenza in the same period is completely lost on the public - and NO I haven't been to the doctor, and NO I will not be the new voice of movie trailers,
even though my impression of him is now wonderfully authentic...

"After a time in the lost world, John McClane is back... and he wants revenge..." you know the clichéd gravelly voice over....

I have just seen a relaxed woman wearing a green hat preparing her fellow supporters for a campaign against Barack Obama - though she emphasised "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" - saying "no you can't" as in no, you cannot tell the Zionists that they must obey UN resolutions and allow Palestinians to have their own state, and so on...you surely know the rest of their line.

The way these occupying rich racists behave makes me wonder - who do they really hate?
I would say that underneath this "defend the Jewish homeland, dictated by God in the Bible", rhetoric there lies a good deal of self hatred. They demand things of the Palestinians, who they turfed off their historic lands, farms and out of their homes in a war of occupation and pretend that the Bible gives them exclusive ownership rights...

They talk of only allowing a Palestinian state that is demilitarized and does not include Jerusalem in a way that might as well be Ghengis Khan saying we will let you live as long as its on another planet.

How can the reasonable Jewish majority ever gain the respect of the educated world as long as Zionists hold sway in this invented Jewish state of Israel? The very notion of a Jewish state is racist, and has unhealthy parallels with the Nazi regime. But if you are reading this you probably know enough of the history to realise that the Zionist dream is self defeating - occupations against a people who have spread widely across neighbouring countries - can never succeed.

Can
never
succeed...
They hold onto the belief that with their civilisation, their army, their nuclear weapons, their alliance with the rich American patrons, and the apparent superiority of their position, they can "win".
Occupying forces can last for decades - indeed, centuries - rarely. The Palestinian people will never simply surrender their land, generation after generation will be taught and remember - "the Jews have stolen our land" and this undeniable fact lurks like a slow release poison in the souls of the Zionists.

If they could, ever, cede the Jewish state of Israel into becoming a multicultural secular state that incorporated those displaced Palestinians and allowed a live and let live culture to develop then I would finally be able to believe that not all Zionists were insane - as it is they are clearly self-hating racists and dooming themselves to eternal failure.

"They were, after all, armed to the teeth. They had the motive, as hate-filled racists. Not only that, but they had taken the first concrete steps towards putting their plot into action: buying ammunition, staking out the gun shop, writing provocative symbols on the car. Besides, stuff happens. Look at Oklahoma city. Look at Columbine. America gives its extremists the benefit of the doubt at her own peril."
-(from the title linked article)

The notion of 'white supremacy' is an oxymoron that parallels the allies of America's take on US military intelligence. I have been commenting on the BNP dickhead racists we have in this country but the great benefit of ours, over those in the USA, is it would be virtually impossible for them to get hold of a gun.

The many, many, people who condemn racism, and those who throw eggs at Nick Griffin are, I believe, tactically naive. In my view, and those of others who have been around the block more than once, the best weapon against ridiculous people is ridicule.

The US armed forces are most effectively portrayed in Jarhead - where the idiocy is entirely realistic and non heroic - remember that of the 58 allied troops killed in that first Gulf conflict, not one was hit by enemy fire - they are all "silly mistakes" or "friendly fire" as in people with all the gear but no idea shooting or bombing their own side in a haze of stupidity and organised chaos.

The problems faced by the military is that their recruiting grounds are full of those whose personalities and lack of intelligence leads to wanting to join the army...people like Daniel Cowart. To an extent the same applies here in the UK, but if they are deemed too nutty even for the army, then at least they tend to end up flipping burgers, fitting tyres or boxing - not organising mass killings and buying up automatic weapons.

The questions that we should be addressing, but don't, concern how we might counter this apparent madness and the dangers of these extremist lifestyles appealing to the disenfranchised dumb people that are far too numerous out there...
With this particular example his picture above comes from his "Myspace" profile - imagine what the MI6 observers would have made of him, brandishing his rifle, shaven-head and swastika tattoo...? and other Myspace users could have pointed out some fun things...
actually he looks so much like a militant lesbian that it would have been mighty tempting to contact all his friends and alert them to his clubbing activities with various purchases of strap-ons from Victoria's Secret...
might have made him blow his cover sooner.

Nick Griffin should be an easy target for ridicule - and now he has a public soap box in the form of his Euro-seat there are bound to be more utterances that can be turned in such a way so that his supporters see the inner-dickhead and realise what fate awaits those who follow...

All this at the same time, of course, as educating our population properly about how immigrants and gays make an economy work - and that we are all immigrants of one generation or another, and all descended from a (black) woman in central Africa, as proven by DNA tracing.
Technically speaking, there is no such thing as race.

Everybody in the west, at least most of the media pundits, seems to agree that Gaddafi is a little bit nuts.

There are many things he has said which might make many change that phrase from "a little bit" to "totally". I would not like to pretend that he has the sagacity of a Ghandi or the all round wisdom of Mandela, but there are aspects to this character that I really like.

You don't get to be voted by the pan African media to be "African of the year" two years in a row for being a complete buffoon - you might get it for using that image to make a mockery of the patronising western media who can only see the buffoon when he plays that role to trick them...

His latest escapade has him honouring Berlusconi - if it is indeed possible to honour such a pompous oaf in visiting him, saying how Italy was the first colonial leader in changing their approach to African independence. Then he pins a picture to his military uniform of the 1931 Libyan rebel who was executed by Mussolini in a blatant act of colonial repression, and all the time surrounded by 40 khaki clad female bodyguards who demonstrate his title of "great emancipator of women"...

you couldn't make this up!
but he has.
It is my sincere belief that he has survived so long as an African leader through very troubled times (do not forget the bombing raids on his family that were America's attempt to assassinate him), because he aint so dumb as he seems.

So if Berlusconi even mentions women bodyguards, or martyrs that Italy shot, he is trapped by his own sexist twit behaviours and his country's past.
What ever else Gaddafi is - he is a lot more fun than Kim Jong Il and clearly a lot brighter...

One of the great threats I see in the world is people not waking up to the oil situation and how we have to adapt now, or hurt more later.

I know there are a thousand gloomy blog posts on the failures of the world's governments and disputes about how we might try to "save the planet" (from ourselves mainly), but I would not have expected, as little as a year ago, to wake up to the headline and picture (as above) on the title linked article in the Grauniad.

Wind farms may not be more than 2% of the answer but its a signal of intent, and solar energy research would not be happening without this kind of visibly sponsored debate about wind and nuclear for example...

Everyone I knew thought that the climate and energy combined crisis was doomed to be completely busted by backward China's demands for massive coal and oil use to fuel their tigerish economy. I still know that this is not enough, not a solution to the crisis and possibly its all much too late for climate change to be positively affected - but boy - I hope it gives a sharp wake up call to action to those who dismissed China as being at the wrong end of the Kyoto thinking...

It isn't news to anyone who follows news - Britain's northwest region just voted the racist leader of the BNP to the European parliament.

In case anyone harbours secret sympathies for this facade of "protecting British jobs" rhetoric they put out - they need to read the analysis of the people within this organisation and their racist statements and actions.

(In the miraculous event of anyone who has caught the trend of voting BNP being web literate, blog curious and able to read the three syllable words I use)

as for UKIP's Nigel Farrago - "pull up the drawbridge" might be his motto - its what any sane person would do if they saw him heading towards their castle....

But that can only be a dream...

The Power mongers of right and left in this country are generally crying out to prevent proportional representation in our general elections.
Apart from their forlorn cries of how it causes paralysis and poor government (I don't see any of the Scandinavian countries collapsing - quite the opposite in fact) they return to this default shout about how we need "Strong government".

What they mean is that if/when they get into power they want to be able to impose their will on the people without having to work with any of those troublesome minority party candidates who represent the views of voters other than those of their power base. The Labour leaders (I don't count New labour) never want to have to combine union popularity with sound business relationships. The Tory leadership would rather not to have to think about the poor and keep giving their merchant banker CEOs knighthoods...

Our democratic leaders do not really want democracy - otherwise the Jenkins report (title linked) system of "alternate vote plus" would have been supported by the leading politicians. The games that Brown's infighting cronies and sceptics are playing now - exactly as John Major's famous "bastards" did in the early nineties, does nothing but reveal the selfish greasy pole mentality of the majority of the MPs...

So it will continue to be "up the greasy pole, and pick up the easy money if you can", business as usual until we find a way to vote in a system that takes the secrecy away and puts proportionally interesting democracy at the forefront of our system.

Barack Obama's speech in Cairo was nominally addressed to the Islamic world - but of course, just like everything he will ever say in public, it has to be built to withstand the utmost scrutiny at home and abroad. Fortunately, at home the right wingers still seem to be in their "we're mad as hell! and we don't see why you're not listening to us anymore" mode.

The reactions are generally predictable on every side - but with nuances that I would just like to pick up...
The Palestinian spokesperson to the EU said it was the best and most important speech ever made by an American president about the middle east. He also said he was, "touched by one aspect in particular, this was the first time any US president had looked into the faces of the Palestinian people and seen them as human beings"..."He mentioned us as refugees - something the Israelis never do, and to the occupation, a key fact of our everyday lives."

The Israeli spokesperson tried to be positive, mentioning the unbreakable bond that the president re-affirmed between them and Israel, but did not mention the command to cease the illegal settlement building, the "daily humiliations" and occupation - the root cause of all the violence - not only there but of most Jihadist violence across the world.

It would be nice to think that the Americans who back Israel with billions of dollars will hear the peace message and the promise to work over many years to achieve it and stop funding this world-defeating war - but until they back away from the idea that you must force all torture victims to stop making that ghastly screaming noise before you will stop torturing them, then Israel will still be the prime cause of terrorism in the world.

that's right - the cause.
Without the Palestinian occupation I doubt whether Bin Laden would ever have gathered any support - the world without a Zionist expansionist Israel, borders as per 1955, would be a place where the world's only bogey man countries would be North Korea and possibly Iran - but even they may well come around to negotiations under this far sighted presidential peace mission. Their own elections (likely to be fairer than any that Dubya won) will be a testing ground for this sense of possible change.

This may be seen as quite dangerous - what would the American people do if they didn't have a believable hate figure or bogeyman country to feel more righteous than? - It could cause a national mental breakdown... or maybe a breakthrough?

It would be nice to see I'madinnerjacket ousted by the opposition who will grasp the chance for a breakthrough for all the intelligent people of Iran. That would be a big breakthrough.

So many people are saying this movement towards justice and peace could never really happen, and they may be right - but I can remember us all saying that South African Apartheid will never be broken and the Berlin wall is for ever... not all that long before Mandela walked to freedom and ...

...and...

David Hasselhoff sang on top of the broken Berlin wall.

I have what some people might think to be a reason to understand why the husband of this Dubai based woman (title linked news story) told the local police she was an adulterer and thus lead to her arrest and imprisonment...
But I find it repulsive.

When dealing with an ex partner, the important part is the "ex" bit, this woman was no longer with him in any sense of the term, they were "estranged". This means that by his behaviour directed maliciously against her and her new lover he was bringing, (IMO) shame on the male gender.

No matter how hurt you might be by the end of a relationship it is right to let things go and not go out of your way to make that person's life as difficult as possible - this applies to both sexes and heaven knows there are hundreds of examples in this country of women behaving appallingly in this situation.

There is, in this example, a much worse game going on to my mind, and that is using another country's backward and dumb laws to gain revenge. It seems a dangerous idea when the country in question is Islamic - did this man know for sure that the punishment would be 2 months in a Dubai jail?

What, in this case, if she just had moved on to Saudi Arabia - where women (as pictured above) are hanged or stoned for such "offences"?

I am just glad that I live in a country where, in at least some instances, the law may actually benefit women more than men, it may be flawed but at least we have some sense of equal rights.
- in other countries the law is not so much an ass as a hostile and lethal weapon used violently to dominate and suppress their women. I long for the day when these pre-medieval societies wake up and understand that human beings are men and women together...
and we are worth more than this.

I get asked - often by people who have a slightly cynical look in their eye, as to what 5 rhythms dancing is all about, why do I do it?

There are web sites that (deliberately) only explain a little, like the title linked site of my own teacher, but they tend to be aimed at those who have already discovered what the dance can do for them.

One of the problems of describing what its all about is that it is not about words, or explaining things in an intellectual or academic manner.
I would say that learning to dance this way has been a revelation akin to learning to read, write and sing beautiful music, having previously been mute...

Let's see if I can do the impossible, explain it sufficiently in words - like describing snow to an isolated Brazilian tribe...

For those who think it odd...
that anyone should choose, especially past the age of 50, to learn to dance and to learn to dance in this specific, definitely not strictly ballroom way, I will try and put it in a way that helps get close.

How do you spend your free time?
chatting to friends, long evenings in a pub? over a meal? many evenings in front of the television set? - whatever it is you will use language and communicate, and in doing so you may discover a few things about yourself.

You may choose some kind of talking therapy, or other therapy to try and discover and deal with deep problems you feel you are experiencing, you may go to the gym and exercise for health reasons, you might play music in a band or otherwise.

The 5 rhythms is like a new yet ancient language, a story that is in you, and yet fumbled around with words and a story that was previously hidden or failing, partly due to societally restricted, and restrictive, actions.
It starts slowly.
The first time I went to a class my "crazy hippy alert" sounded off wildly. What were these people thinking!? moving around a dance floor in an often posy and pretentious manner, out of time to the music, and what music - very strange and mixed music.

I bit my lip, having committed to try this because it was a friend who was teaching the class and who had invited me along, and I started to move. I too was guilty of trying to "look OK" for a long while.
Many people love to dance, and would probably find it less difficult than I to adapt to this way of dancing that is apparently unstructured movement.
Those who "just don't dance" are numerous and it is to them I suppose I am now speaking.

You might expect me to say, "I was instantly struck by the beauty of this way of dancing and have never looked back", but in fact it has been a journey of discovery much like learning to read music. I can play music, I know a lot about it, but learning to read it is a whole new language without words and sentences to guide me.

5 Rhythms allows me to properly discover that my body is me. I can express myself on this website with words but in moving on a dance floor the whole of me is involved in discovering who I am, and why I can't do this or tend to do that...

In learning that it is OK to move in a non rhythmic way, with no design to ensnare a sexual partner, no aim to impress someone else, and with no one judging you for what you look like, I have slowly become so much more free it is discernible even to those who have no idea that this is the way I am getting there.

It is not just learning a new language; as one learns the new language you are dealing with what is your own personal vocabulary and your own personal story. In beginning to move in new and exploratory ways the vocabulary grows, the story develops, the emotions begin to find their moving voice. This is what is meant, I think, when teachers talk of "going deeper".

In dancing with others who are also at various stages on this path, the air of non judgmental appreciation of the marvelous nature of our bodies, ourselves, begins to breed a confidence. This is not only a confidence in the acceptable nature of how I dance, but also a confidence in the true togetherness, the "oneness" of human beings.
Now there are other ways in which I have felt this togetherness, but very few, if any, have taken me into my own story and developed long lasting confidence in the way that this dance meditation practice has.

To fail to explore one's own body language suddenly seems to me to be the most glaring failure to live a full life.
I often feel sorry for those who spend their days in a fugue of worry about what will happen, or reliving what has happened, and never truly being just present. The Zen teachers place a right emphasis on NOW being the only reality, it is very sad that the absence of "now living" means that people wrap themselves up in worries and lose the awareness that, in worse case scenarios, leads to death - through careless driving for example.

In this type of dancing you do not need to be fit, young, slim, athletic, it is your story that counts. Anyone and everyone who has gone just a tiny bit deeper than a few classes will be very supportive of whatever your personal journey is. To join the class is to be made a friend, all that is asked is that you remain awake, present, and in the best sense of the word, experimental.

Once this personal body language has a large enough vocabulary, (which may take no time at all) you will be amazed that you ever worried about your ability to dance and what you might look like - self discovery and the absence of critics over your shoulder will move you into a new world of self awareness and freedom to be yourself.

Do I sound like a salesman?
I am standing by the river,
selling water,
to heat-blinded thirsty people.

a later addition - there is a sort of connection between this desire/need and the story of the national tendency to drunkenness - the desire to get "out of your head" -
troubled thoughts and mind dominance over the peaceful soul are nearly universal...
The dance gets you out of your head and into a fully lived body and soul life, alcohol just gets you out of your head and into a more nearly dead place...