Shelter in Space

Zeynep Catay, PhD

When I first heard this enigmatic and yet somehow poetic directive I was confused.

We were directed to not just stay at home but somehow find shelter in it.

How does one find solace in one’s space, in the expanding time.

This city that can only maintain balance in motion,

tolerate aloneness within crowds,

how will it come to a halt?

Can it breath if it stops moving?

 

Our space is supposed to provide shelter.

Not from bombs falling from the sky, tanks or bullets but from an invisible enemy.

Really, where is it? Is it in the air, on the supermarket bag, on you, in you?

How deadly is it?

How deadly can human contact be?

How deadly can its lack be?

 

My friend writes from her lock down in Italy:

 ‘This morning, I woke up missing hugging’

 

The word hugging rekindles many pieces of body memory, a burning sense of longing. 

Now it is time to connect over movement.

So we gather with my dance therapy group across continents and time zones. As we appear on separate little boxes on the screen, we wonder where is our shared group space now?

We start moving, swaying to a joint rhythm. I see hands reach towards the screen, enlarging, then taking off to space inside each room. They are now out of the screen but alive in their own rooms, moving the bodies along. I catch glimpses of limbs extending, curling with momentum. Hands joining in moments of stillness on the screen. Then darting off to space again. I see bodies enlarging and fading into their background, each box on the screen opening up to a different world.

Gradually I gather a sense weaving the space- my space and our shared space.

My body starts to sway remembering the movement of the waves, the soft breeze of summer afternoons. Then a new pulse is born in the group, tiny jumps of joy reminiscent of festive gatherings. I join my fellow movers in the tiny jumps. We fill our little boxes up and down.

 As I stretch my limbs, my senses over the screen, across the Ocean

my memory and imagination start to loosen up into freedom. My feet are more alive and rooted now. I find my sense of center in trying to connect across time and space.

And I wonder how does resonance work? Can it travel online?

 

 

Zeynep Catay, Ph.D. First-year Candidate, NYU Postdoc; Part-time faculty and supervisor, Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program, New School for Social Research; A clinical psychologist, dance/movement therapist, and somatic experiencing practitioner from Istanbul who is now living in New York City.

 

Photo credit: Bongkarn Thanyaki/Pexels