angry sidewalks

Last night on my walk home from the dreaming ant, i had an interesting experience with another human being and his dog companion. I had just been sifting through the movies at the ant, looking for some magic, and saying hi to a fellow adventurer who was watching a sad and a happy clown violently fighting one another. Before that i was at class, learning how to integrate more of my body with the rest of my body, and stringing all the parts together into a dance that sometimes makes my body need to vomit.

And after the dancing and the stringing and the movie sifting and the hi-ing and the violent clowns, i was walking up the street towards home-base and i saw a dark and stormy, broody looking man walking his dog on the sidewalk, heading in my direction. As he approached, being the dog lover/scoper-outter that i am, i identified the dog as pitbul when the man spit in my walking path. This act of spitting is not something i ever take personally, but it is always something that registers on some level as aggressive, so i shifted focus from the lovely dog to the dark and broody man. His head, sitting on a beefy neck, supported by a largely built body, was down and covered in long black hair. The closer he got the stormier he looked, and i faintly detected a gravitation of his walking trajectory into mine.

At this point, several things began to happen. I started to relax and i focused my attention completely on the man and tried to make eye contact. His lips were a little pursed and his brow just a little furrowed, while the rain cloud above his head  followed him like a shadow. No eye contact.  The dog was oblivious of me, i noticed, when it became clear to me that collision between the broody one and myself was imminent. My body relaxed and my brain went quiet, i anticipated/felt the collision and deflected it with almost no impact. His very deliberate, thoughtful and heavy shoulder seemed to reach out for mine, but i felt like a leaf in the wind. I was a leaf in the wind. No triggering, no fear, no reaction at all. Just being a leaf.

I kept walking without breaking stride, coming back into my normal mind. i turned to see what his and the dog's reaction might be, but they just walked on. Once i was back in reality and not being a leaf, i started analyzing what had happened and wondered how in the world i would/could interact with an aggressive and broody man and a pitbul in a confrontation. I had no answers. I was thankful i wasn't forced to make any other decision than what i had chosen.

The next day i told my co-buddies at work and L told me he had learned to punch the dog in the nose to get it to back off. That would make me sad, but not as sad as being hospitalized. I'll ask my teacher in class on Saturday and see what he might suggest.