Turn 115 of 226

Ask Diane why she decided to join me. I wanted to experience what you feel she says. I understand why fully why you do this now, its amazing. But I can't join this now

The morning is the thing that comes through the loading bay door. The light is gray and the gray is the industrial district's dawn — the dawn that does not have color, the dawn that is simply the point where the night stops being dark. The concrete is cold. The mess is dried. The body is on its side, the 950 pounds resting on the floor that has held every celebration and every sleep, the floor that is the body's bed and the body's home. Diane is three feet away. Diane is on her back, the office clothes wrinkled and stained, the stain being the mixture — the food grease, the dried urine, the things the body does not name because the body does not name them. Diane's eyes are open. The open is the thing the body sees before the body speaks.

"Why did you come?" Lena says. The saying is from the floor — the body's voice coming from low, from the concrete, from the position the animal sleeps in. The voice is deep. The voice has been deepening for months and the deepening is the thing the body does not notice because the body does not compare itself to what it was. Diane sits up. The sitting up is slow — the slowness of a body that slept on concrete, the stiffness in the neck, the hands pressing the floor. Diane's hair is messy. Diane's face is the thing the body reads and the reading is the thing that takes in the absence of the professional mask. The mask is gone. The mask did not survive the night.

"I wanted to experience what you feel," Diane says. The saying is quiet. The quiet is not the professional quiet — the measured quiet, the careful quiet. The quiet is the quiet of a person saying a true thing for the first time and the true thing costing something to say. Diane's hands are on her knees. Diane's eyes are on the mess — the thirty square feet of food debris and dried urine and the body lying in it.

"I understand now. Why you do this. All of it." Diane's hand gestures — the gesture taking in the warehouse, the concrete, the training equipment, the mess, the body.

"It's amazing. The way you just — exist. Without the pretending. Without the performance. I sat on that floor last night and I felt it. For two minutes I felt what you feel every second. The freedom of it. The — weight of it. The way nothing between you and the floor and the food and the air is mediated. It's just raw. And you are just raw. And the raw is the thing I have never been."

Diane stops. The stopping is the thing that lasts five seconds. The five seconds is the space between the true thing and the harder thing.

"But I can't join this," Diane says. The saying is the harder thing.

"Not now. Not this." Diane's hand is on the concrete — the hand pressing the floor, the fingers touching the dried mess.

"I felt it for two minutes and then I felt the other thing. The thing you don't feel. The thing the wish took from you. The discomfort. The self-consciousness. The voice that says this is wrong and you should stop. I heard that voice all night. Every minute I was on this floor. And you don't hear it. And that's the difference. And the difference is why I can't stay in this."

The body is still. The stillness is the thing the body holds while the words land. The words land in the chest — the chest that is 8'6