welding and dancing by the pane of glass

I read that people are advised to try a "peaceful mind exercise" if they are struggling going to bed at night. After tossing and turning or slipping out of drug-like experiences of sleep I have started to do the exact opposite of mind-easing meditations. I have found on multiple occasions that bringing myself out of my bed and dancing like a crazy woman in the darkness is my only resolve. Streaks of moonlight and stripes from streetlamps chase my bare legs and belly through the slats of the blinds. I am painted and dicernable only through movement. I listen to the most riling music and motion inspiring jigs that I can find on my i-pod and rock my body as though I never wanted tomorrow to come.

and the stress, and the thoughts, and the unease, and all that comes with facing the cieling as night draws deeper into itself........ it washes away.

It slips off the sides of my hips as they sway into some imaginative figure with power and purpose. It bounces away as I lollygag with such determination in the darkness. One would never know it from listening at the door that there was even a mouse (which there is). The pads of my feet as they two-step and shuffle about make nothing but smothered sounds against the hard linoleum floors. Not until my breath overpowers the air that I am blending with my body would one know that somthing is stiring and overflowing within my little room.

And what do I do before that? I weld. I put on my blue workers uniform, a strap on the multiple layers of leather to protect my gut, arms, and anything else that might be exposed to the orange glow that I have come to love, and I bind metal to metal, mask over face. I have given up on any other sort of romance or love because so far it is the only one that I can actually make something out of. Of course it is nothing to know that I am the first woman to weld at UNEX and that I am damn good at it for my first time.