Strangely Familiar

My secret dream: To perform spoken word in front of a large audience and move them. I haven't actually done it (yet), but a couple of years ago, when I was in Chicago, I prepared a piece to (maybe) take to the Green Mill. Here's what I wrote, here's what I still feel: No one ever bothers to ask why we dance- isn’t that a funny thing? Humans have been dancing from the beginning of ‘sapien’ until 2015 and it is never a question of why- it just is. Babies dance from the minute they can hold themselves upright to the tune of the their momma’s favorite song. Some of them just keep going, dancing until their bones are brittle and their progeny wonders if they should help grandpa back to his chair before he breaks his hip. Oh, but grandpa don’t care. Dancing isn’t only for the young, it’s not only for the old. It’s for the “Oh! This beat is so good, that if I don’t I get my groove on right now, I will burst!” kind of people. You know who I’m talking about- the good people wh...

I have a flash of memory from when I was a child where I was standing in my room looking around. I noticed the bed, the dresser, the bookshelves, and the many things that lay strewn about. I also noted the spaces in the room, the emptiness that was existed between the things. It occurred to me- quite suddenly- that there could be another universe stacked on top the one I was in. I imagined having the vision to see another Poonam busily drawing a picture on the ground, or else another family in my house altogether as I stood there and looked on. Why not? I thought. If the universe is infinite and if the divine is omnipotent, why can’t there be infinite parallel worlds stacked atop one another? Why do I presume to believe I must be able to see or sense them, and take that as the only evidence that they do or do not exist? My human form is limited. I may not be endowed with the ability, the faculty to see or understand such a limitless world. Humbly, I am an amoeba compared to this univ...