breadtoy

Ooh, breadtoy, breadtoy!  I have to take it up from the floor and onto the bed, so that I can cover the sheets all with crumbs!

I will bat it and whack it and bite it and gnaw it and thwack it from here over to there!  I shall hit it with left paw, and hit it with right, and poke it under the blanket it and snag it right back!  I will jump at it, pounce on it, paw at it, look confused by it, snack on it a bit, and then leap away!

I will rip it to bits, and then chase them all around!  And then forget some bits completely, and leave them to be found later.

I will hook a bit in my paw, and go nonf-nonf-nonf with my mouth, predator teeth trying to chew.   I will claw up your foot, friend, when my battle comes too near, and I will swish my tail with the perplexity of it all.

I will back-hop and back-hop, great four-paw springs in the air.  And then I will get lazy for a while, and attack while reclining.

Now, between two paws, over my mouth, it is mine, finally earned to be mine.  Munch munch, hunch hunch.  It is mine, all mine....

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you lose your grip
when you've got no back
the wall behind you has crumbled
the ground is all dug up
and they tell you
just push forward
forward
ever on
eat up
and
dig in

speak song, walk dance

Other languages sound musical to us; our own does not.

This is because every language has a song to it---a consistent range of melodies and rhythms that together make up the everyday music of how we speak to each other.

Our own everyday song is just that: so familiar that it sounds like nothing at all.  Like water to a fish, or air to a human.

What this means is that we are all always singing.  A song that we share with fellow speakers of our language (or dialect, etc.), even as we always perform it in our own distinct style.

In the same way, how we each walk, our specific gait, is a dance.  We choose this dance for a variety of reasons---a mixing of the purely physical (our body-specific mechanics) with the emotional (how we feel about ourselves and how we want to be seen).

The proverb "If you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing..." is not floofy optimism.  It is a statement of fact.  Ordinary speech is already a song; ordinary walking is already a dance. 

Both lay the foundations of how we sing and dance in the more familiar sense.  And both bring out what is inside, whether we want it or not.

So: in walking and talking, we find already the seeds of these arts, and a better understanding of ourselves.