Tonight at dance practice we spent the whole night working on a Zar dance. It’s a tribal dance involving a lot of spinning and swaying the head wildly from side to side and its ancient use was to induce a trance in which to appease your spirits (or Djinn).

Well, after two or more hours of running this dance, even given that about half of the runs were greatly toned down, just going through the motions to clean up the choreography and make sure we remembered things, we were all quite dizzy.

As I left the hall and stood outside fumbling for my keys, I pondered whether I should just lie down in the grass and let the world finish its spinning before driving home. And I imagined trying to explain my state if I got pulled over.

“Ma’am, can you tell me why you’re driving so erratically?”

“Well…. you seee… I was doing this ancient tribal dance that’s meant to put you in a trance to appease your Djinn. Oops! I mean Djinn, for real. Not Gin.”

And as Ian didn’t even know what Djinn are, I figure I probably couldn’t count on most Saskatoon cops being hip to either middle-eastern cultures or Imperialistic appropriations of middle eastern cultures — er, I mean Kipling.

Gah, I’m not drunk, I’m just in a Djinn-appeasing trance. Cuh-LEEER-ly.