Date: 9 Aug 1995 10:57:50 -0500
Subject: RE: spasms



>What about that leg-jeggling thing a lot of men do.  Never really understood,
>why. I always presumed some sort of subsumed erotic tension relelase, but
can't >say I get anything out of it when I do it.

>Today at my city's parking office I saw a woman office worker doing it and 
>thought "That's odd, I've never seen a woman do that before..."

At the risk of driving this thread into the ground, I don't know what you are
talking about.  Is it just lifting a leg up and starting to shake it
uncontrollably?  I have never done that, although I could relate to people
that do.  

The past few months I have been taking Tai Chi classes where there is a lot of
emphasis on correct stance and posture.  In class we often have to hold these
postures for several minutes - up to an hour in some of the more advanced
classes.  When I am holding these postures for sometime, my legs will often
spasm uncontrollably.  My teacher says that someone once told him it is the
body rapidly alternating between relaxation and tension.

Meanwhile, I remember reading an essay by Deleuze about Francis Bacon's work a
few years ago.  He intreprets the vomiting/wretching in a lot of Bacon's
paintings as an attempt by the figures to escape the body/canvas by some means
- I may be overgeneralizing the essay a little.  The spasm as escape?  Has
anyone else read this?  Where is it printed?

John  



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