when and where

when I sat down and stopped dancing,

I did not know what it would take to start again.

I was taking it all for granted.

I was tired.

I was taking a step back.

I was trying to get perspective.

I was sure I'd be right back.

I was wrong.

I was headed down a road without shoes.

I was stumbling.

That's what I tell myself. 

I tell myself this:

once the dancing stops, the whole world begins to go solid. 

What if, instead,

the dancing continues.

But, it just looks like breathing now.

It just looks like something different when I'm perched out on a limb.

It moves slower.

So that, I feel the dark things moving underneath

and realize that they are

here

to dance.

ah, the drama.

I'm here because:
1. I need to write more. No one is telling me to do this except that visceral bending feeling that comes when I've stopped writing. It feels like a dried riverbed. It feels like a tugging regret, a misalignment, a reminding certainty that I've abandoned an essential element of movement.

2. I need to remember these small anectdotes, stories, mile markers, bread crumbs. They are the rich hues of the whole colorful experience of life. Not: "I went to rehearsal. I sang. I danced. I came home." But, instead:

Yesterday, when I arrived for rehearsal for "Little Shop of Horrors" I initiated a conversation with the costume designer regarding the costumes for the show. I was standing in my 'choreographer' shoes and approached with a spirit of collaboration and dialogue. I let her know, since, surprisingly she has not attended one rehearsal to see what is unfolding with the movement and staging, that the songs/dances, particularly for the Doo Wop Girls (of which, I am one) are quite vigorous, aerobic and physically demanding. I said, "I really appreciate your vision and what you have pulled together with the costumes so far but, because of the reality of what we are doing on stage, would you consider another option for costumes other than sweaters and wool skirts?"
I was thrown off guard by the sharp defensive tone that came back at me. She, essentially, told me that she was sticking to her guns, unless I wanted her to quit. By sticking to her guns, she clarified that "this isn't a show with dancing in it." I quietly informed her that, indeed, this show is a show with dancing in it. She said, "No, it's not. It's not supposed to be and so that's how I designed the costumes." She went on to say, "I've seen this show and there is no dancing in it beyond little doo wop moves. That's how it was written and so that's what I'm going by." Her implications were, of course, that I was way out of bounds for actually choreographing real movements beyond a step touch, step touch, bounce bounce, clap. That I somehow had gone "rogue" and violated the integrity of what the writers had intended. That I'd left the box and betrayed the sameness of "just do it like you've seen everyone else do it a million and ten times. Think not from your own imagination. Dare not use your own creative fire." Past the "are you fucking kidding me?" voice that was blaring in my head, I could feel the dance party inside my body, celebrating my own capacity to hear my voice and to be an original artist.
The rest of the conversation is boring, quite frankly. To me, anyway. It's more ego drama and pouting and an emergent hissy fit embedded with "Well, just have someone else do it", despite my invitations to collaborate on a vision that encompasses both, her creative ideas and the reality of the moving bodies occupying the stage. I stayed pretty calm, though entirely unyielding to the attempts to be steamrolled, shamed, bullied and manipulated.  I exited the scene with a sincere invitation to attend tonight
's rehearsal so that she could see all the dances/songs on their feet and have a better sense of the overall vision. We'll see.
I'm just so very clear that I'm not interested in working with ego driven amateurs who try to bully and pout their way around their own feelings of low self esteem. People, it's  OLD. It's annoying. It's a waste of everyone's time. I have so much more fun when there is creative collaboration and idea exchange.

2 nights after connecting the dots about growing up alone with a sociopath.

a dream last night of T
I walked along a river path, or an urban trail
and, to my right,
he was pulling the self made bow and launching arrows into a near bullseye
on the second one, I said "impressive".
and we talked as he pulled me into a curling embrace on a stoop of stairs in an open space
where the glassy eyed beat of strangers lounged and wandered in a medicated darkness around us.
He waxed poetic philosophies, spiritualities and sentimentalities as we perched in the center of the wire.
Inside a house, a man in a towel slyly approached me for an important aside about T's journeys through Memphis and the rabbit trail of secrets he so skillfully omits. I embraced him with a thank you and whispered that I liked him (my body knew truth),but not in that way.
we smiled and separated.
I wore a borrowed orange jacket and ran out of the house with a terrible and terror filled urgency.
and, in the dream, could feel the surge of adrenalin in my legs and arms.
running, running, running.
T was down the road a bit, still in the dark, and called to me over and over until all I heard was my own beating heart and the pounding of my feet, one after another. In a moment of awakening, he began the chase.
I could not run fast. With all my might I urged my feet to find the next step, faster, faster, but, it was lead and concrete and only a thick and weighted pace that I could summon. He gained on me.
I turned into a home and barreled through the door, tearing off the orange jacket, and into a bedroom. Someone was there, but I never saw a face. I could only lean into a bigger hope of protection and mercy as I dove under the bed and pleaded for my secret to stay. I prayed that I had not landed into a more dangerous den of lions.
My secret was kept and as I began to wake I tried to stay and resolve the completed flight. who would I want there? what next? Call for someone to come pick me up in a car?
No, no car.
I would run myself out of there and to my safety. Who, where?
I thought of Linda S. and Adria.
go to them. run.

brilliant traces.

take one breath,
one long and lasting breath,
and let it be the story.

deliver yourself to the images of your own heart, split and cracked,
pouring out the paralysis that prevents you from
moving,
speaking,
thinking.
let it pour and fill your veins and
try
not
to scream
and see what happens next.

you are hovering and watching this thing, this unfathomable force,
speed through you and pull at your
insides,wringing the tears and screaming from their hiding places.
in that quivering jaw,
the bracing thighs,
the spinning lightness of your thoughts.

see the images,
with every exhale and step backwards into the hot air,
following impulse after impulse into a constellated trajectory that
finds you walking in ice, begging for life and
dreaming of death.
you are indistinguishable and irrelevant and magical and extraterrestrial in one fall backwards.
let the scream out.
he's got you.

elysian fields.

"What on earth can you do on this earth but catch at whatever comes near you, with both your hands, until your fingers are broken? "  from Orpheus Descending by Tennessee Williams.

hello, dark night. the stars are out.
all the planets that have been falling backwards have
finally come
to a standstill.

it is time to say goodbye
to those two rooms, thick with the humidity of love
and violence,
to that swampy, seasick time of tears and passions,
to the make believe ephemeral declarations of magic and extra-terrestrial, soul catching mirrors.

the flowers are dead. the flowers are for the dead.
the dead rest in my broken fingers.

in that season of snow, fire came to breathe and stalk the iron-wrought streets of desire.
We threw our hearts forward, hurling doubt and hesitation headlong into the kitchen walls. Desire came galloping down elysian fields like a heavy rain, drowning everything.
It took on everything.The steam rose from the collision of all those fierce furies and now, everything smells like the sea.

she,
with her swing of hips and trickling laughter, is a woman who runs like a train to the edge of the world;
her quiet secrets tied in bows to her tiny fingers,
her volcanic terror curled like a sleeping cat at the foot of her deep sleep.
she,
who bears the intoxicating and illuminable weight of her husband's need, surrounds herself with dreams painted in blue.

he,
broad and imposing in his broken vulnerability,
is a baby, nestled precariously on a thin and wavering branch.
he roars with pleasure and pain, assuming his own sovereignty in a territory he does not rule.
he is a beautiful explosion of sea and sorrow; fragments of blue hope and maps written with invisible ink burrow in the hollows of his skin.
he,
who carries her heart like a wildflower in the pocket of his shirt, is the breath in the room, held small and shallow.

between them only a breath of warm air blown from an old electric fan.

between them only a torn curtain, sheer and full of age.

between them only a trunk full of fiction, fluttering moths and spilled bourbon.

between them only a number of years, impassable, furtive and hostile.

between them a staggeringly frail and fierce creature that knows how to see in the dark.

cold.

the outside feeling,
the door half closed
or opened.
the laughter inside, the music of belonging.
the fireflies outside, blinking their private tribal codes.

standing in the liminal space,
a sheer veil, a portiere,
a great divide.

the softness of my mouth, maybe,
or the texture of my silence.
the truth of my eyes or the
truth of my heart.
or,
the truth.
pulled into the light.
the truth,
boldly faced.
the truth.

caught in my throat like a butterfly in winter.

under the boughs of a sleeting and frigid rain,
smoke curls and fire cracks.
inside is a dark hollow of questions.
outside is nothing but snow.

there is a beginning that starts with a story. it is a story of loss.

balancing bone and finding space.

sitting uncomfortably in seat D10 of Hendersonville Little Theatre, I waited for the final show of the run of "The Glass Menagerie." Robert's call brought me there early, so I had some time to kill.
sitting uncomfortably, my attention narrowed in on the strain of the ligaments and tendons attaching my limbs to pelvis. For longer than I care to admit, my own experience of shattered glass  has been stabbing into me from the compression of nerve and soft tissue. bones out of place. out of joint. broken glass.
what if I alter my perception?
what if I guide my attention, instead, to the spaces that are spaces. to the softness, the non-pain areas...and, ask..."how would I describe this?"
what if i use images to alter my sensations. this is what I learned back in the new york days in the studios of movement research with nancy topf. dynamic anatomy. imagining the body and allowing the sensation to move me. allowing the images to transform into sensation and, ultimately, movement.
what if I imagine the head of my femur easy and aligned, balanced and fluid...see my pelvic bones stand upright in the chair...and, let all the soft tissue melt away. what on earth would be left to hurt me?
the balancing of bone. without effort. with ease.
and, things changed.
the alarm and strain quieted. not extinguished entirely, mind you, but quiet is g o o d.
space. is. good.
s p a c e     i  s   g    o     o    d.

and i read and was reminded of the beginning of butoh.
beginning with an image and then, indulging in the luxury of time, allowing the movement to unfold to become that image (whether any outside observer would even identify it as such).

what if I hold the image in my mind (in my body) of a bed of seagrass, for example.
soft, strong, fluid, supple.
and unfold the time and reveal the possibilities back to my body.

what if I do this for everything in my life.
my whole life.
where things are sharp..what if I imagine marshmallows.
where things are stuck...what if I imagine a river.
where there is a deep ache....what will the image of being held in giant hands offer me?

just like resource.
it is resource.
and, what if we take it further in. allow more time. allow the dance of the image to speak.
forget the narratives.

work with image in the resource.
and pendulate to the images of discomfort. back to the movement of resource, images of space and possibility.


i need to take this time to explore.
I need to find myself in creation again.
create art. witness.
feed my soul's longing.
and, come back to life.

...

in the stars, in the dark of night
she fell into a blue pool of fire
and a question arose.
an unanswerable, untenable and
unfinished thought.

spring comes before winter.

i.

it is common to find stars clinging together and spinning through space,
through time,
through the paradox and the puzzles of this mysterious thing we call life.
love.
or life.
        it's the same thing, isn't it?

after some time, when we walk, we become certain of the next step. sure that the ground will be there and then, there. and, there. and, there.
until
it
isn't.
there.

and, once again (and again) we are cartwheeling, spilling coins from our pockets and leaving bruises on the sky.

ii.

sometimes it is hard to open my eyes.
hard to accept the sunlight that's rushed into my room and whirred all the dust into a frenetic dance.
i want to lie motionless and feel the pause of time and let the silence speak for a while. let my cells breathe and stretch out and yawn like lazy cats.

iii.

with even the strongest glue between the shards of every bit of glass that broke,
stacked neat like it was, like it had been before,
before,
before the hard truth of velocity and gravity came along...
even with that kind of mending,
is it possible for the vessel to ever hold water
without leaking, I mean,
without leaking and making a soggy mess of everything around it?