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?