Thoughts of New York "Downtown Dancer(s)"

This morning, I stumbled across the "Downtown Dancer" blog, written by a NY-based dancer who appears to be as articute with her words as she must be with her physicality.

In a recent post titled Is that the Ghost of Bloggers Past?, she writes so clearly what most of us have felt at one time or another: "How many more years can an intelligent person with a solid education struggle with money, health insurance, and the vagaries of a dance career?"

I've been writing a dirge of my own -- a "call to arms" in honour of DeeAnn Nelson, the young NY dancer who was seriously injured in performance about a week ago. I didn't know her personally, though I respect the company with which she was dancing. And I am always feel empathy for dancers who are suffering like this young woman -- who will continue to suffer as she undergoes multiple surgeries and rehabilitation to repair her fractured spine...

Acute Triangle Degrees: An Open Letter to a Former Love

Dear - - - - - - ,

Twelve hours with you yesterday, and still I feel free from the logic of time.

We loved as deeply in our arcane affair as we had four years ago -- yet with awareness that we both were lacking then. What mystic gift has brought us here again? You mire me in contradiction: an atheist who feels we loved long before the fissure of the (nonexistent) soul.

I relive our ecstasies like clips of art-house film, spliced into a soundtrack of Susan Voelz, Jimmy Dale Gillmore, and Counting Crows. I see you sprawled across the bed, your exquisite form framed by the arched rail of the spiral staircase. I feel your back beneath my hands -- prone on a lavender sheet spread over dry pine needles. And your eyes -- pale sapphires that intuit me more truly than I may ever see myself -- I fall into your image, swimming inches from my own, through tangled strands of hair that land between our lips.

You revive me. Twelve short hours of your touch and I breathe deep again: the phantom limbs that ached intangibly are becoming real, aroused and opened by your love. You conjured up the bliss of all we had -- and all I now know I could be.

I want so many days like this -- even if we must wait months or years to alter angles of our geometric world. I will await more nights with you, sleeping entwined on wrinkled cotton sheets, making love in the space between dreams.

Obliquely Referencing Horizontal Planes

I don't want to bathe -- can't lose how you've seasoned my skin
while whispering nothings (sweet somethings) that pulsed like the sun
on our soft-blowing hair as we picnicked out under the pines...
so grateful for all that we shared and all left undone.

Let's Uncork Champagne to Celebrate Jerry Falwell's Death

It's rare for me to celebrate death, but in this case I do -- because the "man" who died was not a man but a heretic, a self-aggrandizing bigot with delusions of grandeur who used the pretense of his religion to espouse his own sham agenda.

So, it's true: I celebrate Falwell's passing, because I remember Matthew Sheppard. Instead of letting Sheppard's broken body rest in peace, Falwell used Sheppard's funeral as a platform to espouse the same ignorance that led to Sheppard's murder. In a situation so tragic that all but the most sadistic bigots had recused themselves, Falwell denied Sheppard's family and friends the right to quietly remember Sheppard's life and mourn his early death.

Falwell no longer deserves our attention. (He never deserved more than our pity.) Now that he is gone, I will try not to speak (or write) of him again. I want to indulge my fantasy -- a fantasy that he never existed -- even though I know that many of his disciples will now clamor to fill the heretical void left by his death.

While I don't believe in gods, devils, or afterlives, for a moment I take joy in the illusion that hell for Falwell would be a unique torture -- where he learns that god is a lesbian and the devil is gay -- and he spends eternity listening to an endless round of "Kumbaya," sung by members of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, buffeted by rainbow-coloured angel wings.

Salvaged Red Carnations

The wilted carnations we rescued from the florist's dumpster have undergone a renaissance: now unfurled in orbs of vibrant red, their slender green stems crossing in a tall vase in my room.

I did not expect this revival; I pulled them from the trash out of habit and empathy, sad to witness the end of their intended life. And I kept them to remember you -- an homage to a friend I've loved since childhood.

I expected swift decline: further wilting, broken stems, a dulling of colour -- but now, days later, they are stronger than before.

I never expected them to bloom, but they are blooming.

And you and I are blooming too.

Writing, writing, writing...

There are moments now when I feel so full – when three or four different stories are pouring out of me simultaneously, battling for supremacy in this séance (this literary eucharist?) we mundanely term “art.”

Different narratives, cascading in moments: scenes for "Fragments..." scenes for a yet-unnamed family narrative… scenes from another memoir… words of unwritten letters.

Amid these battling (but complementary) voices, I pause for a moment, trying to prioritize. Then I pluck the thread of the most compelling narrative – of Fragments – and hope the others will wait for my return.

One for Posterity?

I am thinking now of children – awkwardly, with an unfamiliar longing – wondering if I’ll ever be a mother.

I’ve never been one of those women who “want children” – have not been the type to instinctively covet the beauty of a crinkled newborn child. So this longing is not something I feel often – though when I do, it’s with a disquieting vagueness: a crucial riddle that I can’t yet solve.

It’s been six weeks since my partner left, and I miss the things I loved most about him – the qualities that also made him my closest friend: his humour, intelligence, tenderness, and musicality… his passion for dance… and the often-fearless way he flung himself at love. I understand why I miss those things, so I can acknowledge their worth and grieve their loss.

But there’s something else I’ve lost that disturbs me – precisely because I don’t understand; I’ve lost a man who loved children and wanted kids of his own.

Logically, this shouldn’t bother me – not me, who has always been content to envision a childless existence – not me, with so many dimensions of meaning in my life (so many a child would hinder).

Intuitively, though, I mourn the loss of this potential. I so deeply value the unconditional love my dad has given me – and some peculiar part of me sees this and naively hopes that with the right spouse, under decent circumstances, I could accord this profound acceptance on a child of my own…

Yes… Six weeks have passed since my partner left.

I’m laughing and healing and often quite happy – but fuck, what a harrowing loss.

Fragments: "Intersection"

I have begun writing something that I've tentatively titled "Fragments" -- my current work-in-progress that blends memoir, fiction, prose, and poetry.

Below is the first excerpt from that work: "Intersection."


~ * ~


We sit at the round table in the intimate windowed alcove, our faces warmed by steam rising from bowls of pho, laughing… glancing out at our bicycles, chained and propped against the diner wall.

Outside: a man sleeps, back propped against the bike rack, legs wedged between a parked Lexus and an SUV. Inside: we flirt with politics; you cough, self-conscious, when chili oil catches your throat.

The broth begins to cool. The sleeping man stirs then settles, neck bent awkwardly.

You rest your chopsticks on the table, push aside the plate with lime rinds and straggling bean sprouts, and cup my nervous hands in yours.

Again he stirs, chapped fingers in the pocket of his threadbare coat, searching, preparing: blackened spoon, bag of white crystals, rubber hose, lighter, syringe.

The petite waitress with her tenuous English brings the check. Politely, we both reach for it.

I struggle to avert my eyes as the white rocks melt on his spoon and he sinks the syringe in his vein.

We unchain our bikes as he staggers off, screaming his hatred for “Jews, fags, and the government.” You insist on escorting me home, so we ride together across the bridge, skirting decrepit projects on the Lower East Side, weaving between Chinatown and Little Italy, then heading West, toward the Village and the waterfront, past industrial sites and factories locked down for the night.

We stand at the door of my loft. Our heat radiates.

We kiss goodbye, cilantro on our lips.

The Spectrum of a Work of Art

Good art haunts you for hours, or days, or months, resurfacing in unexpected moments: in the contoured arc of a stone bridge that’s reminiscent of a ballerina’s arch; in an encounter with a stranger – the man your novel’s protagonist would have been if only he had lived; or the moment in the woods when (spooked by your approach) the birds flutter free of their perches in an evergreen, flashing such vibrant streaks of red, blue, yellow, black, and gray that you feel you’ve entered a Pollock canvas brought mystically to life.

But the best art is even more than this: it seeps into your soul, alters your dna, and grows like an exquisite cancer, expanding and recoiling with every breath of your life.