On My Knees: a "public divorce ceremony" by Cathy Gordon

A quick heads-up for anyone in Toronto: Cathy Gordon, a close friend and colleague, will be crawling across the city -- on her hands and knees -- on Monday, August 13th.



Cathy is a very gifted artist, and this should be a particularly interesting project. All I'll say for now is that I'll be there -- and I encourage anyone reading this in Toronto to see it.

For more information, please visit her website -- www.cathygordon.com -- and check out the article in today's Toronto Star newspaper: An Extremely Public Divorce.

--------------------

(Photo is from Cathy's website.)

"I Drew a Map of Canada, with Your Face Sketched on it Twice..."

I sit in full lotus on the grimy station floor, little white headphones in my ears... humming Joni Mitchell as I wait to board the London train.

I feel happy.




I am still leading a surreal life -- hovering between nations and suitcases (linen skirts and poetry). I feel content here, in this state of suspension -- more content to hover than to land.

But it seems I am landing -- gracefully, like a weightless dancer -- in the second land I've grown to love; Ariel has asked me to return to Toronto in October -- to love and live with him -- and I have agreed.




For several months now, I have been thinking about the nature of love -- feeling gratitude for my loves (past and present). I've grown so much with them, and in such unexpected ways -- just as I have also grown (in different but harmonious ways) in the spectrum of my solitude.




I'm agnostic, with no desire for illusions of god, fate, or destiny. I do not believe in "soul mates" -- cannot imagine that each person has only one partner they are somehow "meant" to find. I simply believe in the love, friendship, and trust that two people can mutually construct over months and years. I believe in passion -- and (atheistic) transcendence.




And I know of at least two men who feel like part of me -- who I love more deeply than my jagged tongue can say. Each man is so much of what I want (close friends... romantic lovers... intuitive artists... trusted companions...) and so much more than I had really hoped to find.




There is no right choice here -- and no wrong one.

The fallacy is in the choice itself: the insistence of monogamy, the dichotomy of "lover" and "friend," and the fear that imposes limits on ineffable love.




To the one I couldn't choose: I love you. I do. And I'm sorry...

9:48 PM: On a Bus Bound for Toronto

I am living up to my "postmodern vagabond" nature: flitting between Toronto and London (Ontario), a few days in each place, living out of suitcases and backpacks. Much to my delight, each time I travel I feel compelled to bring fewer items with me.




Years ago, I could not "travel light." I carried thick binders of creative notes: sketches for paintings... new stanzas of poetry... pages of in-progress theatre scripts... collages and mixed-media journal entries... and sentimental relics from people I'd met during my journeys.




And now: an electronic revolution!

A modest library of music CDs (and a series of French-language lessons) fits onto a player the size of a deck of cards. My photographs (and some raw video footage for a short film I'm brainstorming) fit on a tiny memory card in my camera; most of my other creative projects are on a laptop computer. With the exception of a bulging folder of random text (scrawled on coffee-splotched napkins and the thin white borders of newspapers), most of my creative life is now digital. As a result, the weight of my creativity is a mind-bending eight pounds...

Butterflies and Gnawing Locusts

After six months apart, we met on a park bench.

I sat in the sun, a flowing pink skirt brushing against my calves; he arrived with a guitar case slung over his shoulder.

We embraced.




And then -- what exactly?

It's so difficult to say...




We spent seven hours together.



He played a few songs...

We shared a picnic on the top of a hill in Riverdale Park (fresh multigrain bread, seasoned olives, Canadian brie, and smoked fish) while children tossed baseballs to each other on the fields below...

We trekked through the Don Valley, charting new paths...

We argued -- as we so often did.

But we stayed -- as we also often did -- and found points of connection: the words unsaid, and the real sense of words we'd each spoken.



I am learning to live with less certainty -- and more trust.

Poetry, Elliptical Orbits, and Heliocentric Lives

This was a truly lovely day.

I saw Ewan, after he'd been away from the city for a few days... and it felt so nice to take his hand and wander around the Annex streets. We stopped to sit and talk beneath trees, on campus benches, and in a small courtyard with a chessboard inlaid into the concrete tabletop...




He's delightful.




I want more of this: more poetry, more kindness... more afternoons with dark chocolate... more moments of connection, of slowly drawing each other back to the sun...

David and Manjit at the Gladstone Hotel

A few shots from David's wedding reception at the Glastone on Friday night...

"His Eye is on the Sparrow"

We intersect at Bloor and Yonge: an accident on the corner. We watch medics pull bodies from broken glass. I try not to stare.

Fingers light on my wrist, you guide me down a quiet street. The barista greets you by name; you carry our lattes out the back, smiling over your shoulder from the fire escape.

I lean against the café wall beside the vent from the roaster (gentle smoke, deeply aromatic, arousing as any scent) and watch you pull a moleskin journal from your bag.

I am squinting in the sun as you recite Catullus – a translation you wrote this morning. Two millennia incarnate in your voice: gentle as the sparrow you tease from my breast, pecking wistful hands…

In your measured cadence, your sonorous voice, I hear us make love: rhythm of tides… ductility of gold… spinning of stars over hemispheres...

(I hear you moan, one octave below: content in my taste and your sweat.)

You’re closing the notebook, your hand touches mine, and we fly.

I Could Not Take a Photograph

thick fog:
streetlights twine
through maple leaves

softly, in pace,
past teens on the swings:
(2 a.m.) pendulums swaying...
haze of the night
like stratified time

(your hand in my hair)
(knees damp on the grass)
(overexposed)

moment replayed:
lines overlaid

A Country Girl Becomes a City Girl Again (Until the Harvest)

On Sunday, I leave for Toronto; I'll be there for roughly six weeks (and may spend a few days in Montreal and Ottawa, or elsewhere in Eastern Canada). I'm excited and very happy...

In a Park where I Played as a Child

Walking through a playground by the home of a childhood friend, I found myself remembering.




There are so many places we frolicked here. I found it a bit surreal to look at the swingsets and jungle gyms and see how small they are, since in my memory they towered like skyscrapers...




Other memories tower too.

I remember her dunken father: unsteady on their yellow porch, bellowing.



Remember how afraid she was to walk across the grass alone to her abusive father's fists. (She spent the night at my house so often as a child that my mom bought us bunkbeds. When we were just a few feet tall, she told me she wanted to run away. She didn't, though -- how far can a ten year old girl run?)



I found myself wondering about her: hoping she has found a safer place to be -- and still feeling afraid.



Did she marry a man like her father?

Through a Small Glass (Brightly)

David Duclos: are you reading this?

~ * ~

No?

Good...

~ * ~

Yes?

Then please stop now -- and please return after July 13th. :)

~ * ~

I am working on a stained glass piece: a gift for David and Manjit -- to celebrate their wedding. I've been thinking about it for a couple weeks, and yesterday I sketched out a preliminary design.





This morning and afternoon, I started to add detail to the sketch (and remove some detail from the dress):




Then I added colour:




(There's much more to do, of course -- but I thought I'd share the progress here. I'll post an update with new photographs in a day or two.)

This is What Inspiration Looks Like

Earlier this afternoon, intending to continue editing Fragments, I pushed the novella away (for what I imagined would be just a few minutes) so I could organize a nearby stack of poetry into the table of contents for another book.

I had been contemplating this second book for several weeks, because although I have occasionally written fiction, my primary literary conduit is poetry -- and has been for most of my life. Each time I've mentioned Fragments to someone who has known me for years, they show interest -- and invariably, they also ask when I'll publish another collection of poems. (I self-published my first chapbook, Candied Nothings, in 1999.)

So -- this afternoon -- intending only to select my favourite poems, I soon found myself laying them out in a possible order -- and simultaneously matching them with photographs I've taken over the past decade. Working on the graphic design, each facing spread became a post-it note scribbled with poem titles and quick sketches -- all arranged (and rearranged) on a window beside my desk.

Then: thinking about the trajectory of the poetry, as well as my intent to somehow use this work a symbolic companion to the novella, I brainstormed titles... and found that three titles obliquely reference rituals of the winter solstice. (Since I am still contemplating, I won't list the options here -- though I may announce a working title sometime in the next few weeks.)

Now, after a couple of delightfully-productive hours, I have the foundation for another book. It's time to turn off my laptop -- change into a flowing skirt -- and celebrate!

Status Update on my Fragments Novella -- And a Dash of Cinematic Aspiration

Tonight, I began reading Fragments from the beginning, continuing through the halfway point.

(I was startled to discover how objective I could be. I didn't feel like the novella's writer; I felt like its editor.)

At times, I was brutal with my cuts and revisions -- and deservedly so. But the process was also quite heartening; I have a couple stylistic issues to resolve -- and I'm aware that many vignettes must still be written to create a satisfying narrative -- but overall, I like the form and content.

Something I have not mentioned before (but that seems worth whispering now) is that while most of the sections are written in first-person narrative form, some feel better suited to a cinematic rendering. So -- a few of the vignettes are now emerging first as film scenes (with suggestions for camera angles and cuts) and are then being "translated" to fit the novella's structure.

I have never worked this way before, though my writing has always been imagistic. It seems to mark a distinct shift in my creative and professional focus: perhaps an extension of my rising interest in visual art that began a few years ago when I worked on performance installations at DNA... and then shifted away from theatre, into dance.

I don't know what will come of all this.

I've never written a film script before, and it sometimes feels a bit daunting to learn yet another lexicon. But I had never written a novella, either, before I began Fragments a few months ago... and Fragments seems to be progressing realatively smoothly -- so why not?

I Wrote "I Love You" in the Sand (as Titania Watched and Faeries Frolicked)

I wrote "I love you" in the sand.

You built our castle.



This is no crumbling edifice -- no dreamt midsummer night -- no tempest in a cup of herbal tea.

This is simplicity -- divinity -- instinct manifest.

This is the innocence of swing-sets by the slow rise of a waxing moon.



This night is a white kitten on the sidewalk by the park...

tofu and bean sprouts on the pavilion steps...

and an orange tiger lilly in a water-bottle vase.

The Angel of History

I have been folding my grandparents' clothing.

This is an intimate task; they died several years ago, but their clothing is still a corporeal presence. We have a closet full of fabric no one wears: Grandma's modest cotton sun-dresses... Grandpa's polyester slacks (some with wear spots at the knees)... a dozen pairs of white long johns (because he was thin and always cold). At the back of the closet: pairs of shoes that still hold imprints of their feet.



There is so much history here: a Christmas photograph from 1955... Grandpa's lunch bucket from the years he worked in the coal mine... Grandma's driver education card -- granted in 1939...

The objects they chose to keep are notable signs of what they valued -- but also interesting is what they didn't keep; neither grandparent wrote a journal, so I have no direct window into their most personal thoughts.



There is such history in this small town as well: the town where my great-grandparents immigrated and raised their families, where my grandparents had lived all their lives, where my father returned to raise his kids (and work with his sister, who has also lived her entire life in this town). My brother and I are the first generation to leave; though we're both home temporarily, he has spent the last decade in Austin, Texas, while I've been away at college and then off working in Toronto and New York.

I am humbled by how often I meet someone here who I don't remember. Often, they are people who knew me as a child... or who know my father or grandparents. Some simply recognize me from articles in the local newspaper, and they congratulate me on my academic and artistic achievements. When I tell them how I've failed -- perhaps not as often as I've "succeeded," but surely more spectacularly -- they dismiss failures instantly. What is most important to them is that I've followed my aspirations and trusted my own dreams.

When I find myself in conversation with old friends (even those I didn't know particularly well), the dialogue is so fulfilling. I am still thinking about my talk with Tom, who has worked at the local newspaper for more than five decades... I am thinking of the joy of running into Angela at the library -- and seeing how happy she is with her spouse and child. I am thinking of the waitress I worked with while I was in high school; her husband recently left her, and despite her obvious pain, she's much better off alone. I'm remembering my grocery store conversation with one of the "girls" (all must have been over 50) who sat at the gossip table at my restaurant, drinking coffee and fawning over the local "heartthrob" (who was also in his 50s). And then there's J.R., my closest high school friend -- who recently reminded me that we made a pact as kids to marry each other if we didn't find other partners by a certain age. (I laughed -- then thought about it -- then revised the age slightly upward -- but agreed that we'd probably do quite well together. So the marriage pact is valid...)



It is a joy to return to this small Midwestern town -- two and a half decades after I was born into it.

I see it differently now; I can appreciate what it is, rather than demeaning it for what it can never be.

For years now, intent on succeeding in the (cannibalistic) arts worlds of major cities, I have neglected my own heritage and the many friends and relatives and teachers who helped me grow into the woman I've become (and am still becoming). Yes, I'm still the urban artist -- but I'm also the Luddite who can read for hours in a clearing in the woods... the girl who -- at dusk last night -- went for my first (spontaneous) swim of the season: stripping off dance clothes and wading into the lake. I'm the same girl (woman) who -- more than 15 years ago -- waded into that same lake to rescue a frightened fawn from our overzealous terrier. As a child, I was so in touch with the rhythm of this land that wild sparrows would land on my fingers to eat birdseed.



Whatever else I do in the next months and years of my life -- regardless of what happens with my novella or the recent job offers from New York -- I want to cultivate this powerful tranquility: to be so serene that birds might choose to perch on me again.

Malleability and Ductility: An Urban Artist is Hugging Trees

At dusk last night, when I caught a glimpse of myself walking back into the house, after many hours outside (gardening, landscaping, laying bricks, etc) I felt three nearly-simultaneous thoughts:

1) My clothing was filthy (a paint-stained tee shirt with my high school track logo... over mud-spattered dance pants), and I was disheveled (hair half-coiled in humid tendrils... a streak of mud where I'd pushed back falling bangs)
2) I looked tired -- but young -- and very happy
3) My friends and colleagues in New York would not recognize me here

~ * ~

Actually, that last thought/feeling isn't true.

Some of my closest New York friends would be happy to see my windswept country splendor.

One of my favourite friends in the city is originally from Vermont; she'd love to see me so relaxed, and I think she'd find this rural life delightful. Another friend would also understand: some months ago, he left NY for a more peaceful Connecticut life (inspired by thoughts of grassy yards and simple canine companionship). An East Village choreographer/filmmaker (who summers in the Hamptons) would empathize. Two Brooklyn friends -- an exquisite dancer/choreographer/puppeteer and an innovative musician -- would be thrilled to see me living so holistically. And two similarly brilliant friends/colleagues -- one a writer, the other a theatre director and video artist -- would understand completely.

~ * ~

I shouldn't fault my colleagues -- I'm the one who cannot recognize myself.

(Is this muddy country girl the same woman who lived in New York?)

Just last October, I worked at City Center -- calling the cues for Christopher's magnificent dance as I crouched in the wings off-stage right. Last November, I was giddy for David's show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music -- slipping seamlessly through corridors with my backstage pass. And I never imagined I would tour as I did. Memories of those months in New York are staggering; I accomplished things so grand I had little time to dream before they morphed from chimera to (transient) reality.

~ * ~

The heights of those achievements made the undertow quite hard.

I was freelancing for so many different companies that I felt I spent more time commuting between meetings than actually working. Some of the companies paid me well... others couldn't pay me at all (but I chose to work with them for the inspiration they sparked)... another intended to pay decently but later didn't (as their finances became strained by other starving artists). I felt pulled in incongruous (and irreconcilable) directions. And I was drowning -- financially, creatively, and existentially.

~ * ~

And now?

I've resurfaced.

I'm breathing... laughing... singing... writing... reading... sketching... dancing.

I'm living.

And I feel ready to live.

Five New "Fragments"

I've just posted five chapters of Fragments:
* Magnolias
* The Musical Term for the Process by which Out-of-Phase Elements Slowly But Deliberately Come into Synchrony
* Entrainment
* The Front Moves Through
* Then

All can be read on my website (on the main page for the novella): Fragments of an Intended Life, Whispered to an Absent Lover.

Catharsis

Last night, after a domestic frustration (the cause of which I will tactfully leave vague), I laced up a pair of old jogging shoes in an angry huff, choosing (against prevailing instincts) not to slam the door as I left.

Striding North through overgrown grass (iPod and travel-size speakers in tow), I kept marching past the pond where I had intended to sit: too frustrated by the incongruity between my distress and its tranquil nature. So instead, I kept walking... until I reached the clearing in the pines.

I broke apart the tranquil dusk with (ironic) Nirvana.

I flung myself into the humid air, landing momentarily on fallen pine needles, then launching again (and again) until I began to feel calm.

In that liminal place (between life and art), I began to notice the remarkable height of my leaps... the grace of my landings... the fluid contortions of my spine... and the openness of my hips.

And with that awareness, the anger dissolved. The dance began.

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.