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.