Push, Soar, Thud, Rescue

Edgar Degas, Three Ballet Dancers, One with Dark Crimson Waist 
1899 (170 Kb); Pastel on paper, 23 1/4 x 19 1/4 in; Barnes Foundation; Photograph by Charalambos Amvrosiou 

Push, Soar, Thud, and Rescue

I pushed myself.  I wanted the chance, you see.  Without the afternoons, Saturdays, hours alone, there’d be no Firebird, no Swan Queen. I was greedy-not for name fame, never that. What pulled me was having the stage, the music, the risk, the irretrievable moments-all to myself. You, in the audience, all to myself. And if you’d be there, rapt, I would give you everything, all that I had. And I knew our spirits would dance together.

By the time I was ten, play was all but over. I had too much work to do. My legs didn’t lift as high as they needed to and clumsiness interfered with fast, intricate footwork. I took more classes; got on the train after school so that I could take class in a studio in another town from a different teacher, one who didn’t care deeply for me, as my first teacher did. I practiced in the basement at the barre my father installed. Down there on the cement floor, somehow missing the poles that supported our suburban house, I flew to the allegros in Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, suffered with strange longings when the slow themes took over my child’s body. There are children who dance, play piano, write poems, sing, long before experience informs them, and yet they get it right. I don’t understand this now, and I certainly didn’t understand it then, but I danced to Chopin with emotions I had no names for, would have no names for until adulthood when I christened them.

As a teenager I wore tiaras and was partnered by princes. Finally I could take some pride in my “line,” my extensions, my pirouettes. For a brief, innocent time, dancing was joy. But I moved to New York and more accomplished dancers were everywhere. Passion and “musicality” were not enough; I needed strength, technique.  I studied under teachers who were gifted, cruel, inspiring, relentless, and impossibly sophisticated. The worst they could do to me was ignore me in class.  Indifference was devastating. Of course I cried, but I-never considered quitting. I was aware of a larger world, cared about it too, but dance was where I lived, had lived, continued to live, even successfully, even with some fame, until I turned thirty and tore my Achilles heel; the ironic injury. A month went by without daily class, then two, then the doctors advised limits. Two hours a day, then two hours of rest. No jumping at all. Idiots! They understood nothing.  I stopped dancing and landed with a thump in a flat world, old at thirty. I deconstructed and became a sodden heap, without motive while dance slowly, painfully drained out of me. After living through two stark years of empty spirit, humble wishes (hardly ambitions) rescued me: I wanted only to walk, head erect, feet on the ground, simply and, possibly, with grace; I wanted to regain dignity, but only my rightful share. I learned, slowly, to extend, to stretch, to share in an off-stage world, without the practice, without techniques. I am still learning.

On Feeling a Certain Age

That’s me in the photo. I was 19, performing in a Juilliard dance concert. My partner, Mark, was not looking at my ass; he was looking at my supporting leg, making sure that he was supporting me en pointe. I’m posting this photo of me at 19 and these poems because I don’t feel strong today, and in the tradition of Emily Dickinson’s “This is My Letter to the World” sometimes you just want to throw it out there. I have some nerve including poems of my own with one of Emily’s, but there you go.

This is my letter to the world,

That never wrote to me,-- 

The simple news that Nature told, 

With tender majesty. 

Her message is committed 

To hands I cannot see; 

For love of her, sweet countrymen,

Judge tenderly of me! 

Emily Dickinson

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

Whirl

Wanna,wanna, whoop de loop.

Hold my baby, kiss my mom,

dance the way I used to do.

Desktops, blacktops, cut and paste,

speed down hills, learn the rules,

Sister Saint Marion, married to Christ.

Sixteen, life-green, pink tights, Swan Lake,

an Italian summer, a Venetian romance,

NYC my campus, Matisse, Philip Glass,

then mountains, desert, New Mexico’s gold, 

headstrong, headlong, swayed by applause,

wandering through canyons colored by God.

A year spent in England, the Isle of Wight,

rock seafronts in Cornwall, Land’s End of the world,

a pause for the Maritimes, soft greens, booming tides.

Then my bearings got lost. I was drunk on the street--

had nothing but loathing till they lent me a hand.

Wanna,wanna, whoop de loop.

Hold my baby, kiss my mom,

dance the way I used to do.

My mind’s got some fluff but she copes well enough. 

I’ve foundered in Florida with its heat and humidity, 

glorious beaches, and churchy stupidity.

I have a sick heart so I do less and less, 

but I write at an old French writing desk.

I could use a cruise, a steadier step, 

a long walk in Paris with Johnny Depp.

It appears gone for good are dramas and bothers, 

threats and therapists, drunk, needy lovers. 

And... lovely, lovely, lovely is my cat’s furry belly.

After Another Reading of Raymond Carver's "All of Us"

Young, strong, brave me, doing all that!

Dancing, teaching, performing, making this,

making that. I drank great draughts

of art, all kinds, you name it.

Used the fine work out there

to define, refine, defend my being,

my sincere effort to soar.

It was almost glorious.

There was, of course, a catch. For many

of those nearly triumphant years, I slogged

through a swampy mess each night.

Yes, every night. I'll stand by that.

Same old, same old. So and so loved me, but

I wanted you and you wanted her, then her.

And for all that time I couldn't get free,

couldn't toss you off, over, away, used Scotch

to dull my fury and so became more pitiful.

From here, out of all that, well-rested,

I can see that awful catch of mine

has a place at the table, in fact, near

the head, across from the almost glory.

My foolishness can be read, watched,

listened to, painted. And it has been.

Will be. Now it's time for some lunch.

Alice Turns Adam Down

"So, you see, you are simply the wrong partner

for this part of the dance. I'd thought 

someone in a blue shirt, with a side part 

in his blond hair, and your hair is red. 

So even if you changed your shirt to a blue,  

I wouldn't, simply couldn't, choose you.

Dance with someone else, why don't you?

You could dance with the woman over there 

wearing that very long string of pearls.

Or how about that woman in the long red dress. 

Do you like long dresses? Or someone else?

Oh. You often wear blue shirts, do you? 

You don't care for long dresses or pearls? 

You like my green eyes and so choose me? 

But that doesn't matter, to me, you see. 

You’re simply all wrong for this part of the dance."

Nonnie's Poetry Trip: Part 2

Who would think, if they met me today, in bed with dog, cat and computer, that I am a woman of such passions? There has never been a time in my life when I haven't been deeply in love with something or someone. As a child my fervors were directed toward ballet and Catholic saints. I would read biographies of famous ballerinas, when I could find them, and the lives of cannonized women  with equal intensity. Could I somehow become the first ballerina-saint, I wondered?

With "boys" went my plans for sainthood, but my love of dance surged. And, indeed, I became a dancer of the daily class or classes; sweaty hours in studios; bloody ugly feet; living to perform and choreograph; GROW; variety. But I turned thirty and became a mess. Serious physical injury, a year or so of full-time drinking, and then, thanks to family love bucking me up and the help of a 12 step program (you know which one) sober living.
I believed, briefly, I could now become a less driven woman. I even pretended to be a secretary but was caught out.

After floundering about I became a teacher of children who were challenged by differences in mental, emotional, or physical states of being. The first priority for these lost souls was to help them "experience their environment with pleasure." Ah, yes.  Passion, for these kids, was back in my life. Then my heart got sick and I had to stop.

This blog was to be about my poetry trip, and indeed it will be. Poetry was and is a passion right there beside me, behind me and in front of me, leading me. From the first memories of my Nonnie teaching me nursery rhymes, I've been a fan. "My poets" have known, challenged, comforted, mirrored, and lord knows, amused me. One of the firsts dances I choreographed was inspired by a line from T.S.Eliot. My last group of special education students were able to recite, with sensitivity, and in front of the class (!) Robert Frost's, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

Atlantic Ave, early morning

Atlantic Ave, Delray Beach, Florida

Poet David Kirby

Me, blurred by passion

A few weeks ago I went to my second Palm Beach Poetry Festival, which is not the least concerned, by the way, with taking place in Delray Beach, Florida. (I don't know. Is that whole beachy yet utterly urban sprawl Palm Beach?) I had a full schedule of workshops (with scholar, poet, rock and roll historian, prince of a man, David Kirby), craft talks and readings by top-shelf writers who gave and gave and gave, an invaluable manuscript conference with Ginger Murchison (oh, yeah, I want to publish a book) and many, many walks between my hotel, The Colony Hotel and Cabana Club (I love that name) and Old School Square, the festival venue. Walks along Atlantic Avenue were exciting imput-events for me. Cafés, fancy restaurants, boutiques, antiques, great dogs, and old, young, rich, homeless, Jewish, Cuban, European, black, bohemian, Americans. I had an excellent time in Delray. Weather was great and all and…poetry astounds me. During the readings I discovered new voices speaking to me and of course, those who have always been around will not go away. This passion will carry on,  I think, forever.

There have been men along the way. Sex and great love and all that. I'll write about them in another blog or two, I think. No, scratch that idea. Poems, definitely poems, for all that.

Nonnie's Cleavage

Cleavage

When I was four I decided I would become a ballerina, started on this project right away, and at seven finally got to start lessons. By the time I was a teenager, a career in dance seemed possible. What I lacked in technique, I made up for in enthusiasm. I was disappointed that I stopped growing at a little over 5’2” tall, and in keeping with almost all dancers, I was, well, flat.

Think about it. How many dancers have you seen with lush, sexy, breasts? How often do you see a ballerina’s boobs bouncing as she leaps, lands, or does fast fancy footwork? When she spins, do you see floppy flesh whipping around as she goes? The torso is a ballet or modern dancer’s center of strength, and there isn’t much chance of developing the soft tissue that fills womanly cup sizes. When I danced, I was glad of my shape, because my “line” was not marred by big bumpy boobs.

Ballet company directors were demanding that all their dancers have long limbs and tiny heads. I was short, and my head was a normal size, so I took off my point shoes, and in bare feet, focused on modern dance. My breasts stayed small and when naked with the current love of my life, or dressed in anything but my dance clothes, I wished I could look more voluptuous.

My dance career ended abruptly at thirty when I tore my Achilles tendon during a performance. Until then I had assumed that I would beat the odds and join the few who continue to perform despite pesky aging. Life is often unfair, etc., etc., but at least, if I couldn’t dance, I expected an increase in cup size. This was not to be. I lost weight. All through my thirties, I was skinny, everywhere.

I got married in a size six dress when I was forty-one, moved into an eight around forty-five and started buying medium, sometimes large, tops somewhere between forty-five and fifty. The change in my body happened when my attention was elsewhere, and I was slow to realize that my water weight was not watery weight at all; it was solid.

But! I'd acquired full breasts. I bought a few low-cut tops that looked like low-cut tops on me, because for the first time in my life, I had cleavage. Forgive me, sisters, but I loved it when men looked at my chest instead of my face! Spandex bathing suits came on the scene, and I bought a chocolate-brown number that squeezed all the stuff I wasn’t so happy about in, and allowed a good deal of mammary to push out.

The politically incorrect pleasure I took when I garnered below chin level stares was short-lived. At fifty-one, with almost no warning, I needed open-heart surgery. They sawed through my ribs, stopped my heart and attached it to a pump, and put me on a respirator while they fixed me up. The good-looking surgeons who came to see me later deemed the operation a success. It wasn’t until I came out of the morphine-induced fog I’d been in that I realized I might have died. Just before I was discharged from the hospital, the nurse disconnected my pee tube, and I walked to the bathroom all by myself.

“Oh, God!” I cried.
“What is it, are you all right?” asked the nurse as she rushed to the open door of the tiny room.
“My cleavage!” I sobbed. Staring at me from the mirror was a scary woman who looked like she belonged in a coffin, and there was a long, thick, red, ugly scar that started below her collarbone and snaked its way down between her breasts.

For a year the scar hurt like hell, and the damn thing even developed its own bumps. And though I had forever lost the chance of dazzling with my décolletage, I still had the unwanted weight on all my body parts except my ears. They hadn’t changed.


My brother Drago, my housemate, (divorce is a whole other blog, at least) thinks I look nice, but he's too loyal for his opinion of my figure to weigh heavily with me. (If there's a pun there, it isn't intentional. I can't pun intentionally. Never could.) The scar was finally fading by 2009 when another handsome cardiac surgeon (they are probably all handsome. Dunno.) saved my life again with open-heart surgery. And on to how I look today: not fat, not thin, big boobs, goodish legs, dressed in turtlenecks. As Tony Soprano would say, "Whayagonnado?"

Cars

My Dad’s Studebaker. That was the first car I remember. We’d moved to the New Jersey suburbs from Staten Island so Mom had to learn to drive. She did pretty well, too. (We had to go on the lessons when they couldn’t find someone to watch us.) The Studebaker was green and not very big. We were a family of five then.

When my youngest brother showed up we got a Chevy station wagon. Two-tone blue and white. It seems to me it was only a little while before our next door neighbors got a much fancier station wagon with a removable third seat in the back instead of the plain space we had. I was old enough by then to understand our wagon had been eclipsed.

About the same time we moved to a bigger house, because we needed another bedroom (because I was a girl and the other three kids were boys) and a second bathroom, if at all possible, Dad came home with a tan Chevy Impala. Sleek. And then, amazingly, he bought a Kharmen Ghia! Mom and Dad needed two cars by then, because even though Dad car-pooled to the city, Mom had a hard time on Dad’s day to drive because there was a lot going on by then. We were a busy family, although not nearly as busy as families of six tend to be now. Jeez Louise!

The gods were smiling on my next-oldest brother and I, because we each had a senior year in high school when we got to drive the Ghia to school. This gave me many cool points that I’d been sorely lacking because I was a ballet dancer and no one at Ramsey High cared about that. Peter was okay even without the Ghia, but it didn’t hurt. There were other family cars after that, but they weren’t important to me because I was in college and then on my own.

It was six years before I had to have a car. I moved from New York City to Albuquerque, you see, and of course, a car was a necessary part of life.

So, my family was addicted to oil, from the get-go I guess. Well, no guessing about it-we were. I’m sorry, pelicans and turtles and everyone else, but that’s how it was. I live on the Florida panhandle. In this town pretty much everyone has a car. When you see adults walking or riding bikes, it’s a sure shot they’ve lost their license for driving drunk. Not a damn thing to do with saving the environment. It’s a mess, isn’t it?