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Tiny girl Petres. Profile view, head to right, facing up. Taken 23 March 2009.
March 23, 2009
February 18, 2009
Bird & snow
It’s snowing big fluffy flakes and the air is soft.
For the past several days on my walks to and from work I have seen a mockingbird perched in a holly hedge, feathers fluffed against the cold, singing quiet little songs. It doesn’t move when I walk by. Even as I slow down and gaze at it the bird just cocks its head, looks at me from one eye and sings a little more. It seems too early for nesting, but who can say?
I am nesting too, I want to say, pointing to my belly in my silly human way, thinking that the world, even avian, must be interested in my affairs. But the bird doesn’t care as long as I don’t get too close, and I am glad of it and walk on.
February 9, 2009
Corner Parking Lot: Center of the Universe
O Charlottesville! I knew it when I parked there for years in the early-mid 90s. And now confirmation at last.
February 5, 2009
Way behind
Lord, this blog is out of date. Thanks for the prompt from Crazytown to get busy. But what to say? I am 12 weeks pregnant. A dear friend lost his partner recently and we've talked together a bit about the rushing train sensation (help, I can't get off) at both the start of life and its end.
I wrote a little note to my body's new occupant today:
I left the house thick in coat, hat, scarf, gloves, with pack and clutching my thermos of tea. Bright air crisped my cheeks and birds sang their cold-songs in the trees along the sidewalks. But you spin like a fish in the warm dark of my body, roomy still, and dreams flicker past your open eyes.
December 13, 2008
My art family
Since I was 19, I have modeled for an artist couple, Steve and Sonia, who live in C-ville. She's a painter, he's a sculptor. After many years spent in their home and studios, they remain treasured friends who have taught me a great deal about art and life.
At long last there is a website set up on which you can view their beautiful work.
Steve's work, including a link to an essay I wrote for him several years back: http://www.stevenstrumlauf.com/index.html
Some of Sonia's paintings here:
http://www.stevenstrumlauf.com/Painting%20Gallery.html
November 5, 2008
seeing blue
What the rest of the world thinks: www.watchingamerica.com.
The brilliance of The Onion: "Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress"
Mandela's words here.
November 1, 2008
Saturday afternoon
Beautiful fungus from the Bath County trip:
I had lunch today at Edible Garden, where all the food is locally sourced. Delicious quiche, salad, bread, outside in glorious sun and flaming leaves. They've started a co-op for the winter. Pay a fee to join, and then each week you get a list of what's available from local farmers. Place an order, and pick up from the restaurant on Thursdays. We're gonna try it and see.
October 18, 2008
color
We drove to Bath County yesterday, through clouds and some rain. The leaf-changes grew brighter as we moved through the mountains, more so since cloud light concentrates the colors into transcendent, luminous garlands strung throughout the woods. Passing one field, I saw a black walnut tree whose leaves had fallen, but the green fruits still hung from crooked branches. We drove into Hidden Valley (that’s really what it’s called), and crossed the little Jackson River on a bridge just like my old driveway in Sugar Hollow. In fact, this whole place bears such a strong resemblance to Sugar Hollow that it tears at my heart. We’re staying in a cottage that’s part of a B&B. One big room, with tiny kitchen on one side, a gas fireplace at one end, and real fireplace at the other.
Rob went off into the fields to track deer. I drove a couple miles down the road to Warm Springs, and took a soak in the mineral spring at the Jefferson Pools. Two bath houses sit by the road there in Warm Springs. One dates from the 18th century. The women’s bath was built in 1836. Round, wood-frame buildings, open to the sky at the top. Inside, there’s a walkway around the pool, with little changing rooms all the way around. You can see the light coming through the boards all around. I forgot my bathing suit this trip, so shivered out of my clothes, walked au natural along the cold wood to the steps, and slid down into the warm water. Several ladies floated together, talking. I watched the steam coming off the water and floating up through the white light, out the roof. I trod in slow motion on the rocks beneath, and watched bubbles rise from between them. The pool is just under 5 feet deep. The temperature is warm, but close enough to body temperature that eventually your edges seem to just dissolve. It took at least 20 minutes for me to really let go and relax, for my mind to quiet down.
Back at the cottage, I parked the truck and headed out to walk, since I knew Rob would be hunting till dark. No wind blew at all, so between clouds and still air, sounds carried further. My footsteps felt heavy. Crows called up the mountain, jays screamed close by, water dripped from branches onto leaves below, but all of this amounted to silence, in contrast to my breath and the blood coursing through my ears. Out of the car, walking through the colored woods, leaves yellow and red glowed so brightly through the stillness it felt like singing.
October 12, 2008
Fiction
Last night I got caught up reading a New Yorker short story before bed. It caused me to think briefly, while brushing my teeth, about why I don't seem to be inclined to write fiction. I wondered if I'm afraid of it. It feels huge and god-like, full of overwhelming choice. I think writing, like all art, seeks truth in different forms. Truth--meaning that a piece of writing captures an experience, an emotion, a presence, in a way that resonates with its reader.
And right now I feel most comfortable with the microcosmic construction of truth in poetry. Or the (somewhat) more objective truth-seeking of journalism. Or the (hopefully) educated truth-telling of criticism--where I tell you my experience of a performance, and I draw conclusions about its effectiveness at truth-telling based on my understanding of its form, intention and execution.
Fiction feels like the uber-truth, a substantial construction from your experience but not of it. And how could I possibly choose among all possible paths through a story? How could I feel comfortable wielding such ultimate authority over characters and their actions?
I'm not ready for it, but sometimes I see it glimmer down there, fish in a shaded pool.
October 8, 2008
done in
To exhausted to write much here lately. Much writing and grading and reading ongoing. This week must write a sestina for Form & Theory of Poetry class. Sestinas make sonnets, or even higher math, look like a walk in the park. And they were invented by 12th century French troubadours on purpose to be difficult.
Food news...not too much. Sliced and dried a bunch of apples from the last of the fruit CSA. Made apple crisp on Sunday. And, the rustic loaf bread from the New York Times recipe which I refer to as "miracle bread."
Still need to make more grape jelly from the juice I have leftover from the first batch of Wenger's concord grapes, and I've given away most of the jars from that batch.
The cats' coats are thicker, the house is chilly, and the husband is taking his bow into the woods this weekend. The year turns.
September 12, 2008
Words~Food
So much work these days, that when I get here I really just want to post poems, or talk about food or the scenery or whatever. Not work.
I did pick grapes, in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, on a hillside in Waynesboro last Saturday at Wenger Grapes. A half-bushel of concords which tomorrow I will make into juice, and then jelly over the weekend. Meanwhile I've been snacking on them at work, and gosh they're like candy.
My vegetable CSA ends next week--devastating. She gave me about a million extra tomatoes today, so there will probably have to be some canning project over the weekend, along with that jelly. What else...in other food news, the husband tells me that the state has opened goose season a month early and upped the bag limit, because there are too many geese (?). He's got a hunt planned for Saturday, so perhaps we'll have goose, with tomato salad. And grape juice? over the weekend. That sounds revolting, actually.
Last night we ate wood ducks (he got 'em down in the Chickahominy) stuffed with local chorizo, which wasn't revolting at all. Tonight it was mahi-mahi from a deep sea fishing trip off North Carolina. Seems like I should bake a cake or something, to celebrate all this meat.
Yeah, well, I have been writing a lot, so here are some links to work things. A fall dance preview in last week's Style Weekly, and a preview of Yes, VA Dance in this week's. I wrote a feature for the August Dance Magazine, but I don't think you can read it online. Next week I am to review Richmond Ballet's Studio 1 online for Style, so stay tuned. And the following week, will review Battleworks at the Modlin Center. The beat goes on.
I gotta stop. Dance history class at 8am; for tomorrow I'm lecturing on ancient Rome. Next week...the middle ages. You know the 39 freshmen will be riveted.
August 30, 2008
late August walk
On an evening walk through the Fan I tried to empty my mind and just sense. Mild success there. After reading in the cool house, the air felt like a warm bath and the light was golden. The rose bush that leans over the fence along Meadow St was unadorned and looked tired. When I turned the corner into my favorite little cobbled alley, the air there felt cooler and the ivy was thick. One curling vine hung directly in my path. I love to walk the alleys, love how much less manicured they are, how the lines of ownership blur and the plants (and sometimes animals) hold sway. Four doves, brown on a brown fence watched me pass. I almost thought they were sculptures until one took a step.
Smells tonight came in eddies, like warm water when you swim in the chilly ocean. Charcoal grill. The restaurant smells--french fries, or the sharp tang of tomato sauce. Trash in the alleys, from the cans all down one side of a lonely track lined on the other side by grass and sunburned iris leaves. The clean, maybe sanitized scent of mulch and boxwoods--in front of house after house, down one block--contagious boxwoods. Coming along an alley that opened out into a sort of no man's land parking area behind some shops, a sweet/tart candy smell I recognized but couldn't place, until I saw the vine-covered fence, festooned with concord grapes, many already ripe.
You could forage through the Fan, and even skipping the trash cans you could bring home a stash of delicious or decorative or medicinal finds. Black walnuts and crabapples. Lavender, oregano, rosemary. Cherry tomatoes. Rosehips. The grapes. One yard I call the secret garden, behind a tall wooden fence, holds a pomegranate tree and a fig tree, and who knows what else. Alongside the fence, someone forgot to pave the sidewalk, and a dirt track runs along under the trees, soft underfoot, until the sidewalk resumes.
I came out along Robinson Street and passed the bus yard with its huge, slate-roofed garage, more like a hangar. I felt the sweat trickle down my spine. A man with a cigar passed and paid me no mind, his smoke adding to the scent-texture of the walk. Crossing the highway bridge in the slanted light, the cars looked strange zipping beneath--it looks so much like a race, a purposeless race, from above.
The Fountain Lake was quietly alive. A homeless woman camped on the grass with her cart. A woman jogged past, intent. Another woman strolled along and we smiled at each other and the evening. A man smiled too, a few paces on, and said it was a fine evening for a walk. He was waiting for it to cool off so he could hit the tennis courts. A couple holding hands walked past with that aimless, off-kilter wander. I thought, how sweet, but when I passed them, not looking to closely, she was sniffling.
Canada geese clustered along one side of the lake, some swimming, some preening on the edge, calling out just a little. Two ducks swam with them. People watched them, and I heard someone say, what would you do if a bird attacked you? as I passed. And I thought, they make a good Christmas dinner.
Strolling back up the road past the last of the lake, a man was shining his Cadillac. I said, It's blinding! And he laughed and said thank you. I passed another wooden fence where some leaves had poked through between the slats and then died there in a brown cluster that looked as though the wood itself was blooming. A girl in a red dress passed with her spaniel, said thank you when I made room for her on the sidewalk, but didn't look up. I passed the cigar man again, he was coming back from the store, remote behind his sunglasses.
When I got home, my little cat had not moved from her place on the front porch. She didn't move when I stepped up to the door, but she blinked once, flattened out under the railing.
August 18, 2008
Sky over river Forth, August 11
August 14, 2008
Inchcolm Abbey, on the river Forth, Scotland
August 6, 2008
Edinburgh 2008--Raspberries and cobblestones
Spending 13 days at the Edinburgh Fringe this time around, blogging for Dance Magazine. Sent in my first post today, but it's not up yet. When it is it will be here.
I've been off to sort of a slow start on the writing front, because I saw a string of bad shows, but things are picking up. Saw an amazing Brazillian group last night with Adam and Grady, and we were all delighted and relieved, since the night before we had seen some terrible people on stilts crawling around and acting like unrehearsed hippie-evolutionists.
The flat I'm in, with Live Arts folks, is lovely, and the landlady stops by periodically--her name is Fiona, of course, and she has bright orange hair and leads a crazy bohemian lifestyle out of a camper van while renting out her flat.
Eating lots of delicious Scottish raspberries and jersey cream, in honor of Apple [she's the Jersey cow back in Virginia in whom I have a share through Averys Branch Farms cowboarding program]. Walked around lots yesterday, climbed Arthur's Seat (the big chunk of highlands
dropped just on the edge of town), and visited the tiny whiskey shop to make requested
purchases for Rob.
It seems friend John may actually be starting a fire in the woodstove in our charming flat, so I'll sign off for now.
June 12, 2008
Everything they say about the stars in the Southern Hemisphere is true.
5-7 June 2008
Umfolozi/Hluhluwe Game Reserve
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Travel journal 2
Drove in on Thursday, into sunset. Immediately zebra, impala, others. Standing by or in the road (particularly zebra). Land is mountainous, with grass, low thorn trees, bush. We wind through the hills. At the gate we had seen a warthog, placid in the grass. We turn off the main road to a dirt drive at the top of a hill, wind along top and back down in dying light. Mutulu Bush Lodge is a small arrangement of rough pole-built, thatched “huts”. Main building faces small river below and is open on river side to porches/balconies (no glass). Other huts connected to main building by wooden walkways down the slope and to each side. Beds, bathrooms, balconies look over the river. No heat anywhere. All buildings view the river flanked by bush/palms, and opposite slopes. Very elegant camping, or very rough hotel.
Temperature dropped quickly with sunset. We cooked dinner on the gas stove, but walking out on the deck, there are those stars again, with the Milky Way ranged across the sky like a gauzy scarf. In the distance we hear an elephant trumpet, and later one lion roar. David hears hyena. Closer, sound of branches breaking, movement on opposite side of the river, in darkness. We can hear chewing, think maybe it’s zebra, but learn next day that a hippo does in fact live across the way.
Very cold night, and all electricity (solar powered I think) shuts off at 10pm. Wakeful night under warm blankets in cold hut. At one point I hear rustling just outside, god knows. Awake at first light but don’t want to get out of warm bed. James, Rob and I set off in car with David, back out to main road and through the hills. Immediately we see rhino, seemingly mother, father, baby. Birds perched atop them, cleaning ticks out of their ears, squabbling. Thoughout day—baboons, impala, zebra, giraffe, buffalo. Stop for snack at a crocodile outlook over the river, but only the sign to read; no crocs. Sandwiches and hard boiled eggs.
Afternoon trip to Hluhluwe for crafts. Return in setting sun. I want so much to walk around in this landscape, be in it. Thumbnail moon in orange-lavender sky. A bit down the drive towards the lodge, I get out with Rob, to walk the rest of the way in twilight, to the lodge. All are dubious of this plan. The car pulls off, and we are face to face with three or four rhino just yards away in the bush. Rob sets off walking rather fast and I follow, in gorgeous waning light but wondering what else will come lurching out of the bush. Well, you really shouldn’t go walking in land so dense with large wild animals. I wonder really how far it is to the lodge, still walking quickly, thorn trees, grasses and sky, heading down that hill. But the car returns—we’d have had over a mile more to walk before reaching the lodge, they said, in growing darkness. After all, a lion had been within earshot the night before.
Back at the lodge, the sun has set. We plan a fire outside. Rob roasts chicken stuffed with last night’s leftovers—lamb sausage and mashers. Fire lit, we stand around in the cooling air, warming faces. I stare at the sky, which feels in this valley like a bowl of night indeed, overturned above us. Looking long enough, my eyes begin to perceive a depth among the stars that, though unreal, I have never felt before—night sky had always been a little like looking at a painting. But here it has depth, near and far, and looking longer, the stars seem to be falling slowly across the sky.
Delicious warming meal grouped in chairs around the hot fire. Movement across the river again, over in the dark. Boo goes to bed. Lights off at 10, and we still sit with dying fire and a couple of gas lanterns. Bats now and then wing past the light. Cold backs and warm fronts staring into purple-orange embers, a raft of dim light on a dark hillside.
Saturday
David rouses us at 7am (heavier sleep this time). He is determined for us to see elephant. We have seen sign everywhere since arriving—broken trees, dung. We drive off in the chill bright sunrise, not stopping for much. We do find fresh sign. At one point Rob sees something cross the road far ahead; can’t tell what it was, but big.
We pull into an overlook, river gorge with cliff opposite, along which a large troupe of baboons is moving. They run along the very cliff edge, swinging, and gather in two large treetops, speaking and moving about.
Back to the main road, then David turns off down a dirt road. We see fresh sign, and in fact stop at a pile of dung still moist—very fresh. I am staring at it until Rob says, There’s an elephant. We all look up, David edges the car forward to see round the bend, and then, heart stops—there they are ahead, walking down the center of the road straight towards us. Six of them, at front is enormous matriarch. In the middle, a small baby. They advance at a rolling walk, heads nodding, ears flapping, in a compact group. Majestic.
David turns the car around so we can advance ahead of them, and flee if need be. But they do not charge. We stop when they do, good distance between us, and their group loosens, individuals stepping out to feed on branches lining the road. They glance at us, raise a trunk maybe, but are not stressed. So we watch. My heart beats faster at the sight of them, and I forget I have the camera until Rob prompts. So there we sit, on the empty road alive with elephants, until they move off into the bush.
Later, we have checked out at the Hilltop Camp, heard rumor of a leopard in a tree towards the Memorial Gate, where we will exit the park. We pack up, head out, get almost to the gate and then take a dirt road back around and deep into the bush. Grass gets high and close. In every tree we look for cat-shapes. Cresting a hill—zebra. So no leopard. Then, a troupe of baboons in the road—damn, no lions near. Though it does look like cat country somehow to all of us. We run into a tour bus and the driver says, Keep going, up the hill and down, look for a tree on the left, the leopard is there.
And yes. Another vehicle with ogling folks marks the spot. The leopard is lounging in a thorn tree on a grassy slope. We’re at a good distance, but binoculars reveal the spots, the sleek sides, beautiful cat-face, and that this leopard is eating a baboon. We are mesmerized. One or two other vehicles pull up. The leopard is quite possibly annoyed at such an audience, but has a good spot and a snack and does not seem to care. Movement in grass below the tree, James thinks maybe another leopard? David says would be rare to see two. Turns out—a hyena in grass, waiting for scraps or a fight. This perhaps explains the leopard staying in the tree all morning on that bright hillside. As we watch it finishes eating, washes its face and paws, then climbs down the tree and vanishes into the grass.
June 2, 2008
A week in South Africa
We have been in South Africa just over a week, with a week to go. We're staying in Durban with my second cousin Carole, her South African husband David, and their three adopted Zulu daughters.
So far, many wonderful meals with the family, much running around with Carole on errands both pedestrian and interesting. Highlights in Durban--lunch last week in a restaurant by the Indian Ocean. Visit to the African Art Center, a non profit gallery filled with beautiful local crafts--jewelry, bowls, weavings, paintings. Lunch with a Zulu group on the Baynesfield Estate, a huge former estate now run as a nature conservancy/farm/agricultural college. Yesterday witnessed the neighborhood troupe of vervet monkeys come through the trees around the yard here; they got annoyed because Rob and I stood between them and the trash. Rob got some excellent photos.
Carole and David took us on a wonderful trip out into Zululand, to a place called Isandlwana, where we stayed at the Fugitive's Drift Lodge (http://www.fugitivesdrift.com/). Up in the high veldt, mountainous country with tall grass, stones, thorn trees, and enormous sky. Zulu rondavels, herds of cows and goats, and people walking along the road more than driving. Mostly dirt roads past a certain point. Isandlwana was the site of two pivotal battles in 1879 between the Zulu and the British, and Fugitive's Drift Lodge provides really fascinating tours of both battle sites. Your head can get very full here wrestling with issues of colonialism and post-colonialism, race relations--all of it. Of course many of the same issues are true in the US, but while in the States the issue of colonialism was in a sense "settled" long ago, with the native peoples driven into reserves and the land taken and irretrievably changed, here it still feels like a coin toss--the penny is still in the air.
But focusing on the land rather than politics, here's my journal entry from Zululand:
Two days here. Intensive attention to history of Anglo Zulu War 1879. Battle site visits, long, detailed relations of story. I feel overwrought by nuances of colonialism, what the hell were the British doing here anyway, which question to me outweighs all heroism.
Blooming aloe bushes everywhere, flame orange spears. Brown-gold-green grasses. Two rivers. Tall sloping mountains, low thorn trees. The sky feels infinite here. The people's low voices in Zulu roll musically, or like water. Lean schoolchildren walking walking. Women with loads balanced on their heads, as unconsciously as we carry a sack. James comments on the people's relationship to the earth, the grounded movement. Passing tiny villages (of 5 or 6 buildings, thatched rondavels)--one sight, two women, one bending over (cooking? can't remember), one sat facing her on the ground, wrapped in blue/green blanket, seeming to emerge from the hillock on which she sat.
We have not had much sleep, and I was drowsy during the several-hour tour/lecture at Isandlwana as our Zulu guide dramatically described his people's defeat of the British there in 1879 (we sat on the hillside above the battlefield as he laid it all out before us). But my eyes would drop shut, his voice continued, and the story wove in and out--I would snap awake and look around for the soldiers he was describing. At end of tour, we had "crunchies" (I got the recipe) and hot tea by the land rover, after walking among the grass, stones, white-painted cairns scattered across the site, where bodies were found after the battle. Silence and wind. Found snail shell.
On the drive out that morning we had seen impala, and zebra at a distance. Afternoon--drive/walk down to Buffalo River with David, Rob, James. Green running water, huge rocks, yellow tumbled flowers and more aloe blooming on opposite cliff. David shows us grass seed that awakens to water and begins to screw itself down into the earth. Cow and calf regard us.
End of day--on horseback with guide Dean--me, Rob, David (James takes a walk). We set out in slanting low sun, through the veldt. Past cows, then immediately herd of impala. Remembering how to sit a horse--distinct impression that we were not in these horses' plans for their evening. Impala small and graceful with spun horns. Hartbeest with white faces, straight horns. Later, in the bush, kudu like large grey deer. Female barks to warn others of our presence, Dean's horse gets agitated. Then on a stop for water, Dean ties up the horses and we sit on a cliff edge watching the sky. Dean steps away after a minute, and is gone long enough for David to suspect...indeed, we walk back to the trail and no horses, no guide. Thrilling! Lost at sundown in the African veldt! Not exactly. We three set off down the continuing trail, seeing the bad horses' tracks along it. The sunset is earth-shattering. The light as it fades becomes palpable. The striding walk along road feels good on horse-stiff legs. Bats appear, skitter past. The light fades and fades, glory-orange sky at our backs. Purples, browns, blues of dusk on the road through the veldt. Laughing at our adventures, we are grateful and conjure up mischief--we should have left torn shirts behind on the cliff, to freak out Dean. At last he appears behind us (we thought we'd be catching up with him), riding one and leading the other three horses--he had caught them up and gone all the way round to find us. Re-mount the now sweating horses, walk back to barn in near-dark, feeling the four-beat walking gait and the changing-temperature pockets of air, like sea water.
The stars here in deep black sky, southern cross, milky way clearer than I've ever seen it. Can darkness this deep be found on the east coast anymore?
We returned to Durban on Saturday. This week, from Thurs-Sat we will visit a game reserve where recently a man was attacked by a leopard. Wish us luck!
April 24, 2008
Mad genius Kittler: book review of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
Last month I had to write a book review on Friedrich Kittler's Gramophone, Film, Typewriter for a graduate class I'm taking called Literature, Media and Art of the 1890s taught by Dr. Nick Frankel. Kittler nearly killed me to read, but he sure did inspire me to write. Click here for a PDF file of the review, in which I quoted sentences as poetry, free-associated, and generally ran all over the page, in homage to the author himself.
April 10, 2008
Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi
Back in February I saw the Urban Bush Women and the men of Compagnie Jant-Bi perform together at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. I was to have reviewed the show for Ballet-Dance Magazine, but life intervened and prevented my timely writing. So here I am in April with the show still on my mind, and some thoughts to offer from my notes and memories—appropriately, maybe, for a show titled Les éscailles de la mémoire (The scales of memory), choreographed by Germaine Acogny and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar in collaboration with the dancers.
Growing side-light carves through a varied group of men and women ranged across the back of the stage. Four dancers slowly tread forward, drop to their knees, and slowly roll up again. The sound of water fills the hall, and the group’s movement feels like the rhythm of small waves on a lake shore. They begin to speak, giving their names and family history.
From this opening invocation, time slips backward and pulls us with it into the collective memories, the record inscribed in the bodies and psyche of a people. They breathe, rock, stamp, and shudder. They flirt, mourn, rage and laugh.
From my notes, almost-poems emerge:
Energy disperses and re-forms
sound of dog barking—beat dissolves
then burst—
all pull shirts over faces
red.
Beni – arms so fast
at moments you can’t see them.
One light from above
pulse in torso all
form into line, process, shaking
exit.
Face into circle, shouts
cries, stamps in rhythm, claps
calling power in to center
slowly spin off one at a time
volume down to whisper—
man enters carrying rock.
Rock. Crouch facing back,
ripple of head. Gentle singing.
Rock his only land?
Deep into the work, a bench appears onstage. Nore Chipaumire in white stands on it and peels one garment at a time off her shoulder, pries open her mouth, clutches her breast, her crotch, sparks movement in the others grouped around the stage—four dancers upstage move slowly, pulling at their faces. That plain bench—it is the auction block, it is the platform under a lynching tree, a fulcrum for pain and rage, and for telling. The weight of memory should splinter it; instead it weighs the shoulders of four who carry it. It may shape-shift but it does not disappear.
But this section is part of a longer story, a river of history that absorbs, reflects and refracts, breaks up on rocks and surges forward. Men and women laughing together, dancing together, competing, applauding, and breathing together. Such skilled and powerful performers, such tensile strength in dance making and stagecraft, all combine in a work that seems less crafted than plucked whole from the current of the world and made visible for a while. I am grateful.
April 4, 2008
Dancing and quesadillas
I spent a couple of days in Cholula, Mexico at the Performatica Festival put together by friend Ray Schwartz. Two weeks of dancing--classes, lectures, performances. All sorts of artists, complete absence of stratification. Experienced and new, students and teachers, all mingled together and learning from each other. Cholula (right next to Puebla), is the oldest continually inhabited city in North America. Aztec pyramids. Spanish colonial architecture. A live volcano across the way, smoking.
Sunday night after arrival, spicy sopa azteca in a bar on the Camino Real, watching the first rainfall since October.
On Monday morning a yoga class woke up every part of my wooden, desk-bound body. Walking past the pyramid with the church on top, we declined various refreshments for sale by street vendors, including fried crickets. In the Mercado we ate grand, cheesy quesadillas on fresh blue corn tortillas, mine with squash blossoms. I regret not speaking Spanish--it feels like something one ought to have just osmosed by now. That night I performed a witchy solo by GZDC associate Damion Bond in a group showing in an old theater in downtown Puebla. Dust and light.
Tuesday night a video showing, and then a party in the courtyard of a tiny restaurant, under an orange tree, small ladies wielding vast culinary powers. Later, a man juggling against the one light, and then eight women wildly dancing.
March 10, 2008
Visit
I visited my artist-friends in Charlottesville on Saturday for lunch. Rain came and went outside, while we ate fresh bread and soup, and stories went round the table. They told me about a friend they knew in New York in the 70s, a composer named David, who had a very hard life. He was nearly blind because of abuse suffered in childhood, and he had no money. But at some point in his life, he had listened to Beethoven and found what he needed. When they knew him he was studying and writing music. Steve said, "I did a portrait of him once," and left the table to dig around in the basement. He brought back a head sculpted in wax and mounted on a wooden base with dirt all over the bottom. I could have cried at how beautiful it was, this dark head with blind eyes and a sweet half-smile like a bodhisattva. Sensitivity showing through the lines of the face crumpled in places by abuse revealed the sensitivity of the sculptor's hands and his admiration of the musician's character.
They had lost touch with David after coming to Virginia, and aren't sure if he is even alive. He seemed fragile, they said, someone who could easily be crushed by the weight of the world. But the story, the sculpture, between them contained the history of art--born out of love and skill and suffering, sitting in a sculptor's basement for 30 years, then breathing compassion and stillness over four people at lunch time.
January 5, 2008
Ocracoke sky, taken by Rob
Lea sketch of Rob fishing, on Ocracoke 5 Jan 2008
January 4, 2008
On Ocracoke Island
Five days on Ocracoke, at the southern end of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In a house that sits on a canal where we can watch the great blue heron who lives across the way, or the pair of otters who come visit, or the pelican who flies by to check out the scene. Early in the week it was warm, then a freezing wind blew for two days. Now moderating, and calm. Ocracoke light is slanting, bright gold, fading to rose and blue in the evening. Beginnings of a poem...
Universe (draft)
and he set the bowl of almonds on the table
while we went on talking--do you remember
that trip to New York when you skated round the park
and I stayed with the beginners, circling circling
not even changing directions?
I couldn't figure out how to stop, so
when it came right to it, I would just fall down
gently if possible.
The sun tipped low across the room
and I stared unseeing at the carpet's gold field
bounded by blue, and the blue medallions marching
inside it, some in full bloom
others half hidden as they moved out of the frame. My friend
told me that motif illustrates the universe
stretching to infinity in all directions, bounded
only by our perception
our weaving together the stories of the world.
I never could skate very well, I thought
and ate a few almonds, dusting salt from my fingertips.
The heron outside caught another fish and shook it, rippling
the canal so its velvet floor vanished into sky-water-sky
We kept talking, leaning back in our chairs as the smell
of baking bread filled the room and a gull's shadow passed
(c) Lea Marshall 2008
December 27, 2007
hm, writing
writing is an exercise in release, transforming the blank page with words into a blank slate for the dreams, projections, interpretations of others. you cannot seek accuracy in language, which is by nature inaccurate, one degree removed from truth. but through language different truths can be found, not perhaps as simple as the green grass and the sun's long, bounded life, but truths intricate, compelling, with as many facets as readers.