Love Painted Here (The Original): 08/01/2004

Thinking, as always... :)

Dreamlike beach....

Voice Lessons

I didn't take actual voice lessons until I was in my 30's. I didn't feel I needed them, but upon the urging of several of my fellow professional singer friends (with beautiful voices I might add) I did decide to try it. They, as well as Thomas Swan (my choral music director) suggested that I could do much more with my voice, if I were to take some lessons. Ok. I did. It was actually amazing what it did for me. I didn't take them for long, but the things I did learn, just about how to shape my mouth for certain vowels, how to open my throat and relax, really helped. It was also an emotional experience for me (as music tends to be for me, they are inextricably intertwined---my emotions and music). I found that it was really frightening in some ways. What if I couldn't sing properly? What if I found I wasn't that good? What if...well, you get the idea. But it was fine. I did write a poem, of course, about the experience at the beginning, which I will post now.

Voice Lessons

I feel the tiny bird
flutter in my throat
oh she is hiding there,

the way my French
only emerges clear
when I am tipsy

she too
(I imagine a blue bird
stretching hollow-boned wings)

sings when I am unafraid,
not thinking, alone.

I do not want to loosen her
let her go yet

she is young and fragile,
tentative, insecure,

she might fly and be hit,
spasm in the middle of the road
of my life,

not dead,
but not yet alive.

Netta's shoes

SHOES

Well, at my fotolog today, I posted a photo of me when I was 5 years old. I directed viewers there to come here, for a special poem written about me when I was four, by my Aunt Louise (a gift to my mother for Valentine's Day). Now I can't find that poem. It was quite accurate about me, my personality actually, I think, so I like it very much. How could she know just what I would be like, when I was only four? Because I already was me, that's how, of course.

Anyway, in place of that poem, and in honor of yesterday's shoe and foot photos :), I will post a poem written about my grandma and her shoes. When I was on my poetry residency, and interviewing (and staying with) her, I found that she had the coolest shoes in all those old photographs. So for Netta:

SHOES
Black chunky heels
slide down to velvet toe bows
pointy
rounded
slim T-straps
cream button shoes
high ankle wraps
open toes
flat white casuals
high heels
ankle boots
MaryJanes
double-vamp straps
ribbon bows
black slip-ons
grace Netta's feet.

Denise, Melinda, and Dave at Letchworth State Park (The "Grand Canyon of the East")

The Grand Canyon, South Rim at sunset

Japanese Gardens behind the Historical Society in Buffalo

Griffis Sculpture Park...posting some of my photos in nature tonight.

Me and Kim chatting...she's in red. When I was younger, I used to think feet were the ugliest thing. I mean, I really didn't like them. But then, when I began to dance, I really developed an deep appreciation for the role they play in dance, in carrying us, in relation to our bodies. I really like them now, and I can always tell a dancer's feet now too. :)

Almost hidden one...

New shoes...moving down...lol

Another favorite photo. There's that pointe again.

One of my favorite photos...taken by A's best friend, also and A. On MV. My A has a towel wrapped around him and his bleached sweatshirt on his head. He looks like quite a goof. But I love this photo...moving from sad to melancholy now.

More from "Ghetto"

I am feeling sad today. Quite sad in fact. It made me re-read this story. It's a bit sad as well...

I stared at her and she at me. Mary held my eyes for an instant longer than allowed by propriety. I saw in her eyes that universal fear I'd felt a short time before. It passed in an instant, replaced by a fragile smile. She left me on the bed staring out at the horizon. Downstairs I heard a tide of voices rise in laughter and then ebb in silence. The lights of Toronto flickered at the edge of the lake. I could hear Jack saying our good-byes.

I slept briefly then, dreamless and without motion. But the pull of something larger than myself, a persistent image, drew me out of unconsciousness. I woke and remembered a night Laurie and I had spent in the cherry orchards of the reservation. It was the night Tony had informed me there was a new girl. A girl whose parents accepted him.

Laurie and I each climbed a cherry tree on the ground that had been sacred to her ancestors. The fresh cherries stained our fingertips and tongues red. There was no moon but still there was no real darkness. All around us, in the forest of pine, maple and birch, fireflies blinked. I closed my eyes and could see the spirits of ancestors unfurling like a hundred white sails. The earth and sky expanded to infinity. We listened to crickets, frogs, and an owl crying out. The fireflies lit the darkness with their glitter. Speechless, we watched as each fulfilled its destiny- to flash and burn away.

From my short story "Ghetto"

My nose had begun to run again and the bow of my lip was raw from rubbing. I sneezed repeatedly and excused myself. In the bathroom I stared at my reflection, my shirt lifted over my left breast. There was the lentil-sized hole that had been punched into my skin for the biopsy. The silver nitrate they'd applied turned the scab a greenish-black color. The red lesion remained. Tears filled my eyes and I blotted them with toilet paper. Where was Laurie? I'd called her house and left three messages already, but she hadn't called back. I sat on the closed toilet seat sobbing; my breast still exposed. The thoughts I'd been reigning in for four days flooded into my consciousness.

I retreated to the master bedroom and slid under the jacquard duvet cover. This was what would even the odds. I'd been able to quit my job, live in luxury and comfort and slowly move further away from everything I had once cared so much about. I should have known I wouldn't be free. I should have known I would not get out of it. Death was the great equalizer wasn't it?

I had the sensation of being heated internally. My skin flushed and I began to panic. Is this all there was? After all I'd thought my life to be about- and then to be turned in so completely different a direction. Adrenaline moved my heart into my throat and temple. I cried openly as I realized the answer to a question I had been asking for most of my life. Some people have more than others do because in the end, all that matters is that we are all born, and we all die. As I lay on the bed that evening, music and laughter wafting up the open staircase and into my room, the answer came. We are not equal in life-this is unimportant- it is death that makes us the same.