bride Her eyes betray her tight smile. The “I do” doesn’t make up for past pain tree holocaust the day after chistmas spruce and pines line the sidewalk ornamental waste concert he cleans up after, alone, white knuckles, sour breath everyone went home ex his smile more open and generous than when they were together last year jealousy it’s better to kill the dancer who jumps higher no alternative wrinkles the couch still molded to the shape of our bodies we won’t kiss again Jessica I dreamed you were taking a break from a coma, feeding tube and catheter temporarily expunged. We were in my bathroom with the water running like school girls at a slumber party, our secrets sanitized and washed down the drain. You were describing death, what it felt like to transcend your creamy, articulate body. You said that you sensed other spirits around, but with what sense organs? You knew, but with what mind? You knew death but couldn’t share it with me. There are no words. I listened reverently, as if you were describing your first kiss to my virgin lips. It was time for you to go back to the hospital, and then to the unknown. In the mirror, we would on try each other’s hair, share bedclothes at night and in the morning, sip coffee from the same mug, Your death is the only thing you withheld from me. Blue Fish Christmas Christmas ornaments and Hanukkah candles ignite the lobby of the Brevoort East. A woman’s heels clickety clack against the marble. The doorman tips his hat. A man enters the elevator with two bearded collies, frosty gray and white. Their smiling tongues hang off the ledge of their fur lined lips. Merry Christmas, he says. I had a dream, I tell him, that a tsunami engulfed the Northeast, Mid-atlantic, Illinois and Michigan, blanketing the land in a thick, blue, frothy salt. I once saw a green parrot, he replies, on the Avenue of the Americas, fleeing from tree top to tree top. The owner threw a milk carton at the bird, over and over. To capture his bird with a carton of milk. Gray and white are panting. Condensation from their gaping mouths collects on the mirrored wall of the elevator. Fur obscures their eyes. Can they see? I ask. Gray steps on white’s paws, not well, the man says. It’s so cold, he says, but we got away with the warm weather for so long. What were we getting away with? I ask. The man laughs and out of his mouth flies a school of shimmering blue fish. Janos We stayed at the bar because you wanted to sit side by side, less like an Interrogation. You drank too much. Were you nervous or an Alcoholic? you wore a tweed hat like a true Hungarian. I wanted to reach out and touch your perfect cleft chin. As we walked in the cemetery at night, you asked me hypothetically, if we were on a first date and you asked me to walk in this cemetery, would I say yes? I said yes, as we walked in the cemetery holding hands. Yours were calloused and closer to the ground because you're shorter than me. You said the clouds are like a screen saver, and the Obelisques are from ancient Egypt. You have a PhD, so I believed everything. You gave me 3 gifts. A rock from Nevada, a new years noise maker and a hazelnut. This is a true story. You kissed me so gently, like a 12 year old and pulled away too soon. I rode away, into the cold on my bike, imagining my future unfolding before me and you weren't in it. Croft Dustin doesn't speak to his parents anymore. When his mother asked a question, such as "What did you put in your eggs?" His heart would surge with rage. He hated himself around her, regressed to a boy of six. We walk across the Walnut Street bridge A lone duck quacks and paddles in the stagnant, polluted waters of the Schuylkill River. We can see the train tracks and his neighborhood dog park. He laments the croft, sterility: "They cut down trees and then plant trees." He wishes his hair would just get on with it and fall out. His last girl friend, Michelle, who he lived with for several years, was 17 years older than him, the same age as his mother. When he was six years old, he married a girl in the playground. They made invitations and said vows. He doesn't remember her name. Gott’s Island, Maine. 2005. I) We We travel hundreds of miles to be alone, together. But when we arrive I unpack, arrange the kitchen, collect stones on the rocky coast. I hear you call my name from the house. II) Deer Today there are only 5 deer on the Island. They aren’t inbred because they swim from Island to Island. I’ve never seen a swimming deer. They must travel by moonlight. III) Moonlight Her face illuminates things. We don’t need all these lights. IV) soot On windy days there is smoke rising from all the chimneys. V) white tough mouths You want to sit on the barnacles and watch the tide come in. I have never sat on barnacles before. You promise they don’t bite. VI) Seals Any animal that swims and barks is my pal. VII) Kitchen I find peace In the frying pan; transluctent, buttery greens. VIII) Seasickness Please push the hammock. Okay, now stop the hammock, please. IX) Kitchen The meal tokes hours to prepare, but we still eat fast. It is too painful to behold all this beauty at once. Shovel it in. X) Bedroom The dark silence of the room magnifies your presence. I am frightened by the soft whistle of your breath and your body; so close and impermanent. I bury my face in a book about an autistic, idiot-savant who does maths in his head to steady his anxiety. Bunny We went to Monk's Cafe, a Belgian beer emporium I watched Gila watch Earl continue to drink himself to death. The interior gleamed with shiny beer soaked surfaces, People and the stained wood interior lost their edges. I ordered the steak salad Earl ordered a burger Gila ordered the rabbit. Gila lovingly offered Earl a taste. He shook his head "I'd never eat rabbit My stepfather killed my rabbit and fed it to me for dinner." "I was six years old. Then he made me clean the cage and taught me how to make a lucky rabbit's foot" Magic Bicycle I recently bought my 4th bicycle in 5 years: a Green, 1968 Raleigh. The guy at the bike shop told me that it was designed to get drunk British men home safely in the rain on cobblestone streets. It was the smoothest ride, the sweetest bike. My first two bikes in Boston were stolen. My third bike I left out in the snow all winter and it rusted. I left it outside a woman's house who I had been dating and when she ended it I didn't feel like going back to retrieve my bike for a long time. Now I've had that bike outside of my house for two months rusted, unlocked, trying to get it stolen, to no avail. My 4th bike, the Raleigh, was stolen last week but I got it back. I came out of my house last Sunday and found a note on the seat, wrapped in a zip lock bag. It read: "Dear neightbor, we're not sure how you came to have our bike, but we want it back. Please remove your lock." No name, no number. This person had locked my bike. Two locks on the bike, mine and theirs. A stalemate. I found out from the bikeshop that they had bought the bike in New Hampshire, that it wasn't stolen in Somerville. So I left a note in a zip lock bag saying, "You are mistaken, there are many bikes of this make. I purchased this bike from Ace Wheel Works and you can call them at 617... to verify that. I don't have a car and I use the bike to commute to work. Please remove your lock immediately." The bike shop guy told me to clean the bike, find the serial # and to call the police and ask them to cut the lock. It rained for three days and I couldn't stand to sit in the rain searching the surfaces of my bike for a serial #. My hoodlum neighbors became very interested in the saga. I steered clear of them because I overheard them talking about raping a girl while I was leaving the note on my bike. I suspected these boys, 16 yrs old. They looked like bike thieves. They probably saw the peace flag on my door and thought, this woman would give away her bike to a previous owner if she thought it had been stolen. I cried about this bike. How cruel to steal something and keep it within reach, but unattainable! No response to my note for four days. Then I came home on Wed night and the bike was lying against a bush outside of the hoodlum's house. My note was gone. Both locks remained locked to the shaft of the bike. The street sign that it had been attached to was intact. What happened? Someone must have hoisted the bike above the 12 foot pole and wriggled both locks arounod the sign. But who? Why? No note, nothing. The front tire was flat, but otherwise the bike was in fine shape. I left a thank you note on the pole with $20 inside and the next morning the note was gone. L.A. February 14th, 2004 Flying from East to West we drew nearer. An unplanned, inevitable intimacy. We walked the unwalkable; broad empty streets knowing we were going nowhere. We took turns walking backward. The florescent glow of the 99 cent store window boasted with rows and rows of Right-O. The donut shop where men played chess and cards had no restroom for customers. Are you lovers? Asked the diner waitress. Not yet, he said. We discovered what to do with our arms. hearts splayed and emptied onto rental car seats we were shy, but certain. Anatomy of Longing I) Anatomy of Longing Longing is an elongation of the chest and throat. The chin tilts backward as the eyes gaze up, yet inward, looking toward a memory or an imagined future. It is that dreamy, upward, inward gaze that causes the throat to lengthen and narrow. It is that narrowing that stifles crying which is the origin of the term: "choked up". If the longing lasts for longer than a few moments it will elongate the esophagus and influence digestion. Stomach is not just a noun, but a verb. 'To stomach' something is to withstand it's discomfort. More frequently the tension of longing circumvents the alimentary canal, but travels down the pharynx, larynx, bronchi and into the lungs. This will leave the "longer" somewhat breathless if they long for too long. The lungs have five lobes, three on the right, two on the left. Nestled within these two lobes on the left is the heart. If the longing lasts for longer than three breaths, "heartache" will result. II) The origin of the Hyoid bone is widely unknown. Hyoid floats in the throat, suspended by a network of intrinsic muscles. It is widely known that the Titan Atlas was forced to carry the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. The first vertebra of the spine is named after Atlas because it holds the weight of the head, which contains the whole world. Less well known is the God Hyoid, who's feet were crushed when Atlas dropped the earth on them. The lesser gods Supra and Infra built a hammock out of their bodies and suspended Hyoid in the air for eternity. III) The origin of the phrase "burning desire" It is important not to run too quickly. The femur bones may ignite a fire in the basin of the pelvis. This flame in the pelvic floor is impossible to extinguish. ******* Coda: The origin of the word crush Few people realize that there are several types of crushes. One should not be confused with another. There is the common crush on the person who you shouldn't be with, dark intrigue. There is the intellectual crush and the coffee shop crush, ships passing in the night. Then there's the original crush, the kind of crush that crushed the original crusher. It feels the way it sounds. It's a very rare and beautiful hue of green. It sings in overtones. Eerie Warmth I tear off my sweater. The sun bears down, early March. Salsa undulates from an open car window. Prematurely privy to a stranger's soundtrack. I go to the park to lie in the grass but there is no grass and only narrow twigs of shade. The ground is wet from recent snow. The yellow, amputated grass bristles in the fierce, warm wind, combed by tree branches, pregnant with invisible possibility. Amnesiac Music and Dance "Games Without End" 9/9 - 9/10, 1-6 p.m. 2006. My first experience with experimental performance was when I was seven years old. My grandmother took me to see the musical Oklahoma. In the front row a little girl had been crying for several minutes when one of the actors stopped mid-line to ask her if she was okay and if she needed any water. Her mother assured him that she was fine and he resumed Oklahoma. The moment when he broke character and took on an authentic voice and posture was monumental for me. Although he resumed character, the spell had been broken. I was fascinated. That experience is what drives me to do experimental performance, the breaking of the spell. I am similarly fascinated by improvisation because the audience has a strong role in the manifestation of the work. Their presence is instrumental in the realization of the piece. In set choreography, we display the work. In improvisation every gesture is an offering that may be accepted or discarded. Guitarist, Derek Bailey said: "Undeniably, the audience for improvisation, good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music that is not achieved in any other situation." The musicians I work with use extended techniques. They explore their instruments as if they were examining alien tools and without any presumption about how they should sound. They discover what sounds these instruments can produce, beyond their formal training. I approach dance in the same way, as if I were an alien inhabiting a body and exploring what it can do, discovering the beautiful, the ugly and the banal. In this project we attempt to blur the boundary between musician and dancer creating a true ensemble. Bilwa, our photographer, had been a presence in our rehearsals for several months when we realized that he had become a part of our improvisation, so we include him in our performances as well. I’m interested to see how his role evolves over time. Another aspect of this work is the large group experience. The more performers there are, the more events we have to keep track of. We try to find structures that accommodate this large group experience. The structure for today is that everyone participates for 33% of the time, ensuring that the space doesn’t become overrun by movement and sound. We are also honing our skills in attending to the many events at once. This is the most challenging aspect of the work, and was my original motivator for starting this project. I have performed improv extensively as a soloist or in duos and trios, but rarely have I found opportunities to improvise with many people, outside of the non-performative setting of the contact improvisation jam. We are still negotiating the terrain of the large group. Magic Realism I am sitting by my father's bed. He wears shorts, a threadbare t-shirt that reads "fifty is nifty' and slippers that dangle precariously off his feet. He lies facing me, pushes himself up with extreme determination, as if he could walk himself out of the hospital. "Dad, you can't get up. The doctor will kill us if we let you fall again." Maybe he could get up. Maybe he just wants to look out the window, watch the other "inmates" in the courtyard. Maybe he wants to turn off the radio. It's hissing in the corner, filled with sand from years of being dragged to the beach, sand choking Chopin to death. He's not allowed to walk around because the hospital's liable. Parkinson's makes him fall ahead of himself. His muscles contract into constant forward flexion, but his mind falls far behind. "Did Robert visit you yesterday?" "I dunno." He rubs the metal bedpost obsessively with his fingers, brushes imaginary crumbs off the sheets. "How are you feeling dad?" "So so. You see, Nikki I… I'm healthy. It's just this Parkinson's affects my mind…" He holds his hand in the air. "…my motor skills. It's chemical, not me." "Daddy, what do you want to do when you get out of the hospital?" "I want to go to London." "London?" 'Um…" His eyes glaze over. Where is he? Fighting for language. "Why London daddy?" There is a glint in his eyes, a spark. He sees through these dusty white walls, beyond the East river, beyond Roosevelt Island, Queens, Long Island where he spent high school, beyond the Atlantic. "The Theater," smiling, his eyes are wet. He is in London. "Maybe we'll go together. Maybe this summer we'll go." I look out the window. Across the courtyard there are a thousand windows. A thousand rooms like this one, looking out at a thousand windows. "Remember when we went to Brazil?" "Yes, I was at a convention. It was very boring." "I remember everything. The water was green and placid, so shallow I could walk out to the sand bar myself. The streets were so narrow and the cars were parked all lopsided, half in the gutter, half on the curb. My babysitter took me to her dorm when you and mom were out to dinner. The room was cramped, packed full of girls. One sat on her bed with curlers in her hair, holding a plastic doll. I thought 'she's all grown up. Why does she need a doll?' I didn't realize how young they were." "You were six." He sniffles, rubs his nose with his knuckle. "Daddy, what was Chile like before Pinochet?" He eyes light up with startling clarity. "I was in Santiago in 1970. Neruda and Allende were still alive." "What was it like? What did the people say?" "It was free, Socialist State. They were happy." "And where did you go? What did you see?" "I remember I was on a bus and I looked out the window. I saw three men sweeping the curb with old brooms." "What?" I hand him a tissue. He squints, brows furrow, as he blows his nose. "I thought, why three men? Why sweep outside?" The tissue falls from his hand. "And it was then that I realized what magic Realism is."