Morning, Evening, Leavening.

Morning comes in a riot of sunlight glancing out of the Bay, white touching white, touching everything white; facades, gulls, a congregation of tiny old people speaking vibrant Chinese below my window. I hate noise, but I open the window.

This is different.

This is good.



At night, walking home from Brad’s, I took Noe through the gardens. Spring has come in February, Southern smells linger unabashedly in the night’s streets. The heavy sweet gardenia smell, the thick, spiced vanilla cream of magnolias. Only two blocks from the buzzline, but these streets are quiet. I pass a man curled into a ball, sitting on his haunches like a thing in the desert, painstakingly painting his face and his blonde beard black- tiny compact mirror in hand. I follow the street until the sky opens and it surprises me, I’ve come to the park near my house. It is a soft place, one that feels safe even at night. I find myself moving over the grass, wondering at the strangeness of it. I used to walk on nothing else, now it is so seldom and special an occasion I would rather bury my face in it and breathe an breathe. But I won’t, because this is a dog park. I’ll leave it to them.

The moon on my right, Orion on my left. I turn to face them both and feel the trees behind me breathing down my hair. I feel them as surely as if Shaun were standing behind me. I stand squarely and confront the moment. This is where I live. Why do I always make it a question of whether or not the time is beginning or ending? Couldn’t we just be here, couldn’t I just be here, in this time, for this part of this life? Couldn’t this place simply be worthy of me, to house these years of my life? These months of solitude and fortitude, these months of absentee touch with too-brief intervals of relief like a flood in the desert that leaves things surviving.


***

You know what drives me crazy? When blogger won't let me unitalicize once I'm done being all writerly. (I have since figured it out, but didn't want to take out this sentence.)

On Friday, I'm off to Vegas with the ineffable beloved Kristina, for the big scary audition I mentioned last post. It's an open dance audition for Cirque du Soleil. That's all I have to say about it at the moment.

These past few weeks have been grueling...marvelously productive, but grueling. When I get back from Vegas, I'm narrowing my focus to getting as much online work done as possible, and training training training, and seeing Shaun. Those things could take up more than enough to make a life, and yet usually I'm concentrating on a bazillion other things in addition. I'm not going to be a part of the next Bohemian Carnival as a part of Project: Resting. Shannon (Vau de Vire's co director and choreographer) has been lovely about it.

Here's a question I have for all of you; why do you do the thing you do? What is the motive force behind your efforts?