The stained glass tries to compete but fails to overtake the scene. The vase too is spectacular as is the old rough hewn window ledge. The vista outside the window takes nearly 5 minutes before it is noticed though the mountains are lovely.
But those flowers. That blue atop green stems. The color of the Aegean. The color of an infant’s newborn eyes. The color of my love for you.
Shakespeare would have composed a sonnet. Byron an ode. I am too close to my dreams.
I have but these few words that have escaped the remnants of sleep.
Dappled light in the forest of my dreams. Serene. Peace. At ease. Body vibrating at the same frequency as the trees. The breeze lifts a tendril of hair and my spirit soars. I feel good.
Oh to feel good. For nothing to hurt. Not my back. Not my feet. Not my heart.
I can’t remember when.,, Let’s not go there.
I want a komorebi tan – light-kissed skin with the shapes of leaves tattooed by the sun.
I remember my first fall and deciduous trees. I was enraptured. I made a glue of flour and water and pasted fallen leaves to the mirror of my Sears French Provincial dresser. I was 12. The leaves were orange and red and brown. The flour dried hard and solid. Those leaves were there for months and months. Until… I don’t know why or when I removed them.
Komorebi – you can almost smell the fragrance of chlorophyll. The trees respirating oxygen. A body can breathe in the forest. Deep cleansing breaths. Breathe in the now, exhale the past.
Relax. Rejuvenate. Rejoice.
May the forest always be with us. May the light always be with us. May peace be our birthright. Forever and ever Amen.
Isobel scrubbed out what was left of her third cigarette of the morning and drained the dregs of her second mug of coffee. Black of course. No sugar. Of course.
She’d been chain-smoking Marlboros and shotgunning coffee since she joined the Academy at 14. It was the only way to keep her profile long and lean.
Isobel was famous for the lines she could make of her body. She preferred modern dance in nothing but a leotard the exact shade of her skin, but when you are called to dance, you go where your talent takes you.
And so she was the prima for the New York Ballet – a position envied by many.
Today they had her costumed in swirls and twirls of scarlet silk and chiffon. Madame signaled that it was time to begin. She walked in her toe shoes, that distinctive walk that only ballet dancers with years of experience can duplicate, to the center of the backdrop. Simple black. The scarlet of her costume, the pale peach of her skin, with her dark hair — oh the photos would be extraordinary if the photographer had even a drop of skill. En pointe, she lengthened her neck, pulled her arms into position, and rotated. She heard the photographer gasp before she heard the camera shutter start its incessant chatter. She always strained for that sound. When her audience gasped, she knew her body was telling her true. She had arranged the lines perfectly. The veins and arteries of her neck reaching upward as did her arms and fingers – balanced perfectly on her toes and the wooden blocks inside her shoes.
Would Claude be in the audience tonight? She wondered as she pirouetted and her skirts billowed to the background rhythm of the shutter clicking. Claude was pursuing her with diligence and finesse. She had learned he was a podiatrist early on. She was dubious that she could allow herself to be at ease with him. Surely, such a doctor would want beautiful feet.
What most didn’t know was that professional ballerinas had the world’s most god-awful feet. Isobel was vain. She did not see her ugly feet as the vehicle for her talent. She saw them as grotesque appendages never to be exposed to a curious world. She never wore sandals and only went to the beach with water shoes. She could not fathom exposing her naked feet to a connoisseur.
Claude’s interest was likely to be rebuffed. Again.
It just wasn’t Saturday without Tom & Jerry, Felix the Cat, and Bullwinkle & Rocky, but my favorite cartoons were the old classics: Silly Symphonies and all the Looney Tunes. Oh, how I laughed. Oh, how I was entranced. Dancing teacups, sentient plants, Singing tubs of cold cream. No wonder we grew up to be the generation that put music videos into the mainstream.
My brother and I would assemble on the floor in the living room. Bowl of cereal in front of us far too close to the television. Mom would say, you’re too close to the television and we would scooch back. After two bowls of Sugar Pops with the Sugar Bear mascot, I’d be wired for sound. I did love that cereal which is odd because I wasn’t much of a cereal eater as I hated milk. I often ate my sugar pops without or as little as possible.
Funny, but I can’t remember the order of the cartoons though I remember that I was done by the time Johnny Quest came on. Sometimes I’d watch it, other times not. My brother was done before then and likely in the backyard with his Tonka trucks.
At about the age of 10 or 11, I added American Bandstand to Saturday cartoons. I think it came on at noon. In later years, soul train followed.
When I got older yet, I discovered that often there were old movies on in the afternoon. I Sugar Popped my way through musicals, film noir, Jerry Lewis, and Tammy movies.
Saturdays were blissful. The only real day I didn’t have much to do. Sure, we were expected to clean our room and do other housecleaning duties, but none of that “no playing until chores were done.” As long as we did get it done, we were pretty free to choose when. No school, no church, hours and hours to just be. Laughing at cartoons, reading Beverly Clearly, eating when hungry, and straightening my bedroom when I was good and ready to.
As an adult, I watched cartoons with my son. I wonder if he realizes how cheated he was. Everything has a moral, a lesson, a sponsor. No silliness just for the sake of being silly. No whimsy. No dancing tubs of cold cream.
I am resolved to buy the old Warner Brothers stuff on DVD so that my grandson will have those hours of childhood. Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, The Roadrunner. What a golden period for cartoons.
W. Va. Fur and Root 