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.
“Be careful what you wish for, Missy.” I can hear my mother’s words reverberate in my head. Be careful what you wish for, be careful what you wish, be careful. Be careful. I was raised to be fearful. Somehow, the times, the burgeoning women’s movement, the rise of feminism, the advent of women as something other than playthings for men, allowed me to transcend my upbringing.
I stood there in front of the travel agency door looking at the poster. Travel! It said. And oh I wanted to go in and book a trip- to somewhere, anywhere I haven’t been before. To escape nostalgia. I wanted new and unfamiliar.
But in times of decision, I heard my mother’s voice. Over and over. Boys don’t like girls who…your future husband will want…, when you are grown and married…, when. . . It was like I never had a chance. And then I was forty with a husband and I didn’t give a fuck what he wanted. That was my sign to get out. I wished for a life other than what I had, and my mother’s voice came back to me, “Be careful what you wish for.”
I have been sincere with my wishes. They represent my core values. I didn’t need to be careful; they were front and center and required no deliberation.
I left my marriage. Not gleefully I recognized the tragedy and the failure it represented, but as the bible said, be ye not unequally yoked. We were unequal in every way. It was a disaster.
And here I was possessed of half of my retirement account and newly paid-off credit cards. I went in. A bell tinkled with the movement of the door. The woman at the front desk seemed surprised and I said as much.
She said, “We don’t get much foot traffic.”
I said, “I need a trip to somewhere I’ve never been. A place most people don’t go. A place where I can lose myself in the novelty of moving through unfamiliar streets.”
She snapped her fingers and said, “I have just the place for you. And we have a promotion going on. It’s quite the deal. Free airfare if you book The Budapest Hotel.”
I paused for a second and said, “I’ll take it. Do I need a visa? Travel papers other than a passport?” I didn’t even know what country Budapest was in. I knew nothing. It was perfect.
“Yes, but it’s pro forma. We can take care of it here. Just fill out some online forms and voila!”
An hour later I had everything I needed to leave for Hungary the following Tuesday.
I didn’t second guess myself, oddly enough. I strode into my boss’s office and told him I needed five weeks off beginning Tuesday and he said no. So I said, “I quit.” And he said, “Now woah, wait a minute…” but he wouldn’t relent and neither would I.
I was sitting on the plane, in first class no less due to an upgrade for the number of weeks I had reserved a room at The Budapest Hotel. It took nearly all my retirement account to reserve the suite. But I didn’t care. Maybe I’d care in 20 years, but not now.
The flight attendant brought me a glass of crisply cold champagne, a finger bowl, and a warm towel. The juxtaposition of the temperatures and the textures was sublime. I handed her the used towel and she took the bowl. I was left with nothing but the bubbly and my thoughts and I penned this.
I think this trip will be transformative. I’m going to keep this journal and document my deepest feelings. The ones I’ve always shied away from because of Mother’s voice in my head.
W. Va. Fur and Root 