hurricane-2011: May 2007

Oasis

(Written while at Oasis 20, the science fiction and fantasy convention hosted by the Orlando Area Science Fiction Society.)

11:24 PM, Thursday 5/24. Classical music plays on WMFE, Orlando's public radio station. I've set up my laptop on the round table in my room, while the radio sits on the bed. The table holds my second brewed pot of coffee on a face cloth, while another, folded face cloth serves as a coaster for my mug (my prior entry, "Simple," has the photo). I've just gotten off the phone with Mary, who told me which panels she's interested in hearing if I'm able to record them. I'm not sure if that's permitted yet, but if it is I've got my digital recorder and extra batteries at the ready. Mary, who was registered to be here, has opted to stay home to care for Red, who is stuck in Kitty Purgatory with his Elizabethan collar.

Ten days before I left he'd had minor surgery to remove a growth from his paw. But as I've been telling people, when it comes to animals there is no such thing as "minor surgery." I'd offered to stay home as well, but Mary insisted I go. I owe her one....

I have traveled with my duffel bag, my computer case with this laptop, two tote bags, camera, and fanny pack. One dresser drawer now holds four cans of tuna (I've had the fifth for dinner) containers of peanuts and raisins, and a box of chocolate Power Bars. The room has a fridge, which holds two water bottles and four cans of chocolate Nutrament. On the table here are leftover chocolate-covered peanuts (do you detect a trend?). I stopped and had one can of Nutrament on the way down, during my second stop, at which time I rewrote my final driving directions in big red Sharpie letters on the sheet I'd duct-taped to the dashboard and made sure I had a flashlight within easy reach.

I made only two wrong turns coming down here, one at the beginning and one at the end. Mapquest had me going in what seemed a counterintuitive direction, traveling north rather than south and making an upper loop to get to I-75 before the jog onto Florida's Turnpike. A wrong turn meant I ended up taking the route I was curious about, and nowI know why Mapquest did what it did. The way I went, I had half a mile to get from the rightmost lane to the leftmost lane on a busy interstate in order to make my connection.

Fortunately, the busy interstate wasn't so busy. Worse came to worse, I'd have overshot the exit and then found a dinky little road to get to Florida's Turnpike, so I wasn't worried.

The second wrong turn was a bit hairier. It was dark by the time I reached Orlando, and then it was wet. And the International Resort and Spa (nee Sheraton) doesn't have big address numbers or even a name facing the road. It's set back from the road, next door to Sea World. So of course I missed it, driving what I knew was way too much distance before I decided to turn around. Then I had to make a quick jog to the left before I ended up back on I-4 ("Help me, Shamu!"). I figured I'd park at what looked like one in a series of motels, then wander around on foot until I found this place and plot out the short route to get there.

I didn't realize I'd parked practically in front of my room. Which is located in Building 16, out of a total of 19 buildings.

This isn't a hotel, it's a campus. With bellhops dressed like Mr. Livingston I Presume and jungle decor in the main building. This is my first trip to Orlando, which is Florida's Showbiz Central. Or, as Mary said, "The busboys aren't just busboys, they're actors."

Let's call it a campus in a movie set that falls somewhere between Casablanca and The African Queen.

But at least here I can schlep my own gear up to the room. And on the walkway leading to my room I made the acquaintance of a lovely little toad.

I got everything up to the room and called Mary to let her know I'd arrived safely, then called her again after we each had dinner. I was going to get a post-drive drink at the bar, but decided instead to just settle in, find some classical music, order this room the way I wanted it, and brew some coffee. The first panel isn't until 2 PM tomorrow, so I'm planning to be up fairly early to explore the place.

Hibiscus flower

5/26 8:44 PM So far I've recorded 3 panels for Mary, written 3 poems based on art show pieces, reconnected with people I met at Necronomicon, and for some strange reason haven't had a drop of liquor yet. (Okay, I tasted some blackberry Merlot spritzer, but that doesn't count. I was just trying to wrap my brain around "blackberry" and "Merlot" in the same sentence.) The TV in my room has stayed off. I've picked up Oasis tote bags plus a commemorative T-shirt, and would have picked one up for Mary except that she doesn't like shirts with a lot of plastic in them. I'll see if there's an all- or mostly-cotton shirt from an older con.

Friday morning I got my first taste of working registration, pulled in off the street as it were. At 10 AM registration was still in the process of setting up -- so, rather than twiddle, I offered to help. I did some schlepping, gave a wish list (trash can, more chairs, another table) to the hotel staff, and then got a quick course in checking in folks who had pre-registered. That gave me a chance to meet a fair number of people whom I later recognized at panels here and there.

The panels here have been excellent. Attended so far: "Genetics 101" (so I can try to understand Mary when she explains things to me), "Cover Art by Committee," "What was the Best Era of SF?", "Alien Artifacts," "What Makes A Human," "NASA Panel" (space exploration controversies), and half of "Is There a Future for God?", breaking from that panel early for a lunch get-together.

Normally I should have free wireless access here, but the node serving my room is on the fritz. After talking with tech support I literally stood outside someone else's room to see if I could connect to their node (yes), then saw if I could maintain that connection back in my room (no). At a cost of 50 cents a minute at the business center and a cost for local calls (I brought my dial-up phone wire with me), I figured I'll play catch-up when I get home. The manager offered to move me to another room, but I decided I'd rather not schlep all my stuff again.

We had a small but spirited Masquerade. Afterwards, I gave Mary a call at our pre-arranged check-in time and she took a few minutes to explain why one should not try to take the label off a can of chicken soup after having opened the can. The unrelated but good news is that Red did not remove one of his stitches as we'd previously feared.

The first-place winner.

Before I left home I received an e-mail from Covenant's editor over at Koboca. I'll spend some time going over the edits before I go to bed. I've brought promotional flyers with me for the book but am being fairly low-key at this point. Covenant doesn't go to print until the summer and won't be released until November. Necronomicon in October will be a different story -- I can pull out all the stops then.

5/27 2:15 PM Waiting for the final panel and closing ceremonies. I'm typing this in the convention area, where I can plug into a wall socket but where I have no wireless access -- unlike the main lobby, where I have wireless access but no working wall socket to plug into.

I'll be traveling home with a beautiful piece of artwork, which marks the first time I've bid on an art piece (silent auction). I stapled my card to the bid sheet because I wish I knew who had bought one of my photos at a live auction back in February. In addition, I've bought 4 books and 3 T-shirts (at 3 for $10; I think I found a couple done in ink that Mary can wear), plus received 3 more books as a door prize.

And I've signed two autographs (one on a book in which my poems appeared back in '84 (Burning With a Vision: Poetry of Science and the Fantastic, edited by Robert Frazier), and one on a poster), the first time I've done that sort of thing in more than 20 years. Very cool!

Last night, before going to bed, I went through the edits in the first half of Covenant. Very small changes. Many of the formatting changes actually undo alterations I'd made based on William Shunn's formatting guide, where I'd switched my italics to underlines. Turns out those needed to be changed back, and two spaces after each period changed to one. Good to know for future volumes.

7:52 PM Attended: "Science Fiction Poetry Readings and Discussion," "State of the Solar System: Is Pluto Just Mickey's Dog Now?", and the Closing Ceremonies. I call Mary in a bit over an hour. I've downloaded the four panels I've recorded for her, plus put them on a CD that I gave to the conference organizers at the "Dead Dog Party." I also played (and won) my first game of Wizard, sitting at a table of six, which was sheer beginner's luck. Years ago Mary and I learned to play contract bridge, of which Wizard is a distant cousin, but we never got past the novice stage there.

I'll see if I can upload this from the lobby after my call. Then I'll partially load the car, duct-tape the directions home to my dashboard, and try to get a good night's sleep before the drive home.

Simple

Simple is life in a room not mine.
Simple is this lobby in which I type.
Simple is wireless used for the first time.
Simple is the ease behind the hype.

Simple is freedom, behind the decor,
From daily obligation and usual care.
Friendships renewed and wonders explored.
The Universe calls, and I am There.

(Typed in the lobby of the International Plaza Resort and Spa in Orlando, Florida, during Oasis 20. This entry is for Sunday Scribblings. More convention details are forthcoming.)

[end of entry]

Masks

Done for Sunday Scribblings.

Adventures in attempted mask-making, knowing nothing of what I was doing but having fun in the process....

This attempt to make a mask mold of my face (and my subsequent mask attempt) probably date back to 2000 or 2001. First I bent wire mesh around my face. Then I filled the impression with modeling paste mixed with gloss gel to keep the paste from cracking as it dried. (A quick check shows that the newer modeling pastes claim not to crack when applied in thick layers.)

I covered the mesh with Vaseline to keep the mixture from sticking. Though crude, I thought this impression was pretty cool.

I then tried building a mask on top of the mold, using paper pulp mixed with gesso and using the mold's contours as a shaping guide. That didn't give me much in the way of results, so I instead used the mold as a visual guide while I built up a three-dimensional face on a surface covered with wax paper. Pretty soon I just took off on my own.

This is my first face sculpture, a bit worse for travel and storage wear. To the painted paper pulp/gesso mix I attached pigeon feathers, acorn cap "earrings" (it's since lost one), and washed hair gathered from brushes. I never found a use for this piece -- until now.

Sights and Sounds

I spotted this lily on my way home from the post office. This is untouched out of the camera (which I'd turned sideways to get the shot). More detail is in the large view.

This entry takes its title from John Dewey High School's wonderful cultural smorgasbord combining art exhibit and concert. As a member of the Concert Choir back in the early 70s, my involvement was more on the music end. (At one time I belonged to four choruses simultaneously: Concert Choir, Girls' Chorus, Pop Chorus, and New York's All-City Chorus. Illness forced me to drop the last of those, though I still remember singing "Just A Song At Twilight" (and the tune!) at my audition.)

"Sights and Sounds" program cover, Dec. 14 and 15, 1973

My singing continues, though in a different manner and at a different venue, and I've finally posted the latest of those performances (joined by storytelling and poetry), at eSnips....

Recording from Performers Circle on April 27, Part 1 (11:46, 14.8 MB): I followed up my usual extemporaneous a cappella singing with a telling of "One Summer's Day in 1999" (titles here and below link to text) and then my poem "Labor Intensive," since by that time I had recently discovered its reprinting in Prof. John K. Shank's "Jones Ironworks, Inc." (More on that is in this entry.)

Recording from Performers Circle on April 27: Encore (16:17, 20.5 MB): We were a small group that night, with not many signed up to perform, so we went for a second round. I've learned that I'm now known as the "Moose Lady," due to my telling back in February of my encounter with a moose (the text is in this entry; the recording is here). I told my audience that after this next performance I might be recast as the "Roach Lady," then proceeded to perform "A Night With Max."

(Every so often my emotions get the best of me, so I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the end. It's difficult for me to control, but I blame it on perimenopause. I figure that if my mother could cry at Marx Brothers movies -- when the lovers were about to be separated or the theater closed down, or whatever subplot supported all the hijinks -- then I can feel sad over the death of a roach with whom I'd kept company for two hours in the middle of the night.)

The cactus patch near the post office has been budding and blossoming.

Large view

Can compare with "Cactus 1" and "Cactus 2" from April 28.

I then aimed for a more isolated shot, not realizing that I was getting an in-flight bee in the bargain.

The bee is near top center and can be seen even better in the large view.

On Friday night, Mary and I took an evening stroll and retraced a route we don't take too often in the dark. This time I had my tripod with me and set out to photograph the optical illusion we'd seen weeks ago.

Back then, we came upon what looked like an arch in the distance (far left, first of six images). Its shape reminded me of the arch in New York's Washington Square, which I had passed repeatedly while growing up (Over on Flickr, Checco has a night shot of that arch here). Or the Arc de Triomphe in Paris (where I haven't yet been).

I didn't remember seeing an arch in our neighborhood and figured we were looking at an optical illusion. The shapes started resolving themselves as we neared what was ultimately a palm tree (the "arch opening"), a streetlamp (the right edge of the "wall") and electrical wires (the "top" of the arch). The tree sank mostly out of sight as we descended a dip in the road and re-emerged as we climbed toward the top of a rise.

The illusion didn't seem quite so pronounced on Friday night, perhaps because the amount of foliage has increased (especially around the "arch"). Or maybe because I now knew what I was looking at. More detail is in the large view.

On Saturday night the Woodview Coffeehouse departed from its usual "first Friday night of the month" schedule so that it wouldn't conflict with the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival in St. Augustine. Woodview's feature this month was the extraordinary Amy Carol Webb. Several of her songs were so powerful that I wasn't the only one searching for something with which to wipe my cheeks. Other songs had us rollicking. And her spoken storytelling was just as riveting as her music.

Recording from Woodview Coffeehouse on May 12 (8:57, 11.3 MB): Woodview's format is first open mic/feature/second open mic. I was the last of three in the second open mic and so closed out the evening, again with extemporaneous a cappella singing, followed by a performance of "Retention Pond in C-Sharp Major."

Second Chance

"Totem." Click here for a larger view.

For Sunday Scribblings. The entry below is a free-write done on the spot during a Writers' Circle group meeting, in which our prompt was, "Trash or Treasure." More on the group is in this entry....

"Trash provides" is one of Mary's stock sayings, and the trash in Boston was indeed a windfall. The furniture left on the curb had outfitted our Dorchester apartment, such that when we moved down here -- to a house outfitted with 50-year-old furnishings, trash to some but treasures of my childhood -- our found furniture made its way to Goodwill in our quest to add as little as possible to the landfill.

When I had neither the time nor space nor presence of mind for fiction, trash saved my sanity. Late the night before garbage day I patrolled the blocks of our neighborhood, gathering up discarded wood, tiles, cabinets, whatever caught my fancy to become mixed media art. Some of it sold. Talk about low overhead.

A rehabilitated cabinet rescued from the curb. This post tells more.

To date my most ambitious project was a 7-foot-tall sculpture called "Totem," which now lives with our friend Mea up in Boston. One night, near midnight, Mary and I loaded onto our four-wheelie a plethora of trash from a single house. Included were panels, 7 feet high and 11 inches wide, that had formed bifold closet doors. Most had holes kicked into them.

Two of those bifold panels, still attached, serve as light barriers at our bedroom door down here. But I had taken one, cleaned it, and painted it brown. I turned it upside-down and filled the kicked-in hole with pigeon feather fluff I'd collected at the subway station. Into the fluff I placed baby birds, their mouths wide open, that I had sculpted from discarded office paper that I had pulped, mixed with gesso, and painted.

Mama bird was more sculpted paper pulp, resplendent with collected pigeon feathers. She guarded the chicks.

The equivalent of a ream of discarded office paper formed trailing bark and branches on the board. I'd used a sculpting knife to give the bark its texture. I sculpted leaves, a face looking out beneath the birds and a sun/moon combination above them inlaid with pieces of a broken mirror I'd found on the street. Finally, amidst the leaves and bark I had sculpted an orange lizard, guided in my shaping by pictures of lizards in Mary's issue of Scientific American.

Before we left for Florida I gave "Totem" to Mea because her son Tobias loved the lizard. When "Totem" was on display at our local cafe, A Strong Cup of Coffee (named after one of its owners, Daniel Strong), the lizard was the perfect height for a toddler. Every time Mea and Tobias were in Strong Cup, she told me, her little boy toddled over to the sculpture and planted a kiss on the lizard.

That prompted me to make him his own lizard. But when Mary and I prepared for our move I wanted Mea to have the entire sculpture. The trash had become creative treasure for me, and then an emotional treasure for a little boy and his mom.

"Organism." More about this piece is here.

My Flickr post "Crone Goddess" includes a description of my sculpting process. Other examples include "Conjuring Goddess", "Amazon", "Necklace", and "Spring" (one of my first mixed-media pieces after my move to Florida). My entry "Demeter or Bust" describes the challenge of paper pulp sculpting in a tropical climate.

Algebraic Sestina for the Ocean

October 15, 2005: Daytona Beach, Florida, at sunrise.

"Sestina is a poetry form that sounds too much like algebra to me."
-- Colleen, in a comment accompanying this entry.

I saw that after I had followed the link from her homage to the ocean to Sunday Scribblings and had already decided to join in with an ocean entry.

I thought: Why not do both?....

Algebraic Sestina for the Ocean

To undertake Pythagorean feats,
Or write about subtractions in the sand?
I sit, Muse cleaved in two by bladed thoughts:
The sea in one, the other stirred by math.
Quadratic ebb and flow, perhaps, a line
And then a grid, new theorems taking form.

I've sat on rock walls, mesmerized by form,
The ocean glass, then froth. Watched diving feats
Of pelicans and gulls. A jetty line
Breaks water from its anchor in the sand,
Grows slippery in spume, stones piled in math
That measures splash, a road of dammed-up thoughts.

On calmer nights I float on buoyed thoughts,
The ocean of my brain a shapeless form
Whose neurons spark a phosphorescent math,
As though the patterns there were schoolgirl feats
Awaiting pencil tests, my gritty sand
Small points of reason straining toward a line.

I cannot fight the straight horizon line
That keeps its distance from my tide-pulled thoughts.
What drops have formed my soul? What grains of sand?
What salt-encrusted air affords me form
That twists me toward imaginary feats
Whose physics fall away? Clear pools of math

Dry up into the simpler shells of math:
The chambered Nautilus, its life a line
Curved into mortal coil. No startling feats
But life and death, the transience of thoughts.
A spark of poem that struggles toward its form.
These scattered words dull irritants. Like sand.

So let's start over. Here's a bucket, sand.
We're in a world where all we know of math
Is counting toes while piglets take their form.
Sharp bird tracks sink a many-crisscrossed line
As surf rolls over mud to clear our thoughts
And we begin anew. Our greatest feats

Not feats of formulae. My tattered thoughts
Refuse to walk a line, or take a form.
Let me be sand. My heart will do the math.

Dorchester Bay, Massachusetts. After a heavy snowfall one winter, Mary and I snowshoed up and down Carson Beach.

The Five

Happy Cinco di Mayo! I took this photograph in the same cactus garden as this shot from October 2005. More detail is in the large view. Another flower, photographed in the same patch and on the same day as the one above, is here.

On April 6, Colleen (Loose Leaf Notes) gave me a Thinking Blogger Award. "Those who have been awarded are asked to name five others to pass the 'thinking blogger' torch on to," she writes. You can find the four other recipients here.

It's been a tough job narrowing these down, and there are many folks out here who deserve this award. But the rule is to pick five, and I'm going to choose three among mine who aren't yet on my blogroll here on Blogger, but whom I've read for years over on Open Diary. So here goes....

1. A Dog With A Blog
Dave Dog comes first because I've just read his May 4 entry, "Drip," and I want to scream at him that he's got to get his stuff out to a wider audience than "OD Members Only."

Yes, you must join Open Diary (it's free) to read him. I encourage you to click here and do it, if only to read this entry, which is Dave at his finest. He's got portraits like this salted throughout his blog. He's also got entries dictated by cats, the goings-on at church, his poems, his songs, his to-do lists. Powerful pieces, some narrative, some lyric, pop up amidst things like cooking forays that make my mouth water.

But my mouth usually waters most when I visit his blog on Saturdays. Because on Fridays he goes to the Watering Hole, and then he details its cast of characters in some of the most poignant, passionate, take-no-prisoners language that I have been privileged to read. Which makes me want to drag him by the collar out of his OD corner, like all his other readers who want to see his stories more widely published. Additional prodders welcome.

2. Middle-Grey Matter - In Re: The Cerebro-Cardiac Dialogues Of A Forensic Photographer
I first found thingfish23 through his blog The Taming of the Band-Aid, with his stunning photographs, nature- and home-based commentary, and links of which I have yet to take full advantage. It was through him that I discovered Bugguide.Net, which has helped me decode many of the insects that have fascinated me ever since I moved to Florida and picked up my first "good camera."

But I'm focusing here on Middle-Grey Matter because when thingfish isn't training his camera on beauty and natural wonder, he is documenting death and often ugliness. It takes an extraordinary temperament to do what he does. It takes an extraordinary temperament wedded to striking prose to write what he writes. And he ties both of those together with a soul-searing compassion and candor that none of my articulateness here can ever do justice to. I can only give thanks there are people like him in this world.

3. Therapy for the Soul
Sunshine Wolf labors on the front lines of public education and her stories are powerful, hilarious, and heartbreaking by turns. For example, check out the slices of life in "Sleeping Beauty and Other Fairy Tales" and "Sex, Lies, and Video Tapes," the dilemmas in "Sweet and Sour," and the epiphany in "An Opportunity Missed." When I thought of including Sunshine Wolf here, the one entry of hers that came to me most vividly was "Too Jaded? Or Not Jaded Enough......"

Then read a piece she's drawn from another source, "What Teachers Make," for a useful reality-check.

4. Rubies in Crystal
Brenda Clews's prose, poetry, and art combine sharp intellect and straightforward vulnerability with a sensory richness that often stops me in my tracks. Her turns of phrase make me go back for a re-read, the way I hold quality fudge in my mouth to let its flavor and texture linger on my tongue, because swallowing it all too fast and too soon would be just plain wrong.

Take, for instance, "All-Seeing," a multi-sensory epic of enormous power crafted in an amazing eye-blink of 56 words. Or take "A Bouquet of Unopened Bulbs," which begins as a pleasant verbal snapshot that launches into a geologic and evolutionary discourse with the fearlessness and grace of a cliff diver. Treatise and poetry intersect, layered like sedimentary rock but melding, leaving past and present transparent to each other in stunning juxtapositions.

As if word-painting weren't enough, take a look at Brenda's "Dancing of the Selves." That self-portrait culminates here, accompanied by poetry and capping a series that details her creative process in equally vibrant fashion. In addition, her SoundClick link takes you to her well-sculpted aural performances.

(Reading "Bouquet...," I thought of another Thinking Blogger who combines poetic and scientific sensibilities, so a bonus award goes to biology professor and poet Paul Decelles over at "The force that through...". Take a look at how data collection morphs into a visceral feast in his poem "Ears in the Field.")

5. Chuck. Awarded posthumously.
When I first started blogging in 1999, Chuck was calling himself "Blather." He died of cancer in October 2004. Open Diary archived its unused diaries at that time, but it has preserved Chuck's entries back to September 2003, when he began the last of his OD accounts. Only the most recent "diary contents" page is visible now, but his "calendar of entries" allows further access. I wish you had a chance to read more.

A survivor of horrific childhood sexual abuse (addressed briefly here), Chuck also survived many avenues of his own self-destruction and emerged from them a man of caring and courage beyond any adjectives I can plug in. He could be wildly irreverent -- for example, waiting until he could find the humor in how he'd been mugged, and finding ways to present physical pain I can't imagine in a way that entertained while it enlightened -- for example, in "Turkey Talk." Then there are entries like his letter to his (non-existent) daughter.

Until his death, all of his diary entries were publicly accessible and set so that anyone could leave him a note, which often left him open to attacks. That can be tough enough for someone in good health. Chuck was dying and fighting for his life until the last, with an unparalleled ability to make at least some of his readers laugh and cry at the same time.

Live at "This Old House"/Fire Moon/Dancin' Fool

Large view

Thanks to This Old House for using my photo of beach sunflowers in its article, "Going Native in the Garden." The photo appears on the last page of the article, from which I've taken this screen shot.

TOH contacted me after noticing the shot I'd originally posted here. Flickr has been a wonderful site for giving my photos exposure (pun intended).

We've been smelling smoke around here lately, off and on, most likely due to the Georgia wildfires. The haze probably also colored tonight's moon.

I took the shot below at 8:18 PM (EST) on May 1, about 10 hours before Full Moon. This is the Full Flower Moon, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac -- also called the Full Corn Planting Moon and the Full Milk Moon.

Mary, however, calls this the Fire Moon. I used a 1/30-second exposure at f/6.3 and took this shot 35 minutes after moonrise. By the time I finished my grocery shopping it had lost its color.

Except for cropping, I've done no adjustment on this shot. The extensive blaze in Georgia (which as of last night had consumed 125 square miles) has sent smoke down this far into central Florida. I didn't smell it when I took this shot, but I smelled it when Mary and I took our walk early this morning, at the time of these Moon photos, when the Moon was much closer to zenith.

According to this article, health alerts have been issued as far south as Orlando, which is southeast of us.

On Sunday night, I found the closest thing yet in my community to the unbridled joy I'd experienced at Dance Freedom back in Cambridge....

When Mary and I first moved here from Boston in 2003, I got involved almost immediately with our local creative communities. That involvement was instrumental to my adjustment to life in central Florida. Without it, getting over my homesickness for the adopted city I'd left behind would have taken much longer. Coupled with this area's stunning natural resources, I soon found that almost everything I loved about Boston had its counterpart here, with a couple of notable exceptions.

One is a good public transportation network, which I don't expect to see here any time soon. Free-dance was another. I'd been to dances here, but they weren't the same.

Until Sunday night.

The same folks who host the Woodview Coffeehouse open mic held a "Spring Fling" evening of dinner and dance, with live performers and music selections dating across several decades. Although the format differed from Dance Freedom's, the energies at the Spring Fling were equally free-spirited. As one person commented, this was just about the wildest non-alcoholic party she'd ever seen.

I got one heckuva workout, which gave me the chance to meet good folks, including neighbors. People whom I already knew hadn't seen me in this context before. ("I thought you were just a writer," one quipped.)

I hadn't started dancing -- truly dancing -- until I moved to Massachusetts. Before then, I had visualized characters dancing in my head, but had been too afraid to actually move, myself. I'd been taught how to waltz in time for my Sweet 16, but that had been someone else's idea of how I ought to move. It hadn't helped that my first instinct was to lead.

I want to see the simulation again. The model was exquisite, they all are or they wouldn't be in the catalogues. But I want this Sportsmaster. I want to see what I could do if I could walk, but I think I want it for a much greater reason than that. I am tingling all over. There is someone in me who is struggling to get out, and I think the Sportsmaster can free her.

"Choreographer" was the first short story I wrote after my move to Massachusetts in 1983. That year it won the New England Science Fiction Association's Short Story Prize at Boskone. It went on to be published in The River Reader in 1985 and won the River Reader Prize for Fiction.

Its protagonist, Rina, is a quadraplegic who finds a way to dance by creating her virtual counterpart with the help of a body graphics simulator. In doing so she risks everything, including Rodney, the monkey trained to be her physical assistant.

I told them: yes, I am a quadraplegic. No, I am not on public assistance. Yes, it was my choice. Yes, I refused a ServoNurse and now I want a simulator. No, I am not mentally incapacitated. Yes, I have collateral.

I was being very careful. I am scared.

Finally, one bank of reputable stature agreed to loan me the money for a Sportsmaster. Long-term payback, as generous as they can be with someone in my position. I am sure I want this, and I am not sure. My teeth still have muscles for gritting, and I gritted them, and gave my name, identification numbers and my one remaining account that goes for food and shelter. My collateral was sitting in my lap and twirling my hair in his fingers. I looked down at him with tears in my eyes. I wondered if I am indeed of sound mind.

"Choreographer" grew out of my own need to dance and my own emotional paralysis. The characters in my childhood fantasies took many of their cues from the ice skating I watched on TV as a kid, only my visualizations took those movements further. My fantasy people had supernatural powers. When they danced, they violated the laws of physics with impunity.

Back in the early 70s, the real-world ice skater whose strength and power most stunned me was the Russian pairs skater Irina Rodnina. Hence the character names "Rina" and "Rodney" in my story.

I felt my ribcage moving in my chair, my neck making small circles as the Rina on the screen danced before me. I felt a touch of envy. But I have recreated myself; she comes to me as a guide. She is the woman I want to be, and she is the woman I already am. Sometimes this becomes confusing.

Before I was able to move freely, myself, I often felt my own muscles responding to dance music. I already knew how I wanted to move. I had watched my fantasy people dance that way for years, unself-consciously and unfettered. I could accept "their" sensuality, but was still terrified of my own.

I chose music that is more grandiose, with swells that filled the living room with vibrations. And in doing so, I felt myself changing, as though a strange power filled the space behind my eyes. As though the pressure there was driving tears out of me, to make room for something else.

The Rina on the screen is more aggressive now, more feral. She and I are partners, and as I recreate her she reintroduces me to myself. Together, we can move as no other human being moves ... and yet, we are very, very human. My frailty lies in my dead limbs. Her frailty lies in the fact that she is a picture.

I was renting a small house in Woburn at the time. Of its six rooms, its kitchen was by far the largest, providing me with a sizeable linoleum "dance floor." I set up a mirror, slipped Thomas Dolby's The Golden Age of Wireless into my cassette tape player, and started freeing my body with the help of, "She Blinded Me With Science." Timidly at first, with a little swaying from side to side. I forget how long it took before I could lift my feet off the floor.

Burning a candle at both ends, I put up the Sportsmaster as collateral. I felt as though my eyes were made of fire.

Then I went to my telecatalogue and ordered the most advanced music synthesizer I could get. Full orchestra. Full range of sound effects. Instant interface with the Sportsmaster.

When my errands were done, I asked Rodney to bathe me in the most heavily scented perfumed lotions and soaps I owned. I told him to move slowly and lightly, so that I could get to know myself wherever I still had feeling. More than ever I wished there was someone here to hold and hug me. More than ever I wished I could hug myself.

The character Rina submits her dances -- her virtual self -- to a public access channel. (Writing in 1983, I had no concept of the Internet.) Her viewers believe the simulation is real.

After dinner, we sat by the television and watched the dream-Rina. And so did some million-odd other people. There was something about the way she moved that fascinated them.

After that, I received a call from the public access people. They wanted me to do more. They asked me if I will take a live spot and I gracefully declined. They jokingly asked me if I was another Garbo and I jokingly said no.

Eventually Rina recaps her expenses and begins to create a virtual troupe of dancers. The income from her art opens up the possibility that she might one day be able to pay for treatments in muscle and nerve regeneration.

One of us is trembling, and I can't figure out which one. I tell [Rodney], in soft, loving tones, that it is not proper for collateral to shiver; in reply, he hops off me to go turn on the music. My first appointment is for the day after tomorrow. I lean in toward the Sportsmaster with my stylus in my mouth, and get back to work. Some day, very soon, I am going to dance.

The catharsis of writing "Choreographer" did for me what its fictional Sportsmaster did for Rina. Not long after I had finished drafting the story, I went to a block party hosted by the Grolier Poetry Bookshop off Harvard Square. Feeling vulnerable, I fought through my fear and finally liberated my internal dancer from her dungeon.

Since that time I've been asked more than once, including Sunday night, if I danced professionally.

Professionally? Nope. Free-spiritedly? Yep.

Freed-spiritedly.

About 90 people attended the Spring Fling, and there's talk of holding more dances like it. Count me in.

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