And I Did Fly!

On the morning after my performance in the Fall Dance Festival, I stand on the side of the road to watch the butterflies flitting and feasting on goldenrod. The air is almost cool. And dry... It is early fall in Mississippi. I watch the butterflies, aware of my aching body, my eyes blurring over with fatigue. Beauty is restful on this day. Not at all inciting... So I abide with the beauty even as my body speaks to me of the faithful and relentless muse. The muse that inhabits and activates my body without regard for its age or limitations... On the morning after, I am left to suffer the effects, to rest with the effects. My body has been abandoned by the fleeting muse.

To be honest, I am grateful for the pain and the fatigue, grateful that the muse still comes: filling my aged substance for those glorious few moments with the light of inspiration, gifting my aged substance with an ease of movement that is nothing short of miraculous. How is it possible that arthritic joints can forget their ache and stiffness long enough for me to realize effortless movement? How can a seventy-three year old woman step onto a stage and lose the limits usually imposed by age? How does she fly?

I wrote this before I heard of the massacre that took place in Las Vegas, before the unspeakable loss and suffering that is still affecting so many. For a few days I was unable to transfer from my journal these words of my personal and positive experience, to finally re-embrace them and the joy they stand for. Yet they came to me so truly, as the dancing did, and the remarkable freedom that let me draw as a part of my performance. So here they are along with butterflies and goldenrod, along with the drawing/painting that lept forth in response to my dance and the small but wonderfully receptive audience in the theater. See the extras...