Buxton Deporter

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

Going The Distance

We mean ‘stand back’ when we say Distance, in these pandemic times. Not a story, but real life.

Yet Sedona, in a far world, has learned to fight. Kill even.

She has also learned to appreciate the artfulness of students who weren’t born to dance. Including herself. And she marvels at the community of people who simply celebrate everything and everyone. It is all so good!

Like a morphine-induced coma must be, after the shark attack.

She walked into the water on one beach, but washed up onto a different shore.

But life is like that, right?

She wants to go the distance and find them again. Whatever, wherever, it is.

Even the Distance

A Toy Saw Lies In The Gravel

A toy saw lies in the gravel

Its handle is orange

Every cinder block in the wall is scored with colored chalk

One of those kids must be tall

 

I never see or hear them

Maybe it’s a weekend thing

But that doesn’t make sense

I never hear or see them

 

Visitation is during the Mon-to-Fri I guess

Unless one of those adults

Who clank and bump around all night below me

Is the one with the chalk and toys.

 

I am an old person. But we all think young don’t we?

I think of Sedona, quarantined from a world – a dream world? – she feels she lived in. A lost love, a lost child. 

She doesn’t have to stand back. She can’t get there from here.

 Confined With All Of You

I am confined to the home in the national/global quarantine, with all of you.

My N99 organic cotton mask is still out in the sun, sanitizing after its foray to the grocery store pick up yesterday evening.

No one else was wearing a mask nor gloves. Thanks guys.

“It’s your funeral” – and 3x – 3x – 3x = the peeps to whom you might be passing This Thing. 

Some people are just stubborn and play follow the leader too well.

There is a lot to learn. The avalanche of conflicting information makes a lot of homework.

That’s fine if you’re confined looking for something to do.

Well at least I have the weekend. 

I guess this will be the shortest post on this blog. 

But, it is my day off.

We’re all dancing around something, right? In the mystery, in the evolution, and the mystery of our lives.

 

 

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

London 1982

Well, to begin with I wasn’t there.

But I probably should have been.

I was still dancing, choreographing, and producing theater.

I had an agent to help me get commercial work, to support my free lance career. I was studying acting with the Sara Baker Actors Workshop classes.

I was still teaching ballet at influential post secondary institutions.

I didn’t get much commercial work. I was hopeless at Nivea cream and beer advertisements.

Oh  – and here’s a true story!

I did an audition for a commercial in Toronto, didn’t get the job, moved to Los Angeles, and there, saw that commercial on television.

In the American version, the actress was not my competitor. I would have done a different shoot if I had won the job.

And a few days later this actress walked into a business I was working in!

Her name was Amanda Banks. The funny thing was, she looked down the rows of desks, to where I sat at the back. And she smiled and waved at me. Funny, huh?

And we talked and I told her how I knew her. She was friendly and said keep in touch.

All of this came to mind today while I was watching a British drama. Noticing a supporting actress. She has a small chin, and large teeth. I have seen her in a few series.

This lady would never get a job in North America, specifically, Hollywood.

Never!

When I was 32 years old and got an agent for film or television, she told me I should go to Paris. I just didn’t look like The Girl Next Door, which is how you won a role in US movies being produced in Canada. Yeah, I should go to Paris.

Not on the agenda. Work permits, etc., not easy to do. Unless you’re famous already.

I didn’t have a receding chin and big teeth, and I should have gone to London.

Now I’m a writer (so I say!) co-writing a series of novels about a young dancer who doesn’t have the perfect body, or the perfect connections, even though she is so close to Los Angeles.

And whose family has the money to send her to NYC, NBS, or other amazing ballet summer intensives, to excel, and make connections.

But Sedona doesn’t. Life is what happens when you’re making plans, right?

Her shocking detour is almost a year long. And after the “life is what happens when you’re making plans” ends, she resumes a time line that, at first, barely makes sense.

Going to London in 1982 is something that never happened for me. Yet, some days it seems like I am still trying to pick up from the that-didn’t-happen-timeline and make sense of things as they are now.

Have you ever had a moment when you thought or felt something akin to that?

How has your writer timeline gone? Going?

Unplugged?

Isolation alone at home – but it could be just any Sunday when I don’t have a social event.

The question is, and it has gone through all our minds, I’m sure, is “but for how long?”

No answer to that!

Tomorrow, if I go out, I will see a total of three other people.

One at closer quarters than six feet because his home is so small one can’t get six feet away from anyone else, in any given room.

He needs help with most daily activities.

Today, and yesterday, after food shopping for him and myself, I got glued to the screens.

Plugged In, Immersed

Alternating from news, to entertainment, exercises, and back to the news.

I don’t get breaking news. I do not have television, but I do get live streaming with recent news.

The radio is only a few moments behind, but it goes off intermittently.

As far as I know I’m safe and have everything I need.

This ongoing, spreading infection results in me feeling uncomfortably self-centered.

Yet if I’m O.K., I can help you be O.K..

I can stay isolated to a higher degree, take less trips to the shops, use up less of my gloves and alcohol, so you can buy yours.

Sedona, the surfer girl in pointe shoes, gets shockingly, completely unplugged after her date rape, by what happens next.

For almost a year.

We hope her adventure will be engaging for the YA readers. Perhaps become a hit, followed by a couple more books.

Yet, after what the YA readership is going through now in real life, will Sedona’s adventure pale? Will her story come across as “been there, done that”?

Or, will this challenging, surreal time pass and quickly fade into distant memories as life resumes in a new normal?

A very different normal, I’m sure.

Will the novels we’re writing now quickly become Historical Fiction?

Because life as we know it will never return?

No answers, yet.

There’s more to come in endurance for us all in sickness and health.

What do you think?

What is the most difficult aspect of the situation for you right now?

We’re all in limbo, right?

And there is a huge storm coming, weather wise.

Be well.

The first poem I got accepted for publication (in recent years) is How Much Must She Storm, about the world itself pushing back at human avarice and greed. Here it is:

HOW MUCH MUST SHE STORM