A Glimmering Plain

Here's the last of the essay. Thanks so much for reading and all well wishes for my recovery! I'm going to start with new blog posts to usher in the new year. Hope everyone is well!

Every now and then I think about that dance class from years ago,
sitting on the floor, surrounded mostly by women and the one asswipe on the dance floor, twirling like a dervish to portray his death as a dolphin. I read an article once about how swimming with dolphins could help heal you from sexual abuse and assault. Something about the water and their beauty and empathy. I’ve never had an affinity for animals of any kind so I can’t say if it would have worked for me. My dance had been scheduled for the next day. I chose to go it alone and perform to a brief snippet of a jazz tune that Alice Coltrane had composed to honor her husband John. The room would fill with the music I would listen to as I wrote for many years to come. I did not know that then, of course. The future, once a glimmering plain, had become one foot in front of the other, the way it is for so many people, forty years in the desert looking for the promised land. I could not know that my mind would return to me after years of enemy occupation. What I did know is this: I clapped at the end like everyone else, not because I had enjoyed it, but because it was over.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?" Joan Didion

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street Michael Davis

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!