le fin du monde

Say what you will about this tortuous road we call the twenty-tens, there's an awful lot of life out there to love.

Examples:

Jack sits across from me in a bright red shirt that reads: Give Blood (You Selfish Bastard). The world may end tomorrow, but he and I—at least—will not be among the looters.

The crazy lady in the Bushwick coffee shop (who has been serenading us with hoarsely rendered jazz standards through her toothless lipstick maw) just broke into a chorus of yodels. Full-voiced, flesh tingling yodels.

The last time I came to this cafe, the sidewalks and trees were winter bare. Today, a shock of green bedecks the streets. A pair of heels (yes, heels—and cherry red at that) are strung over a power line outside an artists' shop.

Crazy lady again. She's asked the very patient counter girl if she's aware the world might end. At six o'clock tomorrow. You're a very nice person, she says, before taking her sideshow out into the twilit world.

That's my new favorite word, by the way: twilit. If the world ends tomorrow, I will have found that much marrow at least to suck from out between the piles and piles of bones.

It occurs to me how much we human creatures learn—on our feet, our backs, by the seats of our pants—and how quickly we adapt. Here I am, nine weeks convalescent, damn near weaned off yoga. I dance in fits and painful spurts. The world has stopped its making sense.

How soon we learn to part our hair a different way, to take honey over sugar in our tea, to fit our lives around the current void. I'm eight months living from a suitcase: four pairs of pants, one pair of sheets. One makes one's way. I've spent whole days in the last two months on doctors' tables, in waiting chairs, rubbing my fraying boots across the same industrial carpet pill. We bring ourselves to suffer any ill, provided we survive.

Denied the fruits of our labor, we plant the seeds of contingency. And when those are dashed away by rain, we spend more time crying than it takes to grow another set.

I'm just saying: if the world ends tomorrow, we'll all just have to figure it out. What do we need with a new world when this one has never ceased to change?

when one runs out of roses

. . . one improvises.

In other news, I danced last night. And woke this morning to glutes abloom with muscle knots. Not to mention one sore-ass sacrum.

Worth it for the first four tandas with Jack in twice as many weeks, and for the way he said, "I don't need to dance with anybody else tonight."

I may be crippled again by Monday, but—ladies and gentlemen—life's too freaking short.

I miss my body electric

Since gone are my ambitious days of yoga and the library, my nights of torso-twisting tanguera body bliss, I've had to fill my time in other ways. First among these ways is trying not to cry. On good days, I am full of what I like to call recovery hope. On bad days, to go two hours without tears is quite the feat. Some faceless and malevolent force has slashed my pillow from the underside, spilling all the down. I replace the feathers with synthetic substitutes, prosthetic hours. In place of practice, I swim laps. In place of logging sedentary hours before the laptop screen, I go to chiropractors to be poked and plied. I see doctors, hoping one will find the fix to bring me back to life. I take deep breaths. I walk at dopy tourist pace. I carry only what I absolutely need, to spare the extra weight. I take elevators. I take cabs. I let my boyfriend carry me up stairs. I lie on my back. I lie on my side. I cramp, I twist. I futilely rub wherever's sore. I watch hours and hours of internet TV.

I am impatient. But I refuse to cease to learn. I've learned to cry alone, so as not to burden friends who've taken up the cause of keeping me afloat. I've learned that even when you're full to effing burst with Grateful, you still can take for granted something simple like the ability to move. And I've learned that there are always silver linings, or—at the very least—unadulterated good to harvest even in the worst of awful times.

Beyond the obvious: I have swimming, I have writing, I have Jack. So I take it like a crack addict, which is to say, one day at a time. I let things unfold in twice the time, I swim my thirty laps a day, and then I try again. The only thing I want (like breathing) is to dance.

(Let it be soon.)

In the interval, I watch—trying to cultivate my writer's observation deck, that infinite expanse behind my eyes.

Whereas before I found my stillness only in the movement, I'm faced now with finding the movement in my stillness.

here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sap

To be sure, between the lady part cancer scare and the herniated discs, I have complained a lot of late.

Really, since September, in my self-imposed exile, self-shortened by the crisp call of a Northeast October, I've been riding my one-woman roller coaster through the Depths of Despair. The peaks have been higher than the drops were low, but I screamed bloody murder all the same.

I've struggled with gratitude. Easy to come by at the tops and crests, arms up and face to the blinding sun. Woohoo escapes your lips and all gods and grandeur answer back.

Then the car catches on the hydraulic brakes, your neck jerks, and the fun comes to a complete and semifinal stop. Five weeks pass in slothdom and sedentary fever. You wonder who you are without all that you have worked so goddamned hard to be grateful for, those big yellow life rafts that steer you through your self-created shipwrecks. How easy it is to lose face, to lose footing.

Four months ago, I fell for a man who's brought me nothing but blessings. Abundance in Bohemia, a living fit for kings. And that man appears to have the patience of ten. Note how he cares for me, carries me down subway stairs, ferries me in service lifts and . . . (forgive me if I gloat) breakfasts me in bed.

I write while he writes. I sleep while he dances. So what if I crane my face away at three am to cry myself to sleep—the very next day he dries my tears. This too shall pass. I'm young and vital and my back will heal. Today the Quackopractor even let me swim.

(Moving through the YMCA pool, I am exultant.)

grounded

I've stopped counting the days.

I've also shot to hell the theory that says I write best when I'm miserable, because—hell, take away tango, yoga, etcetera and I barely know who I am. Add the mandatory five pounds I've gained (so far) from fat lady rest, and there's not much left in me for lemon squeezing.

On the upside, my friends are really good to me. (Not that I feel guilty about this . . . after two ugly break-ups at the hands of emotionally retarded fuckwit fortysomethings, two Plagues of Locusts and one quarter life crisis, followed almost immediately by a brush with the big C .)

And on the down, we still don't have a diagnosis. Could be hip or back or gluteus medius. Could need surgery, could need six more weeks of rest. Could need ice, could need heat. Could respond to stretching, could get worse.

And here I sit, lumpy, losing muscle definition, losing patience, losing my grip. Paying for cabs I can't afford to ferry my gimp ass across Manhattan. Picking fights with the scary version of Jack that lives in my head and will never love me.

I'm not out of optimism yet, though. Just, almost out. May the MRI bring answers!

the healing power of pessimism

Having not been raised religious, my guilt muscle seems disproportionately defined. I shy from sloth and rage and all those sins, even while I tell my friends they ought not bother with such parochial concerns.

If I practiced what I preach, I would have a lot more fun.

Be that as it may, I do not enjoy convalescence. An afternoon is one thing. A hungover Sunday with fettucine alfredo is another. A prescribed ten day hiatus from all activity is about to kill me.

Day one: prosecco followed by pudding cake. Pain.

Day two: overdid it—courtesy of work, class and the NYPL. Discovered chemical burns caused by Thermacare patches. Thanks, Universe.

Day three: more library (but hell, at least I was sedentary), Paganini caprices at Carnegie Hall with Jack, then late night Bedford biergarten. Took a lot of taxis, rode the service lift. More pain.

Day four: bed, followed by pasta, followed by bed. Less pain.

Day five: spent three fifths in bed, but spent the other two limping and seizing from stem to stern, blinking back tears. Lots of pain. Thought it would be a good idea to meet Jack at Roko. I was mistaken. (Don't worry, I didn't try to dance. Just sat at the front desk trying not to cry.)

Here we are at the close of day six and the situation continues to spiral. I've gained five pounds, choked up in front of my boyfriend, and had to postpone work until seven pm because I couldn't put weight on my left leg when I woke up this morning. I'm sick to death of the sound of myself complaining, sick of calling in favors, and sicker still of saying thank you to those who give and give and give. I'm afraid they must be sick of me.

I've never been good at asking for or accepting help. But I'm getting great at gratitude.

I'm saying this now, in case the Universe is listening in: please just fix my back. Restore me to my yoga mat, in tango shoes, where I belong. And to the arms of Jack.

on the fragility of existence

Point of fact: I have a newfound patience for the elderly and the impaired.

Never again will I curse in exasperation as some hunchbacked or otherwise limping soul struggles its way down the subway steps, holding the rail for dear life, thus causing me to miss the R train.

There will always be another R train. Moreover, that simple schlep can be both daunting and excruciating for the in-any-way infirm. Since I sprained my hip, I've come to dread the simplest exertions made necessary by life in NYC: that easy twelve block walk, the madcap dash to catch a train, the idea of being on one's feet from dawn to dawn . . .

On the bright side: I was sent to a charming young orthopede named—shityounot—Dr. DuChey (please withhold your snickers til the end of the post; it's not pronounced that way), who took x-rays and determined the problem to be soft-tissue (and thereby not bone) related. He prescribed ten days of Fat Lady Rest: no tango, no yoga, no stairs, no . . . "et cetera." In essence, I'm to eat bonbons in bed. Alone.

On the brighter side: I had a hilarious run-in with my former boss while wearing my paper examination bloomers (see above). Followed by a trip through the waiting room clutching the aforementioned shorts and exclaiming, "Yeah, you want a piece of this."

And, on the brightest side: with me was the Waldorf to my Statler, to translate me out of speculative doom—and ply me with Prosecco when all was said and done.