A Rimbaud Kind of Day

Rimbaud by Ariane Pasco/Nice Art

Sunday was a Rimbaud kind of day.

In the morning I posted an aerial image on Facebook of l’Île de la Cité and the Seine in Paris that my friend Anne Hines Reese had posted earlier. This worldwide Facebook interconnectivity is such an astonishing thing. You can participate in a salon that reaches beyond your city, beyond your country, beyond your continent, and discuss whatever subjects fascinate you, with like-minded people.

So I shared this beautiful aerial photo of Paris that morning, and was struck by how much the island looks like a boat from this angle, which made me think of Rimbaud’s poem, “Le Bateau Ivre.” We have a book of his poems in our apartment, but I didn’t have the book at hand in my studio, so went online, looked up the poem, found an English translation, and posted just one stanza below the photo.

"What a Surprise," street art by Kashink

I think a lot about time, especially the spirit of time. Sunday: the Sun’s day: Apollo’s day: a good day for entertainment and enjoyment, a good day to take a break from work. 

Richard and I set out for a long walk from our fifth arrondissement through the fourth through the eleventh to the twentieth. It was a sunny day, bright blue sky, and all along the rue de Charonne we passed newly pasted-up work by one of our favorite street artists, Kashink. Each of her double-eyed colorful heads had either a number or an image on the brow. Richard photographed each one and I wondered aloud if the numbers corresponded to street addresses. We checked, but no. A mystery. We’d have to ask Kashink.

At the corner of rue de Charonne and Boulevard de Charonne, I had a drunken boat conversation with a local clochard wearing a plush cheetah as a stole (C'ést votre petite amie? Oui! Et elle est féroce. Oui! he roared), while Richard shot his portrait, then paid him €2 for the privilege.  

Richard took me to a wonderful old brick factory building on Villa Riberolle, an alley that dead ends at Père-Lachaise cemetery, where artists had either squatted or leased space. We’d considered renting one for a studio that doubled for photography and writing, but I needed something closer to home, or I’d never have used it.

In the Name of Love #4, by Roswitha Guillemin

We walked on to a squat on rue Stendahl to catch the closing day of Walls and Rights (Richard had photographed opening night), an exhibition filled with the work of street artists in support of gender and sexual equality, and AIDS research. We talked with three members of the seven-member art collective, No Rules Corp. And to two artists, Roswitha and Christine, who were long-time friends who have been sending each other postal art for 20 years or so.

Ariane Pasco of Nice Art

Then an artist named Ariane (my favorite mythical figure) walked up to me and handed me a collage with a portrait of Rimbaud on it. A gift! Astonishing! It was black, white and gray with rosy red marks and torn on the edges and I instantly loved it. And at the same time was struck with wonder: I’ve never posted a poem or even a line by Rimbaud on Facebook before. How very odd that the only day I happened to do this, Ariane should give me her collage with the poet’s face on it. I exclaimed over this to her, and to Roswitha and Christine.

Roswitha told me that one day she went to a Serge Gainsbourg event in Paris, and that same day, an envelope with an image of Serge Gainsbourg arrived at her house from her friend Christine. They’d never discussed the French actor/singer. It was just…

What do you call this? The word synchronicity doesn’t seem to capture its magic. I’m looking for a new word to describe this phenomenon, the “aha!” moment that happens when it shows itself so clearly and deliciously. 

I asked the organizer of the show if she had some cardboard that I could place around the collage to protect it on our long walk home. Yes, she said, and brought me a roll of cardboard, which I wrapped in a clean trash bag.

But first we stopped at a restaurant at Place Gambetta. As we sat eating a Caesar salad and onion soup, I looked up at the side of the entrance. There, in big letters: Absinthe Traditionnelle Rimbaud.

Okay, let’s just call it magic.

Later at home, in a phone call with my brother, Jon, I told him the story and he described a similar experience of what he calls “the connectivity of the universe,” with his green building company and community. Then he proceeded to answer a question that Richard and I have in a way you might call lightning (an idea so brilliant I can’t talk about it until we make it happen)—lightning, yes! And magic.   

I think I’m going to name days from now on.

Sunday was Rimbaud Day.

The Drunken Boat

by Arthur Rimbaud,
translated by Rebecca Seiferle, editor, The Drunken Boat

As I descended impassible Rivers,

I felt no longer steered by bargemen;

they were captured by howling Redskins,

nailed as targets, naked, to painted stakes.

What did I care for cargo or crews,

bearers of English cotton or Flemish grain—

having left behind bargemen and racket,

the Rivers let me descend where I wished.

In the furious splashing of the waves,

I — that other winter, deafer than the minds

of children — ran! And the unanchored Peninsulas

never knew a more triumphant brouhaha.

The tempest blessed my sea awakening.

Lighter than cork, I danced the waves

scrolling out the eternal roll of the dead—

ten nights, without longing for the lantern's silly eye.

Sweeter than the flesh of tart apples to children,

the green water penetrated my pine hull

and purged me of vomit and the stain of blue wines—

my rudder and grappling hooks drifting away.

Since then, I have bathed in the Poem

of the Sea, a milky way, infused with stars,

devouring the azure greens where, flotsam-pale

and ravished, drowned and pensive men float by.

Where, suddenly staining the blues, delirious

and slow rhythms under the glowing red of day,

stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyrics,

ferment the red bitters of love!

I know heavens pierced by lightning, the waterspouts

and undertows and currents: I know night,

Dawn rising like a nation of doves,

and I've seen, sometimes, what men only dreamed they saw!

I've seen the sun, low, a blot of mystic dread,

illuminating with far-reaching violet coagulations,

like actors in antique tragedies,

the waves rolling away in a shiver of shutters.

I've dreamed a green night to dazzling snows,

kisses slowly rising to the eyelids of the sea,

unknown saps flowing, and the yellow and blue

rising of phosphorescent songs.

For months, I've followed the swells assaulting

the reefs like hysterical herds, without ever thinking

that the luminous feet of some Mary

could muzzle the panting Deep.

I've touched, you know, incredible Floridas

where, inside flowers, the eyes of panthers mingle

with the skins of men! And rainbows bridle

glaucous flocks beneath the rim of the sea!

I've seen fermenting— enormous marshes, nets

where a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!

Such a ruin of water in the midst of calm,

and the distant horizon worming into whirlpools!

Glaciers, silver suns, pearly tides, ember skies!

Hideous wrecks at the bottom of muddy gulfs

where giant serpents, devoured by lice,

drop with black perfume out of twisted trees!

I wanted to show children these dorados

of the blue wave, these golden, singing fish.

A froth of flowers has cradled my vagrancies,

and ineffable winds have winged me on.

Sometimes like a martyr, tired of poles and zones,

the sea has rolled me softly in her sigh

and held out to me the yellow cups of shadow flowers,

and I've remained there, like a woman, kneeling . . .

Almost an island, balancing the quarrels,

the dung, the cries of blond-eyed birds on the gunnels

of my boat, I sailed on, and through my frail lines,

drowned men, falling backwards, sank to sleep.

Now, I, a boat lost in the hair of the coves,

tossed by hurricane into the birdless air,

me, whom all the Monitors and Hansa sailing ships

could not salvage, my carcass drunk with sea;

free, rising like smoke, riding violet mists,

I who pierced the sky turning red like a wall,

who bore the exquisite jam of all good poets,

lichens of sun and snots of azure,

who, spotted with electric crescents, ran on,

a foolish plank escorted by black hippocamps,

when the Julys brought down with a single blow

the ultramarine sky with its burning funnels;

I who tremble, feeling the moan fifty leagues away

of the Behemoth rutting and the dull Maelstrom,

eternal weaver of the unmovable blue—

I grieve for Europe with its ancient breastworks!

I've seen thunderstruck archipelagos! and islands

that open delirious skies for wanderers:

Are these bottomless nights your nest of exile,

O millions of gold birds, O Force to come?

True, I've cried too much! Dawns are harrowing.

All moons are cruel and all suns, bitter:

acrid love puffs me up with drunken slowness.

Let my keel burst! Give me to the sea!

If I desire any of the waters of Europe, it's the pond

black and cold, in the odor of evening,

where a child full of sorrow gets down on his knees

to launch a paperboat as frail as a May butterfly.

Bathed in your languors, o waves, I can no longer

wash away the wake of ships bearing cotton,

nor penetrate the arrogance of pennants and flags,

nor swim past the dreadful eyes of slave ships.

Le Bateau Ivre

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,
Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs :
Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles
Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.

J'étais insoucieux de tous les équipages,
Porteur de blés flamands ou de cotons anglais.
Quand avec mes haleurs ont fini ces tapages
Les Fleuves m'ont laissé descendre où je voulais.

Dans les clapotements furieux des marées
Moi l'autre hiver plus sourd que les cerveaux d'enfants,
Je courus ! Et les Péninsules démarrées
N'ont pas subi tohu-bohus plus triomphants.

La tempête a béni mes éveils maritimes.
Plus léger qu'un bouchon j'ai dansé sur les flots
Qu'on appelle rouleurs éternels de victimes,
Dix nuits, sans regretter l'oeil niais des falots !

Plus douce qu'aux enfants la chair des pommes sures,
L'eau verte pénétra ma coque de sapin
Et des taches de vins bleus et des vomissures
Me lava, dispersant gouvernail et grappin

Et dès lors, je me suis baigné dans le Poème
De la Mer, infusé d'astres, et lactescent,
Dévorant les azurs verts ; où, flottaison blême
Et ravie, un noyé pensif parfois descend ;

Où, teignant tout à coup les bleuités, délires
Et rythmes lents sous les rutilements du jour,
Plus fortes que l'alcool, plus vastes que nos lyres,
Fermentent les rousseurs amères de l'amour !

Je sais les cieux crevant en éclairs, et les trombes
Et les ressacs et les courants : Je sais le soir,
L'aube exaltée ainsi qu'un peuple de colombes,
Et j'ai vu quelque fois ce que l'homme a cru voir !

J'ai vu le soleil bas, taché d'horreurs mystiques,
Illuminant de longs figements violets,
Pareils à des acteurs de drames très-antiques
Les flots roulant au loin leurs frissons de volets !

J'ai rêvé la nuit verte aux neiges éblouies,
Baiser montant aux yeux des mers avec lenteurs,
La circulation des sèves inouïes,
Et l'éveil jaune et bleu des phosphores chanteurs !

J'ai suivi, des mois pleins, pareille aux vacheries
Hystériques, la houle à l'assaut des récifs,
Sans songer que les pieds lumineux des Maries
Pussent forcer le mufle aux Océans poussifs !

J'ai heurté, savez-vous, d'incroyables Florides
Mêlant aux fleurs des yeux de panthères à peaux
D'hommes ! Des arcs-en-ciel tendus comme des brides
Sous l'horizon des mers, à de glauques troupeaux !

J'ai vu fermenter les marais énormes, nasses
Où pourrit dans les joncs tout un Léviathan !
Des écroulement d'eau au milieu des bonaces,
Et les lointains vers les gouffres cataractant !

Glaciers, soleils d'argent, flots nacreux, cieux de braises !
Échouages hideux au fond des golfes bruns
Où les serpents géants dévorés de punaises
Choient, des arbres tordus, avec de noirs parfums !

J'aurais voulu montrer aux enfants ces dorades
Du flot bleu, ces poissons d'or, ces poissons chantants.
- Des écumes de fleurs ont bercé mes dérades
Et d'ineffables vents m'ont ailé par instants.

Parfois, martyr lassé des pôles et des zones,
La mer dont le sanglot faisait mon roulis doux
Montait vers moi ses fleurs d'ombre aux ventouses jaunes
Et je restais, ainsi qu'une femme à genoux...

Presque île, balottant sur mes bords les querelles
Et les fientes d'oiseaux clabaudeurs aux yeux blonds
Et je voguais, lorsqu'à travers mes liens frêles
Des noyés descendaient dormir, à reculons !

Or moi, bateau perdu sous les cheveux des anses,
Jeté par l'ouragan dans l'éther sans oiseau,
Moi dont les Monitors et les voiliers des Hanses
N'auraient pas repêché la carcasse ivre d'eau ;

Libre, fumant, monté de brumes violettes,
Moi qui trouais le ciel rougeoyant comme un mur
Qui porte, confiture exquise aux bons poètes,
Des lichens de soleil et des morves d'azur,

Qui courais, taché de lunules électriques,
Planche folle, escorté des hippocampes noirs,
Quand les juillets faisaient crouler à coups de triques
Les cieux ultramarins aux ardents entonnoirs ;

Moi qui tremblais, sentant geindre à cinquante lieues
Le rut des Béhémots et les Maelstroms épais,
Fileur éternel des immobilités bleues,
Je regrette l'Europe aux anciens parapets !

J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux ! et des îles
Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur :
- Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles,
Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ? -

Mais, vrai, j'ai trop pleuré ! Les Aubes sont navrantes.
Toute lune est atroce et tout soleil amer :
L'âcre amour m'a gonflé de torpeurs enivrantes.
Ô que ma quille éclate ! Ô que j'aille à la mer !

Si je désire une eau d'Europe, c'est la flache
Noire et froide où vers le crépuscule embaumé
Un enfant accroupi plein de tristesses, lâche
Un bateau frêle comme un papillon de mai.

Je ne puis plus, baigné de vos langueurs, ô lames,
Enlever leur sillage aux porteurs de cotons,
Ni traverser l'orgueil des drapeaux et des flammes,
Ni nager sous les yeux horribles des pontons.

The Best Christmas Gift

How odd it was on Thursday to hear that everyone we know in the U.S.A. was celebrating Thanksgiving, while here in Paris we heard nary a mention of turkey or pumpkin pie.

But we celebrated in our own way with our usual daily gratitude for our work, family, friends, and our lives together in Paris.

Moving on to Christmas: what is your favorite Christmas gift? I mean besides love, money and creativity—something that can be wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree.

For me, it’s always been books. Even as a child, getting a new book was bliss.

Last week, Richard and I and our nephew, Jonathan Edwards, went to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore one night to hear the American novelist, Percival Everett, read an excerpt from his novel. We’d heard him before at Antioch University in Los Angeles. But here in the bookstore, I could immediately buy one of his books.

After the reading I asked him to recommend where to begin. He suggested his comic novel, “I am Not Sidney Poitier.” Both Jonathan and I bought it, and I had the sad experience a few days ago of finishing it. Sad because the world Everett creates in this novel is so rich, so real, I didn’t want it to end. It is about the journey of a young black man, Not Sidney (yes, that is his name) from his childhood with a smart, unsentimental single mother who, through her investments, makes her son staggeringly rich. After a period of living with Ted Turner (and glimpses of Jane Fonda), Not Sidney embarks on a farcical stint at Morehouse College and a terrifying journey through the South where—okay, can’t give that away, can I?

The book is full of absurdity, from a Morehouse professor named Percival Everett who teaches the Philosophy of Nonsense to his earnest students, to Not Sidney's way of handling the cruelty of frat house hazing, which made me laugh so loud I had to run into the kitchen so I wouldn’t awaken Richard.

But wait—it’s more than his humor that makes this novel so brilliant. It’s the mild temperament and voice of the narrator. While people around him are behaving savagely or absurdly, he simply observes. (Think Candide.) And slowly it dawns on the reader that this is the most eloquent telling of how it might feel to be black in the U.S.A., at least in the redneck states, of anything I’ve read. (I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read James Baldwin’s work, but I’m going to get Giovanni’s Room next.)

Street art by Nice Art

But wait—it’s even greater than this. No one has put into words better than Marcel Proust the deepest purpose of reading. Here is what he wrote in a letter:

“It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books…that for the author they may be called “conclusions” but for the reader “incitements”…That is the value of reading and also its inadequacy. To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.” As Alain de Botton writes in his book, How Proust Can Save Your Life, “Even the finest books deserve to be thrown aside.”

There was something about the surreal sensibility of this book that incited the first pages of a new long story (novella? novel? not sure). Inspiration: the greatest gift any book can give us. 

And with that, I want to recommend a few of the most inspiring books I’ve read in the past year. Who knows, one or two of these might inspire you, or someone for whom you're looking for a gift.

Fiction

• The Certificate by Isaac Bashevis Singer (This novel was written in Singer’s sixties and is closely autobiographical, the story of a young Jewish man who arrives in Warsaw from his small Polish village in 1922. He has romantic adventures with three young women while waiting to get his certificate to go to Palestine. This is brilliant writing, the kind of voice that’s so vivid you can’t stop reading. It’s out of print, so you may have to track it down through some online used book store like Abe Books.)

• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia Davis. (I can’t improve on Virginia Woolf’s words in a letter to Roger Fry in which she wrote, “My great adventure is really Proust. Well—what remains to be written after that? …How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp.”)

• The Blue Fox by Sjon (Such a strange and mysterious story told by the Icelandic writer Sjon. It takes place in Iceland and links the destinies of a hunter/priest, a blue fox, a naturalist and a girl with Down syndrome in a tale about compassion. It is a book that seems carved out of ice; it’s minimalist, poetic, and told in a distinctively Scandinavian voice that reminded me of my Norwegian-American maternal grandfather, Julius Heimark’s way of telling a story, colloquial and as simple and straightforward as The Eddas.)

• Self-Portraits: Fictions by Frederic Tuten (Imagine a series of short stories that combine the sensibility of Luis Bunuel's films with Andre Breton's writing, and you'll be half-way to the flavor of this writer's work. The stories seem to be telling an autobiographical dream narrative, sometimes erotic, sometimes hilarious (laugh out loud), and always as close to poetry as fiction gets.)

• N-W by Zadie Smith (stream of consciousness narrative of four characters, Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan, in present-day London. It made me think of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This is one of those books that in the first few pages is slow to get going, then you are truly inside the characters in the most satisfying way, living their life minute by minute, including some surprises that you don't see coming.)

• This is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz  (Interlinked stories about various women in the life of Yunior, a young Dominican-American man whose Don Juan ways end up breaking his own heart. Diaz’s genius is high voltage voice! You can’t put the book down.)

Street art by Miss-Tic

Poetry

• The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Bashō (Seventeenth-century travel writing that chronicles the great Japanese haiku poet's journeys through Japan, interwoven with his poems and his Zen Buddhist vision of eternity in the sensory world around him.)
  

• The Maximus Poems by Charles Olson (A free-verse epic poem that approaches the Massachusetts fishing town of Gloucester through its characters, its history, its ecosystem, and the poet’s inspired personal and mythical vision as well. It marked a new freer direction in American poetry. And strangely, it seemed to bring my own paternal ancestral history to life in me, though I haven’t lived in Massachusetts since I was three years old.) 

• The Iliad by Homer, both Robert Fagles' and Stephen Mitchell's translations  (The greatest epic poem ever written on war. My favorite part is always the way the gods and goddesses are characters as real as the humans.) 

Non-fiction

• The Goncourt Journals (1851-1870) (Two brothers, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, wrote down everything that happened in their literary and social circles during mid-nineteenth century life in Paris. Casual mention of conversations with Flaubert and Turgenieff spice it up. I loved reading in George Painter’s biography about Proust’s self-pity after he read these journals. Why didn’t he know that many interesting people? And then it dawned on him that he did. Proust spent the rest of his life writing about them.)    

• Robert Duncan, The H. D. Book (This is a strange, visionary book, part apprenticeship to his beloved poet idol, Hilda Doolittle, part visionary and poetic musing as befits a book about this great visionary poet.)

• Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer (The best writing I know about religious fundamentalism and its intrinsic domination of women, carried right to its ultimate end in the murder of the most clear-thinking, "disobedient" woman, the brother of these two Mormon brothers, and her baby.)

• Eels by James Prosek (An elegant book about the biology and mythology of this strange fish, from New Zealand to the Sargasso Sea, illustrated with beautiful etchings by the author. Most fascinating are the Maori legends about eels as guardians and monster-seducers.)

Street art by Fred Le Chevalier

Biography & Autobiography

• Marcel Proust A Biography by George D. Painter (A bookseller at Village Voice Bookshop (sob) lent me his copy. I marked it up with so many colored flags that I had to order a copy for myself, and transfer all the markers in order to have all these treasured facts close at hand.)

• The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (One of the greatest works of Japanese literature, Shōnagon weaves short tales, longer ones, lists, and poems about her life as a gentlewoman in the 10th century Court of Empress Teishi in Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto). Fascinating for the way poetry, wit and okashi (that which delights) are a part of every aspect of life, and for the exquisite attention to sensory beauty, especially the clothes of both women and men.)

First Chapter: The Ice Dancer's Tale by Susan Griffin

We are delighted to inaugurate a new feature on Paris Play, one which will, each first Wednesday of the month, present to our readers the first chapter of an as-yet-unpublished novel, by a writer we treasure and want to showcase.

We will present the first ten or so manuscript pages in this space, then you can download the rest of the chapter and finish reading it in PDF format.

We will also ask each writer to provide us with a short craft talk on how the novel came about, and they will be available, in the comments section, to answer your questions about the process. Just leave a comment and we will relay their reply.

There are thousands of online sites, and small magazines, that offer short stories, and poetry, but as a novelist, I wanted some way to spotlight writers who are working in that longer form, and to whet readers' appetites for the rest of the book.

The writers have not submitted, we have asked. It's not a slush pile, it's the tip of a diamond-fine iceberg.

Which leads directly to the first chapter we're presenting this week, from Susan Griffin's novel in progress, The Ice Dancer's Tale.

About Susan

Among twenty books written by Susan Griffin, A Chorus of Stones, the Private Life of War, a New York Times Notable Book, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award, winning the Northern California Book Award. The Book of the Courtesans, A Catalogue of Their Virtues, was a best seller. Woman and Nature, inspired the movement known as eco-feminism. Susan Griffin’s latest book, Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World, the highly praised anthology she co-edited, was published last Spring by the University Of California Press. Named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the new millennium, she has been the recipient of an NEA Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her play "Voices" received an Emmy award for a local television production in 1975 and has been staged all over the world. In 1987, her collection of poetry, Unremembered Country, was awarded the Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal. In 1998 Copper Canyon Press published Bending Home, Poems Selected and New 1967-1998, a finalist for the Western States Poetry Award. She was scriptwriter and narrator for the Academy Award nominated Berkeley in the Sixties. Her work has been translated into 17 languages. She has lectured and read her work at universities and community venues throughout the world. She teaches at the California Institute of Integral Studies and will be the visiting writer in non-fiction this Spring at St Mary’s College in Moraga. She has completed a play in poetry to be set to music called “Canto.” She has written online for The Huffington Post, The Women’s Media Center and Open Democracy. More about her here and about her latest work here.

The Ice Dancer's Tale (c) 2012 by Susan Griffin

Chapter One: Jumping Off Edges

Here we stand suddenly at the confines of human
thought, and far beyond the Polar Circle of the mind.

                                             --Maurice Maeterlinck

 

and remember you can always go outside

really really really far outside

                                                --Ani Difranco “Splinter”

Even today I awaken wondering, was it real? The story shimmers like a legend in my mind, filled with those strange yet glowing images of ice that even today, after so many years, still inhabit my dreams.

            Ice. You may think you know this substance, but you don't. You say it is cold and hard. I would have said so once too. But I tell you now ice is a form of water and like water it moves. If this movement is slow, in the end the action is startling, even dramatic. As I was to discover, a wild heart burns at the core of the frozen North.

            Though certainly I encountered this mysterious power at least once before I saw the frosty region of Kaltelünd, that legendary place which even today cannot be found on any map. Kaltelünd, that country still has a powerful hold on my mind and no wonder. It is real. It has three dimensions. It is located on the earth. But it is also a state of mind. A concept that when I was younger was hard to grasp, as it once was for most of us who came of age in a postindustrial world. No wonder then that this mysterious place would have played such a profound role in changing the way we think. But of course the ancient culture of Kaltelünde was not the only source of wisdom I was to find in the Arctic Circle. There was also the ice itself. 

            Anyone who devotes her life to ice-skating has to know the power of this element in her bones, even if she is not aware of what she knows. It is difficult to fully claim what has not been named.  Certainly, on one fateful morning in October of the year 2012, after practically living on ice for over three decades, I became almost painfully aware of a force beyond my understanding.

            Yet, as I have come to see over my seventy years on this planet, when you accept it as such, a state of unknowing can lead to new understandings. So to begin this tale about the dance everyone knows now as The Great Turning, the mysterious and elusive performance that helped us all awaken to the danger facing all life on earth, I will begin with what on a terrible morning was a kind of ending.

            Notwithstanding my own destiny (and the fact that in the end none of our destinies whether tragic or joyous can be separated), that year there were plenty of signs of an impending danger facing the earth. Record heat waves had led to massive forest fires, droughts shrinking wheat crops in Russia, flooding where no flood had occurred in a century, more tornadoes across the center of America than anyone had seen before, glaciers in Greenland receding at an astonishing rate, ice disappearing in the Arctic, and with that polar bears threatened with extinction, beginning with plankton, the food chain in the sea damaged beyond repair and, as the oceans warmed, coral reefs dying. Not to speak of the massive storm that would soon be on its way toward New York City, where I lived.

            But in that year, immersed as I was in the weather of my own soul, I was only vaguely aware of all this. I was possessed by a vision, day after day, chasing a shadow over the manufactured ice of a skating rink, as I tried to grasp a phantom that while beckoning to me irresistibly, continually eluded capture.

            The search started at an early hour. For most of my childhood and well into my forties, I would awaken every day without fail at 5 a.m. so I could be at the rink early to stretch, warm up my limbs, and then run through a series of exercises—steps and spins, jumps and camels—before I began to craft a new dance or practice an old one. This regimen had become such a solid part of me, it was as automatic as taking a breath.

            Most mornings, when our troupe was not touring, I would sling my bag packed with a fresh gym suit over my shoulder, head for the Sunrise Café on the corner of 45^th and Fifth Avenue, and after a quick cup of coffee and a piece of fruit, jog west over to the ice rink at the Chelsea Pier. At that hour, I could count on the building being relatively quiet; the only others present were serious young skaters and their teachers, diligently training for competition.

            I spent so much of my life on skates that the blades I wore felt like an extension of my feet, and the surface on which I skated seemed as ordinary as a wooden floor or a cement sidewalk. The grounding of all my work, this element was so familiar that I took it for granted.  But, soon after I reached my forty-second year, six months before my day of reckoning, on a morning that began as routinely as any other, the moment I touched my blade to the ice, I felt a strange sensation, one I could neither locate nor name. As I glided toward the center of the rink, the feeling only grew stronger until I was overcome by the sense that I had entered another world, stunning, strange and yet, in some way, deeply familiar. I knew where I was. I was not hallucinating. Yet despite my grip on reality, for a distinct moment, I felt as if the ice on which I stood were growing all round me, enclosing me, as if in the belly of a great Arctic beast. When I looked toward the ceiling, though in fact I knew I was staring at the same high, steel girders I saw everyday, I had the disturbing yet intriguing impression that these were also the ribs of a creature that had swallowed me, one that was swimming, taking me somewhere I had not been before. Which, proverbially speaking, was true. 

            I was thrilled for an instant but also terrified and thus glad when the moment passed. I chalked it up to flashback from some late night movie I’d slept through. Though over the next month this brief experience was to prove auspicious, the first sign I had from that strange territory of the conscious universe that sends out intimations of the future.

            It was in fact at the end of this practice session that quite spontaneously I began to dance a new piece, something I had neither notated nor planned. I was not thinking of which jumps or spins I would include or even of my next move. I was instead completely taken up with what I felt as I danced. At first it seemed to me as if I were floating sweetly above the ice, then suddenly I felt an explosion of energy, followed by the sense that my body had been broken up into an infinite number of particles that were being dispersed, all falling downward, toward the ice, when suddenly in midair, each cell, each fragment of my being became a kind of eye through which I could see, each a crystalline lens that like a diamond fractured the light into a fan of dazzling brilliance, until all these particles came together again into what seemed for a moment like stillness, but was instead, an elegant embodiment of the slowest motion you can ever imagine, a subtle but steady pace that was, at the same time, stately and grand, monumental.

            When it was all over, it seemed almost as if I had awakened from a dream. But, though I could not remember any of the actual moves I had made, I knew the dance was real and that it was the most beautiful one I had ever done.

            By that time in the morning a few of my colleagues had also arrived to rehearse or work with students and they had been watching me dance. Carolyn who was up in the office, a glass box in the back above the ice, whispered “My God,” over the loudspeaker.  Jack, not on the ice quite yet but standing at the edge, began to clap his hands and shout bravo and Carolyn asked over the loudspeaker in a stunned voice, “What was that?” before she too started clapping and hooting.

            For several seconds, I was silent, frozen in a kind of trance until I answered, “I don’t know,” throwing up my hands, then shrugging my shoulders melodramatically as a gesture to emphasize my point. I was not being modest. The beauty of the dance was like a magnet, the power undeniable. I had been thrilled by ice dances before, performances that I did or designed or others that I had simply witnessed but this one was in a class by itself. Yet, in what would soon come to seem like a cruel joke, I had no idea how I had done it. I had not choreographed the dance or planned any of the moves. It was as if the ice had come through my feet and moved me. 

            From that day on, this dance took hold of me with a force I could neither deny nor shake. My spirit was possessed, and as my tale will reveal, I am not using a metaphor. For weeks, I could think of nothing else. Of course I questioned all the witnesses, pressing them for details, but though they all testified to the beauty, none of them could remember a single move. We all agreed that the dance contained the mood of many of our most popular dances, some I had performed when I was young, and others that I had created for our repertoire. “Reindeer” and “Drum Beats,” for example, came to mind, as did “Waves,” the dance I first envisioned as a teenager on the Northern California coast (where I sought healing from my first fall), “Raven” of course and “My City Was Gone,” even “Honey Bee,” “Machine,” and “Bloom.” But this dance was both different from and more than all of these, in a way that none of us could explain. Though in the end we did give this elusive performance a name: we called it “The Disappearing Dance.”

            Over and over I tried to recreate it. Yet, despite every effort, I was never able to remember anything of what I did, not a single jump or move. That first day, all that day, after the first series of failed attempts, I cancelled all my rehearsals, the lessons I was supposed to give, my whole schedule, so I could try out various moves and approaches. I did not stop to eat or drink. I only went home at midnight because at midnight our contract required us to vacate the building. Yet once there, though I was exhausted, I could not rest. Tossing and turning, eventually sleepless, I was like a creature captivated in an invisible cage, a cage made of irresistible longing. It was not glory I was after, but something else, something I glimpsed during the dance—the fleeting feeling that everything made sense, as all the elements in my life appeared to fall into a crystalline order. But this was an order that, like dance itself, seemed to seduce and elude me, all at the same time. 

            Every day for several weeks, I would arrive before dawn and begin my attempts again, racing through rehearsals during the day and then from early afternoon until midnight, repeat my trials, always without success. Obsessed, half mad, I steadily descended into a hell of my own making. With so little sleep and almost no food, I began to resemble a character out of some gothic romance, gaunt, trembling and pale. After pleading with me to consider moderation and return to a somewhat more normal life, and then asking over and over for just an hour to talk with me, Jimmy, my partner, finally left. “I’ll be back,“ he said. He might as well have said, “I just need some space.” I did not believe I would see him again. Yet, though I was crushed, not even his departure could stop me. It seemed to me as if I had been born to create this dance.

             So I could spend even more time in my vain pursuit, I found a way to get into the rink before any of the maintenance staff arrived. A strategy, as I was soon to learn, that was dangerous, since one morning very early when I was the only one in the building and in the midst of a jump I collapsed and fell spread eagle on the ice. When I tried to get up I found that even with the greatest effort I could not even raise my head. I was calm for a while, thinking that sooner than later someone on the staff would show up to rescue me. Calm that is until I heard the wind outside and began to fear that since a violent storm was supposed to hit landfall that evening, they had decided to close the rink that day.

            Still, in the interest of hope, I comforted myself with conjectures. Surely someone had to drop by to make certain the building was secure against the battering winds that were expected, I told myself. And wouldn’t they want to power down the place? But in the meantime, shivering uncontrollably, miserable with a damp cold that seemed as if it were seeping into my bones, I began to feel as if I were on the verge of turning into ice myself.

            Though it was an ominous sign, I was not thinking clearly enough to recognize it as such and even grateful that, after what seemed like an interminable period of suffering, I began to feel warm again. I even tried to unbutton my jacket. Though I had learned years before that this was an advanced stage in hypothermia, the condition in which the body succumbs to cold and often dies of it, I was so fatigued from weeks of little sleep that I was grateful for the rest. Vaguely aware of the growing danger, I tried occasionally to wake myself up, but every time I did, I would soon drift back into an even deeper sleep, a sleep that was not empty however but instead filled with memories of how I came to be where I was that day, beginning with how I became an ice skater in the first place. 

Download the rest of chapter one in PDF format.

The Ice Dancer's Tale: Craft Discussion

Photo (c) Irene Young

Crafting the Ice Dancer’s Tale

         Speaking of crafting The Ice Dancer’s Tale, it has occurred to me that one of the subjects of this novel is craft. As the narrator explains almost immediately, her tale reveals how she created the legendary ice dance, called “The Great Turning.” Though part of this telling involves the story of the narrator’s life, the focus is on how she began and then developed her art, first as skater and then as a choreographer.

         Why then does the first chapter of this book include so much about her family life? There are many answers to this question, though to be honest, I can furnish them only in retrospect. For me, though I think a great deal about my themes, the process of writing almost always includes a voyage into the unknown. Like an archeologist entering a dark cave, I have to feel my way inside, before I know where I am, where I am going or even what I am doing. Strangely enough, the sensation I often have is that the work already exists somewhere and that all I have to do is find it.

         In this regard I was comforted when I learned that the great Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam, felt that his poems already existed and he only had to listen to them and write them down. 

         In my first draft, because I began the story after the heroine had become an adult, Gigi’s mother and father were only briefly sketched. Trying as best I can now to reconstruct how I came to start with Gigi’s childhood, I remember that I wanted to develop the character of her mother more vividly. For some reason, perhaps because I had been one myself, I thought of her as being a single mother. Somewhere along the way I decided that she met Gigi’s father at Woodstock—I loved the humor of this--yet this became pivotal to who she was and who she became. (Each detail you include in a story will create lots of consequences.) Only later did I realize that since, like Woodstock, I conceived the “Great Turning” as a watershed event in the consciousness of a decade, this was very fitting if not prophetic.

         In the same way that a painter comes up close to a canvas to see details and then moves back to see the composition, I find that, while creating a long work, I move back and forth between detailed, concrete elements such as description, or music, dialogue or scenes and the ideas and elements that shape and inspirit the book. It’s a process of cross-pollination in which each perspective inspires the other. While telling the story of Gigi’s emotional development, for instance, I remembered how such trajectories dovetail with artistic development. This has led me to organize the chapters around what Gigi learns in different stages in her life, emotional knowledge that sustains her when she creates the famous dance.

         We usually don’t think of craft as requiring emotional development as well as skill. Yet it does. Gigi is strong headed, which sustains her though many challenges. But to create this dance she will ultimately have to learn a deep humility. It’s the humility that art requires. You are never working alone. You are working with words, or with paper, canvas and paint, or ideas common to your culture, even with the psychology of the characters you have created, and all these both permit you to create and at the same time give you various constraints.

         But of course this quality is also what is required of us now as inhabitants of an earth endangered by global warming. We need to see that we aren’t on this planet alone. To save ourselves and what we love, we will have to learn to dance with all creation. 

         Susan Griffin, Berkeley, 2012

Paris street art (indoors) by Jérôme Mesnager