This is a story about a time when hope was nearly lost.
When a people sat bankrupt, vacant hearts slowly pulsing. Eyes glazing over with an insatiable hunger that saturated fat and corn syrup could never fill. This is a story about prisoners to flat screens with fingers like the beaks of chickens attempting to peck their way back. It is the tale of unwelcome guests, anxiously contained within the security of skin and bone, while the hand of time rhythmically ticks off unbearable hours. Once resilient forms molding into soft couches in echoing homes with unlocked doors and where the pop from a medicine pill container is their only solace. "Pop! Pop." Eerily silent, but for the gnawing drone of black boxes clicking their way through hundreds of cable channels. "Click, click, click. Pop!"
This is a story about a time when oceans were rising and ice melting. "Pop. Pop. Plop!" It is the tale of when exhaust and fumes filled a night sky, blurring out ancient mythologies of Cassiopeia and the Big Bear, of Orion and his faithful dog. It is a a story about a time when a great hush nearly swallowed a people, when the drum beat faded and the dance set in the far-off distance. "Click, click, click." It is the tale of a madness that took hold of cells, devouring tissue, eating flesh, cancers like wildfire spreading throughout a decaying EarthBody. It is the tale of disappearance, when the Pinta Island Tortoise, the Western Black Rhinoceros and the Eastern Cougar were declared extinct. Their carcasses now precious matter to a depleted soil, bones to be dug up and recovered in whatever is to come next by whomever is to follow. This is a story about a time of the great dying off.
And, this is also a tale about redemption.
When the writers and the poets, the singers and the musicians, the artists and their muses, emerged from the four-walls of their studios, beckoning to their now mute neighbors to join them once more around a blazing bonfire for evenings of spoken word and S'mores, for convivial laughter and shared moments. This is a re-imaging for when the gardens of our collective soul were once again tended to, soft hands growing calloused and sore above wooden tools and reverberating Djembes, pasty skin becoming bronzed in a summer sun, thigh muscles protruding from feet pounding into a raw Earth. "Dum, dun, dik, dun. Dum, dun, dik, dun. Dum, dum, dun, dun. Dik, Dik.
Dun."
This is a tale about when the winds of change blew across the hurting, faning the flames of transformation and laying waste to the dis-ease. It is a tale of redemption discovered precisely in the loss, just as a decimated forest needs fire to grow, just as rebirth follows destruction. It is a tale about a time when each individual feather re-trained its gaze, recognizing that its brilliance lay not in its mere singularity but rather in the outstretched plumage and colorful fanfare of all of the parts of its whole. This tale, like the round behind of a strutting turkey, stands purposefully on an edge. Precariously balanced on the precipice, she sways her voluptuous hips from side to side as her piercing vision locks in on a harmonious future. This is a of story of when our warbling bird song of love emerges once more, a shrill call to arms from the warmth of our once barren breasts, as the slithering snake of evolution glides along the desert floor below, reclaiming his rightful pursuit of our hand.
Ichibod and Distance, Osiris and Isis, Eternal Woman and Revolving Man, brother and sister, Twin Flames, together once more. "Click, click. Pop! Dum, dun, dik, dun. Dum, dun, dik, dun. Dum, dum, dun, dun. Dik, Dik. Dun."
Notes from an 07/29 Sherman Heights backyard where the "Art of Storytelling" is revived.
