I will be posting different short pieces of mine
here. Last week, I was invited to read at Mia Wolff's Church Street
Studio Salon. Because there were also a number of aerialists
performing, this is what I decided to read.
(For more about Mia Wolff, check out her blog, http://.wolffbrain.blogspot.com )
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Trapeze
by
Carla Cantrelle
Here's what I know: everything is stupid so being smart isn't always helpful.
Everything is scary so why stumble over specific phobias.
Love is the only thing that matters and the one thing we always get wrong.
If we could just keep in mind those first two statements, we might not have to fulfill that last one. I think I found the trick.
"You know we're heading for disaster," he says. "We're on a no-holds barred collision course. We'll annihilate one another."
Gee. The sex must be as good for him as it is for me. Why else would he be in such a nihilistic tizzy?
He persists in predicting doom and wants me along as more than a mere witness but as a collaborator in a finely etched tragedy; the maker of my own nightmare. "You know that, right?" he says.
Is this his attempt at new-age honesty, absolving his guilt in advance by making sure I don't have the grounds to hold him responsible for the heartbreak up ahead? Are we moving toward social interactions which require pre-pre-nuptial agreements? Pre-going steady documents or something? All I ever hope to come out of a relationship with is what I brought into it: a shred of dignity and all my limbs. Sometimes even that seems to be asking for too much.
"You know that, right? We're on a dangerous twisting road. Love is the scariest place to go with someone."
He said the "L" word. Following a sentence that began with "we". He's hooked. "It would be a lot scarier if you had to get there alone,'" I point out.
He shakes his head since I have deliberately missed his point. The dire warnings. I know that when a guy tells you something you should believe him. This guy is warning me that he's trouble, so he probably is. He's also revealed that he is attached to gothic ideas about love. But I had guessed that the moment I laid eyes on him in his baggy stretched-out sweater with the frayed cuffs and the battered leather jacket that matched mine. I wonder: are my own twisted romantic notions caused by having seen the movies Tom Jones and Wurthering Heights in the same week at an impressionable age? I was permanently left asking the question: Is love a light-hearted romp or lifelong devotion past death, the thwarting of which will kill you.
Isn't it both?
I smile across the wafting latte steam. His hair sticks up in funny little points because it was still wet when we left. He now gazes at me with affection. "I just want to make sure you're aware of all the dangers up ahead. We could be in big trouble."
"Yeah, so?" is my perfect answer.
Now that it's later, much later than we ever thought we'd get to, I see what he'd been doing and how right I was about fear. He was afraid. Okay. I buy that. It's just that facing down death is what I do for a living so my fears take on a different shape, a different villain twirls his mustache in my personal melodrama. For him, its the grim reaper of the broken heart, the fear of lost pride, of disappointing and disappointment that awaits him like the bogey man under the bed. For me it is empty space, unknowable space, hollowness that chills me and makes me recoil when logically I should be moving forward.
But on the trapeze, forward isn't what you think, really. Not exactly. Directions like forward, up down left right -- they are meaningless, whirling and twisting in the air, your skin tingling with your self-created breeze, seeming to fly faster than the speed-of-light to be caught by waiting hands. Hesitation is what will kill you. Lack of commitment is what will plunge you hurtling to the earth. Death is the companion of ambivalence in my world high above the ground. So unflinching certainty is the first thing I demand from myself and my cohort in any risky venture, loving him being the riskiest of all.
I face the bar in the practice room, never using a mechanic, taking only calculated risks. I know the mechanic makes sense in some situations but since ultimately I can only rely on myself and my partner why give myself the escape hatch. I don't believe in divorce, either.
I see it, the bar. I grip it in my hands and then up and over and wham, the backs of my knees slam into place. I let go and dangle, letting myself stretch. Ahhhhhh, I needed this. I hang upside down, letting the tension drain from my body, down and out my arms. What shall I do today? While I wait? I flip into a bird's nest, then do a few angel's in each direction, feeling the kinks work their way out of my back. I am not thinking: what will happen? Will it work out? When my partner comes and we switch to the high bars to warm up, I don't think, if I let him catch me will I lose my autonomy? If I let him rely on me does that mean I am an enabler? I don't wonder: Does he mean it? Does he mean it as much as I do? You can't fake it in the air. No, we just do what we do, it feels great, it's right, it's strong, it's true. It is action and it is beautiful.
Walking the wire, you keep looking at a spot ahead. If you go too deep inside yourself you lose track of where you are. What you learn is to be absolutely present in this very moment but also highly aware of where you intend to be next. Intention. Action. Your feet in the present with an eye toward the future. You stand on the back of the horse and leap into your somersault, taking off in the now and landing sure-footed in the next. You don't ask questions, you just feel the horse's thick broad back under your feet, and take off knowing where the horse is headed. You're in it together, connected, the horse as pleased and proud as you are in your shared success. The wisdom of the horse is that the horse never doubts the completion of the move. It never occurs to the horse to worry because worry has no use. Besides, glorious spectacular failure is a fundamental in every smidgen of success. This is some of what I know that he doesn't. How could he? This is not his world. But he knows other things.
He is so solid. His shoes are so much bigger than mine, his laundry heavier. He takes up space in my bed, the sound of his breathing rhythmic and real. He is attached to the earth, never leaving the ground and he has caught my wrist and tugged when gravity threatened to elude me. He is so serious that he is serious enough for two. And every time I wake up, and I wake up all the time, every time I am startled and amazed to think that he is still here. Forever here. Here with intent, purposefully here.
Since he's been here, I detect my influence in his wardrobe. He has added a few grays to his customary black. I guess you could say he's learning to lighten up.
Okay, by television standards we are dysfunctionals, losers, wrecks, damaged. The facts of us make for talk-show fodder. But you know what? Who cares. I don't watch much TV and together we have managed to wipe the grime away from the window to allow in a narrow but steady stream of light. The clarity of sunlight. the glitter of twilight, the grace of moonlight.
He has taught me to stand still in the world by giving me a place to land. I don't have to hide up in the rafters any more. I have opened up locked doors by fearlessly somersaulting into the very center of his sanctuary. I guess we were both so smitten we allowed ourselves to be stupid which was probably the smartest thing either of us has ever done. It's like one of the few lessons that stuck after I dropped out of school, that when you add two negatives together the result is positive. I don't remember if it's numbers or electrons but the point is the same.
He protested all the way and yet we still arrived. I protected myself against his disappearance yet he never vanished. I guess you could say I packed up my armor in his baggage and then we left it all behind us in a dumpster. And now, we spiral upward. My audacity has made him hopeful, his hopefulness has made me brave, my bravery has made him steady, his steadiness has calmed me down.
The body will define its own limits. Don't you go and beat it to the punch. You'd be amazed by what you can do.
There are happy endings afoot in the world if we're just willing to let them happen. They lurk like kittens in the curtains, poised to pounce with delight on your unsuspecting toes. They flit like lightening bugs but lose their wonder if you trap them in a jar. Let them fly and hover and soon enough they will land as they will and there you'll be, aglow.
You see, I'm much smarter than you might have thought.
But, you know that right?
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