saturday night

and my feet are cold. but there's a fire burning in the fireplace, first one of the season. I don't know when it happened but the record player blew a speaker. stevie wonder now sings at me through a tiny fuzzy megaphone but I listen anyway. I turn the record over and lower the needle, adjust the volume. the house smells like wood and smoke and it is maybe the best smell in the world. which is when my mind turns to list making. list number thirty-eight: best smells in the world. but before my mind can settle, it spins off in another direction. and another and another and another. I am full of ideas tonight. but I am also full of pessimism. the kind that sits in a stiff, sour place and will not budge.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night. we'd fallen asleep on the big green couch. again. with all the lights on, television on, legs uncomfortably intertwined. what I am going to tell you now is that the television was turned to PBS. and I am all for PBS, I love PBS but I can't imagine what we could have possibly been watching on public television on a friday night before we drifted off. we are almost always watching reruns of seinfeld. anyway. american masters with bill t. jones was on and I forced my sleepy eyes open because this what I would call luck. I am a big fan of mr. jones. I was pretty out of it but at three in the morning, I listened to him talk about abraham lincoln, watched him yell at dancers, then at musicians, watched him push and pull new work into place. and I wanted to cry because this is a world that I miss. I miss dance, I miss that sweaty, messy place. I miss class, I miss rehearsals, I miss choreographers. I miss my old body. I miss my old body so much. the credits rolled just then and I turned the channel. and then I fixed myself a bowl of cereal because I didn't want to think about it anymore.

we will probably fall asleep on the big green couch again tonight. to the sounds of the television, the dying of the first fire.