The Magician

The Magician

The house lights flash once at two minutes to eight.
With bated breath, we all restlessly await
a dazzling exploitation of human habit:
the appearance of the wand and the rabbit.

Across strangers minds there builds a unity.
On edge of our seats we anticipate
commencing another opportunity
to witness practice and talent culminate

In exhibitions of ever unseen skills
the mechanics of which we are loathe to grasp
yet so content are we to simply fulfill
our part of the bargain: smile, applaud and laugh.

The attention of all, spellbound by one man,
a crowd who came with no desire to learn
and yet, watching him they grow to understand
that a gasp is a thing that one must earn.

To us it's so seductively confusing
as he remains, observantly amusing.
Witnessing him command the mysterious,
we realize its the jester who's the genius.

Freedom is Worth Celebrating

Today is the Fourth of July - Independence Day in the United States, the country of which I happen, by the random draw of fate and DNA, to have been born a citizen.

There have been times when I have felt better about the current state of the US, when it has been easier to carry the responsibility of being an America, when we had been hurt, and rallied to regroup, when we came together with more obvious love, and less dissension.  But there has never, and there will never, be a time when I am not grateful for the freedom it provides.

Freedom always deserves gratitude, defense and expansion. Freedom is still worthy of celebration.

Today, on the 4th of July, in spite of our flaws, our ugly, battle scarred, mistake-riddled history, I'm taking a moment to be grateful, to honor the sacrifice and to call for the proliferation, not of patriotism, but of freedom.

So, like, go celebrate.  Make a cake or something.  Shoot off some fireworks (Make sure your pets are safe.)  Grill a burger.  Spend the afternoon with your kids.  Not because it's tradition, not because you feel should, but simply because you can.  

Pulse

One year ago this weekend, 49 innocent people were gunned down inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  Three days later, Melissa Etheridge released a single, "Pulse" in tribute to the victims, as a call for love and a condemnation of hate.  

I chose this music for my Ice Show Exhibition, and tomorrow night, my performance, like the song, will be dedicated to the memory of the lost.  

It will also be a reminder, to myself as much as to the audience, to be grateful for every beat of our heart, every breath that we are given.  Every human has a finite number of heartbeats, and none of us knows exactly what that number is.  Every beat, every pulse is a treasure, a privilege and a gift denied to many.  Wasting even one of them in hatred, intolerance or fear is to throw away that gift, carefully selected and hand wrapped for you by the universe, without bothering to open it.  

Two years ago, I had cancer, and spent six months in chemotherapy undergoing treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma. 

I returned to the ice in earnest this January, after healing from the surgical removal of my chemo port.  I worked hard on this, getting my thirty-seven year old body back in shape, rediscovering my center of balance, learning to manage my stamina with the diminished lung capacity that is an irreversible side effect of the bleomycin that helped to cure me.  

  My skate in the exhibition tomorrow night is my first public performance since remission.

It is a celebration of love and life, a reminder that every moment matters because we don’t know how many we have. It is a testimony of survival, condemnation of hate and a plea for love, understanding and acceptance. It is a prayer of gratitude for every beat of my heart, for every beat of everyone’s I love.

This is my costume.

Yeah, I put the sequins on myself.  I'm crafty like that.  And yes, yes that is a crop top and hot pants.  Yes, I am aware, it is not a traditional skating dress.  I'm aware there may be people who think it's not the best idea to skate an ice show because it exposes certain things. 

And they're right.  It does expose things.

 It exposes the scar where they pulled my gallbladder out through my stomach.  It exposes the empty navel piercing that partially closed up while the gallbladder wound closed.  It exposes the double brown line that the Vinblastine decided to draw permanently across my abdomen sometime between my 8th and 9th round of chemo.  And it exposes the tiny, baby, almost-sorta-abs that I worked hard both on and off the ice for six months for.

So, yeah, there's exposure.  But, you know what?  I’m tired. I’m tired of worrying about exposure, fretting over what others will say or do, tired of caring about other people's judgment.  

I got cancer and did not die. My own body tried to eat me. You think after that, I’m scared of some ignorant opinions? I have no fear left for opinions.

I didn’t mainline poison to waste a single second of the remainder of my life.  And I didn't do it so anyone else would have to either.  

I wish I could tell you that after surviving cancer, I'm no longer scared.  But that isn't true.  There is still fear in me.  

The world is terrifying right now, I'm not going to lie.  The shooting at Pulse last year is sadly not anywhere close to the only example of the true danger we do face.  But every second something like that is not happening, is a second we have a chance to prevent it.  A second we can make the choice to live in hope, to share our love, to reach out a hand of tolerance, of acceptance, to initiate a dialogue, to foster a friendship with someone different than ourselves, to focus on the fact that we are all human.  Race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, nationality. Take a chance and get to know someone who think is different than you because of one of those things.  See how quickly you find common ground.  

Underneath our skin, we are all human.  We all have a pulse. 

I'm not going to tell anyone not to be afraid.  But don't let it paralyze you.  Don't let it trick you into wasting precious heartbeats hiding, or avoiding, or skipping adventures.  Don't let it silence you from speaking out for equality, for justice and for freedom.  Don't let it trick you into hating what you can't understand, because if you do, you'll miss out on so much life, so many beautiful heartbeats.  You'll whimper through your lifetime and never feel your pulse.  

Don't do that.  Open the gift, even if you are scared it's another ugly sweater from Aunt Victoria.  

To everyone who's scared (like me) and brave enough to keep trying anyway, I'm skating for you.  

To everyone who's survived a hate crime or loves someone who has, I'm skating for you.  To everyone who is LGBTQ+, everyone who isn’t sure, everyone who is an ally, I’m skating for you. To everyone who believes in love and is committed to extroverting that love to combat negativity and intolerance, I’m skating for you. To everyone who survived bullying, injustice, abuse, discrimination or neglect, because of the way they were born, I’m skating for you. 

To everyone who fought their way back from cancer, I'm skating for you. To everyone who’s still fighting, especially those who aren't going to win, I’m skating for you.  

If you believe in love and justice and equality, think of me tomorrow night. 

I’ll be where i belong, on the ice, skating for you.

PS: Speaking of exposure, I'm well aware that very few people read my blog.  But if you do happen upon this post, leave a comment & I'll donate $5 each toward the elimination of cancer and LGBTQ youth homelessness.  (Up to the first 10 comments, because I've got a budget and a mortgage.)  

To the Artists, the Magicians and the Ice Dancers

To the Artists, the Magicians and the Ice Dancers,

You look at me, through my glasses and over my engineering degree, around my thirty-seven patents and you say things that make my soul hurt.

You say things like you should have at least forced yourself through that Calc 1 elective on your way to the fine art degree I could never achieve, or that you wish you worked at something more useful than a subjectively judged performance sport, or you belittle yourself that your entire contribution to the planet this year was twelve episodes of a goofy television show.

When I could lose days just watching you draw, marveling as you carve beauty out of nothing, pulling it from the air and out your magic fingers, when I drive four hours one way to watch you balance your bodies on a sliver of steel, crafted by deliberately accepted pain to disguise their power as grace.

You look at me and you call me a producer.

But you'd have passed Calc 1, and in a million lifetimes, I could never foreshorten the proportions of a human nose. You could hold down a nine to five before I could produce a dove, and if I spent forty five hours a week at an ice rink I could eventually master a level 4 twizzle sequence, but I could never reproduce the shared and living soul that dances between the pair of you as you skate turns and rip our collective breath away.

Maybe you're right. Maybe what science and engineering produces is more useful. But what other need is there for infrastructure, if not as a conduit for beauty? If art did not exist, what reason would there be to build a structure to house it?

You think you have no worth, because you are not a soldier, not an engineer, not a doctor.  The truth is you are the opposite of worthless.  You are the creators of everything worthwhile.  You are what the sword protects, you create what the infrastructure was built to support, what the medicine was brewed to save.  Your work is the most important of all.  It is the reason for ours.

No one needs an ice dancer to survive, but we all need things to live for.  When I was fighting cancer, I missed a lot of days of work, but not a single event in the Grand Prix of Figure Skating.

So thank you.  Thank you for the truth.  Thank you for the beauty.  Thank you for being brave enough to share your soul with us.

If Tech is the atlas that carries the world, Art provides the purpose for the effort.

Because of you, the artists, the magicians and the ice dancers, the weight is not a burden.

It is a privilege.   

National Poetry Day

In celebration of National Poetry Day and Throwback Thursday, here's a bit of a poem I wrote about 15 years ago.  Enjoy, my friends.  

Where is my mind?

In a carrion fertilized field, rubbing at the spot on my hand,

Doing clandestine reconnaissance, somewhere in southern Thailand.

On the monorail at the Bronx zoo,

Wondering what else your hands can do.

It's wrapped around your mouth; finding us the perfect house,

Wandering through forgotten dreams silenced by the South.

It's writing a three part saga, guess who I made the hero?

It's bending scent, folding time to begin again at zero.

It's fighting numbness, compliance and conformity,

Yet seeking your acceptance, how’s that for irony?

Where is my mind?

It's off looking for company, it's tracing the lines of a body,

Sensuously blended angles and curves; its living trigonometry.

Between my hands where I want your face

Or wherever I left my toothpaste

Maybe behind the dryer, with all my missing socks

Or meeting one of you in the bar around the block.

It's in Tahiti on one of those natural water slides,

Taking back a rejected kiss that I never should have tried.

It's arguing with my heart about letting you in

And busy rewriting the definition of sin.

Where is my mind? 

 Where hasn’t it been?

NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge - Round 1 Story

Entered another writing contest over at NYC Midnight.  This time it was the Short Story competition, so we were allowed 2500 words and were given a genre, subject and a character.  Other than that the rules were similar to the Flash Fiction (1000 word) contest I entered there last year.  

The Genre/Subject/Character combination for my group was: 

Political Satire/A Surgery/A Vegetarian

I learned a lot from this challenge.  First, that there are two types of political satire: Horatian, which is subtle and humorous, and Juvenalian, which is darker and more angry.  My submission falls more in the second category, though it flirts also with sci-fi and fantasy.

Edge of the End

A warrior struggles to protect his children, feed his people and defend his homeland from the increasingly diabolical weapons of an evolving, elusive enemy.

---

    The trouble with living in darkness is you can’t see where it stops.  The sickness was the first sign, like a beacon burning on a mound, that there could ever be an end to our beautiful, endless night.  

We had been at war with the whites for as long as our history could remember.  Since the first division that spawned our prolific race, they had made it known that they intended to destroy us.  It was because we were corrupt, they said.  We did not live a holy life.  We were shallow and lacked honor.  No fealty, they said, infidels all.  

We did not fear them, not back then.  Skirmishes occurred constantly, but they were little more than a predictable annoyance.  The fools would line up to fight in a wide line on the horizon.  We could see their flashing shields coming from ever so far off.  Even once they’d mastered disguise, infiltrated our ranks and walked among us, unnoticed for nights before launching an attack, they barely hurt us.  If they made at all it was usually a flesh wound, never a fatal blow.  The occasional maiming was the best they could manage.  

They couldn’t even kill our children, though the cowards would try.  The alarm would go off daily in the schools.  Sometimes it would be a drill, more often an actual attack.  Our babies were valiant and always drove them out.  We were proud of the effectiveness of our offspring, repelling the invading whites though they were just hours old, but we expected their success.  They were made of us, after all, and we could not be killed.  

Or so we thought.  

No one believed we’d be defeated by the whites.  No one believed we’d be defeated by anything.  Well, no one but Joe, of course.  But nobody ever listened to Joe.  He was a vegetarian, for darkness’ sake.  

    He would chastise us for our consumption of flesh.  We’d laugh.  “Oh, shut up and eat your fungus, Joe!”

    “We only have a finite amount of natural resources,” Joe protested.  “Much longer, and you won’t even have a choice.  Too many of us are reproducing too fast.  If we continue at this rate, there simply won’t be enough flesh to feed us all.”  

    Joe didn’t find it funny when I offered to eat his share in the meantime.  

    “If we run out,” I said, “we can always move on.”  

    I was tired of the metropolis anyway.  It felt wrong – all of us crammed into one place when there was so much world to discover.  We were an exploring race, the urge to spread ran deep in our cells.  In my youth, I had been leader of several scouting parties, spawning divisions that established our race in satellite communities ranging from the Thymas in the North to as far South as the Patells.  

    That was before the sickness.  There was little exploration now.  We did not have the energy.  

The first wave was subtle.  To the strong like myself it could do little more than fatigue; others it crippled or rendered infertile.  The children bore the worst of it.  It slowed their growth, deforming them.  Progress ground to a halt.  Buildings stood half complete, exploring parties stayed in their tents for nights, too tired to venture onward, too sick to return home.  

    Then the wave receded.  Our energy returned, construction resumed and exploration continued.  Yet things were not the same.  The vegetation was disappearing.  Whole fields of fungus were obliterated overnight and the sugar was in short supply.  Oh, the jokes we shared then at poor Joe’s expense!

    “Looks like you’ll have to join us at the big kid’s table now, Joe!” I teased.  But he refused to feed with us.  He would hold out, he said, until the sugar returned.  

    The sugar did not return.  The sickness did.  

    The poison spread, infiltrating our food.  We became lethargic, unable to work.  Reproduction attempts were slow, some altogether unsuccessful.  My newest babies took four nights to reach maturity.  One of them died before before he had reproduced.  That was unforgivable.  The whites had taken not just his life, but his immortality.  

    In the past, such a sin would have been spared us, even by the corrupt standards of the whites. They had expanded despicable to a new dimension.  I sent an ambassador to their leaders informing them of my loss, identifying it as the war crime it was.  They made an empty promise to ‘investigate the incident,’ and that was the last communication I ever received.

    We died, in the meantime, hundreds in hours, thousands in nights.  Chaotic, pointless, untargeted and nameless death.  

    The pattern continued.  The whites would disappear with each cycle, returning only once the sickness had receded.  They would attack and begin infiltrating again until the next wave of poison came.  Then the cowards would retreat to watch from afar while the genocide swept through us like an unstoppable acid.  

The best of us were dying: our generals, bastion leaders, forage captions.  In one night, I lost more mature babies than I could name, assuming our society would ever do anything so pointless as to provide our offspring names.  

Only Joe had a name, and that was only because he was a pariah of his own making.  More accurately, he was a dying pariah of his own making.  He still refused to eat flesh and was slowly starving to death.  

The news from the North was worse.  The Follics had been completely wiped out.   Their water supply had been poisoned, the acidic sludge had drained into the smooth planes of the Palates, bursting through the surface in oozing boils.  

West of us, the reports were better.  The water was clean, our scouts reported, the food was fresh.  We sent a delegation to the Pancras asking them to divert a portion of their supply in our direction in return for our labor.  We offered to construct a barrier of protection between them and the dangerous whites, in exchange for the run off of their overabundant supply.  They respectfully declined our 'innovative but unservicable offer.'  

“The whites are not our enemy.  We have no need of defense against them and do not make it a practice of bartering our natural resources for the services of warmongers.”  I read the Pancras' heartless reply in our nightly circular through bitter, hungry lips.  

“Warmongers!  We're starving to death!”

We’re not supposed to have favorite children.  For years I never did.  How could I, when they all looked the same?  But the sickness had stunted one of my own, leaving him half the size of the rest of us, though just as identical.  It was he who spoke.  It was an unending joy to me to hear my own bravado, the warrior words of my youth being spoken in his tiny, high-pitched voice.  

I picked up the circular and read the rest of the article.  “The republic of Pancras, however, freely extends their deepest sympathies for your current turbulence and offers their moral support without the necessity of recompense.”

“Right,” my favorite snorted.  “Like we can live on that.”

The whites continued their elusive maneuvers, intent on leveraging their effective new strategy until it had destroyed us all.  Three, four missions in a row, we burst into the very rooms where our intelligence had proved they were hiding, and we found nothing.  Where were they?  How were they controlling the sickness?  How were they poisoning us?

I awoke one night and heard one, rumbling through the walls of my trench.  When I pulled the plaster away and dug the bastard out, he rushed straight forward five steps, then spun in a circle and collapsed on the ground.  I stared down at the white body in disbelief.  It was dead.  

“It’s not them,” Joe's voice rasped behind me.  

“What?”

“They’re dying, just like we are.  The earth is turning on us, for our voracious consumption of her flesh.  She will kill us all.  We are no different to her - the whites, the Follics, the Palates, the Pancras, even us.  Beware!  The darkness bleeds!  This is the end of the black, the edge of the night!  We are parasites, parasites all!”

I ran.  I couldn’t hear another word and keep my sanity.  He was delirious from hunger.  He didn't know what he was talking about. He was wrong, he had to be.  Of course he was.  After all, it was Joe.  No one listened to Joe.  

I ran from the trench to my outpost on the wall.  I found my favorite, pacing, waiting for me on the watch.  

If there is a single constant through all planes of existence, it’s the obvious truth that a miniature version of anything is automatically adorable.  This little child of mine was no different.  He cheered me.

    “Why don’t they show themselves, the dirty cowards?  I want to punch a white, just one,” my favorite cried, scanning the dark for a sign of their approach.  “Bam!  Right in the face.”

“So do I,” I told him.  “Almost as much as I want to win the whole damn war.”

    The cycle of sickness stopped.  We awaited its return at the now predictable time, but it did not arrive.  I waited a night.  Just to be safe, I waited two.  Nothing.  On the third, I caught a near-forgotten scent in the air.  Sugar!  I ran for Joe.  I wanted him now, wanted him to hear it first.

    “Joe!”  I found him in the back of a cave, collapsed against a wall.  I gathered his limp body in my arms.  “Joe!  Wake up. The sugar is back!  You were wrong, it’s not the end of night.  Joe?  Joe!”

    But this time it was Joe who wasn’t listening.  He was dead.

Two nights later the lasers began.  

Ugly, golden swords of light that could not be blocked or deflected sliced into us from above and below, down from the dome and up from the ground.  They came from out of the very flesh, our very food.  These new lights did not kill; they maimed.  One hit my favorite, my perfect, beautiful duplication in miniature.  It turned my child into a monster.  He could no longer walk upright.  He could only skitter, crablike and sideways across the ground.  I could not bear to hear the noise of him shuffling through the trenches.  I sent him away.  

    We abandoned our outposts, retreated from the trenches and fled from our central metropolis.  Reports from the West indicated no laser activity had occurred there.  We had no choice now but to rely on the dubious mercies of Pancras.  We marched in that direction until we could go no farther without rest and concentrated ourselves in a large cavern.  The use of the cave was not for any strategic defensive purpose, but simply because we were afraid.  We would rather face the end together in the dark, than to die alone in the terrible fire of those hideous rays of light.  

The sound came first.  A pop, then a rip as if someone was tearing the sky apart.  Above us, a small dot of light burned down through the top of the cave.  The dot extended into a thin sliver that cut a glowing straight line of light into the blackness.  The light expanded, stretching from the rent it had  carved in the dome of the dark, as if it would encompass the full expanse of the top of the world.   

I knew then that Joe had been right.  This was the end, the bleeding edge of the night.  

Another instant and we were flooded, the horrible light burning open our flesh.  A gigantic silver sword came down through the gash in the black.  The blade dissected the cave, revealing us as a single, huddled mass.

We did did not run.  It would have been futile. Where could one hide in such an insidious vacuum of full exposure?  I clutched my newest baby to my chest, my last, tiny, precious division and shielded her from the burning glare.  My mouth opened to pray but I never got the chance.  

Everything went white.

---

    “Mrs. Terragaea?”  Doctor Rhea Winston approached a  worried looking woman in her mid-forties, who lifted her tired eyes up to the hovering surgeon.  

“Yes?”  The woman breathed out the word, her breath fetid with fear.  

    The surgeon smiled.  “Your son is stable and resting comfortably.  We have every reason to believe we have removed the tumor in its entirety.  We’ll do a scan in a couple weeks, but I’m prepared to say your son is in remission.”

    “He better be,” Mrs. Terragaea said.  “First the chemo, then the radiation and now you’ve had to cut him open.  Did you know, he gave up sugar completely?  Wouldn’t even have a piece of cake on his birthday.”  Her wet eyes met the surgeon’s.  “No child should have to fight this kind of war.”

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge Results

Got the second round results from my Flash Fiction Challenge last night over at NYC Midnight.  

My second story, Dogs Don't Make Plans, received 10 points!  Not bad considering it was written two days after my second dose of chemo!  (Possible side effects may include nausea, fatigue, hair loss and improved writing skills.) 

I'm pretty darn excited about this.  Not only did I move up seven places from Round 1, I finished in 6th place for Round 2 and in 11th overall.  I didn't make the top five, so the contest is over for me for this year, but it was a fantastic experience and I totally plan to do it again next time.  

Two great things came out of this little adventure.  

The first was the opportunity to receive feedback from and to communicate with a plethora of talented writers from all over the world.  

The second is now I have two new short, unique and diverse writing samples that I didn't have two months ago. As they say, I may not be there yet, but I'm closer than I was yesterday!  

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