"Your Story was This" (premiere) Liss Fain Dance Company. SF
Enjoyed a 45 minute performance of a dance inspired by poems of Jane Hirschfield. These lines were from "A Cottony Fate", ...It troubles the mind/as a held out piece of meat disturbs a dog/ Now I too am sixty/there was no other life. " from The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), I heard her read in the lunch hour series at UCBerkeley when this book was released.
"China" from "Come, Thief" (knopf 2012). This was my favorite, for obvious reasons of my own journey......
“China
Whales follow
the whale-roads.
Geese,
roads of magnetized air.
To go great distance,
exactitudes matter.
Yet how often
the heart
that set out for Peru
arrives in China,
Steering hard.
consulting the charts
the whole journey.”
― Jane Hirshfield, Come, Thief
and "It was Like This: You were Happy from "After" (Harper Collins, 2006). Used by permission of Jane Hirshfield.
It Was Like This: You Were Happy
It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn't matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
"China" from "Come, Thief" (knopf 2012). This was my favorite, for obvious reasons of my own journey......
“China
Whales follow
the whale-roads.
Geese,
roads of magnetized air.
To go great distance,
exactitudes matter.
Yet how often
the heart
that set out for Peru
arrives in China,
Steering hard.
consulting the charts
the whole journey.”
― Jane Hirshfield, Come, Thief
and "It was Like This: You were Happy from "After" (Harper Collins, 2006). Used by permission of Jane Hirshfield.
It Was Like This: You Were Happy
It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn't matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
Note: Bold face lines were employed as "voice over" in that dance...what is there to say? Dance employs movement and space to articulate its vocabulary of the body and spirit. Two Chinese dancers, and two Caucasian dancers - one male, one female - articulated the pieces, including some yoga and meditation poses.
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