Dear Amber,
Just wanted to pass you a note to tell you how much I am enjoying Waveform! I am trying to get school stuff squared away this month and this came in the mail nestled next to beauty is a verb and it is funny how it's small but big--I read some pages one night and then this morning went back and re-read and all these other layers--I love the voices and the back and forth and the not-knowing of the voices and of me in parts and the knowing--the part about and I never really thought about collaboration in this way...not sure if I am making sense but am loving and savoring it...and how it is on the page and the image of the words crashing into the page that I am probably misquoting or whatever but I just feel like I am with these voices and shifting as they shift and turn...I like the talking about things that don't get talked about--suspension, blockedness--cross purposes (or purposes) of form/genre (avant garde) meeting identity/disability/political etc. Collaboration and artistic and interdependent-reflecting.
I have been thinking about and writing (not very well) about--lifting and dance and in life...how it is so much a part and natural to dance and so looked down upon and dreaded in a ableist societal dependence/disability context people). but good afternoon to you and just wanted to say thank you and I look forward to reading the rest and maybe re-reading more too! warmly, Leora PS Feel free to forward this to Denise. I'm off to get something done or try to.And also, this generous story, embedded in a review of Waveform by Kristen Stone at Limn Literary Review
How something or someone falls to the earth, falling through time. The effort it takes to rise, the relationship between effort and flow. Carrying the body to the ocean so that it can be buoyed in the salt water: salt the opposite of gravity: my grandmother trying to teach us to float in the ocean. If you hold your breath, you’ll float better. you have more air inside. Her soft breasts, scarred and tattooed from radiation, threatened to slide out of her one-piece like their own ocean animals. Us, little, furiously treading water, vertical while our horizontal grandmother rose and fell with the waves, her ten toenails painted coral, sticking up out of the gray water. We are quick and stiff: holding my breath makes my whole body tense; the fear of sinking and the effort to stay up, kicking my skinny legs: we pant like puppies. Once you give up the fear of sinking you can breathe slowly and you will float, dropping below the surface slightly with each exhale, rising again as you breathe in. Later, grown, I practice yoga, I swim in a pool, I dance and strut as a member of my local drag troupe: remembering these lessons in resistance and surrender, a more complicated relationship between effort and release. Surrender and the breath: the body doing its strange work: moving uncertainly through space.Read the entire review at Limn here: http://limnreviews.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/waveform/#more-40
Many thanks to Kristen and Lee!
