Pirouexiting IEPs

I want to tell ya'll about the day I had up on a bluff at Point Dume in Malibu, but first I want to tell you about the funniest question I was asked by one of Sophie's teachers yesterday. It was Monday morning, about 8:30, and I was doing the usual morning thing with Sophie at home which calls for a combination of the physical strength of an elephant, the body dexterity of a circus performer and the patience of a -- let's see -- praying mantis. I'm not going to give you anymore of a description than that, so let your imagination take flight, especially those of you who've been reading the exact same shit for the nearly nine years I've been writing the old blog.

Anyhoo.

The teacher* called me to ask why I wasn't at Sophie's "Exit IEP," and I said, What Exit IEP? and he said, Didn't you sign the paper letting you know the date of the Exit IEP was April the 3rd at 8:00 am? and I said, Um, no, I never received a notice about an Exit IEP and actually thought this would be the first year in two decades that I actually wouldn't have to perform my high-wire act at the IEP! (actually I didn't say that last part but I thought it with my tiny little mother mind™because you know -- really? an EXIT IEP?**) -- and he said, The form should have been in her backpack a couple of weeks ago, and I said, Well, I never received a form, and thought to myself with my tiny little mother mind™that it was weird they hadn't called me if they never received the signed form but remember I was busy with my own circus act at home which involved the elephants, the trapeze artist and the praying mantis, so I just said hmmm and nooo, and contemplated a pirouette (muscle memory every time I hear the acronym IEP), and then he said what is probably the greatest thing that I have ever heard uttered in the nineteen year history of the Sophie Girl IEP (and oh, lord, there have been some doozies), and perhaps the greatest thing ever uttered to my Caregiver Self and that was this:

Maybe one of your household staff removed it from her backpack?

Reader, need I say more?


I think not and will tell you about Point Dume and the whales and the flowers and the turquoise water and the television series being shot on the beach below which included airplane crash wreckage and actor/survivors and then later the Topanga Ranch Motel pictured above (which subs in for my "estate") at a later date.

*For the record, I love and admire Sophie's teacher, and he will be sorely missed when we are hurled off the cliff in May or shot out of the circus cannon and over the Pacific.

** For the record, I told him FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NINETEEN YEARS to just do what he had to do for the Exit IEP and send me the paper to sign. I have always wanted to check that box on the IEP notice that my household staff neglected to give me that says, "I am unable to be at the Individualized Education Meeting but hold the meeting without me anyway," because -- well -- really, what difference would it have made if I hadn't brought in those doughnuts every year, wore that pale rose-colored leotard and chalked my hands before doing the most perfect pirouettes on the wire above the earnest heads of the Powers That Be?

and she shouted, "Bravo!"

Girl on the Flying Trapeze, 1936 Julia Thecla

her ethereal and sensuous portrayal of dreams, fairytales, and planetary realms were extraordinary explorations of alternative social orders.

DePaul University Art Museum, describing Julia Thecla 

I watched Wings of Desire the other night on a bed in a dark hotel room for the thousandth time, had forgotten the black and white film turning to color every now and then. We are black and white yet both see color, now and then, but this was after and one of us dreamt (him) and the other knew every word (her). Now and then. The German faces, the wide smile, the tilted head, the closed eyes. There's something spiritual in the library's murmurs, the way the angels walk among books, heads bowed over them. Wings on a bronze statue, a wall that divides Berlin. An angel lays his head on the man's shoulder, yet the man jumps over anyway and the angel screams. The desire for life. The woman on the flying trapeze, how later she shrugs out of her robe, her back, sinuous. The desire for love, to love. Even before I swung above the crowd myself, then, I was told you've an amazing back. I've a memory like a trap. I remember every word. You've an amazing back, he said. Now. Twice I've been told, then and now.

This morning Sophie groaned in her sleep before dawn, and I ran into her while she seized. It was a violent one and I was smacked in the face by one of her arms. I bent over her, gathering the limbs, what flies. I've walked the rope and swung on the trapeze, so many little people below. My back is strong. It never hurts. I don't feel gentle toward the situation in some moments. I don't feel gentle toward her. It's where I leave off and she begins and there's a space there filled with nothing. When I gathered her in my arms, limp now (then), a pieta, I did cry. And cry. And cry. And cry. She was spent and it cost me tears which are, in comparison, nothing.

The dog barked once and a package was thrown through the slot of the front door, made a thump. I left Sophie to go and pick it up, a small but heavy box from Seattle. Inside, a heavy book, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer. A pink Post-it over the crook of the poet's nose:

Dearest Adorable --
Reach for this
volume when
you most need
to counteract
the crazy.

❤️️  Leslie  xo

Yes, I took it as sign.
The signified and the signifier.

I seem to myself, as in a dream,
An accidental guest in this dreadful body. (Anna Akhmatova)

Several hours later, with no prompt from me, I received a picture of a painting on my phone, a girl on a trapeze, awkward yet strong.

I am thinking of you, she said (Tanya, my friend, not the girl). I asked her (Tanya, not the girl), Who painted this? 

Julia Thecla, Tanya said, I love her. 

Thecla is a forgotten Chicago painter of the 1930s and 1940s, in the school of magical realism. I did not know her.

Magical realism, a literary genre to which I have been drawn (then) -- Marquez, Borgia, Allende -- is also a genre of art, I learn (now). There are details (Sophie's groan, her bed, the seizure, her arms, my back, my tears, her limp body) that are real and then something strange, unbelievable  (the thump, the package, the Akhmatova, the note, the painting, the girl on the trapeze, ), through a hole in the door, via air.

I fly through the air with the greatest of ease

And Peace*

First of all, as I fried an egg and toasted some bread this morning I wondered just how I do it. That's all. It wasn't self-congratulatory. I was just observing in a sort of mindful way how I absorb, think about, deflect and let fly the various emotions that accompany my daily life with Sophie. It's been a difficult morning. Yesterday, I took her to the beloved osteopath who worked on her for nearly an hour. Sophie was quite calm and even fell asleep for most of the visit, but as we walked down the hallway to go back to our car, she gazed off to the right and then collapsed into my arms in a seizure. I lowered her to the floor and knelt beside her as she jerked, cradling her head in my lap. When it was over, I sat down on my butt and just gazed back down the hallway, looking right out of the window at the far end. It was a long, light gaze. In the foreground were the tops of Sophie's pink high-tops, pointing upward, then a line of  pale carpeting and closed doors, symmetry, four-paned window, light, clouds.

We're working on adjusting the dosage of Sophie's cannabis and trying to tinker enough to get some better seizure control. I am actually pretty confident that we'll be able to do it, so when I say that I don't know how I do it, I mean balancing, the tightrope walk, the delicate stepping despite my bulk. Literal and figurative. Clumsy on the ground, the narrowing perspective, exploding out to light.

















*For those of you reading War and Peace with me, a chapter a day, please see my friend Criticlasm's fine blog about his own experience doing so (he inspired me to take it on). He wrote a blog years ago about his experience that serves as an excellent compendium. He's also a playwrite and wonderful critic of all things cultural, and you can find a lot of good writing at his other blog. Thank you, B!

Death and Sex, Tigers and Tightrope Walkers

The first dead person I saw was my grandmother in her open coffin when I was twenty-five years old. That doesn't count the shadow of a dead person I might have seen when I was sixteen years old, the flash of blonde hair through the windshield, the eyes, before our cars were irretrievably smashed together. Like I said, I'm not sure that I really saw this or imagined it, afterward, as I recovered. That is another story. I walked up to my grandmother's coffin holding my father's hand tightly. I've never seen a dead person, I said to him, right before we reached his mother and bent over to kiss her cold cheek. I know he wouldn't have said it then, but at some point afterward my father said, How could you never have seen a dead person? I probably saw scores of dead people before I was half your age! That photo above is some dead relative of mine. The little girl, perched on the stool, is my aunt, the woman behind her my grandmother.Perhaps that is my great-grandfather. Evidently, posing with your dead relatives was a common thing in southern Italian culture. And my father apparently posed in much the same way as my aunt, many times during his childhood. They were accustomed to death.

When I show this photo to people, they peer at it and wonder if it's real. Death. We don't like to think about it very often, we do our damn best to avoid it, and when it comes we're shocked, shocked. Sex and death. We're shocked by both. And we certainly don't write about it until we do.

I am an animal today, pacing my cage or circling the tightrope walker above me. She doesn't see me, doesn't remember how she shed her tutu, plunged from the wire, naked, and wriggled into this skin. How do I get back? Where is the Master of Ceremonies? Sometimes we need the proverbial provocation -- the stick, the prod, a crack of the whip, the leap, a roar, talons unsheathed, the naked body devoured or devouring the beast.

Philippe Petit

It's blurry, but that's a photo of Philippe Petit signing a photo of himself (that Oliver had printed out on the computer earlier): To Oliver.  Last night, I took him downtown to our central library to hear the man read from his new book, Creativity, the Perfect Crime. Here's an excerpt from the book:

My attitude as an artist grew out of the realization I'd arrived at from an early age: that my intellectual engagement, my imaginative freedom, had a price, that of the forbidden. Whatever I decided to do, it was not allowed! "Creativity is illegal!" became my byword.

The creator must be an outlaw.

Not a criminal outlaw, but rather a poet who cultivates intellectual rebellion. The difference between a bank job and an illegal high-wire walk is paramount: the aerial crossing does not steal anything; if offers an ephemeral gift, one that delights and inspires.

Despite my outlaw approach -- or because of it -- a network of personal creative principles imperceptibly emerged. Lawlessness doesn't mean lack of method: in fact, the outlaw I became needed method all the more, because I was swimming alone to the island of my dreams. 

 

 

I can't express how thrilling it was for me to see this strange and funny man come on the stage. He wore an orange pullover and khaki pants tucked into weird leather boots. He's of medium height and quite muscular for his age, and if you've seen any of the wonderful documentary Man on Wire, you'd recognize his quirky mannerisms and mischievous smile. In fact, he did less reading from his fascinating new book, and more explaining in a thick French accent and demonstrating his own creative processes. He involved the very small audience throughout the performance, asking us to come up with interesting uses for a plastic fork that we were given when we walked in, and even doing some sleight of hand magic tricks. He was utterly charming and subversive in the best way. 

I did find it hard not to stare at him, consumed by the thought this man walked on a wire between the World Trade Center towers. Don't ask me why this has always thrilled me to the point of obsession. I'm not a risk taker. I hate roller coasters and heights make my knees quiver. There's a tightrope walker and trapeze artist in one of my favorite movies, Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire. I often wear a necklace with a tiny medallion on it of a tightrope walker holding that long balance stick. Come to think of it, it might be Petit between the Towers. I guess I could make metaphor with my obsession -- why it resonates so much with me.  I've done that plenty of times even here on this blog. 

The funambulist is a person who walks the wire or dances on the wire, messing with boundaries, balancing dark and light, acknowledging the fine line between them. As the mother of a child with such severe disabilities, who is so utterly dependent upon me, I am a funambulist of sorts, alone and agile. 

But enough of that.

Oliver and I were smitten by Philippe Petit and grateful to live in such a fine city where we had the opportunity to see this great artist in such a small and intimate space, for free. 

He's legit, Oliver declared after meeting Petit and shaking his hand. When we walked out into the softly lit evening city, we felt enchanted.