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Rachel Murane

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Rachel Murane

Monthly Archives: October 2014

Wonder Wide Open

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Grief, Melancholia

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

anniversaries, childhood, death, family, grief, memory, sisters

As I was growing up I had a sister. amyShe was almost four years my senior, had unmanageably thick dark hair, loved at a strangely precocious age the Talking Heads and the Beatles, and had an uncanny ability to make friends with the most interesting people around her.  There was Matt DeMerrit, a talented saxophonist on whom Orpheus himself probably had a crush; there was Erin the dancer, already wry and wise to the world; there was the gorgeous Shawn Garcia who, even though living in Denver, had clearly been cut from the same surfer-deity cloth as Laird Hamilton.  There was Elizabeth the witty redhead and Andrea the stable, somber “adult” of the group, and there was Craig, the brilliant, angry, astutely political boy who was as beautiful as a god.  And there was me, chasing after all of them, knowing without being able to name it that my sister understood and drew to her good people.

Her name was Amy and I adored her.  When we were very little we fought viciously, and could not have been more different in looks or temperament.  Our parents were young, too young, and were struggling to create their own peace and place in the world.  We took the chaos this created and turned it on each other, yet this anger and raging seemed to make us cling all the more to one another.  While our fights could be heard down the block, our collaborations were made of private, secret, sturdy stuff, of the type only sisters can contain between them.

Amy and her friends smoked dope, tripped acid at the zoo, went hiking and camping, and explored together the joyous, achingly painful road that wends its way from childhood to independence.  They were obsessed with Neil Young and David Bowie, as all good children must be, and to this day some of my own most vivid memories of young girlhood are of listening to “Everybody Knows this is Nowhere” while staring at huge posters of David Bowie in his Thin White Duke phase.  amydb(Of the latter memory, little has changed: I still stare at prints of David Bowie, and my infant daughter is partially named for him.)

In the shining early spring of Amy’s senior year in high school, she began to hurt.  And then bleed.  The hurting and the bleeding came from places foreign and unnatural to a young body: back, legs, gums, nostrils.

Amy’s very bones had turned against her: cancer.  Leukemia. Her pale, dark haired new body was somehow rejected, from the inside out. Just as her friends were rapidly preparing their minds and spirits for the great stepping forward into a newly unfettered life, hers was ending just as quickly.

Chemotherapy. Radiation. A bone marrow transplant, the marrow coming from my own cells because, as different as that girl was from me to all eyes, we were genetically twinned from within.  This twin-marrow-match was unsurprising to me, even as I somehow knew all the treatment-torture would fail, and that Amy was as condemned to die as I was condemned to go on living without her.

Amy died on October 29, 1988.  It was close to midnight when she took her last agonized breath.  It was not a peaceful death.  There was nothing redeeming or poignant about it.  It was violent and painful and tortuous and would give the most fervent believer pause about just what kind of god would do such a thing to a beautiful young woman-child.

I think of Amy every day. I think of my father thinking of Amy. I think of my mother thinking of Amy and I almost buckle with the strange truth that we’re all still here. I think of my mother on Amy’s birthday: how my mother must remember that child now horrifically dead birthing from her own body. The dark haired infant, suckling and asleep at the breast. Her first smile. Now gone.

Of all this I think and I am split open with wonder. The wonder of endurance. The wonder of love. The wonder of grief unending, each year adding another shovel of soil and earth between my sister’s body and the rest of us. The wonder that most humans have a story just like this or something similar to tell. The wonder that despite the revolting and unfair pain granted to and laid upon the human race most of us indeed continue to sometimes know the mystical wonder of Joy and of Bliss.  The wonder that the gift of wonder remains.  Sometimes.  On the good days.  Or the open ones.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Amy’s death.  She’s been gone far longer than she ever was here.  I still weep when I listen to Neil Young.  And, wonder of wonders, my children, my pale dark haired young children, simply love the sound of his voice.

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It’s time

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Dance

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Tags

alastair macaulay, Balanchine, ballet, dance, irritations

I love dance.  I love to take class, I love to feel music in my body; I also love to think about dancing, to read about it, and to study the artists who are at the forefront of the art.

People who write about dance, particularly ballet, should have a passionate appreciation for what the art looks like in its current form.  As much of a genius as Balanchine was, he’s dead, and there are other choreographers doing brilliant, groundbreaking work.

This is why I cannot stand Alastair Macaulay.  He writes for the New York Times.  He is a powerful voice in the world of dance.  He is also clearly someone who spends his days pining for the good old days of the 60’s, when Balanchine and Jerome Robbins ruled the Earth, or at least New York.

Against these giants every dancer and choreographer is compared.  And they always fall short, because nostalgia always wins, no matter what the game.  The sepia tones of the past will forever look more alluring than the difficult glaring light of the present, especially when the past includes a great, irreplaceable genius like Balanchine.

When I read Macaulay I usually have an image like this in my head:

alastair

And it is that image that’s critiquing artists who look like this:

dfeet

And this:

mfeet

And there is something wrong with that picture.  Mr. Macaulay needs to retire.  And let ballet take its new, inevitably different, form.

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Somber Child

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Motherhood

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

humor, motherhood, photography, young children

My first born child rarely smiles.  He was a terribly serious baby, watching intently as his mother – and the rest of the women in his family – heaped worshipful adoration upon him.  He is focused, he is witty, he is intensely, endlessly, sometimes it seems infinitely, verbal.

But rarely does he go about the world cheerfully.

He reads while he walks:

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He is quite serious about his favorite food, pizza:

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Rare is the smile from this beloved, even when he clearly holds the world in his hands:

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He is also seriously rude to his loving little sister, but thankfully he is equally serious about loving her back:

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According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “somber” derives from the Latin “sub,” for “under,” and “umbra,” for “shade.”  I love this origin.  Under shade, dwelling away from the light.  After all it is only by accepting, even reveling, in the dark passages that we may appreciate the clear brilliance of the sun.  I think my first born innately understands this.

Or perhaps he is just a little grumpy.

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Pumpkin Patch

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Motherhood, Seasons

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

autumn, family life, motherhood, spirituality

On Saturday my family went to the pumpkin patch.

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As I get older and my children grow, I am finally beginning to see how tender, how necessary, these yearly rituals are:  the temporal accent that outlines and articulates the rushing-river of moments, of hours, of days and years.

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I picture the story of a family, or indeed of any single life, as a tapestry.  In the making of a complex tapestry in, say, France, 1432, the weaver would first produce the outline for the story to be told, called a cartoon.  And then, through the conjoining of the supporting warp and colorful weft threads, the artist’s hands, working in reverse to the plan, would bring the outline to vivid life.

First, the idea, then the taking shape; finally, realization.  And then, inevitably, the slow fade, from brilliant intricate thousand-shaded color to the hazy remembrance of it, washed by time to mere gesture.

The rituals unfold: summer leaves droop then alight, days in school begun, a visit to the pumpkin patch, and then the costumes of October’s end.  Autumn.  A new panel begins: winter tableau.  And, even though the outline is there, already written, the very act of the weaving changes the form of it.

pumpkinpost

What tales these threads do tell, of all of us, and how we each yearn to see the weaver’s hand.

I do so love the creatures who inhabit the loom of my life:

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Birthday

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Motherhood

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Tags

birthday, children, motherhood

A fairy celebrates her fifth birthday.  I suppose the nature of being a fairy is to make time speed up, because I’m certain it was yesterday I discovered I was pregnant with her.

20141018_145842 (1)

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Gold

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Seasons

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Tags

autumn, beauty, photography, trees

Yesterday was perhaps the pinnacle of autumnal beauty here in Colorado.

20141023_175019

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King of the asanas

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Yoga

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Tags

children, headstand, yoga, yoga practice

Middle child is preparing for sirsasana, otherwise known as the king of all asanas.  (Sarvangasana, or shoulderstand, is its complementary queen.)

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The preparation never ends.

cropped-20141021_185458.jpg

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Talisman

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Motherhood

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Tags

motherhood, photography, vulnerability, young children

20140804_210440My middle child has had this bear since her first birthday.  He has become part of our family.  Most children have a beloved creature like this in their lives; I think it’s an external reminder of how vulnerable children are as they explore the enormous world around them.

Does that vulnerability ever leave us? Or do we forever need some sort of talisman in our lives, anchoring us to love, to safety, to continuity? This bear often reveals to me how tender we are, how easily wounded and how important it is we give space to that vulnerability and never harden against it, lest we lose the openness it offers.

20141018_131214

 

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yoga fraud

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ashtanga yoga, Denver, yoga

bs

A few weeks ago I had the rare opportunity to attend an actual yoga class, instead of practicing at home.  I love practicing with community.  I also love to know that the person doing the teaching, or the studio doing the advertising, actually understands the lineage or “type” of yoga on offer.

The class I attended was held at one the most popular studios in Denver.  I used to teach there, and there is a huge student roster.  The class I chose was advertised as an Ashtanga class.  It was not an Ashtanga class.

It was barely a vinyasa class.  In the yoga industry, it would be so wonderful if at the very least studio owners practiced honesty in advertising.  Not only was I out about 50$ (babysitters!) for that non-Ashtanga class, but every student in that class was in essence deceived about one of the most foundational practices in the Western yoga world.  Without Ashtanga yoga, these studio owners wouldn’t have “power” yoga, or “vinyasa” yoga; it’s the backbone of the yoga most practitioners know, and should be honored as such.
October 23, 2014
 

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Steel and Glass

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by racheltejas in Dance

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Tags

age, ballet, choreography, creativity, farewell performance, New York City Ballet, Wendy Whelan

retirement

 

Wendy Whelan, who needs no introduction to any balletomane, and is arguably the greatest dancer the New York City Ballet had within its ranks since the days of Suzanne Farrell, gave her farewell performance last week.  She is 47 and, despite a full reconstructive hip surgery a few years ago, remains vibrantly healthy and has spoken confidently of continuing her career independently.

Along with every other student of ballet my age, I grew up with Wendy Whelan.  She loomed a huge, goddess-like presence over the entirety of the world of ballet.  She joined NYCB just as I was becoming a serious young student, and I have watched in awe and gratitude as her artistry took shape, evolved, and influenced younger dancers.

It is apparent from the stage that there is a deep, seemingly unending force of strength and will that drive her creative and physical gifts.  It is unsurprising to learn that as a child she was diagnosed with severe scoliosis, and trained for years in a full back brace.  (How, then, did she develop such an exquisitely arched arabesque? Miraculous.) wara  Her body and her persona are a wonderful study in contrasts:  she is as stunningly muscular as she is startlingly thin, she is seemingly spontaneous even as her movement is obvious in its intelligent training; and as much as her often translucent, heartbreaking delicacy calls to mind the archetypal muse, she is clearly utterly independent, free.

Throughout her career, particularly at its beginning, when NYCB was adrift and charting its new course after the death of Balanchine, Whelan had her detractors: she was too thin, too angular, her epaulement (upper body movement) was too disjointed.  Alastair Macauley, the primary dance critic for the New York Times, who in my mind has a fossilized and leaden concept of what ballet is today, led the charge in these criticisms.

Over the last thirty years, they have been silenced.  Whelan is at any moment on stage thoughtful, passionate, erotic, cerebral or simply technical purity itself.  She described in an interview that often in her dreams she sees herself as a “building of steel and glass.” This is nowhere more apparent than in her collaboration with the choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, who has created almost a dozen ballets with her.

I have seen her dance many times on stage, always with thrilling excitement.  However, it was seeing her at the Vail Dance Festival perform the now famous pas-de-deux “After the Rain” with Craig Hall during which I experienced one of the more transcendent moments of my life.  Surrounded by the chilled mountain air, the audience hushed to a unified wonder, Whelan And Hall melted, parted, and became one: with each other to be sure, but also with the music and with us, grateful observers.

It is in these rare moments one sees that art is an oblation, and Whelan has been for dance a treasured chalice.

 

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