It begins with a memory, an image I can cling to for strength, balance and hope.  As all of my energy centers on the image itself, the memory of one perfect image, I am torn away from my beautiful haze and back into the day to day normality.  If I let it seep in too much it will take over me, and I will end up jaded and worn.  This cannot happen-to lose the look of innocence-would end all prospects for me. 

When one is taught to balance seduction with innocence-naiveté coupled with complete understanding of pleasure.  To let one in that close costs more than your dignity, your respect, it costs your insides.  In an attempt to sustain one real part of myself to hold onto the inside of my vessel I let the world around me fade away and focus on the one memory that fills my entire being with grace and restores my wonder.

The vessel I can give away – It performs, tricks the eye, and moves on command. An air mystery radiates like the sun on water as I move through the room hoping to secure a job-hoping no one will actually notice.    The atmosphere in the room changes and though the moment has not yet arrived I know in the next breath shift I will make eye contact and seal my fate for that night.

In that moment I must imagine myself back to that first memory.  Back to innocence, of moving on impulse, allowing my reactions to pour out truthfully without self-awareness.

My eyes close as his arm leads me up the stairs and I remember the sting on my cheek when I pressed my 5 year old cheek up against a pane of glass.  Only when the fog that my own body’s heat created fades do I see it.  Snow, large flakes of lace dancing from the sky.  I must hold onto that thought all through the night.  The cool breeze coming from the cracks in the wall the hot/cold glass on my face. 

I descend into two worlds one where I am an object, very much an adult, and one where I am the spectator, very much the child, in awe of the world around her.  I cannot feel the reality around me only the truthfulness of the memory that I have submerged myself in.

If I give away one bloom a night, then I keep one bud for myself.  It will bloom again and again safe inside the shut doors of my spirit. 

I am only Fifteen- but this life of giving way almost all that I have has been going on for as long as I can remember.  Past memories fade more quickly as each day passes. I must hold onto the one image to get me through. 

 
Dramaturgical Blurb:
The great French actress known as Rosay, who studied music as a child, referred to rhythm as a form of energy. She used the word to describe the way actors go beyond merely pretending to feel what the characters in a play are supposed to feel. Instead, she said, an actor must actually experience the feeling. If the courtesan was, to some degree, always acting, her success depended on how well she could act, that is, on whether or not she actually experienced the feelings she radiated. But this must have been what Rosay meant. When you find the right tempo for any activity, whether it is eating or walking, talking or making love, you have also found the capacity to feel.

In one of the posters Toulouse-Lautrec designed for the Moulin Rouge, he portrays La Goulue with an expression that is neither bawdy nor frivolous. As she balances on one leg and lifts her right leg high, she stares intently into space, as if concentrating on her art. She is clearly a woman serious about her work. Of course, even if at other moments she laughed, she had to be focused at this moment. She was earning her living. But Lautrec has captured another energy altogether in the lower half of her body. Below her waist, a froth of lace and lingerie gushes forth, as if out of a hidden source within her, threatening to fill the room.

Excerpted from The Book of the Courtesans by Susan Griffin Copyright © 2001 by Susan Griffin.


 

Leave a Reply