Number Twenty Six: Listen

N.Y.

by Ezra Pound

My City, my beloved, my white! Ah, slender,
Listen! Listen to me, and I will breathe into thee a soul.
Delicately upon the reed, attend me!

Now do I know that I am mad,
For here are a million people surly with traffic;
This is no maid.
Neither could I play upon any reed if I had one.

My City, my beloved,
Thou art a maid with no breasts,
Thou art slender as a silver reed.
Listen to me, attend me!
And I will breathe into thee a soul,
And thou shalt live for ever.

I was actually looking for a quote more for the topic I wanted than the other way around. I wanted to touch on a something specific and I couldn’t figure out just how to go about it. I talked about before how I don’t feel like I communicate the same way others do. And, I wanted to think of a way to get my point across that made sense to others. All the while, I do believe that too much thought was given to it and what I was intending to avoid in the first place is possibly what I’ve just ended up doing anyway.

Regardless. Let us begin.

When I was just a very little girl, two/almost three, my mother enrolled me in dance class at a local dance studio. There was a little lobby area with a Coke® machine and grey carpet. A counter, where only the staff, meaning the older girls who volunteered there, were allowed to go – although they would let me sneak back there on occasion. And the entrance to the studio was guarded by two sliding doors that “G,” my instructor, would ceremoniously slide open and closed between classes in what seem to me as her ever abundant flourish and flair.

I can still remember the sound of the doors as they rolled open and shut. The sound of hollow moving to full, then back again.

I danced many years across that shiny shellacked wooden floor. I learned how to tie bows on my ballet slippers long before my shoes I felt beautiful for the first time in front of one of the mirrors that lined the front wall. I discovered so much about myself, and the world and life. And, I experienced the sensation of being graceful as I have not since.

I enjoyed my life inside those four walls. I liked who I was in that enclosed space. But the thing I miss most about that part of my life, is G. She was incredible. Beautiful. Magical in a way, especially to someone who was lucky enough to meet her at almost the very beginning of their life.

At my last recital she presented me with my very first solo costume. It was so small, so pink and so shiny.

During my Junior year of college she was diagnosed with breast cancer. You wouldn’t know it through her letters, as she never wrote – not one – negative word. Even when she lost her beautiful long blond hair. When she became more and more housebound. Even when the cancer spread to her lungs and continued its journey, it never touched her spirit.

That’s what must have been with me that day.

The day my mother called and told me that G wasn’t doing well and I needed to come home.

The day I didn’t even have time to get my shoes on – let alone tie them – before the phone rang again.

The day that I found out there was a last time that you could see someone, and mine had been months.

The day I drove from college for an hour in silence before I realized it and switched on the radio, only to hear on an alternative punk station – although I was on the backroads of Kentucky so some could say there was interference – and heard this:

Where have you been,
My long lost friend?
It's good to see you again.
Come and sit for a while
I've missed your smile
Today the past is goodbye...


...There is a way to make you stay.
Darlin don't turn away
Don't doubt your heart
and keep us apart
I'm right where you are
Stay
Allison Krauss

I may be a quagmire. But I have just told you, at least in my way, a great deal about myself. Perhaps figuring out what exactly that is, tells a great deal about who you are.