Private Lesson with Grisha, Aftermath, riffing on wings

Find a way to engage my wings without going light. Stream of consciousness, calling up images and metaphors.

This morning, commuting to work, I stopped at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Speer. A pigeon was walking, looking for crumbs. He kept lifting his wings, wriggling them, laying them down. He couldn’t get them comfortably settled.

Birds with broken wings. They drag heavily. Those birds are doomed. Do they know it? I think that they must. If they don’t conceive of death exactly, they must know that next time a predator strikes, they’re not going to make a quick getaway.

Big wings. Turkey wings, huge and meaty. Despite their huge wings, turkeys can’t fly. Canada geese. The bones of their wings click as they shove air.

The wings of Michaelangelo's angels. Beefy types, whose wings look to weigh twice as much as their bodies. Every feather looks weighty. When I lift those heavy, heavy wings, I get lighter. They are lifting me up onto my toes.

Heavy. Think heavy.

Airplane wings. In theater, an area off-stage, whence dancers come and go. The wings of buildings. The Denver Art Museum’s new wing. Soaring, angular, bulky and light.

Think wings that aren’t light. Wings that don’t soar. That don’t lift you up. Wings that are heavy. Dragging. The wings of angels banished from paradise. Broken.

That guy who flew into the sun with his wings made of wax. What was his name? What was his story? I believe he burned and crashed.

Back to my own culture’s myths. Jesus pinned like a butterfly to the cross, emaciated arms like wings outstretched. Sagging, chest collapsing, suffocating. Lifting himself, leverage against the nails in his hands, for sips of air. Crying out yet unable (or unwilling?) to make the quick getaway.

Yikes! Those wings aren’t for me.

DJ Dave says tango is mournful, even when it sounds peppy. Julie Taylor describes the bitter melancholy that informs the staid milangeuro. They are all banished angels. Yet they dance. They have wings.

A banished angel dragging beautiful, broken wings. Yoked to those wings as an ox at the plow, leaning forward to pull hard, even and steady against the crush of history. Wings as they drag gash furrows in the earth, raising blood.

Argentina.