A poem for public consumption

YOUR COMMANDS

Cataloguing every offense is
like saying
you'll exist forever
indelibly
in my cerebellum or cerebral cortex
and only an aneurism will
spew you forth.

When you say:___________
harsh
barked sterile commands
without
PLEASE
or
THANK-YOU
My servile non-tallying mind
is adding it all up.

When your wavering gaze
won't hold
my steady introspection
I want to break loose
from where words
won't fly
into the empty space
between us,
where you have left me,
staring at your blue poplin shirt
Ironed,
pressed by my
unmanicured hands,
the shirt lays lifeless and small
as I gaze
at my pixellated
body
in your wall of mirrors

Your iron:
a small cauldron of heat
is insufficient
as you look away
I am aware that
I have shed all
the saline I could

And as I gaze
at the sky
your absence,
as you left me behind
on the curb,

Has set me free.

---Blanca Asiatic

Lawrence Sacharow

There is this feeling that there are six degrees between us and everyone else around us. I believe this idea gets old. Fast. What if there are 12 degrees between you and I, 36 between you and the beautiful woman you beheld on the train and only two between the street thug and myself? I am always suprised by connections, but never impressed.

One of the most connected people I have ever known in the world recently died. He was probably one of the few professionals in theatre that I have worked with that actually remained true to what he believed in (in life and in theatre) until the day he died. He was my mentor: Larry Sacharow (otherwise known as Lawrence Sacharow), director and profound mentor to hundreds, if not thousands. I don't know how Larry managed to take a scared, profoundly overwhelmed kid from Yokosuka, Japan under his wing. But, he did; he changed my life. The fact is: I never got to tell him.

It isn't the telling that is really weighing on me as much as the fact that they are so many "untolds" that I have lingering on the tip of my tongue. Anyone who knows me might find this suprising considering the fact I tend to rarely be afraid of being frank about almost anything. But, when someone or something really touches me, I have difficulty explaining and rendering a proper account verbally. Stick me in front of a piece of paper, a computer, etc... and I'm alive and ready to define.

So, this one is for Larry. One of my first suprises with Larry occured after being told that he never remembered any of his students names. However, after having only been at Fordham for a total of three weeks, I ran into him at the opening of the Pushpin Gallery at Fordham University, he introduced me to Eva Patton and said, "This girl just lights up in my acting class. She has this light about her." Years later, I saw that same childish glee on Larry's face when he attended my performance of Closer to Zero, in tandem with the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, and proclaimed after the performance "this is my baby."

Larry taught me what was important in theatre and life and how there can be a balance in both, but that one must be focused. I think that I am sad that I let that part of myself that loved theatre go fallow for a long time and I want so desperately to have it back. In Larry's death he has beckoned me to not let my writing go to waste and keep fighting to keep theatre a part of my student's lives.

I have always believed in using performance as a vessel for uplifting lives. I have seen the difference performing has made in my clients, students and my life. I don't know where I would be without theatre. At this moment, I see Larry in the classroom and I miss him profoundly. I am reminded of how short life is and how there are so many wasted moments. I feel like there are many wasted moments where I could have told Larry so much and never did. He never knew how much of an impact he made on my life, or that his picture has hung on my parents refrigerator in four different houses spanning two continents.

What does it mean to make an impact on someone else's life? What does it mean to be loved the world over?

I wonder if my life will ever be significant to someone else like Larry's life was to mine. I think if I was to pass on to the next life tomorrow, how would I be remembered? Introspection does not give me many answers these days and the more I write, the more questions I have.

I am not a person who likes to have questions that I cannot find the answer to.

My friend Ali says that it is at these moments that one must turn to God, who has all the answers.

Will I be able to hear what the Lord has said? Or will I be too busy looking at clothing at Triple Five Soul or Brooklyn Industries? Will my life be so filled with kitsch --to avoid the mundane-- that I can barely think straight, let alone hear what God has in store for me.

I am plagued by the unknown reality before me and my inability to perceive it. I do not want the existential, I want the concrete.

Bon O Dori

Once upon a time there lived a girl. Every summer this tall, honey -coloured- haired girl would dance in the Bon O'Dori festival. She would don her fan, tucked delicately into her obi and dance as no other native Japanese had ever seen gaijin dance.

This evening my roomate, ObiOne, warned me that there were some serious "festivities" going on in our neighborhood. As I glanced out the window to hear Caribbean drum beats I was reminded of the Taiko drums in my old Japanese neighborhood in Maborikaigan. My sister and I would drag my mum to the Bon O'Dori festival, where we would be to be allowed to dance. Muttie, my mum, thought it a little presumptuous of the resident foreigners to jump up and dance without any invitation. But, anyone who knows me knows the impossibility of keeping me off the dance floor. It's like asking Eminem not to curse on his next album, or Kristie Allie to quit flaunting her weight loss routines, or certain political leaders to stop talking in inane tones in public venues. I am a magnetic dance machine.

As ObiOne and I glanced out over the various teens and adults hanging out of cars, blaring music, honking horns, donning Dominican flags, I thought about how I wanted to dance: right there in the middle of the street. I wanted to shake my bootie like it had to business being there (and it really didn't). But, I kept the hysteria to myself. Instead, I pointed out to my cousin that the group we were passing by were dancing to salsa music.

I still remember the lanterns, fireworks, drums beating through the night and the magic that seemed to permeate the heavy weight of Japanese summer humidity. Cicadas would chatter and scream alternately and the ocean would lapalap softly against the concrete barrier sea wall. There are forbidden love, tears of joy and sadness, long walks to blow off steam, and mad poetry sessions. All of these memoirs are rolled up in one word, in Japanese: natsukashi. Natsukashina. A longing for what was.

In longing for what was, I wish to remake what is now. As I lean out the windows to my bedroom I hear the drums once again, and I dance slowly, quietly to myself.