Looking Over My Shoulder

About new solo

3/29/08

 On my way to the kite festival on the national mall, if I ever get through the wall of people. I thought Maya might enjoy it. Maybe so, if she wakes up before it’s over. 

I haven’t given much thought to the iconography of kites. They symbolize childhood and freedom. But a kit in a tree? also childhood, Charlie Brown, but a darker side of childhood: interrupted, freedom tethered. Of course, you could say that about any kite, tethered to hand, momentarily in air.

The mall is dusty, and overrun. Kites wave overhead. Some whip about; others hang, poised, tails rippling; others trip unsteadily through the air, tentative swimmers climbing into the pool. The cries of distressed children cut through the chatter—nothing so inspiring or frustrating as kite flying. A kite crashes beside me, nose down, typical triangular shape. It seems so spindly up close, so little likely to do anything but lie there like rubbish, bits of tissue and string. Yet it rises again: ungainly and stuttering, but flying.

What do I want to use a kite to say? I feel alternately grounded and uplifted by my role as father. Maya is my passion and the biggest obstacle to my career as I have envisioned it. I would not have her raised by anyone but myself, but I feel some doors closing as I spend days at home instead of in the field. I fly, but am tied down. 

Maya wakes. Her eyes flicker from silky streamer to silky streamer. She does not seem surprised, as if it were a sight she might reasonably have expected to wake to when she closed her eyes in the subway tunnel. She remains, as ever, interested by everything: as curious about kites as the cloth lining of her stroller or the comfortingly familiar flavor of her hand. 

Malcolm Shute

4/9/08

How to proceed with this solo...he begins twisted up, tied. He unravels his bonds and tries to escape. He can't escape, so he weaves himself into the web, becoming the web. Finally, by becoming the web, by taking it into himself, he is freed.

4/11/08

The soloist is caught on a spider's web. He tries to free himself, but he can't. He has to wrap himself deeper in the web, to tie the knot tighter, in order to escape. This is essentially about my struggle to redefine myself as a father. I feel trapped by Maya sometimes, tied to the house, away from the heady pace of working outside, which used to bring me such pleasure. Yet I find that when I surrender to this new life, when I just play with her and focus on her needs, I am confronted by periods of contentment. I have discovered a new well of satisfaction.

He breaks free at last, but remains scared. He flickers like a hunted thing. He is still looking over his shoulder, expecting disaster. So, too, my satisfaction has limits. I may forget myself only for awhile.