WHITE ON WHITE
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
—But who is that on the other side of you?
—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, lines 360-6
THE CARD, WHITE ON WHITE
Forgetful Snow: three naked white women
stand about on a rectangular white shag
carpet in a white-walled gallery space
illuminated from above by a square of white
neon tubes. The audience enters into this
proposition, to sit on risers at the close end of
the box. Enter downstage right naked-whitewoman-number-4 with a large white board,
about four by three feet. She walks halfway
along the side of the carpet, pauses, and
begins to fan one of the dancers. The dancer’s
hair shifts in the slight breeze. Slowly, she
raises a crooked leg, and the dance begins.
Number 4 becomes my pole star. In this
world of white, she is the different one.
The others dance about, at first thawing,
full of pauses, later in furious squalls of
self-involved abandon. These three are
unto themselves, purposeful but opaque.
Trapped, perhaps—figments of another’s
imagination. Why do they move as
they do, when they do, in sporadic fits?
Unreadable, unapproachable. Then there
is 4, the one of repetition. She pauses,
then returns to fanning.
2 | CQ chapbook 6 2015
I learn from her. I can count on her,
forget her for a while, watch the others,
come back. She establishes a reference.
Her focus on one dancer makes the
others subsidiary, creates causality, for
example: this one thaws then the others
slip and jerk. She changes her fanning
technique, and I notice the beautiful
ordinary movement of shoulder-elbow,
shoulder-elbow.
board as if to say, “This is private”—though
we half-see it anyway. Did she create the
intimacy through her edit? Later, she kicks
the board with her knees in a rhythm, and
the dancers frenzy. And I see it again, the
beauty of ordinary knees-in-movement. All
the while, I delight in watching the others
frolic. But I know, somehow, I would not
see them as well without her.
Close by, she turns to face us. A little
shock. She breaks the fourth wall of our
gazing at the nude bacchanal, making a
footprint in the pristine snow. Now she
fans us, obscuring our view at times,
distancing them as she crosses downstage
front, establishing a liminal audienceperformer zone. She wafts their news to us
on air currents from realms just beyond.
Naked white women dancing on a white
shag rug in a white room. Why are they
dancing? No, not dancing—thawing. Art
come to life. Are they objects? Or subjects?
THE READING
Sometimes she is one of them. She races
to the center back wall with her board and
plasters it there, white-on-white, and she’s
a lunatic’s compass. She pins the board
to the wall with her head, corroborating
the others’ movement with an arm and a
lunge, momentarily stealing their beauty.
Yes, I think, it’s like that! I admire the others
but I return to her. I need my bearings in
this blizzard of dance; I notice that I’ve
become a little dependent on her clues.
Suddenly, she flips the board; the other
side is a mirror. She wears it like a yoke,
reflecting women and rug. At another
point, she covers a dance coupling with the
Get your bearings: Forgetful Snow—we
have the title, a reference to T.S. Eliot’s
The Waste Land:
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Proceeding, we have the strange
bedfellows—World War I and the Heroic
Age of Antarctic Exploration. Red
herrings? We have choreographer Merce
Cunningham’s stage-space-of-equalweight. Though not the no-center stage
of Merce Cunningham. Add to it white,
the universalizing abstraction. This dance
is all-center. The three women are snow,
each intricate interaction as mesmerizing
as the last. They pile up and I’m lost,
drowned in references.
AYL AT
Note on line 360-6: These lines were
stimulated by the account of one of the
Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think
one of Shackleton’s): it was related that the
. e r u t c e t i h c r a e h t g n i l e ef e r e h t i a w I
party of explorers, at the extremity of their
strength, had the constant delusion that there
was one more member than could actually be
counted. —T.S. Eliot
Number 4 appears. While the others
drift, she helps me shovel. If they are
the Senses, then she is Oliver Sacks’
Disembodied Lady, the one who lost her
.kcab ym otno trad I nehT
ability to feel her body through a disorder
of the sensory nervous system. She
relearned to walk by using her vision. Now
she shows me how to look.
I had already forgotten their nakedness by
the second sentence. Their nakedness had
become a kind of costume. An ill-fitting,
naked suit of flying movement, wild in
its awkward, unexpected puzzle-piece
moments of contact and multi-angledness.
Yes—those angles, private places made
public. I am privy to it all, all at once, the
dance of it. These women’s bodies are
not pinned to a wall. The Disembodied
Lady shows me how to look at the bodies
I e k i l l e ef I . d n u o r a g n i o g y l l o M d n a e i g g a M e e s I
before me, naked women’s bodies in too
h g u o r h t p u s e m o c m r a y m n e h t t u b d e z y l ar a p m a
much movement. She reveals the body is
s ’ e r e h t d n a y a w s i h t r ef s n ar t I d n a , s g e l y m
movement, not a frozen dream.
YL L OM
Your time has come, don’t wait for it to
stop snowing. Find an excuse to do a little
dance.
E I G GA M
—Melinda Buckwalter
I . e i g g a M r of g n i t i a w m ’ I . d e d l of e r a s d n a h y M
epahs siht ni m’I dna evom ot gniog s’ehs wonk
.gnitiaw si gniod m’I lla fi sa s’taht
.og ylsuounitnoc I ,ereh gnippots on s’erehT
sllaf daeh ym ,dnuorg eht no leeh tfel ym yal I
. d r a w r of y a w e h t l l a l l o r I n e h t d n a , k c a b
e b d l u o c t a h t y a w a n i k c a b s p i l s t o of t f e l y M
,elbats ton ti ekam ot gniy rt m’I tub ,elbats yllaer
ti dellup I neht dna ti koot dog fi sa erom s’ti os
.tsaf ni
neht dna stsif ym otno thgiew ydob ym fo lla tup I
eht ni pu dnah ym gnivaw ,ttub ym no nwod llaf
ot gniog s’ ylloM esuaceb ti ta gnikool ton tub ria
gniog s’ehs woh ro nehw wonk t ’nod I tub ,ti dloh
.ti od ot
ym rednu gnikool dna daeh ym revo gnihcaeR
f o e n o s ’ t i f i s a e i g g a M r of g n i h c a e r m ’ I , m r a
p m u j I , e m s b ar g e h s n e h W . s g n i h t d n i m e s o h t
dna dnuora og mra tfel ym tel I dna thgir ym otno
.pmuj ,pmuj I nehT .pu kcab fo tros
gnillup si ylloM .dellup teg I neddus a fo lla nehT
, t e ef y m o t n o t h g i e w , d r a w r of , s e e n k y m o t n o e m
s’ ylloM evoba gnirevoh wohemos ,ecnalab I dna
.redluohs
.mra dna gel eht tuoba ffuts yhsum
.reh ezilibats ot y rt dna eiggaM rof hcaer I nehT
t ’now I esuaceb gniod s’ehs tahw wonk t ’nod I
.f f o f o d n i k s ’ t i w o n k I t u b , k o o l
litnu em sdloh ehS .rentrap doog yllaer a s’ehS
.llaf I
Image © Paula Court
THE DIVINATION
gel eht ,dnuorg eht ot nwod emoc seod dnah yM
You have pulled White on White: Forget
y m n i g n i s p a l l o c a l e ef I d n a , d n u o r a g n i h s u m s i
the footnotes. Enjoy the wild goose
.nihc
chase. Make sure to bring your lunatic’s
compass. Grab some white space. Feed
your desires but keep them lean. Steal
some beauty and give it to the people.
Forgetful Snow | 3