Day Forty-Eight/Image Forty-Eight

“Afloat” Image. Ceres Gallery. New York. Solo Show.

Ice. Snow. Flame. This is another one of those I don’t remember what my thought process was. Except I was focusing on the visual as always. Possibly an avalanche.

My attachment to ice has diminished. I tore my rotator cuff by stepping on some black ice near the downspout of our house in the dark. Our dog was pulling me one way; the ice carried my feet another. Not letting go of the leash because I did not want my dog to get loose and lost, I fell on my shoulder.

It was painful at first. I went upstairs and a friend of my daughter’s mother, who had just left our house, called and mentioned the ice as something I should be careful of. I told her I fell, but this did not stop her from going on and on about the various types of Nutcrackers there are in the world, namely one where the Spanish Dance is done in lobster costumes.

She had been kind enough to drive my daughter home from an interrupted ballet rehearsal that night. The ice on the roads was like glass and the trees sparkling, not easing my tension as I left the parking lot early, spinning and twirling myself, trying to gain traction even in my SUV.

I did not have surgery on my arm, but those Spanish lobster costumes dug painfully into my shoulder, even as I slept at night, for one solid year after the incident.