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euphoria!

9/30/2013

1 Comment

 
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With my childhood spent during WW2 and my adolescence during the Cold War of the 1950s, living with The Bomb when people took it seriously, I was programmed to expect that the end was, in fact, coming.

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This feeling reached a climax during the Cuban Missile
Crisis of 1962.

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I remember vividly that most dangerous October day, slight
crispness in the air, brilliant blue sky, the walk from my lower Sullivan Street apartment to the nearest local subway stop . . .

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. . .  to take the train up to Columbia University  where I worked in the library of the School of Journalism. I still can remember a sudden euphoria, an acceptance of doom, a great lifting of weight from my heart. There was this moment. This instance. There was no more.

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That day in the library I watched a young woman suddenly
burst into tears and rush from the room. I wanted tosay,“It’s all   right.” But there was no way to explain my own sense of joy.

Now this euphoria had a serious downside: for years to come I could only live in the present instant. There might not be another. There was no future, and there was no need to plan for one. Hedonism raised its pleasant head.

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A year or so later I became interested in ballet, particularly 
the New York City Ballet, when a co-worker invited me to accompany her to a performance of George Balanchine's “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at City Center.

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When the company moved to the (then) New York State Theater, I followed, first to see “Dream” again, then to sample programs of shorter yet thrilling works. Talk about brilliant and breathtaking instants! And thanks to Balanchine, I began to see how instants melted together in time could become something more. I began to think of the possibility of a future.

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Now in my later years, and particularly this day and this week, I am starting to feel that old 1962 euphoria again. Where is my Balanchine?
 
(It may be Terrence Malick, but I’m not sure yet.)

But I guess the euphoria is preferable to fear and dread.

                Isn’t it?


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1 Comment
Erica link
12/7/2020 04:10:08 pm

Hi nice reaading your blog

Reply



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