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The New Hope Journal         The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill

October 2010

The Vanderbilt Chronicles continue...

Dancing With Our Scars

A photo essay with commentary and a new poem by Larry L. Dill

This past August, posters began to appear around the Vanderbilt Apartments that on Friday, September 16, a “dress-up” dinner/dance would be held in the lobby and community room of the Vanderbilt in downtown Asheville.  “Oh boy,” I moaned, “another “old folks” event I need to miss.  I’m a vegetarian after all,” I thought up immediately as my first excuse.  There won’t really be anything there for me to eat except a baked potato with nothing on it.  Plus, if that’s not reason enough, no alcohol is allowed in the public spaces of the Vanderbilt.   So that‘s a bummer.  And the entire first floor of the Vanderbilt where this little party was supposed to take place, complete with “hired DJ,” is carpeted.  A carpeted dance floor?  Fat chance of dancing on that.  I was smug.  I was defiant.  I was superior.  I was…well…just too sexy for all that. Fat chance, alright.  Fat chance I was going to miss the opportunity to prove I was too sexy for a dance at the Vanderbilt.  Fat chance. I do live here after all.  I am one of the “old folks.”  And I love to dance.  What was I going to do?  Cower in my room on a Friday night?  Slip conveniently out of town for the weekend?  Fat chance, indeed.   I invited Deborah Gaddy to be my guest and I had more fun than I've had at a dance party since junior high school  They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  Well, take a look at these.

Dancing with our Scars The way forward is with a broken heart.                                    --Alice Walker 1. Sometimes you need a friend. Sometimes you need a practical companion. Not the same it seems. Sometimes you, yourself, are needed to be one or the other or both. Even against your will… Or your wishes. Well, then, what to do? You can blow it off. Sure. Run them off. That’s not hard to do. But what about you? Of course you want to be alone to suffer your sorrow. Except when you don’t. It’s a practical dilemma, isn’t it. Learning how to be proud in your loneliness And humble when you are being shaken down. Call it the price of admission to the human race. 2. The interpretations of lust and love and sorrow Are based purely on the orders of the intellect. I think therefore I rationalize. I think therefore I mythologize my feelings. A tear, said William Blake, is an intellectual thing. Faith, on the other hand, is going on living Even when you don’t know why.

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