LETTERS FROM HOME: COVERED IN LIPSTICK AND DANCING IN YOUR SLEEP

July 14, 1994

Dear Carol,

It's finally hot here. Lots of vacationers in town. People from British Columbia can't stand the heat. Midwesterners appreciate the lack of humidity. A mother and daughter from Liverpool, sunburned and panting, dropped by the tourist center for some air conditioning and told me about growing up near the famous strawberry fields and Penny Lane. Hometown girls used to beg to wash the Beatles' cars, the daughter said. "They (the cars) were covered in lipstick and all that."

I was waiting for the Forrest Gump story that never came, the tale of once admonishing little Johnny Lennon to get a haircut which, Johnny being Johnny, gave birth to Beatlemania.

Actually, I think we affect others lives in unseen and unknowable ways all the time. Merely to look at someone else changes us and them. It's quantum physics. Imagine what touching someone must do to our body chemistry. And how easily a few words from another can heal or wound. We can armor ourselves in various ways or run away or pretend to be immune, but it was Johnny Lennon who said I am you and you are me and we are all together.

Wish your dance-loving self had been here to see the David Parsons Dance Company. One number called "Sleep Study" began with the seven dancers dressed in pajamas and lying on the floor in sleep postures. Slowly, the postures changed in exquisitely timed chorus and the movements built as the dancers rolled and stretched and awoke and dozed off and dreampt in various tandems. In another crowd-pleaser titled "Caught," a single dancer leapt about a dark stage hit every few seconds by a brilliant strobe light. The effect was perfectly timed so the dancer appeared to be flying.

In the sweaty, sexually charged finale, some of the costumes bared a woman's breast or a man's buttock. Rather than gratuitous, displaying these magnificent bodies seemed perfectly appropriate in the context. Even though children were present, nobody was heading for an exit. Maybe that's a Northern California thing. When it comes to wearing swimming suits at the rivers here, some folks do and some folks don't.

I hope the teachers you are studying under aspire to Parsons' combination of innovation and technique. We walked away transfused with the euphoria the dancers must have felt during these acts of creation.

DC wakes me up at 5 a.m. these days, worried about the cost of moving back to Missouri and getting a house and starting a practice. I realize that my lack of regard for money is the reason I have none, all of which both amazes DC and adds to her concerns. I soothe her but confess I'm more worried about whether the likes of David Parsons dancers are to be found in Missouri. Would they even be invited? Then DC tells me Parsons was born in Illinois and lived in Kansas City. Practically a hometown boy.

I do wonder how different life will be different there now that I'm married. Maybe less hanging out at Broussard's and Port Cape, more hanging out at the Presbyterian Church. I don't think I'll mind the trade so much, given the warm place in my chest that comes with it.

The blackberries along our backyard fence are just ripening and the poppies DC put out front are indeed popping up. Only one sunflower survived from the spring planting. We accuse our blue jays but who knows. Maybe with the late summer they decided to sleep on through, keep their pajamas on. Some seeds -- not sunflowers -- can remain dormant for hundreds of years. How nice if next summer the new tenants found a beautiful surprise growing along their fence and wondered how it mysteriously got there. You never know when a seed planted long ago might sprout and even bloom.

Love, Sam