My Cardboard Balcony

Reluctant Artistry by Belinda Roddie In gentle curves, in definite strokes, I once painted music across a dying winter canvas. The heat spread from my fingertips. It bubbled, simmered, and hovered in a cloudy halo above my head. There were days when I played grand piano in hotel ballrooms where dozens of waltzers swiveled like machinery against my tactical one-two-three-one-two-threes. Now, I have no ivory or ebony to grace my hands with. My palms sweat from the idea of facing a crowd and performing a personal symphony. Every night, I see the old culture disappear into lunar craters, swallowed by rising oceans. The new culture isn't bad, per say - it has enough salt added to please the palate. But it is more a polished silver spoon than a woven tapestry. It is shining chrome or steel over warm golds and reds and oranges. And above all, it is calculated, al one-two-threes and step-by-steps, while the notes I streaked across the horizon had no pattern. They

Day by day, I felt myself become progressively unhinged. Sort of like if I were a door, and a carpenter was meticulously and painfully stripping the bolts and screws that kept me attached to a stable cerebral home. I found myself drinking more and eating less, staying up late at night and calling into work to ask if I could come in an hour or two later. For a while, my manager was okay with this because she knew I was having a hard time, but after two weeks of my shenanigans, she was losing her patience.