Losing It
#2 of Signals
This was not how the dance routine was supposed to go for Cassandra the vixen. She was supposed to come in dancing and pirouetting like a ballerina- instead, after a tiring routine, rather than a triple spin she fell flat on her face literally, drawing the shocked looks of the audience. She had ruined the entire play, as this solo was integral to the story- her character's transformation from shy shrinking violet who didn't know about dance to the embodiment of feminine grace and passion. Instead, the vixen realized at the age of 51, she was simply too old to be a good dancer, performer, or anything for that matter. Now, she knew that the world still had use for the elderly but her inability to dance had cost her co-stars a chance at being noticed, hermisstep also costing the audience a chance to remember anything of an othewise top-notch performance.
She could still remember the lowlights from that exhausting, humiliating evening- the pain of falling down on the floor, second only to the hot eyes of displeasure given to her by the audience and later by the other actors and dancers (though they tried to cheer her up), their eyes hotter than a thousand suns as she dragged her sweat-covered and stiff-as-wire body across the stage. From her intense dance before the audience, the vixen's lungs were absolutely screaming from the pain- yet still in spite withdrawing all from her body that could be withdrawn, Cassandra was simply too old and too fatigued to finish her routine. So as a result, her body, which she prided as still having that swimmer's physique even after 50 reached its threshhold and betrayed her. Some members of the audience clapped, sensing that her dream of having a flawless performance came crashing down on only a small misstep but those were few and far between. What mattered most to her was that she failed at this and her crying could be heard all throughout the backstage area where the theater performers put on makeup and costumes.
As Cassandra looked in the mirror, all she could do was cry because when she looked at that mirror, she saw a flawed individual who failed to entertain people as she had been doing for decades. During those times, her Broadway career had included enough bouquets (traditionally given to a particularly-good female dancer after a stirring performance) to fill an entire garden. In her memories, the vixen relived the zealous applause by her fans, the cult following she developed in everything from classical to Baroque, from burlesque routines to Rodgers & Hammerstein productions. She was the best singer-dancer in New York City, a vixen who was called "Rubberwoman" for her flexibilty and grace. Now, at a retirement community in Phoenix, this vixenwho was once worshipped as a goddess in the New York theater scene was just a failure who had burnt out like some expired lightbulb.
"I should have quit and let the younger vixens take my part. I should have let Miriam, my understudy perform in that last piece. I was too tired", she said before remembering that she had gone through not just the final routine but the entire play without a fall throughout the numerous dress rehearsals, cursing herself soreness she experienced the day after each of these tiring dances. That's when the vixen came to the realization, her tears breaking up the chemical composition of the make-up that he;d her fur in place that she was indeed too old.
"I'm an old and useless biddy. I am not a good dancer anymore- let someone younger take my part. I'm too old to help anyone!"
It had been another long day for the lion who once wrote stories of incredible influence in America. His eyes, now glassy from the port he had used in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat his writer's block were now staring at a blank page directly in front of him and a wastebasket filled with papers. These papers were discarded manuscripts, rejected works that his publishers would not accept, unreadble garbage printed by a man who was desperate for anyone to read his musings. And this enraged the lion- his inability to write anymore of the ultra-masculine heroes who seemed to defy nature and become extraordinary. The lion's mane once a golden-brown, now was thinning and graying at parts and his once-beautiful face which had charmed many women in his years, was now pockmarked by his tears of rage.
It wasn't always like this. It seemed like an eternity ago but there was a time, about thirty years ago, the words that made their way from his psyche onto the parchment blazed like a fire, igniting the minds of those who read his books. As an ambulance driver covering the war in France and later the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War, this lion had used fiction to tell the stories of heroes who would prove to nature their worth. Those were good times, sunshine days...
But now, the lion's mind was darkened and dulled by a suicidal sickness, an insanity which would eventually destroy him and indecision which had cost him dearly. To think that dozens of stories which should have been unveiled to the public were now residing in a wastebasket somewhere in his home or had already been used as fuel for a fireplace. And as the lion writer lifted his aged and weary frame from the desk he had been using and stared out the kitchen door, at his age the sun would rise no more.
These two, the vixen named Cassnadra and the lion, Ernest found out throughout their lives they were some of the lucky few who were able to live out their childhood fantasies whereas most of us only dream of those things. Howeevr, there comes a time in everyone's life when they realize they've grown old and not just in a physical sense but too old to carry on the things they once could do easily. It's sad to watch these dreams die and there are times that many think it would be better off never to have known them. And just like the characters in this story, this decline is inevitable and it will happen to each of us no matter how young and invincible we think we are.
For you the blind who once could see...
the bell tolls for thee.