Yohji Yamamoto
It was over twenty-five years ago when I saw this picture, which put me in my mid-forties. I walked by this large poster in a camera store in New York City on my way back to the afternoon session of the International Women Writers Guild Conference.
But I could not walk past this woman!
I backed up and stared at the poster for awhile from the sidewalk. I began to hear her tapping feet and the harmonies from the violin. I felt the happiness and the spirit which flowed from this image.
Immediately, I had words for this poster: “I hope you dance.” I had always liked that song and when it played I let the words seep over my own spirit and felt it reach out as my number one genuine wish for my grandchildren.
May you always choose to dance in your life, regardless of circumstances, whether you are up or you are down, just……dance, dance, dance.
I was pretty sure I was going to make myself late for the beginning afternoon class, but I went inside the store and asked the clerk if they had a duplicate poster and explained to him that I just had to have it.
He said no, that was the only one and it was being used to promote a camera brand sale. Some of my own intensity of desire must have reached him because he said the sale was going off soon and they would not need the photo anymore. He would give it to me and it was then assured a good home.
He went to the window, removed the poster and handed it to me, who was one happy camper. I probably wrote about her in my afternoon sessions.
Yohji Yamamoto’s name and line signature was below the photo, so I believe that is the name of the photographer and I credit it here.
When I look at this photograph, I remember my young child joy during the old time family hoe-downs on my grandpa’s Wisconsin farm. I hear my uncle’s fiddle bouncing notes off the wall that filled the room and there was nothing that could keep a body still. I recall my grandpa taking the center of the kerosene heated room, standing there a moment in his denim blue coveralls and high top brown scuffed up work shoes loosely laced to the top, then breaking into a stomping, loose-kneed rhymetic dance, lost totally in the pleasure of it all.
And it is the light in this woman’s eyes that called me back to that window. It is the same light that is in mine. I know that when I looked at her, my deepest wish was that when I reached her age, the light in my eyes would still shine like that and my feet would still tap out a splendid beat.
She has graced the top of my bookcases since then which means she endured many movings and resetting our homestead up, but she was never displaced nor replaced.
I am now well along the path of becoming this woman’s age. I may even have reached it. Given inspiration, which finds me easily, my eyes still carry the light and my feet invite the dance. This is good.
notes on a napkin
Napkinwriter 