11.1.16

Allegory – Act One


There is a tiny dancer that is living with her tiny grandmother in her house. The tiny dancer likes to play all sorts of games while her tiny grandmother is cooking dinner. Her favourite game is playing the Witch. The Witch is always played in the fancy dining room; a musty unworldly room, with heavy furnitures, where the curtains are always shut, because 'the sun eats the furniture away' as the tiny grandmother always says. The spooky dining room is perfect for the Witch because of the old pictures of the scary people on the dark tapestry. Although the tiny dancer loves to play in that room, she avoids looking at the frames because she knows that all these people are dead now. Dead people can move when they live in frames, she knows it, she's read it in a book. And as much as she loves hearing stories about them from her tiny grandmother, she doesn't want to hear the stories from them. One afternoon she is playing the Witch with the Taro cards she's made on her own and somehow her arm is stuck in the frame of the chair. The tiny dancer is now panicking because she is convinced that the dead people in the frames are going to get her. But she doesn't cry because she knows that this is what they want. So, she sits there, stoically, trying to keep herself calm. She sits there with her arm trapped, and silent tears are falling down her tiny face. After a while – or a couple of days, time is hard to track in the spooky dining room - her tiny grandmother comes in and sees that she is trapped. Her tiny grandmother thinks that it's a good idea to tell her a story about the dead people instead of releasing her arm.

'Back in my village there used to be two children that were so young they couldn't talk yet. One day, they were playing in the backyard when one of them put his hand in a hole of the stone paddock. His hand was stuck in the hole and when he started to cry the grown-ups were gathered around him trying to release him. They were trying for at least two hours – maybe it was a couple of days, time was hard to track in the backyard – everything they could think of, but nothing seemed to be working. Finally, his friend approached him and asked him in a language that no one understood: ''Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'' and he immediately answered ''Packa-Packa'', while removing his hand on his own, with no effort at all. When he was asked what those words meant years later, he simply answered that his friend asked him if his arm was straight or if it formed a fist, when he first put it in the hole. Because, they only way to get something out, is to pull it out with the same shape it had when you got it in. If his hand was straight when he put it in the hole, there was no way he could get it out while he had a fist, because there was not enough space to fit a fist out.'

After telling her that story, tiny grandmother asks her tiny dancer 'Packa-Packa or Poocka-Poocka?'. Tiny dancer answers 'Poocka-Poocka' while she is easily releasing her arm on her own.

The months are passing by, and the tiny grandmother is teaching her tiny dancer about life. She is telling her stories about the Amazons, and Judith and her cousin, Yolanda. Tiny grandmother says that Yolanda is so strong and beautiful that when she walks the pavement breaks from her power of her presence and men around her faint from her beauty. Tiny grandmother insists that tiny dancer should be like Yolanda: beautiful and powerful, untouchable and fearless. Tiny dancer has tried in multiple occasions since then, to break the pavement but she hasn't succeeded. She runs and stomps and jumps but the pavement is not bowing in front of her power and men definitely don't faint from tiny dancer's beauty, just yet.

Tiny dancer is to trust no man. Tiny grandmothers teaches her well and reminds her that her dignity is what will make her great, and her brains is what will make her powerful. Now tiny grandmother has to leave and visit her old village for a couple of weeks and tiny dancer cries at the train station
while her mother is consoling her. What will tiny dancer do for two weeks on her own?




When I was a tiny dancer, I used to lie that I hate pink because I didn't want people to think that I am weak and girly. Now that I am a grown up I tend to buy pink shampoo because I have a need to feel more like a girl. I get pink razors,  my tongue is pink, my underwear is pink and when I scratch my skin too hard, it also becomes pink.



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