Shirley Maclaine - Its All In The Playing

Bantam Books by Shirley MacLaine
Ask your bookseller for the books you have missed

DANCING IN THE LIGHT
DONT FALL OFF THE MOUNTAIN
GOING WITHIN
ITS ALL IN THE PLAYING
OUT ON A LIMB
YOU CAN GET THERE FROM HERE
DANCE WHILE YOU CAN
MY LUCKY STARS

I would like to thank

Colin Higgins
Bella Abzug
Stan Margulies
Thomas Sharkey
John of Zebedee
Tom McPherson
Lazaris
Charles Dance
and
John Heard

each of whom helped me to
realize an aspect of myself

When the eagle of the North
flies with the condor of the South
the spirit of the land she will awaken

Peruvian Inca prophecy

I stretched upright, lifted my arms to the sky, and breathed deeply. I needed the oxygen. The altitude of the surrounding Cordillera Blanca mountain range, high in the Andes of Peru, was 22,205 feet. I was standing at only 12,000 feet and could still feel my heart pounding and thumping. It occurred to me that it would be worth the discipline of coming here just to get in shape for a new show. Returning to two shows a night at sea level would be a breeze.

From where I stood I could see straight across the valley of Rio Santa, known among the Andeans as the Callejn de Huaylas. The Rio Santa valley is one of those places so stunningly beautiful as to be literally breathtakingin fact, its impact on me might have been the real reason I was short of breath. To attempt a description can give only a hint of the meadows of waving corn, silent turquoise lakes, and luminescent waterfalls tumbling into the rich and fertile valley below, backed by unending vistas of ice-covered peaks marching in glacial splendor to their high horizon. I have always loved mountains, always felt a sense of peace and elation being there, a glowing feeling that something wonderful is going to happen just around the cornerand even if it doesnt it wont matter because every present moment is so magical. I wondered what Gerry would think of this ancient Inca land, of its secretive, mystical quality. I reached out and peeled the soft skin from a quenuales tree. It was more like fabric than bark. Gerry said that all of his happiest moments had been connected to nature, yet he never had too much time for it. The smell of Scotch broom and eucalyptus mingled in the glacial mountain air. God, it was so strange how I missed him, particularly since there hadnt been any personal involvement for so long.

It had been ten years since our troubled love affair had sparked the self-search that pushed me into writing Out on a Limb, which, in turn, first brought me to these mountains. Long enough, I thought, for me to be objective about Gerry in the film I was now making of the book. And I had good cause to be grateful to Gerry, whose rigidly skeptical attitude about spiritual values had provoked me into further explorations both on my own and with my friend DavidDavid who had been a composite of so many people acting as spiritual guides for me, condensed into a character who would become real on the screen. I wondered about all the people whose various realities I had combined to crystalize in David. Would they see the film in far-flung areas of the world? Would they even know, from distant mountain-tops, that it existed? Davidmy creation, a marvelous, quirky, gentle, strong friend who led me into the labyrinth of my self and left me to find my own way. I had created David. I had created myself. Was life like the movies, only a dream?

I felt a crisp, cold, yet mellow warmth flow together like a textured elixir over my bare arms. I could see sugar-cane fields far down in the valley. The air was so clear I could make out where sheep and cattle dotted the craggy mountains, and where molle (red pepper) trees provided shade for the mountain people in their brilliantly colored ponchos. Brilliantly colored so as to permit people to distinguish one another in the mountain distances, each village subscribing to its own color.

The peasants took great care of their sheep, the most highly prized of animals, for their perennial gift of wool. Often the Andeans used pigs as watch animals to tend childrenanimals and peasants all participating fully in family life. When I asked why I never saw llamas or alpacas or vicuas in this part of the Andes, no one seemed to know except that they had just never come over here.

I sat down under the quenuales tree and bit into an apple I had brought with me. I focused on the irony of the stunning countryside, remembering how deeply affecting the natural disasters of the area had been in scarring the memories of the people who lived here just recently. It would be impossible to understand the culture of the people here without recognizing the accepting, fatalistic undercurrent that made it possible for them to live under the threat of storm, earthquake, and volcano.

Huars, the central commercial and cultural mountain city of the region, with a population now of 50,000, suffered a massive earthquake on the afternoon of May 31, 1970. Measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, it killed about 67,000 people, leveling almost every town in the Callejn de Huaylas. In terms of lives lost it was the worst disaster in the history of the Americas. The quake lasted about fifty seconds and was followed by aftershocks all through the night. It was so severe that two days later helicopters were still unable to land in some places, because the dust was so thick. The death toll would have been greater had it not struck on a Sunday when children were out of school.

Not long after, in 1972, the shocking avalanche landslide occurred which buried the beautiful mountain city of Yungay, killing 18,000 of its inhabitants. The people still speak of the massive slabs of granite that broke loose from the west face of the north peak of Nevado Huascarn. Three million cubic meters of ice and mud rode a cushion of air down to Yungay and the Santa River in only three minutes, at a speed of 300 kilometers an hour. The only survivors were 240 people watching a circus outside the avalanche path who managed to scramble to a high knoll.

Way back when, Gerry had been shocked that I was going to Peru. He and I had talked of the destiny of those 240 people. Why were they different? He said it was coincidence. I said it was karmic.

As I sat munching my apple I wondered what Id do if I found myself caught in an event of that magnitude. And worse, how would I feel if I survived? Would I know why? As soon as the thought struck me I was reminded that I had been through such disasters many timesnot in this life, but in others. Even today I have a haunting terror of tidal waves. I knew I had watched, transfixed in horror, as a mountainous wall of water bore down on me, curling me into it. The terror of my memory was not associated with being inundated by the weight of the water, but more by the pull of the giant undertow as it sucked me out to sea again. I remembered dying then, almost relieved that earthly panic and pain had ceased.