gossamer into spiderweb

2004-06-30T11:35:00.000-04:00

Last night I dreamed that I was in the woods, picking up shiny rocks from a streambed in a place where it cascaded down a little hill. There were some people I knew (you know, that random dream collection of nobody in particular and everybody all at once) a little ways away. I heard a crashing sound and looking downstream, I saw a large bull moose splashing around in the stream. I was quite worried because moose can be dangerous, and this one looked pretty agitated. As I wondered if I could sneak away into the underbrush, the moose charged upstream at me. I curled up into a ball in the water, in the hopes that it wouldn't notice me and hopefully not trample me. When the moose got to me, it lowered its head and sniffed at me. I could feel its hot breath on my face [2]. I started to think it might be okay after all, and then was suddenly swept into the air by a man riding a black horse. There was a boy with the man, and I realized that I was a child too. I think actually I was Lyra, which would make the boy Will and the man probably Lord Asriel, as he had that sort of look to him. I was pretty sure that I had to take the horse and ride off on a mission of some sort, which was very exciting, but the dream got muddled from there. Up to that point, it was extremely vivid.

Then this morning, I read in the paper that a moose had strolled into Wellesley yesterday afternoon around 5:30pm, and was last seen heading into Natick. Biologists speculated that it was a young male moose who had just left his mother and was looking for a territory of his own.

Coincidence? Hmmm...

[1] this was right out of my forest service experience in california. We didn't pick up many things, but we did look for bedrock mortars where native people sat and ground acorns. These mortars were often in or right alongside stream beds so that the water could wash away the bitterness of the acorns as they were being ground.

[2] i don't doubt in the slightest that in the real world, there was a ferret sniffing my face at that moment.

2004-06-16T11:51:00.000-04:00

Two days after my big show my feet still hurt but I am happy with how it went. Some things certainly could have gone better (there was a lot of tension between various personalities in the days leading up to the show, and it hadn't entirely dissipated by Monday, which affected us all), but all in all I'm proud of what we did. Can't wait to see canongrrl's photos!

Saturday night we have a gig in Burlington, MA. It's our first paid gig, which is cool, but I'm a little anxious about the show. It's an African fashion show, which is cool and all, but I hope the promoters understand that we aren't remotely African and that the crowd is cool with this too. Our dresses, should they arrive in time, will be from Egypt and the music is from Egypt but we are about as caucasian as it gets in appearance. I suspect it will all be okay in the end, but I don't know enough about it not to be nervous.

On Tuesday, the day after the show, I went to have an audiogram done. I've been having a strange and often uncomfortable flinching sensation in my right ear, unsettling enough to make me go see the doctor about it. It only affects me if I am in either a very, very quiet place or a very, very loud place and somebody speaks to me or a drum is hit--it's as though my ear is struggling to separate the distinct sound from the silence or the background din. I'll mention here that I have never heard that well out of my right ear, so if you talk at me from my right side in a club, chances are I can't hear you. The audiogram was an interesting experience. You sit in a soundtight (and therefore airtight) room with headphones on and listen to tones and repeat words. If you are in the booth I was in, you are also creeped out by the Donald Duck Halloween mask hanging in the corner; presumably it's there to comfort children in the booth, but it does not at all comfort adults with overactive imaginations who have seen too many horror movies. I will now listen to Matmos' song Spondee very differently now, having done that very exercise in the course of the test. I'll probably listen to that whole album differently.

Anyway, the end result was that I am showing early warning signs of tinnitus, both in that flinching and in the loss of some of my upper range hearing. I am trying not to be too freaked out by this because it is pretty common--Blixa Bargeld speaks of his tinnitus very matter of factly and it obviously hasn't prevented him from following his career in music. My dad has had it for a few years now and he also continues to listen to and enjoy music. And if I become religious about wearing earplugs in noisy situations now, I will be able to stave off my ears' deterioration for longer. There was some good news in all this too, in that I have quite acute hearing in most ranges.

But the fact of the matter is that I am pretty freaked out by this. Music is an integral part of my being. The music of my two subcultures is a crucial part of who I am, and I am a dancer. How can I not hear?

2004-06-07T13:07:00.000-04:00

Too little sleep leaves me in a permanent state of melancholy, it seems. I've been very down on myself for the last several days, and I'm pretty sure a lot of it has to do with sleep deprivation. I went to an excellent workshop with a warm and friendly teacher this weekend and still felt ready to burst into tears of frustration and despair on a few occasions. On the second day of the workshop I did actually end up crying in the bathroom, and I don't even really know why. Well, I guess I do know why: because I will never be a great dancer. I'll be good enough for the amateur scene, but I don't have the time or the strength or the natural talent or the youth to become anything more. That's very saddening. And sometimes it feels like the more I try, the less I can accomplish because I use up my strength and energy too soon and am left flat and struggling.

I also learned a little last week about the way other people sometimes perceive me, and that made me a bit sad as well. Nothing terrible, but something that I'm not sure I like. Or on the other hand, I might be intensely proud of that perception I apparently induce, but then I'm not sure that I like being proud of it. And certainly it has made me rethink many relationships and situations I've had in a different light. I think it's something that has hurt me, but I don't know any other way to be except the person who I am.

I wish I lived in some kind of Xena fantasy land where I could just fight the good fight and be kickass yet kind and know that I was making a difference in the world.

Now I'm even sadder than I was.

2004-06-03T12:03:00.000-04:00

At the doctor's yesterday I checked out the body mass index chart. The term for a good weight is "desireable." That is a terrible word choice; inevitably the word "undesirable" springs to mind when one's numbers don't match up. Couldn't they have said target or healthy or appropriate or something like that?

My leg is killing me this week but I think that is actually a good thing, because the location of the killingness has shifted from my knee tendons and foot directly into my Achilles tendon and connecting calf muscles. My theory is that this means my tendon is finally stretching as far as it should and it's complaining about it after years of not stretching far enough. So I take this as a positive sign. This weekend it will have been two years since my original injury, so I think I'm due for some real improvement after a year and a half of therapy and exercises. Maybe it will someday be normal. That would be nice.

I should just rename this Z's Leg's Blog, I think...

2004-05-23T19:12:00.000-04:00

recipe for exhaustion:

Help a friend move on saturday afternoon.

Eat a late lunch.

Don't eat dinner.

Go out on saturday night. Drink most of a bottle of red wine, and stay out until 3am.

Go to bed at about quarter to 4.

Get up at 10am on Sunday.

Fight crowds of red sox fans to get to a dance rehearsal. Dance for an hour.

Go home. Don't eat lunch. Go to the plant store and buy a bunch of plants.

Go home and undertake massive weeding operation, then plant the plants. This will take about three hours.

Have a beer.

I'm so drained it feels like a drug. A pretty good drug. But I do wish tomorrow weren't Monday.

2004-05-19T11:59:00.000-04:00

sometimes talking is like pulling my own teeth. the power of speech is rooted that deep far inside me somewhere, reluctant to release itself.

2004-04-29T11:59:00.000-04:00

waiting for the bus this morning, sunglasses, ponytail, wind blowing around my silk scarf in the sunlight--there really ought to have been a jaguar convertible coming to pick me up rather than a big old dielsel bus. And then I get to work and take off my coat, and discover a liberal sprinkling of glitter on my shirt, courtesy of Saturday night's performance. What did those incredibly glamourous women in film noir do for a living? How did they make ends meet? Maybe Leah Callahan knows.

The show on the 24th went very nicely. Of course there were things I wish I had done differently or better, but one should always have room for improvement, otherwise life would be stagnant. The crowd response was great, I had fun, Amber Spyglass had fun, and I got a standing invitation from Leah Callahan to participate in her caberet events, which I think I will take her up on in the future. People started tipping me in my costume, which was a bit unnerving; lesson learned is that if something is making me uncomfortable, stop it before it starts. I let the first person do it because I liked her, but then other people decided that meant everybody could do it. Perhaps I should have been more threatening with the sword ;)

I liked dancing with the sword quite a bit, and it's not as difficult as one would think. I was very happy with how things looked when I rented the studio at the Dance Complex, so I went into it feeling good. Of course the sword slid off my head once and wobbled a couple of times, but I caught it, and I suppose it served to highlight how hard it is to balance a sword on one's head. People were way more impressed with my balancing the sword on my hip and turning in a circle--Mathew heard someone exclaim "That's not human!" On my quite human body it's not difficult to balance the sword there; rounded padded hips can sometimes be an advantage, it seems. I'll have pictures posted somewhere soon, once I get them out of my camera.

Then the next night was Einstuerzende Neubauten, and what a wonderful night that was. I volunteered to check in supporters, give them their buttons, explain the night to them and sell them copies of the live cd. I was glad that I did it. I got to meet some interesting people, and it felt nice to be a part of the team making everything happen. Plus I got to boss around Paradise security a little bit at the meet and greet following the show. The meet and greet was a bit odd--it's such an artificial situation to be in. I feel sure that if I were hanging out at a party with members of Neubauten, we would have great conversations, but

--break for watching the hawk on my balcony. Its feathers are all fluffed out and the wind teases them in all directions. It must feel nice. I can only imagine how soft they are. The hawk watches everything, craning its neck to see the oblivious people walking down the sidewalks underneath. This is what a glamourous raptor does for a living.--

well, anyway the members of Neubauten were gracious and down-to-earth, with patience for fans even after a two hour plus show of amazing intensity and beauty. Blixa Bargeld signed my surrealist lunchbox, a life goal of mine. My intellectual/artistic heroes all in one place. It was also gratifying that he liked the lunchobox very much, and I was happy that he recognized so many of the young surrealists.

The artisitically rewarding weekend was followed by grueling days of illness, just now starting to abate. This is good, because I want to enjoy the Kentucky Derby this weekend with style, which is to say, with plentiful mint juleps.

2004-04-14T12:36:00.000-04:00

too many sweettarts
high voltage wire nerves sing
think I'll have one more

2004-04-13T11:49:00.000-04:00

There's nothing like calling a dance studio to reserve rehearsal time for yourself to make you feel like a real dancer.

I've ambitiously committed myself to a sword dance on the 24th, as well as a veil piece. So over the last few weeks I've dug up my sword, bought a video to practice with, and worn a groove in the top of my skull practicing. It's actually not as difficult as I thought it was--or at least I think it's not. Saturday's rehearsal with mirrors should be a reality check. I'm a little worried that I might be making movements too small. But I'll find out! I'm excited about the event, it's another cabaret deal and I'll be dancing to Siouxsie covers performed by Amber Spyglass.

2004-03-12T18:14:00.000-05:00

Also, the news that Tobasco Cat passed away has made me very sad. I will forever maintain that he could have won the Kentucky Derby and gone on to win the Triple Crown had he only felt like it that first Saturday in May. You could argue that winning the Derby might have taken too much out of him to then go on and win the Preakness and Belmont as he did, but he must have spent at least as much energy fighting with his jockey as he would have if he had run all out. He just didn't feel like it that day, sitting down on his haunches like a dog in the starting gate. I hope he went out happy though--they say he died of a stroke in the breeding shed. Not a bad way for a big red stallion with a mind of his own to go.

2004-03-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

Objectively, I know that having the PA and monitors and mic stands and lead singer at the Scissorkiss show in Providence is more important and necessary than having me at the show in Providence. There is not room for all of that stuff and me in the car. The show can't happen without those other things. It can happen without me.

Subjectively, that didn't stop me from crying myself to sleep last night. And it hasn't stopped me from feeling sick and numb today. Part of me is hoping I can catch a ride with somebody else, but a bigger part of me is telling me not to get my hopes up and besides I'm not needed anyway so I should just stay home and forget about my stupid vacation, which was prompted by the show in Providence in the first place.

I'm supposed to go out dancing tonight but mostly I just want to throw up. I think I'm hungover from all the crying.

2004-03-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

Sedna was the most beautiful girl in her village and the daughter of the best hunter. In those days there were no large game animals, so it took a lot of hunting for a man to feed his family on small animals and fish. She never wanted for food, and everybody constantly praised her, remarking especially on her long, lustrous hair. "That woman," the people said, "will marry a fine man, and our village will be all the better for building bonds from such a man, the kind of man that Sedna will marry!" And so of course, Sedna believed that the man she would marry must be the finest man alive. She would have none of any of the men in her village. After all, if her father was the best hunter, then they were all inferior sorts of men. The young men strove to outdo each other, competing for Sedna's favor, but nothing they did was ever enough for her. Nobody would say so to her face, of course, but it began to seem odd to the villagers that Sedna would not marry, and her father pleaded with her to no avail to accept the best of the young men as a husband.

Then one day a fine young stranger arrived in a large boat, laden with rich furs and all manner of meat. He was a very handsome man, and after an evening of watching him, Sedna declared, "This is the man I will marry!" The village rejoiced at her fine catch, although it did seem odd to everyone that the handsome stranger covered his mouth whenever he smiled, so that you could not see his teeth. Sedna's father gave his blessing to the union, and Sedna set off with the stranger in his boat, sitting proud and tall on a pile of furs.

When they came to the shore of his land, he smiled for the first time without hiding his teeth, and Sedna was surprised to see how sharp and pointed they were. "My husband," she began, but before she could finish he had leapt from the boat to the shore and as his feet touched ground they became paws, and there stood a husky dog. A fine dog, to be sure, but certainly not a handsome man. "What's the matter," barked the dog, "am I not the best hunter you have ever seen?" Sedna screamed, and the sound of her cry carried back to her father in his sleep. He followed the echos until he found her sitting on the shore under the upturned boat, looking miserable. "well," he said, we all make mistakes. now maybe you'll marry a nice village boy." "Maybe," said Sedna, and they set off for home.

Once they were home the women of the village combed out Sedna's beautiful hair and welcomed her back, each woman whispering into Sedna's ear who they thought the best catch in the village would be. Sedna was non-committal, and as the days and weeks went on, it was clear that she was as set in her determination as always that none of the village men were good enough for her.

And one day a handsome stranger arrived in a boat laden with shells and all kinds of fish and delicacies from the sea. He was a little pale and his eyes were very round, but still, he was handsome and there was no question that he was a good hunter, better than any of the young men of the village. Sedna was again smitten, and her father once again, although a little reluctantly this time, gave the union his blessing. Sedna set off to sea with her new husband. But rather than following the shore, he set a course straight out into the sea. "My husband," said Sedna, "where are we going? And what is that horrendous noise and stench?" He smiled at her as a giant rock covered with gulls and terns came into view. "That is my village," said Sedna's new husband, and with that he leapt into the air, spreading long white wings and looking back down at Sedna over his gull's beak. And Sedna screamed.

Her father sighed, and got back into his boat. He paddled until he found the great rock of squwaking birds, Sedna hunched miserably just above the tide line. The gulls and terns had been picking at her hair for nesting materials and she looked a fright. Yet no sooner had they put out to sea than Sedna began talking about how to look for her next husband, "because those village boys are no good, they never will be." Sedna's father thought about this for a moment, turned to Sedna, said "Good luck finding him, then." And he pushed her overboard.

She clung to the side of the boat pleading with her father to pull her back in and started to pull herself up with her strong hands. Her father took out his knife and cut her fingers off so that she could not climb up. As the fingers fell into the water, they became seals, something never before seen. Other fingers became caribou, striking out for shore, and others became great salmon and small whales, leaping away over the waters. Sedna sank to the deeps, hair swirling in tendrils around her, still crying "the best hunter will be mine!"

So now Sedna lives at the bottom of the sea, controlling the spirits of those animals that came from her flesh. She gave the gift of being great hunters to people, but when she is cranky, she keeps her animals close to her and doesn't let them out to meet people. In those times the shaman has to fall deep into the sea through trance and cheer her up by combing her hair free of snarls, reminding her that all the great hunters belong to her now. Then if she feels mollified, she will let the animal spirits travel up to meet the hunters so that the people may eat. All the hunters may have human wives, but she knows that she is the one to whom they are truly married.

This post was inspired by the fact that I am cranky and my hair needs washing and I am wearing my Sedna necklace. The river flows by me and I can imagine being underneath it, moping around with seals and caribou until somebody comes to comb out my hair and tell me it's all okay.

2004-02-25T12:48:00.000-05:00

I really need to lock myself away and cry for a while. Just too much piled up too fast. I try to improve things, I get slapped down for it. I get yelled at for things I wasn't responsible for. I take it out on the wrong people and despise myself for it. In all situations, I have to keep my mouth shut. I am not making enough effort in any part of my life. I am squished into a tight little box and I think my skin is starting to crack and implode.

And my foot hurts. What else is new.

2004-02-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

The river is frozen over and for a moment today I felt that my life had frozen as well. Just as I did as a research assistant in grad school, I went to the library (the law library, as it were and as I often did then) to photocopy articles for a professor. The old familiar rituals of explore the stacks, find the book (or not), photocopy pages, checking to make sure all the text fits, starting with the last page and copying my way back to the first, looking at the law students and feeling more than vaguely alien--it all felt so familiar. What city would I step out into when I left the library?

When I did step outside, the river before me was the Charles, not the St. Laurence. The bridge over Storrow Drive to the river's bank beckoned, so I crossed over to the riverside, walking back to my office surrounded by the strange silence of a city--a silence that really isn't, with the noise of the cars and the wind, but a silence made of the absence of human noise. The cars don't count, because on the highway they take on the character of being part of a river of their own. So I walked back in this silence-that-isn't, feeling the sunlight warm on my black jacket and the wind creating arabesques in my hair. I see the river all day long from my office, but it takes on a different character up close, more real somehow and a reminder of the natural world, muddy banks with animal tracks, twisted stumps sending up new shoots, the evidence of little lives that we know nothing about, and me passing by with my thoughts of places and people and who I might be.

Time froze for a moment today.

2004-02-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

so overwhelmingly tired... I was actually happy to hear that the red line was experiencing delays this morning, as it meant I could sleep longer.

The show went really well on Friday. Moon Colony started with some technical difficulties, which I think maybe I should just expect with that song unless I'm performing it with the band. This is now the second time I've been stranded on the stage with no music. So I smiled and shrugged prettily at the audience, because really what else can you do once you're on the stage? Unfortunately most of the choreography flew out of my head, but by all accounts I covered well. The second song, Habbeza, went very, very well. There are times when you are dancing when the music flies by, you are at the end of the song before you know it, and you just feel so incredibly *on*--and this was one of those times. I love the song and I had a blast dancing to it and got tons of great feedback afterwards. The event organizer remarked that this was probably the first time a lot of the people in the audience had ever seen a real live bellydancer, so I'm glad they got it. I could certainly tell that I wasn't dancing for a regular dance audience though--the lack of clapping and yelling during my performance threw me off a bit until I realized that they just didn't know that it was okay to do that kind of thing. Certainly they clapped and yelled when I was done!

The whole event was very enjoyable--I heard some bands that I'd heard of but hadn't actually heard before and met a bunch of new people and had some good conversations with both friends and strangers. The Zeitgeist is a nice little venue. The owner is interested in having bellydance events, and I'm thinking it might be a nice venue for an experimental bellydance show for people to come and do works in progress, pieces to unconventional music, the sort of thing that doesn't fit at regular venues. Not that I have any time to plan anything right now, but if I can get some co-conspirators perhaps this could happen in the spring or summer.

I'm feeling good about dancing in general right now--when I did Habbeza for class, Seyyide commented on how much progress I've made with posture and expression, which made me feel quite proud. I know I have a ways to go when it comes to a lifted posture, but I feel like I'm starting to feel internally how it should be done and that my muscles are finally starting to cooperate with my intentions. When I look at the posed photos I did back in early November, I know that I could pose better now. I do have a lot of work to do over the next few months, what with a teacher showcase at the end of February and our annual show sometime after that, but I'm looking forward to it. That's how you improve! I'm still very thankful for the whole contest experience back in September, because I showed myself that I could do a lot more than I thought I could if I only worked at it. Now if only my stupid foot and achilles tendon would get better...

In the meanwhile, this day will never end. I slept poorly all weekend and was already feeling asthma symptoms before spending a chunk of Sunday in a smoky room, so I'm somewhat oxygen deprived in general. I used Ventolin at work on Monday which I hate doing, because then my hands shake too much to type. Better than ceasing to breathe, I guess. The last seven days have taken a lot out of me. I am so looking forward to plunking my bottom on the couch tonight and watching mediocre scifi (Enterprise) and fabulous fantasy-horror (Angel) and not doing anything remotely productive except maybe brushing my teeth before slouching off to bed. Yeah.

2004-02-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

Pan came through so well--he was pretty chipper when we brought him home, and isn't picking at his tail at all. They did a good job in closing it up, and his hair is even growing back already. When he finally does grow all the hair back, it won't even be obvious that he lost any of his tail. Happy Pan! Happy us! He's on a few days' worth of painkillers, but fortunately he thinks they taste good (that or he can make the connection that it makes him feel better, he is a smart weasel). It is all a huge weight off my shoulders. Even paying for it all won't be that bad--the surgery came in under the estimate, and I have three months without interest to pay it off. So all's well that ends well.

Now I just have my performance on Friday to stress about. Although I'm probably more stressed about doing a run-through of the new choreography in class tomorrow than I am about the actual show. And I'm way more stressed about how I am going to get to the show in time than I am about the actual performance. But it will all fall together, and if I'm late getting there, then I'll just go on later. I have the choreography pretty much finished; there's a weak part in the middle in a part of the music that I think just goes on too long, but at least I can move all the way through. I really like what I've done, and as I rehearse this piece and Moon Colony I realise that I am a more sophisticated choreographer than I was 18 months ago.

I finished sewing my "spider belly" pants as well and am very happy with how they turned out. I sewed beads and coins along the ends of the spider straps, sort of the equivalent of a techno tassel. God help me, I'm going to end up in tribal costuming yet. I suppose what I am doing might fall into the triberet category, except that my movements are more Egyptian. All quibbles that most likely nobody but me will be aware of on Friday, but I do try to be aware of what I'm doing and not just wildly mix and match. Ah well. Sometimes you just go with what works.

2004-01-30T16:18:00.000-05:00

YAY!!! My little Pan-fried noodle came through surgery just fine and he's awake and now I'm just waiting for Mathew to come pick me up so we can go bring the noodle home!!!

2004-01-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

My eyes close because I am so tired and then I think maybe Pan's eyes are closed right now too as he lies on the operating table and then I am too anxious to be tired.

2004-01-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

I think of that day in April 2002 and suddenly I am fighting back tears. I don't think the pain will ever dull. I took all the pain she was living with and made it mine.

2004-01-14T13:43:00.000-05:00

lots of time gone by--the holidays went by in a blur. Much gift-giving and receiving and attending social events (as well as hosting one) and all was well. Honestly, I think this was one of my best holiday seasons ever, helped along by my creative frenzy over the last six weeks or so--marble magnets and cabinet handles, glass bead magnets, the belts for our December performance, a recreation of Bjork's swan dress in black velvet and organza for New Year's eve (really!), building a headboard, cooking, and probably more stuff that I'm forgetting. It feels very good to have the opportunity to do something creative, especially when many of these are projects I easily completed in a couple of hours. So often I start projects and then they lie around for days-weeks-months-years and never quite get completed. What I've been doing makes me very happy.

For my next projects I am going to stain a small table grey and do a mosaic on the top, rework a pair of spider pants into technobellyharempants for an upcoming performance and hopefully do _something_ about that ugly, ugly living room ceiling light. Both Mathew and I have been on a real push to get the apartment decorated, especially our bedroom. In the last two places we've lived, the bedrooms never really felt finished, as though we ran out of steam by the time we hit the end of the apartment. Doing the headboard in the bedroom has already made a big difference in its coziness quotient and inspired us to do more.

Another area for creativity is an upcoming dance performance in February with a group exploring the relationship between artists and technology, or something like that. At first I wasn't that sure how I fit in, but now I feel confident in myself as an artist exploring technology in the form of technobelly through a more traditional medium, that of dance. This week in class we learned some great combinations that will fit one of my songs excellently. So I'm all fired up for that--just have to make the time to practice!

The only really negative thing going on right now, apart from Mathew having the flu, is that Pan has a lump growing on the end of his tail. I am sure it is chordoma, but we have a vet visit scheduled soon to find out for sure. If it is chordoma (a bone tumor), curing it means chopping off the last inch or so of his tail, which isn't too bad, but I worry about his ability to deal with the stress of the experience, that I'll bring him in for minor surgery and he'll come home with bleeding ulcers. I feel so protective of poor little Pan. I'm almost tempted to try Bach's rescue remedies or various other forms of snake oil that are reputed to have calming effects on ferrets--if the vet says it can't hurt, it may be worth giving it a try. We'll see. I keep reminding myself that the surgery is totally curative and what the heck, it's only money :-/

back to work, I suppose...

2003-12-15T11:34:00.000-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks I have sewed four dance belts, attended rehearsals and class and practiced at home, all the while trying to maintain those regular things like work, laundry, grocery shopping, time with Mathew, etc. Yesterday our troupe had our special holiday performance, a very entertaining cane number to a Saidi version of Deck the Halls. I thought it went well from my perspective, but as my teacher noted, I haven't seen the tape yet. Oh well. Following our performance I watched some lovely dancing, participated in some group dancing, went home, shovelled yet another 4-6 inches of snow, walked in the house, and was hit by a lethargy so powerful it actually felt good, because for the first time in I don't know how long I could give in to my exhaustion, just sit and do nothing except feel my muscles relaxing. No feeling that I ought to be practicing some move or sewing something or shoveling or fulfilling any number of obligations--I could do whatever I wanted, just exist for me.

A little sherry, the couch, a warm blanket, Mathew, the sound of the snow and sleet and wind blustering outside, and the pleasantly surprising new Battlestar Galactica miniseries in its entirety--sometimes life just doesn't get any better than that.

2003-12-04T15:07:00.000-05:00

dreamed last night about either being a hawk or watching a hawk, or perhaps both. There was also some glistening raw meat, which either I wanted to eat if I were the hawk or I wanted the hawk to eat if I were not the hawk. I really couldn't tell what the situation was.

I watched 28 Days Later, which wasn't anywhere near as scary as I thought it would be (despite watching the first half of it alone and in the dark). I think that the speedy grainy camera work infiltrated my dreams, and maybe that's where the raw meat came from, but honestly the scariest part of the movie was a car alarm. I thought it was pretty good sci fi with a dash of horror, rather than a horror film per se. I do think the soldiers were a bit of a cop out as a plot element though--it's too easy to make soldiers look bad, though they did look bad indeed. And there were some other things I wish were explored a bit more--I was okay with no real explanation for how the rage virus worked or why the experiments were happening in the first place, but it seemed to me at one point one caught a glimpse of the human being trapped behind the rage when the camera was focused on one of the infected, and that would have been interesting to pursue. All in all, though, I'm glad I saw it, because it's always heartening to see sci fi genre stuff and quality movie-making at the same time. Some of the filmwork was gorgeous, especially the sort of portraits of people's faces.

2003-12-02T11:31:00.000-05:00

I left my house sort of on time this morning and ran to catch
the bus. I arrived at the bus stop as the same time as
the bus, but that was because traffic was moving approximately two car lengths every few minutes. Even though it snows here every single year, still, the first time it happens people forget how to drive and traffic is a nightmare. I stared at the bus, already full to the brim
with people, and thought about standing in my winter coat on the bus, hemmed in by humanity as it crawled through traffic. I turned on my heel and walked to the train station, and I'm pretty sure I beat the bus.

But I was glad that I did walk, because as I walked along a bicycle path all overhung with trees (my shortcut to the train station), I was listening to "Cassiel's Song" on my "new" mix cd. The sun made the icy path glow so bright white it was hard to see even through my sunglasses, the occasional wind blew clouds of glittering snow into the air around me, and the clouds above were masses of silver flame
stretching across the sky, and for a moment I could believe that I was Cassiel walking back into heaven leaving all human suffering behind, led by those who loved me and wanted me safe, and my heart ached with the music.

Then the sun went behind a cloud and I could see that I was not walking into the light but rather the train station, and I realized that human suffering awaited me still this morning. It was a glorious moment while it lasted.

We've come to bring you home
Haven't we, Cassiel?

To cast aside your loss and all your sadness
And shuffle off that mortal coil and mortal madness
For we're here to pick you up and bring you home
Aren't we, Cassiel?

It's a place where you did not belong
Were time itself was mad and far too strong
Where life leapt up laughing and hit you head on
and hurt you, didn't it hurt you, Cassiel?

While time outran you and trouble flew toward you,
and you were there to greet it,
weren't you, foolish Cassiel?

But here we are, we've come to call you home
and here you'll stay never more to stray
Where you can kick off your boots of clay
can't you, Cassiel?

For death and you did recklessly collide
and time ran out of you
and you ran out of time,
didn't you, Cassiel?

and all the clocks, in all the world
may this once just skip a beat in memory of you
then again those damn clocks, they probably won't
will they, Cassiel?

One moment you are there and then strangely you are gone,
but on behalf of all of us here we are glad to have you home
Aren't we, dear Cassiel?

2003-11-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

I want a drink. A really fucking big drink.

2003-11-20T11:12:00.000-05:00

I wrote this to a mailing list after a dancer expressed frustration with the growing number of fusion dance forms that call themselves belly dance. She was set off by the announcement of the Gothic Belly Dance Resource, a site which I happen to like quite a bit and plan to contribute to in the future. I put a lot of thought into what I wrote in response and so I thought I would record it here for posterity, and also perhaps to get myself motivated to write an article that I promised a while back :-)

I send this not to cause waves but in a spirit of education.

I have been a goth for my entire adult life (when I reached
my early 30s, my mom looked at me and said "I guess it wasn't
a phase after all. well, at least you look good in
black!"). A definition of goth would be an entire essay in
itself, but some loosely defining characteristics are a
passionate love for a particular genre of music which often
incorporates melancholy themes, minor keys and plenty of
ornamentation, a flair for the dramatic in clothing style,
and an abiding interest in the unusual. Many gothic
musicians have incorporated middle eastern elements into
their songwriting; the Changelings are one example. Peter
Murphy, a former member of goth band par excellance Bauhaus,
collaborated with Turkish musicians (the Mercan Dede
Ensemble) on his last album, and he is also married to a
Turkish modern dancer and has converted to Islam. I am sure
that many people on this list enjoy the music of Dead Can
Dance; while they are not a goth band per se, they are
tremendously popular with goths. There is a lot of goth
music that has rhythms and melodies in common with middle
eastern music.

So it should not come as a surprise that goth women (and some
men) are attracted to belly dance. If you teach in a good-
sized city, I would be surprised if you did not have at least
one goth in your classes, and have probably had several goth
students over the years. And we goth women, realizing that
there are plenty of us out there learning belly dance, want
to connect with each other and have our own community within
the larger dance community, have people to talk with who
share our own tastes.

Being a goth is an important part of my identity. It is who
I am. Being a belly dancer has become an important part of
my identity over the last five years and has also become a
part of who I am. So naturally I integrate the two parts of
my identity when I dance. When I perform in a belly dance
event, the goth part of me is in the background. I tend
toward more Arabic and Egyptian music when I dance for belly
dance audiences (I do raqs sharqi/caberet, not tribal), and
while my costuming reflects my color preferences, I don't
look like Morticia up on stage. But the goth element is
there, supplementing my feelings for the music and my
interpretation of many of the Arabic lyrics, which can be
more melancholy than a lot of goth stuff!

When I perform in a goth venue, _then_ Morticia throws on her
bedleh and cuts loose, because then I am in a context where
that will be understood and appreciated. And it also becomes
an opportunity for education about middle eastern dance--
people always ask me about the dance after I perform. I make
it clear that what I just showed them was fusion and
not "pure" belly dance. We gothic bellydancers do know the
difference; we are exploring points of commonality between
our two different communities. I do my best to respect the
standards and traditions of each community while I am
standing in it, and I'm sure a lot of or most other goth
bellydancers conduct themselves in a similar manner. Apart
perhaps from Halloween haflis, I wouldn't mix my two modes of
dancing. Nobody should take the existence of gothic belly
dance as any kind of threat to the "integrity of the dance"
or whathaveyou. It's just a bunch of goth women celebrating
the best of both of the worlds they live in.

That was my several cents' worth :)

2003-11-18T16:16:00.000-05:00

I was going to write a really whiny post about being sick and how nobody likes me, they just tolerate me, and how miserable and pathetic I am, but then I read, as I often do, Baghdad Burning, Riverbend's blog, and I realized that really I ought not to be whining as nobody is dropping bombs on me or my family and I don't have to have a gun to feel safe and I almost always have electricity and enough food and potable water and the right to wear more or less what clothes I want in public. So this over-privileged American will shut up now.

2003-11-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

I am quite sure that the volume of snot that has come out of my head in the last 24 hours is far greater than the actual cranial capacity of my entire skull. Where the hell does all this stuff come from? There must be some transdimensional portal somewhere up my nose bringing this stuff in from another galaxy. That's the only explanation I can think of, plus it would explain the splitting headaches too.

I should probably still be at home, but I feel like sitting around is making me sicker. Though I bet everyone in the office is wishing I'd stayed at home as I cough and hack and snort and snuffle in their midst. I was starting to feel like my bones were melting as I lay on the couch. They still feel pretty wobbly but at least I'm moving them around. I've been so sick I can't even make myself feel bad about not working out or dancing this week--I didn't even make it to class, and that for me is quite ill indeed. I haven't even wanted any alcohol since Saturday, and again, that is an indication of a substantial illness.

Apart from this plague crashing down on me in the last hour or so of the day, I had a wonderful time at a benefit at the Athenian Corner in Lowell on Sunday for an area dancer who has had some serious medical problems. She is one of the very few to be able to make a living from dancing alone, but the flip side of that is that whatever health insurance she may have had didn't cover the costs of the expensive procedures she needed. So the community pulled together to hold a day of classes and various raffles, photo ops and so on to raise money. I got a lot out of the day as a dancer. The first thing I did was a tribal workshop with Amira Jamal--I'm not that enthralled by _watching_ tribal, but I have to admit that it was a lot of fun to _do_. It's very much a social dance, I think, which may be why it doesn't always carry over so well as a performance dance. Then came a great workshop with Melina on balancing props. I used my cane as my prop and learned some very useful tricks and tips for getting the thing to stay on one's head and how to really impress an audience while doing things that aren't necessarily that difficult. I happened to be wearing a velvety headband, and that cane did not slide off my head once--I was very proud of me and will never dance cane without a headband from now on! I also managed a fairly respectable backbend with the cane on my head. The trick it seems is to take your time going into it. After the balancing workshop, it was my turn to have posed photos taken under the direction of Amina Delal*, an experienced professional dancer/makeup artist. This was also extremely valuable, because not only do I now have some very nice photos of myself but I also learned quite a bit about stage makeup and costuming for my body type while Ms. Delal* worked on me and directed my posing. Then it was time for lunch, yummy Greek food. I had a souvlaki sandwich--not as good as Villa Souvlaki in Montreal, but pretty good nonetheless.

After lunch came a makeup workshop by Amina Delal* (why the asterisk? I do not know, but that's how she writes it), which was good because that gave my stomach a chance to digest the yummy Greek food. Again, I learned lots of good stuff, and it was fascinating to see the chosen model's face really transform before our eyes. Then it was up on our feet for drum solo technique with Phaedra. The workshop was a little disorganized--I couldn't tell whether we were supposed to be following her or doing our own thing most of the time--but it was still fun and substantially augmented by a live drummer, and without a doubt Phaedra has excellent drum solo technique. Last but certainly not least came Lebanese movements with Shadia. I would love to take more classes with her--she came across as tough and no-nonsense but really enthusiastic about her knowledge and happy to share it. The Lebanese stuff is very hoppy and bouncy and made a great finale to the day. I think I took to it pretty quickly--I know I enjoyed the movements, except maybe for the back-and-forward head slides which make me feel like a chicken, plus as I mentioned earlier on this was when I realized I was getting sick and so head slides just weren't that fun. But anyway, I tremendously enjoyed the day, and it was all the more rewarding to know that we were all doing this together to help out a fellow dancer.

Having had the stamina to get through that day makes me feel a little better about the blob of snot that I've been this week--if I could do all those pretty rigorous classes from 10-5 and still be keeping up at the end of the day, I'm in okay shape. Once I've figured out how to seal off this snot-dimension portal in my head, I am so energized to start dancing again...

2003-11-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

You know love is still as strong as ever when you have spent nearly every waking hour in the last day and a half with that certain someone, yet when they leave the house it feels strange and empty.

2003-10-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

Also, it's really hard to leave your house in the morning when it is warm and smells like apple pie, as I indeed baked an apple pie this morning. I can still catch the lingering scent of it on my taste buds. Want pie.

2003-10-22T10:34:00.000-04:00

Missing the bus made me cry this morning. It's going to be a long day...

2003-10-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

I have new insight into how many of my friends must have felt when I publicized my intended separation/divorce from my ex-husband. So many people said over the years "oh, you're so perfect for each other, different yet so complimentary" and then I told them that it was all based on my living out some version of myself that I didn't want to be. I now have some sense that I must have shaken their worlds a bit, because mine feels shaken a bit. I wonder if people mourned the way that I mourn now. I don't want to think that they did, because the situations are so different and I can't bear to think that anybody could have thought that my separation was anything less than a fiercely positive step for me. But if anyone reading this did mourn the dissolution of my former marriage, then I thank you for being my supportive friend as you felt your own loss.

This is an intense week for many reasons. I am tired today but I'm glad I went out dancing last night and that the music was so good and the friendships were so palpable.

2003-10-09T13:08:00.000-04:00

Last night I dreamed that foxes and ravens were watching me, popping up in unexpected places and keeping an eye on where I was going and what I was doing. That must mean something, tricksters hanging on my every move like that...

2003-10-07T12:05:00.000-04:00

sleepy, sleepy, sleepy. Do antibiotics make one extra drowsy? I know they do make one pee like a rhinoceros*. I scratched my eyeball with my own powder brush, fully laden with powder, while preparing for the contest last weekend and went on antibiotics after my eyelid swelled up to about three times normal size.

*I use this simile because once at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago I walked into the large mammal house. A rhinoceros was peeing copiously. I stayed in the large mammal house for about fifteen minutes or so, watching a charming baby elephant cavorting. As I left the large mammal house, the rhinoceros was still peeing with great vigor and force. Amazing.

I could also be drowsy from an action-packed weekend. Friday night was calm enough; I spent it watching a documentary on Max Ernst. It wasn't a superbly well-made documentary--I was glad that I had read Dorothea Tanning's memoirs beforehand to fill in some gaps--but the filming of the artworks was impressive, particularly the cement sculptures that Max Ernst placed on his various houses. I am in full agreement with Ernst that if one is covering a wall in concrete or plaster then one ought to do something creative with it. There was a lot of interesting historical detail about Paris and the Surrealists and the art world of the early to mid 20th century in general. So I would actually recommend the documentary, available through netflix, even though the narration was a bit bland and also they made Peggy Guggenheim sound like a whiny bitch (which maybe she was or maybe she wasn't, but the woman did support Ernst and surrealist endeavors for at least a couple of years, they could show her some charity). I think it was simply titled Max Ernst.

Then Saturday it was off to the wilds of East Providence for jhimm and Liz's wedding. It really was a beautiful event. The two of them looked positively radiant and wonderfully happy, and it was a pleasure to help them celebrate. The venue was a private club right on the water's edge, with a dance floor extending over the water. It got so warm in the hall that we had all the windows open and it was a wonderfully sensual experience to dance with the ocean winds rising off the waters. A lovely moment was when an old fashioned schooner set sail off into the harbor, cutting through the mists. We joked that it was a pirate ship, and a little girl ran to the window to watch it sail away. We hoped that she was singing under her breath that the life of a pirate was the life for her. After the wedding, my carpooling crew and I went over to Providence to see the Riverfires and get some falafel. Mathew and I waltzed to music by Satie on a cobblestone bridge, bonfires floating on the water around us. Quite romantic, really. Then I thoroughly conked out on the ride home in the lovely hybrid Prius, which Kevin obtained from Zipcar. That was a really cool car. if I were buying a car and had lots of money, that's what I'd get.

Then I had a performance on Sunday afternoon at the annual big hafli, this time held in far-away Melrose. I never knew where Melrose was before Sunday. I resolutely refrained from buying stuff, but it is a good thing that the stunning beaded leopard dress over at Anatolia Imports was so far out of my price range, otherwise I'd have been in trouble. It was gorgeous. The dancing went quite well--new troupemates had a great debut, the audience was enthusiastic, I had friends there to see me, and the atmosphere was a lot of fun. I ran into a few of the women from the contest and it's nice to see that our little bonding experience is holding over--I don't know if that's part of the reason why Za-Beth holds the contests, but a nice effect of them is that community is formed and strengthened in the newer dancers. Also I was rather pleased to discover that my Shakira pants are a little too big now, although it did mean that I had to keep hauling them up all afternoon.

The only negative thing I would have to say about the entire weekend is--wait for it--you'll never guess--my foot hurts! I wore shoes that I shouldn't have to the wedding (though I was doing okay until we tromped around Providence later on) and then I stood for a few hours before performing on Sunday, as I didn't want to sit in my costume. Last night it hurt more than it has since we moved. Stretch, stretch, stretch, ice, ice, ice (baby). Brr.

2003-09-29T14:05:00.000-04:00

So, the contest has come and gone. I did not place, but I am okay with that for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, _I_ know that I danced well, and I met my personal goal of getting myself ready to dance with a live band. That, for me, was the point of entering the contest rather than competing with other students. I had great audience reaction; the things that I think make me the most proud were that people I had never met before sought me out to tell me how good they thought I was or that they thought I should have won never mind not placed, and that a couple of Middle Eastern men told me that I was the best dancer, and hey, they should know what to look for! So I passed what for me was a huge hurdle with I think flying colors. I also think that stylistically, I do not do what the judges were looking for, and so they did not rank me highly. Judging is subjective, especially when we were not being judged on technique, so I can't really argue with how things turned out. And I wouldn't want to argue with the end results, since in a way it confirmed for me that I am doing something different (hence not scoring highly) but good (hence tons of positive reinforcement after my performance). All of this is not to say that my performance was perfect--I was so scared I had some balance issues!--but I'm happy with what I accomplished. Six months ago I wouldn't have thought I could do it, but not only did I dance to a live band, I did it with style and entertained people. And in the process I learned more about constructing a costume and other useful things.

In addition to all that, I also learned that I have some very supportive troupemates and friends out there :-) That means a lot to me.

And for my next solo act--definitely the Middle East on a Sunday night, definitely something hella Egyptian. I'm leaning towards a selection from Raksit Badia, not just because the music is good but because of the similarity in dance names--Badia is the moon, Badriya is shining like the moon. Sounds auspicious to me!

Seti's almost better, but Pan seems to have caught his bug, thereby confirming that it's a bug and not any of the horrible things I was contemplating. I guess I'll give Pan a week or so to see if he can clear it up on his own, and if not, it's back to the vet, sigh. I might as well just give them my back account number and have done with it. Maybe though the vet would be willing to write a perscription without seeing Pan. Probably not, but it's worth asking.

Foot, of course, is killing me, but that's par for the course. I stood for probably four hours yesterday because I couldn't sit in my costume, and that more than the dancing put a lot of strain on my arch. More exercises, more ice...

2003-09-22T15:18:00.000-04:00

I spent about six hours doing beadwork on my contest costume yesterday. That is grueling work--my back and shoulders ache, my fingertips are tender, my hands are cramped and my eyes are sore. I dreamed about beads all night. But it is looking very nice, and I am learning a lot about beading in the process. It's not that hard, just time consuming and as I said, physically grueling. And I know for a fact that nobody else there will have a costume exactly like mine.

The birthday party was very fun. Goldfrapp went a bit later than I expected so we showed up after midnight, but there were still plenty of people around. Mathew gave me a gorgeous top from Kambriel and Gorey bat earrings and necklace, which I love so much I am wearing today at work because I cannot bear to take them off.

No real definative news on Seti's health, but he's on a round of antibiotics to see if that clears things up. Hopefully it will.

Last night I had a nightmare that I got up on stage for the dance contest and couldn't hear the rhythm in the music, couldn't remember any dance moves, hadn't finished my costume and the only person I knew in the audience was an ex with whom I have absolutely no contact, by choice. The judges asked me what I thought I was doing there. Ugh. I was hoping not to have anxiety dreams this far from the date. But I think this was really prompted by my feeling badly that I didn't get any dance time in on Sunday because I was sewing and beading all day, making it a guilt dream rather than an anxiety dream. Hopefully dancing tonight will prevent a reoccurance.

2003-09-19T13:31:00.000-04:00

It's easy to be strong and declare that you don't want pizza for lunch when pizza is not present and you can't smell it. It's much harder to stick by that decision and eat your zero fat black bean couscous stuff when the office is fragrant with pizza, especially pizza topped with eggplant.

I was waiting for the bus this morning as the outliers of Hurricane Isabel rolled into the Boston area. The almost tactile cloudiness of the low ceiling and the winds tossing the tree tops reminded me fiercely of September in Alaska and once again I had that feeling of homesickness for a place that was never my home. It gave me a lot though, so I suppose that's why I sometimes yearn for it. Not that I concretely wish to go back, but the weather is enough of a trigger that I can imagine that I am once again swaggering though town in gumboots with a rifle slung over my shoulder on my way to the float plane, that the plane will take me to some small cove where I can set up my tent in five minutes flat and where I won't mind the grit in the water and the grime under my nails, where it's an unusual day if I don't see a bald eagle and where I can almost understand what the ravens are talking about if I unfocus my ears enough, where a bear sees me as an intruder who might need confronting and where the otters aren't afraid to run up and tell me just what they think of big galumphing things walking down their pathway. In Alaska I found strength and calm in myself that I never knew I had--I only wish that I'd known how to use it better at the time. But as life went on I learned to draw on what I found in myself, how to be an oldgrowth tree, immovable against all forces, or how to be a raven, whirling and wheeling where the wind takes me, or how to be a seal, capable of relaxing on land when my environment is water.

These are good things to think about right before my birthday.

2003-09-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

now my leg feels like molten lead. ow.

also I am dizzy and nauseous. bleh.

2003-09-16T11:37:00.000-04:00

I danced for a solid hour and a half last night, an hour of improv and a half hour of working with a new troupe member on a choreography. My legs feel like lead today but it felt good. I am now wishing I had more time before the contest, but I don't, so it will have to be enough time. As long as I can remember to keep off my toes I will do well--going up on my toes hurts my foot and also makes all my movements smaller so it's just a bad thing all around. Yet I do it when my mind goes blank or when I get nervous. So obviously that will be something to watch out for when I'm up on the stage...

Some of my friends are starting to take bellydance classes, which is cool, given my troupe thoughts, but unfortunately it's in a segment of the dance scene I just can't relate to. Ah well. Their loss.

Zill workshop tonight. I'm looking forward to that!

2003-09-10T13:23:00.000-04:00

I can't tell if I am feeling overshadowed or just underwhelmed. Am I not making a big deal of the upcoming birthday festivities because I don't want to be in competition (which I would "lose," I suspect, since nobody's even asked me what kind of cake I might like amidst the birthday planning)(which really is ok, cake doesn't excite me all that much anyway and I'd rather have good liquor), or am I not making a big deal of it because I have just become rather blasé about the whole concept? Probably the truth is somewhere in the middle. Either way, I feel all unsettled about it. I don't even know if I can invite other people beyond mutual friends. Then again, I am the one blowing off the first few hours of my joint b-day party by planning to go to a concert (the lovely and talented Goldfrapp), so really I am unsettling myself.

I'm trying really not to care that much about it. Whatever happens, as long as Seti's vet visit that morning goes well then I am okay with anything else that happens that day. Seti appears to be having some gastrointestinal issues, and that's the earliest appointment I could get. The vet said though as long as he continues to show no discomfort and doesn't start passing blood or something dramatic like that, the wait should be ok. He is acting quite normally apart from the questionable leavings in the litterbox, so I'm trying not to worry too much. Really, I am.

By contrast, I feel almost relaxed about the dance competition. At least my preparation and performance feels like something that is completely under my control. My teacher and some fellow students have remarked that I have recently really hit a new level in my dancing, and that feels good and confirms my own perception. It also shows what dancing a lot more every week can do. I think I finally have some posture issues under control and have the muscle memory now for being able to maintain proper lift while dancing, and that makes my whole presentation much more effective. I've also been working with new troupe members to teach them our choreographies, and that's a confidence booster as well, proof that I do know what I am doing. For the contest, I decided that I am going to use zills--the structure the band uses seems more congenial to the American style of making an entry with veil wrapped or draped around you, playing zills, and then ditching the zills for the veil when the slow part begins (and then ditching the veil when the drum solo begins). I was having problems practicing at home trying to use a veil with my entry to Turkish/Armenian/American style music and finally realized that the problem wasn't me, it was that the music just isn't intended for veil entries the way Egyptian music is. Now I just have to practice elegantly unwrapping, as opposed to inelegantly disentangling, my veil.

Immersing myself in all this Turkish/Armenian/American stuff has made me really appreciate Egyptian and Lebanese music all the more. I have a couple of pieces of Lebanese music in mind that I want to choreograph a more classical routine to--doing the pop songs I've been doing is lots of fun, but I want more challenge and I want the audience to know I can do classical, not just pop. Dear god, I think I'm turning into a performer. I'm even half-planning to take this new choreography, whenever it gets written, onstage on a Middle East Sunday night during the open mike hour. No, more than half-planning: I am planning to do that. If I can do the student competition to music I don't know in front of people who are there specifically to critique me, then I can dance to music I know in front of a bunch of people who are just out having dinner and a few drinks. Ha! Firm resolve!

I'll end on that upbeat note.

2003-08-29T13:08:00.000-04:00

my discovery of the week: careful application of a post-it note to the automatic flush sensor on the randomly flush-happy automatic toilets at work prevents random flushing. In fact, it prevents flushing at all until you are good and ready for the toilet to flush. In the grand scheme of clever ideas, this is a small thing, but believe me, it keeps me in a much better state of mind.

2003-08-26T16:20:00.000-04:00

swing the heartache
just for her sake

2003-08-23T19:19:00.000-04:00

in my solitude...

A perfect alone yet not lonely evening: home from work before the sun sets. Play with ferrets who are happy to see me. Fix an almost perfect gin and tonic (it's a quest, rendered more difficult by never measuring anything). Watch the exciting and satisfying Travers Stakes. Pick basil from the front yard and make pesto in the kitchen, singing along with Billie Holliday and doing a little soft shoe for a change. Plate of al dente pasta with pesto and another gin and tonic in hand, I settle down to watch the new Nick Cave DVD. I will be very happy to see Mathew when he gets home but right now, life is awfully good.

2003-08-21T22:33:00.000-04:00

I danced to nearly half an hour of drum solos this evening, including one piece that was over 8 minutes long, without stopping. In the 85 degree heat, no less! I rock!

2003-08-20T17:36:00.000-04:00

I never did finish that entry about the Bellydance Superstars. Well, I liked them. Also I was seated with a nice dance troupe from Maine who didn't mind squishing over to make more room for me to see around an inconveniently placed pillar. And that's my review. (except to add: what the heck was up with the junior troupe doing the number with spears? It was bewildering.)

I feel like life is very full, sloshing even. Actually sloshing is a good descriptor, because I feel like things are getting away from me as the vagaries of life swing me around.

Largely I wish the heat would stop. I need to be dancing every single day to prepare for the student contest in September but when I get home at night and the apartment is 90 degrees and I'm tired from a long day at work and fighting my way home on the T--well, it's difficult to get motivated. At the same time, I also need to increase my activity level because I have definitely gained weight this summer. People have told me recently that I look like I've lost weight but I know from the way my clothes fit that I really haven't. So anyway I need to do more dancing. Somehow it isn't so difficult to dance for 90 minutes in class when the classroom is also 90 degrees, so I should be able to do 30 minutes at home. I think I may start reserving a practice room for myself at the university where I work at least once a week--that way, I will go there and have nothing else to do but dance, compared with home, where there are entirely too many other things to do.

When I do dance, it's going fairly well. I'm better every single time I work on improv, and that's very heartening. I need more of the right sort of music--the contest band is more American-style belly dance music played by Armenian musicians, and I mostly own either purist Egyptian raqs sharqi or thumpa thumpa techno belly, neither of which is much like the contest band. There's a hafli at the end of this month though where I should be able to pick up some appropriate practice music. I'm buying more cds now so that I have more fresh, unheard music to "practice improv," as the contradiction would have it.

And I just found out that my troupe will be performing at an October 5 hafli. September will be a busy month and I think I'd better invest in a roll of sports tape for my foot. It feels verging on normal but it is still often achy.

On the ferret front, we opted not to give Pan a rabies vaccination, a decision supported by our vet. His reaction was so severe and it took him a good month to get his weight back up and start acting normally, so all agreed that Pan does not get shots anymore. Seti got his though, and was a model ferret patient, lazily charming the socks off everyone and not even flinching at his shot. Pan came along for the ride, for a general checkup and also so that his most recent memory of Angell Memorial would be less terrifying for him. He seemed to weather it all pretty well. Strangely, he now outweighs Seti by about 130 grams, but I can't help calling them "big old Seti" and "little Pan." It just suits them that way.

2003-07-25T11:16:00.000-04:00

Last night I went to see the Bellydance Superstars performing at Layaleena in Cambridge. Wow.

I will finish this later as right now i am headachy and have that too empty stomach with too much tea feeling. Bleh.

2003-07-22T17:41:00.000-04:00

I sincerely hope that all of the signs telling me to stay home this morning had nothing to do with my imminent plans to go stand out on an exposed bridge during a thunderstorm as I wait for the bus to dance class.

they call it the dance
the St. Vitus dance...

2003-07-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

This morning was no good.

I woke up. That was a problem right there, but nothing out of the ordinary. I felt wretched and slept for another 20 minutes. Debated calling in sick to work but if I'm well enough to expect to go to dance class at night, then I'm certainly well enough to go to work. I feel very weak though.

Shower. Nothing disastrous happened.

Made breakfast. Discovered that several of the cherries which I bought scarcely twelve hours before had already gone bad. I pick though to find good ones.

Eat toast and cherries. Stir tea--bleech! it's full of white flakes, which I realize is probably concealed nasty ice cream residue left in the mug from several days ago. I had washed the mug, but spoiled dairy products are tenacious. I control urge to vomit on the spot as I stare sadly into the mug and watch the chunky flakes swirl around. I do not have enough time to make more tea. Life seems filled with decay.

Fix hair and makeup. I don't seem to be able to pull my hair into a symmetrical shape so I leave it lopsided. I'll fix it at work when I've had some tea.

Clean ferret poop. Wonder again why they simply must go under the radiator. Bedroom smells strongly of car exhaust from neighbor's car, which might explain why I felt so wretched upon waking.

Get ready to go out the door. Phone rings and I answer it so it won't wake up Mathew. It's a former internet provider calling with an announcement about a change in ownership, which reminds me that I probably owe them a little money. Nothing like a debt reminder so early in the morning. Get ready to go out door again. Blazer is very wrinkled from being crumpled up in backpack earlier this week but it will just have to do because I have no other options and certainly no time to iron it. Fully laden with backpack, bag of groceries for lunches, dance cane, walkman and netflix dvd to return, I walk out the door--and the rain begins to fall. I step back inside the door, put down all my stuff, dig out my umbrella, juggle my belongings (for those keeping score, I am now carrying backpack, groceries, dance cane, umbrella and the netflix dvd; the walkman has been temporarily relegated to the bag of groceries as has the blazer. At least I don't have to worry about wrinkling it.) and head out again. It begins to thunder.

I wait at the bus stop for the 9:15 bus. It does not come. The rain falls harder and heavier and the thunder draws nearer. I am standing under an awning but I wonder if I ought to be worried about standing outside in a thunderstorm. The exhaust of the cars and trucks as they go by nauseates me anew.

I see lightning strike the ground a half block away from me. I wonder at this point if I really should have stayed home. The 9:25 bus comes at 9:35. The only seats that aren't wet are covered in black grime, I presume from the bus's own exhaust. I sit up at the front in the least wet seat I can find, directly under an AC vent. My hair is still wet and I start shivering.

Arrive at Alewife to find a dead train and a platform full of people, loudspeakers apologizing for delays. This is really pretty conclusive proof that I ought to have stayed home.

The rest of the day has gone a little more smoothly but the glare from the hazy Charles River is making my eyes water, and I am wondering at what point will I just give in and go cry in the bathroom. Not that there's anything specifically wrong. But maybe if I just cried for a while I could purge myself of all the things that are bothering me--anxiety about the dance competition and my dance ability in general, my weight which has increased, kind husband's words to the contrary, very serious worry about Pan and his rabies vaccination and whether he's truly recovered from the bad reaction to his distemper shot, the signs of aging I see in myself, the lack of a point for my life (what else is new), frustration over never having enough time for anything--craft projects, husband, ferrets, friends--or enough money to help enable fun things to happen, an apartment which while not an utter dump has some serious drawbacks (I had told myself that I would never settle for the kind of place that has holes in the walls again, yet here I am, and now we seem to have an early morning exhaust problem as well), my foot which has been painful for far too long--the list of whiny-ness could go on and on and on, and if I keep going on about it I probably will go cry. So I'll stop now and try to get some work done and think about anything that isn't my problem.

Blah.

2003-06-19T14:26:00.000-04:00

update on the garnet crisis: ebay saves the day. Decent quality garnet for cheaper. Yay!

2003-06-19T13:06:00.000-04:00

I was very inspired by a project in the newest Lapidary Journal and thought I would make this project. I compiled the list of elements for the project (a bracelet) and have been looking at bead sites for ideas of what stones to use, because of course I'm not satisfied with the recommended stones in the magazine. So I picked tourmalinated quartz because it is just plain nifty, some silver glass cubes--and what would go perfectly with that would be garnet, but of course the garnet beads are twice as much as everything else and would make this a much more expensive project. I could economize and use lower grade garnet or Swarovski crystals, but the lower grade just plain looks lower grade, no getting around that, and the Swarovski crystals look too perfect and uniform to go next to the quartz with all of its inclusions. Sigh. I suppose the entire point of this entry is to convince myself to go with the more expensive garnet.

On the dance front, I have been encouraged by my teacher to enter the student competition this fall, which makes me very happy. I have a lot of work to do between now and then, but it was a personal goal I had set for myself a while ago to get myself up on that contest stage one of these years, so I really feel like I'm getting somewhere. Over the next three months I must practice improvising, if that makes any sense.

I had a bunch more things to write, inspired by feeling like Marlene Dietrich yesterday in sailor-inspired loose trousers and a long velvet coat, but I find everything has fled my mind. I am completely obsessed by the cost of 4mm faceted round garnet beads and there is little room for anything else at the moment.

2003-06-11T18:25:00.000-04:00

This morning I left the house wearing capris, maryjanes and a black shortsleeved turtleneck with thin white stripes that Mathew says looks very early 80s and as I sat on the T listening to the new Goldfrapp album in all its unabashed synthpop glory I wondered for a moment what decade it was, and if I were bit too mired in the past in some ways. The unusually crowded train only served to reinforce that feeling of being lost in time as I slowly lost my coping mechanisms. Why do people not understand that if they sit on the rails by the doors, they are thereby sticking their butts in the faces of those seated alongside those rails? And why do I never have a really big pin or a knitting needle when I need one? I found myself contorted trying not to brush against any other human beings and felt that some things never change.

A few weeks ago however I was making my way home from dance class on a blustery spring evening. I was wearing leggings, clunky boots and my raincoat, a black trenchcoat type affair. I caught sight of the shadow I cast in the light os the streetlamps and was struck by the resemblance to 17-year-old me, whose uniform was leggings, a battered trenchcoat and clunky boots (when they weren't pointy boots, that is). I thought about how that 17-year-old never thought she'd be casting that shadow in Arlington again, given the choice, yet here she was, living in Arlington and thinking it better than living in Cambridge or those many other places that seemed so much more hospitable back then. It was actually a liberating moment in a way, a letting go of some residual bitterness but also a re-connection with that old self. I think I'm somewhere I'd be proud of, if I had a time machine to see the future back then. I think I'm reaching a place that 17-year-old Z had the potential to reach before she got sidetracked for a decade or so. Sure, some of the same old problems are there (see emotional state on the T above), but there are so many things that I'm not afraid of any more, that maybe I never did need to fear but the experience of learning to overcome that fear was a crucial part of my development.

I waved to my shadow on that rainy night and walked on home.

but it's time to crush this feeling
as soon as it rains
ooh the rain
ooooh the rain

2003-05-23T11:21:00.000-04:00

So as it turns out, a betting person who likes to take the middle odds would have done well on me--I successfully worked out, found my checks, washed dishes, made and ate dinner, and watched the first episode of the Singing Detective. Not too bad. And Mathew came home earlier than expected so I got to hang out with him, always a good thing.

Working out made me happy because for the first time I was able to do a couple of Pilates exercises that my left leg previously wouldn't support. Yay, I am getting stronger and better than I was before! We can rebuild me! We have the technology!

I somehow missed The Singing Detective completely back in the 90s when it was aired on television--perhaps it was when I was living without a tv. I've only watched the first of six episodes but I am amazed by it. Very powerful in its portrayal both of murder mystery noir and also of a physically debilitated and disfigured patient desparately trying to cope with his circumstances, stuck in a ward with fellow patients, most of whom he would avoid in the outside world, and subject to objectification by doctors and humiliation at the hands of nurses, who tend to infantilize the patients. Shades of The Kingdom, but almost creepier in that there is no supernatural element, it's all real, or at least it all feels real to the delirious patient. I'm very glad to have stumbled across this now.

2003-05-22T13:35:00.000-04:00

I am at loose ends this evening and somehow I think that between the time I get home from work and the time I responsibly go to bed early I will work out, put away my all laundry, clean up some of the sprawling mess I have created effortlessly in the apartment, watch an hour or two of the Singing Detective, find my checks or order new ones, make and eat dinner, wash dishes, make nifty decorative things to hang from the lights with pullchains, and I don't know, there's probably other stuff I'm forgetting. A betting person would find short odds on my only accomplishing making and eating dinner and watching the Singing Detective. We'll see.

I had my first solo restaurant/nightclub performance this past weekend, and as with my eariler troupe restaurant experience, it was a blast. I really was anxious about dancing in that sort of venue but it is a lot of fun, with a very different kind of energy than one feels in a more formal sort of performance. We were still limited to a stage area, but I actually found I had to restrain myself from moving through the crowd, mindful of my teacher's advice about visibility. My number was very well received, as was the troupe number and the solos of my troupemates. And I was pretty happy with my dancing--the more I perform this choreography, the better it gets. I don't know when I'll perform it again, but I should remember to practice it every now and then. The crowd was very welcoming and supportive. The whole event felt very good, well worth the drive all the way out to Springfield. I really wish we could have some sort of student showcase night like this in metro Boston... One of the nicest compliments of the night for me was hearing from the vendor who sold me my beautiful sequinned net gloves how much she enjoyed seeing her wares help create my lovely performance.

The truly amazing thing was that I did all that dancing after working at BU's Commencement. Getting up early on a Sunday morning was highly distressing, but it ended up actually being rather fun. I wore my new suit and felt very Scully. Or very Agent Smith, when I had my sunglasses on. And I neither vomited nor dissolved (see previous entry).

I dreamed last night that I was one of the actors in the Matrix Reloaded and it was the evening of the day we were done shooting the movie. Keanu Reeves told me that he was very sorry things couldn't work out in real life as they had for us in the movie (perhaps I was playing Trinity? I was wearing a pvc bodysuit in the dream, with much less tummy than I have in real life), but I told him that was fine because I had somebody in real life. Very strange. That was my second Matrix-related dream after seeing Reloaded; the first dream was a strange combination of the Matrix and Winged Migration, a beautiful movie about the lives of migrating birds, mostly ducks and geese with a few raptors and seabirds thrown in.

Which leads me to another subject (this being my blog which is mine, I can jump as randomly as I please). While watching Winged Migration I was profoundly annoyed by many audience members who laughed too much at the behaviors of the birds. I'm not humorless, I don't think, and I recognize that on one level, many things were funny, the leaping and flapping of cranes in their mating dance, the way a duck peered at a decoy, a small flock of geese out of place in the desert fleeing a herd of mustangs and their heavy hooves. But the point of the movie, for me anyway, was to see life through the bird's eyes, and in a bird's eyes, these things aren't funny at all, they are matters of life and death. Especially those poor trusting ducks peering at the decoy--how can it be funny when we know that the decoy is a set up and after flying hundreds of miles and thinking they are safe because they see a strangely mute friend on the water, they will be shot at and chased by dogs and lose those lives they have struggled so hard to preserve? I know I have read theoretical papers somewhere (Freud on joking maybe? don't remember) about how it is easier to see things as humorous than to feel genuine empathy, that laughter shields us sometimes from having to feel unpleasant emotions, and it seemed to me that this is exactly what was happening in the movie theatre. If you're not even going to put forth the minimum effort to feel empathy and see beauty in unusual places, then what was the point of seeing this movie? (except that it won prizes at Cannes and so of course as a good arthouse movie fan you are obliged to see it and say you liked it, says the cynic in me)

However, even I must admit that fledgling owl chicks are just plain funny. If there is a deity who created all life on earth once, owl chicks are a sign that it had a sense of humor, to use that old cliche.

Emulate would be a better word if it meant "to try to become like an emu."

And in a final bit of bird-related blathering, one of the redtailed hawks is hanging around on our side of the building today, so I am getting to do lots of hawk watching. Pretty!

I saw a great home decorating idea, which I am making a note of here so I don't forget it--cast iron shelf brackets in the corners of doorways. Surfing around today I found some very elegant cobweb brackets that would look lovely in our house. I also want to replace our twelve-year-old junky plastic fan with one of them nifty black and chrome retro fans. Someday we will have money again and I will purchase such things. Moving really dealt us a crippling financial blow, though, just as we felt like we were starting to pull things together. Sigh. I really hope we don't have to move in a year. I think we'll be happy enough with this place to stay put, if the driveway situation works out in the wintertime (single car width, three cars to juggle).

guess that's all the news that's fit to print for now. I could mention that I'm a bit freaked out by the explosion at the law school at Yale, seeing as how I work at a university and all, but I'm really trying not to think much about that. I'll think happy thoughts about a beer festival I'm attending on Saturday instead.

2003-05-06T12:29:00.000-04:00

I'm going to throw up. I swear I am. That or dissolve.

2003-05-05T13:58:00.000-04:00

I forgot to mention in my last post how very exhausted I am. And covered in bruises.

2003-05-05T13:00:00.000-04:00

A month has gone by. Only a month?

We moved this weekend, with the help of 15 or so of our very lovely gracious friends. I guess if you have to move at all, moving only a few houses over is a pretty good arrangement. Transferring the stuff only took about two hours, including the fridge, once such a source of anxiety and now safely tucked away in the basement. It wasn't as heavy as I thought it would be, though it was certainly heavy enough. Now we own three major appliances, fridge, washing machine and dryer. Someday we may own a house to put them in. The ferrets have adapted well. I think they were pretty nervous on the day of the move (though I think only I could interpret a snoozing ferret as being nervous) but given the chance to explore a bit last night, they seemed pretty happy. Pan especially seemed happy with himself as he figured out how to get on the computer desk. Guess some re-arranging of the room is in order.

On the negative side, the tendonitis in my left knee and calf is back and my foot is really sore, between all the stress I've put on it and the lack of time or strength to exercise it. I am very glad that I bought expensive arch supports at the beginning of the week; they made a real difference. If any of my gentle readers in the Boston area have problems with their feet, I recommend the nice people at Marathon Sports in Cambridge. They will sell you healthy insoles and despite being a sports shop will not laugh at you for not owning sneakers and will help find insoles that will fit in your fluevogs. Hopefully with lots of gentle stretching I will be ready to perform on Saturday, as I have a solo piece to do then.

Dance life has had its ups and downs as usual. I've worked pretty hard on my solo piece and I have most of the movements down, or down well enough that I can fake it where I don't remember them, but I need to get a lot more emotion into what I'm doing. The piece is a very passionate Turkish pop song by Tarkan. The lyrics are very beautiful, I think; on one level it is a very sexual song (the chorus: hup, take me inside you), but on another level I think it is about finding complete sublimation in your lover, mind, body and soul equally. When I dance at home in the living room it goes pretty well, I think, but I froze up rather badly on Tuesday in front of my classmates (I got thrown off by the teacher frowning in concentration, which I interpreted as frowning critically but in retrospect I don't think was meant that way) and then on Wednesday in front of my other classmates it went better but I still felt a bit inhibited. I think I will be ok for the performance though. I'm really a level or two past my Wednesday class, and I think I felt badly about busting in there, being the new girl and then outperforming everyone else so I held myself back. Which is not to say that I actually would/could have outperformed everyone else, but I felt nervous about it and it showed. For the performance, my solo piece is in the same section as the other more advanced students, so hopefully I will feel free to emote and express all the song's potential. I really do want to do the song justice.

But apart from the solo piece, I feel pretty good about the dancing I've been doing lately as my foot and leg become stronger and my flexibility improves. The big lesson that I am taking from this plantar fasciitis incident, apart from go see a doctor when things hurt, is that although dance is an art form, it is a physically demanding one and if I want to step up the level of my dancing, I have to have the physical structure to support it. That may mean not dancing as much as home as I have been doing because I'll need the time to work out (pilates, weight bench stuff), but the net result should be worthwhile and make a real improvement. I'm already pretty strong and have good endurance (as the move this weekend demonstrated) but I need to fine tune myself and work on the less obvious muscle groups, because they matter too.

I see from the state of the velvet shirt I am wearing that the ferrets must be doing their spring shedding. Ah well, it's like taking a little bit of them with me to work.

2003-04-06T16:47:00.000-04:00

I danced today for the first time in a week and it felt

so

damn

good.

My body just leapt into remembered movements and improvisation felt easier than ever before, perhaps because I could dance with more joy. I worked on the piece I am doing as a solo in May and while it needs work, I could fake my way through it right now if I had to. Very, very damn good. Foot and tendons are sore now but so far it's manageable. We'll see how it feels in the morning.

And we got the apartment. The realtor is supposed to drop by the lease this afternoon. The meeting yesterday went fine; I think it really was just a formality. Once we have the signed lease in hand then I can start calling the phone company, cable, electricity, etc. etc. etc. to make all the switches. Didn't I just do all this?

As a side note, I have the sweetest weasel boys in the world. Really, I do. Whenever things have been even at their worst in the last few weeks, watching those little ferret guys chase each other around and come up to us for contact and comfort has made me smile and feel like things could turn out ok.

2003-04-04T18:04:00.000-05:00

For just a moment today my foot felt like a normal foot as I walked down the hallway. It became achy again soon afterwards, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Today at physical therapy the therapist and her student measured my flexibility with a funny sort of protractor thing and said my flexibilty has improved. It must be true if science and math say so.

The landlord has not rejected our application but wants to have coffee with us tomorrow morning to meet us. I hope it will be a good thing. I worry that this might be the sign of a landlord who would be way too much in our business, but on the other hand, it's good that he cares about the property and perhaps also about the upstairs people. I printed a brochure on ferrets for him. Seriously, if we have had to jump through all these hoops and we don't get the place, I'll be irked.

2003-04-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

Put in an application for an apartment today. We are supposed to get an answer from the landlord by 6pm tomorrow. I am alternately nerve-wracked and incapable of caring. It's a nice enough apartment. It's just that if I get too excited, I am afraid that I will be setting myself up for a fall. I am trying to take the safe conservative approach here and trying to keep in mind that it is only the beginning of April. We are offering the landlord less money than he is asking, so we'll see (what a sign that the rental market in Boston has changed, that one can do this. It was the realtor's idea, even, and that cuts into his take).

I am somewhat afraid that I reversed the final digits of my fax number when I gave it to the realtor. Hopefully he would call if the fax wasn't working though. I am hoping that if I gave him the right fax number, anything that comes to me will be later in the day, as there's financial info in what I gave him that I don't really care to share with the rest of the office. Hopefully that sheet will be buried in the middle.

So tired. Foot is achy but this week off is good, I can tell. I need to get better shoes though. The physical therapist was shocked that I do not own any real sneakers. "But what do you wear if you want to go for a walk?" Me: "Doc Martens." Her: *look of horror*

2003-03-31T12:42:00.000-05:00

I danced in a restaurant last night, the Middle East. I did not see myself as ever being comfortable doing the whole restaurant nightclub thing, but to my surprise I had a great time. It was a very different feel from doing a show or a recital, even the shows I've done in goth clubs. People are eating and drinking and relaxed, and they are all there to have a good time--it felt as though we were all creating a big party together. And people were far more responsive, with clapping and calling out or whistling appreciatively. If I'm ever at the point where I can do a 20 minute routine, I think I actually could see myself doing solo performances in a restaurant. Watching my teacher Seyyide dance later in the night, I could imagine the rush of performing solo.

Lots of things went so well for me. I made my share of mistakes during the choreographies (not to mention the veil debacle at the start of the first number, compounded by the dj messing with the beginning of the song), but everything kept flowing smoothly. I was told that I have a wonderful expression while dancing, which was very nice to hear as that has been a real challenge for me. And I also was told that I looked hot in the Shakira pants, not like a stuffed sausage at all. That number was actually really fun to do in our jeans and metalwork bras--it was easy to be sassy and full of confidence. My foot didn't hurt very much at the end of the night either, which gives me hope and makes me feel better about taking the next week off from dancing. I have definitely noticed an improvement in my balance already as I use my feet more effectively.

So I feel better than I did with my last post. Maybe I was right about that vulture negating all the dead and rotting things I've been carrying around with me. Even the apartment search is not feeling as traumatic, although I'm still far, far from thrilled about it. But we turned down a place on Sunday because it wasn't good enough for us, and it's important to feel like we can do that and don't have to take the first thing that comes along. The apartment felt kinda cruddy, and we don't have to settle for cruddy. It may mean paying more money because we may have to go through a realtor, but if we find a place that we'll be happy to stay in for a few years, then it's worth paying more now. Because it seems that in this case, even though working with realtors can be painful and expensive, you may well get what you pay for, both in dollars and in sanity.

Sleep remains an issue. I got five hours of sleep last night with lungs full of bad smoke residue. But it was all worth it, as I reflect in the afterglow of a successful performance.

2003-03-26T16:54:00.000-05:00

So many things in my head I hardly know where to begin.

Well, I'll start with a cool thing: earlier today a turkey vulture flew past my window at work. It literally took my breath away. I wonder if I put a carrion-filled bird feeder on my balcony if it would come back.

For the last maybe two and a half weeks I've been doing physical therapy for my foot. It's never gotten any better than a dull ache since the original injury last spring, so I finally saw my doctor and got a physical therapy referral. It's not easy, but it's going well and I can already feel some benefit. The end result of all this should be the correction of some rolling out that I do when I walk, better balance, and of course no pain. It still scares me quite a bit though that my body could fail underneath me like this, and I've had a nagging fear that I would have to give up dancing. I may never ever be a really good dancer (though I think I will hit more or less proficient in a couple of years) but it's become a very important means of self-expression and knowing myself.

Then at my Monday session this week, my therapist said that I really needed to take a week off to let my foot heal. Now, a week is not a long period of time, but I have a performance this Sunday and another one in May for which I need to prepare a solo piece that I haven't done much work on yet. The anxiety about just one week put so much fear in me that I completely lost it at dance class on Tuesday night when my foot/calf reached the point where I couldn't keep up with the moves. I was frustrated by the pain and by not being able to do everything that was being asked of me. At the same time I felt like I was making excuses for why I couldn't be good enough, even though a muscle injury and a lifetime of walking incorrectly are a pretty good excuse for having some difficulties. I toughed it out until nearly the end of class, and then I had to go shut myself in the bathroom and cry because there was just nothing else that I could do at that point. I felt wholly inadequate and wretched. I was already having bad body image stuff going on in the first place following a group shopping trip for stretch jeans as costume elements for our next performance--I was the only member of the group whose size was in the double digits, and these are pants that are not at all flattering for my figure. Looking in the dressing room mirror I felt like one of those fashion magazine photos illustrating a "fashion don't." That combined with the fact that even if my body did look good in these stretch jeans, they are not something I would ever wear, as they scream white trash at me (a little ironic, that, as we bought them at a clothing store directed at young urban black women and we are wearing them to theoretically look like Shakira, but there you go).

All of this together just hit me hard and knocked all of the self-confidence out from under me. I managed to more or less pull myself together and get out, but when Mathew asked me how my day was I lost it all over again. In a way, it was a relief though. I've needed to cry and cry for a while now and just haven't been able to give myself the break for it. Dancing in pain and uncertainty, learning that we have to move and going through the process of looking at places and explaining what a ferret is for the umpteenth millionth time to prospective landlords, stress at work due to a backlog of impossible projects, never getting enough sleep--all of it building and building up inside me until I finally broke.

Maybe I should take the vulture as a positive sign of rebirth. It came to collect whatever I am able to walk away from, the worries, the pain, the anxiety about the future. Of course, those things unfortunately seem to reincarnate on a regular basis, so I'm sure they'll be back, but for now, I can try to think of myself as free of them...

2003-03-01T15:20:00.000-05:00

watching hawks making lazy circles in the sky is supposed to be lonely, isn't it. It should evoke a feeling of smallness under a vast and empty sky, a feeling of isolation as even the tumbleweeds rush on by, not stopping to ask how you are.

So it's perfectly natural to feel this way. It's the hawks. Surely it is.

2003-01-21T16:17:00.000-05:00

Worst pickup attempt ever:

So I'm standing at the automated checkout at the supermarket scanning my groceries and bagging them myself. I don't know whether it is actually any quicker than going through a line with a cashier, but at least if it goes slowly, you have no one to blame but yourself. Suddenly a guy about ten years older than me pops up next to me and says "Excuse me, how did you know what code to enter for your gala apples?" Oh come on... if you were close enough to know read on the scanner that they were gala apples, you were close enough to see that I looked at the little stickers on the apples and then punched in a number. I said, "umm, I looked at the stickers." Unspoken: "you know, the little stickers with the numbers on them that you have had to peel off nearly every apple that you've ever eaten in your life." He had the grace to look embarrassed (I suspect he only noticed my wedding band when I pointed at the apple stickers) and got back into line, a bit like a chastened puppy. My theory is that he was a relatively recently divorced guy who hasn't had to buy his own groceries much and thinks that the supermarket might be a swell place to meet women since he doesn't really know where else to go.

The dance performance went well, and I was pleased to see some familiar faces in the crowd. We weren't all in synch, we didn't all remember all the moves at the same time, but nothing too disastrous happened, and the crowd liked us. So I'd chalk it up as a good experience, and a good test run for our student show next month. If nothing else, at least I didn't tear any muscles or ligaments this time, always a plus. I was beat though--it never ceases to amaze me what a performance takes out of one, even if the performance is much shorter than a class. I suppose it's because you have to be really on, with an extra edge to everything you do. I still feel a bit creaky and stiff today*, but I'm looking forward to class tonight.

*though that could also be due to the bitter cold temperatures outside. I'm not looking forward to waiting for the bus this evening.

2003-01-16T16:21:00.000-05:00

I had the most lovely dream last night. I was on my way to being in a play, in a car driven by one of those sorts of composite friends that appear in dreams, and the sky was in rich deep purples and blues and magentas, a late intense sunset framed by bare-branched trees starkly black against the rich pallette. I could see first one then several then hundreds of beautiful little bats flying silhouetted against the sky. Even though the bats were really too far away for me to see clearly, I could still somehow see that they had beautiful sculpted little faces and their wings flapped and furled in swirling, scrolling patterns, most unnaturally for a real bat but for these dream bats, it was a perfect means of flight. My friend and I stopped the car and I wandered off and watched the bats. I swear the dream went on for an hour, just full of elegant shapes looping and fluttering their way across the royally colored sky.

And when the alarm went off, I was quite sure that it was something that had nothing to do with me and that I could ignore it, but eventually it became impossible to ignore so I got up to turn it off, and realized that it was my alarm clock after all and that it was set for a reason. But I don't think that I'm the only one having that kind of day, because on the Green Line this morning somebody sat down next to me and said, most definitely to me and not into a cellphone or anything like that, "Sorry I'm late, the train schedules are all screwed up." I made a noncommittal noise and the person gave up his seat to a man with a cane. I wonder if I have some doppelganger out there on the T in the mornings, also all snuggled up in her fake fur coat shielding herself from the morning commute wearing sunglasses underground and headphones firmly ensconced in ears. Very odd.

I started my new Wednesday dance class last night. It is definitely below my level in some sense, which is kind of ironic given that I was complaining about that with my former Tuesday class, but I think it is going to be very valuable to me. This teacher is very methodical in helping us develop posture and isolation, to the point of giving us exercises to work on as homework between classes. The exercises aren't bellydancing per se but means of feeling how one's body works, how to move some parts and keep others still and how to maintain proper stance and carriage and balance, all of which is what I needed. So I may end up bored, but it's a necessary revisiting of some of the basics for me. I hope that by the time I'm ready to move on from this class, I will be well-grounded in my entire movement vocabulary, rather than the sort of scattershot grounding that I have now--some things I do very well, others not so well. I am also reminded of an entry I made here a while ago about wishing I could take apart all my bones and muscles and sinews, give them a good cleaning and rebuild myself correctly from scratch. This class, I hope, will be the equivalent of that for me.

My old Monday class is now my Tuesday class. I discovered an excellent crosstown bus route that goes from a point very near my work to nearly the classroom doorstep, which is great but also odd because the bus goes right by the place where I went to my old Tuesday night class, and I thought of all the people I've come to know a little bit over the last few years all gathering together and getting ready for class. I don't doubt at all that I'm doing the right thing, but I'm still a bit sad. I will also say that for all of my frustrations with that class, the teacher had the best warmup sequence of any teacher I've studied with yet--five or six minutes of fast movement to get our muscles warmed up and _then_ stretching, which is a much more effective and much safer way to warm up. Oh, I somewhat take that back--the modern dance instructor from last winter/spring used the same kind of technique, but I think that only further proves that the old Tuesday teacher has the right idea. Ah well. I am generally a little early for both of my classes now, so maybe I can try to do some warming up on my own before class officially begins.

Two more hours 'til I can go home. Then Pilates workout, then dinner, then put away laundry, then sleep. Then work, then dance rehearsal, then performance on Saturday. I hope I can stay relaxed about it; I tensed up much more than I thought I would at the last performance with this troupe. I think I'm getting better about performance jitters though. I don't get them horribly, but it's still enough to affect how well I'm dancing. However, the new Tuesday class is in a new venue as well as a new night, and people are constantly wandering through the rehearsal space and stopping to watch us, which I've decided is a good thing because it will make me be more comfortable about having an audience. So hopefully the jitters will sooner or later fall into the eminently manageable category.

2003-01-14T11:51:00.000-05:00

I had some stronger tea than usual when I arrived at work this morning and now the extra caffeine is making every second seem like a crystelline entity that I must fully experience in all of its multidimensional splendor before reliquishing my experience of it and moving on to the next one.

In other words, this day will never end.

2003-01-09T17:27:00.000-05:00

I want nothing more than to be at home in warm cozy clothing playing with sweet little ferrets. I would add "cuddled up with my man" to that list except that I know he will be out at a band rehearsal. So it's just me and the ferrets and last night's episode of Enterprise tonight.

I received a B in Arabic. That strikes me as eminently fair given the effort I was able to put in, although it also makes me sad because if I was able to get a B with scattered effort, I would have been able to pull down an A+ if I'd really been able to give it my all. I think I really had an aptitude for it. Well, that shouldn't really be a surprise given all the Arabic music I listen to, but still, I was good at it, darn it! It was very pleasurable to gain even a small understanding how a very different language works. But I'm more or less at peace with the decision not to continue. Already I have two dance performances coming up in the next five weeks and a new class to start next week, and life feels abundantly full.

Then again, I wouldn't be me if I didn't try to do just a bit more than I think I can, so I've started doing pilates using the Pilates for Dummies dvd. So far, it feels very good and I think it's already making a difference to how I think about my posture. Because I've got reasonably strong core muscles already from belly dancing, I'm able to keep up with the majority of the exercises already, but I definitely need to refine my positioning and alignment. Most of all, I need to work on that getting up half an hour earlier plan so that I have time to do the exercising :-\

2002-12-11T10:40:00.000-05:00

I cannot keep awake at work today. It's only 10:30. How on earth will I make it through the day?

We appear to have mice at home. I pulled out what should have been an unopened bag of pasta at 11:00 last night after I got home from dance class (hence the trouble staying awake), only to find that it had been neatly opened by something with little teeth and most of the pasta had been eaten. Time for the ferrets to start earning their keep... actually, I should make sure there aren't any mice stashed under the bed with all the books. I guess what I'll do is this weekend empty the cupboards, clean them, and stuff up any holes with steel wool. Because I don't have enough other things on my plate for the weekend*. Sigh. I really hope we don't have to kill any mice, and I certainly don't want poison in the house. I don't mind mice and I don't begrudge them the food but I don't like having droppings in the cupboards and also they might give the ferrets fleas or diseases.

A few hours after I wrote the entry below about giving up my Arabic class, I went to class and discovered that I'd gotten near perfect scores on three very hard homework assignments, including one on numbers. It's so frustrating, because I know that I could do really well at this. I repeat, sigh.

*my weekend: work holiday party friday afternoon. see star trek friday night. get haircut/color saturday morning. see gormenghast saturday afternoon and probably do some sewing while it's on. go home. make a mix cd of technobelly music for annual cd swap. go to annual cd swap out in brookline. go home. sleep. get up, study arabic for hours. get stuff ready for dance performance and try to figure out what to wear under chiffon skirt that does not detract from elegant gypsy look, or possibly make some kind of skirt-topper because as things stand the skirt is a bit too sheer for this troupe and context. (the somewhat insane thought has crossed my mind that perhaps I could include a quest to find flesh-colored leggings on saturday's schedule between hair salon and gormenghast.) go to MIT and get all dressed up and and perform with dance troupe. go home. study more. sleep. study more. go to arabic final. the possibility exists that i'd have to go to work for an hour or so after the final. go home. get monday night dance gear together. scarf a light dinner. go to dance class. go home. sleep, but not enough. then my regular work week begins on tuesday. so you see, mice really don't fit into my plans.

2002-12-03T15:14:00.000-05:00

angst, more angst, and some small measure of resolution.

Sunday night at the end of a long holiday weekend. The weekend wasn't as restful and revitalizing as I had hoped. It ended with grocery shopping, laundry, homework, a pile of obligations and a necessary isolation of myself from the world, including Mathew. All of it was frustrating, the grocery shopping because of stupid people, the laundry because our washing machine is apparently on its last legs and doesn't reliably rinse out all the soap, the homework because I am struggling because I never have enough time to get caught up, and the isolation the most frustrating of all. I like being alone, I really do, I often prefer it, but that night I felt like I needed human contact and I couldn't have it. Mathew had left the house so that I could get homework done, but then that turned into his not being back until late, long after homework was done.

So anyway at 10 I started watching Animal Precinct, a show on Animal Planet about SPCA officers in New York City. It's often very difficult to watch, not only for the frequent suffering of animals on the show but also because one wonders whether suffering has been turned into a form of entertainment. Yet whenever I watch it, I am committed for the entire hour, because I need to know if the animal lived, if the cruel person was caught, if things might have turned out all right in the end. And if they didn't turn out all right, still, I feel like I bore some kind of testimony to the fact that the animal lived at all. This episode of Animal Precinct began with the abandonment of 13 puppies in a trash can. A woman's dog had puppies and the woman put them into plastic bags and threw them in the trash. Neighbors heard the pitiable whimpering from the can and fished out a couple of puppies, all that they saw at the top, and called the SPCA. When they arrived, they went through the trash and found all the puppies. Three of them were already dead. Little tiny puppy bodies, little black and white lab mixes, so vulnerable. I completely lost it and cried and cried and cried until my eyes were red and my nose was runny and then I cried some more. In the end, only two puppies lived, but they were strong and it looked like they were going to make it, hand fed around the clock by vet techs who volunteered their time and homes and hearts. I think on Animal Precinct what makes up for the horror of the people who do terrible things to animals is seeing the good that others try to do against what sometimes seem like impossible odds.

But at a certain point in my crying, I realized I wasn't crying just for the puppies, although they were owed all the tears in the world. I was crying for me and my feelings of abandonment and loneliness and the recognition that my life cannot continue as it has. No matter how much we want some things in the world to happen, they just can't. "There comes a time when you cannot deliver; this is a fact, this is a stone cold truth." And I have reached the point where I can no longer deliver. Something has to go. In an ideal world, it would be work. My job is stressful, more than I realize, and my commute is long. However, in an ideal world I would also have some sort of stipend just for being me, and since in the real world I need a salary, the job remains a part of my life. Besides which, there are things that I like about it. So what else do I do in life? I dance. I want to continue with two classes per week, because I think that's the best way for me to make real steps forward (and backward and around in circles) in my level of dance ability. And I love it very much. And then the other main occupation in my life right now is my Arabic class, and I have come to the sad realization that since this is my lowest priority (lower than dance by choice, lower than work by necessity), that's what has to go.

This has been a very difficult decision to come to. I have had my intellectual curiosity and vigor re-awakened by this class; it is the first time in years I have taken a class just because I wanted to, not because I needed it for my program or it was related to my thesis. I have rediscovered that learning feels good and that I like thinking about how languages work. Being able to read news headlines and album titles has been very gratifying as well. And it turns out my handwriting is quite nice, perhaps because I find it fun to write in such an artistic script. I do think my reasoning about Arabic being a strong marketing point for myself is sound, too. So this learning experience has made me very happy and excited.

However, and it deeply pains me to come to terms with this, the sacrifice is simply too much. I have to take time out of my work day which then has to be made up later. A regular 8 hour day feels short to me now. It is a constant struggle to get homework done. Weekend homework is not so bad because I always have Sunday afternoons but that means, of course, that Sunday afternoons are never just for relaxing. Weekday homework is nearly impossible, between my dance classes and the long hours I work to make up for the class time I miss. Between class on Tuesday and class on Thursday I have approximately 3 free waking hours, and that time has to include eating dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday, any household chores, any time I might want to spend with my husband and the ferrets, and anything else that might require any of my attention.

I do feel like a quitter to some extent, for many of the reasons I pointed out in an earlier entry about my lack of ability to carry through on things. But I'm making a choice about what I need to do. And it's not the choice I want to be making, so it's not as though I'm just taking an easy way out. None of this is easy for me, neither carrying on nor making changes. When Mathew and I talked about all this, he observed that I focus on my failures more than my successes and that I am not a quitter when it comes to my dancing or my devotion to my ferrets or to him, for that matter. So I should reflect on those things and allow myself some pride. After all, I never would have suspected myself of being capable of bellydancing on a stage in front of 75 or so friends and random strangers and receiving their applause. Not to mention that I wrote my choreographies and sewed my own costumes. So I should be proud. And if I want to focus on continuing to do well at those things, then I have to sacrifice some other things, such as taking academic classes, simply because I have decided on what I want to do the most. And the job is just a necessity that enables me and Mathew to live in the style to which we have become accustomed, such as it is, and enables me to pursue the things that matter to me, like dance classes, costuming, ferret support, and so on. And I can always dabble in Arabic at the hobby level--I have the books and cds, and I certainly have enough Arabic music cds, for listening and reading practice (I can always try to decipher the liner notes, and the artists' names).

So, a light at the end of the tunnel. Not exactly the light that I wanted to see, but the light that I was hoping for turns out to have been the incandescently radioactive kind that burns you to a crisp when you reach it, so this is better. After I finish out the semester, I can slow down a bit, work more regular hours, have more free time, and have one less thing to make myself feel guilty about. I repeat yet again, it's not what I wanted to do, but I can feel it's the right thing.

2002-11-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

Tired but happy.

Last night I performed at Reverie, dancing to a song by Amber Spyglass and the Scissorkiss song Moon Colony. It's amazing how all the weeks of hard work and sweat and tension are finalized so quickly. I remember nearing the end of Catalyst Groove, the Amber Spyglass song, and thinking "this can't be the end already! I'm just getting started!" Six minutes is a lot shorter when you're up on a stage than when you're practicing over and over and over. The club was only about a third full when I did the first song, but the audience was appreciative. I spent the next half hour backstage and was suprised when I came out to do Moon Colony to find the club much more populated. Moon Colony went over just as I would have hoped--it was bouncy and fun and people laughed along with what I was doing. I was glad the cyber implants bit worked. Even the technical difficulties at the beginning of the song helped create a moment, as Liz sang from the audience and people clapped for me to dance to. And if I do say so myself, my silver costume came out gorgeously. I cast little reflections all over the club. I don't know how durable the mylar fringe will turn out to be, but all the sewing was worth it just for the one night. I was also very gratified that one of my teachers came to watch me; a little anxiety-inducing, but it made me happy to be able to show her that I could take what she's taught me and run with it.

And today, my knees are toast and my lungs are still full of smoke and I have not had anywhere near enough sleep, but I'd do it all again in a minute. I may do Moon Colony on stage with Scissorkiss, which would be fun although I think I would feel odd detracting attention from the band. For now, I'm looking forward to rediscovering the concept of free time and softly glowing in remembered glory.

2002-11-06T09:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was wearing a two-layer floaty chiffon kind of skirt, and on the T on the way to class a woman asked me "Is that skirt supposed to be goth, or are you on the way to a Halloween event?" My brain had a little trouble comprehending her question at first, as Halloween was, if I recall correctly, last week, and my skirt wasn't "supposed" to be anything, so I replied "no, it's just my skirt." She then said she liked it and went on to babble at me non-stop about fabric and god knows what else as I couldn't hear her very well over the clatter of the train. Smile and nod, smile and nod. However, I did hear something about a long brown coat that she brought to San Francisco in 1969 and it was worn out within a year, which I think may have been metaphorical for the course of her life. I could see the other people on the train thinking "thank god it's not me that crazy lady has latched onto!" but I didn't really mind. It's been a long time since somebody random on the street noted my gothnicity. Besides, I was getting off in two stops so the interaction was destined to be limited. I told her to have a nice night as I got off the train.

2002-11-04T12:15:00.000-05:00

Things have gone on recently at parties that I’ve been at, and it’s causing little ripple effects in my community. I’ve been wrestling with my own feelings on the matter, because largely I have a relativist, live-and-let-live policy towards the world, but I found myself feeling upset without quite knowing why, and did a lot of thinking on the matter. So here’s my perspective on recent events, and if any involved parties happen to read this and want to talk to me about it, please feel free to do so.

Words are hard to find, to start with. I’m not even sure what to call the behavior that’s been happening at parties, because most of the words I can think of sound judgmental and I don’t want to be judgmental of my friends. On the other hand, it’s a little hard not to be since I feel indirectly judged in turn, and found lacking. I don’t mean to say that this is happening on purpose, but the effect of a large part of a party separating off and participating in activities which are exclusionary to me communicates that I’m not worth bothering with when other entertainments are at hand. And when a bunch of my friends are all doing this at once, it’s very alienating. Yes, this is in my head and nobody else’s. And I’ve happily and wholeheartedly chosen a lifestyle which rules out participating in those activities. But still, one feels shades of elementary school and realizing that you will never be one of the cool kids and so you lurk on the fringes of the playground at recess, resentful yet desirous. You like your life and all the things you do--reading strange books, playing with toy horses and action figures a little older than other kids did--but you know it is these things that keep you from being accepted. And then you grow up to become a goth, and somehow you expect everything will be different when you are all adults because you all went through this experience in one form or another. And then it’s not different. There was a party this weekend at which there was a certain point when it was clear that it was time for Mathew and me to go, and while we went to the party knowing that such would be the case (and I’m pretty sure that the hosts were worried about us being uncomfortable), it still stings a bit. I’m trying not to complain, because as I said, we knew what the score was before going. One can’t help one’s feelings, however. And I now feel a mix of excited and queasy before going to parties, and I have to convince myself that I really do have friends and there is a social circle for me, that I’m not still that kid with her fingers entwined in the chain link fence wearing the wrong kind of jacket and the pants that were hemmed up a little too short, always looking and never acting, wondering what is wrong with her.

People have a right to do what they want. But there are always repercussions, whether it’s making other people feel uncomfortable at that moment or whether there are longer term repercussions for the participants. I’ve seen this going on before and it’s always taken a personal toll on people and relationships, both amongst the single people and the couples. Again, I don’t want to be judgmental, but I care about people and I worry about them. Also, with regard to an incident a couple of weeks ago, a friend noted in her livejournal that that one or more participants may have been too inebriated to make fully competent decisions about their participation. I had wondered something similar a few nights ago, perhaps about the same person, and this worries me very much as well.

My final worry is that it was exactly this sort of behavior and the psychodrama that it led to that contributed to the great list/social schisms of a few years ago. I’d be sad to see that happen again; hopefully we can all find a way to navigate through whatever happens. But it is hard to want to help people pick up the pieces when you feel like your friendship had been set aside for a few moments of passion. I know this for a fact.

light as a feather, stiff as a board

2002-11-02T10:05:00.000-05:00

I wish I knew why I am feeling so lost and scared. I guess it's coincided with going back to work after a vacation, and once again resuming my perpetual state of sleep deprivation, but really that only tells me what the trigger is, it doesn't tell me what's wrong with me. Or if there's anything wrong with me. At the moment, I'm not the most objective judge of that.

2002-11-01T12:27:00.000-05:00

There are emotions and situations that I am just plain done feeling and thinking about, but they won't leave me. My brain is struggling in slow motion, and every time a synapse tries to fire off in some other direction it hits a rubbery wall and is deflected back into the mess from which it came.

My hard drive died, deader than a doornail, last week, and I lost a lot of data, not to mention all the little customizations I'd done. Now I begin again with a new hard drive, setting things back up, trying to recreate what I can. I appreciate the bigger storage and smoother performance, but it is a bittersweet appreciation. I reach to click icons that are not there; another media type has no player or viewer installed.

Somewhere in between there must be a happy balance.

2002-10-22T08:58:00.000-04:00

I don't want to arrive at work a raging psychotic. But it happens anyway. If I make it through today without ever saying exactly what I think it will be a small miracle.

The smell of bananas and cigars in the morning does not improve things one little bit.

2002-09-26T10:49:00.000-04:00

new template courtesy of strange problems at blogger.com. I'm not very pleased with it but the old one wouldn't load properly any more. Judging from others' reports on the troubleshooting board, I may be able to change back to the old one after leaving this one in place for a bit. We'll see. It's nice to finally put in all these angsty updates.

2002-09-25T09:01:00.000-04:00

Things I have learned since turning 34:

When the sword that is balanced on your head goes off balance and starts to fall, either grab for the handle end or let it fall and hit the floor. Do not grab the pointy end.

The best way to make coming into class late when you have rather obviously been at the hairdresser's even more embarassing is to drop a tambourine on the floor as you try to slip into your seat.

When you are already filled with self-doubts and your body image is adipose and hideous, a marvel of ungrace and aging inadequacy, going out clubbing and watching the kids ten to fifteen years your junior popping their raver stuff out on the dance floor is not a good idea. On the other hand, you can cattily observe that for all their tremendous muscle control and sinewy twisting, some of them couldn't find the beat if they were smacked upside the head with a drum machine. At least when I dance, I know it's about me and the music, not just about me.

I am significantly more pleased with red hair than honey blonde. I feel more like myself.

The sure-fire way to make oneself cry when one is feeling less than satisfied with oneself is to say "But I am happy..." because then one feels even worse about feeling so poorly.

2002-09-19T12:46:00.000-04:00

My birthday is very anti-climactic this year. Initially I planned a party on my actual birthday. Then I heard about something being planned for someone else that night and I graciously gave up that night. That ended up being ok because I am going to a dance workshop with a demanding instructor the next day, and being hungover/tired/etc would have taken a lot of the value out of the workshop for me. So I switched the party date to an earlier day, only to be told that somebody else was planning an event for that evening, so I again graciously relinquished my claim. And as days go by it seems that neither of the events that I gave way for are even happening, or in fact did even happen. I’m not really bitter about it, but I do feel oddly alienated, and I suppose disappointed because it’s not as though Mathew and I have parties all that often, so birthdays provide a good excuse. And it seems that I don’t get any birthday cake at work, because I’m taking off the day of my actual birthday. My parents did have a sort of birthday dinner for me last weekend, but it was also a yay we’re all alive after 9/11 dinner too, so it just wasn’t all about me, it was about bigger, more serious things. Plus the cake was cheesecake and I can’t eat that. I’m starting to wonder if it is actually my birthday after all, or if I’ve used up the stock of joyous celebration that was allotted to me and from now on one year oozes into the next without ceremony or marker.

But, the actual day itself should be lovely. Mathew and I are going down the Cape to visit the museum that’s been made of Edward Gorey’s home and to walk on the beach on a September afternoon when all the tourists are gone. If I can’t have a party, then I can at least get an introspective windswept empty beach. I think that suits me better this year anyway.

2002-09-06T13:17:00.000-04:00

would this day frelling end already? not quite halfway through. if the windows opened all the way I'd throw myself out one. I'm exhausted and have to plan a family luncheon thingy and clean the bathroom and finish the couch cushions and my brain just keeps playing the piano line from "from her to eternity" (the live seeds version) over and over and over and I'm hungry but I shouldn't eat more candy and if I eat my lunch now the afternoon will drag too much and I'm crampy and cranky and my back hurts and all I want to do tonight is relax and go to bed early but when I get home there will be a houseful of garrulous gamers, which is good because I like gaming, but it will as always overwhelm me and I will freak out and have to hide for a while only since I'm already now getting home later than ever that means I will be absent from more of the game and then I wonder why I nearly always play characters who kill with a smile or at least with calm self assurance that it's the right thing to do and have I mentioned how much I hate the T yet in this rant?

Need more sleep. Need more dance time, need more ferret time, need more Mathew time, need to create some study time. Need, need, need.

This blog entry brought to you by the letter S for scream and the number 6 for no real reason at all.

2002-08-29T13:38:00.000-04:00

The perennial question rears its head again: how much will prove to be too much for me, and what is it worth for me to do this to myself? As I did last spring, I am taking a class at BU, working 40 hours/week and taking two belly dance classes, with at least two performances in the fall. The fall course, unlike the spring course, will have homework. Last spring I was severely sleep deprived, constantly on the edge of a breakdown, feeling a strong lack of any kind of personal life, and I ended the season with a pretty serious injury. You’d think this would tell me something.

But I am doing these things because I want to, right? Well, maybe I don’t actually want to work the 40 hour week, but that’s an unavoidable given in today’s world. Dancing has become an important part of who I am over these last few years. I would feel profoundly empty without it, and even giving up one class, assuming I could choose between them, would hurt (sometimes I think it's the only thing propping up my physical self-image). Then again, this job I have now will not last forever and if I ever want to be anything besides an admin or secretary, I need some learning. The problem is, of course, what do I actually want to be? I can’t make a living doing any of the things that I passionately like to do. Over the last few years I’ve shifted focus so many times--one month I think I’ll go to business school, another month human computer interaction, another month something else. This month it’s “learn Arabic and try to parlay that and your anthro background into something interesting.” Which actually does sound like a somewhat reasonable plan, if I squint at it just right.

The problem remains, however, of burnout in the short term. I feel like a big heap of wasted potential doing what I’m doing now. Through serendipitous chance, the name of my undergraduate advisor came up in my office, and my first thought was nostalgia, a feeling of respect for the professor and missing his courses and personality. My second thought was how ashamed I would be to run into him and tell him what I’ve done with my life (and we won’t even open the can of worms of the Native American activist telling me I’d be just like all those other white researchers or undergrads who take up Native American causes and then drop them months or years later. We just won’t go there).

So I look at all these things which are fun and/or interesting and/or career-building and I want to do them but I feel defeated already, before classes even begin. I do feel like a failure, and I do feel ashamed of how I’ve let what I could have been slip away, but maybe 9 to 5 Monday through Friday isn’t where I was meant to succeed. Maybe that’s the (inordinately large) chunk of my life that enables me to be an artist, a dancer, a jeweler, a lover, a keeper of ferrets, all those other modern day Bohemian things that matter so much to me. Andre Breton worked as a shipping clerk. Later in life he worked as an art buyer but I don’t think he had much respect for it as a profession; it was merely a means to build fine collections with someone else’s money.

Yet I sit here three and a half hours into a workday and the rest of it seems incomprehensibly long and tedious. I live in a state of perpetual anxiety, waiting for the workday or workweek to end, then living my life knowing that it will all have to be put on hold several hours a day, and knowing in both situations that no matter how I try, I will never get enough sleep.

All I can do, I suppose, is give it a try. Take Arabic and my two dance classes and get ready for performances (and, incidentally, sew costumes for those) and create time to spend with my husband and my ferrets and my friends and work all week and try to hold it all together. It could work. You never know. If not, well... then I guess it couldn't work, and I will chase the tail of this mental conversation over and over and over to my very dying days. It's not a very appealing thought.

2002-08-15T11:15:00.000-04:00

I face a dilemma.

I'm now rather active in the livejournal arena as a commenter, and I enjoy it. I maintain a fictional livejournal, which my occasionally baffled friends don't seem to mind in their friends page, or at any rate they don't delete me. And I maintain this blog, which stands alone. And I like it like that, mostly. But after doing the livejournal thing for several months now, I feel this nagging sense that I should be giving back to others what I get from them, and also a feeling that I'd like people to know what's up with me without having to seek it out. But I don't want to abandon the blog, because it is my personal space and a part of my website. And I think I write differently here, knowing that people have to seek it out if they want to read it, than I would if I were writing live journal entries. Not that this blog is completely open and honest, but it is probably less self-censoring than a non-fictional live journal would be. I also do not want to abandon the fictional live journal, Badriya Z, because I do like the challenge of knowing that my words will be read by people (well, I hope they are); I think it makes me a little sharper than I might be otherwise. And of course there is a lot of me in the fiction--Badriya is becoming an alias for me in a few spheres of life. And then if I were to create an additional live journal for me, I'd have to come up with a new identity and start posting from that, and I like posting as Badriya Z.

Sigh. I don't know. If anybody is reading this and has an opinion, feel free to tell me about it.

Feeling extra angsty today after a nightmare-filled sleep... I've actually been getting nearly enough sleep all week, but it doesn't seem to make me any less tired. I suppose it's the heat.

2002-08-07T14:09:00.000-04:00

Last night I dreamed I was back in school studying archaeology. This was brought on by two things: one, as I walked through some MIT buildings yesterday, it caused me to reflect how much I miss being a student, that feeling of belonging on a campus and an excitement about learning. And two, a couple of nights ago I saw an archaeology professor for whom I used to be a teaching assistant on a Discovery Channel program about human evolution (Mike Bisson). Out of all the professors with whom I had interacted at McGill, I have the most respect for him as an academic and as a human being by far. Plus he really liked Amelia when I brought her to school one day. Anyway the combination of factors was all my brain needed to remind me that I have always wondered how things would have turned out had I just stayed with archaeology and never been sidetracked into socio-cultural anthropology. I'm sure I would have stuck it out for the PhD, if I made it through the undergraduate science courses. Not that I'm exactly unhappy with life at the moment--well, maybe I am. I don't know. Maybe I'd be just as unhappy if I were an archaeologist but with no life or personal identity. And I should remember that one of the reasons I found it easy to switch to socio-cultural was that I was uncomfortable with North American archaeology--colonial is boring, but pre-colonial has moral issues.

I don't want all my dreams to be about things that frustrate me. Can't I just have some nice escapist dreams once in a while? The night before last I dreamed that these sprites or brownies or leprechauns were out to get my ferrets. One of them even ripped a hunk of fur from Pan, so I went after them. They sent black wiggling snakes after me, but I chopped them in half with a shovel. I guess they were the adrenal gnomes or something.

2002-08-01T18:22:00.000-04:00

The other night I dreamed that I was seeing Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. It wasn't quite all of the Bad Seeds but it wasn't a solo show either, and the dream pleasantly recaptured some of that absolutely ecstatic feeling I've had the last two times I've seen Nick. The band launched into Black Betty and I, under the impression that this was what Nick Cave wanted, sang along with the responses at the top of my lungs. "Damn," I thought, "I sound good." Then I realized that nobody else was singing, and in fact they were looking at me oddly, and that I was being that person, the one who is singing over the music and annoying everybody else who paid their money to hear the band, not some jerk next to them in the audience. So I stopped singing out loud and just mouthed the words. But I was still sure that 1., Nick had wanted us all to sing and 2., I did sound really damn good and that these people didn't know what they were missing.

Can you tell that singing is yet another one of those areas where I know I am talented but I can't find the time or grit to do what it takes to become successful at it? I do sing well. I took classes, even. I have a rather contralto voice, basically schooled by singing along with Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington and Helen Merrill. And, of course, Nick Cave, as well as Blixa Bargeld, although I have to make up the words as I go along and I can only get out one or two screams before I break. I don't do sweet and ethereal but I think I have a depth and richness that would sound swell in sa moky jazz-influenced, deranged circus kind of sound, with occasional rocking out. I even have two band names already, both anime inspired:

The Ryoko Solution

and

Stray Shinma

I also don't have the first idea how to write a song or a melody, though I don't think fitting words to somebody else's songs would be a challenge. In fact I have done that before. So I don't know. Maybe someday in some theoretical spare time I'll try to make something happen. Or not.

At any rate, I listened to Black Betty over and over the next morning on my headphones on the way to work.

2002-07-30T11:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was hellishly hot (although probably not as hot as today will be) and I hadn't done laundry recently so I had to improvise a work outfit. Summer work clothes are a little challenging to construct for me because of my tattoo work on the upper arms. So I ended up in long sleeves yesterday, and even though we have AC at work, I still wished that I could take off a layer like everyone else in the office can. I felt like I had to stay covered up when I ran out for lunch as well, since who knows who I'd run into. I know that's the way the world works, and I certainly don't regret the tattooes (in fact they help keep me sane in some regards by creating an anchor of selfhood), but sometimes, like when the sweat is running down my back, I wish the world worked just a little differently. On the other hand, it's kind of like having a secret identity and I like that (see above sanity-related comment). I'm just like Diana Price, only without the lasso or the invisible jet.

I made tea nearly two hours ago and forgot about it. I guess if I put it on the AC, in another hour or so I could have iced tea, without the ice.

2002-07-28T21:39:00.000-04:00

I write this sitting on the T, because I don't know when else I'll find the time. I had a ton of things to write but the foremost thought in my mind is, don't college-aged boys realize how bad they smell? The other thought in my head is wonderment at how many people are on the train on a Saturday afternoon. Of course I'm used to crowded trains from commuting but at least commuters, for the most part, understand train etiquette.

I'm babbling becase I'm running somewhat late for an event that I'm nervous about to begin with. Did I dress right, both for the venue and the company I'll be keeping? Who is that company anyway? Plus I shouldn't be spending the money right now.

Some child is making farting noises. I hate the living.

2002-07-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

My little piece of Dove chocolate came with a message on the inside of the wrapper:

“Time is a river without banks”

So, in other words, it’s muddy and swampy and not safe to build near, but provides a lot of habitat.

2002-07-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

I wish that I could take apart all my bones and unravel all my muscles and put the whole thing back together again.

This morning though Pan sat in my lap all by himself and hung out with me, getting petted and appearing to like it. And on the weekend Seti took a little nap with me. They like me, they really like me! I also found a treat, albeit a rather odd one, that at least one of them likes: Seti likes soft tortilla shells. A lot. Crazy weasel.

Also, I knew my brain was wired differently: it says so here.

2002-07-09T13:15:00.000-04:00

Suddenly I realize why I have felt so yucky the last few days. I'm getting sick! Scratchy throat, runny nose, red eyes, aching brain, can't get enough sleep but can't sleep well, yep, that would be sick.

Sigh. Add that to the foot injuries (oh yes, I've multiplied them by kicking a doorframe and breaking or spraining a toe) and I am a right mess. It's been close to a month now since I injured my foot the first time and I am feeling like a slug. I really, really want to dance, and all of me from the left ankle up is ready to go, but these two teeny places on my foot prevent me from dancing. In the meanwhile I think I will (carefully) start some Pilates or yoga so that the rest of me gets some exercise in a controlled fashion that won't hurt my foot more. There's an excellent workshop coming up later in July that I was very excited about, so if I'm careful, hopefully I can make it to that. I feel like such a disaster area. My bus broke down yesterday and I'm sure it was my influence.

Things continue to go well with the ferrets. It's amazing how much personality they have and how quickly they have settled in to their new home. Pictures are now available here. Seti instantly liked being petted and cuddled, and now Pan is starting to seek out hugs too, which is nice to see. Pan has been so skittish it's lovely to know that he trusts us. It is interesting to me how my bonds grow differently with each of them. I pretty much bonded to Seti instantly, probably the first time I saw him in the pet store, and I don't think it took him much longer. He's actually slept a little alongside me now. Pan's been a little slower but in a way that makes his affection all the more rewarding, since I had to wait for it. Certainly neither one of them is shy about poking at us in the middle of the night, so that's trust right there ;-) I'm looking forward to getting their vaccinations all finished so I can start taking them places with me. I'm sure they are looking forward to getting the vaccinations all finished too.

Sometimes I hear one of them sneeze or crunch kibble and I suddenly miss Amelia so much. I'm so glad to have ferrets now but I think I'm glad I ended up with two boys so I can still call Amelia the best ferret girl ever. Because she was. The tattoo is nearly healed over now and looks very nice--I have her with me wherever I go now.

What a year this has been, just since January.

2002-06-23T20:09:00.000-04:00

Introducing…

Pantaleimon and Setanta, aka Pan and Seti

Pantaleimon and Setanta Harrison Fuller Ferret moved in with us on Saturday, June 22. They were astonished to discover there was so much room in the world after spending a while at Petco in Cambridge. It’s obvious they’ve been handled a lot and the staff was sorry to see them go, so I’m sure they were well-cared for, but there’s nothing like the sweet taste of freedom!

Both of them are supposedly 3 months old or so, born between 3/11 and 3/17. I’m not sure I believe that they are both 3, and the store people said Setanta was 2 months, but since we’ll never really know, I can comfortably declare St. Patrick’s Day their official birthday. Pan is slightly built, a classic example of what ferret people call a whippet shape, long and slender with a pointy face. He has a cream colored undercoat and dark brown guard hairs with nearly black feet and tail, white toes on his front feet, a white bib, dark eye patches, a neat speckled smudge between his eyes, and his eyes are an intense deep garnet that flash super brightly when they catch the light just right. He’s the more cautious and skittish of the two, careful to check things out thoroughly and jumping at noises often. I felt he was a little too skinny when I brought him home; he’s been eating like a little horse since yesterday and already looks rounder. He was the smallest male in the bin of ferrets and I think maybe he got out-competed for food most of the time. Despite being small though he throws himself right into play and is quick and agile. He also likes to turn the pages of books and tries to hide books under the furniture. Within 24 hours he’d figured out the principle of litterboxes despite never having seen one before. So he’s the dark quiet type, deceptively smart. Seti, on the other hand, is big and boisterous and is going to be a very large ferret when he grows up judging from the size of his feet and ears, especially if he really is only 2 months now. He has a golden-cream undercoat and milk-chocolate guard hairs, legs and feet, no mask at all, and ruby red eyes. He looks strikingly like my much-missed Cully at about age 6 or so, except for those red eyes. He’s the happy-go-lucky sort, the kind of ferret who will accidentally leap sideways off the bed while jumping around and playing, then bounce right back up onto the bed again. He’s very people-oriented, probably thanks to the staff at Petco making a fuss over him, and is a bold explorer of new rooms. He assumes the world is there just for his entertainment, and he will be the one to watch for things like climbing up the curtains or leaping over tall barricades to get to where he wants to go (Pan, I think, will be the one who figures out how doorknobs work).

Now I can really say we’ve truly moved in to our new place—home is where the ferrets are!

[I know that the pronunciations of the “S” in Setanta and Seti don’t match, but he’s a multi-faceted ferret, hero and trickster rolled into one, so it works : -) ]

2002-06-21T12:42:00.000-04:00

So today I am getting Amelia's pawprint tattooed on me so that she will walk with me forever. I feel sad about it, because it marks the end of the time span since I accepted that her death would be coming. But I am glad to be doing it. I'm going to Fat Ram's Pumpkin Tattoo Studio in JP; I had a very nice consultation meeting with my artist last week. Her dog passed away in May and she is also planning a memorial tattoo, so I certainly have a sympathetic person doing the work.

And then tommorrow--real live ferrets! In my home again! I crave having little furries with me again. There are definitely some inconveniences to pet ownership (I have gotten pretty used to being able to walk through doorways without stepping over gates) but life without pets is just a little too empty. Most of all I think I miss those random moments when a napping ferret wakes up and wanders into the room where you are sitting, looking a little surprized to see you but happy to have the company. Or maybe it's the warm ferret baking-bread smell that I miss most. Whatever, I miss ferrets! I was very taken with a light chocolate or champagne baby I saw last week at a Petco who looked much like Cully in his younger days, so if that one (not sure if it was a boy or girl) is still there, perhaps I will be bringing home that one and a friend...

yayyayyayyayyayyayyayyay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2002-06-13T12:49:00.000-04:00

This morning, listening to Unto Ashes as I hovered somewhere between sleep and wakefulness on the subway, I had a wonderful idea for a video piece for one of their songs. It's an instrumental song from their album Moon Oppose Moon, I believe track 8 or 9 (my eyes being closed, I don't know for sure). My dream-vision was of a classical dancer, a ballet dancer, in a place of beautiful ruins, all greys and verdigris greens and hanging spanish moss. She would dance to the music and pluck out one of her blue glass eyes, dancing with it, holding it to the light, perhaps rolling it along her arms. Where her eye had been would be replaced by blank flesh, no gaping wound or socket. When the music reached its first cascade the eye would fall and roll away from her, bouncing down mossy steps and coming to rest beyond the boundaries of the ruin, looking away. The dancer would look sadly after it for a moment and then with resignation pluck out her other eye and begin to dance again. Her dancing would be more passionate and her near-misses with the broken columns and turned cobblestones quite dramatic. But for all her precision, this eye too would escape her elegant fingers and as she stood bereft, the second eye would follow the path of the first, dislodging the first from its resting place and sending them both into a headlong tumble. The steps would become a stream bed and the eyes would tumble almost gaily over one another into the water, splashing and bouncing. They would appear to be looking about, and perhaps shots of the scenery swirling past could be interspersed. The stream would join a river and at last the eyes would come to rest at the shore, rolling up and down the sand with the waves. A final wave would suck them under the water entirely and the eyes would see wondrous things under the waves, palaces full of strange sea creatures in art deco finery, oxidized metals and pearls, armor made of irridescent scales. As the eyes sink into this beautiful world, we cut back to the dancer, sitting on the ground in her ruins, hands clutching each other against her chest, eyeless face turned to the sky and smiling.

It was a pretty image to travel with, anyway.

2002-06-12T12:08:00.000-04:00

What a morning.

I started it with shooting pain in my foot as I jumped out of bed to turn off the alarm, forgetting that I wasn't supposed to put weight on that heel. Hopefully whatever is wrong with my foot will clear up but for the moment it is hella, hella painful, not all the time but only when I move or shift my weight in a certain way. Then it feels like somebody is driving a large nail into the bottom of my heel. It hurts enough to make me gasp out loud, and I'm generally pretty stoic about pain. I complain about it a lot, but I don't usually make faces and such. I have, in my usual hypochondriac style, diagnosed myself as having plantar fasciitis. Whether that's actually what I have or not, those are certainly the muscles/ligaments that I've injured, the area that anchors the end of the arch of your foot to the heel bone. It's all swollen and tender too. I'm seeing a doctor next week so in the meanwhile I'm just being careful with it, which is all a doctor might tell me to do anyway. Ice at night, and trying not to strain it. Unfortunately, this being my life, the best shoes I could be wearing for it broke last night, the heel came off of one of them. I may actually have to buy sneakers. Maybe I can find some with bats on them... I did buy arch support things and am astonished by how much better they make both of my feet feel, in addition to my lower back. Arch support rocks. So at least I have learned one good thing out of all this. I also think I can pinpoint exactly when I hurt my foot, at one point in a choreography when I'm sitting on my feet. I was staying up on my toes with my arch fully extended so that my skirt wouldn't be under my feet when it was time to stand up, with my weight on my heels, and I remember my feet hurting. Then standing all night at the SK show in heels most likely reinforced the damage, though the foot didn't actively hurt at the time. My back is slowly getting better, but unfortunately some of the best back stretches make my foot hurt, so it is still achy. I am a pathetic lump of malfunctioning flesh, I am. Oh to be cyborg...

So I'm in pain, and then this morning I find out that the office gift for the person in the office who is getting married had already been bought, and I hadn't put in any money in yet. This is mostly my own spacy fault, but still, a reminder might have been nice from the organizer of the purchase, whose attitude about it this morning was basically tough luck. I felt like this was a politically important thing for me to participate in, so this rankles. But, in the end all is well, because I know where the couple registered so I sent my own gift. With blackjack, and hookers. Well, ok, actually with salad accessories, but I sent it in true Bender spirit, and I feel much relieved. Maybe it's even better this way anyway.

And now I can't tell if the movie I was supposed to go be in this Friday is happening or not, having received an enigmatic email from the assistant director. Hmmm. It might be just as well if it weren't, since I don't think I can wear the heels that I'm supposed to wear, what with my foot and all. It has healed so little, or so not at all, since Monday that I don't think it will be much better by Friday, and even if it were wearing heels would still be bad. But I did figure out an alternative choreography without me, so if the movie is still happening and I have to back out, I'm not thoroughly wrecking things.

goddamnit, I want a good night's sleep and to not be in pain. My back still hurts enough to wake me up when I roll over in the night, although it no longer hurts enough to take my breath away. That's just my foot, now. whine whine whine... I need to start writing more interesting things here, more artsy stuff. It's hard to be artsy under all these conditions, though.

2002-06-10T15:39:00.000-04:00

The same co-worker who talks on the phone incessantly is eating a tuna fish sandwich and a banana for lunch. Anybody who knows me well can only imagine how queasy this is making me right now, all the more so since the room is stuffy.

bleech.

2002-06-10T11:04:00.000-04:00

What a full, full weekend.

The dancer performance on Friday night went alright. Which is to say it went well enough but I wished it had gone better. I'm not unhappy per se with my dancing that night but there were things that needed improving. Performing is an odd thing, when you're doing these four or five minute songs--it goes by so quickly, and you are still wondering how well you executed the last move while you're doing the next. Or sometimes you are so busy thinking about the next move that you forget to actually do the next move, as I did at one point. The songs always seem longer in rehearsals, perhaps because you do them over and over and over. I suppose what I learned is that I should make the time to run through the choreography a couple of times extra beforehand, and to get my muscles warmed up and keep them warmed up. Unfortunately I cooled off too much between sets and so felt stiff on the second piece. Anyway, it was more or less a successful experience. Then from there off to a party, where I astonished myself by staying until 3 or so. Pleasant party. I saw Ruben's lungfish, which was a fascinating critter. I dreamed the next night about it, that it was talking but I don't remember what it was saying.

Then Saturday morning I was up earlier than I wanted to be but still late for where I needed to be, helping Ted with his current movie project. My involvement started out as a showgirl extra but I have since become choreographer as well for the showgirl scene. I'd never choreographed other people before, but it wasn't too difficult. In fact, I had fun, despite the hangover from the previous night's party. Then I rushed off to Arlington to watch the Belmont Stakes, only to see Triple Crown hopes dashed once again this year. War Emblem stumbled badly out of the gate and never really recovered; we'll never know if it could have been this year or not. Depressing. Then dinner, then exhaustion kicked in and I went to bed by 11 on a Saturday night. Pathetic, but much needed, because I slept 12 hours. The bad part of that was that I slept 12 hours almost without moving, so my back was in spasms the next morning, so much so that I was worried I wouldn't be able to participate in Sunday night's performance with my other troupe. Much stretching and a heating pad got me there, and the performance was mostly pain-free. Performing at the Folk Dance Club, as we were, is pretty low-key anyway; I don't get very nervous for those.

Then from there off to the Scissorkiss show at the Middle East. It was a wonderful night of music--Project Sphere opened, and while I missed most of their set, what I heard I liked. It's nice to hear someone be really goth and not at all apologetic about it. Then Scissorkiss put on a great high-energy show, and made some new converts. I hadn't heard anything about the final band, Mindless Faith, but they were an unexpected bonus for the night, heavy Ministry influenced loud guitar industrial, old skool but innovative. A really good fit for Scissorkiss, in fact, probably one of the most appropriate bands they've ever performed with. And they were nice guys too, as we found hanging out afterwards.

Then home, and (finally) dinner, and four hours of sleep later I got up to go to work. Ugh. My back is still messed up and there has also been a strange thing going on in my left heel bone (talus? I can't remember) where it feels like muscle attachments are tearing if I put my foot down flat with my calf extended. Owwie. And I have dance class tonight. I think that dance class will help my back, as long as I'm careful, but the foot thing kinda worries me. God I'm glad rehearsals are done so that I can make an attempt to get more sleep and let my body heal... it's all worth it of course but two performances in one weekend has left me pretty demolished, mentally and physically. I want to be dumb and watch tv all week.

2002-06-05T15:34:00.000-04:00

It was the screaming of the crows that drew my attention. As I walked across the MIT campus to dance class, a small knot of crows gathered in a tree shrieking their heads off, joined by increasing numbers of crows. Sociable crows are loud, but their caws are almost languid, or as languid as something intrinsicly harsh can be. These crows were not relaxed; they were troubled and they wanted all other crows to know it, to feel their troubles and come join them. One crow swooped low as he flew up into the tree, and then I saw it...

A red-tailed hawk sat perched on chunks of cement torn up by MIT's perpetual construction. The hawk was expertly picking apart its dinner, a good-sized rat, and ignoring the crows overhead. The construction debris sat behind a chainlink fence with a footpath along side it, and after I caught my breath I slowly walked along the path until I stood about 8 feet or so from the hawk (how odd to be watching a hawk in the wild, yet still be watching it through a fence, almost as though the hawk had chosen the location for its own protection). The hawk gave me a glance, and went back to dissecting its rat into discrete little food packets. I watched it for about ten minutes, until it had eaten most of the rat. With a couple of hops, it collected the rat's remains into an easily carried bundle, and flew off silently along the construction. A few seconds later the crows noticed and took off in noisy pursuit, but the hawk was able to reach its destination unmolested. I wonder if it might be one of a pair raising some young. I'm not a good enough birder to be able to tell a male from a female, not unless there's one of each standing next to each other (the females are bigger).

The hawk was a wondrous thing to behold, efficient ferocity in the unlikeliest of places. It looked strong and confident, muscled broad shoulders and sharp claws and beak. My first thought, when I realized it was eating a rat, was that it was sad how urban living had reduced this magnificent creature to living on vermin--but then I thought, vermin is in the eye of the beholder. A human's vermin is a hawk's perfectly acceptable dinner, and the city rats, forgetting their instincts in their boldness, are probably easier to catch than the squirrels and the other birds who are warned off by the ever-present crows. What really did make me sad was that of the dozens of people--literally dozens--who passed me, only one or two others noticed the hawk. Granted its dusky browns camoflauged it somewhat against the grey concrete, but still, its grace and wildness should have shouted out to every passerby. Not to mention all the noise the crows were still making. But I suppose many people never do notice these things, not the different sounds that crows make, not the presence of an elegant predator. We have forgotten our instincts as much as the rats have. Surrounding oneself with cars, television, the trappings of city life is no excuse to my mind. Letting go of a sense of wonder at the natural world, wherever one finds it, is to deny who and what we are. My heart lifted and soared with that hawk, taking joy in its presence. I cannot imagine feeling human without that love of what is not human, of knowing what I am without thinking about what others are.

2002-06-04T12:29:00.000-04:00

There need to be more hours in the day. Otherwise, I don't see how I'll get everything done this week that needs to be done and sleep too. I am discovering today that my body just doesn't function that well on four or five hours of sleep, even if I haven't been out clubbing the night before. I stayed up late working on a new circle skirt. It's amazing how a seam that it took one less than ten minutes to stitch in can take over 45 minutes to pick out when you discover it's not in the right place :-( But the skirt will be nice when it's finished. It's a bold foray into the world of color, royal purple.

I have a dance name now. I wasn't sure I was going to bother having a name, because I thought that I wouldn't ever be at anything like a professional stage and that Regina sounded ok anyway. As I thought about it more though, I liked the idea of having a stage persona to put on (just like PJ Harvey in that Rasputina song). So on stage I become Badriya Z and leave the baggage and anxieties of being Regina behind me. I chose the name because Badriya means, roughly, she who shines like the moon, which my skin certainly does in a dancer costume, and I added the Z because that's part of who I am and it will also differentiate me from any other Badriya's out there. I'm finding that it's a powerful step for me to have taken. Even though I still don't expect to be a professional, taking a name says I am serious about what I'm doing. At least to me it does.

2002-05-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

I dreamed last night that I was sentenced to death by the Catholic Church for heresy. I was to drink hemlock like Socrates. As the time drew nearer, I cried and cried, but I knew it was futile to resist. I wasn't in jail but I was expected to report to the poisoner on my own. I did, and I died. At first I couldn't tell that I was dead, since nothing seemed different at first, but then I realized that nobody could see me any more. Then Amelia appeared, and I held her and hugged her. I thought being dead might not be so bad after all if I could figure out a way to communicate with the living. It then occured to me to see if I could still send email, so I found a computer and logged into my hotmail account. I sent a test message and was waiting to find out if it would work or not when I woke up. I felt optimistic about it working.

The amherst ferret person wrote to the ferret mailing list today to say that the ferret was going to a ferret shelter. She never wrote me back, not even to acknowledge the offer. I don't really take it personally but it did make me wonder about her motives for creating a scene. Well, it was really too soon for us anyway; for one thing, the apartment is still pretty paint-fume laden. I think I'm going to go against my resolve about getting a shelter ferret; I know that adopting is the right thing to do, but I really want to raise another baby and have that bonding experience. Plus, the baby in the pet shop deserves a good home too, though I know it's fallacious to think of pet store purchases as rescues. We'll see.

2002-05-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Two more hours before I can go home. I actually get to go home tonight, with just a brief detour by the grocery store. Then I will frantically work on the belt part of my bedleh (two piece belly dance outfit) because I just discovered on Monday that I need a bedleh by June 6. Yikes.

In today's ferret mailing list (couldn't bring myself to unsubscribe) somebody out in amherst announced that she had to give up one of her ferrets and was seeking a home for her. The ferret is about a year old, silver, and bitey. I emailed the person several hours ago but haven't heard back yet. I didn't think I was ready to get a ferret Right This Minute but if fate wants this one to happen, then it will. If not, there are plenty of other deserving ferrets out there. Mathew, bless his heart, is willing to put up with another biter. I was hoping not to have to do rehab this time around (Mr. Cully Monster was quite the experience), but I'm a sucker for a sad story.

Thunder is rumbling in again. At lunch I thought I might wake myself up by going for a walk, but the sun showers just succeeded in making me all the more groggily disoriented. A guy in a truck wolf-whistled at me as I walked down the street. At least I assume it was me he was whistling at, as the only other person on the street was Eddy Munster grown up to be a frat boy. I don't know; maybe that's what the truck driver is into. But if it was for me, I felt like yelling after him "don't you understand? I'm blobby and my head is attached to my shoulders by a thin string! Your whistling surely must apply to somebody else whose feet can walk in a straight line without intense concentration!"

As usual, I need more sleep.

2002-05-28T11:58:00.000-04:00

Two wishes:

One, that it would thunderstorm already. Not the random rumblings we've been having, but a nice all-out storm. I can feel it in the air but it's not happening.

Two, that my co-worker who has been on the phone for the last half hour would please, please shut the hell up or go find an empty office to make her personal calls from.

Edgy and grumpy, that's me.

2002-05-21T13:02:00.000-04:00

We've been in the new apartment for only ten days now--it seems hard to believe. Some things are still new--like being careful not to lock myself out, finding the doorknobs in the dark--but now that much of our stuff has come out of the boxes, it feels comfortingly like home. Once the artwork is up on the walls (damn whatever the lease says about no nails in the walls!) it will be downright cozy. And of course once we have a ferret or two in the house it will feel complete. We needed this so badly for ourselves. We had guests over for the x-files finale and didn't feel like we were taking over the living room or being interrupted or having to share our guests (selfish, I know, but you invite people over because you want to spend time with _them_).

Now if I could only get enough sleep life would be thrilling. The one night I could sleep in this past weekend I woke up after seven hours and couldn't fall back asleep. I don't really know why. Well, ok, maybe it was the previous night's red wine. But darn it, I should be able to get drunk _and_ sleep well in the same weekend!

On another subject, I was so frustrated with my dancing last night. For starters, I couldn't stretch deeply enough for the teacher, though in my defense we don't warm up before doing these deep stretches, which means my muscles aren't ready for the stretches. So I started the class feeling inadequate, and spiraled down from there. I kept turning the wrong way, over the wrong shoulder, and stepping with the wrong feet, and lifting my arms to the wrong side. I knew I was doing it wrong, so being told that repeatedly by the teacher didn't help. I honestly can't tell which way my body is going or which shoulder I'm turning over--I don't know if that's dyslexia or just general panic, but the message to go the other direction couldn't travel from my brain to my body. And then we added zills, and I couldn't keep a rhythm to save my life, as I was already flustered, and at that point I wondered if I would have to leave the class to go cry in the bathroom. I was able to keep under control and choke out that I was fine when the teacher asked if I was ok. Allergies are a wonderful excuse for red eyes and a drippy nose, though I don't know if anyone bought it. Actually I think I'd be somewhat hurt if everyone bought it, though I'm glad nobody called me on it. At any rate I survived the class though the last fifteen minutes lasted an eternity. Then we ran through the choreography for June's performance, and I was pissed off at myself so I threw myself into it and earned praise for my energetic hip kicks. So at least things ended well, but only because I was mad with frustration. I can't dance mad all the time.

I got the videotape of our last performance but I certainly was in no mood to view it last night. Even on a good day I have a hard time looking at photos of myself dancing because I see that I'm not extending my arms, that I'm sloucing more than I think I am, that I'm frowning, etc. I've never looked at video of myself dancing. I just have to go into it as a learning experience and not expect to be amazed and astounded by my shining talents. This dancing means something more to me than just something to do for fun. I don't think I'll ever be great, but I'd like to look at myself with satisfaction and think I did well. For all I know I have done well, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to see it and not see visions of the Fantasia hippos dancing in my head.

Another dance class tonight. This one isn't as challenging but we do have a performance coming up. I should know this stuff cold. Hopefully I can relax enough by then to remember it.

2002-05-20T11:31:00.000-04:00

Why can't everybody stay good? Play bites only!

Arrogant person plus angry defensive person equals things you'd rather not know about your friends.

At least Scully and Mulder are back together the way it's supposed to be.

Sigh. I'm sure I've been equally stupid in my time. This is starting to sound like a livejournal entry, all ellipsis and reading between the lines, so I'll quit it. On a side note, I really like my blog because it is all mine, no interjection of other people's thoughts or comments. I still write with the knowledge that others will read this, so it's not a true diary and I must be a little more circumspect than I might be in a true diary, but I suppose it's that lure of having an audience, assuming anybody actually reads this, that keeps me writing. Though I'm sure if I did start writing exactly what I think about particular persons, issues, etc. I would be assured of an audience. But that's not what I, or this blog, am about.

2002-05-16T17:48:00.000-04:00

I haven't been able to write for a few weeks, both because of the pace of life and because of its finality. Amelia's body gave out on April 22 and so we brought her to the vet's for a mercy shot. I still question--will probably always question--whether she could have lived longer on her own or not, but her body was so limp, and she did not want her good-tasting medicine. And this way, she died with me rather than alone, something I think I would have wanted for myself were the situation reversed. Perhaps selfishly, I could not bear the thought of her dying alone. She struggled a little at the vet's when whatever it is that they use entered her bloodstream but I held her still and felt her slide away, slide straight from her heart into mine. I dream frequently about her; the majority of the dreams are very good, she is young and fluffy and strong again. Her ashes were returned to me and now she and Cully sit alongside each other. I look at the photos of them next to each other and realize how long it has been since I would hold them together and try to convince them that they should be friends. Hopefully they're friends now, curled up in my heart together.

The apartment (the new apartment, hooray for this married couple living in privacy) feels empty, incomplete, without a critter running around. It won't be long before I bring another ferret (or two) into our lives. It will be hard for a while though, expecting to see Amelia when I hear the pitter patter of little feet. Still, I am looking forward to the time that I feel ready.