April Blogs 2008
April Blogs 2008
April 29, 2008
No’Poo Day Seven
It’s been more than one week since I used commercial shampoo. One really bad gnarly hair day over the weekend, but other than that it looks probably better than it usually does in the humid weather, and certainly no worse. The baking soda scrub twice a week seems like it will work out fine, for now. I hear these tales of people only having to do the baking soda thing once a month, and having hair as radiant and silky as a baby’s with this beauty regimen. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t plan to cut back the baking soda to once a week unless I am absolutely certain that I won’t be walking around looking like Ethan Hawke, for pity’s sake. I’m going to try a white vinegar rinse instead of apple cider vinegar, as the acv can cause greasiness, and it seems i won’t need to rinse with vinegar every week anyway. This has been a great way to use up leftover coffee, too; I’m rinsing with that just in case the baking soda lightens my hair, which it can do. Did you know houseplants enjoy the occasional cup of coffee, too? It’s true, you can feed black coffee to your plants; I guess that’s on the order of feeding filet mignon to your house cats. It’s amazing what a quick search for “coffee rinse” yields. I found recipes for homemade cellulite creams using coffee grounds. I am enjoying the kind of euphoria right now that is the joyous aftermath of great pain. I had a sinus headache so bad today that I left work an hour early, after vomiting from the agony. I know I’m old when I’m puking in a college bathroom because of a frickin’ sinus headache and not because I’m sticking my fingers down my throat in an effort to lose weight. Ah well, not everyone can sustain the glamorous lifestyle afforded to the youth. As far as my light reading agenda, I am not at all ashamed to say that I enjoy Sophie Kinsella’s books. When I was a teenager, I used to put book covers on the V.C. Andrews novels I was reading, so that no one would know I wasn’t as highbrow and literary as I let on. Then I grew up and got a job in book publishing as a copy editor, and realized that there were people installing air-conditioning units who were making more money than I was making in publishing, people who had never read Jane Eyre, and that people who never played by the rules, never even earned their GEDs, were leading fulfilling lives, while I was mortifying my creative dreams in favor of a desk job. God, I am so stupid. I should have rebelled more when I was younger. From grammar school, I busted my ass to get good grades, so I could get into a good college. I never took sick days, and I spent ten years building up a publishing career. And then the company I’d worked at for seven years laid me off, because the person I trained as a copy editor would be able to do my job, for less money than I was doing it. And it seems not to matter one iota that I have a master’s degree and all this experience in the field; the starting salaries I’m being offered are the same as they were ten years ago. So I’m not taking any full-time publishing jobs right now. Which is why I’m reading chick-lit books: it’s research. I’m done with literary fiction. I want to write a book that will sell, so that I won’t have to tutor anymore, or teach anymore, or copyedit anymore, or ever talk to another person during my work day. Rod offered to build me a tall pillar to sit on top of, like one of those Biblical holy people, thinking this would scratch my itch for both solitude and public service. But I’m afraid of heights.
April 28, 2008
Books like Crack
Went to the library yesterday and got some light reading to tide me over:
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella (of _Confessions of a Shopaholic_ fame)
The newest in the Princess Diaries series
Cupcake, the third in a YA series by Rachel Cohn
I couldn’t even be bothered to pay attention to the Godzilla movies we’ve got from Netflix, or the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” movie Rod got from the library.
It’s a sad state of affairs when I don’t have the attention span for a Godzilla movie.
Did find time to watch the America’s Next Top Model rerun, since I’d missed it when it aired. Glad to see that the plus-size model is still in the competition. I think she could be the one to finally bring it to the bank, since no other plus-size model has been America’s Next Top Model, right? I haven’t seen every season, but I’m pretty sure Whitney of season 10 would be the first.
April 27, 2008
Bored
The worst kind of day, when the weather is uninviting and so two people are cooped up in a small apartment together, getting on each other’s nerves. Rod is too much of a gentleman to say that I’m getting on his nerves. And in truth, I don’t mind him. It’s me I mind. I’m pissing myself off. The Godzilla self, the lizard brain, the Id, the inner two year old, whatever you want to call her; she’s large and in charge, and she’s stinging me from the inside so that I can’t set my mind to anything. Can’t read the Terry Pratchett novel Melissa loaned me. Can’t watch “Curse of Dracula,” with which Rod is beguiling himself this morning while he sorts VTES cards. I’m going to the gym to run as hard as I can; maybe that will chill me out. Boredom is undigested anger, I think. I am so infrequently bored that I don’t know how to handle it when the feeling hits. It feels like a small tornado of the mind, a beehive set loose and spinning between the walls of the skull. Had a great workshop with Tempest yesterday, in which we learned the basic shapes of Nouveau Noir bellydance, her special area of expertise. She is an articulate, fun, and generous teacher. I particularly admire how she is able to translate her attitude into gesture. Plenty of people can tell you that gothic bellydance is all about attitude. It is. Not so many people can tell you how to acquire the gothitude if you don’t manufacture it for yourself. Or even if you do have the dark aspect in spades, sometimes it doesn’t translate to the stage. Tempest broke down her special brand of “sass” into skewed geometrical shapes of arm and hip movements, illustrating how the Art Deco aesthetic affects the way she thinks about angles of hands, arms, wrists. Most illuminating. Then we went for noodles at Men Kui Tei on Third Ave, where Melissa enjoined me to sample, “The fried rice of deliciousness.” She’s been hyping this rice to me for months, and I must report that the fried rice totally delivered. A simple pork, egg, and scallion recipe, but the pork bits were moist and crispy in equal part, and the chef must fry the rice in pork fat, because it was hella savory. Did you know you’re not supposed to stick your chopsticks in the rice because it’s bad luck? I didn’t; but Melissa has travelled extensively in Asia and was on hand to tell me all these ways to avoid bad luck. I can’t help feeling this is a senseless prohibition, though, on the level of the old Catholic school chestnut “Don’t put your hands in your lap because people might think you’re masturbating.” Who wouldn’t want to stick her chopsticks in a hefty bowl of rice? They look like horns, antlers, antennae. It’s a simple, hilarious joy to have chopsticks sticking out of the rice, and in this fallen world it is a godsend to be so easily amused. I had a panic attack in the middle of the Cult of Myth show last night and had to leave. I’d been looking forward to this show for weeks, and during the first act my heartbeat was accelerating and the asthma kicked in; by the time intermission came I was running out of the building, pursued by some unseen but omnipresent danger. Promptly burst into tears once my feet hit Chambers Street, my throat aching with some unexpressed grief. Depression and anxiety are closely linked, chemically. In the past I have been more of the depressive type, but these anxiety attacks are becoming frequent enough to make me think of getting a prescription for them. Some days I am terrified to leave my apartment. On the hair front: Went to Tempest’s workshop looking like a stringy-haired hippie. Came home and realized baking soda is next to godliness. Note to self: Do not go more than three days without doing this baking soda rinse, and cut back on the apple cider vinegar, which might be causing greasiness. When Don died, one of our friends, Mike, asked a very good question: How do you decide that friends and family and music aren’t enough? Answer: When the gnawing, pestilential rat inside of you is goading you past any peace. Self hatred, the death instinct, whatever you want to call it, we all have it. It makes some people smoke cigarettes. Some people don’t look both ways when they cross the street. Others neglect to floss. I don’t know exactly what has been shaken loose in my psyche by Don’s death, but I do know this: I am sick of everyone and everything. I’m sick of trying to do anything, be anything, accomplish anything, produce anything. The part of Jackie Sheeler’s poem “Girl Is the Line on the Floor,” (in which she analyzes the proscriptions that petrify wounded girls inside of the women that they become) that always makes me cry is the end: I wanted only to be made invisible, every now and then, to sling down 86th Street in a pair of dungarees, utterly unnoticed. And free. Free. We are all trying to get free. I’m trying to get free. But the only thing I’ve ever really wanted in life is to get rid of that gnawing, pestilential rat inside of me, and that is not a life goal. Is it?
April 26, 2008
Five Feet of Pure Ugly
I woke up this morning and banged straight into the ugly wall. Had a perfect day yesterday; lunch with my friend Daryl in Central Park, read the new Alice Hoffman book, cooked a tray of mac ‘n cheese for dinner, no problems. Hair flirty and full of body, not itchy, still a little static so I stuck a headband in it, which calmed it down. Then I gave myself a coffee rinse last night and as soon as my hair dried it looked like the Titanic must have looked when it got the first whiff of that iceberg. My husband Rod, most tactful and gentle of men, had to admit that I was having a bad hair evening. This no’poo thing is different for everyone. Some people do the baking soda thing twice a week, some people just do it once. I was trying to hold out for once a week, and maybe I’ll get there eventually after the transition, but I have a very glamorous day ahead of me: bellydance workshop this afternoon, bellydance concert tonight. I cannot afford to look the way I look right now. I look like I crawled through the dream sewer. My hair is so greasy that it’s standing up in whorls of its own volition. See that? It has body. And greasy doesn’t mean dirty. I am not giving up and using shampoo. Ever again. I am Sicilian, which means I am filled with tenacity. I never abandon a goal. I’m going to try the “dry shampoo” trick with powder first and see where that gets me. In my heart, I was convinced that my transition would not be ugly, since I’ve been using the Lush natural shampoos, so my scalp could not be so traumatized with chemicals. It feels like an admission of defeat to use the baking soda twice in a week, but that’s just because I’m an overachiever. I’m having such a good time washing The Man out of my hair that I can’t help but take it to extremes. Some of these flimsy blondes I’ve been reading about only have to baking soda every few weeks. Rod, who knows me very well and can see mania from a mile off, pointedly told me that he’s not throwing away his Dial liquid soap, even though it has sodium laurel sulfate in it. He wasn’t impressed by the beautiful sandalwood soap bar I got at Whole Foods, made of nothing but ingredients we could recognize and pronounce, like palm oil. ”That soap bar cost $3. That’s like sixteen times as expensive as this jug of liquid soap.” he said. What he fails to understand is that it is not a bargain if it gives you cancer. Chemotherapy is expensive. Only did so-so with mental detox week. Caved in and watched several hours of television on both Thursday and Friday nights. Rod, cruel man, won’t let me have Tivo, so I actually have to watch the shows I like–WHEN THEY’RE ON. And I wasn’t going to miss a brand-new “Ugly Betty.” I think of Anne Sexton’s line every day: “Many have come to such a small crossroads.” If you didn’t get your tickets for Venus Uprising’s “Cult of Myth” fantasy bellydance show tonight, then you are out of luck because they are all sold out. I can’t wait to see it. My dance partner Melissa Voodoo will be in a few of the numbers, and I’m going to cheer her on and to be generally inspired. Wanted to be able to get to the Dances of Vice party in Brooklyn, and maybe still will–depends on what’s happening after Cult of Myth.
April 25, 2008
No ’Poo Day Four
I went running yesterday. And when I run, I go balls to the wall. I was soaking wet by the time I was done, and I was absolutely convinced that a rinse wouldn’t cut it as far as cleaning my hair. I was also absolutely wrong about that. Can you believe this? After a rinse and a quick scalp massage in the shower, my hair showed no trace of how sweaty it had just been. I am bound to report that today–the day I would ordinarily be shampooing again–my scalp itches, and my hair has developed some strange static electricity. It looks perfectly clean, though. I was prepared to have to put the lovely new rose-scented powder I got from Lush (Powder Puff, it’s called) in my roots today, but it looks like that won’t be necessary. All the blogs I’ve read say to try different herbal infusions if you get itchy. If it gets really bad today I might try rinsing my hair with rosemary tea. I went to the gym with Mistress B yesterday, who is very interested in the whole no ‘poo thing. She has straight, fine hair that is similar to mine, and she is waiting to see the success of my experiment before she tries it for herself. Probably also because she’s got a year’s worth of Lush shampoo bars in her bathroom. Being my friend and neighbor for the last eight years, she has also seen with what zeal I have given up many habits, such as cigarettes, fried food, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, watching too much TV, overexercising, starving, bingeing, shopping out of boredom and buying too many MAC lipsticks…I could go on. The point is, I like depriving myself of things. It’s fun. I am determined that nothing outside of me will define me, no matter how much I like it. There’s a restless need in me that drives me to seek out the next form of comfort. And then reject it. Mistress B periodically reminds me of the time I spent months collecting Living Dead Dolls, agonized about how I would display them in my apartment…and then during PMS boxed them all up and sent them to my friend Renee in Chicago, declaring that it was stupid to collect things, anyway. Which it is, I’m perfectly convinced. As soon as I catch myself depending on something, out it goes. This does not go for people. All my friends, you know, I wish I could quit you, but I can’t. In other news, Rod brought home a beautiful bunch of yellow daisies for me yesterday. He is also spending the whole of this evening editing the Voodoo Sisters performance video we’re sending to the Night of 1,000 Goddesses audition. What a guy! Give that man a sausage stromboli and he’s your slave, I tell ya.
April 24, 2008
Detox Progresses Apace
I made a complete ass of myself at the uke jam last night. I’ve belonged to this meetup since I got the uke for Yule, but I’ve been too intimidated to attend. Last night, I made myself go to the uke jam because I don’t like the idea that I’m getting panicky in new situations as I age. The moment you start craving the known, it’s over. Fear has won. The result? I walked into a session room and introduced myself to five strangers, all of them twenty years older than me at least. I sat there for forty-five minutes picking my cuticles, the untouched uke in my lap, trying not to burst into tears at the beauty of five people singing and strumming Tom Waits’s “Innocent When You Dream” on the ukulele. Turns out, even the simplest song they did–Chiquita Banana–was way beyond me. I can’t remember even the chords I’m comfortable with unless I have the chord chart in front of me, and my strumming is definitely not up to speed. I can accompany myself on the uke playing one simple strum at a time. So there I was, like a poser, with my beautiful concert uke and its spiffy gig bag with the flowers on it, making absolutely no music at all. Truth be told, one of the reasons I cajoled myself out of the house is so that I would not be tempted to turn on the television and watch “America’s Next Top Model,” since I am supposed to be turning off the media this week. I have to admit, I’ve been watching about a half hour of movies per night. “Rebirth of Mothra” came from Netflix, and Mothra is my favorite. Rod and I have been tossing around the idea of nighttime yoga for a while, but we’ve never done it, perhaps because we only have one yoga mat, and we’re not sure both of us can stretch out in our tiny living room at the same time. I’d really like to have a nighttime routine that doesn’t involve watching television before I go to bed. It invades my dreams, changes their character. I’ve heard a lot of people say this, though, that television is a marital aid, and that they never used to watch so much television until they started living with their partner. I think that’s because TV watching is time spent together without having to interact, whereas, if one person is reading and the other is on the computer, you have to admit that you’re not doing something together; you have no shared experience at all. When I go through my detox stages, I beg Rod to throw the TV out. He won’t. Then I ask him to put it in the closet for a few weeks. He won’t. Roderic, pure of heart, apparently feels no need to detox. He is unflappable. I’ve seen him eat a hot dog from a street vendor, his appetite not affected at all by the proximity of a man with a megaphone screaming about sin. Unlike me, who is affected by every damned thing. I’ve embarked upon a course of reading to help me deal with Don’s death: Wuthering Heights, and Alice Hoffman’s _Here on Earth_, which is a retelling of Wuthering Heights taken from the point of view that the hero and heroine do get to live out their love affair. Still I found myself sobbing on the street corner yesterday as I stood outside Astor Place Hairstylists, trying to compose myself before I went in for a haircut. Don is the one who took me to St. Marks Place for the first time, in the eighties. Rita, hairdresser to the stars and proud owner of a chow and a pomeranian, gave me an $18 haircut, a chin-length bob, that left me with several pieces of straggling six-inch hair jutting out of my new ‘do, which I had to hack off at home. I’d walked all over NYC yesterday looking like a mental patient who’d given herself a haircut. Rita didn’t even blink when I asked her not to wash my hair. She was wearing enough makeup for at least two people, and she took in my plain face and Birkenstock sandals and asked no questions. I’ve spent my time this week in the ways that I like best: Reading, writing, cooking. I’m doing some job hunting, applying for copyediting jobs that interest me. Have spent more time on the Web today than I otherwise would, looking up my ordination in the Universal Life Church and the regulations for marriage celebrants in New Jersey. My sister and her girlfriend have asked me to officiate at their wedding this summer, and I want to have my paperwork prepared in plenty of time so that I can devote the whole of my energies to crafting a ceremony tailor-made to their needs. Looking forward to this weekend. Venus Uprising’s Cult of Myth fantasy bellydance show is on Saturday, and afterward the Dances of Vice party in Park Slope. Today I’m confining my efforts to reading, writing, running, and to making an escarole/sausage stromboli for dinner.
April 23, 2008
No ’Poo Day Two Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping
It’s called the No ‘Poo movement, which I can do without. But seriously? It’s almost insulting how much better my hair looks just having washed it with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. When I think of how much time and money and effort I’ve wasted on toiletries, it makes me want to smack someone. My friend Mistress B, an avid knitter and DIYer, asked me, “Do you smell like a salad?” No. The vinegar smell evaporates as soon as your hair dries, and besides you can rub your fave scented oil into your hair, such as lavender, rosemary, or tea tree. Of course, this is only day two. It could get real ugly. Mostly all the blogs I’ve read include some kind of adjustment to this routine, at least a week or two of bad hair days involving the wearing of many hats. And I haven’t gone running yet this week. We’ll see how this beauty regime stacks up post workout. I actually went out and bought a black bandanna yesterday, so that I can cover up my head if I have to. Isn’t that ridiculous? I can’t remember ever having bought a bandanna, outside of the Middlesex County Fair. And even there, I probably won the kerchief by throwing a ball at some bottles or something. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going slowly insane. Part of the mania started a few months ago when I decided to try living plastic free and began putting all my food in glass jars. Now my paranoia’s gotten so bad that I’m looking up things like propylparaben on the Web. Emily Dickinson said, “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else,” and there is definitely a part of me that would rather make all my own products to clean my house and my person. Rod rolls his eyes when I ask him to buy turbinado sugar, and he isn’t convinced that the homemade laundry detergent works. If you want to investigate the No ‘Poo alternative, start with these sites: http://babyslime.livejournal.com/174054.html http://www.naturemoms.com/no-shampoo-alternative.html
April 22, 2008
Mental Detox Week
This is mental detox week. Used to be TV turnoff week, but now Adbusters has extended it to all technology, which means that the blogs will be short this week! I don’t care much about not watching television, but the computer rules my life. I belong to a lot of bellydance tribes and like to get all the news. This detox week comes at the perfect time, because I’ve been feeling the need to simplify anyway. Because I’m not tutoring this week, and so don’t have to be presentable, this is the week I’m going to try the no-shampoo experiment. I hear that a baking soda scrub and an apple cider vinegar rinse gets hair just as clean as shampoo, without all the chemicals. I’m trying to go shampoo free because: Even though I shop at Lush, their shampoos still include ingredients called sulfates. My hair has a slight wave, which might upgrade to actual wave or curl without the weight of shampoo. I can make my own scented rinses, like a rosemary rinse or a rooibos rinse. Speaking of scents: I have now officially cheated on Arpege. I cannot be a scent monogamist. I went to The Fragrance Shop on East 7th Street yesterday and blended up a truly bewitching oil of amber, rose, and frankincense. Commercial perfumes irritate my asthma in the spring and fall, and essential oils are the only ones I can wear. And besides, I was craving amber.
April 21, 2008
The Weekend Update
On the way to the Alessandra Belloni workshop, I got lost in Edgewater, New Jersey, on Saturday–naturally. The bus driver didn’t know where Veteran’s Park is…and neither did I. I thought it was a stop that the bus routinely makes. It isn’t. And failing the sight of anything vaguely parklike on River Road in Edgewater, I took the flipping bus all the way to Fort Lee before I realized my mistake and had to walk huffily into one of the restaurants and have them call me a cab to take me to the Church on the Edge. The cab driver (carefully combing his blonde mullet with his meaty fingers) cheerfully informed me that he would never live in NYC, because when the shit goes down, everyone who lives there is going to be nuked. I was forty-five minutes late to the workshop…and they had just finished introducing themselves to one another. This is the good thing about being on Italian time. Much more relaxed. There were about ten people in the workshop, two of whom I’d met before. We got detailed instruction and individual practice about how to perform the tarantella rhythm on a frame drum. Then we learned a folk dance commonly danced in San Roca, which reminded me strongly of Native American dances. The movements are low to the ground, and everyone holds hands in a circle. A lot of stomping, hunched backs, small shuffles and hops. The idea is to get the energy of grief that’s in the upper chakras to drain into the ground. There is also a lot of spinning involved. Spinning cleanses the aura. I have never been a good spinner. I’m Capricorn, which means I was born a little old lady, and I don’t remember spinning in circles with abandon even as a young child. I get sick and dizzy. I can do it because of dance lessons; I learned how to spot, and that allows me not to fall over. But I never enjoy it. According to Alessandra, who also is part of the Sufi community, that kind of sickness occurs from toxins. Rod thinks that’s bunk; he says it’s just biology to get sick and dizzy when you spin. What came up for me as I was doing the San Roca dance is that I hold a lot of fear and anxiety all the time, in my stomach, and I absolutely could not let go of my neck, which is the bridge between the head and the heart. I had a hard time letting go because I was concentrating on how I looked doing the dance rather than how I felt while doing it. This continual tension between how things look and how things are is one of the reasons I dropped out of the drama program in college. I could not get to an authentic place in my drama studies, and I didn’t think the discipline of drama would be able to free me from the tyranny of appearance, as it encourages eating disorders and plastic surgery. It’s also the reason I shaved my head. Let’s face it, it’s easy to conform to societal norms of beauty if you’re willing to stop eating and kinda torture yourself. It’s very liberating to let go of all that. Then we did the tarantella, which is what I came to the workshop for. I can do this dance by myself in my living room, because I bought the CD, but the main benefit is to have Alessandra drumming over me. She senses exactly where people are blocked, and when she holds the drum over that part of the body, stuff breaks loose. I have tried psychotherapy, and that worked to bring me in one piece through my twenties. But now that I’ve found the tarantella, I’m never paying a therapist again. When I have more cash flow I’m going to get acupuncture regularly and dance the tarantella, and then all will be right with my world. Then, because we were on Italian time and the workshop had lasted for 1 1/2 hours longer than it was supposed to, I had to wait an hour for a bus that didn’t come. Alessandra ended up driving the New Yorkers back to Port Authority. All in all it took almost two hours, a trip that should have taken thirty minutes. That’s the bad part about being on Italian time. Feeling that I want to get my Charlotte the spider tattoo changed to a tarantula. I always itch to get tattooed when the weather gets warmer. Voodoo Sisters rehearsal yesterday was great. We filmed our audition for Night of 1,000 Goddesses. We’re doing a piece dedicated to Sara-Kali, the Roma goddess. The choreography for this piece came to me when I was sitting in a business meeting, and it’s elating to see it come to fruition. This collaboration with Melissa is the longest collaboration I’ve ever had. I usually do not work very well with others; I’m too introverted, and it’s nerve wracking to be always choosing my words with anxious care when I want to give or receive feedback. We’ve been dancing together about six months, which means the honeymoon’s over, and I’ve got to be genuine. I’ve got to find a way to get my needs met that doesn’t stomp all over her needs or creative vision. It’s exhausting. But worthwhile. We’re creating something totally new. I’m not tutoring this week, just teaching, so I can get some work done on writing projects, hooray!
April 19, 2008
Taking Care of Business
Woke up this morning scattered but full of determination to nail down my different agendas. So I was on the Web early this morning looking for plane tickets to California. I booked my flight for Tribal Fest, woo hoo! The Voodoo Sisters will be performing at Tribal Fest in California on May 18 at around 8 pm. Full moon tomorrow means I’ve been extra psychic and emotional all week. For those of you who know that I am super emotional all the time, I’m sure you’re pitying my husband Roderic every full moon. Join the club. Many people wonder how he puts up with me. I can only say, in my defense, that I introduced him to green leafy vegetables and punk rock songs that last for two minutes or less–both important de-stressors. I’m taking an Alessandra Belloni trance workshop today and I am so excited that I can’t sit still!!! I’m hauling my butt to the wilds of Edgewater, New Jersey, to take it, too. The Presbyterian church there is called The Church on the Edge, which I think is an awesome name for a church. I’m reading a vodou book called _Vodou Visions_, written by the woman who created the New Orleans Vodou Tarot. The book has some interesting advice for solo practitioners of vodou. I’ve been a solitary practitioner of wicca for a long time, and I’m not terribly interested in a solo vodou practice. I want to find a spiritual community. Also preparing for a visit from my sister-in-law, her girlfriend, and their friend. I am making way too much food, probably, just for cocktail hour: English muffin pizzas topped with pesto, artichoke hearts, bell peppers, kalamata olives, and fontina cheese red grapes and blue cheese apples and cheddar black bean dip and crudite They’ll be here for brunch tomorrow, too. I drafted Rod to make an easy crustless spinach quiche, and I’ll be concentrating on the banana chocolate chip muffins. Last night I was seized with the most violent urge to watch vampire movies. What can I say? Such films help me problem solve. We watched Coppola’s Dracula, and today we’re going to watch Hammer’s Horror of Dracula. The problem that needs solving? How to metabolize the loss of one of my soulmates. When Don shot himself, I received the news like a bullet to the chest. I am not exaggerating when I say the shrapnel has lodged inside me, and I’ve got to grow a scar around it. Writing poems about it helps. But I never realized how much of my shadow side I was allowing him to hold, until he released it into the ether and it flew back to me. Which is why my friend Kenwyn and I are exchanging tarot readings this morning. Tarot reading around the full moon is a salubrious thing to do.
April 18, 2008
The comforts and constraints of the body
Ever since Don died, I have been thinking of “The Earth,” a poem by Anne Sexton. It illustrates beautifully how the physical world can comfort us. I have especially been thinking about this poem because I’ve been thinking a lot about sex (it’s spring, after all), particularly as it relates to art. I am beyond tired of the idea that art is somehow superior if it does not contain sexual references, or if those references are veiled, somehow rarefied and imprisoned, distanced in images. I got enough of that in grad school. I like poets who say stuff straight out, like Anne Sexton or Walt Whitman. By the same token, I don’t think there’s any artistry in just letting all your junk hang out, either. But I desire the kind of vital art that can tolerate explicit sexual and physical imagery done artfully. Why is that kind of art only okay when we’re looking at Indian temple statuary in a museum? Why are we so offended when it takes place during a downtown poetry reading?
The Earth
God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.
God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves, its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing for their music,
the farm house, white as a bone,
sitting in the lap of its corn,
even the statue holding up its widowed life,
even the ocean with its cupful of students,
but most of all He envies the bodies,
He who has no body.
The eyes, opening and shutting like keyholes
and never forgetting, recording by thousands,
the skull with is brains like eels– the tablet of the world–
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.
He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a body and come down
and give it a bath
now and then.
April 17, 2008
Simplifying
I need more down time. This is not negotiable. I have to drop a few things from my schedule so that I can rest more, read more, write more, dream more. I just declined to take a bellydance class series this spring, which will free up one of my evenings. I feel bad about it, because I do enjoy the class. But when I’m getting to the point that I have to spend fifteen minutes at a time staring blankly at a wall in between tutoring sessions, and I fantasize about shaving my head, joining the Peace Corps, or giving away all my earthly possessions, I know that my soul is screaming “simplify your life!” Other ways that I can simplify my life: Move to Brooklyn, join Park Slop food co-op. Breathe more. Stop eating meat. Stop answering the phone. Stop watching crappy TV shows. Stop engaging in pleasantries with people I don’t give a toot about. Stop worrying my childhood like a pitbull with a cherished rawhide dog toy. Stop trying to be happy and just be. Stop trying to do and just be. Just be. And stop thinking about ylang ylang essential oil when I haven’t used up all the tuberose I already have. Speaking of simplifying, I’ve pretty much narrowed down my perfume obsession to one perfume: Arpege. Those of you who know that my aromatherapy discoveries are like my part-time job will be shocked to hear that I’ve been monogamous with Arpege for at least six months. With an occasional dalliance with Lush’s Silky Underwear perfume. Which means that I spent a good long time on ebay today looking up vintage brass perfume bottles that will travel well, so that I can decant some of the Arpege I have and take it with me in my purse. If you are confused at the notion that I price special containers for cherished essences whenever I feel the urge to simplify, consider this: When I get upset, I go to the Container Store. The sight of all those spiffy, empty containers never fails to restore my belief that, although my life is out of control, I can undertake to store all my lipsticks in an orderly fashion. And then the order will spread, and I will be mistress of my life. Also I like to look at empty containers framing all that air. Gives me a feeling of expanse. I also enjoy decorating with empty shelves. Rod doesn’t. He should have been born in the Victorian era…if the Victorians ever decorated with oversized plastic replicas of Hellboy.
April 14, 2008
Between Dimensions Recap
Doing the show was so much fun yesterday! I can’t wait to see the video. We packed an insane amount of entertainment into an hour and a half, and it all went off without a hitch thanks to the consummate professionals who performed, and thanks to Mistress B who emceed and kept things moving. She even took one for the team and played a ditty from West Side Story on the trombone. We’re hoping that, for the next one, we can have a time slot that is more amenable to the gothic nature of our entertainment, as only the most hardened and hardy dark souls can watch a comedy dominatrix blow up a balloon with her boob and then twist it into a gigantic penis–at five o’clock on a Sunday evening. We reconnected with old friends and even made some new ones, with new plans to spread the gothitude to the younger generation. There was talk of a goth prom! I thought I was going to have to step on Melissa’s foot to keep her from sailing off into the stratosphere from pure joy when the folks from New Goth City came over to talk to us. As a perky goth, Melissa can easily pass for one of those well-adjusted people. Not everyone can effortlessly keep up the concentrated aura of Eeyore gloom the way I can. You have to look really hard to see that Lissa is completely skewed. If you have any doubt that she’s a goth, you’ve never attended one of her Pilates classes. We made some on-the-spot art as we improvised a collaborative veil dance to Heidi and Rolando’s song. Jackie debuted some work which touched people’s minds and hearts, which bled across the boundaries of spoken word and music. Autumn did her contortionist act on the bar. Thaddeus represented the fetish goths. Darshan poured herself onto the stage like a lick of chestnut flame. Boni Joi read the doll mafia poem, which is so concentrated in its imagery that it always reminds me of a mosaic, the shards of words lying jagged and bright next to each other to produce a shimmering whole. And the Voodoo Sisters got to perform our death-defying Kawaii no Cane number. A cane routine in a small space is always a little dangerous. It’s the threat of either performer or audience dismemberment by cane that adds the gothic spice to the enterprise. In every pic and vid I look about four feet tall standing next to Melissa, and the diva in me could never stand for looking like someone else’s mini me…unless that someone was smokin’ hot. We bill ourselves as the Mutt and Jeff of bellydance. I think Lissa’s going to have to start dancing in four-inch heels, to exaggerate the lopsided effect of our height difference. Non-Euclidean geometrical effects are so very Lovecraftian.
April 13, 2008
Lady Frankenstein
Rod is attempting to calm down by playing an old horror movie, Lady Frankenstein. He would like you all to know that Joseph Cotten is in it, and that he is trying something new today, as his go-to feelgood movie is Dawn of the Dead. I woke up anxious and have been getting more and more excited as the day progresses. I’ve been rereading _Wuthering Heights_ to calm down, and I’ve just decided to let my heightened nerves take me and not bother trying to be calm. Because you know what? A few months ago Melissa and I were only imagining this event, and now it’s happening. We’re creating a space in which we can enlarge the notion of what gothic entertainment is. I love ruined castles and moonlit walks just as much as the next goth, but seriously? Stepford Wives is a much more trenchant horror movie than Hammer’s Horror of Dracula. There’s a reason that Rosemary’s Baby took place in a well-to-do section of NYC (can you tell how much I heart Ira Levin?) And why is that? Because it’s the masquerade of sanity, which must be preserved at all costs, that is most deeply horrific to me. Two of my friends created entirely new works, which they will be debuting at Between Dimensions. Many of my favorite performers will be in one place this evening, dispensing their own insane brands of art. Just to have Boni Joi, Jackie Sheeler, and Thad Rutkowski on the same bill is like a wet dream for me. Just one of these performers can guarantee serious mayhem and an alteration of reality. But all three? I shiver deliciously in an-ti-ci……..pation. It’s true that as artists we create the art we want to see, and that I am passionately fond of the variety show format. When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to be Carol Burnett…and Morticia Addams. One of the bonuses of walking through life looking like a Robert Crumb drawing in 3-D ( or DDD, as the case may be) is that I’ve gotten used to sloshing over whatever boundaries have been set for me. I can’t find a bra that fits decently…what hope do I have of fitting in, anywhere? And transgression is the heart and soul of gothic sensibility. I have attracted a merry band of Lilim to share my wandering in the outer darkness. I am so happy, so grateful, to know all these people who have decided that they will not be quenched, even in the midst of this expensive city that seems to be slipping away from its artists. Those of us who are not preoccupied by NYC’s baseball teams turn our conversation to real estate, and sigh about maybe moving to Portland, to Oakland, to Seattle. Deep down we know that we’ve planted our black, black hearts in the fervid jungle of Manhattan.
Dropping Out
Rod and I have been thinking about moving to Brooklyn for a while now. We love Hell’s Kitchen; we’ve been in the same apartment for eight years, longer than we’ve lived anywhere other than the houses in which we grew up. I will miss the neighborhood, and all the specialty shops where I can get kalamata olives, Greek yogurt, etc., but we can’t afford to buy here. It just seems as though the current economic downturn will mean lower housing prices, and that now is the time to buy something. Kensington is the front runner, mainly (for me) because of its literary associations. Peter Pan lived in Kensington. So do Boni and Tobi Joi! I woke up obscenely early this morning, anxious about the Between Dimensions show, from a dream in which I was in the southern Italian town where my maternal grandfather was born. In the dream, I was watching my relatives haul fish in large nets on fishing boats, which is what my ancestors have done in that town for generations. I also woke up with a thimbleful of breath; asthma and anxiety go together. No doubt the dream was a work-related dream. Of the many jobs I’ve had, freelance writing is the only one that didn’t make me want to kill someone. The choice is clear. It’s so easy when in Italy not to fixate on one’s work, because it is so beautiful there that work seems beside the point. I often feel I wouldn’t care so much about work if I lived in California or some gorgeous place. But we are very driven here in the tristate area, and the rat race is really starting to freak me out. I did a lot more writing when I lived in New Jersey. Hence the move to Brooklyn; that’s me dropping out. I can’t move to Williamsburg or anyplace that requires I get dolled up just to go to the laundromat. I need to be in a neighborhoody place where the artist types are. The real artists; not the trust fund babies.
April 12, 2008
Countdown to Between Dimensions
I slept for most of yesterday, which was deeply necessary, since today I feel much more uplifted…and I don’t think it’s just the red skirt I’m wearing. I shook off whatever small, sniffy, sneezy, viral or coldy bug my darling husband must have passed along to me. I’m starting to get really excited about our Between Dimensions show tomorrow! I’ve decided that I’m going to wear white on Fridays and red on Saturdays in honor of Papa Legba. For the last few years I’ve weeded out most of the red clothing in my closet, as I desire to blend in more than stand out, and nothing says “look at me!” more than red. I can’t deny that red gives me a lot of energy, which is a good thing unless I’m angry, and then I feel as though red garments are literally burning my skin. Most of today I spent reading _Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn_. It’s fascinating. I am wild to attend vodou services here in New York. I think Legba often appears to artists and captures their imaginations. Elton John has a song for him, and so does David Byrne. Moon in Cancer for most of today means we’ve done the food shopping and are planning a lovely dinner of homemade pasta with pesto. Also on the bill: broccoli rabe sauteed in garlic and oil, and an appetizer of homemade tortilla chips and salsa.
April 11, 2008
Ghost World
At Don’s viewing, my mother and my sisters all expressed the dread that I would one day kill myself. They said they were at the event not only to mourn Don’s passing, but also to confront the feeling that I am not tethered closely to life and could easily be the one lying in a casket. Naturally, I see where this idea comes from. I am not what you could ever call a jolly person. (Which is why I have so few Aries friends: concentrated Capricorn energy is an Aries repellant. Libras are more resilient; they just can’t stop themselves from trying to cheer up an inveterate grump such as I am.) I have a long history of depression that includes a suicide attempt in my early teens. I wonder if it would surprise my family to know that I think far less about suicide and much more about leaving the confines of my life as I have built it and simply moving to a new place where no one knows me, and trying to cover my tracks so no one can find me. Can you tell I’ve got five planets in Scorpio, including Scorpio rising? It’s one of the plot lines of Ghost World that most disgusted my sister Patt: That Enid gets on a bus headed for parts unknown and a fresh start among strangers. (And Enid? Capricorn.) After all, Patt is a social worker, and a Cancerian, and her ability to connect to other people with such ease frightens me. What all of this means is that I reread Anne Tyler’s _The Ladder of Years_ frequently. In it, the main character reacts to her beloved father’s death by disappearing for a year and creating a new persona and life elsewhere. She finds, of course, that one cannot avoid human entanglements, which are both a blessing and a curse. I’ve always loved those lines of Rumi’s: “If you’re here with us unfaithfully, you’re causing terrible damage.” What the lines suggest to me is that there is a place in the pattern of life even for the incurably grumpy. You’ve just got to have faith that we cranky and unmutual people who are permanent residents of Ghost World should not be drummed out of your Brave New Stepford World. We just need dual citizenship.
April 10
Solitude: Apply Within
I don’t think I’m temperamentally suited to teaching and tutoring. I can do it, because if I undertake an endeavor, I always perform to the best of my ability. However, I don’t enjoy it. It takes too much out of me energetically to be with people all day, so I have no energy left to spare for the people I love and actually want to see. I need to earn the bulk of my money while in solitude.
Which means that when the college is closed for spring break, I really need to get some nonfic book proposals together. Something, anything, that will allow me to work by myself, dealing primarily via e-mail with other people.
I used to think that I *should* have more social jobs, because it would help me develop a facility for interacting with others. On days like this, I know that I will always be introverted. People make me tired.
April 09, 2008
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Voodoo Sisters are dancing in the World Famous BOB’s burlesque show at the Bowery Poetry Club tonight. Come out and support if you want to see two well-endowed ladies painted green and shimmying. In other news, two men won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, for a change. Although Ellen Bryan Voight was a finalist. A few years ago I set myself the task of reading the last thirty years’ worth of Pulitzer-winning poetry books. I was not shocked to find that most of them have been written by men. One tremendous discovery I made during that process was the poetry of Lisel Mueller. Do you know her work? She is marvelous. Her prize-winning collection is called _Alive Together_. The titular poem begins with lines that are particularly apt for me right now: “Speaking of marvels, I am alive/together with you…” I have nothing against the poetry of Robert Hass and Philip Schultz, and I do think they have both done a lot of work to advance the cause of writing; for example, Schultz runs the Writers Room in NYC. But when is Lucille Clifton going to win the Pulitzer Prize? I mean come on, people.
April 08, 2008
Nausea
Why does it always happen this way? This week, when I have two bellydance performances, I want nothing more than to hibernate in my apartment writing. I went to the viewing for Don last night. Any visit to my hometown is sure to give me an asthma attack, and yesterday was also cold and damp, the kind of day which guarantees that I need a caffeine IV. One day I’m going to invent a hat that has an espresso machine with a straw on it, rather like those beer hats one can buy in novelty gift stores. My sister Jennifer filched pictures of Don from our family photo albums and brought them for me. I realized again how much I owe him for my gothic makeover. And oh, my prom pictures. Words fail. Jennifer quoted the entire text of the poem “Cold Steel” that Don wrote in 1984. Her recitation was one of the acts that brought me the most comfort. The other was looking at the photos Don’s family had compiled. My mother proved that she can always make a painfully awkward situation worse by introducing herself to Don’s grieving widow as “Magdalena’s mother.” She couldn’t have just kept it classy and said she knew him when he was young, oh no. What the hell does that poor lady need to be dealing with Don’s ex girlfriends and their crazy mothers for? *I* didn’t even introduce myself to Lisa because I figured she would only have the energy to deal with close family and friends during this difficult time. I literally fled the event watching my mother blather on. I thought I was going to throw up.Mostly I’m just disgusted by how my ego barges into everything. I would love, for once, to have a pure experience, such as being able to handle grief without this corrosive self-consciousness. The poem of the day from Knopf was Edward Hirsch’s “Self Portrait,” which pretty much sums it up for me today.
April 06, 2008
Rhythm is the Cure
Holy cannoli, people. I just took a workshop with Alessandra Belloni called Rhythm Is the Cure, and I’ve never been so frickin’ glad to be of southern Italian ancestry in my life. Well, maybe sometimes at Christmas when I was a little girl and we’d have struffoli on the table. Or when I was in Italy and tasted about fifty different kinds of mozzarella. A drum is a sacred instrument, and from the moment I picked up that hand drum and drummed it next to my heart, I could feel my blood leaping like a snake through my veins, my life insisting on itself with rude and peasant joy, shining like a struck match under the full force of the sun. When I danced the tarantella and got down on the ground, mimicking the movements of the spider, when I exposed my belly to the group in a deep backbend and began to bawl, tearing at the roots of my hair, when the drummers stood over me drumming the misery right out of my chest and lifting me back into the light… This is something that I could never have imagined when I was a teenager; that happiness is a habit. That it is a choice we must keep choosing. That we must continually honor what nourishes us. That, like Persephone, we each descend into the dark and return, and return, and return, presiding like royalty over our own blackest territory. Thanks go out to all those in the workshop today, who transmuted my pain with their adept application of healing energy. I bought the CD. I will be doing the tarantella frequently. I will use it to lift the pulse of joy in the universe and remember that it is a brave and foolish state, happiness. Yesterday I went to a clothing swap party at Tomara and Kami’s house; we ate lasagna and drank wine and got naked and tried on each other’s clothes. I brought two bags of clothes I didn’t want and returned with a new-to-me spring wardrobe. Hooray! I am learning to play “C’mon Everybody” on the ukulele, in honor of my friend Don Buchanan. I thank my wonderful husband Roderic for modeling those habits of happiness, from which I have learned so much. Thanks for whistling in the kitchen even before the coffee perks.
April 04, 2008
Accompanying His Soul on its Journey
I come to my blog this morning for the kind of comfort that only writing brings. Yesterday I received some terrible news: One of my friends shot and killed himself. I use this word, friend, as though it were enough, as though it covers our long and complex relationship. I use this word, friend, because when I say friend I mean family. I mean the people my heart has chosen. My soul’s counterparts. He was my first love. Remember your first love, for a moment. Now remember mine: A tall boy with green eyes and a black leather jacket painted with the movie logo for Dawn of the Dead. I don’t see how people cope with grief without poetry. I want to use some lines from Judy Grahn’s “a funeral a plainsong from a younger woman to an older woman,” even though it states explicitly in the book that the poem is for ritual use only. I think blogging counts. It is this ritual of sitting down to the machine to type that keeps me sane most days, and especially today. I think your reading this poem will help his soul find its place. a funeral a plainsong i will be your mouth now, to do your singing breath belongs to those who do the breathing. warm life, as it passes through your fingers flares up in the very hands you will be leaving you have left, what is left for the bond between people is a circle we are together within it. i am your best, i am your kind kind of my kind, i am your wish wish of my wish, i am your breast breast of my breast, i am your mind mind of my mind, i am your flesh i am your kind, i am your wish kind of my kind, i am your best now you have left you can be wherever the fire is when it blows itself out. now you are a voice in any wind i am a single wind now you are any source of a fire i am a single fire wherever you to go, i will arrive whatever i have been, you will come back to wherever you leave off, i will inherit whatever i resurrect, you shall have it you have right, what is right for the bond between people is returning we are endlessly within it and endlessly apart within it it is not finished it will not be fnished i will be your heart now, to do your loving love belongs to those who do the feeling life, as it stands so still along your fingers beats in my hands, the hands i will, believing that you have become he, who is not, any longer somewhere in particular we are together in your stillness you have wished us a bonded life when you were dead i said you had gone to the mountain the trees do not yet speak of you a mountain when it is no longer a mountain, goes to the sea when the sea dies it goes to the rain when the rain dies it goes to the grain when the grain dies it goes to the flesh when the flesh dies it goes to the mountain now you have left, you can wander will you tell whoever could listen tell all the voices who speak to younger people tell all the voices who speak to us when we need it that the love between people is a circle and is not finished i will take your part now, to do your daring lots belong to those who do the sharing. i will be your fight now, to do your winning as the bond between people is beginning in the middle at the end my first beloved, present friend if i could die like the next rain i’d call you by your mountain name and rain on you you have put your very breath upon mine i shall wrap my entire fist around you i can touch anyone’s lip to remember we are together in my motion you have wished us a bonded life.
April 03, 2008
The Voodoo Sisters Are Primed for Burlesque!
This morning I woke up thinking about how to explain helping verbs and the past perfect tense. I shudder to think of what kind of day that presages. Yesterday I woke up singing AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells,” and I knew I was going to kick ass all day. The New York Ukulele Festival is this weekend. Can’t wait! Since I got the uke for Yule, I have learned to play the following songs: Anarchy in the UK Blood and Fire Ring of Fire Downhearted Blues I’m a Believer Iko Iko I’m looking for a uke beginner group; I’m too intimidated to go to the uke jam in town every Wednesday, since I only know two strums and four chords. I’m taking an Alessandra Belloni workshop this weekend, too. She’s a musician/dancer specializing in Southern Italian ritual dance and music. I’m going to learn how to do the tarantella. We have to dress all in white for this event, and I don’t own any white clothes. This will have to change if I want to start practicing vodou. Next Wednesday, April 9, the Voodoo Sisters will be performing in the World Famous BOB’s New Revue burlesque show at the Bowery Poetry Club. We’ll be doing our zombie bellydance, “I Shimmied with a Zombie.” Which means the only thing we’ll be peeling off is fake skin.
April 02, 2008
Sensory Description
In my job as a writing tutor, I see a wide cross section of humanity showing up for help with writing. I’ve worked with sentegenarian Creole speakers, I’ve worked with American teenagers who simply slept through their high school days and now can’t remember when to use an apostrophe. Yesterday a man needed my help with writing sensory description. His assignment was to choose which of his senses he would give up, and to write an essay describing an orange using the remaining four senses. This man is from Bangladesh, and he is an accounting major, and he could not grasp the concept of using details to give a picture in writing. It went like this: ”What does an orange smell like?” ”It smells like an orange. Nothing else smells like that.” ”Okay, good! Oranges have a unique smell. Now choose an adjective. What kind of a smell is it? Fresh, stale, dusty?” ”An orange smell.” ”Right, but is that a clean smell, a dirty smell? Does an orange smell like light, or sun, or garbage?” ”Sometimes it smells like garbage.” ”Well, yes. It does, sometimes. When it’s in the trash. But if you’re peeling an orange, a fresh orange, how does it smell? What does it remind you of?” A baleful stare was the reward I got for my effort. I remembered, not for the first time, how much effort was put into making me the person I am, able to enjoy the arts, and able to play with language and dance. My heart aches for this guy. I’m sure it would pain him to watch me count on my fingers because I’m such a retard at math, but there you are. We all have different abilities. April is national poetry month, hooray! I get a poem mailed to me every day from Knopf, and yesterday’s was Mary Jo Salter’s “A Phone Call to the Future.” I especially enjoyed the opening lines: Who says science fiction is only set in the future? After a while, the story that looks least believeable is the past.
April 01, 2008
Papa Legba Woke Me Up
When I named my dance project the Voodoo Sisters, it was only because we were doing a zombie bellydance…or so I thought. What I soon realized was that I’ve been obsessed with the concepts of voodoo for years, and that my Wiccan devotions have been losing their hold on me. I should have known that if I put the feelers out to the lwa, they would respond. Papa Legba woke me up the other night with a little visitation and message. Ever since, I have been dreaming vividly about changing my life. This morning I dreamt I was living back in my parents’ house (this is a common dream setting/theme of being stuck) and was married to a former coworker, who was West African, and who openly disdained me when we worked together. Understandably, in the dream our marriage had not been consummated, and I was considering getting it annulled, the logic being that because I was raised Catholic, annullment was still an option. I love spring and fall, the transitional seasons. I love how the winds in the spring tussle with you, nudge you in new directions, fondle you indiscreetly on the street. I feel at the beginning of an adventure.
Currently Reading: Tell My Horse by Zora Neale Hurston
