clearing space

I taught my first "Basic Ballet for Adults" class yesterday. It was lovely. The adults were sublime, really. I fell a little bit in love with each of them. I hope they come back, but at the same time, I am preparing myself for the fact that they are adults with busy schedules. Not being as obsessed with dance as I am, other things may take priority.

Today, I am indulging in the simplicity of a Sunday morning shielded with a refusal to start doing anything productive until I get bored of: laying in bed reading, drinking a large cup of coffee, and staring out my window at the Inner Sunset Farmers' Market. What BLISS.

Ran in to an acquaintance last night at a dance show, a fellow dancer. We come from opposite sides of the training spectrum: I am classically trained, he comes from release dance and the AXIS syllabus. I wouldn't say I know him well, but when we do run in to each other in the dance community, I feel as if we meet with a mutual respect and understanding. A feeling of, "I know you. You are someone else who is doing it; you are someone else who is pursuing this odd and beautiful choice of lifestyles." And when we run in to each other, we seem to often talk about... our day jobs.

He's a physical trainer. He works approximately 3 hours a day (I think?), standard work hours are from 6-9am. Then there's time for class, and then, as it goes rehearsals and performances, which are things which can keep him awake until almost the start of the next day. He once told me that the only way he makes it work is with "a rigid napping schedule."

It's interesting to see how we all concoct our lives. I don't think that anyone who's involved in the meat of it thinks it is or ever can be easy. I'm sure we all at times would rather give in, and I know I have been there at several points in my life. Currently, despite the fact that I can blanketly place "busy" as the culprit, I am feeling like I'm always giving in on something, always compromising one point to make room for another - leaving me feeling constantly behind, in debt, and ill-equipped to take on it all. Often this means that I don't get to enjoy the fruits of my own labors: as soon as it's done, something else is sitting there waiting to take my time and mental energy.

One of the things I'm trying to include in this constant struggle for my attention is down time. This means I have to ardently refuse to let anything take over. Right now, I am firmly insisting on taking the pleasure of a Sunday morning including: the dregs of my coffee, one more chapter, and the sight of two golden retrievers and one black lab wagging their tails at each other next to a pile of oranges.

things considered

I started reading a book over my vacation that now sits, two-thirds finished, next to my bed. It was a pleasant distraction when I was home, but now that I'm back, I really don't think it's that much of a book.

But, anyway, tonight I was thinking of one passage from it, about a man who prays and prays to god to let him win the lottery until one day, finally, a frustrated god replies, "My son, BUY A TICKET!"

I was half thinking about this because my friend, who gives my a ride home from Oakland a couple times a week told me that when she gets super frustrated with her job she sometimes buys a lottery ticket and hopes.

I think that... my life has several lottery tickets taped to the sides, the biggest thus far being the one wherein I decided to quit my degree program, move to San Francisco, and do everything I could to self-define as a dancer. With a gritty amount of desperation, I really really hoped that that would work.

(It has?)

I feel like I've come to a crossroads of frustration and lack of clarity and I need to buy another ticket. I'm just beginning to see what this one will look like, and it's as terrifying as it is exciting.

notes on a man who immediately needs a unicycle

I've been spending more time with the Dandelions this fall, an experience which often leaves me in a slightly awe-struck space, gently shaking my head in with a weird twisted up half-grin on my face, with one phrase going through my head, "What has become of my life?"

Lately, I have seen: two grown men playing dress-up with a matronly pair of glitter gowns, a man teaching the circle of fifths in his underwear, a man lifting another man in a wheelchair over his head. And lately, I have: sung the circle of descending fourths in arpeggiated scales, been top and bottom on a Balkan melody, wrestled until ten o'clock at night, and had several conversations over the course of 2 days about how to get a unicycle to a man who needs it immediately.

Not that I object to any of it, I just wonder where it all came from, and how it stemmed so naturally out of practicing pointing my toes for so many years.

I've been reflecting on that my life feels 10 steps ahead of me, as if it's taking its own direction, and I'm left struggling to keep up. I feel as if all of my choices are made by the course of events, and all I have to do is work. This is the circumstance of living that has gotten me to creating dance installations in an art gallery, pursuing teaching basic ballet to adults, and bonding with the program manager of a major foundation about the craziness of a day in arts administration.

For example, and then I'll close this entry, at 8pm last night I told a friend, "I'm not planning on doing any more of my own work anytime soon."

By 10pm life had told me differently, and I think more is coming.

All I want to do

is practice things that are art-like. Such as take dance classes, sing, play music, move in a giant room all by myself, and sit around drinking coffee and ruminating about things I'd like to create. That's all I want to do.

That is why I am sitting at my office computer writing a blog and leaving that stack of emails and paperwork for later.

things that happened this weekend

I performed for a total of 12 hours in an installation as a part of CELLspace Open Studios... well... we took breaks, and we spent some time setting up, but STILL! I feel like a super woman! A very bruised and battered super woman, but all the same.

The week before the show, I wrote down stories that I didn't necessarily want to tell anyone... embarrassing moments and awkward social interactions (mostly about boys... gah). I then crumbled up the pieces of paper and put them in a big plastic pitcher. In my improv in my living exhibition area, I would occasionally knock over the pitcher accidentally on purpose and the paper would spill out on the floor. Embarrassing moments and awkward memories out in the world! I would stare at all the surprised art viewers in my vicinity (Did she mean to do that? Was that my fault?), scurry to the floor, and begin picking up the pieces of paper and shoving them back in the pitcher. Occasionally I would read one and look mortified.

My idea was that this was an inner motivating factor for movement and character development, and I didn't necessarily care that people knew what the papers meant. I had meant at some point to make up stories that related to my character, but I ran out of time. Oh well, I figured, they're not to be read anyway, so as long as the intention is there it will probably work.

This weekend, I learned: Do not write down anything and put it in an interactive art gallery if you do not want it read. The visual artists with their art on the walls kept asking me, "Can I take one?" "Is this a choose your own adventure?" "Can I take one NOW?" To which I responded, always, "NO!" (Dana heard me do this once and burst out laughing, because as one of my bestestes girlfriends she knew what the papers meant.) Then, when I was running sound for Dana's solo, I looked down from the sound booth to discover a group of girls going through the papers in the pitcher, reading them one by one. It was torturous. It was probably good for me.

So, in the spirit of this past weekend, here are those stories (save one that I'm really not prepared to share). They are all separate instances with different people and are represented here with no regard to chronological order. As I look through them... I realize they may not be that embarrassing. Perhaps even in writing them down I didn't reveal all of the memories I think of when I read them... ones that make them really actually a bit painful to think about.

After we'd stopped seeing each other, he told me that I was the weirdest/most artistic person he'd ever met. To which I'm pretty sure I responded with the incredibly creative, "Oh."

"Have you ever seen the backs of your knees?" I hadn't. I stood there for awhile, twisting backwards to see them in the mirror. They were awkwardly beautiful.

The best flirtatious conversation I ever had was the one in which a boy working at the corner market explained how to make peanut butter with a food processor.

I had a pantomime conversation on the train with an old Chinese woman who laughed with me when the train started and I stumbled. Together, we practiced how to hold on so that wouldn't happen.

We went for a walk in the rain and he told me he thought we'd be great together. I mumbled something about still being with but not really with my high school boyfriend who was visiting next week. Honestly, though, I'd was really in to him.

I got over my ex by having a relentless crush on a coworker much older than I. I wonder if he has any idea of the role he played in my love life. While I probably barely scrapped the surface of his consciousness, he played a huge part in my head.

I think the moment that cemented it was when the cab lurched and I grabbed his knee. Later, I read on the internet that that's one of the ways to tell that a girl is in to you: she grabs your leg. Oops.

the internet is a place for me to grumble

Things I currently CANNOT STAND!!!
a) the improper use of the "reply to all" function of email
b) the way I chew pens
c) the ratio of office work to dance work in my life
d) persistent and ineffective feelings of attraction
e) the itch for change, unaccompanied by the motivation to do anything

I'm trying to figure it all out.

11pm and a bit of catharsis

Today, I had the pleasure of two cathartic experiences.

First: I went to El Torro and got a burrito with spicy salsa, and it was really spicy. At the end of my burrito I was sweating and my nose was running and there were napkins all over the table. It was, as my friend Dana noted, not much unlike the feeling of a really good cry.

Secondly, and later, I came home from a cafe where I go when I have work to do at night - where they have excellent chocolate chip cookies. There was a pair of scissors laying on my bed, an obvious signal that this was the moment to cut my hair.

I really like doing this myself. I don't care that it's uneven and choppy and funny looking at certain angles, there's just something to be said for picking up a pair of scissors and going at it.