I've taken a step away from burlesque in the past months. At first it was practical. Starting back into the service industry, it was hardly economical to begin all schedule discussions with the sentence, "I can't work weekends." So I took the shifts and only made my requests when practical or particularly important. But it's different now.
I've pulled away from burlesque because by golly I just need a break from noise.
In my office. In my cubicle. I craved the bustle and noise of human interaction. The things people say when they aren't required to remain likable for the sake of employment. I like listening. And in certain instances I like vaguely entering and exiting, never standing still at a party if I find room to roam politely. I like eavesdropping until it entertains me to appear and comment. Which is precisely what waiting tables has allowed for.
Which is precisely why four to five days a week during eight to ten hour shifts is quite enough of all that.
I'm still just as Bubble-y as ever--in private. I've been dressing up and dancing and playing and doing all the things I've always done when people aren't watching. I've even played with thoughts about doing a Bubbles' Dance Party webcam thingamawhatsit for this blog as a means of still sharing the gazillion mazillion songs I have fun dressing up to and teasing off with. I've considered photo shoots again, now that I'm craving quiet, now that burlesque has really let me embrace what I want to share and what I want to keep.
But things are different, too. Being at home so much has given me time to slip back into some happy habits the past few days. Belly dance has never felt so good and yoga has never come so easy. Being Mama Fairy isn't as rough either when I'm not feeling so pushed to sparkle and spin social talk at all hours of the day. I like the quiet that comes with easing into myself and only the things closest to me spatially--which tends to coincide with what should come nearest to my heart.
And spatially I've been expanding. I don't mean into space precisely. I'm not taking up more space. I've been cleaning and clearing things out that really needed to be quite some time ago. I've started creating breathing room within the space I inhabit. When I moved last fall, it was in haste and half-hearted. I didn't want to move and perhaps I never really gave it my best effort. The suburbs hadn't interested me ever since high school graduation let me leave one, and I detested the trek north toward my new home. I had hoped to stay south where I felt more rooted in direction but living arrangement possibility fell out of place, and what had to be done had to be. But I brought a lot of clutter from that small place I traded in for a bigger place to put all the clutter. And I think I need it gone before I can make it any further in my decision making. Don't you see? I've been living in the physical trappings of a marriage no longer manifest and a mindset of a woman I decided not to be.
I'm still sorting quite a few things out as to who I'll be instead. That's why I've been staying quiet. (I even deactivated Facebook!! It was like jumping into a swimming pool for the first time on the first day of June!) I don't know if school is what I need. I don't know if a move is my best move. I don't know entirely where I'm going to go or what I'm going to be.
Twenty-five served as an odd year for me to meet. And now that I set down the Jameson for a moment, with almost precisely one month of being 25 behind me, I think I may have been a bit rough on me as to what it should mean. (I'm also spirit-free at the moment, darlings. Working in a bar has its merits in the stress-control department. But I think if I'm ever to get anything done, drinking may be better left to special occasions for now and that writer fantasy of what happens after leaving the service industry for later.) Whether I want to admit it, I've held 30 in my head as some precise moment I needed to achieve professional perfectionism due to the inescapable fact that the age of 30 also coincides with the exact moment when my looks will go into decline. So being 25 meant I had to know precisely where I wanted to be at 30 in order to enact a five year plan. It is this similar type of thought that once led me to believe I needed to meet the man I wished to marry at age 22 so that I could date him one year, live with him for another year, and plan a wedding for one year leading to marriage by 25 when I would still look sublime in a wedding frock.
(Kinda shockingly adorably brainwashed for a self-proclaimed feminist, yes? Not only did I buy into every sexist myth or self-sabotaging women's magazine thrown at me about age and what it means to a woman...I actually thought I should seek marital bliss before my career decision(s)/life goal enactment/passion pursuit/etc. Just like some modern-day Jane Austen minion raised on Barbie dolls and media shots of power suit Moms.)
And I guess I had to go ahead and a fail a marriage before 25 and then go ahead and get past turning 25 (when I was supposed to have my Doomsday 30 Career Plan structured by and no later), to clearly see that all these ideas about who I should be and how I should go about it don't mean a fucking thing when I'm unhappy.
I'm still searching for the answer to which way I should go. On any given day, an answer to questioning about my aspirations could include the following: culinary school, more classes in costuming and design, dance classes of all varieties, teaching group fitness classes, yoga workshops, writing school, teaching English in Japan, and so forth. I still know I want the end result to revolve around writing and words and where they take my mind. The precise path best suited to me is still shrouded in some sort of purple smoky haze that rises and falls in opaque waves as I take steps forward and back. But I think clearing the fog starts with cleaning out my closets and sweeping out the dust and dirt of the expectations I let 25 put on me.
After that, I'm just going to stay in this silent space I've made for a moment, and dance and stretch and breathe.
(P.S. A note on breathing: I also haven't smoked in three days. Not God's good shit...I mean I haven't smoked evil tobacco company products in three days. We're not saying I'm quitting...that's a lot of pressure. But I will say I'm about to have to go yoga the hell out of myself to resist the urge after giving ya'll such good blog. ;))
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Happy Belated Birthday to Me.
I've spent my life skipping to the end of novels. I get so curious as to where things go, I have trouble focusing on how they get there. When I found short stories, it seemed the perfect solution: every sentence counts so much, it's hard to not get captivated in the flow of one word to the next. For once, I found myself not consumed with the way that things close.
This is where I write. But you see I haven't been doing much writing at all in quite some time. The past few weeks have held enough rough times that I have found occasion to explode five or so pages at a time of fiction frenzy onto notebooks falling apart with the wear and tear of me carrying them everywhere. (Well...that and the fact that I've taken recently to writing in notebooks purchased at a garage sale next door from a couple who first came to live in their house in 1954. I was smitten with the enchantment of writing on pages decades older than me. I was certain of their magic when I came across old domino scores in the midst of writing my first story in seven months.)
But still that small taste of fiction on my fingertips and pouring in whispers from my lips has brought back my craving for all things interlaced with the art of writing. I'm an addict and a few pages that no one has seen yet isn't enough. I want more. I want grad school and I want publication and I want the fucking whole nine bullshit. I know this is what I want and now I have to take it.
I saw a psychic in Shreveport two Sundays ago. This story would seem much more surreal if I said that I went to Louisiana seeking such guidance, but we'll save that for fiction. Truthfully, I was there for Mudbug Madness. But when I came across the psychic, I saw it as a sign. Most things can be if you believe enough.
One week before my 25th birthday (this past Friday), the central card that came to rest told me to follow my heart. For a year now I've been doubting and fearful of what happens when I get done with grad school and I'm still not all the writer I want to be. I've considered doing other things in an effort to think and behave like an adult and concern myself with things like career and consequence. But it isn't what I want and I'm tired of seeking out things that I know I don't want for the sake of presenting myself as practical to everyone outside.
The psychic told me she wasn't telling me anything I didn't know. She told me following my heart is what it comes down to and that was the answer to the questions I was asking. She told me my palm read of a time in my life where I very well might have died, but I didn't; because that time came to change me. It did change me. And when I decided to create to heal my heartache, it was the closest I had ever stepped to start exposing my true self.
Follow your heart, she said. Stop thinking on failure, she said. The people who don't want this for you and don't believe you are trying to hold you in place, but you're meant to move, she said. You're meant for success.
She told me I was content but not happy, and she's right. But most importantly, she told me I was the reason I wasn't happy. I had decided to not allow myself to think I deserved that kind of happy, and that I was purposefully fucking up my own success because I'm so fucking scared of failure.
Perhaps she didn't say fuck that much, but it was the gist.
I know what I want. I'm going to follow my heart.
Five years after almost dying, four days after my 25th birthday, I'm finally ready to write my story. And unlike my fiction at times, I'm setting myself up for a happy ending--for now I've just gotta breathe and not skip ahead.
This is where I write. But you see I haven't been doing much writing at all in quite some time. The past few weeks have held enough rough times that I have found occasion to explode five or so pages at a time of fiction frenzy onto notebooks falling apart with the wear and tear of me carrying them everywhere. (Well...that and the fact that I've taken recently to writing in notebooks purchased at a garage sale next door from a couple who first came to live in their house in 1954. I was smitten with the enchantment of writing on pages decades older than me. I was certain of their magic when I came across old domino scores in the midst of writing my first story in seven months.)
But still that small taste of fiction on my fingertips and pouring in whispers from my lips has brought back my craving for all things interlaced with the art of writing. I'm an addict and a few pages that no one has seen yet isn't enough. I want more. I want grad school and I want publication and I want the fucking whole nine bullshit. I know this is what I want and now I have to take it.
I saw a psychic in Shreveport two Sundays ago. This story would seem much more surreal if I said that I went to Louisiana seeking such guidance, but we'll save that for fiction. Truthfully, I was there for Mudbug Madness. But when I came across the psychic, I saw it as a sign. Most things can be if you believe enough.
One week before my 25th birthday (this past Friday), the central card that came to rest told me to follow my heart. For a year now I've been doubting and fearful of what happens when I get done with grad school and I'm still not all the writer I want to be. I've considered doing other things in an effort to think and behave like an adult and concern myself with things like career and consequence. But it isn't what I want and I'm tired of seeking out things that I know I don't want for the sake of presenting myself as practical to everyone outside.
The psychic told me she wasn't telling me anything I didn't know. She told me following my heart is what it comes down to and that was the answer to the questions I was asking. She told me my palm read of a time in my life where I very well might have died, but I didn't; because that time came to change me. It did change me. And when I decided to create to heal my heartache, it was the closest I had ever stepped to start exposing my true self.
Follow your heart, she said. Stop thinking on failure, she said. The people who don't want this for you and don't believe you are trying to hold you in place, but you're meant to move, she said. You're meant for success.
She told me I was content but not happy, and she's right. But most importantly, she told me I was the reason I wasn't happy. I had decided to not allow myself to think I deserved that kind of happy, and that I was purposefully fucking up my own success because I'm so fucking scared of failure.
Perhaps she didn't say fuck that much, but it was the gist.
I know what I want. I'm going to follow my heart.
Five years after almost dying, four days after my 25th birthday, I'm finally ready to write my story. And unlike my fiction at times, I'm setting myself up for a happy ending--for now I've just gotta breathe and not skip ahead.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Hey there sailor in the sky--got a map up there for me?
I'm going to admit it. My life has fallen apart a bit as of late.
I don't mean I'm drowning in desperation or despair. I mean I can't seem to find the time for anything at all. Emails go unanswered for days. I only check my mail every two weeks and I'm quite fearful that the certified mail I'm required to fetch may be an order from the government regarding that "survey" they sent out. (I meant to get it in! Really!) I finally bought new pillows for the first time in four years or more, and for two weeks past now they've still gone uncovered. The first ten days were spent with them on the floor still wrapped in thin plastic.
I know I've got to get the move on on something. That's part of the fumbling. I've always required a degree of directioning in my life. School felt good because it involved deadlines and deadlines required work. Sometimes the hardest part of my creativity is finding the means to motivate it into one solid effort. My Gemini beams bounce and refract, retract and disarm. I cast light on some things and burn holes in others. But I'm ready for sparks from some sphere as volatile and chaotic as my light. Something that will force it to sit down for battle that builds new patterns and waves of creative processing.
I talk in circles and I create in the same way. I can scarcely sit down to a volume on Picasso without feeling the need to scribble and carve fiction into the margins. Writing on occasion causes me to dance but most often dancing and spinning and letting everything go leads me back to tackling tangles of words on a page.
So it all goes back to writing I think; but how do I get to writing best? Is it studying museums or under other writers? Do I need to be dancing through the days to write all through the night? And dear god...whenever do I find the time to decipher the answers to all this?
Waitressing has been rougher on my soul than I thought it might be. I forgot that physical fatigue can interfere with nighttime creative flow until you learn how to negotiate the effects of both. I've had a hard splash of reality being able to spend more time with Princess Duckie since I never work now the days I have her. All day long with a two year old can be rough stuff, and I don't always utilize her naps or bed times to my best advantage--finding my brain a mush that idly flips through Facebook or reads blogs about things for which I have no actual intellectual interest.
I do know this, however. I need to grab hold of whatever rainbow rope I'm hoping leads to the golden iridescent dream stars shining in my eyes. You can only look at light so long before it starts to burn. It's time for me to climb.
(Please excuse all the flowery references to bright lights and pretty rainbows and stars above; I'm really trying to relocate my mind to what might be in the sky.)
I don't mean I'm drowning in desperation or despair. I mean I can't seem to find the time for anything at all. Emails go unanswered for days. I only check my mail every two weeks and I'm quite fearful that the certified mail I'm required to fetch may be an order from the government regarding that "survey" they sent out. (I meant to get it in! Really!) I finally bought new pillows for the first time in four years or more, and for two weeks past now they've still gone uncovered. The first ten days were spent with them on the floor still wrapped in thin plastic.
I know I've got to get the move on on something. That's part of the fumbling. I've always required a degree of directioning in my life. School felt good because it involved deadlines and deadlines required work. Sometimes the hardest part of my creativity is finding the means to motivate it into one solid effort. My Gemini beams bounce and refract, retract and disarm. I cast light on some things and burn holes in others. But I'm ready for sparks from some sphere as volatile and chaotic as my light. Something that will force it to sit down for battle that builds new patterns and waves of creative processing.
I talk in circles and I create in the same way. I can scarcely sit down to a volume on Picasso without feeling the need to scribble and carve fiction into the margins. Writing on occasion causes me to dance but most often dancing and spinning and letting everything go leads me back to tackling tangles of words on a page.
So it all goes back to writing I think; but how do I get to writing best? Is it studying museums or under other writers? Do I need to be dancing through the days to write all through the night? And dear god...whenever do I find the time to decipher the answers to all this?
Waitressing has been rougher on my soul than I thought it might be. I forgot that physical fatigue can interfere with nighttime creative flow until you learn how to negotiate the effects of both. I've had a hard splash of reality being able to spend more time with Princess Duckie since I never work now the days I have her. All day long with a two year old can be rough stuff, and I don't always utilize her naps or bed times to my best advantage--finding my brain a mush that idly flips through Facebook or reads blogs about things for which I have no actual intellectual interest.
I do know this, however. I need to grab hold of whatever rainbow rope I'm hoping leads to the golden iridescent dream stars shining in my eyes. You can only look at light so long before it starts to burn. It's time for me to climb.
(Please excuse all the flowery references to bright lights and pretty rainbows and stars above; I'm really trying to relocate my mind to what might be in the sky.)
Sunday, May 2, 2010
I can't escape my head.
I seem to require infinite more alone time than the average person.
My friends and family and various loved ones have felt my distance lately. My writing may actually be calling my name in the night because I wake up with fevers that tossing and disclothing don't seem to dislodge. My poor, dear sweet mother feels as if I have forsaken her. My sister received a frenzied, frantic text telling her how I loved her (and secretly where she couldn't read between the lines--how I envied her motherly inclinations).
I get stuck in my head. It's the only way I create (editor's note: creation = wordly enchantment). And in between the career change, the baby, my burlesque hopes, and imminent intimate issues, I barely find enough alone time to remember what I'm trying to set out to do. Who I want to be. What I want Princess Duckie to learn from me.
This is a slightly ridiculous post. It's an apology wrapped in a prayer, hoping to my personal Jesus that I've made the right decisions and that they're leading to even more important ones.
Because sometimes lately I feel my soul flailing. I'm just hoping gravity doesn't exist in the metaphysical sense.
My friends and family and various loved ones have felt my distance lately. My writing may actually be calling my name in the night because I wake up with fevers that tossing and disclothing don't seem to dislodge. My poor, dear sweet mother feels as if I have forsaken her. My sister received a frenzied, frantic text telling her how I loved her (and secretly where she couldn't read between the lines--how I envied her motherly inclinations).
I get stuck in my head. It's the only way I create (editor's note: creation = wordly enchantment). And in between the career change, the baby, my burlesque hopes, and imminent intimate issues, I barely find enough alone time to remember what I'm trying to set out to do. Who I want to be. What I want Princess Duckie to learn from me.
This is a slightly ridiculous post. It's an apology wrapped in a prayer, hoping to my personal Jesus that I've made the right decisions and that they're leading to even more important ones.
Because sometimes lately I feel my soul flailing. I'm just hoping gravity doesn't exist in the metaphysical sense.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
What You're in For.
I've been a very fucked up girl for a very long time if I had time to think through it all right now. I don't. I have taxes to do and laundry to put away.
I spent the day dreaming then dancing. I wasted time with Facebook foolery and conversed on costumes. I fell in and out of love at least four times with the change of a tune. All in all it was a delicious day, but now it is truly time to do my taxes (which immediately makes me wonder what fun the Taxman might be to grind to).
A funny thing happened a bit ago. I went outside for the mail and other things, and before I knew it, I was walking. I was turning away from my house and going down shaded streets of suburbia and thinking fast and walking slow but not without inflection. The slap slap of my boots were thoughts on a sidewalk and in that moment I knew some small part of me will always crave the comfort of a small space still large enough for me to wander about in.
I've been a very fucked up girl for a very long time in ways you can't always see or detect or even suspect because they don't always materialize outside my head. I had known a long time ago that walking and thinking and sorting through the tangle, and dancing and writing and putting it all to paper and type was really the only way I was ever going to get that fucked up out of me.
I have the oddest relationship to words. I can write love letters but scarcely utter aloud a word more than once for fear of a faulty landing. My lovers find themselves in a constant guessing game as again and again I reply: I didn't say anything and nothing and nevermind. So I write more in words in print than ever clearly come from my mouth. I write it in fiction details and blogging bent and half truths. It's not really the words that appear that make me feel better; it's the entire process of thinking and remembering and encountering and processing.
Dreams are fascinating lands where terror and fantasy can appear in alternating shades and symbols all within the realm of one slumber. I've had one terrifying dream for as long as I can remember. I'm being attacked and when I open my mouth to speak nothing comes out. Nothing. I should be screaming and there is only a silence that pierces my hearing. I wonder now looking back at certain times, bad times when bulimia was lurking around my every thought. I wonder if I was just trying to get that scream out. To let all the words I never can say find a way out of my mouth. It's disgusting and it's vile; but most rebellions are.
I decided lately to go back to a lifestyle that made me happy at a time. I'm a waitress again and I can tell you, I've already seen things that open new scenes just behind my big brown eyes. Now that my cubedom has finally come to a close, I'm looking forward to many more epiphanies beneath the sun, walking through what feels like my own little small town where I get to wander and write and figure out how to get everything just right again.
I spent the day dreaming then dancing. I wasted time with Facebook foolery and conversed on costumes. I fell in and out of love at least four times with the change of a tune. All in all it was a delicious day, but now it is truly time to do my taxes (which immediately makes me wonder what fun the Taxman might be to grind to).
A funny thing happened a bit ago. I went outside for the mail and other things, and before I knew it, I was walking. I was turning away from my house and going down shaded streets of suburbia and thinking fast and walking slow but not without inflection. The slap slap of my boots were thoughts on a sidewalk and in that moment I knew some small part of me will always crave the comfort of a small space still large enough for me to wander about in.
I've been a very fucked up girl for a very long time in ways you can't always see or detect or even suspect because they don't always materialize outside my head. I had known a long time ago that walking and thinking and sorting through the tangle, and dancing and writing and putting it all to paper and type was really the only way I was ever going to get that fucked up out of me.
I have the oddest relationship to words. I can write love letters but scarcely utter aloud a word more than once for fear of a faulty landing. My lovers find themselves in a constant guessing game as again and again I reply: I didn't say anything and nothing and nevermind. So I write more in words in print than ever clearly come from my mouth. I write it in fiction details and blogging bent and half truths. It's not really the words that appear that make me feel better; it's the entire process of thinking and remembering and encountering and processing.
Dreams are fascinating lands where terror and fantasy can appear in alternating shades and symbols all within the realm of one slumber. I've had one terrifying dream for as long as I can remember. I'm being attacked and when I open my mouth to speak nothing comes out. Nothing. I should be screaming and there is only a silence that pierces my hearing. I wonder now looking back at certain times, bad times when bulimia was lurking around my every thought. I wonder if I was just trying to get that scream out. To let all the words I never can say find a way out of my mouth. It's disgusting and it's vile; but most rebellions are.
I decided lately to go back to a lifestyle that made me happy at a time. I'm a waitress again and I can tell you, I've already seen things that open new scenes just behind my big brown eyes. Now that my cubedom has finally come to a close, I'm looking forward to many more epiphanies beneath the sun, walking through what feels like my own little small town where I get to wander and write and figure out how to get everything just right again.
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