Month: February 2005

  • More protected……

  • Big news!  Doug has moved to Bend.  Have written a protected post.


  • Something big happened for me tonight.  I let go of something.  You’d of thought I’d let go of it a long time ago but it just kept hanging on.  I watched some old friends dance tonight.  A former bellydance teacher of mine started a troupe, opened up her own studio, in fact.  Tonight her troupe performed and I sat next to a young woman who I’m guessing was kicked out.  She didn’t seem that upset about it so maybe she dropped out.  X.’s troupe isn’t something you’d want to leave, though.


    Q. was drinking a fair amount of red wine, something I hadn’t see her do before.  This is the person I sold my red costume to.  She came up to me one night in class and asked if I’d teach her and her friend a beginning Cabaret class.  We were in X’s tribal class and I would stand in the back and do my own thing.  Tribal can be a little repetitive so I’d jazz it up with some Egyptian Cabaret.  I said I’d think about it.  I talked to my husband and he flipped out.  I talked to my cabaret teacher and she advised against it and I talked to X and she said she could understand how the other teacher felt.  I went back to Q. and said I thought she should take from my teacher.


    Not even six months later Q. was teaching a beginning Cabaret class to the tribal people.  It was a good lesson for me.  After my last surgery I sold my good costumes and stopped dancing.  I would still take classes here and there and attend most of the shows but it always killed me to do it.  I’d sneak in after everyone was seated and sneak out before they stood up.  People would see me and come over but I tried to avoid those conversations that always started with “why aren’t you dancing? ” Watching dancers become better than I was, hurt.  It’s a terrible thing to say but that’s how I felt.  Not when I was watching them.  I would cry at how beautiful they were.  It was wonderful to see these girls come into themselves as dancers and as women.  But on the way home in my car I would feel terrible.  I would kick myself for quitting, thinking about how I could have been up there, too.  I’d think about how good I would have been by now, and I’d feel so sad and mad.


    Not tonight.  Q. was the one who felt terrible tonight.  I sat next to her and I wanted to say I knew just how she felt but I just rubbed her back instead.  She knew I knew.  I feel like I passed the baton to her or something.  I haven’t felt like this for a long time.  I am free now, free to appreciate something I used to love without the pain, the loss.


    You have no idea how cool this is.  It’s like some distant — hey, you know what it’s like it’s like my marriage, like when I left my family.  I know that sounds bad but it’s the truth.  Dance was everything to me and I walked away from it because I thought I had to.  It wasn’t like I was that good.  I was okay.  But you know what the best thing about tonight was?  I got to see that they managed to fuse Cabaret and Tribal without me. 


     


  • I was actually clapping, on the freeway; clapping for myself I guess.  But you know how when you get really excited you just start clapping at the excitement of it all?


    I read tonight and I could hear, by the silence in the room, that I had them with me.  And I could even tell when I captured them.  We had gone into another room where they had three guest authors reading from their books.  The last guy who read is someone who teaches at Oregon State.  He read in an almost stilted fashion but it really drove it home.  He paused a lot giving the reader time to digest his words. 


    When we went back to our room and resumed the workshop it was my turn to read.  I mentioned, before I started, that I had been quite taken by the last author’s style, and that I was going to attempt to recreate that cadence. 


    When I got done the teacher said, “Nice read.”  And because I read a piece which focused on setting the language was fairly lyrical.  I was able to dress up my words with my voice so the end result was something I drove home feeling proud of.  How validating!


    I am learning so much.  Just being able to sit and make notes from people’s comments is worth the price of the class.  I’m going to sign up for the advanced class next term.  I’ve got a second book in the works now as a result of their encouragement, plus the one I want to write as soon as my kids are older. 


    You know what those writers said?  They were talking about their editors, how much they valued that relationship; so much that one guy left his big New York publisher to go to a small press in his home town.  All three appreciated the fact that those smaller presses would keep their books in print.  It would never be in hardback but the New York publishers won’t do that.  After that first run, it’s over if they’re not big sellers.  They said that the only work they’re interested in (New York) is a novel that can be made into a screen play, which will have a good sound track.


    All three said, for them it’s all about the language.  They will not compromise their work to be marketable. 


    They talked about contests and what a great vehicle they can be.  The woman, and I’m sorry I can’t remember her name, said she entered a contest, didn’t win, but had a publisher contact her and subsequently publish her book because he had seen her work in a trade journal as a result of the contest.


    There is so much to learn.  I’ve decided I’m going to start hanging out at Powells when they have people come to read.  I learn a lot about what works for me by hearing the words. 


    When asked what book we should read, if we had to pick where the writing was worth emulating, the teacher answered, “Lolita.”


     

  • When I say death and dying I think I was focusing more on the process of resignation.  The planning of those last precious months of life.  At the hospital the focus is always on fighting death, prolonging it.  It’s what the doctors are trained to do and it’s what every patient seems to want. 


    But I wonder if the woman wants to fight it.  She’s a smart one, she’s probably looking at the numbers.  But it’s not about the numbers with cancer, it’s about the fight.  People can do amazing things with their minds.  I’ve seen women beat something like this.  Then again I don’t know the particulars of her pathology report, how aggresive her kind of tumor was.  But I do know how many lymph nodes were positive, and it was the majority.


    I wonder if she’s in her hospital bed right now thinking about all the special things she’s going to do while she still has time.  I think that’s what I might do. 

  • Do you ever have the feeling that ….It’s like when you can’t remember a word.  It’s hovering right beneath my conscious, trying desperately to wriggle free from my subconscious. 


    I saw a patient today, up on the fifth floor.  That always means trouble. If you’re on the fifth floor your cancer has metastasized.  And it was a women I have gotten to know.  She stops by sometimes on her way to radiation.  Plus I saw her after her mastectomy.  She was pretty loaded so I didn’t stay too long. 


    This woman was married last year and her new husband was sitting behind her, on the window ledge, rubbing her back.  They had just been told that it had spread to her liver.  Normally, if the husband is there I don’t stay long so after a bit I made like I was leaving but she wanted me to stay.  The husband looked like he was going to cry but she seemed unusually together.  I got the feeling that the sooner I left, the sooner she’d have to deal with his grief, on top of her own.


    I’ve never visited anyone on the fifth floor, by myself, but my boss is out of town.  Her doctor asked that I go up and see her but for the life of me, I didn’t know what to say.  Get this, I said, “You gotta roll with it.” I can’t even believe I said that.  It so minimizes where she is at. 


    All I could remember was that I was supposed to mirror her.  And the really strange part about this is that she’s never seemed better.  I mean every time, and it’s probably been five times that I’ve hung out with her –  Often she is with another woman that I like very much and we shoot the shit out in the hall, me and my boss and them.  So you know, we’re all trying to be up and funny.  But there’s always this edge to her, like she’s trying too hard.


    Today, for the first time she was real.  She must have known all along.  But the funny thing was she said she was so surprised when she got the news; that she had thought she was fine after the mastectomy.  And I’m looking at the husband and he’s a complete wreck.  I think he believed that she was fine.  Knowing her pathology report, after the mastectomy, I don’t know why he would.


    There’s something on my mind about this but I don’t know what.  I mean something’s bothering me, beyond the obvious.  I just can’t put my finger on it.  I used to hit the trail when I’d get like this but that’s not an option.  Am I missing something?

  • It’s been such a great day. I think it’s because it started out so well. 


    I ran out of tea and I can only find it at the Tao of Tea on Belmont.  It’s called “tuocha” and it means camel’s breath.  It comes rolled in a ball, pressed and wrapped in paper.  I fill two cups with very hot water and dump one of those so I can pour the water back and forth through the tea strainer.  Each ball is good for three servings.


    It was a beautiful morning and I decided I’d take my notebook to this new place I found over on Freemont.  It’s also a tea place but it turned out to be closed.  So then I decided to go to the deli and get a treat, but they were closed, too.  So I gave in and had a latte which I drank outside in the sunshine. 


    I really like this coffee shop and there was nobody else sitting outside so I got my notebook out.  I have a hard time writing if there is eavesdropping to be done or even music that I like.  I’m so auditory.  I’d gotten a good idea in the shower for a character I haven’t had much of a feel for.  He’s black and around 58 and I’ve been avoiding him.  But now I knew better who he was, what he’d say. 


    There’s something about writing in longhand that makes the story more real for me; makes me more present, more invovled.  What didn’t come to me in the shower was coming out on the paper.  I am clearly not doing this alone, and I can always tell when we’re done.  Even if I think I’m still good for another couple of pages, sometimes they’re done so I quite.


    I thought I’d walk up the street and snoop around some.  I found THE COOLEST PLACE.  You know when you walk into a place that feels like it’s been waiting for you.  I won’t say it was an antique store and I won’t say it was a junk store, but somewhere in the middle.  In the “70s room” I found a briefcase.  It almost looked like a doctor’s but it was too modern.  It looked like a teacher’s.  I opened it up and I could imagine my manuscript nestled in the middle of the three sections.  I took it home.  It was like buying the bassinet when you were far enough along in the pregnancy.


    I came home and joined the neighbors who were all cutting their grass.  I just did one side of the front, the big side.  Then I came in and made roasted vegetables, one of my very favorite things to eat.  I even love making it.  I put in beets, potatoes, parsnips, onion, celery and chucks of garlic.  Over that I drizzle olive oil and lemon pepper and garlic salt.  I mix it well with my hands and bake it covered in a 400 degree oven, forever.  I take the tin foil off for the last half hour.  When I pull it out I carefully splash a little balsamic vinegar over it and mix that in.  I’m never sure how long it’s cooked because I always get distracted and forget about it.  That’s good though because the onions caramelize that way.  Mmmmm.


    Time for bed.  Sweet dreams.


    I forgot to add, last night, that I returned everything to the store but I probably should have kept it.  Nobody had contacted them.  It appeared to be a case of someone not having suitable funds and the checker didn’t want to put the stuff back so she just stuck it in my cart.  That’s what I guessed and she agreed it was a likely explanation.  I wish I’d at least kept the yogurt. 


    Have a great day!

  • Putting away the groceries, I found things I didn’t buy:  A six-pack of Miller beer, a plastic container that said Lays on it but the plastic was so thick I can’t imagine there would be potato chips in there, a bunch of candy bars and five things of yogurt.  I might have to go get one of those candy bars.  I called the store but nobody answered.  I feel terrible for the people, but it was too far to drive back.  I’ll call tomorrow.


    I just tried one of the candy bars.  Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme.  Fortunately (there are five more in there) I didn’t like it.


  • Half-kneeling, half-sprawled in the grass by the side of my road, still clutching the leash, I thought:  Ego gets you every time.  I looked over at the ledge of blacktop my ankle had teetered over and the drop was miniscule.  I don’t even know how it could have happened.  Well, I do.  I believe I had been just a little too pleased with myself, “being in my body” and all.


    My ankle is black and blue, wrapped in an Ace bandage.  I’ve done this to the same ankle before but it was Halloween and I was walking back from a neighborhood party, a little tipsy, wearing clogs.  Marcie, if you’re reading, you remember those clogs?  I threw them away the next morning, deciding I was too old to wear them.  They were dangerous.  After scolding myself about ego, I thought maybe I should have kept the clogs.  If I can fall over wearing tennis shoes, there’s really no hope for me.  In my defense, I was looking over at the puppy, keeping her at a perfect heel.  She was doing great.


    I was so pissed and in so much pain.  I put the dogs in the car, the older one was back at the house, extremely hurt that I had left on foot without her, choosing the puppy instead.  So I went back for her, and we drove over to my brother’s house.  My brother had just wrecked his ankle at Christmas so I thought they might have a bandage.  She had a cream that sounds like Antarctica and it’s supposed to aid healing.  Then she and I went for a drink at the bar up the street. My brother was working late.


    As I parked and hobbled through the back door, in my sweatpants, I could see what’s become of me, living over here.  Hey, when in Rome.  Speaking of which, –And I can’t remember who told me this– she advised me early on that using clichés (I call them idioms but my teacher used “cliché”) is bad form.  She said something to the effect that it’s okay in a comment but maybe not in a post.  And I’ve tried to cut back, really I have.  My teacher backed her up. 


    We are on our second drink, (I can’t even feel my foot now), and she asks what I was thinking about right before I fell.  Then I had to explain about my idea for the belly-dance class.  She has a bizarre theory that our bodies try to sabotage our soul’s attempts to self-actualize.  Our bodies want to keep a status quo (woops) and our minds want to push ahead.  She thinks I should do it. 


    Her theory sounded off to me.  I said, “What about the whole ‘listen to your body’ thing?”  I answered for her when I thought about how my body had told me the night before, at ten o’clock, to get in my car and go get a Hershey bar with almonds.


    So, I think I’m gonna gear up to go into the club and pitch my idea, right after I can walk without a limp. 


     

  • I forget how euphoric working out with the old folks makes me feel.  Although I noticed today I wasn’t the youngest one in there, by any means.  I stood up front, like I would in any class, and there’s this one move where the teacher does a variation of the twist only she juts her hips, laterally from one side to the other.  So I found myself doing a bellydance move each time she did that.  Very similar but different enough that I could see the teacher give me a look of concern. 


    As I did my sit-ups it occurred to me that all these women might enjoy a beginning bellydance class.  I could teach them some veil and zills.  They’d love the music, and it might pep up their love life.  Then maybe I wouldn’t have to get a real job.


    I’m just dreaming.  I really like hanging out with older women, though.  At the hospital, on Tuesdays, I’ve started learning a lot from the women I talk to.  I think women get a chance, through taking care of their children and then taking care of their ailing husbands to learn a lot about love.  Some of these women I meet really have their shit together and it comes from years of living and loving.


    Gotta go, it’s time for my 1,000 words.


    Okay, I did my thousand words and it got me to thinking about something a friend of mine, brendaclews, wrote yesterday.  It was a poem about renewal and the last stanza reads: 


    I turn,


    and you who were gone
    are there

     When I was married, I spent a good hour every day getting some kind of exercise.  It varied over the years.  A couple years I swam every morning.  When I went back to school to be a court reporter I took up bellydance and, between walking in the woods with my dog and dance classes, I lived in my body.  Now that I have taken up learning to write, I live in my head.  After I had the last surgery and sold my costumes I felt so stupid for wasting all that time and money on something I was too old to do anyway.  What was I thinking?  Driving home from class today, It could have been 1988, back when I first started working out at the gym.  Brenda’s poem made me think about how glad I am to have so many things to do that I am passionate about.  And it doesn’t matter if I am making my living doing them.  If all it brings me is joy, that’s enough. 


    I have three girls and two of them said to me recently, when they were down, that the only thing that made them feel better was getting their nails done.You can imagine the horror I felt.  Brenda’s last line made me think about all the different versions of me and how grateful I am to be able to get back the physical one.  We are the same person, 21 or 71.

ydurp

Recent Posts

Categories