What Early Childhood Has Formed, Let No Therapy Tear Asunder

Today in my undergraduate Level 1 Beginning Jazz Dance class that I am taking as an elective for fun, to help relieve the pressure of my other classes, I broke down crying. I went down my list of things that might normally lead me to such a state of panic…like the insensitivity of my spouse, the clutter in our home, worries about health, stacks of ungraded student papers, our monumental student loans combined with statistically hopeless career paths…and none of them seemed to ring a bell.

As close as I can figure, I had to go into the bathroom and cry because I do not want to do the final group performance for my dance class a week from Friday. Our little group of four—me and three other students—has to choreograph a three-minute piece and perform it for our class combined with another dance class. This is not high pressure. Get up there, stumble through it, have a laugh, everyone claps, and you get your “A.”

But I don’t want to. I dread it to such an extent that the dread is creeping back in time so that I now dread going to my dance class already. I dread doing our little routine in the center of the floor with the class split in half. I dread moving across the floor in small groups. My brain freezes and I can’t remember any pattern longer than four counts.

I have to assume that this is not really just about being horrified to stand on a stage for the length of the song “Kiss” by Prince. It must harken back to some other traumatic experience…like being unable to learn all of the "Maple Leaf Rag" when I was ten, or the time I forgot the bridge to “Sonata in C” at a piano concert and had to get up and leave the stage. Or maybe it's some other stuff that even though they'll nod understandingly, I don’t really think will make any sense to the graduate student teacher, or anyone else who sees my red splotchy face and asks what’s wrong. Like that I’ll turn thirty-seven on the day of our performance, or that this week and next will mark the third anniversary of my cancer diagnoses and surgery. That after everything I’ve lived through, and all the things I’ve tried to change, I am still unhappy with certain aspects of myself: that when required to keep my head in front of an audience, I can neither overcome my inherent weaknesses nor achieve the lightheartedness and acceptance of them that would make everything all right.

It’s both eye opening, and fairly unhelpful to witness, how, despite most of our illusions to the contrary, the same old shit is alive and well and living in the suburbs of our souls.

Send in the Clowns

Pics from Paul's recent shoot...I mentioned it was about a clown, right?

Foodie

My parents are coming tomorrow for Thanksgiving. Since we have a little kitchen I want to pre-cook some dinner items for the next few days. Right now I am simultaneously cooking, each at different stages-- Thai-pumpkin soup with coconut milk, Pasta Fazool, and Cranberry Sauce made with Rosemary, Ruby Port and Figs.

Paul, who is not a fan of wine or rosemary, says it smells like ass. I say, thanks for the love and support, hon. Although I must admit, that Italian, Thai, and Thanksgiving smells together are an interesting blend.

Old English is NOT English!

So tonight one of the works I am translating is called Deor. This title alone could mean "bold" or "dear" or "animal." My book calls this work a "poem of consolation." Each verse recounts a miserable experience, followed by a little refrain that loosely translates as "That passed, so too shall this." The first verse is about a guy who is famous for his metalworking, so the King captures him, and hamstrings him to keep him from escaping (That passed, so too, shall this). In the next verse the guy makes himself some wings and escapes, but on his way out, kills the king's two sons and rapes the daughter. who then discovers she is pregnant.

The general flavor is "Wow, that person's life sucked, but they got through it (dead or alive.)" Apparently the poet who wrote this had just been fired by his patron from his poet job, and in this way he was being philosophical about it.

I am trying also to be philosophical about the next three hours of my life spent translating. After all, those guys' lives really sucked, but now all their misery is in the past, as mine will be too...

Okay, I know it's shallow, but I just want to bypass the misery and watch Battlestar Galactica instead.

My Panda

I woke up bright and early this morning to make my bi-weekly attempt at adding to my story for fiction class, but the house was such a disaster I couldn't even yearn. (For an excellent and humorous explanation of how yearning relates to writing fiction, you can see this post by my friend Mya. You'll need to start about halfway down.) I was inspired however, to write this very short story:

My Panda
The things in my house have started singing. They have the voices of those children who constantly, tonelessly incant when they want candy in the checkout line: Please please can I have it please can I have it please. Thus the objects in my house: The dishes play a constant game of tag moving themselves from surface to surface. Look at me I’m on the table, I’m on the floor, I’m in the sink. You can’t catch me you can’t wash me you can’t keep me in the cabinet! The papers just like the sound of their voices Lalalalalalalalalalalalalalala, they sing, so high-pitched that the neighbor’s dog will sometimes start to bark.
I have tried to explain to my Giant Panda how I am reaching a breaking point, but it is hard for him to understand. He cannot hear the high-pitched wailing of the stiff socks underneath his favorite chair. This is not his fault. Because of his inefficient intestinal tract, he has to eat thirty to forty pounds of bamboo everyday, which takes him between twelve to sixteen hours of constant eating. So it is not surprising he cannot hear the lalalala of the utility bills over the CRUNCH CRUNCH of the bamboo splintering between his jaws. The noise must be deafening from inside his head, because it is loud even to my ears. Low pitched and percussive, it joins the singing choir, and I have to run out of the house.
Fortunately there is always reason to leave, as I must go to the store often in order to purchase more bamboo. There are fifteen varieties of bamboo that a Giant Panda can eat, my Panda prefers only four of these. When, due to limited availability, I must bring home one of the eleven other varieties, my panda looks at me with sad eyes and sighs, and I feel bad for disappointing him. Sometimes I get resentful that he won’t expand his tastes, but then he is good and tells me that it’s okay, he knows I tried. He thanks me for bringing him the bamboo and asks if I wouldn’t mind chopping it up and putting it on a fresh plate for him, if I’m making something for myself anyway.
On the weekends, my Panda likes to go to restaurants. Even more than his four favorite types of bamboo, he likes to eat fresh bamboo shoots. Bamboo shoots, however, are not as filling as full-grown bamboo, and so he must eat more than double the weight he would eat in bamboo. It is not often that even a large Asian restaurant has eighty-four pounds of bamboo shoots, so we spend many Saturdays driving from restaurant to restaurant, waiting for tables and waiting to order, waiting for food. My Panda enjoys this very much, and thinks it is a great treat for me as well, even though I only eat at one or two of the restaurants. He says he likes to spend time together. I don’t have the heart to tell him I would rather cook at home and have the remaining nine hours for myself, although lately, I do appreciate how at the restaurants the tableware is well behaved, and doesn’t sing.
Last Saturday, as my Panda was chewing his bamboo shoots inside the Super Happy China Buffet, and I was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot (a habit I have taken up just so I can get outside more on Saturdays), a bus pulled up at the station across the street, and I thought about getting on. It was an abrupt thought, but suddenly it seemed simple and possible. I would get on a bus. I would move to a new apartment where the cutlery was quiet, and the walls didn’t shake with constant crunching.
I was half way across the street when I remembered that my Panda, having no pockets, had put his keys in my purse. I couldn’t leave him stranded, so I went back inside just to give the keys to the hostess. But Super Happy China Buffet is a very large restaurant, and the hostess was young and worried she wouldn’t know which panda to give the keys to; she insisted I point him out. And when I saw him, sitting alone at the table in out regular booth, waiting so patiently, looking with such hope at the steamer-tray where the bamboo shoots might soon be refilled; when I saw how he was chewing with his mouth closed as I have so often urged him to do at restaurants, I told the hostess not to bother. I put the keys back in my purse, and returned to my seat at the table, where my Panda was very happy to see me.

I didn't suck

At least I don't think so...It's very hard to tell these things on a set. People can't tell an actor that a scene was bad, because the actor might freak out and make the next scene even worse. So I will say this...I am fairly certain that I wasn't stellar, but I am also hopeful that I didn't suck.

I found out an interesting detail about the film the night before we shot, which was that for my entire first scene, I would be wearing clown makeup. The story is about a guy who is a clown. His ex-wife is getting remarried, and he's having trouble reconciling this. There is a dream sequence where he bursts into the church and interrupts her wedding. Everyone turns to look at him and they are all clowns. Including the bride, which for some reason hadn't occured to me.

So someone took pictures and promised to send them, and I will definitely post them here.

Film Related Newsflash

Paul got the email yesterday:

Congratulations!! Your script The Working Girl has been chosen as one of 10 finalists for the 2006-2007 Coca-Cola Refreshing Filmmaker's Award Program!
Please contact us with your availability next week for a pre-production conference call with our production group.
Thank you for participating in our program and we look forward to speaking with you.

He’s very, very excited. It was a good morale booster in a week where for a few days he lost all of his actors to other obligations, and had to cut a major stunts because the breakable glass guys are all booked up. Half the locations are still undecided, and they start shooting tomorrow (Sunday).

One result of all of this, is that I will have my first acting gig in quite some time, as the ex-wife of the clown. I’m a little nervous about the whole thing, as I’d hate to be shoddy and mess up his opportunities for future endeavors. We’ll see how it goes.

Today everyone’s running around trying to get ready. Since we don't rehearse til tonight, I’ve given myself the exciting task of plowing through five loads of laundry, so that we can express ourselves creatively in clean underwear for a change. Also, we could stand to have food in the house at the end of the fourteen hour days. So, I’ll try to make it to the grocery store before seeing if I can fit in my “costume” (yes, my own wedding dress, aged five years), and then maybe work on my essay that’s due on Wednesday, and of course, the latest twenty pages of Old English translation.

Future Uncertain

Damn,
Just when I had my writing life all figured out with two nonfiction classes next term, they announced they were opening up a screenwriting class over at the film school. I had been asking, but had finally just given up, and made a new plan. Now...I don't know what to do! It's all complicated by teachers who might or might not ever teach again while I am still in town. It's a quandary, and not really helped by the advice of the Magic 8-Ball.