Dance Party 2 (Because All of its Musical Fabulousness Couldn't Be Contained in Just One Volume)

I’ve been stuck because I don’t know where to begin. 

So I thought I might try approaching things one at a time.  (Good luck, she says to herself.)

It was late afternoon a couple of days ago- the worst time of day for me- because I just want to crawl in some cave and sleep until dinner is ready, which is a problem as I’m the one that does dinner, so cave slumber= mass starvation.  Anyway, I try to do some sort of physical activity with my little ones (two four year olds) so that they don’t turn into couch potatoes and I don’t have to start an IV caffeine drip. This particular day I thought, “Let’s try the Just Dance 2 Playstation game,” otherwise known as “The Dancing Game.”  For those of you not familiar with this rockin’ timeless, Billboard-chart shattering music collection brought to life with equally mind-numbing blowing choreography, here’s an earworm that will devour your soul:

You’re welcome.

So, we begin. Now I’ve taken a LOT of dance; I had some sort of dance instruction for close to 10 years, and that’s not including all of the miscellaneous theatre movement training. For some reason, this choreography seems just “off” like a quarter of a beat or something.  I can’t place it.  It’s just so damn awkward and I find myself not as graceful as I imagine myself to be, although it could also have something to do with the fact that I’m 25 years older than when I first started dancing; however, that latter explanation is clearly the inferior one, I’m positive.

My girls are doing an OK job with The Dancing Game.  They love it.  It doesn’t matter how good they are, although it’s clear that one of them is more coordinated than the other.  It could also have to do with the fact that Slightly More Coordinated Twin is serious as a heart attack about her choreography.  Slightly Less Coordinated Twin gets caught up in watching the video and doing some half- hearted attempt at what seems to be a possible voluntary physical movement—or maybe it’s just a twitch.  Sometimes I can’t tell.

Still, an awareness rears its ugly and awkwardly-timed head.  And the self-comparisons—which have already begun in other areas—emerge, paralyzing and self-depreciating:

“Momma, I can’t do this.  She does it better than me.”

Ohhhhh crap. So I go into problem solving mode.

“You’ve got to make your moves bigger,” I tell her, in an effort to cajole her into making some more definitive, more distinguishable moves.

“Mommy, I lost.  She got more stars than me.”

“No, honey, you didn’t get as many stars but you have to keep trying.  Don’t worry so much about the stars your sister has.  You have one.  Keep trying.”

And:

“Did you have fun dancing?  Then you just have to keep dancing and you’re going to get better. You can’t just stand there. You have to move!”

And then it happened.  I heard what I was saying for the first time, as if Morpheus for a moment stepped out of “the desert of the real” reached into my world, stopped time, and shoved my face up against a mirror.

I’ve been feeling stuck, you see.

“Momma, I can’t do this.  EVERYONE does it better than me.”  As an actor, I’ve been trained to put my focus on the “other”- the other actors onstage with me, the “other” that I allow myself to inhabit.  Somewhere along the way, I forgot myself a bit, and was so focused on everyone else, that I just got lost. Particularly of late, I am seeing so many of my friends and colleagues garner well-deserved accolades and success, both professionally and personally.  And I am genuinely happy for them- seriously.  But then I look at myself and can’t help but think how everyone I know is a better mother/ wife/ teacher/ scholar/actor/homemaker than I am. 

“Mommy, I lost.  She got more stars than me.” I’m still a big believer in winning and losing.  I don’t think everyone should be a winner all the time.  But I have been feeling lost- and like I’ve lost a lot.  I feel so behind and am a little perplexed as to how this “behind” situation happened.  I feel tired, like I’ve done a lot, but I just haven’t seen any payoff, and that is frustrating.  I see other people getting some acknowledgement, but I don’t see it happening over on my end.  There’s no anger toward other people, only anger toward myself for not being better, although I’m unsure as to what “better” actually means.

“No, honey, you didn’t get as many stars but you have to keep trying.  Don’t worry so much about the stars your sister has.  You have one.  Keep trying.”  Of course I will keep trying.  I’m like a damn terrier.  Ask my husband.  I relentlessly pursued him (minus the Lifetime Network dose of psychosis). But for a start, I think perhaps I need to put some of the focus on myself for once. On my work. On figuring out what it is I really want to achieve.  Setting goals.  Ugh, that one’s a tough one, and I realize that I have not been good at defining what I would like my future to look like.  I always believed that if I just worked hard enough, “good things” would come to me.  What these “good things” were- exactly- I couldn’t specifically say, only that they were really good. Seriously. I mean like, totally. I'm totally serious.

“Did you have fun dancing?”  Yes, nothing I’ve done I regret. Very few things in my life do I wish I had done differently because I never would have met my husband and had these daughters and that hypothetical prospect looms most regrettable of all.

“Then you just have to keep dancing and you’re going to get better.” Fine. Fine. FINE.

 But will it have to look like this:

Or this:

But really what it comes down to:

“You can’t just stand there. You have to move!”  I tell my students this all the time, but it actually sounds more like this:  “Be strong and wrong!” The sentiment remains the same: do something, even if you don’t know what to do, because in all likelihood, a definitive, strong choice reveals the path to follow (or at the very least will slam a door in your face and you probably needed that).  I can’t just stand around and watch other choreography.  It’s off because it’s not mine; I’m trying to ape someone else’s trajectory and that simply won’t fly. Doing this only sets me up for failure and defines me as a victim, someone things happen to, not someone who can impact the world around me.  Deep down, I have faith I can make this change.

So for me, the first move I make requires setting my fingers to the keyboard and writing, writing, writing.  And yeah, I probably should get off my butt and workout.  That too.

Holiday Shrubs and Pampered Duodenums

I've been really frustrated of "late," if you couldn't tell from my pilot post.  Particularly when I'm tired and required to put out more than I have, I stop and all of my failings and shortcomings wash over me with the blunt trauma force of an avalanche of boulders.

It's been a difficult 10 years.  My marriage and the birth of my children notwithstanding, I sit and wonder sometimes paralyzed by that dull ache of regret and futility rooted in the pit of my stomach.

It could be the ulcer in my duodenum.

Duodenum.  Duodenum.  That word just doesn't get enough mileage.  Seriously overlooked body part.

But yesterday, while dealing with a bunch of final deadlines, I resolved to go with my family and get a Christmas Tree.  My girls bundled like two little pink and grey Michelin babies waddled around the small, wet, cold makeshift tree lot.  Although I have my own intuition about the trees, I automatically acquiesce to my husband because he's from Maine.  Enough said.

Finally, however, my impulse gets the best of me and I spot The Tree.  It's tall and although it's not completely opened up, I can tell it will be pretty damn plush.  My husband worries it will be too tall- I inhale- maybe I'm wrong and The Tree is not The Tree at all, but merely A Tree.  A very tall tree but certainly missing the definitiveness of a definite article that makes The Tree.

No, This Is The Tree.  Some background:  growing up, we always had this little five freaking foot artificial tree, which seemed big and fine until I approached, oh I don't know, the age of eight.  Suddenly I realized the tree was more shrub than arbor, which added to the growing holiday disenfranchisement of a little girl approaching her tween years.  From this point, I always wanted that mythological tree, the big ceiling-scraper with a ton of twinkling lights, garland, covered in ornaments, and at the base, a huge nativity metropolis, complete with holy scene, church, post office, carolers, angels, school house, animals, cars, fences, and the whole lot encircled by an automated train running on a track.

Back to The Tree.  We get it and lug it home.  My husband hauls out the ornaments.  I unwrap every ornament, each one with its own history from my husband's past, my past, or our collective (but relatively short) past.  The old ones are...old, and we place these in a position of earned security and respect at the top of the tree; safe from curious little fingers, we position the remnants of our childhoods just out of our children's reach.  For now.  And anyway, that damn metal dragon my husband has from I think 1983 is an incisive weapon rivaling any Chinese star.

The room smells of pine.  It is an amazingly simple pleasure.  And I realize there is something that I really need to say:  I am so thankful.  These past months for my husband and I have been a struggle; this will continue for another year or so.  But I look at this tree that stretches up to the ceiling and I remember that I am lucky enough to have this tree in my house, that we have a house to put the tree in, that we can pay for the house (some days, it's tight), that we have food to eat, that we are relatively healthy.  I have the luxury of having First World Problems, which are mostly just a big pain in the ass.

I shall now go pamper my duodenum.

(M)Otherhood Part the First

I can’t stop thinking about the alter egos of Butters and his little friend.  Hell, I can’t even think of Butters’ alter ego, I can only think of his friend’s:  General Disarray.  Appropriate somehow that I can’t think of this wee little minor character’s ACTUAL name, only the pretend name of a pretend person. 

Which leads me to how I’ve been feeling over the past couple of years.  Or maybe longer. General Disarray.  I can’t tell.   But right now, I’m sitting at my makeshift desk in our disaster of a makeshift office, with piles of paper and stuff that I try try TRY to keep organized, and I just can’t seem to organize it faster than it comes in and demands a fucking space in my life.  I’m in a funk (ha- almost typed “fuck”) because I just got a “Dear John” letter from a theatre company with which I am/ was/ will have been affiliated.  Deep down, I don’t feel that it’s unjustified, but it feels like a break up nonetheless.  It is a place where I generally feel wanted and appreciated, but I haven’t had the opportunity to frequent of late because I have two small children.  Still, I can’t help but feel that maybe- maybe- my talent wandered off somewhere, lost, looking for a more worthy vessel. Or, maybe I’m just not talented enough; surely someone who was talented enough could FIGURE OUT HOW TO JUGGLE IT ALL.  At least that’s the perception, although I can’t tell whose- mine or everyone else’s.  At any rate, I’m sure you know that old saying, “Perception is reality.”  So someone around here is perceiving that I’m disposable.

I started thinking about attempting a blog earlier in the year.  I was in a graduate English class studying Shakespeare trying oh so desperately to figure out some pattern or similarity between The Merchant of Venice and Othello – and what the HELL was I going to write about – blah, blah, blah, “Othello is the ‘other’” blah, blah, blah “Shylock is the ‘other’" blah, blah, blah – and then I realized something:  there are no mothers in these plays.  Alive ones, that is.  It’s as if in Shakespeare’s world, these women squeezed out their offspring and dropped dead.  Admittedly, that was a very likely scenario at that time, so maybe.  

But that’s how I’ve been feeling lately.  As if the Mommy Track runs right off a cliff into some God-forsaken clusterfuck no-man’s-land called Youdontbelongmuchofanywhereland (geographically located anywhere west of Harlem Avenue- Chitown peeps, you know of what I speak.)

So you’re dead.  Or at least perceived to be.

And it came to me, courtesy of the Moor and the Jew:  Motherhood is simply another “otherhood.”