Revolution revelations

I've just returned from Tribal Revolution with a new idol and attitude. I learned a lot. I loved a lot! I now mangle sentences and cliches just trying to relay how much I freaking loved it.

Lesson 1. I drove to Chicago (well, past Chicago) by myself for the first time since the early 00s. Now, we have the benefit of GPS, but I was proud of myself nonetheless. I do not want to get stuck in one place.

Idol 1: Rachel Brice Serpentine Scales was my first workshop. First of all, she's adorable and an amazing dancer. Is it fair that she's also hilarious and smart? No, but that's how the world works, sisters, so get up offa that wall. There were a lot of amazing concepts to absorb, from the 90 / 90 principle (practice something 90x a day for 90 days and it's yours forever) and the whole idea of playing your dancing "scales" on a regular basis, to her cool and unusual footwork and drills. Plus, yoga. I miss good yoga instruction. We even took a picture with her afterward! That's my sometimes dance collaborator and hotel roommate Michelle on the right. I am wearing my new beloved Girl Walk // All Day inspired scarf.

Next: Elizabeth Strong. She was teaching Upper Egyptian Fusion, which included geography, history, culture, and duh, dancing. I knew a lot of the dance moves from studying with Joette, but I am ashamed to say I did not know as much of the culture / history / geography as I should. Revelation 1:  it would be good to be a well-informed and articulate speaker, as well as dancer.

New Idol: Donna Mejia. Her class was called Le Funk Araby, which I was attracted to for the promise of new playlists. But there was so much more! It was kind of a hip hop / pop and lock dance style, which means I am quite thankful there were no mirrors in the conference center to reflect my clueless-ness. For example, see this:

There's a long intro, skip to 2:15. I wore my wow face during her entire performance. She stopped time and held it at 5:40. And then sped it up at 7:15. How can a human do this? She can't. She's a goddess.

So, 3 classes in one day was a lot of dancing.... The next day I only had 2 classes.

Idolatress Extraordinaire: Tempest. I've taken a workshop with her before. Heck, I may have already heard some of this before. But it's an excellent reminder. Revelation 2: We are dancing to tell a story. It's not about looking sexy. (Also, Revelation 3: very sage belly advice - that avoiding performance until your belly looks the way you think it should is really just avoiding performance.) We did an exercise where we improvised to music and then told the group what we were imagining. I was kind of annoyed that my brain went into Hollywood pitch mode, "Goddess surveys the destruction of war in Sarajevo, meets cute boy. Scene!" whereas others had more details, or at least said them out loud. But I realized that I had used a similar approach (at least in my own head) when I was choreographing with Julee and Michelle for our trio at the Greek Fest, and that made me feel better.

Then, the athletic workout of Asharah! Seriously, two hours of shimmying on releve'. Ouch. But awesome ouch. I thought I had lost my shimmy, thanks to running and the IT band. But no, you can use your glutes. Thank goodness, as I reputedly have lots of glutes.

There were two shows. Friday night we saw our local tribal school dance (Boheme), which  was cool, and Saturday was the big gala craziness where Donna Mejia removed my brains and scrambled them, Tempest charmed them, and then Rachel Brice messed with the time-space continuum again and everyone was really awesome actually until Unmata killed me with this (again, from Tribal Fest, so different stage and audience, same performance). It's long and loud.

I know there's a lot of links here. But I want to share! It's an awesome world out there.

Lesson 2: Keep in touch. I had meals with some new friends, and some old friends, and it felt natural. No need to stress. Give love, get love, platitudes can be right.

I am sure the next 51 weekends will not compare, so I want to remember these things. I want to practice them. Happy half-year and summer.



I

I have come to kill your kittens, or why awesome is unsustainable.

So, our friend Kelly (she is your friend, too) found kittens in her garage. Adorable kittens with names. Another friend insisted that they must be killed before they reproduce and create a feral kitten colony in Kelly's garage.

And this is where is I leave the MUST! / have to /  everyone-knows ____  religion of high-achievement and being the best you can be. Really? Killed?

Because sometimes the best you can be is = meh. (Not that there is any evidence of that above!!!)

Confession: I'm not always following my spirit guide. I'm not even using my "whole ass" (as opposed to my "half-ass"?). I'm doing the best I can with tools that were available at the time. I am not impressed with this effort either, but sometimes I am surprised by how much more that is than what is frequently "brought to the table".

I guess I'm apologizing. I should have written a book by now. I should have cured some diseases (or at least successfully fought off CANCER FOREVER!!!!). I should have been traveling the whole time and being an enviable elegant classy lady. I should be making a million dollars a year, living with my SOUL MATE! and flying a helicopter or something.

But, I love kittens. Kittens deserve a chance. I understand that feral cats have miserable lives, will overtake the neighborhood, pee on everything. Fluffy tabby kittens. Feral mangy black cats. Is there nothing in between?

So there. I said it. I am not always on. I am not even trying. I just want to be on when it's important, which is nearly a random occurrence. So you try to be the best you can on a regular basis, but you can't always be awesome. And that's okay. You go, kittens. I'm on my way, too.

Wednesday Stream of Consciousness

Venus in Transit. Where did you go? What will you bring us? Such greedy, selfish children. But hey, that's what you get. I hope you bring us love. (I have enough snow globes for now. )

I will try to bring you love, too. Open your heart, I'll make you love me.  It's not that hard, if you just turn the key.

For some stupid reason (two beers) I was just trying to explain to co-workers why the term "soul-mate" gets under my skin. It's a lot of pressure, is most of it. SOUL MATE. Seriously? My soul is a serious thing. It's heavy, and soaking wet. You can't lift it. I can barely stand to carry it around myself. And if I have met my mate, he's kind of mad at me right now for not dropping everything. 

So I'll just keep searching. Because love is everywhere, and that's okay. But you gotta keep your heart open. Because there's a little boy waiting for you finish your shift at the peep show. And then you can skip off into the dusk, away from that old man yelling Italian after you. This is a metaphor for ______________. 

Navel Gazing. Literally.

It's almost Christmas for belly dancers of Kalamazoo (meaning, the Greek Festival is nigh) and I'm starting to fret about bellies. I realize this is ridiculous, but aren't all thoughts that cross the screen?

I wish I could love my belly like Princess Farhana. I'm not quite there. I remember talking with one of the more experienced dancers for an academic paper she was writing and revealing (ha!) that I had never shown my stomach in public as an adult. "Well, it's not required," she said, almost recoiling. And when I look around at my fellow dancers, I don't see any Sport Illustrated swimsuit models with airbrushed abs or anything. I just don't feel confident.

I only know one way to fix that, and it occurred to me today, it still might not work. As a woman, you always think if you can lose enough weight, you will be perfect. But that's not true. Number one, you can never be perfect, which is perfect in itself. And it's not about weight. Is it about love?

So, I have to learn to love my own belly. Damn. I'm still getting some self-tanner before the Greek Festival. Does anyone know what kind to get so I don't turn trying-not-to-be-Irish orange?

Fuck you, cancer

I try not to be angry about things, but this one really punched me in the neck. I'm not being flip - that's where my heart has moved, to my neck. It's a stupid place to keep a heart - the chest is much sturdier and well protected, but I have little control of where my emotions gather and constrict. 

And if you think about it, it's fitting. The neck controls breathing, speech, access between the brain and body. It's narrow. It's hard to hide aging there. Obviously, I am not speaking medically. 

I would like to make things fit together. I would like to be able to argue that it's not fair that good people die of cancer, or that cancer is sneaky and has a motive and intent. But it just is. There are no rules. That doesn't mean I can't raise a fist and shake it uselessly. 

Which is what I did. I thought, YEAH, NPR is finally playing some Beastie Boys bed music. Pump my fist, pull into the driveway. Whatever, middle age demographers, I'll take it. And then the newsy part where Adam Yauch has died of salivary parotid cancer at 47. 

And the unfairness starts now and musing about why the death of someone you don't know should matter. But it does matter, because he made music that I've enjoyed for half of my life. It matters because I'm 42. It matters because I've had cancer in my neck. It matters because we all have necks. 

Rest in peace. I really mean that. The rest of us will have to raise the ruckus. I'm not sure I have 25 years to see what happens. I'm not sure I ever did. Thanks for reminding me. Love.

Status post-status update

I love the word status. It sounds kind of medical, and military, and statistical all at the same time. I just thought I'd fill you in on some projects, before I start some new ones.

Walking toe-heel has fallen by the wayside. It is sad. I tried it for a minute while hustling down the mall to dinner the other night, and caught a glance in a store window, and I just looked uncertain and clueless. I'll try it some more. I still think it's a good idea to do on the way to dance, but I always forget on my rush to class.

And speaking of dance, I am performing tomorrow in a trio at a hafla. The good news is, I'm feeling pretty confident about the choreography / music choice. I would like to be a little more excited about the costuming, but it is a trio and the other two didn't seem as inspired as I was by the Balinese gamelan parts of the music we chose. If someone captures video, I'll post it. I don't know who will do that, however, because even Richard is not attending. I'll be performing to acquaintances and strangers.

The running has been going pretty well, despite the slight frustration of not being able to run today due to weather. (Yes, I know the weather of cold, rain, etc. is not real barrier, but why make it unpleasant when I can do it tomorrow it is also forecast to be cold and raining, but the forecast could be wrong?) The 5k I am running is next Sunday. I hope to finish feeling good. If they weren't so good at timing, I wouldn't even look at my time, but I feel it may be unavoidable.

And my oldest project of gratefulness is going pretty well, also. It really does help put things in perspective. Right now I'm loving the napping husband and cat in my living room, under the gorgeous quilt his aunt made.

So, if we end the story now, it has a happy end. Everyone coo. But I want more! So here we go again. 

Bucket of perfection

Weeks ago, Fashionably Late Sarah posted a blog about her bucket list (it was so long ago, it was about skiing). Oooh, ooh, I'ma gonna write one too, I commented.

Crickets. Because it's almost summer now. (Well, I exaggerate, because that's what I do.)

I have been doodling in my little Moleskine. So, it's not entirely fatal, but I've basically been stalling on stuff because it's not going to fall out of my mouth like a perfect molar. And it's driving me crazy.

In the mean time, I could have either 1) kicked the bucket, without any of these things ever happening, or 2) filled all the buckets, and have to start over again on my list. So I'm just going to spit it out.

Here is a random picture, so this blog doesn't look so boring:

Ha ha, Eccentric Day.

Bucket 1: Attend a black-tie event in a fancy dress. Technically, I have already done this. But I was 28 years old, wearing the cheapest plain black dress I could find, I had a terrible haircut, and it was for the opening of the public library. The pictures reveal that I was actually 58 at the time. I need a re-do.

Bucket 2: Sing opera. Why not? I know this is not a one of those one-day processes and then you can check it off the list. It's a career, based on a talent I probably don't possess. In fact, I probably should have started in high school. But maybe I won't be able to dance someday and I'll need a new hobby and then I can take voice lessons.

Bucket 3: Travel. On the short list: Beirut. Australia, in general. A Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg tour. Japan. Egypt. Switzerland. Turkey and Morocco. Spain. Venezuela. Portland, Oregon. I am renewing my passport next week, obviously.

Bucket 4: Ride a horse. Without screaming.

Bucket 5: See a cabaret show in Paris. Whatever is hot. It also means I get to go back to Paris, yay!

Bucket 6: Believe in love. I would say "again", but I don't think I ever did.

Bucket 7: A minor scandal. I'm probably already a little scandalous (the belly-dancing health care improvement coordinator, oh my!) but maybe a little something where, at the black-tie party for the Moulin Rouge, it is discovered that I rode a horse through the Netherlands with John Cusack in a showgirl headdress or something. I guess you guys could make something up for me.

Pretty shallow bucket list, eh? Well, you can drown in an inch of water.