Category Archives: adulting
Whine and Jeez Party
2016 has been, in many ways, an unrepentant bastard of a year.
Basically all of the defining cultural icons of D’s generation have shuffled off this mortal coil, along with people like the gent who wrote Watership Down and the lady who proved that Dark Matter is a thing(1).
- Someone on the facebarge suggested that this is all evidence that David Bowie has created an alternate universe and is selectively populating it. I’m down with that.
Burning Man was even more contentious than usual (though not in my little circle of super-cool Burners: we try to actually talk rationally about the problems in Burning Man and find ways to solve them, instead of exploding in anger).
Kentucky installed a governor who is the living personification of everything people from Connecticut imagine to be true about people from Kentucky, but don’t generally say because we’re busy reminding ourselves that it’s wrong to think that way(2).
- It’s human nature, so feeling guilty about it is pointless, but it’s still wrong. Guilt accomplishes nothing; action, on the other hand, moves mountains. Just like it’s human nature to punch your little brother in the arm and take his candy, but you learn to overcome that impulse (even though sometimes as an adult you still want to punch people people and take their
candyself-righteous bombast). The process of becoming a good human is often the process of learning to master the desire to be a giant Chrome Dickface(3). It’s a process in which mountains are moved one pebble at a time. - Chrome Dickface, in turn, is a kind of ur-asshat character that Robert and I made up by accident one time when we were chatting on the Internets and Chrome was being a dickface. Chrome Dickface has now come to stand in for basically all forms of ass-hattery in my world.
People got their knickers in a twist over whether transfolk should be allowed to pee in peace. People couldn’t understand what it meant when other people said Black Lives Matter. People did the exact opposite of what Jesus/the Buddha/Muhammad/Ghandi/Mother Theresa/etc would do, and often did it in the name of G-d.
To them I say:
And let’s not even get started on the whole US general election fiasco (4) and Brexit(5).
- Less the results (bad enough) than the general ass-hattery on all sides leading up to Election Day (demoralizing).
- I can’t help seeing seeing these as related cultural phenomena; two expressions of the same simmering discontent, one in each side of the pond: Chrome Asshat Victorious.
This isn’t to say that good things didn’t happen. They certainly did for me (Summer intensives! Triple turns! BW’s class! Marco Island! Commuting manatees!)
But the Zeitgeist, frankly, is probably best characterized as a destructive toddler who occasionally offers a bite of his candy bar to individual people whilst still generally creating wrack and ruin.
As such, I’m thinking about hosting a Whine and Jeez party, maybe after the New Year commences, to see off this dumpster fire of a 2016. The idea is that it will be a place to safely whinge about the Disasters of 2016, say “Jeez, I’m glad that’s over,” and commiserate whilst snacking.
I’m still on the fence about it, because I’m afraid to host parties because I don’t think anyone will come. Deep within, I’m still the wildly unpopular kid who cannot believe that anyone actually likes him.
But I rather like the idea, anyway.
So that’s my idea for sending off 2016.
The Badger Cabinet Problem, Episode 01: Possible Solutions?
D installed new cabinets in our kitchen some while before I arrived in his life.
He bought them as a lot, rather than having them custom-built, because he’s the frugal kind of person who does that kind of thing and makes it work (I love that about him).
Anyway, I think our cabinets were originally intended for a more typically-sized and -laid out kitchen. This led to one significant problem: a deep, inaccessible well in a corner where two cabinets should connect, but don’t.
Well, there’s your problem. (Also, full disclosure: the weird, sugary pink lemonade mix belongs to D, but I am the one who drinks the nasty instant coffee.)
I’ve dealt with the problem, thus far, by shoving things I rarely use into that deep, dark well.
This is all (ahem) well and good until I actually do need to use them. Then, it’s a giant pain in the neck to pull everything out of the near end of the cabinet so I can fish around in the far end, hoping against hope that nothing with big, sharp teeth is hiding in there(1).
- Okay, it’s fairly unlikely that there are, say, badgers living in my cabinets, but there’s still something I instinctively dislike about shoving my arms into dark hidey-holes.
Yarrr. Here be badgers.
On the other hand, if anyone needs a secure place to stash the One Ring for a few decades, my Badger Cabinet is probably a good choice.
Anyway, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with a better way to manage the Badger Cabinet, and I think I’ve finally figured something out thanks to a really expensive sliding spice rack.
Denis would almost certainly murder me if I spent nearly $80 on a sliding spice rack right now, or even $45 on the single-tier version that holds “large containers,” but he almost certainly(2) won’t murder me if I buy some appropriately-sized plastic or metal bins and some of those stick-on felt slidey feet, as long as I don’t spend too much money.
- I say almost certainly because D doesn’t understand my desire to organize things into easily-removable units. He has no problem with removing 15,000,000 individual small items in order to access one large item, probably because HE NEVER PUTS ANYTHING AWAY, EVER(3). /me stomps off in a huff
- Seriously, this is true. You should see his work bench
But he makes up for it by his many other excellent qualities, like knowing how to do plumbing and already owning a Fancy Stand Mixer so I didn’t have to buy one ^.-
One set of bins could go up front, so rather than removing a bazillion individual bottles of miscellaneous oils, tins of baking powder, bags of baking soda (I have discovered that you can buy baking soda, which I use both for cooking and cleaning, in 2-pound bags), I’ll just have to remove a few bins.
The slidey feet will make it easier to get the the bins in the back out.
Et violà—no more sticking my poor, naked arms into potentially badger-infested dark holes.
I will have to measure our fancy stand mixer to confirm this, but it might even be possible to move the Fancy Stand Mixer (which currently lives atop the fridge, where I can’t reach it for fear of dropping it on my own head; that thing is heavy) to the cabinet, where I could potentially wrestle it free without risking cranial injury. Then I could actually use said Fancy Stand Mixer.
That or else I could move the Fancy Stand Mixer to the spot on the countertop where the SodaStream and several cookbooks currently live, then move those guys into the cabinet above or onto the top of the fridge.
I could even move all the random junk that lives in the large cabinet under the flatware drawer up into the Badger Cabinet and then use it to store things like the bread machine (also currently inaccessible due to its precarious perch atop the fridge) and possibly some of my loaf pans, cupcake molds, and so forth.
There’s also a Badger Cabinet on my stove. Right now, it holds all the muffin tins, loaf pans, and so forth, but they’re not very well organized. (Okay, really, they’re barely organized at all.) I have some plans to improve that situation; the challenge is finding the right parts. I’m thinking a combination of slim tension rods and some kind of heat-resistant shelf could work.
So there we have it. A possible solution for the Problem of the Badger Cabinet. I’ll check back in once I try implementing one of my possible solutions.
Work Song: Adjustments
So, I’m writing this at 3 AM, but scheduling it for Actual Morning.
We’ve had a late casting change for Work Song. My other boy wound up with a bounty of work projects, and he’s swamped. I’m fine with that; in the gig economy that feeds so many artists, you have to strike while the iron is hot. I love his work, so I’m excited about seeing more of it down the line, even though it means losing him for this piece.
Last night I asked GM, a fellow aerialist, if he’d like to try jumping in. His formal training in dance is pretty minimal, but he’s a very good mover. I think he’ll be able to roll with it. AM, AS, and I will be able to coach him on technique.
Interestingly, bringing in a less-experienced dancer has helped me to streamline my choreography a bit. I had about five different ideas for the third phrase, and only one of them is something I’d feel confident handing to someone with limited dance vocabulary.
It’s good to work with limitations. They make decision-making easier and help to shape the finished work. Just as the stone tells the sculptor what figure lies within, sometimes the dancers shape the vision of the choreographer.
We should be able to start rehearsing next week or the first week of January.
Ultimately, this piece is only about 3.5 minutes long. The rehearsal process will be less about learning the choreography, which shouldn’t be too hard, and more about making it really sing. There’s a lot of partnering in this piece, though it’s largely not of the classical-ballet bent. GM takes acro with me, so I suspect he can handle it. Timing and musicality are the open questions, one everyone learns the choreography.
I guess, really, this is my first professional project as a choreographer-director. I’m learning on the fly how to cast dancers, schedule rehearsals, teach choreography to four busy performers with very different backgrounds, make costuming decisions, and so on and so forth.
Having done it once, I feel like doing it again won’t be so difficult. The biggest ongoing challenge will be finding rehearsal spaces on a budget of $Zip.ZilchNada. The nice part in this case is that rehearsal space is built in. I teach with AS, and this performance is part of the Instructors’ Showcase, so we will be rehearsing at the studio.
Finding dancers isn’t incredibly difficult. I’ve managed to connect with a decent handful of adult ballet students who want to perform, including a fairly advanced core group. My aerials family is made up mostly of very game performers, a few of whom have reasonable dance training.
I might have to learn how to do fundraising stuff. The internets should make that easier.
I’m pretty excited about all of this. The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the cat-herding involved in scheduling rehearsals 😛
That might not be as bad as it could be, though, because we’re all attached to the aerials studio, and we all spend a lot of time there.
More to come. It’s weird how far 2016 (the Year of the Dumpster Fire) has taken me as a dancer. No matter what I’ve said, one year ago I wouldn’t have predicted that I’d be staging a piece (for four dancers!) with so much confidence.
Gives me something to look forward to in 2017 (which, hilariously, is the Year of the Cock).
The Evolved Self Eats Crappy Food (Sometimes)
I started to read this article by Benjamin Hardy on why most people will never be successful.
It caught my attention by leading with a negation of the equation “money=success”—a negation with which I concur.
A few lines further on, though, this bit rolled in:
To be successful, you can’t continue being with low frequency people for long periods of time.
You can’t continue eating crappy food, regardless of your spouse’s or colleague’s food choices.
Your days must consistency(sic) be spent on high quality activities.
To which I say:
Shamelessly (and successfully) stolen from Know Your Meme.
The article in question goes on to prescribe a reasonably-okay definition of success centered on the verb balancing, but by then, Hardy had lost my buy-in.
Why?
Because success doesn’t necessarily mean never eating crappy food. Nor does it necessarily mean completely eschewing “low-frequency people” (whatever that means). Part of success is being able to roll with the punches (or, as autocorrupt appropriately suggests, “the lunches”)—to accept without judgment that the occasional bag of Doritos can be good for the soul, and that humility is a critical faculty.
Added a “More” tag because holy philibusters this is long.
A Case for Un-Educational Viewing
I have occasionally been one of those annoying idiots who think to themselves, “Should I ever have kids, they’ll only rarely watch TV, and when they do it will be educational.”
This morning, I realized that I’ve been a giant (if mostly internal) hypocrite about part of that equation.
It’s probably true that any child of mine wouldn’t watch much television. I didn’t as a kid. This was, of course, partly because we had strict rules about it at Mom’s house.
In reality, though, I didn’t watch much TV because I was usually either outside riding horses or bikes, skating, skiing, hiking, climbing, and just plain running around or was off at ballet class or gymnastics. When I wasn’t doing those things, I was usually reading, writing, or painting. Even when I did watch TV, I was usually drawing at the same time.
In short, I would take sitting around and watching TV as a sort of last-choice option when I didn’t have anything better to do. I’m not really great at enjoying passive entertainment (unless it involves watching horses, dance, or figure skating).
I like going out and doing things and running around, and I’ve noticed that many kids tend to like doing doing those things as well. It’s not that screen time is inherently evil. Rather, there’s a strong probability that any child growing up with me as a parent wouldn’t watch much TV purely because, in short, who’s got time for that?
The world is too full of trees that need to be climbed; of knees that want skinning.
So that’s not the hypocritical bit. It’s the “educational” part that I rather ought to rethink.
Here’s the thing: as kids, my sister and I had a fairly limited selection of videos, and literally none of them were specifically “educational”—and yet I learned a great deal from them.
We subverted Mom’s rules by watching hours and hours of movies at Dad’s, though we also read books aloud every weekend, went to parks and museums, and listened and danced to 20th-century jazz greats like Thelonius Monk and Charles Mingus. There were a few wildly inappropriate choices—I vaguely remember some version of Samson & Delilah that was terrible, had terrible music, and struck me as inappropriate, which is saying something, given that my parents pretty clearly regarded kids as Adults, Only Smaller®(1).
- Conversely, I often feel that adults are basically just Kids, Only Bigger®. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective. At any rate, I still have no idea what I’m doing as a so-called adult.
To be fair, most of these were seminal 80s coming-of-age movies that Dad bought because he liked them. We had The Explorers(2), The Goonies, The Labyrinth, and The Never-Ending Story(3) at our fingertips and we watched at least one of them just about every weekend(4).
- Curiously, I didn’t like The Explorers the first time I saw it. I think I might have just been too young to “get” it. I was about five, and very into The Rules, and very annoyed at the characters for flouting The Rules and risking Getting In Trouble. Later, it became one of my favorites, except [SPOILER ALERT!] for the icky kissing part. Because ew, gross, kissing, amirite?
- I eventually developed a crush on a character in every last one of these movies: Wolfgang, Data, Jared (because David Bowie, ffs), and Atreyu. Much later I decided that Sarah was pretty cute, too. It’s kind of weird to realize that my penchants for Nerdy Dudes With Glasses and Tough-Pretty Boys In Leather goes back that far, though.
- …Usually while gorging ourselves on soda, chips, and (in my case) gummy worms. Oh, yeah, and ice cream. At Dad’s place, we were all bachelors.
The Explorers taught me (among other things) that persistence and ingenuity can accomplish almost anything. It also taught me one of the greatest Dad Jokes known to humankind, the infamous “Rolls-Canardly Gambit.” I have been known to use this joke on bike rides.
The Goonies (and an entire childhood as The Weird Kid) taught me that it’s okay to be weird, and that sometimes it takes a weirdo who refuses to accept “reality” to solve big problems. Like, you know, saving the town from landgrabbing golf-course mavens and relocating everyone to “Murder City” (it takes a child to save a village?).
The Labyrinth taught me that imagination and reason aren’t enemies; that they can overcome adversity; and that mistakes are no reason to give up.
The Never-Ending Story taught me to believe with conviction in the unbelievable, and never to allow the outside world to crush my imagination. It also spoke to the power of grit in the face of hardship. It taught me that when your heart friend sinks in the Swamps of Sadness, you GTFup and keep pushing forward in his memory.
On the outside, it also kind of taught me that first impressions aren’t everything, since Bastian struck me as an insufferable, whiny git at the outset but grew on me. I think that’s what’s supposed to happen, though, as he learns to believe in himself.
We also watched anime, from which I learned to value stoicism, teamwork, protocol, and even moar grit. And teamwork. And protocol. Because Japan. Also Giant Robots.
Nature shows, red in tooth and claw, imparted important lessons about the distinction between the acts of predation that animals undertake to survive and cruelty, which is largely a human invention—not to mention the fact that suffering and death are parts of life.
Even when I was foru years old, nobody shielded my eyes when the gazelle or the bunny got whacked. I think that probably made me a better person than I might have been. Life is hard, and you have to practice looking at hard things if you’re going to face up to them someday.
We even watched some plain old cartoons, like Thundercats and (for some reason) old reruns of Thundarr the Barbarian(4). They were pretty good at imparting lessons about loyalty, kindness, empathy, and integrity (between awesome battle scenes).
- I’m not sure how this happened. This show was before my time, and yet there it was at some weird hour. Was there a programming exec secretly crushing on Ookla the Mok? Was someone magically beaming it straight into our TV? Was there a timewarp inside our TV (I favor this explanation; the TV was old)? Who knows?
There are any number of intentionally-educational shows that attempt to teach the same lessons I learned from a bunch of 80s fantasy-adventure flicks. Often, they fail: they’re trying so hard that they come across as preachy or even a bit smug. They’re like shredded wheat(5)—good for you (if you don’t have celiac), but tasteless and hard to swallow.
- I keep dying of laughter because Autocorrupt insists that this phrase should be “shredded what,” and I always hear it in my head like, “Shredded whaaaaaaat?”
You know what you get, though, if you iron your shredded wheat into crunchy squares and add a little oil (FAT! NOOOOO!) and salt (OMG! SODIUM! DEADLY!)?
You get Triscuits, which are freaking delicious (and still good for you: I like to eat them for breakfast).
So if I ever have kids, I’m not going to make them only ever watch the video equivalent of Shredded Wheat. In going to introduce them to Triscuits in the form of the 80s movies my Dad showed me, along with 90s classics like … um, are there any? I apparently missed the 90s entirely (sounds about right; I was too busy riding horses, dancing, abs playing the violin). I think The Lion King might make the cut. And, of course, they will know the joys of Harry Potter in both the written and the visual form. And eventually Monty Python, if I play my cards right.
And because it was one of the greatest gifts our Dad gave us, I will read them The Wind in the Willows, The Hobbit, andThe Lord of the Rings.
Probably none of these things are, in the strictest sense, “educational.”
But what a poor world this would be if all we ever ate was shredded wheat(6).
- Say it with me: “Shredded whaaaaaaaaaaat?!”
A Break, Maybe?
I’ve started and scuttled four or five posts this week, and just now figured out that maybe (GASP!) I should take a brief break from the ol’ blorg. I’m not really doing social media right now, either.
Now is a good time—this week has been jammed with rehearsals and, for me, last-minute learning of choreography for a piece that lost a dancer to illness (I mean, she didn’t die, she’s just out sick; fortunately, this dance is neither long nor difficult, so picking it up in two days has been okay). Next week is the last week of Dance Team for the semester, so we’re doing an improv workshop and team banquet on Friday. I also need to check in with my own wee group of dancers and schedule rehearsals for “Work Song.”
Class updates: Thursday class is on hiatus until after Nutcracker (because BW is Dancing All The Things), Wednesday Class has a sub (who I like very much) until the end of the month because Killer B is also Nutcrackering (IIRC, on Key West!). Saturday class continues with excellent substitutes. I’m going back (finally) tomorrow, though I may just do barre. I chose to call it a day after barre on Wednesday this week, and I think that was the right decision, and while I’m feeling more like normal now, JP’s teaching, and I may or may not have it in me to do his full class. Sunday, I’m back to teaching.
I’ve put Monday class and all Tuesday classes on hold until I get my waterfowls in a linear array, because it’s the only one I feel the least bit flexible about. I’ve been having a rough time getting caught up on stuff that got behind behind at home while I was sick (in other words, literally everything). That needs to get sorted quickly, and now (before we jump into the fray of “Work Song” rehearsals, Spring Dance Team, and Even Moar ballet) seems like a good time.
So I am pretty sure I’ll be taking a one-week break, and I might make it two.
But I am, as always, Not Dead Yet.
And for all all those celebrating all the various holidays:
So paper. Many joy. Wow
It’s Not Just About Conversation Starters
In real life, among strangers, I am shy in a way that’s remarkably specific and to a degree that can fairly be described as crippling.
I’m fine on a podium. Fine in a classroom discussion (unless the instructor utters the dreaded words, “Divide yourselves into groups…”). Fine if I’m with someone I trust who will let me stay close. Fine in a ballet class, because the protocols are generally pretty clear.
But usually I’m not fine.
It took me a long, long time to really understand the problem—in fact, it was only in the past year or two that I was finally able to pick the most important thread out of the pattern; the thread that forms the warp(1) of the whole thing.
- In weaving, the warp is the straight thread that forms the matrix around which the fancy stuff is woven. It may may not look like much, but without the warp, a beautiful loom-woven rug is nothing but a ball of yarn. BTW, there’s an easy way to remember which is which: the word weft(2) relates to the verb “to weave”—and if you think about the action of weaving (whether weaving fabric or weaving through obstacles), it will help you know which word is which. The weft is woven around the warp.
- Some weavers use the word woof in place of weft. I forget exactly where I first learned basic weaving (it was a school thing; we made hand-looms), but the woman who taught us used woof. I use both, interchangeably. A different bent on the same mnemonic applies: weave > woven > woof instead of weave > weft.
The warp of the problem, for me, is that I can’t read (or even see) the subtle signals that say, “Hey, it’s cool if you join me/us” or “Stay back, weirdo.”
Being as I’m a fairly benign weirdo who doesn’t like to go where he’s not wanted, I have no idea who to approach—and I also have terrible feelings associated with the times that, as a kid, I tried anyway and found myself harshly rejected.
I’m okay if someone approaches me, but if I’m put in the usual free-for-all kind of situation, I’m completely screwed, and I tend to quietly panic.
I doubt this helps me seem approachable.
I don’t know if there’s any complete solution for for this.
I have grown marginally less anxious about approaching individual strangers. Most adults aren’t obnoxious jerks who will openly heap scorn on beleaguered randos who approach them, and I think I’m pretty okay at picking up on the signals that say, “Okay, it was nice meeting you, I’m out.”
Groups are harder, because I can’t tell when a group is open and when it’s closed. To complicate matters, I live in a place where people feel that is impolite to say so directly, or indeed to say anything directly …but in which the conventions surrounding polite, indirect communication are quite different from those I learned growing up. Argh.
So I dread the “divide yourselves into groups” moment with singular intensity.
I’m not sure what to do about all this, exactly—but at least it sheds some light on why all the. “quirky conversation starters” articles out there seem, from my perspective, to miss the point (though I’m sure they’re a big help to a lot of people).
It’s not that I can’t think of something to talk about. Everyone loves ballet, dinosaurs, entomology, and etymology, right? RIGHT?! ;D
It’s that I can’t figure out who is and isn’t open to talking to me (unless, like the guy at the last party I went to, they make the first move).
~
I’m writing this mostly for myself. Writing about these things helps me think about them. Maybe if I can start thinking concretely about this problem, I can start to develop a strategy; something that will help.
As a dancer, of course, I’m backing flag semaphor. (FOTO:Fortepan. Hungary, via Wikimedia Commons.)
I don’t think this will will ever be easy or natural for me—but that’s okay. If I can figure it out just just enough to get by, that will be, as they they say, gravy.
10/10: Do Recommend
This is evidently what happens when I haven’t been able to dance—or do much of anything else—for more than a week, but I’m finally feeling well enough to do more than play “match 3” games on my tablet and sleep.
I read.
(Okay, I read anyway; I’m a compulsive reader.)
Specifically, I fall down rabbit holes all over the Internet, then find myself googling related or semi-related things and falling down, I don’t know, jackrabbit holes. The game is afoot, but I’m cozily tucked up in its living room.
Anyway, I just happened upon a Ravishly post titled, “I’m Not A Stay-At-Home-Mom, I’m A Queer Housewife, Thanks.”
I was going to write something about the same basic topic (except, like, I tend to call myself a “homemaker,” because people still be like, “Wait, you’re a boy, you can’t use ‘-wife'” and arguing about it is tiresome, and for all that my cat thinks he’s human and would happily ride around in a baby carrier all day if I got him one, I don’t have kids), but, y’all, Ravishly’s Katherine DM Clover has pretty much covered it (without even invoking the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which has depressingly little to do with Star Trek: The Next Generation).
So, in short, since this is a dance blog and you may not be super-interested in sociology, I’m not gonna be like OMG GO READ THIS AND THEN WRITE ME A 500-WORD ESSAY AND I EXPECT YOU TO TURN IT IN BY MONDAY, I’m putting it out here, because you might be interested in dance and sociology, and even in the power of language, so why not?
I also enjoyed a post about fancy food, to which I can say: yes, for the love of all that is holy, I’m having a hard enough time mastering Homemaking 101 without delving into the arcane waters of Organic Quinoa Coffee Flour and Martha Stuart Everything (and also, while I’m at it, why is almost everything they print in Real Simple actually really freaking complicated?).
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Organic Quinoa Coffee Flour is inherently bad — just, like, baby steps, y’all. Baby steps. At least for me. Because I was raised by cats.
Um, I’ll be over here, trying to devise yet another system to keep from getting behing on the household book-keeping.
Here Is Fine, Redux
I’ve been reflecting a lot on some of the themes from Monday’s post — the need to step back from a dualistic world-view that makes me want to do the adulting equivalent of storming off the playground because the toys I want aren’t there right now, or whatever. I have more thoughts on that, but I’m not feeling very serious today(1)
- Possibly in part because I may finally have reached “laugh so you don’t don’t cry” territory; certainly because this latest fire abt invasion is veering into Theater of the Absurd territory; I feel like a walking, talking … okay, shuffling, croaking Monty Python sketch.
My fire ants are still in residence, but I’m seeing seeing my doctor tomorrow.
I’m really glad that I decided to get off the fence and make an appointment, because over the past couple of days, a detachment of fire ant scouts has established a beachhead in the conjunctiva of my right eye 😐
(Maybe -___o is more appropriate?)
Medically speaking, this isn’t as horrible as it sounds—it’s just run-of-the-mill “pink eye,” which I assume is related to the Invasion of the Fire Ants but might just be a random dose of Immune System Trollery.
In short, it’s itchy and weird-looking, but not dangerous.
The main problem is that “pink eye” in general is often highly contagious, and thus essentially good cause to go about wearing a placard that reads “LEPER UNCLEAN!”(2) and ringing a warning bell.
- Ironically, actual leprosy, properly known as Hansen’s disease, really isn’t very contagious.
In other words, you can’t go anywhere or do anything when you have “pink eye.”
Not that I’m in any shape to go anywhere or do anything in the world (though I finally discovered that I can actually sleep if I take, like, four different decongestants and a cough suppressant before bed, and then keep the cough suppressant handy for the inevitable 4 AM coughing fit, so I’m feeling marginally perkier today).
Anyway, I seem to have wandered (for now!) past the Bitterness and Recriminations phase of being ill and found my way to the Jovial Self-Deprecation phase, so that seems like progress.
Back to the doc tomorrow to (one hopes) roust the dreaded Fire Ants both from my respiratory tract (which they’ve petitioned to rename Solenopsia) and from Fort Pinkeye for good.
Here’s hoping they won’t be back for Round 3,because ballet blogs should be about ballet, not about the only thing that can turn a dancer into a whinging heap of goo.
Until then, I will try to remember the motto of my poor, besieged Inner Buddhist, who is trying very hard not to let the rest of my Inner Populace run away with their whinginess:
Here Is Fine.
Just Monday: A Meditation
I wrote on Friday about gratitude, and also about the company of fire ants living in my throat.
I was in denial. I knew that the fire ants (which had first made themselves known on Tuesday) were probably the opening salvo in the battle with another respiratory infection, but for various reasons, I didn’t want them to be.
I didn’t want to acknowledge the nature of my fire ants because, frankly, it’s frustrating to be sick.
Health-wise, for me, this has been a phenomenally good year. I have gone months at a stretch without getting seriously ill. I have recovered from things more quickly than I expected to. I have actually had a couple minor viral illnesses that didn’t lead to secondary infections.
When I put it like that, though, it feels like a pretty low bar.
I’m a bit of an anomaly — or, rather, I’m something that America’s approach to health, which remains firmly rooted in Puritan ideals, doesn’t know how to place. On paper, when I’m not ill, I seem pretty robust. Tons of exercise, good basic diet, excellent vital stats. Allergies and asthma, of course, but I live in the Ohio River Valley. I have even mostly learned to listen to my body, my wonderful and obedient body that will allow me to push it ludicrously, when it asks me to rest.
According to the American ideal, I should be and stay as healthy as a horse (which, frankly, is an idiom that can’t have been coined by a horse person). But I’m not, and I don’t.
I am still someone whose immune system, for reasons nobody understands, just isn’t that great. I catch things that are, for other people, innocent little colds, and they go rogue. I am terribly prone to secondary infections. I get sicker than other people and I take longer to get well.
It’s worse when I don’t take care of myself or acknowledge the limitations that circumscribe my choices (I can ride my bike hard in cold weather if I’m willing to pay the price in terms of respiratory problems that inevitably lead to infections; I can adopt a schedule that approaches typical American busy-ness if I’m willing to acknowledge that my immune system will respond by going on strike).
But it is what it is even when I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself. This is my reality.
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This weekend I talked with Denis about some of the ways in which I’ve historically felt conflicted about my body, and how I’m beginning to understand that I need to stop looking at it from a dualistic, one-or-the-other point of view.
Maybe the same can be said for my health.
Maybe it’s time to stop thinking of it as either-or, and start thinking of it as and.
Like, maybe I should take care of myself as best I can, enjoy the periods in which I stay well for an unusually long time, and gracefully accept that I’m still going to be prone to infections that will, from time to time, knock me flat for longer than they should. Maybe I should try to accept that one does not invalidate the other, and to be kinder to myself about all of this.
As a dancer, it’s hard to accept any of these conditions. As a dancer, and as a human being, I find it easy to accept my gifts and hard to accept my handicaps.
One set of conditions propels me forward; another holds me back. I am inclined to forget that this trade-off is universal — everyone’s tally sheet has entries in both columns. Maybe my peers in the studio don’t have immunity challenges that can keep them from dancing for weeks at a time, but they have other struggles. Maybe those struggles don’t affect their lives as dancers, but they hit somewhere.
I feel like there’s a profound lesson in not clinging to phenomena here — both in the sense of not clinging to the phenomena of health or illness and in that of not clinging to the phenomenon of dancerness. I’m not sure how how to put those thoughts into words, though.
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We live in a culture that treats illness like it treats fatness — which is to say, as a question of moral failure.
People who rarely or never get sick tend to announce that status with a kind of prideful tone that suggests that they are somehow morally superior, even if in the same breath they say, “…and i don’t do any of that health-nut BS,” and scarf down a Whopper and half a bag of Cheetos. People like me, on the other hand, and regarded with a degree of suspicion, even (maybe especially) if our lifestyles should produce unequivocal good health.
When I find myself forced to explain that I get sick easily and that my immune system just kinda doesn’t do its job very well, I almost always receive a bunch of advice about what I “should” be doing to fix it. I get get tired of explaining that I’ve basically tried everything; that, yes, it’s worse when I don’t take care of myself but it’s never going to be normal; and that much of what people suggest is complete crap founded in pseudoscience (I do try to be polite about that).
I get tired of explaining why n=1 makes a great basis for an anecdote but a poor basis for an axiom. I get tired of re-asserting the fact that neither goji berries nor a strict Mediterranean diet will “cure” me.
I get tired of the implicit and usually-unexamined assumption that anyone who isn’t a shining paragon of good health probably just just isn’t trying hard enough, or isn’t trying the right things. Sometimes that may be true, but often it’s not.
My crappy immune system isn’t the result of poor habits or poor morals. It’s the result of poor genes — with the caveat that the same set of genes that saddled me with this burden has also given me the gifts of talent, strength, flexibility, coordination, off-the-chart spatial processing, a powerful musical sense, and the intelligence to use all of those things to make art.
This, by the way, keeps me humble.
I know that my crappy immune system is not a question of effort or a measure of moral turpitude. By that same stick, I can see that the things that make a good dancer are, likewise, random gifts. Morally speaking, they do not make me a better person. In fact, morally speaking, they have sometimes made me a worse person — a less compassionate person; a more self-aggrandizing person. Thank G-d for crappy immune systems and for ballet, both of which are really good at teaching us humility when nothing else will.
I try to make the most I can out of the gifts I’ve been given, but sometimes the things in the “debit” column get in the way. I suspect this is true for most of us.
Most of us are just muddling by ,trying to do the best we can, fairly often saying to ourselves about about many things, “There, but for the grace of G-d, go I…”
On which note, I’ll close, because I’m hoping to go back to sleep for an hour or two.
I’m still working my way through this particular thicket, though. More later, perhaps.
danseur ignoble 