One of the things I am trying to do with my life, assuming my life is a canvas for art, is to be authentic. What that means from day to day varies, but it mostly has to do with ridding myself of the desire to compare myself with other people and just be myself.
I don't know if that sounds easy or not, but who I am is a constant work-in-progress. I set lofty goals for myself. I work hard. I am my own worst critic. In spite of that, I need to be more real.
When I get into trouble is when I try to be what my perception of a societal role should be. When I try to be what I think a "good wife" or "good mother" or even "good artist", I fall into a trap of trying to be what is expected, rather than taking the time to think about what that means to me. Does it matter if I put honest effort into something that ultimately is not natural to who I am? Doing that just leads to feeling like a failure.
Example: When I was Little A's mom, I did a lot of things with her. I wanted to be a good mom, because I loved her and also because some measure of my self image was wrapped up in that. I kept beating myself up because some of the things about parenting I wasn't so jazzed about, and I felt like if I was a "good mom" I would naturally enjoy them more. For instance, I dreaded bath time. Not mine, hers. I felt like if I was a good mom I would enjoy bathing my child. I would laugh through getting splashed with soapy water, I would be good-natured about getting that slippery kiddo to wash her hair. Tony was way better at it. Frankly I didn't enjoy it.
I also, for some odd reason. didn't enjoy playing on the floor as much as Tony did. Little A always wanted me to play with toys with her on the floor, and I did it, but I also had to make dinner and do laundry, so those moments often felt conflicted for me.
What I did enjoy were the afternoon tea times we had together, when we would have snacks and listen to music (often Mozart), and we would do drawings and color together. We had lovely closeness in those moments. Is that somehow less valuable than playing with a commercially ubiquitous plastic doll with her? I don't think so.
But when we had to reunify Little A with her biological mother, the first thing I noticed was that she played with Little A on the floor a lot. And even though I had my shit together in a lot of ways, I felt some harsh self-judgment feelings. I was glad for Little A that she would get that play time like she wanted, but after she was gone, I missed those more contemplative moments making fridge art the most. I missed most what came most naturally to me.
Little kids and friends and artistic audiences can smell it when you are not giving full commitment to the moment. I got up and read some of my poetry at an open mic recently (my first attempt at such a thing). I was nervous and unable to fully commit and I think as a result I got a tepid response. I had also chosen to read some stuff that I thought would have a broader appeal and be less about my inner persona. In retrospect, I think that was a wrong choice, based on what I thought a "good poet" would read. I made my selections based on what I thought were good representations of my work, instead of pieces that revealed something visceral and real about myself. If (or when) I decide to do it again, I need to not be afraid to show what is real about me. I need to bleed a bit, be a bit more raw. It is scary to do, because what if is isn't accepted? What if it makes people laugh?
But for me to be able to be satisfied with it after the fact, I need to experience being real with other people watching, even if that means I am not understood by everyone. Playing it safe will do me no good. Doing what others expect or worse, what I think others expect, will only prove that I can be superficial and concerned with the opinions of others. I don't even think that kind of art would ultimately resonate with anyone. It might be pretty, but ultimately forgettable.
I don't want to be forgettable. I don't want to blend in. I don't want to be "whatever is in these quotation marks", but the real thing. Even though it takes more energy and involves more risks, I want to be, as much as possible, more real.
Dreamed this morning after I went back to bed with a gnarly red wine hangover. All kinds of mixed up things, including living in a house with lots of family, and someone had brought home a young dragon, who had set up a nest in the living room. The room always hung with smoke from its breathing, and I wasn't sure I could live in a house like that much longer.
Little A was in my dream again, just being there in her proper place, misbehaving and just being a kid. It is always so sad to wake up and have that not be true. I miss her.
I also dreamed that I went to a large specialty fish market, and a friend of mine who worked there had set aside a package for me with 4 different sizes of shrimp, from tiny bay shrimp to large Vietnamese Tiger prawns as big as a man's hand. I remember thinking it was thoughtful of him to pick them for me. I had to stand in a long line to pay for them.
When I woke up my headache and nausea were much better, but I had lost much of my day to paying for last night's frivolity. Oh well, that is pretty rare for me. Have to have some fun sometime.
Ok, this one was a doozy and I am going to struggle to capture it all before it fizzles out in my brain.
I was in a house, ostensibly newly living there with a huge family. It was clear from the way the front door was boarded up that we were all squatters in an abandoned area. There was barely room for the people, but there were also animals in the house. Not just dogs and cats (my dachshund Ember was also with me) but farm animals like goats and chickens that moved from the backard to the living room. The goats were female and being used for milk. Much talk was being spent on getting the guy down the street with a male goat to come over and breed his goat with ours.
There was music being made and a general atmosphere of badly funded but bohemian and somewhat nomadic existence. I was new to it and it was a bit uncomfortable for me to have no privacy and no real possessions of my own. The men sized me up for my sexual potential, but rarely talked to me.
Some younger man noticed my elk antler Inanna necklace (I own this in real life) and was talking to me about it. It was the first real conversation I had had in a while, and I ended up making out with him. Even so, it didn't really feel like a real connection, just better than most.
I spent some time in the dream taking care of a baby girl that one of the other women had. I was feeding her some mango pudding, and it was getting all over her face in a sticky mess.
Basically, it was just me and my dog in this chaotic atmosphere with goats and babies and messy overcrowded conditions. So freaking strange.
Good friends of mine know that I have an irrational and angry response to the music of the Beach Boys. For some reason, the sound of their music grates on my nerves to the point of making me desire to commit acts of senseless violence. I am only sort of kidding.
This time of year, I have been subjected to the song “Little Saint Nick” more times than could be considered tolerable. My eyelid is twitching and I feel like breaking stuff.
I have had a limited range of interest in Christmas music in general this year. It is really annoying me for some reason, probably because I have been trying to avoid it since before Halloween. Some of the classics are great, but the newer stuff is adding nothing to the tradition in my opinion, and mostly just sounds thin and over produced. I have a few Christmas records that I like, and that represent Christmas for me because I listened to them when I was little:
1. Johnny Mathis: Mom loves that one 2. Christmas Sing with Frank and Bing: lots of references to drinking too many hot toddies, kind of quaint in that “alcoholic uncle” sort of way. 3. Glenn Miller Christmas: Old radio show recording with many artists of the day, with references to WWII troops overseas 4. Luciano Pavarotti, O Holy Night: Beautiful and operatic, it includes a boys’ choir. 5. “All I want for Christmas is you”- as sung by that cute little girl in the movie “Love Actually” 6. “Do they know it’s Christmas?” Band Aid. Ah, the 80’s at its most Bono-riffic and Boy-George-tastic. 7. “Oh Holy Night” as sung by Josh Groban 8. “Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby and David Bowie. Weird but lovely combo.
Some that have notably been less enjoyable this year for me: 1. Any Christmas song sung by Gloria Estefan. I am just not digging it. 2. The Beach Boys tune mentioned above. Shudder. 3. Any super country-music version. I just don’t like country music much. Plus the French and Latin words that some of them have sound funny with a southern drawl. 4. I have a new dislike for “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Grandma got run over by a reindeer” for no specific reason.
I never did play well with others. Lately, I am finding that I chafe at the yoke of all this stress that I am under. The pressure to do well in school, the pressure to be a good wife, the pressure to be an upstanding citizen. The ordinary things that people do when they are grownups. It is ridiculous.
I think this happens every semester about 3 months in, when I still have a month to go before finals. It is just my nerves talking. But too much conforming to professional standards and good manners and decorum when what I really want to do is go around pitching fits has got me daydreaming at every possible turn.
The world is my matador. It is like the universe knows I am tired and cranky, and then just for fun throws all kinds of intolerable people into my path just to see what I will do. Wave that red flag and see if I charge.
I already don't approve of people that are both dumb AND mean, so I have been running into a lot of those lately. Usually I am somewhere that would make it impossible or just ill-advised for me to take them to school. So I have to attempt therapeutic communication with someone I would rather just eviscerate. And I doubt they even understand or take to heart the things that I say, so I end up feeling powerless-a feeling that makes me ticked off.
So I have fantasies about throwing out all of my clothes and buying only things that are red and black and leather and satin and plunging-neckline/Mae West retro-fabulous. I dream of chucking it all and running away to live as a beggar poet on the streets of Paris. I want to start up a home-based assassin business. Who would ever see me coming? I look like a soccer mom, a Midwest tourist on her first trip to the big city. I look like your auntie that bakes cookies. I could make a killing.
What is it about being ultra-responsible that makes me want to wear way more black eyeliner and fishnet stockings and carry a concealed weapon? The sick part is that by the time I gut out the next month of exams and my pediatric rotation, I will be so exhausted after finals that going out and making trouble will take a distant backseat to sleeping in.
Rawr, Bitches! I am being PC for now. One of these days I am going to snap the tether and gore that matador, skewering him and his fancy gold pants. So there.
