perching on the edge of a chair/a life

swallow, hummingbird, dove, wren

light hollow bones
  quick intake of breath
   fluttering heart
    anxious limbs

flitting room to room, branch to branch
a quick hug, don't press too hard

A puff of air
  quicksilver tears
    a nest of down--precarious sleep

soaring, diving, spinning, falling
(yearning, wishing, needing, wanting)

tiny gray bird
  always in flight

I hit the wall today. When I woke up I realized that I was done before the day had started. I wasn't sick, there was nothing wrong, I was just completely done. This has happened before of course. I run myself ragged as a source of pride. I NEVER give in. I feel it, and then go for a 5 mile run followed by a dance class. Today, I gave in. It was a new experience to just be with the exhaustion, the overwhelm and the fatigue of the season. At 12:30 pm, I was still in my pjs, had made a pot of soup for the week, superficially cleaned the house (which is tiny) and had surfed the internet. As the day progressed, I added in a novel and an episode of "Revenge." That is it. I did have several commitments today: parties, theater conferences, people to see. As the day passed, and I realized that even opening the front door was going to be too much, I systematically texted my apologies. Now, what was unique in this slamming up against the wall was my calm acceptance of it. I didn't have a panic attack because of the quiet. I didn't berate myself for the bowl of soup that I ate without a workout to balance it out. I simply let myself feel the exhaustion. It was justified: I taught 30 classes this week, had the most important (and most successful) audition of my life, dealt with numerous student melt downs, bureaucratic shenanigans, and the daily stress of traffic in Los Angeles. That is a lot of energy to put out and, for maybe the first time ever, I allowed the fact that I had put out much more than I had taken in be ok and gave myself a day to recharge. It feels a little like a miracle.

When things start to change.....it's blustery and uncomfortable and amazing and terrifying and exciting and impossible to hold onto. When something amazing happens, I want to grasp that moment, the very moment when it's perfect, but I can't. Moments are just that, fleeting. So I'm learning to take a deep breath and move into the next. I'm in a place of movement and growth and expansion. Expansion is a HARD word for an anorexic girl to embrace. I have spent years and years with these two competing intentions: Please see me. Please don't look--I am invisible. No more. I want to be seen now. I want, more than anything, to be solid and present and real in this world now. I'm shifting each and every day and it's scary and uncomfortable and I keep hitting walls, but I am changing and allowing myself to say all of those verboten phrases: I want. See me. I am here. I am hungry -- for life, for love, for success, and even, every so often, for the simple pleasure of food. And I'm reaching for the stars.

photo by Weiferd Watts

I am drawn to articles; to studies, to stories about girls who are anorexic; who cut, who appear to have it all yet struggle to exist in their upper class, privileged neighborhoods. Articles about girls who excel in school, take all AP classes, dance and sing and volunteer, who go to good universities and get good grades there. Girls with big smiles and designer jeans and bright eyes. I am drawn to these articles and read them obsessively but they are all about girls. What I am looking for are articles about what happens to these girls when they can no longer be classified that way. Young women, middle aged women, women who are caught somewhere between.....women who feel just like those girls that they used to be. Women who have acquired somewhat better coping mechanisms through years of therapy but still wake up wondering what the hell they can possibly do to fit in, to be successful, to find love, to not question their right to exist. Women who then decide, knowing full well that it doesn't work, that if they can just run farther, eat less, bleed a little and climb one more career mountain, that things will be better. Where are those articles? Do we care about the girls once they become those slightly lost women? I fear that we don't. My fear is that it's not possible to fully shed that girl; the girl who knows deep in her bones that she will never be good enough. It's a fear, it's not truth. I have been told that numerous times. But on mornings like this one, lonely mornings without the structure that keeps all of those urges in check, the climb can seem insurmountable and the desire to make the struggle visible to the naked eye is enormous. So, I continue to surf the internet looking for the one article that will give me the answer. I have yet to find it.

Silence........

I forget, sometimes, to turn on music in my house. I often feel silenced when I walk in the door and then feel stuck there, moving quietly, almost as if I don't belong, ignoring the fact that I have the power to change my situation, to make some noise.

I often find myself in the same situation out in the world, refusing to be seen or heard, forgetting that I have the power to make some noise. Making noise can mean a thousand things; standing up for yourself, creating something new and exciting, fighting a political battle, even saying no. It can mean stepping out on a limb and asking for something. "Hire me, like me, love me...." I find there is noise in the seemingly remote possibility of opening up my heart to someone else. The cracking and breaking of the wall around my heart will be loud, really loud. Most of the time, I'm not sure that I could take it.

I've turned on some music. Soft, melancholy singer/songwriter tunes waft through my little cottage. The days are starting to darken early, and my cottage is golden inside...the artificial light makes the pale yellow walls glow. Silence is golden too. It's safe and clean and a known quantity. But, if I am to be totally honest, it's also almost unbearably lonely. I think that it might be time to break it. Silence is full of secrets and pain and past shame. With the silence, the past retains it's power and in doing so keeps all of the wonderful cacophony of the present moment at bay. Ultimately, it gives the ever present voices in my head much more space than they deserve, and in doing so, feeds the illusion that is safer to be stuck in this little golden cage than to live.

I'm taking on a challenge; making noise. Starting with breath....breath that is audible, daring and deep. Breath that supports song and life and growth and most importantly, truth.

Back to School: What I Want This Year (other than a pair of cool new shoes!)

I've been staring at this white page for days...weeks...over a month. Trying to come up with something worth writing about. Something that will interest not only me, but at least a few people who happen to come across my blog. Something pithy, witty, not too dark. Humorous, a little touching, moving enough to inspire a few tears, but not so deep that the reader is wrecked for hours afterward. That is actually a lot to expect. I have great respect for writers who are able, on a regular basis, to put out blog entries and columns and books. I am distracted by the truck idling outside my window, the dust blowing across the floor, the voices in my head telling me that there is nothing I could write that would have any meaning at all anyway. My time would be more efficiently used by sweeping up the dust. Yet, one voice in that mix, one tiny voice says, hey, write about what is most important right now, who cares if anyone else is interested! So...here goes.

I've not been a student, at least not an official one for ....well...a long time. However, every year "Back to School", even more than New Year's Day, signifies a new start. Whatever ever happened last year; the B instead of an A in some math subject, the disappointment of not getting a lead in the school musical, the lack of any dates whatsoever...again...all of those disappointments are in the past. This year I'm going to get all As (book a bunch of jobs), star in the musical (book a big theater instead of a tiny one)...go on a date (um....go on a date). This year is it! This year I'll be popular, the fashion go to girl, super successful. All of my hope is renewed as the days start to shorten. So, instead of back to school shopping, I decided ( in the wake of an aborted vacation due to Hurricane Irene) to spend the last weekend of summer in a Grinberg Method Intensive. I've been twisted every which way and am still sorting through everything that came up.

Part of the intensive, which included a lot of breathing, and talking and feeling, and, on the last day, tears and shouts, was to write a list of what I really want. I thought I would share (most of) it with you.

I WANT:
*to sleep better
*to teach less and make more
*to book at least two commercials by the end of the year
*to book at least two co-star spots by the end of the year
*to feed my dance soul with concert work, more choreography and more classes with my favorite teachers
*to book a big musical or play in a big house
To believe and accept that I deserve any of this.
*to go to Paris, via New York
*to get through a day without saying any of the following to myself:
-you are fat
-you are ugly
-you are gross
-you suck
*to remember
*to cry
*to let go
*to be at ease with people and in the world
*to trust when there is nothing to fear
*to update my media: reels, vocal demo, some new pics...
To not judge this list as greedy, self-centered, superficial, un-attainable, stupid or pathetic
*to speak when I've something to say
*to be open to love and care
*an amazing gown and a reason to wear it

Memorial Day, 2011

My father died on Memorial Day ten years ago. Ten entire years. It feels like yesterday and a lifetime and everything in between. He died after a Quixotic fight with pancreatic cancer; a fight that everyone but he knew he would lose. I will never forget the look on one of the many doctors' faces when he said that if he could just get through x or y procedure and put some weight back on, he'd be back in the game. He weighed about 90 pounds at the time and the expression on the doctor's face was a mixture of disbelief and pity. My proud father never told his clients he was sick. He didn't allow anyone to talk about what would happen next or how he felt about his life being cut short. We saw occasional glimpses of his anger or sadness, when he would lash out at one of us, usually my mother, followed by remorse. We could see that if he opened up enough to let us in, there was so much emotion buried there, so much he could have shared with us and unburdened himself of, but mostly what we saw and felt was a wall of denial. If there is one thing that I want to take from his death, it's that denying the truth is not the answer. Facing it and dealing with it, in all of it's bloody imperfection and pain, is infinitely better.

People, in their well meaning efforts to be comforting, say that my dad would be proud of me. That he would see this bright, artistic, well-intentioned life that I am carving out for myself and be proud. I am absolutely certain this is not the case. I don't say this with a "woe is me" attitude at all. It's simply the truth, without denial. My dad would not be proud of my life. He would be and was extremely disappointed by it. That is not to say that he didn't love me. I'm relatively certain that he did. But pride is a different thing. He looked at my artistry as a pastime that I would grow out of. He felt that I was fiscally irresponsible (which is odd, considering that my financial challenges actually began after his death.) He disagreed with me politically. He abhorred my lack of religion. My failed marriage was more than sad, it signified my failure to be a moral human being. He absolutely believed deep in his soul that I was or will actually be descending into hell and told me so point blank. So, what I then ask, is whether or not his pride in me is what matters. If it is, I can find moments where my work transcended his disappointment and he saw me as a professional worthy of respect; his reaction to my singing at my sister's wedding, catching him bragging about a certain Phantom performance, an impromptu recital in his hospital room. There were these isolated moments and I do treasure them, but they are not the reality of our relationship. That exists somewhere else.

My dad was funny. He was smart and biting and incredibly entertaining. He looked like Fred Astaire. He loved opera and politics (well, Republican politics) and meeting new people. He loved to run (something that we do share) and ski and travel. Above all, he loved to fly. I think he felt immortal or closer to God or something when he was piloting a plane. His greatest joy would have been to see me as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. Seriously. My friends who never saw his anger adored him. My friends who did, well, they never came back to the house.

He was demanding and unforgiving and self righteous. He was a fundamentalist Christian in a Jewish family who ended up with two Atheist children. He loved animals and sadly never met his granddaughter, whom I am absolutely certain he would have been utterly in love with. He believed that the gun in his bedside table was safe and that the world was not. He loved garlic. A lot.

I have a lot of unresolved issues around my relationship with my father. I wish more than anything that he was alive so that we could work them out together. I believe, maybe irrationally, that we could have gotten to a place of understanding and mutual respect. He did with his own father. He was eventually able to tell his father, after 40 years of deceit, that he had converted to Christianity. If he was capable of that, I have to believe that we could have gotten to a point of truth in our relationship. We could have, if he had been open to it, gotten there when he was ill, but he wasn't, so we ran out of time. On Memorial Day, and on this one in particular, that is what I mourn; the lost opportunity to know each other as adults.

All of this being said, I did love my dad. I will never forget the overwhelming feeling, as I watched the towers burning on Sept. 11, 2001 that if only my dad were still here, this unbelievable event would not be happening and everything would still be ok. When the world was falling apart, I wanted my dad and in that moment I knew that our bond was still there and always would be, even if he thought we would spend eternity in different places. I can't wait to prove him wrong.