quoting noel coward

“I am no good at love…

For I feel the misery of the end

In the moment that it begins

And the bitterness of the last good-bye

Is the bitterness that wins.”

Noel Coward

dancing in the dark

Sometimes I don’t want to process. Sometimes I just like to feel the sadness. I’ve grown comfortable with its weight.

When I sat down at my computer tonight, I thought it would be to write about my mother and my sometimes complicated relationship with her. Little tears have been working their way out all evening. Ever since our phone call. No real crying spells. Just the occasional wetness snaking its way down my cheek.

I thought I needed to come here and to process.

But I turned on iTunes and I came to this place and I simply stared at a white screen. I’d turned on a slow and smooth playlist, fitting for my mood. But as a song drifted by, and then two, and then three, I realized that what I needed was not to write. What I need was to just feel the sadness.

So I lit a candle. And I turned off all of the lights in my apartment. I switched to a slightly different playlist. And then I turned the volume up. Way up. And I just danced.

Dancing is something I love to do. I usually do it in a club. Quite often there is soothing herb. There is always alcohol. I’m usually in something cut low across my breasts and high across my thighs. Hair down so I can run my fingers through it. Artful smudges in black and gray shadow around my eyes.

I like going to a club and getting lost in the movement of bodies on a dance floor. I like that feeling of being connected but not. If I have a partner, great, but it’s OK if I don’t. I like to just close my eyes and let instinct takeover.

Tonight, without the chemicals and without the heavy eye shadow, I danced. For myself. I let the music play and I let my hips and my heart take over. I began to strip. Peeling off layer upon layer. Until I was naked in the candlelight. The tears came then. As I stood in my living room swaying to “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the Beatles.

It was the last song. I sank to my knees and was just still for a minute. Letting the tears dry themselves. And then I returned to my computer to write.

roots

Roots have always been a sort of shifting thing for me. My southern roots are deep, it’s true. But when I was 8, I moved to the west coast. I became a successful transplant. And while it’s true that I lived in WA longer than I lived in OK, I spent so much time in OK on vacation and family related trips that my roots there remained strong.

Both states felt like home. Neither state felt like home.

And then I met LH. And when you marry the military it adds a whole other dimension to shifting roots. You’re told when to pick up your entire life and you’re told where to take it. And when you get there, you know on day one that your time in that place is already counting down. So you make friends and you do things, but it never really becomes home. Except it does a little.

Even when LH and I settled in TX and he separated from the Air Force, we knew our time there was limited. Our plan was to go to TX, finish his enlistment, finish school, take the world by storm. That didn’t exactly happen. Not all of it anyway.

The year after I left TX was the most rootless in my entire life. A few months in WA, a few in NY, a few more in WA, and then the move to CA. There were times when I felt homeless, even though I never was. There were times when I was acutely aware that my most major possession was my truck. That inside it’s cab was the only space I could call my own.

I’ve managed to build myself a quiet little life here. It’s a life I’m pretty fond of. But, I’ve been here for almost three years now. So I’m starting to feel that itch. The moving itch. And truth be told, there’s some pretty strong gravitational pull toward the middle of the country. To Texas. To Chicago. To New Orleans. Santa Fe.

Instead, I’ve done something to deepen my roots here. I joined a board of another performing arts organization. It’s not the sort of thing you do if you’re only planning on being around short term. I feel good about the decision. But at the same time, there’s that little part of me that’s aware of it’s larger implications.

There are plenty of reasons to stay here. More reasons to stay than to leave, really. But there’s just something about making an active, deliberate decision to commit to a place that sketches me out a little. Maybe because I view the world as being small and easy to move around in and I don’t want to lose that. Maybe because part of me worries about missing out on something that is happening somewhere else. Maybe because my fear of entrapment really is that big.

I don’t know. What I do know, is that from all appearances, it seems I’ll be staying here for a while.

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perfect stranger

When I was in late elementary school and junior high, I watched a ridiculous amount of TV. These were the in between years. When I was younger we were in Oklahoma and lived on a big patch of land in a small town. I was outside a lot. When I was older, I was at dance class or a voice lesson or a rehearsal or cheerleading practice. I had a life.

One of the shows I watched was Perfect Strangers. It’s hardly a memorable show, but there you go. I loved it. Balki and Larry and the happy dance. It made the adolescent version of me giggle.

Flash forward many years and I found myself in London’s West End watching a production of Stones in His Pockets. Stones in His Pockets is a fabulous two man show set in a little town in Ireland . We happened to be there during a week when the regular London cast was on a break so the cast who would be opening the show soon on Broadway could have a chance to really get the show on it’s legs.

I was in awe. It’s brilliantly written stuff, to be sure. But it also requires each actor to play many many roles. Both men were fantastic. One of them, was Bronson Pinchot. During the show I was completely able to forget that I was watching Balki.

After the show, LH wanted to get autographs. So we hung around. Across the street. Finally one of the actors (not Bronson) came out. He went to the take-away window we were standing next to, ordered some food, and then lit up a cigarette while he waited. We struck up a conversation.

The other memorable thing about this particular trip is that we were in London in Sept of 2001. As soon as we’d identified ourselves as Americans by our accents, it didn’t take long for a very animated conversation to ensue. He was from New York, so we talked about the bombing. We told him how we’d been in Pisa when it happened. He recommended that we take a trip to the Embassy to see the memorial (something we did the next day). Then we got on the subject of theater.

So we’re chatting away, having a completely sane, rational, intelligent conversation, when he sees Bronson exit the stage door. “Bronny,” he calls, waving him over. Bronson approaches us, we’re all introduced. And then tragedy struck.

Now, today, if you stick me in front of someone famous, it doesn’t really phase me much. Not unless you’re talking about super, super famous. Today, I know too many people, casually or otherwise, who make their living in entertainment. But back then, the only famous, or semi-famous, folks I knew were still in the “when” stage of I-knew-you-when.

It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Or listening to it. Before I could stop myself the words came tumbling out of my mouth. “I used to watch Perfect Strangers all the time when I was a kid. I loved that show. It is so cool to meet you.”

Yup. Not, you were fantastic in this show. You played such a wide range of characters. You’re going to be great on Broadway.

No. I let loose with unadulterated geekiness over Perfect Strangers.

I think LH’s jaw actually hit the ground. Needless to say conversation was pretty much over. We got our autograph though.