Cville Amateur Improv & Karaoke!

I was realizing the other day I don’t have enough opportunities in my life to Goof Off.

I miss theater for that… I miss being part of an ensemble… I don’t have time or the will to try and crack into the local drama world… so this is what I came up with!

Do you love to act, perform, sing, do improv, play theater games – but you just aren’t ready -for-primetime material? You don’t have to be good to join us, you just have to want to have fun. Who knows? We might even form a real performance troupe…! … or not…!

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The New Blog

I’m doing a new blog.

It’s a whole new sensibility for me, represents the changing concerns in my head. Since spending most of my time home with my children in the last eight months – my whole work-at-home scheme is yet pending – most of the thoughts in my head that do not have to do with nursery rhymes and diaper rash center around the interior landscape of the spirit – I’ve been mining, in tiny sandbox-sized heaps, some depths I haven’t noticed in a long time.

And so, the new blog is about an exterior landscape and how it relates to the inner one…

This one may just lie dormant for a little while.

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Thanks, Cvillain, for giving us a mention!

Perverse

Here’s how perverse I am: J somehow ended up bringing a Berenstein Bears book home from the library about the ‘bad habit’ of biting one’s nails.

Ever since reading this to her, I’ve been chewing away.

And I wonder why it’s so hard to get her to learn to pee in the potty… it’s the stubborn perversity of doing the opposite of what’s expected, to test out every rule – and then there’s the imagination that turns every potty seat into a crown or a large monocle to peer through…

I will not be bitter.

Repeat; I will not be bitter.

(I will be very bitter.)

“Mother”

I think I’ve read various op-eds over time encouraging women to proudly lay claim to the work and worth of the role of “mother.”

But not until the other day did I fully and personally experience the emotion that’s at the base of why those articles get written: There’s an emotion of guilt and shame attached to motherhood swimming around in our culture that I’ve recently picked up on – something connected to

1) the idea that women who want to have babies are biologically driven, and therefore weak, somehow not in control of their body urges = the urge to procreate is a base, shameful ‘urge’ – kind of silly and superficial -

2) having children is selfish (self-indulgent; are your genes so great? earth impact – population control)

3) not having children is also selfish (instead of giving your mother grandchildren, you’re concentrating on yourself)

4) being a mother verifies a woman’s feminity in some ways – but it also puts her in a strange category, defined often in commercials and tv shows – she has definitely taken herself out of the running to be a hottie – to be a desired object – I’m trying to put my finger on it – there’s an ambivalence around motherhood, it’s desired for women to fulfill themselves, but it’s also marks you, removes you from being competitive in the world of sex and business fully -

Not so sure, could research this more fully, am just interested that now having TWO children, I feel much more defined by them than I did just having one.

Still Drinking Coffee

It’s almost 8:30, and I’m still drinking coffee. I’m soooo tired. I’m soooo stupid.

This is worse than college: I stay up all night, I regret it the next morning, but then I do it again.

All because I am desperate for a couple hours to myself.

Which are crucial. Not enough – and often, I still am not totally relaxing – I remain “interruptible” – Ariel Gore in her book The Mother Trip provides the insight that mothers are constantly interruptible, but we need time to be uninterruptible – it was really helpful to read her words and know that my constant feeling of being on call, on high alert, just ON – 24 hours a day – is not because there’s something crazy about ME. It’s commonplace, it’s hormonal, it’s motherhood.

It’s hard to explain to others that only when my kids are sleeping – and I know they’re asleep for at least half an hour, solid – can I come close to getting absorbed in something else – yoga, intimacy, writing, things that only have a benefit when you’re fully present and not leaving one ear perked like a satellite dish toward the children’s room.

Of course, by the end of the night, when they are finally both truly asleep – usually 10 p.m. – the last thing I feel like doing is yoga, intimacy, or writing. I want to veg. I want to watch bad television. I want to sleep. I want to read cheesy blogs. I don’t want to engage in anything that requires me to be thoughtful, soulful, or energetic. I have nothing left to give at that point. My body has been a source of nourishment, caring, and entertainment since 7 that morning – it wants a break.

So my relationships are suffering – long distance ones, that require phone calls – close ones, that require quality one-on-one interaction. Not to mention, my relationship with myself. Of course, the last thing I need right now is to grow distant from the ones I love. Again, Gore advocates for mothers to make time for things like sleep and meditation and sex – but god, it’s hard.

Sleep is so boring. And meditation and sex – though both can be reviving – require focus. Can I just chill with the Netflix for a good 48 hours? With some ice cream and vino, while someone gives me a massage, does my nails, trims my hair, takes notes for me when a thought of worth actually does crop up, a little crocus amid the weedy landscape that is my untended brain?

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend Gore’s book and her site, hipmama.com. I don’t think I am at all a “hip” “mama” but it’s nice to know hip mamas exist out there. Mothers are not just saggy, docile, vapid yuppies in ill-fitting jeans driving SUVs badly. They are cool and creative and spiritual and sexual and intellectual and responsible for the human race’s various incarnations. They are not a sub-group for political pundits to try and buttonhole, nor are they a ‘they’ to be tapped and targeted by marketers.

More on that later – probably on my new blog…

The Mom Purse

When I was little, it seemed like every mom had a “Mom Purse”. You know it – it’s larger than seems necessary, and full of random crap. The stuff of MacGyver’s dreams – a rubber band here, some toothpicks there, a little lotion, some tissues, a few bottles of pills (just in case). Oh, and of course the abundance of receipts and miscellaneous scraps of paper stuffed into (and falling out of) the checkbook. Change dancing around the bottom of the bag.

Addicted to organizing as I am, I never thought I would have one of these clutter-traps. Turns out I was wrong. I think it’s a rite of passage – once you get your “Mom Purse” you’re officially an adult. I just discovered I have one. Complete randomness and chaos took over the second I bought one of those oversized bags. It’s sad, really…but also allows me many opportunities for reorganizing, which is fun…so maybe not all bad. Am I alone in the battle of the bag? Do you have a “Mom Purse”, and are you willing to admit it? What’s the strangest thing you’ve found in there?

 

DIY? LFE vs. LFE

“WHY do you always have to learn everything the HARD way instead of LISTENING to others? WHY do you have to do it yourself?”

My mother was ANGRY.

So was I. But she was completely right: My life is a study in DIY/LFE – Learning from Experience vs. Learning from Elders.

My 60s-bred dad taught me to Question Authority.

I tend to Question Everything.

Case in point: Thimbles. They exist for a reason. I discovered this, not by trusting the wisdom of the ages and wearing one before embarking on a sewing project that involved thick brocade, but by going footloose and thumb free.

I ended up with a broken piece of needle imbedded beneath my thumbnail. I ended up in the dr office for an extraction that ouch, yuck, ai yi yi, ooh, will cause me to testify to the masses: YES, thimbles, use them! I heartily advocate thimbles! I’m a thimble fan!

Meanwhile, my mother rolls her eyes in exasperation. “DUH,” she would say, if she were me.

Now, this is just one example of me just foregoing the Usual Procedures of Things, ignoring Conventional Wisdom, because I don’t see the obvious need. I’m suspicious that society has unnecessary habits. I get annoyed when people follow the rules blindly without understanding why…

Other instances involve not wearing underwear, not checking the oil in my car, art projects (some successful, some not), and other large-life things where my attitude was, Heck, I can do this my way; it can’t be that hard; why not?

This attitude is exactly what makes me excellent at analyzing processes at work and streamlining them – finding better, faster, quicker ways to do a job, because I question the current procedure in ways others just wouldn’t, because they go along with This is The Way It’s Done and Always Has Been Done. I have been valued for this capacity for critical judgment. I honed it doing critical theory papers in college and grad school.

What hurt when my mother yelled at me was that I don’t do this on purpose – it’s like there’s some instinctual Try it Yourself and Prove it Right/Wrong instinct in me that sends me riding bareback over the plains of experience – sometimes toward disaster; sometimes toward brilliance.

Of course, for my mother, her role is to protect me – not to let me test the Fire is Hot and Burns rule by searing my flesh over the stove, but to teach me to listen and to trust her to avoid that kind of pain. Obviously, somewhere along the line, as happens with all kids, I think, I discovered that one of mother’s rules or laws wasn’t as true as she had advertised.

So then I had to question everything she said.

Some things were very true. Some not. And how else to know but to test them? Good old trial and error?

But of course, this can take a lot more time and pain that necessary. We read history in order not to repeat it.

So when exactly should I test authority, and when should I trust it?

How do I decide and discern?

To my children as I lay dying…

To my children,

 

Why do people always wait until someone is dying to say “I love you”? Why do you wait until the last breath is hovering in the room to wish you had more time? What is it about Death’s presence that brings out your understanding of what you regret not doing? And yet…the lessons learned are but fleeting bits of knowledge in your consciousness. For tomorrow you will still put off reaching out to someone that you will apologize to only after they are gone.

 

Understand this, my children: you need not fall victim to this vicious cycle. Learn the lesson and act upon all you know you will wish you had – today. I beg you. For if you do not, I will surely die. As it is, the light is dimming and the air is thick in my lungs. I am weaker than you understand. I try to tell you every day just how close I am to giving up, and I am losing the will to fight. If my children will not fight to protect me, what reason do I have to continue? So I ask again – please fight for me. Please help me regain my will to survive. For without you I will perish…and I fear you do not realize what will happen then. You, too, will disappear.

 

Love,

 

Your Mother Earth

More Mary Poppins Disection: Eastern Religion Tidbits

I mentioned the idea of this post to a friend of mine, and she correctly concluded, “You are way too into Mary Poppins.”

Yes, I know.

But maybe this is my thing. Some scholars study the I Ching all their lives; others War and Peace. Maybe I will become the renowned interpreter of Mary Poppins. Maybe this is my destiny. (And maybe I need to stop watching Lost and Battlestar Galactica so much, two shows flooding with destiny-driven plots. They are making every scribble while talking on the phone seem weighted with meaning it does not have…)

Whatever the point-lessness of it, I did notice a few – shall we call them clues? – to a hidden eastern- influenced philosophical bent undergirding this movie:

1) At the end of the ‘fantasy’ scene, wherein MP takes Bert and the children into a sidewalk chalk drawing to dance with cartoon animals and ride carousel horses through various romps, it begins to rain – so the troupe has to zip back to ‘real life’ before the chalk completely dissipates in the rain.

They do so, and MP says, seeing the art has all been washed away, “Oh Bert! All your fine drawings!”

Bert says, “No matter. There’s more where they came from,” pointing at his head.

Bert takes his foot and smudges the runny drawings, and the yellow and red colors caused me to think of those Buddhist sand paintings that take such painstaking amounts of time, only to then be blown and swept – destroyed – upon completion. Bert’s attitude of acceptance models an acknowledgment of the temporal and transient nature of things, a lack of ego and clinging, very like what Buddhists aspire to.

2) The first time the children look up the chimney, Jane says, “It’s so dark and gloomy up there.” But Bert offers a poetic paen to the chimney sweep’s world that is half-light, half-dark, shadowy, that sounds very like a Taoist description of yin and yang nature of reality.

3) MP carries an umbrella not unlike the Dalai Lama’s in a photo I have of him.

4) The whole ’spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down’ idea echoes the story in which Lao-Tse drinks vinegar and finds it sweet – because, as father of Taoism, he finds the world sweet.

Ok, I had more, but it’s gone.

I’m sure I’ll see it when I watch… again…