Transition into Singledom

I haven't been single since 1999, and then only for a couple months.  I basically haven't been single in my adult life until now.  I was a teenager when I was single last, and a pretty oblivious one at that.  I have never been taken in by flirtation, but I also wasn't always aware of it.
I am struck and disappointed by how much more vulnerable I feel without the shield of the excuse, "I have a boyfriend."  I am annoyed to realize how much I depended on another human for a sense of ease navigating new friendships and relationships.  I have always been friendly, and I hope I remain so, but I now see how being friendly--especially without the caveat that I'm already otherwise engaged with another--might be misconstrued as romantic encouragement.  Ew.  And sad.
It's been one week that I've been single.  A busy week.  A really emotionally intense week.  I feel like I'm doing pretty well moving on on the surface, but my body is not letting me get away with it so quickly.  I want it all to be okay, I want to just be productive at work, and in dance, and making pendants, and seeing friends...but my body feels completely discombobulated still.  Still exhausted, still weak-muscled and sorrowful (though not quite as acutely so), but also very confused and outside myself.
I had a great show last night, for instance, but I felt like I wasn't connected or present.  I was distracted but not by anything in particular, not from anything particular.  As people came up to introduce themselves and thank me after the show, in hindsight I feel like I didn't offer any of them the decency of real presence.  I smiled, and shook their hands and asked their names, and tried to listen to them...but I didn't feel like I was really able to absorb or offer a real exchange of energy.
I keep coming back to the mental image of two parts of me:  my logical self, and my heart self.  My logical self is the one I know well.  It is disciplined and experienced and mature.  It is often right, but isn't threatened by that which it does not know, because it knows how to methodically find a reasonable answer or solution. It is patient and relaxed because it's confident.  I grew up in a quasi-Buddhist home, and have thus absorbed the teachings and practice of mindfulness.  My heart self, though, is recently born, and it is wild, untamed, young, like a toddler with unrefined black and white wishes, demands, cares.  It is impatient, and has a ton of energy, which can be brilliant if focused, but if exhausted is like an albatross around the neck.  My heart has always been subservient to my mind, especially in the realm of relationships.  Now that it has been loosed, I don't recognize myself.  I am unable reign it in.  I'm not sure I would want to curb it even if I could--my heart is probably a very important part of me, and likely should be allowed the same freedom to grow, learn, and mature as I have proffered my mind.  Still, part of what felt safe letting my heart explore in the first place was that I was doing so in the confines of a relationship (familiar and comfortable in and of itself, even though the partner was new and different).  To have been shaken out of that situation throws me altogether into an abrupt state of transition.  I'm not just in a new city, newly not a student for the first time ever, allowing my heart to explore for the first time ever, but also single.  It makes me feel like a loose cannon.  I feel unpredictable and unreliable.  I always thought of myself as someone who had their sh*t together, and part of that was the stability I gained from being in a long-term, committed relationship.  Without that, I feel a little bit like a pinball.  All over the place, for no reason, most of the time.  My heart is leading this zig-zag non-path, and I feel like I'm embroiled in a child's tantrum--my mind-self is only able to sit back and be patient while the turmoil continues.

Being Present with Heartbreak

Heartbroken Truth. Collage by Alyssum Pohl

What is this feeling?  How do I feel?  Why don't I hear more people talk about heartbreak?  Is it because it's so personal that people keep it under wraps?  I have been on the verge of crying for hours, but nothing spills over.  My skin feels like it's crawling, and has for days--and I can't escape it.  I can't get out of my skin.  I feel sorrow.  My head hurts.  My chest is tight while my heart feels like it's an over-full balloon, and I have to keep reminding myself to breathe.  It's different than anxiety, though, it's not that I can't breathe, it's that I keep forgetting to.  My brows are constantly knitted, my jaw is stiff. My skin is crawling, and my muscles feel weak underneath.  I am afraid of moving on.  I am afraid of not moving on.  I am worried about the distraction these feelings will cause at work, I am looking forward to the distraction work will cause from these feelings. I want to scratch my eyes out and peel my face off, the beginning of getting out of my crawling skin.  My throat is clenched, that vulnerable spot.  Baring it brings me closer to tears.  Yes, throat bared, eyes upward into the darkness, my lips quiver, I hear a sad whimper burble from deep inside, and tears appear on my cheeks as though pumped from the pit of my belly, rivulets of molten sorrow.  I ache.  

The space around my eyes hurts, I feel a constant exhaustion.  I want to sweep up my life, and take care of myself, but first I -- I can't. The simple things take longer, weigh heavier, seem more impossible than I've experienced before.  Eating is something I force myself to do, sometimes.  I had a bowl of cereal, some peanut butter cups today, for instance.  Thank goodness a friend coaxed me out of the house and plied me with a hearty Ethiopian meal.  This constellation of fatigue, tightness, crawling skin, and expansion is new to me, makes up heartbreak.  I am alive, I am trying to encompass what this is and feel it from the inside out.  I don't understand how it works yet.  My logical explanations for why things are the way they are don't help quell these feelings.  My intermittent moments of freedom from these feelings don't lessen the intensity of them when they return.  It's not like sickness where you can sleep through it as your body processes the foreigner, and wake up well; if you sleep, the heartbreak naps too, and is there for you in the morning to experience entirely.  It's a heavy visitor, it rides my back, forcing me to trudge, bent over and debilitated.  Relief seems like a question I don't even know how to ask.

1st Snow in DC

I ride the bikeshare bikes to work, no matter the weather.  Dressing appropriately (down jacket, fuzzy hat instead of the ubiquitous black trenchcoat and measly earmuffs of DC) means it's truly no big deal, but you'd think I was trekking through Antarctica or something the way people exclaim incredulously that they can't believe I ride a bike in this weather.  I mean...it's a dusting of snow, people.  It's barely below freezing.

















Here's an artsy fartsy dramatic poetic photo of snow fallen on a dried bouquet of a dozen red roses.

Burlesque Classic Strip Tease Ruse

I have several friends who are burlesque performers.  I have never been into burlesque myself, and have, in fact, had quite an aversion to it.  I chalked that aversion up to being expected to pay to watch unseasoned performers clumsily prance around, a problem rife in the burlesque world as well as the bellydance world, with which I am more familiar (too many performers in the wrong venues--that is, billing themselves as professional before achieving the talent to merit that claim). In the spirit of open-mindedness and challenging myself, I'm diving into the deep end by taking a Burlesque 101 class, trying to learn more about the genre and why I have such strong opinions about it.

I've only had one class so far, but have already learned a couple things.
1.  This genre is accessible.  You don't have to have much talent to bump, grind, or shimmy, and really you can be successful with a simple walk.  Which explains why so many people seem to love it, from the performers' perspective.  I'm glad they're having fun. (Please don't make me watch you until you have built up some talent in your presentation, however simple it may be.)

2.  This point is more of an exploration of a thought I had after watching a Classic Strip Tease by a woman considered to be one of the best, as one of our homework videos. Watching it alone, I was bored bored bored. She bored me with 8 minutes worth of the same, overdone, unimaginative, stock movements (knees cocking, hair flipping, shoulder shimmy, arm up overhead in Ta-Da presentation) as she undressed.  She infused zero character into the act.  She gave me no reason to care about her act, so I didn't.  I was shocked that I was the only one in my class of 10 people who felt this way.  The only point one woman raised that I could agree with, is that (at least) she had musicality.  (Please don't make me watch you do something to music if you haven't yet mastered musicality.  This should be a baseline, not something to be lauded in a performing art).  Upon further reflection, this is what I have determined:
I find the ‘classic strip tease' to be desperate.  I can’t imagine another reason that someone would perform one (desperate for attention, desperate for validation, etc) and I can’t imagine another reason that someone would truly enjoy it (so desperate for intimacy that watching a stranger on stage undress somehow makes sense to the audience member, or so desperate to be validated in their own sexiness that somehow they can project what they perceive as confidence onto someone that they wish they could be like).  Two people having sex has the potential to be most intimate experience possible—and it’s the hint of this intimacy which makes things genuinely sexy.   The ‘classic strip tease’ in the setting of a burlesque performance lacks intimacy, though.  It’s a feigned pre-sexual staged experience which is ultimately the exact opposite of intimate:  the ‘classic strip tease’  is shallow, empty, unfulfilling.  It’s gauche, no matter how dressed up in elegant clothing, jewels, lingerie, coiffed hair it may be, and offers nothing of substance.  (Which, perhaps, is why they call it a tease.)  And if that’s the case (that it’s a shallow, empty, unfulfilling display), I don’t understand the whoops and hollers, the cheering and whistling from the audience.  The entire scene including performer and audience members seems so sad to me.  It seems like the appropriate response would not be cheers, but crestfallenness, beaten-down-edness, pity, sadness.  To realize how desperate all these people are is so sad.  I’m saddened by the desperation of humanity.  I’m disgusted by humanity’s impatience to cave to that desperation (performing a classic strip when there are other burlesque options, cheering at a classic strip) instead of working toward something meaningful, deep, rich, truly intimate, and therefore truly sexy (if that's what you're after).

That’s why I prefer the other type of burlesque (what’s it called, again?), where the point is to challenge/spoof/mock/make-a-joke.  Whether or not the performer actually delivers, at least there’s a platform for true, authentic content. 

Even within this sort of burlesque, though, I still think too many people end up relying on the (false) crutch of blatant sexual appeal.  It’s a ruse, and I’m sad that people have the wool pulled so far over their eyes not to recognize it when it stares them in the face.  It’s such a cowardly, lazy crutch to use; it takes advantage (in the worst sense of the word) of the desperation of your audience, knowing that you can hook them simply by feigning sexiness, and also indicates that you don’t believe you have enough substance in your act to let it carry itself.  What an embarrassment to find oneself won over as an audience member by that cheap trick, confusing visible flesh and codified flirtation with intimacy and authentic sexiness.  

I'm not condemning the strip tease entirely--I think if you have enough self awareness as a performer to realize you're playing on your audience's weaknesses, then the honest, mature place for you to strip is in a stripper bar.  If you're clear that you're a desperate person who wants to see some flesh, then have at it at a stripper bar!   What I have a problem with is the self-delusion and denial of the desperation. If you're not self-deluded, then you will embrace the moniker "Stripper" instead of  "Burlesque Artist" when you do a 'classic strip tease'.  If you are not desperate, and you tell stories while taking off your clothes, okay, then maybe you're a "Burlesque Artist".  

I am taking this class and writing this post as an effort in self-discovery.  Therefore, I welcome any comments or challenges you may have to share.  

Dapper and Demure

I did a professional photoshoot for the first time since 2007 a couple days ago, with Stereovision.  Carlo and Elise are a husband/wife team who take turns shooting, getting very different perspectives despite the same subject and background.  It was relaxing and inviting, and I'd recommend them to anyone.  Super excited to see how the photos turn out!

I prepared feverishly over the holidays leading up to the shoot by completing a costume I'm very proud of.  I chose the fabric for the skirt and dyed it that color, but Dusty Paik of SnakeChurch made it for me.  My dear friend, Paco Fish, and I shared the costs of the photoshoot, and here we are in our fancy duds.