"A" For Effort

I was on the subway the other day, and I noticed a youngish-looking professor marking papers. It was a relatively long commute, and so I spent my time slyly peering at my neighbor's "marking system."  In the end, me and my wandering left eye extended themselves for far too long, and so, in the interest of keeping me and my eye intact, I just asked him how he determined an "A." He was startled, and initially stumbled, and then said rather demurely that an "A" is determined by the quality and persuasiveness of the argument.  I really wasn't satisfied with his answer, but thanked him anyway, and batted a left eyelash in recognition, while my right eye rolled around a bit.  This is bogus I thought.  Can't he come up with something better than that?  Oh, cut him some slack, Clover, he is not Groucho Marx, who would have come up with a wittier, funnier, and smarter retort, chock-full of puns, and precipitous predications.  Oh, poo-p00.  This is what I get when I spy and I pry.  But, hark, there's a bit of wisdom here; like an old-scratch-and-sniff sticker from the Eighties that every now and then, when provoked, can emit its original scent and derivation.  Is that bubble-gum, popcorn, or skunk?  So here's the rub - what's my grade? Do I get an "A" for effort, and a "C+" for results? I don't think I've ever received anything lower than a "B" in my life.  

My qualifications are there, and so is the persuasiveness of my argument - that I want and need a permanent job now.  I'm not sporting signage that reads "Give me a good job," nor do I hold a beggar's cup; I am just hungry for a return to my career.  I think I've been pretty clear in my interviews, in my e-mails, and in my follow-up calls that I am eager, without being desperate, to re-start the system of working and receiving paychecks.  So what's the hitch, and the glitch? I understand the itch.  The whole point of this blog is to express the source of this most complex, and itinerant of itches.  This whole period of time has been supremely vexing, and left me with a hankering that has not yet been fulfilled, a hankering that is fast becoming a lusty and compulsive eruption that is burrowing itself under my skin.  It's a manifold mite, and I don't like mites.  When will my "A" for effort turn into an "A" result?  When will the quality and persuasiveness of my "argument" be understood and answered?  It only takes "A" phone call, "A" note returned, and "A" yes, you're hired. 

Psychic

I got to thinking about the Psychic around the corner.  It's open approximately twenty-two hours a day, and there's no one ever there, no clientele; which leads me to believe that the Psychics are so psychic that they can not only anticipate the future, but they can anticipate the customer, even if the customer is virtual.  All of life's variables are virtual on some level.  I've got to get into this game, maybe not with crystals and palm-reading, but with anticipating a good virtual reality. What does the future hold? Daisies, rainbows, and flying unicorns? A pot of gold? I don't need this type of saccharin tomfoolery, maybe just a bit of the future perfect in my life.  I will have, I shall have.  Sometimes a certain amount of reasonable entitlement works. I have to be honest, over the last two years, my sense of entitlement has lost its hard-on.  I am in need of some vocational Viagra not tomorrow, but yesterday.  But let's get back to the future. The "virtual" is not formally recognized or admitted even though its there in essence and effect. It's a ghost image on a xerox copy.   "Virtually speaking" - which means for all practical purposes - so in the one word, and let me be verbose for a second with my riff - we have "impracticality" and "practicality," living as twins joined at the hip.  The future, as in the virtual, can be both destructible and unshakable.  I am going with the unshakable for now, like a true soothsayer's rock-solid words of wisdom.  I am actively engaged in this course of action. I am actively engaged in the course of re-finding an occupation.  I am actively engaged in the future, without foregoing the present.  I believe in the impossible, in the impracticality of pursuing a dream even when it might be a dud.  The life-lines on my palm prove it.  No where do they read futility.  They outline a time to come for some time to come, until that time drops off, but then at that point, my future, will become part of someone else's past.  But for now, the red neon sign reading "Psychic" has not shuttered yet. 

Watching The Wheels

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.

I really love to watch them roll.

No longer riding on the merry-go-round. 

I just had to let it go.

I don't know what to add to the above.  It's just a snippet of John Lennon's wonderful song, "Watching The Wheels," and yet it depicts life in all its manifest glories, sorrows, and rudderless rotations. Lately, I've been thinking about this song quite a lot.  It used to be quietly playing in the background when I was a child, and now as an adult, its pronounced; it seems that I am doing time in this song.  It's a good one, damn near perfection, but the sentiment makes me more and more uneasy, because I completely identify with it.  And I don't know that I really want to identify with the passive watching of time going by, without some blips of the spectacular.  You see, I am in this strange twilight purgatory, an intermediate state, where I'm waiting for things to happen, and I'm just watching the wheels go round-and-round, and I'm ruminating about my past and things that seemed hard now seem easy, easy things are becoming hard, and my carefree friends have now become careful.  And it's difficult now.  I see the changes, and some of me wants to turn back, and steer the wheel, so that fortune and fun is constant, ever-flowing; no drought. This sounds so unbelievably naive, but I never thought the merry-go-round would stop, I had some vague notion that I would be on that horse poised at the heavens, going round-and-round, listening to that sticky sweet music for all eternity.  But did I really contemplate eternity, or the end of my time?  No.  I still don't.  That's good.  I still retain a childish state of wonder, that things are gonna go swell, tomorrow will be sweller than today, and next week, well it's gonna blow me out of the water - in a good way.  I'll be riding the crest of a whale's blowhole.  Fantasy is important when time is whipping by, and the day-to-day is dragging.  I know I am too sentimental for my own good.  And now it's easy to be governed by feelings of time gone by, when the here-and-now is rife with all sorts of struggles.  But I have to just let it go. 

Heart On Your Sleeve

The other day, I was thinking about the benefits and disadvantages of wearing your heart on your sleeve.  I have always been a "heart-wearer."  I know no other way; although sometimes it has gotten me into trouble.  More than sometimes, in fact.  I've often thought about "turning back," and becoming a person who can repress his/her emotions, and wear a cloak and a mask all day long.  It must be theatre all day, all play-acting, a relief, and then when it's dark, I suppose, one can peel off and leave his/her "outerwear" in the cloakroom overnight.   Life must feel safer inside a pretense and a disguise; life must be a whole lot easier.  I have always been envious, and yet...And yet, I cannot don these garments.  I am a torn woman with a button to be replaced, and a hole in my sleeve, where my heart keeps falling through.  I am doing penance for it though, let me tell you.  I always think that if I were Christian, I would give forthrightness up for Lent.  I could try the self-denial on for size, just for a day, or a week, or a month.  But I'm not Christian, and I think I might die inside a little every day if I curtailed myself.  I would no longer be tripping all over my heart all day long, and perhaps not always be so broken-hearted about so many things, but at least, I know that the resilient little muscle would still be there, contracting and pumping, and doing its job as a heart, instead of a blank doing a void.  Anyway, my ideas of this system of hearts worn-on-the-outside really manifested itself the other day when I was watching, by chance, the Olympic ice-skating contenders.  I am not one, to watch the Olympics, but here, I was mesmerized by Evan Lysacek's performance of "The Firebird." Here, I thought to myself, is a man wearing his heart on his sleeve, and on his skates.  This is not run-of-the-mill skating.  This is not a performance, this is humanity pure and simple set on the ice. It was beautiful, and inescapable, and my insides ached because I saw what this young man was giving, and what he was giving was everything.  Everything.  It was all heart and soul, and practice, and discipline, and blood, and sweat and tears.  And just writing what this man did that day in front of all those people cheering for him makes me feel a bit wobbly.  I feel that his great achievement was poured out and solidified like the ice he was skating on, and maybe along the way, he might have questioned his own motives and ways of acting, but here the end result justified all those queries.  I, unlike Evan Lysacek, have not yet come upon the "end result," and so I am left right now with all these doubts.  I think to myself that I would not be in this position of looking for a permanent job for so long perhaps, if I had a heart-guard and a good sturdy mask.  But then I realize that maybe my time on the ice has not yet arrived, and until that time, be happy in the notion that I am me, and no one else, and chill. 

Boo!

There comes a time in every properly made horror film where the unsuspecting, vulnerable female (and sometimes male) protagonist peers into the bathroom mirror after a hot steamy shower, wipes off the residue, and finds that their own reflection is joined by a bogeyman, a psycho-slasher with all manner of detrimental weaponry, or a cyclops monster that spews out green viscous goo, each time it hears its victim's cries or screams.  Lately, while I have not been impaled on a bed of nails by the shadowy characters that live beneath the stairs, I have found that each time I wipe away the fog directly in front of me, I too, am joined by another in a series of scary cretins whose spikes are not necessarily in full-view initially.  In fact, the spikes come subtly, almost passively out of the miasma, and I find that I need to keep swatting the terrors, in an effort to stay the course and survive this most daunting of circumstances; instead of "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," I would say that no work makes Jill frustrated and sad.  Jill/Me/I am trying to wade through the murky state of things, with sea monsters jutting in and out of every corner, and my paddle is splintering, and I need new siding on my canoe. Each time I wipe the mirror, I have to reacquaint myself with myself.  Am I here?  Am I vanishing?  Am I the woman I once was, or continue to be?  Is this a lesson in metaphysics? And then, somewhere in this murk, and nightmarish nebula, a familiar and kind voice, and a familiar and kind face will reassure me.  It emanates from the very bottom of my being, it says: "keep going, keep chugging, keep plugging, after all you're Ms. Pacman, and you can gobble up all the silly obstacles set in your path."  Yes, I seem to be taken in by this silly statement from the bottom of my being, it's valid, it's useful, it's available to me.  It keeps me from looking over my shoulder, under the bed, and tensing up after a bath.  I'm eating dots, avoiding ghosts, reversing the course of the maze, all the while, garnering a lot of fruit bonuses that will be consumed for increasing point values later in life. 

Who's Leading?

You might be surprised about what I'm about to tell you.  And what I'm about to tell you is this: I am an athlete at heart. Or more precisely, a "spiritually-minded" soccer player whose feet, hands and head "carry the ball" all day long.  The game exposes my strengths, and my failures; it teaches me to remain nimble, and strips me of pretenses.  A great deal of practice, and discipline is required, but when it comes right down to it, the path to the proper solution, and ultimately a "goal" realized must be off-the-cuff, and on-the-spot.  If nothing else, the past two years of looking for a permanent job, has taught me that the fixation on the distant future is not helpful, detracting from the "tackle."  It's one matter at a time, one game at a time.  My improv class is all about bringing one's personal awareness into the moment, imparting a profound understanding of the particular action one is doing.  My spinning/cycling class focusses on the climb, we're to envision the top of the mountain, the mountain is there.  IS THERE.  Right above our noses.  I've learned to suppress my inner-grunt, and suck it up, because it feels good to get to the top; to suspend my disbelief of not believing in myself.  I'm not limited by actual boundaries here. I am in the zone, even though I am on a stationary bike.  I am an athlete.  It's make-believe; but there is the rush of the wind in my hair, and the smell of the mountain dew. Every class I have "pretended" my way into the true belief.  I am now one with the infinite array.  Possibilities.  It is then that I am rendered the true "central defender" of my goals. There might be foul-ups, and "foot traps" in the kicking around of the ball, but there are fresh starts, and "free kicks" as well.  It's no "consolation match" to be leading with yourself, and by yourself.  You can settle the score by magical thinking, by perfecting the inner idea, by exposing yourself to sometimes "dangerous plays" that become an exercise in child's play, and child's play and the art of make-believe is extremely significant.  It's Zen.  

Down The Rabbit Hole

The other night I was washing my hair and the back of my earring fell down the drain.  I was feeling luxurious for some reason, and wanted to be the kind of woman that washes her hair with diamonds in her ears, albeit, small ones.  Marilyn Monroe's Lorelie Lee in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" came to mind, although I am not a blonde, and not a gold-digger; yet.  While losing the back of an earring isn't a very big deal at all, I fretted.  I have always managed not to be "casual" with my possessions, and hold on to them for a long while (plus this was one of those "screw-backs" that are not supposed to fall off at any cost).  But there I was on Saturday night with soap in my eyes, using a small flashlight to see if the miniscule back went down the rabbit hole.  And there it was staring up at me, with an imaginary set of eyes affixed to its silver sheen. The anthropomorphic creature seemed to also have a voice that called out and said: "Help! Get me out of this muck!"  I unscrewed the top of the drain with a screwdriver, took a tweezer and got the little guy out of that sea of hair clumps and drain scum.  And then while marveling at my own handiness, I thought, gee, like my friend here the earring back, and Alice, I have fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole, slowly, through a tunnel lined with all sorts of strange occurrences and wonder.  This brave new world is awesomely mysterious, uncertain, and astonishing.  I've been spat out of the sluice, and I've landed into a strange room full of locked doors of varying sizes.  I know there is a beautiful, bountiful garden on the other side of these doors, and the key is there in plain sight, but I'm for now, clearly, the wrong size to fit through the door.  I am more expedient and facile in adjusting to the circumstance at hand, and like Alice, I have gotten my hands on the various drinkable/edible potions that build me up - so that I'm rendered a towering tree, hitting my head on the ceiling, only then to be cut down to size, ever the small inconsequential Minnie following the crumb trail.  This two year period of looking for a permanent job has been dizzying, and the back and forth of expectation, and then the dashed hope, has taken its toll, and there are stretch marks on my psyche to prove that its been a fierce battle of weathering the me as big and powerful, and the me as small and feeble. Until the doors open, I will have to do my time at the Mad Hatter's table, along with the Dodo, the Cheshire cat, the Mock Turtle, the March Hare, and the Dormouse.  It's good that I think I know how to deal with the effects of tea.

A Woman With Options

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," Virginia Woolf writes in her incredible and provocative extended essay "A Room of One's Own," which is call to arms on the social and material conditions required for the writing of literature.  Things have not changed much since the publication of the book in 1929.  Women still need financial independence, privacy, and leisure time for growth - and ultimately, to be a woman with options. I like to think that I am a woman with options.  I have a wonderful education, and a room of my own, with room to breathe, and outside that room there is a great, vast world with limitless possibilities.  No room for doubt either.  When I open the window, especially on these cold days, I can almost smell the possibilities.  But as "air" is and does in a non-conspicuous manner, those possibilities, while limitless, are amorphous at the moment, and my "one-pointedness," and devotion to being a woman with options is being tested.  It's an air screw. Pay it no mind.  Keep a single stream of thought, play to the tune, do not dance for nothing. The empty space, while all-consuming and threatening, is rigged for some universal measure that has not been made clear to me yet.  This is just a temporary black hole, not a supermassive one. I guess I just have an "event horizon" on my lap.  Okay, maybe not an "event horizon," that is undetectable with the point of no return, but an "Event" and a "Horizon" on my hands.  The event or physical realities have been difficult and painful, but the horizon is looking good, because it is something that can be attained.  Something good.  Light cannot escape from a black hole which is believed to be created by the collapse of a massive star.  Light will get in here, because I have not collapsed, and I was not anyway a massive star, just a starry-eyed woman that is determined to get her options back and then some. 

Tie It Tight

I am wondering how much accumulated time has been spent on tying my shoelaces.  No, I haven't turned into a dimwit overnight, it's a significant question for a significant action.  I don't know about you, but I tend to wear boots and shoes with laces.  It's a problem relationship, but I cannot break it off.  Laces are troublesome as they inevitably become undone at the most inopportune moments; and for me they must, at all times, be tied tight.  My feet have to be snug in the confines of the boot/shoe, so that I can go about my day.  If my feet are assured, I am assured.  My ankles up, depend and rely on the circumstances down below.  I find if it's tied tight, I can confer more easily and more readily.  Although recently, "easily" and "readily" hasn't necessarily translated into we want you, we like you, you're hired.  It's more than the laces now.  I can compromise, I can play footsie, just respondie.  At the very least, an acknowledgement that I have written, that I have called, that I have applied would be sufficient, otherwise, I am rendered as my own footnote.  Isn't procrastination, and let's call it that for the moment, a subheading in the cardinal sin list? I am not a foot-dragger, so why are you?  My professional dealings, like my laces cannot be slack, but sure-footed.  It's the tie that binds, and I have formed an attachment to the person at the other end of each e-mail sent and call made. The curtain is up, and the footlights are hot, so where's the audience? Okay, okay, okay.  In the meanwhile, I'll stay grounded, digging in my heels, with no footrest, just a belief that my achilles is an ache, and not a prolonged vulnerability.  Laces, I need to tie you especially tight these days, don't break on me.  

Send In The Clowns

We all want to be part of the pack, albeit, in varying degrees.  Or more aptly, we all want to be accepted, loved, admired, taken as true, or true as taken.  Love me for who I am, hire me for who I am.  People might modify who they're to become more "lovable," or more "hirable," but at the end of the day, we all have to take a lasting look in the mirror, and see, no matter how buried the real self is, it can never be completely elusive.  

Great stage performers have the ability and discipline to present facets of their "true" personality and self, while assuming the idea of make-believe; I believe it's similar to putting on a slightly transparent cloak; you're baring it all under the guise of make-shift protection.

Last night, I was lucky enough to see Elaine Stritch in her last performance this winter of "Elaine Stritch Singin' Sondheim...One Song at a Time" at the Cafe Carlyle.  There is no mincing words, Stritch is the grande-dame of turning-the-wand onto herself and her audience when she performs.  She is simultaneously bigger-than-life, and completely vulnerable.  She is made of the sturdiest armor and the corresponding wound.  Stritch is fabulous and fascinating to watch not only as an entertainer, but as someone who has poised herself in the watchful glare of the spotlight, and we react so much to her, because we see parts of ourselves in her.  Our folly, our foibles, our fascinations, our faith - check it all off, she is our trusty mirror.

Stritch turned 85 yesterday, and perhaps her performance last night reflected this big birthday, and all the thoughts that come with it.  Sondheim is always a wonderful choice, and a whole evening of Sondheim is even better, but how perfect to use this composer's genius in deciphering the human experience, good, bad, or indifferent, to celebrate Stritch's 85-year tenure.  I know that the audience felt the presence of Stritch's highs and lows more acutely than ever, perhaps.  I know I did.  "I Feel Pretty" never sounded so tragic tinged with mocking humor, "Rose's Turn" never presented itself so emphatically and insistently, and of course the deeply introspective address to one's own real self in "Send In The Clowns" might have been the truest portrait of life being rehashed.  I am grateful to have seen Stritch so raw.  I don't know how she felt.  I believe that there is a cosmic order to things, and strangely, I was meant to see this performance when things in my own life are rocking between triumph and trepidation several times a day.  Friends over the years have told me that their first impression of me is one of confidence, the outer, but I'm all jello inside - meaning I am vulnerable and quivering like we all are in varying degrees.  I think they're right, and perhaps I would have had something to give to the stage had I wanted to pursue that game, but no one can do the system of incongruity like Elaine.  New York loves her for it.  I love her for it.  Now, can New York love me for it?  We're all mortals.  I don't believe in God or reincarnation, I believe we have one crack at life, one crack at being ourselves, maybe not completely, but in turns.  Transparency, vulnerability are significant traits of human behavior, so send in the clowns.

The Big Apple

Adam had a party

Adam had a party 

Adam had a celebration 

And on the fourth day...

What happened on the fourth day?

Victoria's Secret becomes an Apple store - 

It's all about Eve

Stay with me for the time-being, I will explain.  This afternoon on the subway, a man wearing suspenders, no coat, and buttons with slogans on his beret, sang the above over and over again. Initially, I was annoyed that his will seeped into my carefully guarded space.  What was he going on about anyway?  Why, when the subway is already so unpleasant, does this man have to make the trip even more eventful?  My fellow passengers were visibly annoyed, and wanted the man to just shut up.  We looked at one another, silent, but our faces were open with the statement: This man must be deranged!  Or autistic, or suffer from acute Tourettes.  Why is he in our car? Why are we in his? His almost pathological dedication to repetition started to make me nauseous and depressed - I'm not sure why, but all the same, I put down my book, and started to really listen to what this man had to say.  And as I sifted through the gibberish, I realized that this man was a type of sage wrapped up in the trimmings of a jester. Astonishingly, he was wearing bells on his belt, and his message was in the form of a riddle; one that was sung, and repeated ad nauseam.  Yes, he was talking about the well-worn story of Adam and Eve, and the eventful "fourth day," where God supposedly set up the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament of heaven.  And then his tale morphed into what seemed a modernized metaphor for the capitalistic conveyor-belt that we're immersed in.  In that, I mean, things, in an unending steady stream, are here for a time, they're popular, and then, they're replaced.  "Victoria's Secret" is still going strong in this city, it's just that "Apple" is going even stronger.  And our car's jester wanted to make clear in his riddle, and in his punning, that an apple, not "Apple" was detrimental to Adam and Eve, and perhaps to us.

I've been eating from the wrong tree.  I know it.  And,  it's a big apple I'm wrestling with; the Big Apple.  I, along with many others, I'm sure, are doing time on this demonic conveyor, and while we're strong and shiny it's no matter, but when there is someone coming around the bend that's perceived to be a little more lustrous than we're, we must get our exercise again - and go round-and-round.  Perhaps it's the sign of the times, that the conveyor has widened, and things at least for me, aren't coming as quickly as they should or have in the past.  But as the man said so wisely on the train - Adam had a party, even a celebration, now where's mine?