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| | Subject: | bits of truth and zine plans | | Time: | 01:58 pm |
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| the other night as i was falling asleep i had this thought that all you can do is send out to other people bits of yourself, or representations of yourself, as true as you know how, and what happens from there is about other people's perceptions and has nothing to do with you at all. it seems like an important thing to remember as i have all this angst about how i am represented by the public entries in this journal, or the outdated info on my web site, or what i say and do at work. it is all true and none of it is the whole picture of me and i think people know that, and anyway i do not want to channel all my energy into creating these perfectly curated representations of my self. one of me is good enough, and conveying bits of truth is good enough.
the other day i went up to the barnard zine library for inspiration to finish two zines i have in progress, and as i sat reading the excellent zine "on being jealous of invertebrates" i suddenly remembered my "handstands at columbia" zine idea! some spring weekend soon heather and i are going to go up to the campus and she will take pictures of me handstanding on every enticing raised surface. then the photos will go into a zine. the original idea was that handstands (and the related community, career, etc) have made me so much happier than i was as a student at columbia and that i would have had a much better time in college if i'd known about them back then. i have discovered, since hatching the idea, that handstands and depression can coexist -- but i still think handstands would have helped. it might be a split zine with a collection of things passersby said to heather last summer when she did handstands in the park on her lunch breaks. | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Subject: | whiny | | Time: | 01:08 pm |
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| i got a script for voltaren (diclofenac) for daily pain, since it takes a while for plaquenil to start helping. i have to say the voltaren is doing nothing at all. i think three OTC advil are more effective (but i can't take them now). i may have to add some vicodin to get anything done today. headache, backache, knuckleaches... good grief.
yesterday i was teased lightly, and it really wasn't a big deal but as i walked home i just wanted to say, what if your wrists hurt so much you wanted to cry, and your knuckles hurt when your girlfriend gave your hand a friendly squeeze, and your hips burned so much they kept you from falling asleep at night, and you were so tired that you slept for 11 hours most nights last week, and when you slept just 8 hours then the next day you got grapes out of the fridge and stared at them and could not for the life of you figure out what steps to take next so that you could bring the grapes with you to the studio, and when you got to the studio you curled up on the floor and napped lightly until amy came to train trapeze with you because there was no way you had the energy get trapezes down and hang them on your own... and what if you couldn't make it through rehearsal or teaching without an espresso and three advil, and what if you had daily headaches for weeks, and and and... i bet if you knew what that was like, you wouldn't give me a hard time.
but i don't say any of that because everybody hurts somewhere and most people don't get enough sleep and what is the point in complaining? i don't know, it might be more useful than moping or withdrawing. but even complaining in my lj, although it feels good to write, makes me uncomfortable to have posted to the public. | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | baby birds | | Time: | 09:25 am |
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| | between the two of us, al and i have seen 3 baby birds dead on the sidewalk in the past week in brooklyn. is it just that time of year for some baby birds not to make it, and we've never noticed before? or is something bad happening this year? | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | diagnosis | | Time: | 04:36 pm |
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| my rheumatologist says i have undifferentiated connective tissue disease. this means that i have inflammation and joint pain and other lousy symptoms that seem to be caused by an autoimmune disorder, but i don't meet full criteria for any particular rheumatic disease (so i don't have lupus or rheumatoid arthritis). he says it is most likely a temporary condition (i.e. a few years), rather than a chronic, degenerative one. so it's good news, even if it feels like a consolation-prize diagnosis in its vagueness. the good thing about it is that it shouldn't get any worse than what i am dealing with right now. and i am now armed with medication, so really, it should just get better. the other good news is that even though my joints hurt, i am not hurting them by doing acrobatics on them. this also might explain why resting never actually leads to my shoulder pain abating. i have an appt with another rheumatologist next week, so it will be good to get a second opinion, even if everything about this dx seems to make sense.
you should have seen me this morning at rehearsal. i started to go into a handstand, then backed out because my wrists hurt and i really did not want to bear full weight on them. i don't think i have ever backed out of a handstand in my life. | | comments: 20 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | the sea | | Time: | 10:57 pm |
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| i have been feeling like if i didn't get to coney island soon i would die, so today heather and i went. and it was gray and perfect. heather picked up some shells for me to wear around my neck and rinsed them off in the waves, and we sat for some photobooth portraits. we waded in the water until it didn't feel cold anymore, until my plantar fasciae contracted too much and started hurting.
today i am wearing a dress over jeans, actually for the first time ever, and a plastic lavender necklace i bought at a weekday stoop sale outside of henington press on 6th ave, and a bracelet i made out of purple plastic buttons a few years ago. it is an excellent outfit except that the armholes of this dress are too tight. that is what i hate about commercial knit clothing and one reason i am looking forward to making my own.
my bike is in for a tune-up right now and then i am going to ride it! oh boy! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | you can tell i worked with adult text today, not kids', by this entry's sentence length. | | Time: | 10:29 pm |
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| 1. even though i've been copy editing for a couple months now (one day a week or so), it still strikes me as so strange, at the end of each of those work days, to think that i worked. in part this is because i am not super busy while i'm there; i spend more than half the day reading and making lesson plans for the coming week's classes. but i think mostly it's because i've gotten used to my work being teaching and rehearsing. i'm used to my work requiring my body. if all i did was sit it seems ridiculous to think i was doing anything worthy. i am not trying to sound snobbish about the physical work i do or to demean office work. it's just really interesting to me how much my ideas about work have changed over the past 14 mos. i mean, there was a time when i was very underemployed and felt guilty about not being a contributing member of society, and strangely, copy editing feels pretty lazy and non-contributory, too. maybe because all my other work has a much more direct impact on other human beings; even if it's not at the lava studio, when i write for kids i really feel like i'm changing their lives a tiny bit. all this is not to say i am dissatisfied with copy editing. i also totally love that i get to sit and get paid, and read or do other work while on the clock, and copy editing is just fun. but the other people there and i, we never pick a cd to put on, sit on the floor, notice whose warm-up clothes match each other according to the particular day's coincidences, then run around the room or roll around the mats together. weird.
2. veda hille's newest cd, this riot life, has been on heavy rotation in our household. the most exuberant song (sara ryan calls it a barn burner) is a rendition of frederick myers’ hymn hark what a sound, and as a result i am slowly learning all the words and going through my day with phrases like "christ the beginning, for the end is christ!" in my head. it's very funny and veda completely sucks me into her camp: that songs about christ can be "gutsy," as she says, and moving, even if you aren't a believer.
3. i slept for 11 hours whenever possible this past week, including this morning, when i got out of bed, had breakfast (mostly while asleep), including tea, then went back to bed for three more hours. i am so clearly having a flare of SOMETHING. headaches like mad. i don't have any idea how to navigate my life like this. how much do i work on caring for myself, and how much do i enforce a stricter sleep schedule and focus on projects and ideas so as not to dwell on aches and pains? how do i differentiate between dwelling on pain unnecessarily and listening to my body? agh. i don't know, maybe i'm just sleeping extra because i'm coming down with a cold (or from allergies), and the headaches are just because i hold too much tension in my traps, and the eczema is because manila rope irritates my hands, and the hip pain is bursitis, and the back pain is bad posture, and the hand and foot pain is so mild i wouldn't have noticed it if i hadn't gone looking for it... | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | sewing plans | | Time: | 02:47 pm |
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|  today i had an i-heart-brooklyn moment. i wanted to get a walking foot for my sewing machine, as recommended in Sew U Home Stretch: The Built by Wendy Guide to Sewing Knit Fabrics. whenever i've sewn knits in the past, my seams always stretch the fabric. maybe i could've just loosened the tension... but come on, who doesn't need a walking foot? i've put off buying it because i don't know what kind of shank my machine has, or how to find out, or where to buy a presser foot. today on my walk home from the studio i thought of the appliance store around the corner from us, which sells vacuum cleaners and sewing machines. and lo, the guy behind the counter told me there was a 75% change my singer had a low shank, and got out a foot for me, and showed me how to install it, which i never would have figured out properly myself from the scant written instrux that were taped onto it.
meanwhile, i am so excited about this book! i still have some knit fabric i bought at the start of last summer that has not found its way into a t-shirt. what i love about this book is it gives you three patterns (t-shirt, hoodie, dress) and then shows you how to alter the patterns yourself to make whatever you can imagine. it looks so easy and exciting and welcoming to creativity. any book that encourages me to design my own stuff so totally wins. there is only one thing that irked me: a line about how if you have broad shoulders and large biceps, you could design yourself a dress with narrow shoulders and puffy sleeves to disguise those things. WHAT? i aim to show off my biceps whenever possible.
i want to make (among other things) something like this (anthropologie), but with short sleeves, and as a dress. and now i feel pretty well equipped to do that. | | comments: 12 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | waiting for a dx is scary | | Time: | 10:16 pm |
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| | the bloodwork form that i took down to the lab had rheumatoid arthritis checked under the diagnosis heading. the rheumatologist told me "i'll just mark this so your insurance doesn't give us any trouble for ordering the bloodwork," but even so, staring at that as i rode the elevator down freaked me out so much that i didn't eat between 2 and 10 pm today and am still not hungry. usually it takes something as big as performing to make me too anxious to eat. the diagnosis is not real, it is not real ... but it could be. i just don't know yet. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | whiny | | Time: | 12:31 am |
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| as much as i want to be seen, when people ask me, face to face, about whether i hurt or how much i hurt, i find myself minimizing it or else feeling melodramatic if i admit to it. i mean, come on, everybody i rehearse and perform with is hurting from some sort of injury right now. who am i to complain?
i am feeling uncomfortable with so many of my interactions in general lately. part of it is being depressed and therefore not feeling at peace with or happy with my self -- and therefore feeling uncomfortable with my expressions of self. but i can't tell how much of it is also that the people i've been spending time with are just not right for me. but being frustrated with other people and finding fault with them also seems potentially depression-based. oh! i don't know! it's no fun being lonely and even more annoying to suspect you're only doing it to yourself. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | big sum-up post | | Time: | 12:38 pm |
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| 1. performing
at a certain point last summer i remember asking myself, "what did i DO last may?" we were performing TIDES four nights a week, but i don't seem to have done anything other than that. i was between writing projects, i was teaching at the studio only once a week, and i didn't have any other freelance gigs yet. did i just squander all that free time? what did i do all day on mondays, tuesdays, and wednesdays?
well, i still don't really know, but i realize now that by summer i had already forgotten how performing takes up about 4 times more energy than it does time, at least. even if i was only at the the theater from 5 till 9 on a particular day, all afternoon i had to plan what and when i ate, and after the show i couldn't sleep, and next morning i'd feel exhausted and hung over and i'd have to figure out how best to care for my body so i could make it through the rest of the shows that week or month. being injured last may made it all so much harder, but i don't mean just that it's physically draining; it wipes me out emotionally, as well. i wonder if it will take less of a toll on me as i become a more experienced performer, or not.
2. other art projects
i've been doing some less exhausting, more solitary creative work lately, too. one zine is being laid out, and just needs an intro and a cover and then i can get started on the work of photocopying and gocco-ing and cutting and folding and binding (so don't let me lie and say it is almost done). i have a bunch of writing for another zine; a lot of it is from the fall, and then another chunk is about my march vacation, and right now it all feels dated, but i think i will be able to add another section about other events this spring to tie the whole thing together.
i finally have a first draft for an original picture book (the other children's books i write are all work-for-hire, which i also love). it needs a lot of work if it is workable at all, but it was really good for me just to bang it out and see what happened when the perfect idea in my head was subject to my imperfect execution of it.
i wrote a poem a day in april, and i am SO GLAD i'm done with that. writing poems did get easier but they never felt like they were really the best way to say what i said in them each day. like with the picture book, though, it was good to realize that just because i read and appreciate really good poems doesn't mean i can create them, and that it could be possible for me to create good ones but i would need to practice and study and learn and grow. along that vein, i have a dozen other ideas for projects that will come out imperfect but hopefully will come out (sewing projects, crochet ideas, clothing to make, mail art).
3. things that are hard
underneath all of this, i am still depressed, though getting better; and i am having a lot of aches and pains, some through clear, diagnosed injuries (lacking an acl, patellar tendinopathy) and others that are confusing and frustrating (pain in my fingers, wrists, low back, hips, toes, and the perpetual headaches) and about which i have a dr's appt on monday. i am hoping that all of it will give way to summer. summer is a little scary, but that's a whole other post, and there's a lot i'm looking forward to in it, too.
speaking of injury, i haven't jumped or run for about a month, at first because i twisted my right ACL-less knee badly two weeks in a row, and then because the opposite knee, the left, developed patellar tendinopathy (jumper's knee) from overuse, and i need it to be healthy because it's definitely going to get some overuse with the right knee is out of commission after this summer's surgery. yesterday i ran and jumped for the first time, in a few places in the show. it was very minimal, as i've already been taken out of all the parts of the show that require lots of running. my left knee is still not pain-free but it's getting better and i felt that i needed to participate in the show in those small, run-y/jump-y ways. the reason i am telling you this is today my quads are sore! from just that small amount of running and jumping after not having done so for a month! the body is crazy. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
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