Wordless Wednesday: Hang On To Your Ego

Warning: I've got my cranky pants on today, so my first thought when I saw this was: Oh great, sign her up for American Idol because lawd knows the world needs more oversoulers. My second thought: How freakin' sweet is this.

Like Dreamers Do

If the mind's a library and memories are books, overdue notices are those out-of-the-blue recollections that float through your days and dreams, all WTF?like. Do you want to return, renew or just keep the dang book because you've had it so long the fine would be more than the actual list price?

Last night I dreamed about one of my best friends from college, a biologist who, as I write this, may be in Kenya counting the rows of Os from which a lion's whisker grows. That's how scientists ID them, I remember her telling me the last time I saw her. I dreamed that we were going to take an exam in a class I hadn't attended all semester (You know those dreams? Sometimes you show up barefoot, too.), and she seemed positive I would pass. The night before that I dreamed about her college boyfriend (WTF? I told you!), and the last time I saw him was when I'd just gotten Bing, and I remember him saying how much fun it must be to have a kitten…

Oh, Bing.

I've been dreaming about him, too. My therapist says it's not uncommon to dream someone to death as part of the grieving process, and I think that's what's happening. They're not sweet cameos of us together, but violent and desperate and confusing. In one dream I was about to be raped, and the attacker put Bing in a pink dresser drawer to get him out of the way. His cries kept me alive as I was beaten and hit and cut. I knew in the dream I would survive and rescue him--no physical pain could be worse than losing him. But geesh, who the heck wants a dream like that?! In another, there was some sort of disaster and I had to bring Bing and Derrick to safety. I dropped Derrick and he fell down the stairs, landing silently, still, in a snowpile.

More overdue notices: This morning I noticed that the ring I wear on my index finger, right hand, was broken. I'm not a big bauble person (unless the thing jingles,  which likely means it's  cheap), but I've worn this ring for, I don't know, 15 years. It was given to me by a beautiful and talented young friend who, just as she was in her freshman year in college, went into a coma. She remained so suspended for years, until she was taken off life support. The ring reminded me of life, only life, and her wonderful family and home, where I spent so much time during  my teenage years.

What does it mean that the ring broke? I don't know. This morning I was all doomsday about it, but maybe I don't have to bring the book back after all. Maybe this isn't about letting go off the past, but of letting go of what you think you're supposed to let go of.

P.S. Excuse the mostly depressing musical accompaniment, selected earlier but still killer, doncha think?

Wordless Wednesday: You Spin Me Round

Oh, this image makes me ache in the same way that the ones in this post do. It's not the Dakota thing (there are other words and wordlessness for that), but that he's listening to 45s. As in, not 33s. And as in, just like you might have done.

Each perfect, contained, knowable. Yet infinite with a spin on it. (The exception:  My 45 collection, which includes such stunners as "Convoy" and "The Little Space Girl." Tho' the latter may be the B side.)

Summer Love Sensation

It's only been a freakin' week or so and already summer's doing a number on me, squeezing out that silky, languid longing for…I'm not sure. It's like I'll be walking by the window as a breeze comes in, and know that I've felt the very same breeze before, on another afternoon in July, on another night in August…  Feeling the asphalt warm on my feet as I walked to the beach barefoot listening to Upstairs at Eric's on my Walkman, bummed that I had to waste my batteries to fast-forward through "I Before E Except After C."  Hitch-hiking home from a club in Sag Harbor at 3 AM, wearing pointy frog-green shoes and black-and-white striped leggings…

These tiny memories come fast and oozy when exposed to bright light, leaving an ache that you can almost see-feel fading. Reminding me how simple summer is, so very much and only about skin and sky, be it at dawn or midnight…

Two Julys ago I got all Slinkadelicate on ssspunerisms, but this year the breeze blew in the rindonkulous memory of my first-ever kind-of-legitimate summer romance. It was the beginning of August before my senior year in college, and I'd finally given up on the guy who wore a fuzzy white hat and once bit my fingernails to see if girl thumbs tasted different from boy thumbs (that one's so you-had-to-be-there, I know, but it was actually quite romantic, and y'all know I'm a nail-biter). 

Anyway, I was working the evening shift at the Paper Place in East Hampton when a creeper-wearing, ersatz-pompadoured boy came in and asked me to the movies. He'd seen me at aforementioned club, where I'd dance by myself in sparkly green 50s dresses and no shoes. I was picky and shy and fast-moving, so that stuff just didn't happen to me. Ever. He would pick me up after work and we would sit on the stoop in his backyard. No smoking, no drinking, just Woody Allen movies and red hots. One night I stole his underwear and wore it, too charming big, as we kissed under the bright white moon. His last name was the name of a Greek goddess, so it is quite fitting that I went to Athens at the end of the summer, and when I saw him again in December it was cold and over, mostly because I started crying like a weird jerk. 

I dreamed about him once, that he was living with a woman with white hair and tried to bite me. The truth wasn't that far off--he'd hooked up with a much-older woman, and the last time I saw him he was wearing boat shoes, in a photo in an article about her in a local real estate magazine. And he used to make fun of people who wore boat shoes.

OMG, why am I telling you all this?! It's too late, I've already typed it.

Meezer Monday: Balance, Beam

A friend of mine who's been teaching herself to tap dance (well, with the help of a Bonnie Franklin-hosted instructional video. Yes, Bonnie Franklin!)  asked me who my favorite dancer was. Of course, I suck at answering questions like that, but I did recall a scene in That's Entertainment that left me feeling floaty and inspired for days--Ann Miller doing a trillion, million chaine turns in some musical, smiling the whole time and full of so much big & bright it was like she radiated her own portable spotlight.


Here she is if you don't believe me:



When I saw this video, I immediately thought of Bing, who once told the animal communicator, "I can dance in the craziest ways, I can walk over teacups and not disturb them, because I am so centered."

Binglet and Ann Miller, then. That's my final answer.

Click this link to watch. (Sorry, embedding disablers. Though I bet you'd feel less stressed out if you let go of the fallacy that it's possible to truly 'own' anything on the Internets. Data just wants to be free and do its own crazy data dance, too, you know.)

Wordless Wednesday: Perchance to Dream

Lately I've caught Derrick and Lorenzo dreaming, and their styles are so different it really got me thinking. There's Derrick, big on the whisker- and toe-wiggling, as he no doubt races to doors that open to the most wondrous places (hallways! elevators! big skies with flies!). And Lorenzo, vigilant ears a staccato yes-or-no, alert even in sleep to the possibility of a can being opened somewhere. Definitely in contrast to little Binglet, whose ears would flutter hummingbirdedly, like he was tuned in to the most harmonious of frequencies and wanted to hear it all at once.

Copy Cats

Lorenzo didn't come loaded with all the apps that most cats do. He sleeps puppet-awkward in the middle of the wood floor, front legs bent birdlike, in lieu of cuddling up in the perfectly good kitty-sized bed nearby. I'm used to Derrick, who arches his back when I put my hand near in order to get the most of the pet; Lorenzo, until recently, would very slightly shrink, like he was trying to fit under a limbo pole or something. Not in a frightened way, but like he didn't know that being touched by a human could be a pretty pleasurable, purr-inducing thing.

Luckily for Lorenzo, tho, with patient Derrick as his teacher, he's mastered some important basics.

Like that being a good friend=licking the inside of your bud's ears, not shoving your nosey face into his dish of Outback Grill, coming when he calls you 'cause he wants to play Bathtub with you and Bathtub is fun…. Renz has learned this all by imitation, and he's a quick study as you can see here.

OK, so the thing is--I'm kind of a Lorenzo, too. I have no idea to put on make-up w/o looking like a hieroglyph (you know,the King Tut eye, 80s-does-60s-style? Or, for those whose unit of measurement for all things is a cat, the wraparound-sunglass markings on tabbies…), and I just recently, in the past 3 or 4 years or so, nailed down shoe lace-tieing. Until then, they'd eventually come undone unless I triple-knotted. Something like that really freaks you out down to the soul--how could you not know how to properly tie a shoe?.

I've learned a lot about copycatting from the 10-year-old dancers in the jazz class I'm the assistant for. No matter how far apart they start when doing a combination across the floor in pairs or as a group in the center, they slowly but surely clump together, winding up trippingly close, happily in each other's way. And the other day at dress rehearsal for their annual performance, they decided as a group to wear their hair in pony tails. But when the first ponytail-wearer sweetly mentioned it would probably work best on hair of her length and texture, the others came up with their own variations, and in the end, no pony tails made it to the stage. It's probably an obvious "being a human" thing that everyone knows, but I was like, wow…being part of a group is an important part of being an individual.

It made me think of my sophomore year in high school, when I finally found a group I could be myself in. True, that group consisted of just me and my friend P. We made up our own dance steps, took aerobics together and wore the same clothes, but she'd get them in purple and I'd get them in pink. I was really happy being part of a unit, until the day P's older friend J. from show choir told her that she needed to stop hanging out with me so much. It wasn't healthy, J. said, to be so close with one friend. Actually, I see mothers saying the same thing to their kids on bad Lifetime movies, and I'm pretty sure it's bullshit. When P. told me what J. said, I remember thinking I must have done something wrong but I couldn't figure out what it was.

These days, I love being a copy cat--it's sort of my whole M.O., to grab inspiration from others and see what I can learn from them. And now that I think of it, that includes Derrick, too. When he rolls around on the floor and purrs when I meditate, I'm reminded that it's not a chore, and I should do it with a light, joyful heart. When I see him turn and walk away when Lorenzo tries to steal the last bite of food in Derrick's dish, I learn patience, tolerance and the importance of picking your battles… His easy good looks inspire my fashion choices, too, like wearing all-white from head to toe with an orange scarf and gold-framed sunglasses.

And if anyone tells Derrick that he's hanging out with me too much, they're gonna have to deal with me first.