Tell me why

The other day, I was getting ice cream with C, and she posed a very interesting question.

Why do I pursue the arts? Specifically, why do I pursue the performing arts when doing so means subjecting myself to more or less constant abuse from myself and others?

I mean, I'm medium talented, so I guess that could be one reason. The Bible says not to hide your light under a bushel, and you could say I've taken this to heart.

I love performing, but I don't do it often, at least not in the traditional sense. At dance class, because I am a showoff, I perform every movement whenever I think anyone is watching me. (Little girls, parents of other students, any of the other people in my class- I'm a little shameless.) In my extended essay, I talked a lot about how "performing" differs from "execution of steps." What I didn't mention was that performing is way more fun. What's the point of doing a series of dance steps? Why do that when you could be an evil witch plotting vengeance, or a bird trying to escape capture, or a cheerful peasant dancing in the streets for joy?

Unless you dance with me, you probably don't know this, but ballet makes me absolutely miserable, a lot of the time. I have the unfortunate habit of comparing myself with other people, and the misconception that success at any endeavor should be proportional to age. I am younger than Caroline, so she has to be smarter, and she is, because she's been to college and I haven't. By this logic, K is three years younger than me, ergo, it is impossible for her to be a better dancer.

And that's just not true.

Still, it frustrates me that girls who are so much younger than I are so much stronger. I have a very flexible body but exceptionally little strength. My teacher called me a wet noodle, which is pretty astute. I wiggle and flop around. Not nearly as much as I used to, but more than I'd like. And it's a constant source of frustration, because I hold myself to a very high standard that's very hard to live up to and frankly, that I'm sick of. I'd kill to be able to take a pointe class and say, "That was better than last week!"

So if I wrestle with my subconscious every time I go to ballet class, why bother going at all?

Love is just hard to explain.

And why do I still work with the music department when I hate Mrs. N's guts and she insults me and my friends in every class and rehearsal? Once, I liked to sing. It's hard to sing when you're gritting your teeth because someone just told you your rhythm was off when there's a pit band, piano, and orchestra that are all playing at different tempos and you don't know who to follow.

I guess I'm just a masochist.

Even working out didn't help

When you let the crazy-dam leak just a little, it bursts and suddenly you find yourself entertaining crazy, nightmarish daydreams on the elliptical.

There's a con this weekend, and I've been rereading the chaplain handbook because I'm one of the chaplains, but the book just made me feel worse. It has sections about the warning signs of suicide and why it's absolutely critical that you keep your own emotions in check throughout the entire duration of the con or else nobody will come to you for help and then the issues will fester and ruin the weekend. Ack! I'm very nervous, and since I've been telling people how nervous I am, they'll feel apprehensive about approaching me for chaplaining!

I think I need a chaplain.

Back to the original purpose of this blog

Enough of these petty emotions. Begone with ye, avast!

I recently picked up a book called Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I really liked Speak, so I've always given her other books a chance, although they tend to be gloomy, depressing, and overall disappointing in comparison. Not that Speak is a barrel of laughs, but at least it has a happy ending. Most of her endings tend to be ambiguous, which I don't love. She writes about teenage issues, such as: rape, internet bullying, college rejections, and the subject of Wintergirls: eating disorders.

Wintergirls was far and away the most terrifying book I have ever read, and to put this in perspective, I've read books like First They Killed My Father, The Bell Jar, and Night. (Which one was read for pleasure? See if you can guess! The answer will be revealed at the end of the post!) This book is about an anorexic girl (high school senior) whose friend who was also anorexic, dies. The main character has been institutionalized multiple times (it's not clear exactly how many) and she still isn't better. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why she wants to be anorexic. She keeps thinking about how hungry she is and how badly she wants to eat, and it doesn't seem to be a body image thing, because she knows she's thin already. As far as I can tell, she is obsessed with cleanliness, because she talks herself out of eating breakfast by thinking about how clean she is inside when she wakes up.

This book is chock-full of disturbing imagery. For example, the girl has to be weighed every week (technically every day, but her family is too busy), and she wears the same yellow bathrobe for the weighing. Her stepmother doesn't know that this bathrobe has quarters sewn into the hemline and pockets. For some reason, that image is impossible to shake. Then, later, she weighs herself on her own scale, which is really fancy and can't be duped, and she weighs 99 pounds.

99 pounds.

Then she talks about how her ultimate goal is 90 pounds.

"At 90 pounds, I will soar," she thinks.

I think the reason that this disturbed me so much is because I know a surprisingly large group of people that have had eating disorders, and it's troublesome to think that they might have thought these kinds of thoughts. It also bothers me that girls who do not have eating disorders and never have occasionally talk about how people think they do. These conversations get braggy very quickly, and it's bizarre; they start out with the girls talking about how they could never have eating disorders, then degenerate into a kind of contest. "My mother thought I did," they'll say, or "the school nurse." "My teachers." This contest is multifaceted; you can score points for how many people thought you were bulimic, how many thought you were anorexic, and who these people were. Bonus points if it's someone in the medical community.

This is very cynical. I know that these girls (and I say girls just because I've never heard boys do it, but for all I know, they could be) aren't thinking about this in terms of a contest or even anything to win, exactly. But it makes you feel sort of good about yourself, in a weird way.

It's only recounting the stories that makes people feel good. When someone really thinks you're unhealthy, your first instinct isn't pride or modesty or anything like that. It's shock, disgust, anger, hurt. Often anger.

The moral of this post is: don't read Wintergirls if you know someone who has or had an eating disorder, if you don't like teen angst, or if you enjoy feeling happy. I didn't even finish it and it deeply unnerved me. A downside to a visual mind is that pictures are harder to erase than words, and Laurie Halse Anderson has quite a way with imagery.

ANSWER: Trick question! I started reading First They Killed My Father for pleasure when I was nine, on a car trip, then put it down and picked it back up seven years later, the summer before senior year. The Bell Jar I just picked up for funsies. That was poor planning on my part.

As far as I'm concerned, Night is the ideal length for a book about genocide, because the beauty of concise writing is that you remember the whole book, not just random snippets. Still, it was no joy ride. I had to read that the summer before freshman year, and in my summer reading essay, I had nothing to say about it.

Conceited

Today in English, we were writing conceits, and I started to write one about how separation is like perfume, how it pervades every area and gets into places you wouldn't expect and lingers and leaves before you want it to, and everywhere you smell it, you remember. It's in the scarf you wore when you went for a walk in the bitter cold and the movie you watched together and the room where you played board games. Then when it's gone, you think you've forgotten but then you see someone else with the same scent; they have the same gloves, or you hear one of the old songs when you're watching TV or in the supermarket, and it all comes rushing back.

Then I realized that my English teacher would be reading these out loud to the class, so I stopped mid-sentence and wrote something about how hate is like rain.

I know what I wrote isn't very good in terms of literary merit. It was trite adolescent crap, and so is this post. But the emotions were there, and that disarmed me. I thought I was OK now.

I definitely wasn't expecting my pen to write those words. Damn pen.

It's easier to limp. Less noticeable. I don't want a cane.

Eye to the Telescope

I have a lovely view of the East Side from my computer at the library at Centaur High. I can see clear across Main Street, over the buildings that are falling apart and the people who are holding it together, the hospitals about to close down and the churches that already have. The projects, the construction, even part of the ugly building I'm currently in. All of it is covered with snow, so it doesn't look quite so bad.
I can't wait to get out of this city, but I almost feel guilty for admitting that. It needs me. Leaving it would be like visiting your ailing mother in a nursing home, then kissing her goodbye and never calling her again. I have my whole life ahead of me, and my poor ailing city has had its glory days a long, long time ago.
I know I'll probably end up moving back here at some point. Nobody ever leaves for good. My roots are here. I'm the kind of person who respects roots.

Blue

Bob Dylan, "Most of the Time"

Ingrid Michaelson, "The Hat"

The Avett Brothers, "I Would Be Sad"

She and Him, "Sentimental Heart"

Kurt Elling, "I Get Along Without You Very Well"

Not heartbroken, just sad. When people talk to me on the phone, they note how sad I sound. D told me that today, when we went to the mall. Caroline noticed but didn't comment until I asked about it.

Everyone's been so nice. My friends are really considerate. C and A came over yesterday, and I went shopping with D. I have really great friends.

I don't even care who reads this. Everyone already knows I'm sad.

What was and what might be again

Over the weekend, I watched "Akeelah and the Bee" for the first time, and it made me nostalgic for last year's musical. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I was actually in that show twice; the first time was with school, when I played Olive's Mom and got to wear a sari and was in an extremely poor health situation, and the second time was at camp. The camp one was best because I got to play the role that I had wanted originally (Marcy Park, the perfect Catholic girl. As the only Catholic at Unirondack, I suspect I was a shoo-in) and did the show with some of my very favorite people on God's green earth and learned that I can sing in a split. That was fun. The second round of Putnam was so much more fun- partly because I was much, much healthier, and partly because of the camaraderie in that cast. We worked together during every available moment, and we were tight.

This year, M and I are trying to get people in the cast of South Pacific to become closer, but I don't know how well it's working. Before most rehearsals, we get the whole cast together and play improv games to try and loosen people up. Two years ago, a girl who has now graduated had us do acting exercises- meditations and that thing where you all try to count to ten one at a time, without interrupting anybody, and soundscapes and things- but she actually knew what she was doing. She went to NYSSA and wanted to be a professional actress. M and I are not quite so experienced. Plus, there's a limit on what we can do because we're working with middle schoolers now, and they don't want to or can't do a lot of the more complex exercises. And on top of that, we're meeting with some resistance from high school students. It's frustrating.

I'm going to keep working at it, though, for no other reason but for people to make friends. The first time I did the musical, I was so paralyzed by my fear of the other members of the cast- who were all astonishingly talented- that I spent the entire duration of the play talking to maybe five people. I don't want anyone else to feel like that.

And so we press on, daunted but trying not to show it.