Now What??? - Manhattan 2003







Wednesday, 28 January, 2004

M. was talking about "hanging out" in the comfort zone of NOT being up on your leg, up where you need to be to balance. "It's comfortable there," she said, "you can hang out, settle in, raise a family…" the other place, she said was awful. "It's horrible! It's not stable, there's no security, it's uncomfortable…"

"Choose wisely," she said, "which place you want to live in."



Tuesday, 13 January, 2004

It is cold today. It is so so cold. And empty and sharp. I hate this ripping apart. I truly truly hate it!

And I can't say I would give anything - but I would give so much to know that he will be happy. Ecstatically happy, for the rest of his life, like he deserves.

Is this compassion? Well if it is, it sucks. Not only do I have to be sad for me, but I have to be terminally sad for him too.

No wonder I've spent so much of my life alone. This feeling business hurts like hell. And there doesn't seem to be any payoff for the pain. Or maybe the pain is just the price of the earlier joy. But that sucks too. Isn't there anything about life that doesn't just suck in the end?

Solitude is such a luxury when you're in a relationship. But when you're alone, it can be a prison.



Monday, 1 December, 2003

Later

A cute little black boy saying to the white man he is with (I THINK this is what he says): "We had a good time, didn't we?" with such a pure, innocent belief in what he's saying, and in the white man's reception of it.

I can't stand to see innocence crushed. I can't stand the idea of letting B down. Maybe the only solution is to love him as much as he loves me. To follow God's command to love.



Later still…

Coming out of teaching my class at Streetworks, I have that particular high that I remember from the last time I taught there - back in May. And it serves to remind me of how much *I* need this. Need to give this to people who need it, and NOT to get paid in return.

I need to call F., and tell him I'd rather not have any money. It would ruin it, and then I'd have to go find another place to just give myself to.



Sunday, 30 November, 2003

Nick-Cave-ish cross dresser in the subway.

I first notice him standing at the subway platform. Tall, lank - probably desperately skinny underneath his clothes - with the gaunt, tortured face of a man utterly thrashed inside and out by love - or heroin.

And I remember when I was drawn only to faces that tortured, attracted to that desperation. Because it was mine. Because everything else seemed so numb. And because only someone who knew my torment would understand, would go deep enough, be unafraid to go all the way. I'm sure that's what this man believes, in his long black leather coat and dark sunglasses in the subway. Hair that hasn't been washed in days. I'm sure he sees no alternative.

And I'm so relieved to no longer be pulled tight by that stark and empty hunger. So relieved to know that I no longer believe that love can only come in that package.

Only when we are in the subway, and he is standing by the door, ready to get off at the next station, do I notice the pearl necklace circling his throat, the sharp-toed pointy-heeled baby-blue suede shoes.

People who dress extremely, who create a "persona" to set themselves apart from the crowd, are out of touch with their own souls, out of touch with God. They don't realize that they already ARE unique, and beautiful.

And I am so grateful to no longer be starving for love. And not just because I happen to have it now.



Saturday, 29 November, 2003, early am

An old man in a white baseball cap sits sprawling on the airport floor putting his shoes back on after coming through security. Al Qaeda operatives across the globe must be laughing their asses off. Next, they'll have a guy put plastique up his ass and get caught - just to see how the world's most sophisticated security apparatus responds.



Tuesday, 25 November, 2003

Later

So there I am: standing in my parents' bathtub brushing my teeth with a meager trickle of warm water because there's no hot water in the sink, and the water pressure anywhere in that bathroom is always pretty pathetic.

At night, I climb through the wreckage that is the garage, out to the computer that sits in the farthest corner from the door. There is of course no light switch anywhere near the entrance. I hear a crash off to my left, as a cardboard box lid filled with videotapes goes sailing off its perch and lands somewhere down below. I manage to avoid stubbing or banging any extremities by slowly sliding my feet out in front of me, cross-country skiing across the floor of a dark forest filled with thousands of venomous squirrels I don't want to accidentally step on.

I make it to the computer and click on the little desk lamp before sitting in the chair (I've made that mistake before.) I set my bowl of yogurt (bonus points for successfully carrying a food item all the way to the desk) atop the uppermost book in a misshapen "stack" of books that manages to cover the entire desk surface.

(Minor digression: To understand my father, you must understand one thing: that surfaces are meant to be COVERED. They are there to be used, and a surface that is devoid of great stacks of matter - a surface, in other words, that can bee seen or otherwise detected - is an abomination of nature. Understand also that the term "surface" is one to be applied most liberally. It can mean anything from a table top to the seat of a chair - to a stovetop if no-one is around who might think otherwise.)



Friday, 14 November, 2003

Burying Nana.

I hate that I felt rushed when we met with the Chaplain in the sitting room at Arlington, and then with the officer who did our paperwork. And of course it was ME feeling rushed. I don't think Mother or Ned felt that way. And they certainly weren't rushing us. I always feel like my presence is an imposition on others' time. That they have more important things to get to. Because that's how I usually feel about people interrupting MY space and time? Always wanting to rush away from people so I can be alone?

But as soon as we stepped out of the car and saw the uniformed officer across the street from the Chaplain, it was different. When he began to march, solemnly, military-style, towards the car holding my Grandmother's ashes, I felt like crying. Suddenly it was different. Suddenly, some strangers in uniform were showing great respect for my dead Grandmother. And I knew then that we were not an imposition.

And I realized something then about our military state. As frightening - and yes, evil - as it is, it does have a soul. And a culture that is built to some degree on that soul. It does have love. Those men love the ones who have gone before. They love the men who died wearing the uniform. They love them and respect them. I neither love nor respect what the military does or what it stands for. But I do love and respect anyone who loves and respects another. Or even an ideal, an art, a practice.

It is what my father will never understand. In his obstinate, adolescent refusal to offer his respect to anything or anyone, he becomes less worthy of respect himself.



Friday, 14 November, 2003

In the Matisse cut-outs gallery at the National Galleries.

I had to be alone. I felt bad running off from Mother, but I knew if I'd stayed and then met up with Ned and Helena later, I would have been sour by lunch. So hungry for solitude that it would have come out as surliness.

I look down at Mother, walking off to see the lower galleries, and I see something of the lonely bag lady in her. I tell myself that's not her, and never will be, because she's got us. But she is partly that. She has that lonely, isolated part of her - yet maybe she's never learned to nurture it. To say - even to herself - "I need to be alone now." Never learned to dive into that solitude and isolation and come back up with treasures from the deep. Beautiful creatures that can only be born of solitude, to share with others, to add to their lives something they could not have had without her journey.

It is a gift, this ability to go into the solitude space and come back out of it bearing gifts for the world. The going there is easy - it comes naturally to those of us who are blessed or cursed with the gift of being called there. Not getting stuck there is the harder part, the part that requires consciousness, and training. And it is the only way I know to create those kinds of gifts. To really think and feel on my own. But of course, one has to come back up - not only so that one doesn't stay down there and die, but frequently, for sustenance, so that one is not just thinking in a vacuum, or in the vicious circle of one's own mind. And of course, to hand out the gifts.



Later

Giovanni Di Domenico
Florentine, active c 1500
Stained glass: "The Virgin Annunciate" 1498-1503
and "The Angel of the Annunciation."


The colors in these pieces, these glorious windows, are enough to make me want to go on living.

Are enough to sweep away the cloddish asshole who was whistling in the modern art gallery. Imagine. Whistling in a museum. What trash. Modern art. Of course. Makes sense.

But this… the light shining through the subtle rose tints… makes it all OK.



Sunday, 9 November, 2003

Women weren't meant to be needy. How did this happen?

I saw it with the African dancing, and with Josh's dancers - sexy, teasing, they're the ones with something that is desired, the creative ones, the creators. How did this get turned around??

Later:

It's better to end a relationship with anger, bitterness, resentment - than with sweetness. Sweetness hurts too deeply. To take him back to something we loved together - to take him to the ocean (unsuspecting, like a little lamb) and say to him, here, remember this? Remember when we were so happy? Keep this with you always, and remember that I once loved you. And now go… be free… fly away and try to be happy without me.

How cruel.

How much kinder it is to make up some reason to hate him. To make him into a villain - if not in my mind, then in his own - to say to him "you are an asshole. You aren't good enough to me. You have treated me badly and I'm leaving you."

Instead of: "I just don't feel for you what I thought I did. Or maybe once did and now don't." Or, worse… "Now that I've gotten to know you better, I realize I don't really love you. Not in that way anyway." Or: "I thought I loved you and now I don't. Goodbye."

Of all of these - and there is some truth in each of them, but neither is the entire truth - of all of them, the saddest is to say "look at how we once loved each other. Look at what we loved together, and remember this. And now go. Go and don't look back."

How much kinder - to us both - to just say "I hate you."



Thursday, 6 November, 2003

Have I given up on love?

I feel that there is nothing on earth that I even want. Maybe that's why we need our earthly attachments - to keep us here. Maybe it is a mistake to try and shed them.

I feel so alone now. But not in a scary way, or even a way that hurts. I just feel accustomed to it. As if it's all I've ever known, and all I will ever have.

Maybe I do want something now. I want to put on my coat and shoes and go to the healthfood store and get some blueberries and soymilk and yogurt and cheese.

I can't even smile. Or get excited about anything. Life seems so pointless and dreary. God, at least when I had false hopes of love, I had something to look forward to. I hate feeling like this.

I hate hating humanity. I just hate the way it feels.

And nothing can offer comfort now. Not food, not a movie… not even a lover.

This sucks.



Later:

Nothing, except maybe the hope of creating something beautiful: My Mermayde book. I don't have the energy to DO it now, or to be excited about it - but I can at least see the hope of it.

And the knowledge that this feeling WILL pass. It has before. It always does. I hate it when it comes, but I do know that it will go.



Sunday, 2 November, 2003

New York City Marathon.

This is what is important. For humanity to build THIS muscle. Strangers. Cheering on strangers. Cops, standing on a traffic island, cheering on whoever is running by. Cheering on whoever has worked so hard to get this close to the finish line.



Saturday, 1 November, 2003

Union Square Park.

I step over the fence to go sit on the grass, along with some 2 or 3 dozen other New Yorkers, and I've just found my spot and am about to sit, when the Park Lady comes out and shoes everyone off the grass. "This park is closed!" She shouts. "Come on! Everyone out!"

A woman and a guy with a dog on a leash. She kneels to scoop up the dog's shit into a little plastic baggie. They're talking about their dog's shit as I sit and eat my meal on a bench nearby.

"It's so yellow!"

"That's not good."

"No, it's not good."

"Must be because he ate all that last night…"

Yeah. Must be. And I wonder why I don't get out more.



Friday, 31 October, 2003

Crazy guy howling in the subway and then getting offended when someone looks at him.

"Stop looking at me! I'll blaze you!! What choo looking at???" He yells at someone down at his end of the train.

And then he stands up and walks toward where I am sitting. He reaches for his belt, and all of a sudden it's not funny anymore, and I hear myself thinking "Oh my God, I'm about to be stabbed!"

I get up and quickly walk past him, joining the 2 or 3 other women who had been standing in my end of the car.



Sunday, 26 October, 2003

On the subway, coming home from D.C.

I look in the window across from me and see B's face staring back at me from my own reflection.

I feel the half-drunk secretary's thigh pressing next to mine and I know that to have sex with her is only to know her body. She has sent her soul away from that experience.



Thursday, 16 October, 2003

I may have avoided commitment all my adult life, as a way of avoiding the pain that comes with attachment - but my parents got married for the same reason. And it didn't work for them either. Life finds ways of touching you, no matter what. You can't really protect yourself from it, only minimize your exposure to it. And what a waste that is.



Sunday, 12 October, 2003

You know your nature, Pascale. You're meant to mate - and then flee. Don't linger long enough to get attached, to bond. Mate, and then run wild. It's what you are.

Don't get caught.



Monday, 29 September, 2003

What DO I want? I've spent my whole life starved for sex and love, and now that I have it - or a very good chance at it - I'm not sure it's what I want. Not sure it's how I want to spend my life.

Is the grass always greener?

I've become SO GOOD at being alone. I've developed the ability to focus on things other than love and sex - quite a challenge for me in early years - And I've built up these other interests. As compensation for not having love? Maybe. But they've become my life now. My focus. I'm more committed to studying ballet with M. than I am to having a life together with my boyfriend.

Is that wrong?

Does it mean I shouldn't be with him?

And I love my time alone. My solitude. I NEED it. So funny. Only six months ago I couldn't bear to be alone, the most important thing was bringing people into my life. And I'm so glad I have. I'm so glad I've opened up these dialogues with people, my friends and family, so glad I can talk to them now, that they're there for me.

But do I want someone with me ALL the time? In my house? My space?

Maybe I'm not really in love with him. Maybe if I were I would feel differently.

But I do love him. And I am very attracted to him. What I think is strange to me is that I am so used to loving someone who doesn't love me back - or WANT me back. Now I have love without pursuit, without longing, without frustration, and it feels weird. Not something I am used to.

I don't think I want to have children, either.

I used to think living life alone was such a waste - that I was wasting myself by not being in love. Now it seems that I could be wasting the gift of who I am - the gift I have to give the world - by being with someone and NOT alone. (Later: Or is THIS really the belief, and fear, that has driven my entire life? …and fear is not always a bad thing…)

Or do the two have to be mutually exclusive? Does being devoted to him have to mean giving up my devotion to dance, writing… me?

I won't do it. I won't give that up.



Monday, 25 August, 2003

Hill of Beans? It's because you tell yourself that two hearts don't matter - that one doesn't - that you are able to use a gun against a person.



Tuesday, 19 August, 2003

Later

I look at a picture I drew of Daniel's face - and I remember… so clearly… I really did love him deep deep inside.

I look at his face - his goofy mouth and bright eyes - and I know much of it was a mask. But the mask was only the flip side of the reality. And the tension between the two tore my heart out. And both were real.

I loved the hope in his face. The sparkly-eyed, wide-mouthed hope and exuberance.

As much as he deeply believed in his own failure, he deeply wished for success. Maybe success was impossible in his mindset. But that just makes it all the more poignant that he hoped for it.

Hopes for it.



Tuesday, 19 August, 2003

Remember, re: being a good yoga teacher:

It's not about me. I am a vessel for the teachings. And the more I am focused on "being a good teacher," the less I am focused on the teachings, and on my students. I need to keep my focus there. Every day, I need to shift it back there.



Wednesday, 6 August, 2003

The message from today's pointe class:

DON'T LET HIM PULL YOU OFF BALANCE!!

So I'm in attitude… partnering with a guy who holds my arm in the air and walks around me. He is short, and pulls my arm back as he moves around me, and I arch my back. I can't figure out how to get straight again, since he's got my arm back there. And then, M.'s yelling at me: "That's right, Pascale, try to pull your arm as far back as you can, and stick your belly way out. It's just what I've been talking about all day…" And then she says something about "…it takes something like… inner strength…" That stung.

I am SO ashamed. It's as if I've just thrown everything she's taught me in her face - and looked like an idiot besides. It takes me the rest of the day to get over feeling bad about it, and then I realize just how important what she said was - and maybe how important it was that I screwed up.

I would never have offered the excuse that he was pulling me back. I am responsible for my back, for my line, my alignment. But if I had, she would have screamed:

"DON'T LET HIM PULL YOU BACK!! IT'S YOUR BACK!! DON'T LET HIM PULL YOU OFF BALANCE!!!"

"A ballerina is strong," she says.

So, I take that to heart. And I kick myself in the butt. I tell myself to focus, to do everything well, to pull it all together - not just a few things I pick to focus on, but everything. To do my best. Not for M., not for her approval, but because I need to. Because I can't afford to get slack in my life. Especially not now, with so much at stake. My screwing up in pointe class was a wakeup call, and not just for ballet.

So I pulled myself into shape, focused, kept my back strong through the whole class, and really did do my best. Coming downstairs after class, I saw M. and she gave me a big smile, like "yeah! Good for you!" It's not why I did it, but it made the effort more than worth it, and I felt redeemed.

Most of all, it is a reminder to never get complacent. Never to think I don't have to work hard at the same stuff I worked hard at yesterday.



Thursday, 14 August, 2003

The helicopters look like hornets, hovering in the air over Manhattan. Just hanging there. Perfectly still. They look like they're waiting for something.

"As you can imagine, it is an historic day…"

I can hear the radio from the neighbor's backyard as I sit on my fire escape looking across the river at the dark city. Oh God. Please not another historic day.

I'm so glad I wasn't in the subway today when the power went off. So glad it's the one day during the week when I don't have to go out. So glad I'd had the AC on all day, so my apartment was very cool by the time the power went out. And it stayed tolerable until dusk - now - when a light breeze took over and I opened the windows.

And so glad that I had just finished doing my taxes when it happened. I went to draw a bath, and noticed my bathroom light had turned a dull orange glow. I thought it was the bulb and turned it off. It wasn't until I came out that I figured out what had happened.

Ooooh… Manhattan all dark at sunset. This could make a great picture…



Tuesday, 5 August, 2003

Later still:

A nametag is stuck above a window on the subway:

"Hello, my name is ZEUS."

I get a junk e-mail from a viagra purveyor. The heading reads "foreplay shouldn't last an hour."

I am at a loss for words. What are people thinking? What world do they inhabit?



Tuesday, 5 August, 2003

When you rush into sex, it's because you don't trust that the desire is there. You grab hold of whatever sparks you can find at the surface as quickly as you can, in case they disappear.

But if you don't grab, if instead you sit in the stillness, and let the truth reveal itself, then yes, you may find that there is no desire. But if there is desire, and if it is real, then it will rise slowly to the surface. And it will be more powerful and more solid than any surface sparks ever could be.



Later

Pretending that sex isn't sacred.

When you treat sex as something casual, inconsequential, "no big deal" - you are numbing yourself to its power. The power is still there, and it will still affect you: overwhelm you, ravage you, make you mad, depressed… but you won't see it until it's too late. And even then, you won't understand. Worse, you will have numbed yourself to the incomprehensible beauty of it by insisting that it is mundane. So, you will miss out on the beauty, but still suffer the pain. And never understand why.



Thursday, July 31, 2003

Uh oh.





Friday, 25 July, 2003

God has sent me another soul to love.

And I think this one might not be afraid. He might actually let me love him. That's all I want.

Oh alright… and a FEW other things. But mostly this.



Friday, July 25, 2003

If I ran this city, there would be posture announcements on the subway:

"Ladies and gentlemen, please be aware of your lower back! Lift your abdomen! Tailbone down! Thank you!"



Tuesday, July 22, 2003

I leave lunch with Guy and step into the downpour. There's no avoiding it, so there's no point in even pretending to try to stay dry. So I just step right out into it, as if I'm stepping on stage. …and gradually becoming drenched.

I cross the street, aware that people are looking at me, aware that there is no longer any meaningful barrier between myself and the outside world. My clothes are now merely perfunctory. They no longer serve the purpose of covering my nakedness. At least that's how it feels.

My pants are soaked through, I feel the weather through them; my tangerine shirt clings mercilessly to my chest and tummy, revealing an equally soaked black bra beneath. So much for Victoria's "secret."

I am wearing the weather. Or is it wearing me?

I haven't felt so sexy in ages! I'm walking down the street, for all practical purposes naked, and no one can stop me!! My nipples poke forth, leading the way, and no one can say a thing against them. Rain pours down my face, hanging from my lashes and lingering on my lips before dripping to the sidewalk below.

Up ahead of me, a woman with cropped dyed-blond hair approaches. She is also sans umbrella, and also delighting in the sense of ridiculous freedom. Our eyes meet, and we burst out laughing and keep swimming on.

The rain is warm as it continues to pelt down upon me. I am not wearing soggy, clingy clothes, but a moving stream of water. It pulls me out of the world I had thought I inhabited, and into its own. All my concerns are gone, all my complaints have melted away, and all that exists is this torrential wetness that demands my full absorption. I couldn't stop smiling the rest of the day.



Monday, July 21, 2003

In a diner, waiting for my yoga class to start.

It's 6:30am, and I feel like I'm in Taiwan again. Why? It's an early morning in Chinatown, grey skies, ugly buildings…

Aaaaaaaaggghhh!!! All I want is to go back to bed!!

It's raining, just lightly - what a beautiful day to stay in bed!!

I may skip pointe today, since M.'s not here, and I could use the time. I'll do a session on my own during the day. Do I go to J.B.'s standup thing tonight? Yeah, I should. God, remember how starved I was for human contact in Taiwan? How horribly lonely I was? Nobody should be that lonely.

Not even D. I tell myself I want him to be miserable, and when I'm angry enough, I mean it. I want him to suffer. But then when C. tells me yesterday, in the park, that she saw him the other day and he was "all down and out," I felt a jolt of fear for him.

Why won't this die?

No matter what happens, no matter what he's done to me, I still feel this tenderness for him, this desire to protect him, to take care of him.

It's raining now. The streets are slick, and the guy on the crane has put on a yellow jumpsuit with a hood. Breakfast in the diner smells good, even though it's stuff I'd never eat.

God, just wanting to tell him it's raining, and not being able to, makes me want to cry.

The rain seems to have stopped for now. God, all I want right now is to be at home in bed watching videos.

Why do people think it's OK to rip souls apart once they are together?

It's pouring now. Shit. I should have left when it had stopped.



Saturday, 19 July, 2003

Morning, before going out to yoga and then having Leslie over for crepes:

Oh, I get it now. This emptiness - it's like the space I felt in Japan, before something big came into my life.

It's like that now. D. carved out such a big piece of me, and now that I've "fallen back into place," there's this big empty space. Is it the space he left? Or is it something new? I don't know. But it seems to be growing. An expanding emptiness at my center. And it's uncomfortable. I try to fill it with all kinds of things: With meaning (is that what I'm doing now?) with passions (dance, writing projects…) with friends, with dating… or, at the lower end of the spectrum, with entertainment, or food. And, at my weakest, dark thoughts about the past, about what I should have done differently, and outright hatred and thoughts of violence.

But I know I need to sit with this emptiness. I need to let it continue to expand. It is making room in my life for something big and new. Something like I've never experienced before. And I know what I want it to be - but I don't know what it will be. All I know is that it will be big, and it will be new. Something outside of my current experience of life. Something outside of anything I've ever known.



Monday, July 21, 2003

My biggest breakthrough as a teacher was when I gave the one-on-one demo class to the woman who hired me at W. I went in knowing that she had been studying for ten years, teaching for many of those, and that she knew WAY more about yoga than I would for years. I knew that, and I decided that I still had something to offer her. And when the class was over, she was so happy. It was "delicious!" She said. That was a big milestone. The next one is keeping awake. Not going on auto-pilot.



Thursday, 17 July, 2003

…and later that day, I realized how lucky I was that my one student showed up. I was taken over again - as I am now - by this emptiness, this feeling of being lost, purposeless. Not even wanting anything.,

And then I was on the subway, going to or from dance class, and suddenly there was a burst of three-part harmony from the other end of the car. It's not unusual. People go through the subways singing for money all the time. But in those first sweet, rich notes, for just an instant, it all came together. I thought of my student that morning, and of what I had said to him at the beginning of class. How, at first I hadn't made connection, and then I did. And his eyes opened up a little more and light shone from his face, and I felt that buzz that thrill of connection, the goosebumps that tell you you've been heard.

And I looked around me in the train and I saw the faces of the people more clearly and for just a few moments, I felt connected, a part of everything around me. A participant in the three-part harmony, which was a part of my speaking with my student - a celebration of it in fact. And I realized then that this thing that was missing - the source of my emptiness - the only true thing that I "wanted" - was making a contribution to others. Knowing that I had given something of value. Not that I "had" something of value, but that I had given it.

This emptiness I had been feeling… I think it was just a realization that all the other things I thought I wanted didn't really satisfy. That without making a valuable contribution to the lives of others, nothing ever could.



Wednesday, 16 July, 2003

What an odd reaction - no, maybe not. I want people to come to my class. And I do want to "preach" yoga. To say this stuff I worked on on the train here, to reach people, to help them lift up. But I see a guy walking towards the studio, and I think "oh no… don't be a student!"

Because I also just want to go home and go to bed!!

I guess it's the same laziness that I had to fight when I first started running. And then dancing.



Date?

Rule #1 about great writing:

You can't go into it thinking you already know what you're going to say. OR even thinking you already know what your position is on the issues. You must allow yourself to become a blank slate. To start from scratch. If you don't do this, you can be very very good. But you will never be great.


(For earlier blogging, see my other archives.)