This imperfect thing we love so much.

About a week, A WEEK, until I fly off to Brazil. It's sinking in and is a little terrifying. I'm terribly excited and as usual I'm finishing up a paper, getting last minute things together, and have not started packing. I lived in denial for 2 days this weekend during which I mainly slept and watched weepy lovesick episodes of Grey's Anatomy. I am a master hibernator, especially when there's work to be done. Ok, I also managed to go on a date on which I had fun stepping outside of myself and pretending to be some random hot woman in a pretty dress on a date, (dates are good for that because the role-playing is such a game), cleaned out my fridge, and had my first yoga class in years. Now I'm drinking some kind of coffee called "European" that consists of egg white and half-and-half and vanilla and attempting to plan a passable paper on the history of childhood in Brazil. (The coffee in my favorite local Chicago cafe is always really funny tasting but I'm mainly here for the calm, studious atmosphere and the soothing young Russian couple who runs it anyway...the caffeine boost can come in odd flavors and I don't mind too much.) Hardly easy considering kids aren't exactly anyone's focus most of the time historically unless considered a problem. My idea wasn't to write about pedophiles or child abandonment...though there it is, entire chapters dedicated to poverty and perversion.

I did however manage to find a subletter within about a day of advertising my place. It is a lovely apartment and made me feel so good to find a thrilled tenant in oh, about 5 seconds.

I also have a sperm donor in case I decide to have a child on my own. I like him a lot, I may be in love with him in a way, whatever that everlastingly loaded term means. God knows I freak out enough for my potential sperm donor and I and our beautiful unborn multi-ethnic babies combined. No committed partner as of yet, but hey Cinderella did you know that modern life would be so darn difficult to navigate for women with standards and brains?

The shoe might fit but we're a little past comparing men to shoes aren't we? Unless you're looking for a two-dimensional life, and some people do of course, a consumer metaphor is hardly appropriate. Fuck the fairy shoe and it's fatalistic implications. Of course, I'm a terrible shoe shopper though when I do find shoes I like they tend to be awesome shoes complimented by strangers so maybe it's not the worst metaphor in the world. But it's not just about taste. It's not just about a Bourdieun understanding of choice and class. There is something else some of us seek, something like the soul that cannot be pinpointed in music and food and the societal niche occupied by the Prince or the Pauper (whoever you happen to fall for.) There's something deep and terribly poetic and painful and inappropriate at the bottom of it all. Your mother probably wouldn't approve of it because it isn't right. It's uncomfortable. The connection with those we have that funny feeling for is somewhere in the neighborhood of the Id and some fairy space called Romance Fantasy and this fairy space is only somewhat rooted in practical teachings and tangible truths. We try not to Peter Pan into the great wide unknown but we do anyway, we have a mutual drugging experience that feeds into the fairy space. We float off. Things don't make sense. We try to explain it to our friends but we can't. We're self-fulfilling madmen.

On that note I'm going back to work, good evening fellow fruit loops. 

chocolate pie ...and this title is complete

I'm wearing a goofy shirt that reads "I <3 Capoeira". It's for a 7-8 year old boy and so it's a tiny bit tight around the sleeves. It reminds me of how when I was a teenager it was popular to wear itsy bitsy shirts and show off your midriff. I have backpedaled into my teenage self and my midriff is slightly on display in this way too small thing I'm not sure why I bought it (except that the mestre with the Arnold Shwarzenegger accent who sold it to me has a charm about him, so if he says it's woman's shirt maybe I'll believe it for a little while,) but maybe I should cut the sleeves off....my little sisters wouldn't approve. It's a high school thing, it's a petty thing, it's a family thing, how to display myself, it's a fashion thing, it's a bullshit, bullshit thing. They always judged me so harshly, my mom and sisters, ridiculing me like a gang of popular bossy girls on the playground. I always succumbed, if not in action, then in hurt feelings. Very hurt feelings and a very sore ego.

I had my first Batizado this past weekend. Mestres and students flew into Chicago from all over the country and world to teach workshops and to graduate students in an order of dancefightloving....I somehow passed, graduated into a level. A white-yellow cord signifying that I have some level of skill: totally unexpected.

I'm in from the "beach," the Lake Michigan Shore...this whole Chicago summer thing is a new and interesting experience for me. It's the first time I've experienced it at all...I'm meeting a lot of nice, fun people in this warm version of Chicago. Well I can befriend for a little while before I re-Brazil my life. Chicago will never be Brazilian or tropical or warm enough anyway. A part of my heart has given up on it even as I discover lovely new nooks and crannies and finally meet the kind of folks I could enjoy myself with.

Things, in some way only have substance if you believe in their thingy-ness. If you believe in them. And I make-believe my own things all the time and that's a good escape from the confines of a mostly senseless world. The only parts that matter are the warm ones. Not their substance but their temperature. Touch my forehead. 

back to the people planet

As if this reconnecting with what I care about meant coming back to Earth. Which it does. As if the sun warming my heart and hopes meant that I could wish and feel empowered on a daily basis about the things that push me out of bed in the morning, that stimulate me into engaging with the world.

When a man in a light pink shirt sat down across from me a minute ago and started staring as if I'm his lunchtime entertainment, I thought, maybe this is my cue to go?
This feels like a weird, unfathomable day/week/something. Span of time punctuated by the kind of heat that usually stays behind shower curtains in Chicago.

I feel, slightly, like I'm bouncing around in one of those pinball machines, back and forth in a frenzy to win points and make contact with momentary discotheques. Ok, it's definitely time to change locations, bump into other silly frenzied points of contact.

Ritual or not

Skiing, like flying, changes my essence. I can soar down a mountain and I don't feel quite so mundanely human at that moment. I'm another species, and I've torn out of the mold of my daily routines and boxed spaces. My body is curving down gorgeously white slopes, and I'm singing to myself. The rhythm is just too good at those moments. It's at those times that I know that this life is so excruciatingly worth it. 

I spent today at home and slept in, slept off some booze and a jazz-filled first date, nursed the cramps that rock my body into submission. At least the timing is good. A Red Tent phase between my travels and work days and lovers. I call my grandmother who has severe Alzheimer's. She picks up and we have essentially the same conversation that we've had for the past year or more. But it never gets old because it's still her voice and we love each other ever more painfully and well, sometimes you find that you are a packaged little matrushka set of emotion. I'm the little doll inside my mother inside my grandmother inside my great-grandmother. Inside of me is a painful little empty space waiting for a doll I suppose. Thanks for the Cavity within, Woman-Maker in the Matel Sky Factory.

I should really be writing or something so this is a low-commital kinda start....

Vanilla Whipped Honey in the Twilight Zone

The sun doesn't really exist today. The sky is just an impenetrable white blur of snow and the snow comes down and sweeps over everything, a ghostly kind of snow. A ghost. 

Somewhat solution? Coffee as can be seen in the picture below, plus honey, plus brand spankin new chalk pastels with which I smudge happy colors onto whiteness. I look at a beautiful photo from Pelhourinho last summer and I draw. It's Carnival there right now, it's the white ghost of nothingness that keeps on giving here right now. 

Send me a serotonin boost or a flower...smile against the white 

unprecedented chill

The more I remember my melancholy imaginings of what this Chicago winter would be like, the sillier it seems. Ok, so I imagined it would be this poetic misery, me sitting alone in a cozy apartment, huddled over a laptop with a glass of wine with enough memories to pretend to be an old geezer writing her memoirs.

Except the problem is this: to get to the poetic, the sweet nostalgic poetic, you have to get past the misery. And the misery my friends, the frigidity that covers the Chicago streets and penetrates the soul, is awfully hard to get past. You have to cross a frozen Styx to get to a place where you can have enough hope to express yourself.

Misery. Misery. Misery. 

Self-delve

I'm not even remotely afraid of jumping into my own psyche. I'm a psyche-bungy jumper and have been since childhood. I will talk about the deepest, most seemingly embarrassing crevices of my mind and honestly, I just don't mind swimming through my id. An id scuba diver. Yes, I happily, enjoyably, speak Idish.

I know this is a language that for many seems too appallingly private. Why strip it all away and stand so naked in front of the planet? I'm an Id Nudist and I'm proud.

How can one write poetry or anything in which one strips for the reader, without being an Id Exhibitionist? I think this is simply part of the process. I yearn for the social mirror and damn it, don't we all seek a bit of this freedom where artifice is stripped to reveal the mess below?

I was in NYC all weekend. It's a kind of delving into friends that I adore and haven't seen in far too long, and yes there was a guy, a lovely one. The streets of New York, always magical, grumbling, full of possibility especially when the heart wanders, filled me with hope and excitement. I've never seen New York under so much snow. It was a mess but it doesn't matter, it's the same fantastic city full of every kind of person in every kind of establishment on every corner. I even heard a Carioca singing in a bar. Her voice was beautiful, I could tell almost immediately from her pronunciation that she was from Rio. I went to the New Museum for the first time and it was a little breathtaking. I saw an adorably painful play with Ethan Hawke about American middle-of-no-where blue collar family psychological dysfunction. Dysfunction and gaudy couches and too many phony kodaks on the walls. I reveled in my old friends. I felt a little overwhelmed because it never feels like there is enough time for the best moments in life. Moments need to be rewound, extended, slow-mo'd.

I had conversations that scurried and galloped into an enjoyment so high pitched it was excruciating. It was excruciating because I knew I couldn't put it in my pocket and bring it back out any time. Bring it back into my life...because some things are not portable. My old friends. A lovely guy who didn't turn out to be receptive to my openly emotional scuba world. Despite the conversation bliss. Or the clearly yearning kiss. A bit disappointing, this. Mermen welcome and wanted.

Life is a pale bitch sometimes. A scrawny bitch with dirty fingernails who scrapes your chalkboard and laughs like a mean little demon. Sometimes you have to wait for that bitch to shut it. You drink some wine, you get all artsy fartsy and try to write, draw, think your way out of it to some higher Platonic existence. Get me out of the fucking cave, already. Please?