Yesterday at Dolores Park we celebrated the 5th birthday of BAH (Bay Area Hoopers), the Sunday afternoon hoop group Philo and I started the day after meeting at Min Jung's party in 2003. Philo wrote about it on hooping.org. And here is how it all started.
I have a total soft spot for poppy, dancey, electronicky music from the very early 90's. I started giggling this morning when I heard Strike it up by Black Box on the radio. This song makes me happy.
Nightshade also has a picture that has the Kean in it (on the far right).
The performance was completely awe-inspiring in its skin-crawling creepiness. It made me super proud to be one of the creatures Anastazia chooses to work with. Late Friday night I got a text message from her--I assume she sent one to each of her creatures--that said "You rock my SHIT thank you for being you with me." Thank you indeed.
We did another Bad Unkl Sista performance at the Exploratorium last night, and I played a small part in it. Kean was involved this time too. It was a last minute decision by Anastazia to add him as a creature and a helper to belay Carl into the air. Aside from the two staged performances, we got to run around and play and weird people out with our characters.
Afterwards we went to MEAT vs. Death Guild at DNA Lounge in our make-up. Mine was crazy red and his was crazy blue. A friend commented on our make-up, and I told her that we had just done a performance. Thinking about that makes me really happy. I love how many different fun and exciting things we do together. I have never been in a relationship with this much shared expression. It makes me never want to settle for anything less. Before this, I had never even had a boyfriend that I could dance with. I had one, a long time ago, that I could dance next to, but not even really dance with. Now I have one with whom I can dance, perform, model, power play, hoop, do subway acrobatics and play other interactive human games. Maybe it's because I am more expressive nowadays, and so the people in my life are as well. No matter where it came from, it's glorious.
This makes me think of a spam email I got the other day, saying "Had some FUN and excitement lately?" Yes, and I feel really lucky and thankful.
After dealing with some difficult emotional stuff at DNA, we released some of that by shoving and pushing and slapping each other on the way to the car, and then Kean put me on his piggyback. After a block or so, we heard a voice from the other side of the street.
"Hey, did you guys drop a jacket or something?"
I turned around, and sure enough, my jacket was lying on the floor half a block behind us. We piggybacked back and picked up the jacket.
"Thanks," I yelled and giggled. People are great sometimes.
Then we switched over to the more poetic part of the day.
"What do you have to eat at home?"
"Meatless balls."
"Okay. We can eat them alls."
In the morning, I was lying on the floor, and Kean looked around the room.
"Your floor is a mess, and you are part of it," he said.
My friend Sarah is going to have some designs in a fashion show soon. It's going to be dark and shadowy. This is the first time that I am going to be modeling in the goth scene, and I am super excited.
On Monday at Death Guild, Sarah and her other models and I had a fitting in the bathroom. It was fun. Before that she had sent us a drawn draft of her designs via email. It turned out that for each character represented in the drawing, Sarah had already had each one of us in mind. And it turned out that each of us was particularly drawn to the character Sarah had had in mind for us and the clothes that came with it. It really worked out well. I love it when designers try to fit their designs to the person, rather than try to fit a person into their designs. Anastazia always does that too. I guess I just don't like pretending to be something that I am not. Just like in the lingerie fashion show on Valentine's Day: It was perhaps the most traditional and mainstream fashion show I have ever done, and I was a little nervous about that. But I feel like I still got to be myself and work with my own sense of style, rather than being someone I am not. I feel really thankful for that, but I am not sure if it makes me a "good" model or a "bad" model. I wonder if the good models are the completely blank canvases, the ones that can be molded into anything - a wholesome maiden or a devious vixen or anything inbetween. But I think I'm okay with potentially not being a "good" model, just like I'm okay with not being a "good" employee or a "good" daughter if "good" means compromising myself. Maybe this is selfish, but in a way there is no "good" and "bad" for me anymore; there is only "me" and "not me" when it comes to living my life.
I recently twittered the following: "Listening to a fit of Cockteau Twins."
Not only did a misspell the Cocteau Twins' name, but I was also lying. I was not listening to the Cocteau Twins but to the Knife. By "fit" I meant that I was listening to the same song over and over and over again. And over again. That morning I had found a burnt mix CD in the CD player of the cab I was driving. It had the Knife song on it. I recognized it because it plays at Death Guild all the time, but I had never really noticed that I liked it until that morning when I found myself unable to stop listening to it again. And again. And again. But I totally thought that it was a Cocteau Twins song. If you are familiar with them, you might understand why.
This Monday at Death Guild the song came on as I was talking to a new friend. I don't remember how it came up but he mentioned that it was Heartbeats by the Knife. Then I told him that I had thought it was the Cocteau Twins, and I also told him the whole story about the CD I had found in the cab. I didn't tell him about my mistaken Twitter though. But I did ensure he understood why it was easy to assume that the song was by the Cocteau Twins. If I have to admit that I was wrong, at least I want to make it clear that there was a very good reason for my mistake. I want the world to know that I don't make mistakes easily! Definitely not!
And now I am telling my blog the whole story about the CD in the cab, the song, the Twitter, and the conversation with my friend. I feel dizzy. And as I am writing this, I am finding myself, once again, compelled to listen to the song one more time. And another.
Kean took a couple of videos of our Bad Unkl Sista performance at Yuri's Night last Saturday. This one is my favorite. Can you guess which creature I am?
Maybe I shouldn't do this but sometimes, after meeting a new client, I search for them online to see what they are all about. Today I was curious about a client who had come to see me on Monday. I found her Facebook profile, and to my surprise I am mentioned in it. Apparently, the evening following our session she created a Facebook status update saying that she loves her intuitionist. Ah, the little things that can make your day.
I just decided to share something from my paper journal. I wrote it on the first day of the big train trip, after I had been staring out the window for a few hours:
I just had the most beautiful thought when I saw a big pile of junky fenders. At first I felt judgmental and negative with thoughts like "how wasteful" and "this is what kind of terrible things we're doing to the Earth" and "the curses of civilization", but then this thought came to me that we are doing the best we can. We as humans are trying really hard to improve our lives and the world around us. We all want the same thing: a livable world. We built railroads and developed automobiles, all so that we could have better lives. We are constantly working things out with ourselves, each other and the Earth, and collectively we are doing the best we can. Storing a bunch of old fenders in a fenced-off area is part of it. Suddenly I felt so much forgiveness and compassion for the human race that I almost started crying.
Last year on Valentine's Day I went to an event at DNA Lounge called Black Heart Valentine. My own heart was totally black at the time as well. I had been invited by a girl I had recently met at a party. My interest in goth events was fresh.
I recognized the guy working the door that night. He was the ex-boyfriend of the ex-girlfriend of the guy I was making responsible for my black heart. I talked to him briefly. I'm not sure if I told him exactly how I knew his name.
That night I kissed the girl who had invited me, her friend, and her friend's boyfriend. Actually, it was more like they kissed me, and I just went along with it. My ego was flattered, but my black heart was too strong for it to really make me feel good.
I also introduced myself to the gothiest of all goth boys that night and gave him a Psychic Valentine because I liked his hair. I still sometimes see him at Death Guild now, but we don't say hi anymore.
But what I really want to talk about is something internal that happened while I was standing upstairs watching the band. I had no idea who they were. A guy with long black bangs, black pants and big boots was stomping back and forth across the stage, screaming "Now how does it feel? Now how does it feel?" The line made me think of revenge. It also made me think that I thought I was over music about dysfunctional emotions, even if I, with my own black heart, was so in the thick of them myself.
I liked how the singer was strutting around on the stage, screaming. I also liked his style with the bangs and the boots and stuff. And I thought to myself "Where I have I been all this time? I knew this world existed, this world of black hair and boots and dysfunctional thoughts. It's been there this whole time; why haven't I tried it on?" I already had black hair, huge boots and lots of dysfunctional thoughts anyway, so that's when I decided to really try on this world.
