special reflexology at Japan Town mall on grey humid but chilly Saturday, very cheap and the massage lady very kind, even if the man proprietor did talk to Isabel about me as if I were her daughter. I speculated that maybe disabled women don't go out on their own sans family members in Japan, so he made an assumption. or it could have simply been that both Isa and I went into the same pink, single stall bathroom and never stopped talking while we both took turns peeing.
then we had ice cream for lunch, chocolate wrapped in a waffle crepe, the way Isa and I eat chocolate. Pointing out parts of it to each other hours later--"Lick that spot on your arm, unless you've suddenly acquired a mole."
later, meeting Anna in her every day hair flower (versus the bedazzled black hair flower clips for burlesque days) at Sunflower. experiencing the good garlic pain of Vietnamese noodles. which may mean that, in our early 30's our digestive systems are profoundly aging.
finally had a chance to rid myself of guilt for having twice had Mission Pies without Kyle. This time, he was with us in the Outer Mission when we passed it by, and he ate raspberry pear.
met Michelle and Amee at a jazz club near 24th. an elderly Chinese lady in a beddazzled blazer was swaying drunkenly up and down the length of the bar. she saw my scooter and pointed, I want that! I want it!
i, yet again, told A and M the story of Isa and Bananna scraping a molten chocolate chip cookie off the wall of the Alhambra and shoveling it into their mouths. This is as exotic as my when-I-was-20-and-a-Eurotrash-hippie-in-Spain stories gets. Mychelle said, Why? because she assumed, what with my eagerness tot ell the story and all, that there was a bigger point. Isa answered, earnestly, plaintively, "There were no other cookies around...!"
Sunday, I remember drinking wine and feeling egregious for exceeding the word limit on this blog post I am supposed to be doing for the Labor Day posts. also, a brief post-gamelan concert interlude with Lex, in which we laid in bed and tried not to be fatalistic about social entrepreneurs who are aggressively courting. What matters is what Lola, the Ethiopian hound, thinks.
Monday, today, my manager gave me "permission not to obsess about X until July" and this felt like a revelation. She chose just the right words for me. Permission to think that i am doing what i can for clients right now, even if it is a bit of a mess.
And then, Words and Deeds class 3. Tonight was led by Sarah Shelton Mann. The left ankle bone spur is O.O.C. as in a coral reef of a callous has formed on my ankle bone and every nerve strums over it when I try to stand up straight. Brianna asked Sarah if I could still participate. i always wonder how to negotiate that. by being the only person with a very visible disability in a room of dancers, i am already making a statement, i am beyond asking permission--and yet, i feel the need to let others know, to ask something else, to make an ok space that helps me let myself.
hobbled up to Sarah as she was vigorously warming up and Brianna was asking the question about me, "Her ankle--" and then, from Sarah, "I see." without B. finishing. This made me a little defensive, immediately. Like she proclaimed she saw my weakness, my wound. But not at all.She just meant what she meant. I see. another kind of permission. She basically said, of course, you can participate. But beyond that, what you need to do is have fun.
Sarah is an tough, hard as a diamond presence. Someone you trust after a few moments, very much. "Your mandible is your identity.", "Find a spot in the room and bring it toward you with your awareness. You don't need to move.", "Go to the back of your skull and see the space.", "Close your eyes and say aloud I am happy. I know it is silly, Just do it."
Harold and I engaged in a kind of chanting chest slapping exercise together and after he told me I needed to hit people more often. in another life, i always thought i was a cuban boxer, though this is perhaps not what he meant, i love harold. and the two women in our improv subset--an aerialist whose father has just been hit by a car, a woman who wants recall her Soviet childhood standing in line for the wrong shoes by staging a performance art piece in a SF Financial District shoe store. the careful gutting and layering of fish innards. also, salt flats with norah, who had missed last week's river mountain people.
i am thinking blogs allow us to be childlike (syntacticaly) and real, a permissive space to use our ordinary language towards the sharing/encouraging of extraordinary patterns and rhythms.
