All posts by Iris

Saturday Morning Treats

Me and My Life

I had a really, really, really, really, really bad day yesterday. Super bad. Awful.

Then this morning I woke up with a headache, which I should have anticipated, but somehow it surprised me. So in an effort to pamper myself, I made myself a nice cafe au lait, complete with foamed milk. Later, I wanted another one, but I was out of milk. I scrounged through my cupboards looking for some way to make my coffee not only palatable (I don’t like it black) but also fun. Only two solutions presented themselves: chocolate ice cream and cocoa mix. I opted for the cocoa mix to keep things warmer. Mmmmmmm…..

The Meeting of Two Times

Portraits of People and Places

Every Sunday morning I drive through a small town in the middle of nowhere. It’s your typical depressed and calcifying town with dirt frontage roads, sea foam green ranch houses with 18-inch wide scalloped asbestos siding, and the shell of a four-store strip mall complete with a grass-invaded parking lot. One thing that sets this town apart from many other small towns in the area is that it has not one but two gas stations. Or at least, it had two gas stations.

A couple of months ago the BP gave up the struggle. But they didn’t take down any of their signs, or even remove old merchandise from the store windows. In fact, I don’t know exactly when the station closed, but I remember noticing three weeks ago that gas was still listed as $2.99/gallon there while prices at the other station in town had fallen to $2.67/gallon. This week, driving past, gas was still listed as $2.99/gallon while prices at the other station had fallen all the way to $2.12/gallon.

But that’s the only clue that the station is no longer operating. Merchandise still packs the windows and no grass has made inroads into it’s asphalt yet. Neither the “open” nor the “closed” sign hangs in the door. It’s as if time just stopped at this gas station somewhere between opening and closing time about 6 weeks ago.

I’ve Discovered, I’m Addicted

Me and My Life

As a young girl, I begged my parents for dance lessons. I had dreams of dancing Swan Lake to rave reviews, marrying my oh-so-handsome dance partner (not realizing the statistical improbability of finding a straight dance partner), and living happily ever after in the wealth and fame of the truly talented celebrity.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

When I was 14 I started dance classes. By this point in my life I had fantasies of dancing Swan Lake to rave reviews, marrying an avid ballet-goer (see, I was learning), and living so happily that I’d never notice how poor we actually were (again, this would be slightly more realistic for a ballet dancer).

Eventually, I learned that while I could be technically good at ballet, my body just wasn’t built for a professional career as a ballerina, let alone the prima slot I’d dreamed about. It was, however, built for classical modern dance, particularly Martha Graham-style dance. If I hadn’t decided on an academic major in college, and if I hadn’t worried about the short careers and extreme uncertainty of a dancer’s life, I might have made something of myself with this style of dance.

But then I moved away from my dance academy and, try as I might, I couldn’t find an instructor in my new location that could coach me in this style of dance. For a couple of years I traveled back to Chicago each summer to teach, choreograph, and continue my training. But dance really doesn’t lend itself to 10-months-off/2-months-on training schedules, and I eventually gave it up. I thought I was over it. It’s hard to believe that I took my last dance class 5 years ago, and it’s been 9 years since I was actually “in training.”

Well, in the last couple of weeks, dance has become a silent obsession again. I’ve begun stretching for the first time in years, I’m dreaming complex and vivid dreams about choosing dancing slippers, I’m ordering books on Graham technique, and I’ve resurrected my old habit of mentally choreographing to every whisper if music I hear. I’ve even developed a “silent” dance technique that I hope Ms. Second Floor can’t hear. Is this what addiction is like? All of a sudden, all I want to do is find a Graham instructor, but unfortunately they’re few and far between.

Maybe I’ll find a space and teach myself. I’m sure my muscles will remember what they’re supposed to do. Maybe I can even get a couple of my friends to play at being dance students for a while (these things are always more fun with people than without). I just really, really, really want to dance again.

Jane Austen Would Cry

Randomness

I’m watching the 1999 version of Mansfield Park, right now. At first I was horrified, but now I find the whole thing laughable. The writers have decided to make the whole thing about slavery. They’ve cast Tom’s illness as a crisis of conscience about his father’s brutality as a slave trader. And they’re having all the women say things like “I can’t get out” when talking about marriage. So there’s just a little bit of social commentary going on.

Fannie is the only one who says that slavery is bad (except for the sick Tom), and she then “gets out” of marriage proposals. And just now, Sir Thomas has gazed at her meaningfully and asked her to read the newspaper because “you have such a clear voice.” Aaarrrggg!!!!!!

They’ve even given Fannie some of Miss Crawford’s lines! Didn’t they know that Miss Crawford was supposed to be a foil to Fannie?

What’s so sad is that there’s quite enough social commentary in the original Austen novel. It’s just more subtle and more multifaceted. Austen saw the whole gender/marriage/society thing as vastly complex.

Oh, and now the credits are rolling with some vaguely ethnic music playing in the background. Strange.

My Life Is So Interesting…

Me and My Life

… that you’ll be surprised to learn that I’ve recently spiced up my repertoire of evening fun. You wouldn’t have though it, I know, but it’s true.

Last night, as the sky got dark a full two hours earlier than I thought it should, semi-darkness suddenly seemed more restful than any other state. And having just survived the busiest three work weeks I’ve had in months, restfulness had become my ultimate goal. If I couldn’t find that grail, I was in imminent danger of losing my sanity.

So I moved a table lamp to my kitchen table (which looks out of my patio doors onto my porch and out over a thick stand of fir trees), made myself a pot of tea, wrapped myself up in blankets (it suddenly got REALLY cold here), and read for a couple of hours. I haven’t felt so refreshed in weeks.

I don’t know where that idea came from. I could just see myself sitting there and enjoying it. All I had to do was recreate my mental picture of tranquility. And it worked so well that tonight, after my dinner guests left, after the dishes were done and the leftovers were put away, and before watching the most recent episode of House, I set up the lamp and the tea and the blanket once again. Something about the warm pool of light falling only around me and nowhere else, the silence of the rest of the house, and the fading light causing the fir trees to shift from deep green to black against the cloudy sky did more to calm me than a warm bath ever could.

I’m even thinking of buying a little lamp specifically for this purpose.

Yes, I know. My life is incredibly interesting.