She screwed her eyes tight, shutting out the light, trying to shut out
the realization…
SNAP.
“There. Take a look.”
She opened her eyes.
Blue eyes she didn’t recognize stared dully back into her own. It was
a cleverly painted face, individuality concealed under a thick
shellack of conservative pale foundation, Feminine and Sexy all
covered up with non-offensive and subtle tones. Nondescript earrings
and a slick, severe bun, meant to be noticed and then promptly
forgotten… Gingerly, she fished the broken half of her nose ring from
her face. The empty hole glared at her.
Her eyes dropped to her suit: pressed, starched, crisp, corporate
and fresh from its plastic garment bag. She didn’t know the child in
this costume, this bland business face…
His arm around her shoulders jolted her out of her reverie. “You look
so grown-up!” he said with a proud laugh, his smiling face appearing
behind hers in the mirror.
She turned to her father, holding the wire cutters in his hand and the
other half of her nose ring.
Déjà vu hit her in the form of another face, another tool, another
state, and another state of mind…
***
A dusting of freckles lay sprinkled across her tanned nose, and her
face was screwed up in a look of intense concentration, willing the
pliers not to slip…
There.
She stepped back to survey the results. She turned her head from side
to side, examining her nose ring that she had just pinched closed, her
uncontrollable curls fanning out in all directions. It was July in
South Carolina, and the heat hung on the air like a shroud… any
attempt to control her hair was simply an exercise in futility.
She sighed and smoothed her vintage apron over her cloth skirt.
Kind of a wild outfit, but what the hell. Fashion is negligible, I’m living amongst a damn circus, she thought wryly.
The thought made her breath catch in her throat for a moment.
I can’t believe I’m here, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m so lucky. I’m so damn lucky…
***
“—Lucky.”
“Huh?”
“Spacing out already, nice. Try not to do that in your interview,” he kidded.
“Sorry,” she said, forcing a grin, “I was a million miles away for a
minute there.”
“I said, ‘You sure are lucky.’ I can’t believe you got an interview
in Chicago in a field you’re not experienced in,” he said, shaking his head. He clapped her on the shoulder. “Welcome to the working world.”
With a teasing grin and another shake of his head, he headed for the
garage, wire cutters and the twisted metal remnants of a gypsy
identity she knew and loved in hand.
“I just wish I knew what I was working toward,” she said to the empty
house and the warring factions of her mind.
A few weeks ago, I decided to leave St. Louis, put in my two weeks, move out of my apartment overnight, couch surf through mover’s limbo with all my shit and Little Orange Cat (creativity abound in that name, I know…), drive home to Illinois, and it’s finally starting to hit me that I’m leaving for Spain TOMORROW.
Life has been so insane the past few weeks that I haven’t really had time to just sit down and even think about moving… again. I just moved to St. Louis this past August, and now I’m moving to Spain for three months with a rusty grasp of Spanish, no real thought of how I’m going to make money, and not knowing anyone but my sister.
Still, it’s the right move for me. It really is. Fiona hit the nail on the head, and I am a full-blown change addict. It didn’t help that to me, living in St. Louis was like being being at dinner with someone that you really WANTED to like, but couldn’t help noticing their little dealbreakers the whole damn date (“Jesus, how many times is this guy going to use the word ‘literally’ incorrectly…?”).
I tend to assign colors mentally to towns I’ve spent any real time in — maybe just because I would have loved to have been a painter in some other life. For example, South Carolina was green — everything was new, thriving, and just so alive. I remember my first night outside in Natalie’s backyard, barefoot in the dirt as music cut through the muggy air, fire blazing, people dancing, and I would swear that the air around me was vibrating, ripples of pure energy coursing through me. And it was smacked me in the face — that gratefulness of being exactly where you want to be and knowing that something incredible was just beginning. Something, some seed of a thought, some grain of an idea of what I might really want in my life was planted in me that trip, surrounded by that crazy circus.
Green.
St. Louis was gunmetal grey and brick red. Hard and toughened. People carried that hardness with them in a sense. I remember one time when picking up my friend Sierra downtown when she came into town from Columbia. I watched her run across the sidewalk, in a classic Sierra outfit (a hot pink jacket and pink boots), she sat down in my car and immediately said, “Wow, I wore the wrong thing for St. Louis.”
St. Louis just isn’t pink.
I’m not knocking St. Louis. From what I saw in my brief time there, St. Louis is filled with really good people who work hard and stay grounded. I appreciate that there are people pushing to expand the art scene on several different fronts. I met some people there that have had such a profound impact on me and how I’m moving forward in my life… I Don’t Know if they realize how much they’ve changed me.
But the longer I lived there, I noticed that while St. Louis is a city with lots of potential, but many people I met described landing here by chance and getting stuck in a sense. A lot of people affectionately joked with me that St. Louis was a bit of a black hole for travelers. It’s uncomplicated to live there — good people, cheap expenses, etc. It’s an easy city that is hard to leave.
It was easy for me to live there, but not good for me. I didn’t have to work hard, so I didn’t. I didn’t want to make decisions about my life, so I didn’t. I look back on my time in St. Louis and have regrets.
I feel like I have learned all that I can from living in places and waiting for life to happen to me. When I go to Spain, I’m going to study flamenco. I’m going to figure out how to live there comfortably. I’m going to absorb the culture and every experience I can squeeze out of this. I’m going to surrender to the fact that while I might hate structure and loathe routine, it really could advance me.
I cannot wait to go to Spain and refocus on what I love to do, my passion, my art… dance. I cannot wait to feel alive again, I’ve been hibernating far too long and I’m ready to thrive.
Ah, insomnia, we’re starting to become good friends, aren’t we?
I still can’t really believe it that I’ve been here in St. Louis a month already. So much of my mind is still in South Carolina, living on a couch in the Circus House…
I have started this blog post countless times over the past few weeks, but somehow I haven’t been able to write down what I’ve been experiencing in any sort of meaningful way. Let’s just start at the beginning:
A lot has changed. My couch surfing has landed me in the abode of Ms. Lola van Ella while I attempt to figure out life here in St. Louis. I’m working at a diner in town. I’ve begun teaching classes at the Dance Co-Op on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 PM (my website will soon be updated with all the pertinent information). I got to take an incredibly rejuvenating Level I workshop with Suhaila Salimpour, one of my biggest dance influences and mentors. I got to work with a gifted local photographer, Tim Barker. I’ve had a breast make a surprise guest appearance at a gig, and performed at another (difficult) gig that taught me a hard lesson about making sure the places that book me understand what exactly it is I do.
But all of my experiences, positive and negative, just seem to keep circling back around to the same questions:
Who do I want to be, and what do I want?
It’s quite a jolting question when you start to realize that the universe is offering you a rare chance to redefine several important factors in how your day-to-day life is structured. All of the sudden, I need to think about what part of the city I want to live in. I need to figure out how I will make my income. I need to figure out what to fill the hours of my days with in an unfamiliar city with few friends. I need to figure out what direction to take my dancing with — what image to market, what material to teach.
I’m not trying to whine — it’s definitely an exciting prospect. I’m truly looking forward to living on my own for the first time EVER, and I’m glad to be in a new city. But I’m starting to realize that I am procrastinating (are you surprised?) really identifying what I want out of a city, dance… and life in general.
All my life I have wrestled with unrealistic expectations. When I was in Columbia, I dreamed of getting the hell out, getting to a new city, and starting a new life for myself. Now that I’m here, I realize that I was an idiot for thinking I would come to a new city and things would be different without a clear idea of what I wanted my life to be like. You have to know what you want before you can devise a plan to pursue it.
I think a lot of my indecision centers around jobs. I have been dreading getting a full-time job because I’m not ready to give up my focus on dance. I worry that a full-time job will prevent me from touring with the Happy and Humpy Traveling Medicine show. I worry it will hurt my dance education. When I think about the highlights on 2010 so far, all have centered around me traveling to study with some of the best instructors I’ve ever worked with. I really don’t want to give that up for a desk job. But I also want to be able to support myself, particularly now that I’m on my own.
And unfortunately this all-too-familiar indecision has begun to push my life back in a direction I don’t want to go in. I’ve become indecisive about everything, from what I should eat to what I should teach in class. When I start to think about a way to be financially stable while pursuing dancing the way I want to (traveling, taking lots of classes, starting on bigger projects here), the indecision and procrastination pull on either side of me to prevent me from committing to anything. The fear of “not getting it right” has begun to dominate my life.
I think we’re all familiar with how crappy day-to-day life feels when fear is your primary motivator. I truly believe what Amy Sigil says, that “Fate favors the risky.” With dance, I have taken a lot of risks — some which have panned out, others that were epic flops; all were totally worth it– but in my life off-stage it’s proven to be more difficult. I incredibly frustrated that my fears of failure have jolted me into this long, unsettled period, especially since this was the type of path I was hoping to avoid by leaving Columbia.
All of this stupid angst and fear has had a definite impact on my dancing. I feel unmotivated to dance at all, and when I do, it is flat and emotionless.
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I had a really hard time writing this post. Part of me feels like a failure that I do not have these life questions figured out. Part of me reads this post and thinks, “No one wants to hear you whine.” Part of me thinks that it’s important that I’m honest when I blog and post about my experiences, positive and negative. Part of me is ashamed to admit that I have struggled so much with feeling unmotivated.
But writing has always served as a way for me to articulate everything that has been floating around in my brain and begin to make sense of it. I have noticed that many times once I get to this point of blogging, I often come out the other side with a better sense of what I need to do and where I need to go from there.
So, I’m putting this out into the universe:
I am going to find an apartment, where I can live on my own, have a dance space, have my cat back. I am going to find job(s) that allow me the freedom to travel but allow me to support myself. I am going to take more dance classes and continue to teach. I am going to make a goddamn try at this whole “living in St. Louis” thing. No more bullshit, no more excuses. I will take a risk, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll try another.
The heat clung to me like a second skin as I sat in the darkness, feeling the drums and hearing the music swell louder and louder. In the small space illuminated by painter’s lights, a fairy with flaming metal wings entered slyly, carrying a small bowl of fire. Fire eaters solemnly filed in to receive the flame, and then there was an eruption of movement as dancers came whirling in, like leaves scattering over a forest floor.
Welcome to the circus, Megan.
I came to the Alternacirque the week of their monthly show at the Art Bar in Columbia, SC. 8 months out of the year, hoopers, fire performers, belly dancers, musicians, magicians, and freestyle dancers gather to put on a free show in the parking lot of a local bar. What started four years ago as a small show has grown to have audiences of several hundred people, and the community — including the Art Commission here and other local dance companies — has sat up and taken notice. The first night I was here, I got to sit in on a rehearsal in Natalie’s backyard, and it truly is something to see. I can’t wait for Friday’s show.
Coming to South Carolina has been extraordinarily good for me. I’m eating better, dancing every day, getting inspired by the talented artists that filter through the Circus House (where I’m staying). This whole trip is kind of a detox for me — I’m mourning the losses of my old life and identifying what I want to bring with me into the future. I’m cutting out bad habits, and I’m establishing new practices.
Seeing Natalie organize costumes, makeup, hair, musicians, dancers, staging, and keeping practices on track has been helpful to see, since someday I hope to establish my own artistic projects in a similar vein.
Right now I’m making no big life decisions, just sitting back and letting the circus life sweep me away. It feels pretty damn awesome.
I really thought this time I was doing pretty well – I got to the airport at around 6 for a 7:45 AM flight. I was actually packed before the last minute since I moved everything I own last night into storage in St. Louis for a few weeks. I had time to get up to get up and have a cup of coffee.
We get to the airport. I open the trunk and realize… I forgot my purse.
Some of the more colorful curse words in my vocabulary immediately came to mind. I truly am a danger to myself and others while sleepwalking through the wee hours of the morning the way I do; I always forget something mildly important – you know, just my driver’s license, my debit card, my cash, and my phone. Little things.
After a white-knuckled, anxious journey back and forth from where I was staying to the airport, I get my purse and get going on checking in. I managed to make my flight. My connection, however, had some issues. It was a few hours late arriving, and then right before takeoff, the pilot informs us that the plane had a flat tire. Once they started to work on changing the tire, they realized the brakes were fubared too.
I’m a little perturbed that we didn’t notice the flat until another plane told us. I can’t imagine landing a plane with a flat tire is all that safe.
On the flight here, I started reading Tom Robbins’ “Another Roadside Attraction.” Early on in the book, the protagonist talks about style:
“The most important thing in life is style. That is, the style of one’s existence – the characteristic mode of one’s actions – is basically, ultimately what matters… happiness is a learned condition.”
Happiness and I have a complicated relationship. At this point, I really don’t know if the path I chose will make me happy. I am a procrastinating worrier who likes to have a clear plan but rarely does. And today is Day 1 of a fairly unscripted period of my life.
I do know that I feel truly alive when I travel, meet new people, experience new things… I feel a fierce joy from being independent and from the amount I learn simply from throwing myself into a new environment.
But in exchange for those feelings, I sacrifice… comfort. Familiarity. My pride occasionally when I realize that this lifestyle sometimes means I must rely on the help of others just as much as it is an exercise in independence and self-reliance. And as much as I have been craving to get out of Columbia and back on the road, it scares the shit out of me. When I’m not worrying about money, I’m worrying about what the heck I’m going to do once I get to St. Louis. I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count at this point:
THEM: “Oh, so you’re moving to St. Louis!”
ME: “That’s the plan.”
THEM: “So you have a place there?”
ME: “Nope.”
THEM: “A job?”
ME: “Not really. I’m broke, and I’m going to Florida and South Carolina for an undetermined amount of time first.”
THEM: *Awkward optimistic comment followed by a look of concern*
But… I’m trying to learn how to be happy, and part of that includes figuring out what makes me happy and how I can incorporate that into my life. I’ve struggled with the concept of being content with my life for years, a trait I recognize in many around me. If happiness truly is a learned condition, then we must be a society of masochists. I see so many good people stubbornly marching on a path — career-wise, relationship-wise, financially — that clearly makes them miserable with some odd sense that perseverance will alter their contentment with the final outcome. But if the pursuit is unfulfilling, then a person’s “characteristic mode of actions” would seem hollow and empty –would the final outcome be any different?
What happened to us that rendered us incapable of identifying what truly will provide a fulfilling existence? I might be young, but I’m old enough to know that the pursuit of the American Dream is not a recipe for my personal fulfillment. I don’t know what is, but I’m willing to try to figure it out. And I’m enjoying this quest immensely.
So I’ll be a nomad for awhile. I’ll figure out how to get through the next few weeks somehow. I’ll stress, worry, probably cry.
But I hope those moments will be outweighed by the joy I feel from seeing my family and studying what I love more than anything on this planet with two dancers that I truly admire.
Within about five minutes, I knew tonight would be my last night in Columbia.
“Hi, Megan…” I heard my mom’s voice on my voicemail. “Well, ” (pause) “Granpa Joe died, he died this afternoon. They’re thinking that the funeral will be this Friday.”
My Grandpa Joe. He was an odd guy. But a good odd — he sent me $2 bills and a Calvin and Hobbes book for birthdays, he told me that there was a law that allowed those over 40 years old to swear freely when I called him out when I was younger… he was a smart ass, but everyone liked that about him.
I love him, and I will miss him.
But as my good friend Steve pointed out, the good thing about knowing someone is about to die is that it gives people a chance to really find connection with their loved ones, say everything that needs to be said, and truly process everything. I’m so grateful for my family, and I’m looking forward to heading to Florida to celebrate his life — and ours.
I was planning on starting to move things to St. Louis this weekend, but it’s been pushed up a bit — I’m currently frantically packing in order to move everything but my furniture to St. Louis tomorrow.
Wednesday I leave for the funeral from St. Louis to Fort Myers, Florida, and I will stay through the weekend.
Instead of flying back to Missouri, however… I have decided I need to get out for awhile. I need to explore and train more and get refocused on my dance. More than that, though, I think I need to really put some thought about what I want in the next part of my life.
So I’m finally getting out of Columbia! … And guess where I’m going?
Columbia.
Well, Columbia, South Carolina. I’m truly running away to the circus this time — I will be staying with Natalie Brown (check out Alternacirque and Delirium Tribal) and Asharah and training with them. I’m really excited, both ladies are phenomenal dancers and pretty bad ass women in general.
How long will I stay there…? Who knows.
Then it’s back to St. Louis to figure out my life.
Columbia peeps: I need to get all my furniture and my car at some point, so I will be back. At that time, I want to have a soiree and party with all y’all, so get ready. I imagine I’ll be back in July sometime.
Starving Artistry 