How to Get Through Winter in Ten Thousand Simple Steps

When I was a kid seasons happened on TV. Christmas meant rain only a little colder with winds threatening to frost the window if the sea was feeling spiteful. I can remember distinctly that my jacket was only useful for the first hour of the day and that the sun would warm up the wet ground by recess.

When I moved to Las Vegas in fifth grade not a whole lot changed about winter. It was somewhat less hot and sweaters were still mostly useless. In tenth grade I brought a giant coat to school one day in December and kept it in my locker until June. It was a real pain in the ass riding the bus home the last day of school with what looked like polar bear fur bunched up in my lap.

When I cam to Utah I saw snow falling for the first time. I remember being barefoot and standing in the Juniper lobby. Hesitant like an animal and shivering. I held out my hand and watched a snow flake melt in my palm. Then another and another; I didn't feel the cold until the wet snow seeped through the bottom of my jeans.

Later that night we rolled a giant ball of snow up the hill across from Juniper Hall and watched it swell as it rolled back down.

A year later I curled up on my first decent boyfriends' mattress, wet from the snow and shivering. My hair was moist and still frozen in places around my ears. I remember thinking about the subtle way a house changes in winter. It closes around our voices;and amplifies our affections. It is a kind of cradle in the dark and people come to agreements and love and sundering, too.

I don't date very often, but when I do it generally happens in winter. I'm more pliable; less reluctant to touch when my skin is cold. It's like my natural frigidity is softened by the falling snow.

So I've been feeling a little lonely and a little colder lately. That's all, just thought I'd say so.

Care or Kill

You may have noticed that I've been blogging more than normal. And by more than normal I mean more than one anemic post a year. Indeed. I am resolving to write something everyday for public consumption; rather than the reals of abject bullshit I spit out privately.

So, anyhow, there's this thing. This crippling thing. This horrific bone mutilating hair churning thing that I have on some occasions believed would kill me. (Or cause a Victorian-esque fainting spell.)

Stage-fright.

I intended to live out the rest of my life in absolute public silence until three years ago when I started that thing you all know I talk too much about already. This switch is partly because of improv and because I decided not to care.

Stage-fright is like a hand around your heart. Generally it's relaxed. You know it's there when your pulse starts to run off but the pressure isn't unbearable. It's something you can live with; you just can't run.

Then an audience slithers in; in a classroom, on a bus, in a crowded store when glass shatters. It has nothing to do with theater most of the time and everything to do with a physical tightening. Your throat squeezed so hard that you think your voice really died. That the regard of another, even one person, might actually kill you.

It's the feeling of crushing loneliness when those few people you've given yourself permission to be genuine around are not around. A curtain of voices feels like a a blanket of little spiders. Every mouth is sharp.

But people don't really want you to fail. Generally they don't even know your there; or comment on your silence. And the ones who really hurt and rip apart your little space and little voice are the people you led there.

Stage fright, in the end, is just the fear of the unknown. In that case, then, it's good to fail. In fact, it may even be necessary. Say something stupid, move incorrectly, trip on your shoe lace. It's the worst that can happen and it ain't shit.

Honey Bee Scissors

Oh, dear Gods I love my hair. I can't stop playing with it and looking at myself in the mirror. Wry grin and all; it's sheer vanity.

It took ten years to figure out how appearance mated with personality and I can walk out of a haircut with a better sense of the way I take up space. The right to chose how you look is an understated and overtly dramatized concept. If someone was about to hurl a rock through your window, or your face, for wearing skinny jeans how'd you feel about them?
Most people wouldn't wear them but the object itself changes. It's not fabric; it's an idea and a law woven into the denim. It's sexuality. It's always about how much is seen or hidden, or hinted at. There's a kind of power, too. The power to cause a stir when you forget to wear a skirt with leggings or think constantly of the way your stomach sits in them.
The clothes we wear have an affect and an effect.

Kind of cool when you think about your dirty pile of clothes as a dirty pile of statements.