Look at meeeee!

I have been performing my entire life.  Even before I knew I wanted to be an actress, I was rather desperately in need, not just of attention so much as of applause.  Sometimes it took the form of my sister and I and sometimes our younger brother putting on skits for neighbors, for our parents' friends, for each other.  But those stimulated rather than sated the desire to be noticed.

Because my family moved so often when I was growing up (one of the seminal factors in my life), I was the new kid in class about every year and a half and, because I was so afraid of being lonely and alone, I would almost immediately begin my little dog-and-pony show.  I wouldn't necessarily literally sing and dance, but I laughed loudly and often, raised my hand for every question, acted silly, gave off some razzmatazz.

There was even a period when I was pre-teen that I began to act in every moment of daily life as though a camera were following me (except when I was in the bathroom; I was very modest).  During that time, I wasn't acting the role of performer/teacher's pet/class clown; I was acting the role of a Very Good Girl.  At night I laid out my clothes for the following day, next morning would wake up cheerful and immediately make my bed.  I would do little unasked-for chores for my mother, such as organizing a messy cupboard.  I wanted praise from an invisible camera crew of documentarians who had somehow discovered that I was special, noteworthy, remarkable.

As I got older and my social life became wider and more complex, I often made an showy entrance at parties and made sure to be the center of at least one circle of attention.  When I began to pursue an acting career, of course some of my need to perform was channeled into that, but actors seldom get enough opportunities to scratch their itch so I continued to show off during every part of life.  I wanted the attention of men so they would fall in love with me, talent scouts so I could be 'discovered', potential friends so I wouldn't be lonely.  Needless to say (but I'm going to say it anyway), all this effort was rather exhausting for me, and must have been exhausting for others to be around.

I'm not sure where all this need from attention came from.  Was it exclusively because of the "new kid" experiences?  Was it in order to get the attention and approval of my dad?  Was it just an organic part of my self, in innate desire to entertain run amok?  Why was I so desperate to be seen as special and brilliant?

It took years of therapy and transformational seminars and life lessons for me to learn at last that I don't have to be the center of attention, and that my efforts are better spent at being quiet and attentive to others; that all that showiness was actually a way not to be fully engaged; that living an authentic life is much, much more important than having boatloads of friends.

I wonder if this urge to entertain and be seen is so common that it doesn't even deserve mentioning.  I wonder if everyone puts on a little show in order not to be scared.  I wonder if everyone takes as long as I have to un-learn childhood survival mechanisms.  Because I suppose that's all it was, really.  Just my way of getting through childhood intact, my way of exploring my own boundaries and my place in the world.

Fear and bravery

I think if I end up having one big regret at the end of my life, it will be that I've spent so much of my energy being afraid.

People tend to think of me as brave and daring.  That's because I can be bold and brassy, which are not the same thing.  It's true that I have taken some big steps throughout the years, such as dropping out of college and moving into a tiny apartment in Hollywood to pursue acting.  And leaving Los Angeles after 26 years to move to Seattle, a city where I knew nobody, had nothing waiting for me.  But those are not examples of bravery.  In both cases, I was excited to take those steps.  I was moving forward toward a life I fully expected to enjoy, in which I expected to thrive.  You don't have to be brave if you're not scared.

And I am scared a lot of the time, maybe even most of the time.  As a child, I was afraid of being alone and lonely, so much so that I learned to put on a good dog-and-pony show to capture people's attention, to make friends quickly, be the class clown and teacher's pet.  As I grew into womanhood, I became afraid of monsters, the human kind, the kidnappers and rapists and murderers who haunt our newspapers and our movies and our dreams.  Even now, living with the most security-conscious person I have ever known, behind double and triple locks, I carry with me an almost constant anxiety about someone coming into our home and doing terrible things to me and Sweet Hubby.

In the natural world, I'm almost phobically afraid of sharks, which is so silly, given how easy they are to avoid.  It's an accomplishment for me to go snorkeling because, oh my god, I can't see what's coming up behind me!  I don't have too many other fears in nature.  I'm afraid of heights, but only when I'm actually high up; it's not a fear I carry with me.  Snakes and spiders don't wig me out particularly.  On a long ago camping trip, a cougar came into our campsite, and all I could think was "I wish the others could see this."  If it had noticed and approached me I would have been scared, but when it saw me, it disappeared like a puff of smoke, the first time I've known that saying to be close to literal.  Again, I wasn't being brave because I wasn't scared.

My overriding background fear is of death; not my own, but my brother's and sister's and Sweet Hubby's.  I brood on those more than is probably healthy.  I'm terrified of having to live in a world without them.  It's a regrettable waste of emotional energy, this terror.  They're here now, they'll die someday, before me or after me, which is all completely natural and expected and universal.  I would love to be able to live much more in the now, enjoying everything there is to enjoy, and save my fear for when there is something concrete and present to be afraid of.  I don't seem to be able to brass my way through this kind of fear.  What a shame.  What a waste.

 

Sexy Ldy and her sisters

Long ago, when I was living in L.A., I went to a Taco Bell drive-through.  After getting my order, I tried to drive away, but the woman who had ordered before me had parked her car across the driveway while she went back to the window to ask for more hot sauce.  Her car was a little red convertible something with the vanity place SEXYLDY.  

She was, indeed, most Americans' idea of what a sexy woman should look like: perky breasts, small waist, impeccable make-up, high heels, and a lolling, fluid sort of posture.  I rolled down my window and told her that her car was blocking the exit.  She shrugged casually and said "Oh well", then turned back to the window.  The proof of her allure was that several sort of seedy men standing around sided with her and chastised me for daring to admonish her.

At the time I wrote her off as a bitch, but now, forty years later, I find I have some interesting, interested questions about her.  She advertised with her license plate that the thinks she is sexy (yes) and a lady (definitely not).  Seems to me that's a label you should let others give you, not claim for yourself.  And why did she want everyone to know that she thinks she's sexy?  This was Hollywood, so it's extremely likely that she was an actress, or at least a wannabe.  Was the license plate meant to attract the eyes of casting agents?  But if that's the case, why not have the plate TALENTD?  Or did she think being sexy was all she needed?  (The sad thing is that in Hollywood, sometimes it is.)

Was the plate meant to attract men?  Well, of course it was.  But to what end?  Was she hoping for a boyfriend or husband?  It doesn't seem to me that the kinds of men who would be attracted to her because of her sexed up idea of herself would necessarily be the kind of men who are looking for a partner, a real partner, a partner for life.  Did she hope maybe to draw the attention of a potential sugar daddy?  I image that's the only sort of man who would want a woman purely because she is sexy.  Did she just want men to want to fuck her, whether she would allow them to or not?  Really, I'm just fascinated.  What and who as the plate for?

The women I'm calling her sisters are two porn movie babes I've seen in a video.  Both have long, platinum hair and excessively large, unnaturally round breasts.  These women chose that hair and those breasts.  I can't help but wonder what they were thinking when they decided to undergo breast implant surgery.  What vision did they have of the future?  Did they actually want to be in porn videos?  Did they actually want men to jackoff at the sight of them?  Did they just want manly attention, any kind of attention?  Because having huge breasts is certainly one way to get that.  But to what end?  What did they hope that ogling attention would bring with it?

All of these questions spring from my thoughts on Hollywood's, and therefore this country's, and therefor this world's, beauty culture.  Because women are so objectified, how we look is our main strength, and our own focus on how we look is often our main weakness.  

Maybe women's focus on our looks goes back to prehistoric times, when men could fuck anything and anyone they wanted to, and women were made vulnerable by having both children and smaller muscles.  Maybe women evolved to learn that they had to do whatever it took to get a man to notice them, have sex with them, and then - and this is the tricky part - stay with them to protect them.  Is that what's driving women to artificially and surgically alter ourselves, go on lifelong diets, spend billions on beauty products, wear shoes that cause us agony?

I think I thought Sexy Ldy was a bitch because I knew I couldn't compete with her on the level of looks.  I imagined I was smarter, and knew for certain I was nicer, but she was winning in the way which, in Hollywood, counts more than any other.  I am so glad to be out of L.A., and so happy to be old enough now that nobody expects me to look any other way than I do.  I'm most especially glad that I married a man who loves me for who I am both inside and out, upside and down.  I wonder if Sexy Ldy and her sisters have that kind of love in their lives.  I hope they do.  Because time and gravity will have had their way with them, as they do with us all.

The small differences

Today I made it my mission to be aware of those actions I take habitually and to run interference, to see how different it would feel, for example to carry my water glass in my left hand instead of my right.

It feels weird.

I gave myself a few passes.  When I went out to run an errand, I didn't fool around with my driving habits.  It felt safer to drive as I always do, not to get clever with it.  I didn't try to write or eat with my left hand, because the idea isn't to become ambidextrous, but simply to wake up in those place where I have learned to sleepwalk.

I wore my Fitbit on my right wrist instead of my left, which felt weird.  When I poured my daily La Croix and pomegranate drink, I held the can in my left hand and the juice bottle in my right, which felt weird.  When I noticed I was reaching for something with my right (dominant) hand, which was most of the time, I would stop and reach with my left.  One of the surprises was that when I stepped into my jeans with my left leg first, I felt terribly awkward and tippy.  I always always always and for no particular reason put my right leg into pants first.  And it was also amusing to learn that my left hand doesn't know how to untwist a bottle cap without considerable thought.

All though the day I've had numerous chances to see how often I make the same moves in the same way: drying off after a shower, opening a door, approaching a chair, opening my wallet, on and on.  All of it done without thinking.  Not that that's a bad thing.  I just wanted to shake myself up a little.  I don't know if this exercise is going to have any lasting impact on how I get through the coming days, but it has been stimulating, and I have felt awake and conscious.  An ordinary day made interesting by itsy little changes.  Maybe there's something to that.

Spats and war

I always know the reasonable thing I could say or do when my feelings are hurt.  I certainly have an image in my head of me being clever and logical and polite and judicious.  The trouble is that I turn so quickly into an unreasonable, scared, disempowered seven-year-old on the verge of tears that, in order not to be vulnerable, I cover myself with bristles and ice, or run away, or go on the offensive, but cagily, tacitly.

I suppose pretty much everyone has some sort of self-protective construct or persona that she's created in order not to be hurt.  In my imagination, I see the possibility of simply listening, simply responding, saying what I don't like or what has bothered me or rubbed me the wrong way.  But Little Girl shows up almost instantaneously and with her appearance vanishes that possibility, and all I'm left with is the effort to cover up that my feelings are hurt or that I feel insulted or left out.

Feeling left out.  That's the big one.  The need to belong is powerful in my psyche, and right along with it, the feeling of not belonging.  The two sides of one emotional coin.  Is mine worse than most because I was the new kid in school so often?  Or it is what drive us all, the yearning to belong?  And with that yearning comes fear of the other, of what is unfamiliar, of what might be a threat.

When I see a war movie and all the weapons humankind has invented, the tanks, missiles, bombs, cannons, fighter planes, all I see is fear made manifest.  For heaven's sake, it is possible now for one country to literally, totally annihilate another, and still no one seems to feel safe.  I have come to think that the most basic feeling/sensation common to us all is fear.  TSA was absolutely born of fear, the idea that it's better for billions of people to be treated as suspects than risk another 9/11.  Personally, I would rather risk being hurt, even killed, than to live in a world in which the attempt to protect ourselves uses so much of our energy, time, and resources.

All this came from me feeling put out by something today.  I see myself in action, and in myself, I see everyone.  

Money and time

At this point in my life, I find I'm contemplating what I should do with my money.  (It almost feel weird to use that word 'money'; it sounds a little blunt and coarse, like asking someone how much they weigh, or saying 'died' instead of 'passed away'.  It feels like a taboo word, even though it's the word which drives so much human activity and desire.  Hm.)  After a lifetime of living on the edge, I actually have money to think about now, thanks solely to the hard work and wise choices of my ancestors and parents, not because of any accomplishment or virtue of mine.

Because my good fortune is a gift unearned, I feel I ought to be conscious and conscientious about what I do with it.  Should I better myself by traveling the world?  Support worthy causes (of which there are so many, I hardly know how to choose)?  Be generous to the people in my world?  Save it for the next generation?  I don't have children, but I do have nieces and nephews, and even though they are already guaranteed by a trust to share a good-sized portion of my estate, I still have to decide what to do with the portion that is free from restraints.

As I think about, I'm wondering if a better question is to ask what to do with my time.  Rather than subscribing to the old saying that "Time is money", I have always believed that "Money is time".  Having money means that, instead of spending my life at a job I may or may not enjoy, I am able to write, read, be with friends, travel, play, learn, expand, explore, give, receive, sit still.  So I guess that's what is most significant to decide: What do I want to do with my time?  I want to do, and do do, all the aforementioned.  But am I frittering?  At the end of my life, what am I going to regret not doing?  I have heard and believe that deathbed regrets are almost never about what one has done, but about what one neglected to do.  (Like the woman in the Lichtenstein painting: "I can't believe it.  I forgot to have children.")

I'm not writing this because I've come to an answer, but mostly because I am so aware that it's time to take these questions seriously.  In one's 20's, 30's, 40's, even 50's and 60's this isn't a particularly urgent matter, but I'm 70 now, and although I expect to live long and healthy life, I know I have more past than future.  I don't feel panicked or anxious, but really, I want to wake up as fully as I can to how I spend that future.  I don't want to be driven by habit, inertia, or carelessness. 

Partly to address this subject - I've started another blog!! I'm really excited about it.  It's called "I do something new every day".  And I mean it too.  For however long I can keep it up, I'm challenging myself to do something new every single day.   I'll continue to muse and opine on this blog, but I find I'm very much looking forward to seeing how true I can stay to the idea of doing something new every day.  It's going to be a hoot!  This doesn't completely answer the question of "Is this how I want to spend my time?" but it should, at the very least, be stimulating and keep me alert and conscious.

Check it out at idosomethingneweveryday.blogspot.com. 

Superstitions

Being a wordsmith as I am, there are few things I enjoy as much as understanding a word or figure of speech in a new way.  I had such a moment of understanding recently when I looked afresh at the word 'coincidence'.  I realized it means co-incidence, things happening at the same time.  There's nothing mystical or magical about it.  And yet so many of us think that a coincidence has some kind of meaning or import.  "I was thinking about you and you called me!  Coincidence?  I don't think so."

I see that way of reacting to a co-incidence as a kind of superstition.  A similar superstition is thinking that if someone says "Things are going really well", that person is automatically doomed to failure, as though there is some impish god or natural force whose job it is to make sure none of us acknowledges our good fortune without being punished for it.  I simply can't take that seriously.

I'm the sort of person who, the moment I step into a theater, wants to say "Macbeth Macbeth Macbeth", the saying aloud of that name being considered an evocation of the worst possible luck to a theater or production.  It knocks me out to learn how many people hold that superstition as sacred and true and very, very real.  And they're not kidding.  I guess you'd call me an iconoclast, or just a troublemaker.  Other people's superstitions just seem so very silly.

My own, of course, are sacred and true and real, so much so that I don't even know if I have any because, of course, to me, my beliefs don't seem like superstitions.  I'm trying to think of one.  I'm sure I must have at least one.

I have sat here quite literally for fifteen minutes and can't call to mind any belief or behavior of mine that is based on a superstition.  I guess I'm just too smart for such primitive thinking.

Well, it's after 2am, so I'm going to say "purple turkey pie" three times, bow to the north, and go to bed.  Works every time.