I have been a weepy mess, tearing up several times a day, ever since Captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger ditched a US Airways jet safely in the Hudson River last Thursday. The cinema-cheesy symbolism went straight to my core and I am convinced that the United States of America is an airplane and Barack Obama is the cool, calm Carey Grant/Sidney Poitier/Jimmy Stewart type genius pilot who is going to save us all. Or not. Everything makes me tear up. Boats. Airplanes. People asking me what kind of coat I have because they need to buy a warm one before they leave for Washington, DC for the Inauguration. Twitters from friends who are on their way to DC or already in DC. Martin Luther King Day. Fresh snow. Civil Rights Movement veterans on CNN. My husband telling me Obama chose a Nobel prize winning physicist as his energy secretary. Listening to “This American Life”. Miley Cyrus in a grown-up red dress. Malia and Sasha Obama taking pictures of Miley Cyrus. My 8-year-old rolling her eyes because I am tearing up because I am watching both my kid and Malia Obama mouth the words to the Disney tween songs they both know by heart. Reading the Inauguration Parade lineup that includes both the Crow Nation of Montana and the Brooklyn Music and Arts Program. I’m just sitting here with my seatbelt on looking out the window at the water putting all my faith and hope in the pilot as my life flashes before my eyes and I pray for a safe landing: Ourfatherwhoartinheavenhallowedbethynamethykingdomcomethywillbedone-onearthaseitisinheavengiveusthisdayourdailybreadandforgiveusourtrespasses-asweforgivethosewhotrespassagainstusandleadusnotintotemptation-anddeliverusfromevil-AMEN
Author: kathie
Went to Clown Lab…
I am always conflicted; playing with my child vs housework. Writing vs performing. Exercising vs volunteering at My Kid’s school. Creativity vs getting a real job and on and on and on. So it wasn’t out of character for me when Jef started to talk about being in the theatrical space, I caught my mind wandering and had to bring it back into the room three times. The first time I realized I had gone off topic was when my mind came back into the room after I learned that Saturday’s workshop is 3-6 instead of 11-2 as I had thought. This lead to a working out of numerous scenarios for My Kid’s weekend schedule as I had made tentative plans with another mother to take the kids to see a movie on Saturday afternoon. The second time I lost concentration was when in the course of developing an improv I fell into a bit of a reverie about Bush falling through a trap-door at the swearing in ceremony and Obama coming down from the sky in an airline pilot’s uniform… The third time my mind wandered away from the studio work at hand, I thought about a handbag I used to own and wondered if I could use any found object to develop a relationship with up to and including grief and loss and weather that would be a good clown piece for me to work up. I’m tired and wide awake from several cups of coffee and several cups of green tea and my mind is still full of meaning of life, good work, and competency vs heroism thoughts that arise from the safe landing of a disabled plane in the Hudson River and timely rescue of all the passengers by local boat crews and the preparations for the upcoming Obama Presidential Inauguration. There’s a clown lab scheduled for Tuesday, but I will not go. I already know that my head and my heart will be in Washington, DC where I would rather be at this historic time. I moved from Montana for a post-graduate job in my congressman’s office on Capitol Hill and I auditioned for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Clown College in the center ring of the arena between shows while the Circus played Washington DC. I hope to spend Tuesday evening drinking champagne at home with my husband and watching the recap of the Inauguration Day on TV.
Cookie Deadline Emergency!
Last year I was such a good mommy helping My Kid sell her Girl Scout Cookies to the neighbors and the folks at the diner and showing others who didn’t even want the cookies how to avoid the calories by sending them to the military troops overseas (so My Kid could get her Girl Scout Cookies for The Troops badge). This year I have done nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. Nothing.
Therefore my kid has sold nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. Nothing.
Sooooo. The sale ends this weekend…. Yikes!!!!!
I am scrambling to find out the price of a box of cookies. I am that out of the loop!
Bad timing. The sale started in December not long before Christmas break. Need I say more…
My sister came from LA for a visit.
We went to Hawaii for a conference and My Kid missed the first week of school.
Our return was delayed and we took the red-eye from Seattle arriving back in Brooklyn at 6:30 am Monday morning. The Husband stopped at home just long enough to take a shower before going in to the office.
My Kid got to school on time so she could touch base with her teachers and classmates on the last day before the @#$%^! No Child Left Behind 3rd Grade English Language Assessment Two-day-long Standardized Test!
The Husband was too busy and too new at his job to let anyone know his household contained a cookie pusher and take orders at the office like I wanted. Last year he took orders from his team but by the time the cookies arrived the company had been sold and the staff had scattered and we were left with a lot of extra cookies. I don’t want to do that again.
And now the sale ends in 4 days! I don’t want My Kid to sell NOTHING!
Just trying to sell enough to get the participation patch…and maybe the cookies for the troops patch…
As for the Girl Scout incentive prizes; pajamas, beach towel or USB Band and iPod Nano (for selling 1000 or more boxes of cookies) Fageddaboutit!
another torch is passed
We walked in the door. Their Older Kid looked at My Kid and My Kid looked at their kid and they both asked, “Why would I know this person?” We told them we had photographs of them in the bathtub together, when they were babies. She was afraid to walk on grass. He used to crawl through the dog door. They looked at us like we were crazy.
We ate and talked of the city with the theatre where we’d all worked and started dating and had our weddings that were a month apart. The kids talked of Lego’s and watched videos.
My parents used to take us to meet other families in strange cities. We would look at their kids and their kids would look at us. The adults who were complete strangers would look at us in the eyes and say, “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby!”
We’d watch TV or play in the yard with the kids we didn’t know. Our parents would tell us we’d bathed together in a tub with these strange children. We’d roll our eyes in disbelief.
Our parents would hug each other and talk about long ago nurses training, college and weddings.
It was weird.
Now we are putting our kids through the same thing.
After a workshop with Chris Lynam
Last night, Jef organized a workshop with Chris Lynam, a clown who is in New York for the Broadway run of Slava’s Snowshow. It’s always good to meet new clowns. After the workshop, there were three conversations at once around the table at the diner. Jef and Chris were talking about working with Slava and working on their own work. I was talking to the only other woman from the workshop about writing and the other guys were talking about guys being goofy.
Walking to the train at the end of the evening, Chris mentioned another clown, Thomas Kubenick a Czech clown who has his own show that he tours around the world. It’s good. I’ve seen it. I met Thomas for the first time at Movement Theatre International in Philadelphia in 1990. He was at that time assisting Boleck Polivka who taught a workshop. I met him again when he showed up at the workshop I was taking with Ctibor Turba at his studio in Nectiny, Czechoslovakia (right before it turned into Czech Land–that’s what the locals called the Czech Republic–and Slovakia) I’ve been around a while, but it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve gotten a handle on what may be my particular style…
I’m pretty much the opposite of Amy G. Chris took a call from her about a gig at a club. Organizing and coordinating are so not my thing that the passing mention of a woman I know putting together an evening of acts apparently caused me to have a nightmare. I had a dream, last night, about running a theatre space–like Annex where Allison Narver, Andrea Allen and Gillian Jorgenson have all been artistic director or the Brick where Audrey Crabtree is the face of the organizers of the New York Clown Theatre Festival. In this dream which was more like a nightmare, brought on perhaps by conversation about successful theatrical clowns and the women behind them, (I was reminded of the organized women behind the careers of monologists, Spalding Grey and Mike Daisey and cartoonist Gary Larson, not to mention the countless women who work as personal assistants, executive secretaries and stage moms (The Husband, My Kid, My Sister and I all saw Gypsy this week.) These passing bits of conversation caused me to have a nightmare about being in charge of an art space like Celebration Barn, currently run by the Amanda Huotari. In my dream there 4 toilets on the second floor that were all overflowing and unusable. The Marley dance floor in the rehearsal hall had been scrubbed with Comet by someone’s helpful visiting unsupervised mother and was now ruined… It was a nightmare.
Now, disorganized person that I am, I’ve got to hurry and help My Kid, (who is alternately yanking on my body an falling on the floor to prove the point of gross parental neglect) get dressed in a manner appropriate for both ice skating with her aunt at Rockefeller Center and hooking up at the Museum of Natural History with old Seattle Annex friends and their offspring, who are visting from Chicago.
Gotta go.
Steve Smith’s Big Apple Circus
We went to the Big Apple Circus, yesterday, My Kid, the Husband and I. It is our holiday tradition. Although on the way to the circus tent I pointed out to my long-limbed daughter the well dressed crowds coming out of The Nutcracker matinee and the posters advertising the upcoming production of Coppelia. My Kid rolled her eyes and grunted in disgust. Damn! She looks so much like a ballet dancer too. Oh well she is on the robotics team at school and this week plans to be a computer engineer like her father, I’d better not guide her towards a career that one of my friends calls a long and painful road towards a job as a fitness instructor. * (see note)
Anyway. The Big Apple Circus this year, “Play On” was a tight show, thanks to the direction of Steve Smith. He was the director of Clown College the year that I went, and his two page description of the rehearsal process in the program sent me into a reverie of all that was good and pure and Steve Smith-y about Clown College when I was there. For the circus program he wrote a description of the rehearsal process; “Knowing the first day of rehearsal sets the tone for all the days to follow, we filled the practice ring full of enormous helium balloons, musical notes, flowers, ribbons, hopes, dreams, uplifting music, and artists from all over the globe.”
He did that for the first day of Clown College too. The acceptance letter came filled with confetti. I remember a huge balloon rainbow over the ring on the first day of clown college. There were quotes posted everywhere around the arena, things like “Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.”—Goethe. That makes me think of Clown College so much and the (…at this point I was interrupted by my offspring and I no longer remember the thread of the post I had intended to craft into a lengthy homage to Steve Smith’s fiercely and intentionally crafted positive energy… and I was going to mention my friend Mark Gindick who was in the show…)
I will have to write about how wonderful Clown College was another time.
I did get my application in on time for the 5e Festival Internacional de Pallases d’Andorra 2009. Who knows if they will choose our show or even if Lorraine and I can afford the time or money to go to Spain.
Tonight I will attend a Modern Clown workshop with British clown, Chris Lynam.
Little by little…hope…ambition…luck and fierce, intentional positive energy!
* (note:) Steve Smith also told us “Cynicism is an easy choice. Don’t make it!”
My very last hour before My Kid’s Christmas Vacation starts…
Last minute things to do
Buy tapes for the video camera
and batteries for toys…
Sparking wine for the Christmas morning mimosas…
Charge the camera and video camera batteries…
Water the tree…
Plan tomorrow mornings food shopping trip–gonna brave the crowds…
Is this room cold or has the blood from my fingers gone to my stomach to digest the cheese and crackers I’ve just eaten. What if the heat’s gone completely out? Oh how my mind wanders to holiday disaster scenarios.
I stayed at My Kid’s school past drop-off this morning, long enough to listen to the sing-along. I am easily distracted from my to do list. But, it was worth it.
Then I went into the Manhattan to search unsuccessfully for some accessories for a gift already in the pipeline. What a waste of time. I didn’t find what I wanted. What a waste of time. I need to clean. I need to shop for other things. I need to shop for food. So much for tasty treats for My Kids teachers. Hey cut myself some slack, I organized the class gift. But, I visualized giving them the dried fruit that they noticed in My Kids lunch…but I didn’t make it to Sahadi’s this week. Oh, well, as class parent I did put effort into organizing the class gift. Oops I didn’t send any Christmas cards. Too late now. The Husband and My Kid are part Japanese, New Years Cards as a concept buys me some more time… The candy canes finally made it onto the tree last night but the snowflakes and My Kid’s twelve tiny brass angels are still in the box. Did I water the tree yet today?
I’m working on a clown festival application with a deadline of December 31. Why did I wait so long? What happened? It was just Thanksgiving and now tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
My sister’s coming to visit–with her cat…kitty litter… Does she still drink Diet Coke? I don’t have any. I’m such a bad hostess.
Times up! Gotta go pick up my kid so her vacation can begin.
Don’t talk to us Mommy
There are two 8-year-old girls clomping around the apartment in heels with purses, cell phones, and an inordinate amount of play money. I am not supposed to talk to them as that ruins the game. Ouch!
Add New
The Husband just updated my WordPress program and it took me several minutes to figure out what to do because “Write” as an option is gone, replaced by “Add New” which is not the same thing at all. This is confusing to me because I go onto my Clownmommy dashboard and click “write” when I want to write. I don’t want to “add new”. Frequently, I want to write about something that has been bothering me for days or weeks or even years. I want to write about same old.
hot shower in the hope of relieving free-floating stress
I just got out of the shower, my second today. I didn’t get to the gym, but I allowed myself a nice hot mid-day shower because I am trying to get a handle on all this free-floating holiday stress. As a class parent I am way too anxious about the amount of money we have collected for teacher holiday gifts. I feel completely guilty because I have not been getting my maybe-she-has-a-cold-maybe-she’s-sick-maybe-she’s-just-tired kid to school on time. We’ve been 15 minutes or more late most days this week AND AS CLASS PARENT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE THE PERSON PEOPLE SEE AT DROP-OFF so they can give me cash for the teachers annual snowflake/snowman/polarbear/penguin secular holiday winter gift. I feel so much anxiety about this that it becomes obvious to me: This tiny task is a stand in for the anxiety I have about the larger economy in general and The Husband’s job in particular; various extended family members in various states of not-quite-OK; me producing a beautiful Christmas spectacular in my living room seven days from now including purchasing every speck of food and drink and toilet paper in advance because the stores are closed on Christmas Day (well maybe not TP the Korean deli will be open); clown work I am not promoting adequately; writing I am not doing; friends I am not seeing; Christmas cards I have completely blown off; how much energy–if any–will I have to devote to coaxing my spouse and offspring to a proper Christmas Eve Mass; when will I ever make it to the laundromat; the safety of Obama and his family; and as always–cleaning the apartment.
So I took a hot shower…
And as I was in the shower, I was remembering when My Kid was a walking baby and at the breastfeeding support group we were going around the circle sharing the ways we relive stress and I said I dragged the baby bouncer into the bathroom, sprinkled some Cherrios on her tray and took a long hot shower. I was very proud that I had a suggestion AT ALL! But, some buzz-kill PC mommy had to remind everyone that we should conserve water. I was chagrinned, embarrassed, guilty. Only in hindsight could I justify my position: “Hey I live in a walk-up, without a dishwasher and I have to cart my laundry (with my baby in a carrier on my back) several blocks in order to do it in a coin-operated public place. We had cars in Seattle but we don’t in Brooklyn. I think my global footprint is small enough to allow me take a hot shower to relieve stress when I am alone with a toddler and even though it seems like mid-day it could be ten hours before The Husband comes home from work!”
Wow!
That was a long time ago. Apparently I didn’t kill my kid. She is a beautiful confident 3rd Grader.
I just wish someone had been there to say “This too shall pass.” I am aware of how fast children grow. Yet…In the grand scheme of things– what future successful private practice medical resident can think beyond laying down to sleep within the next 30-minutes after being awake and working for 36-hours straight? Mommies are not much different.