Never Walked In High Heels

 “I can’t keep going on like this.”

“That’s what you think.”

- From Waiting for Godot

It was one of those productions that is a guaranteed money maker. Four legendary British actors performing one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century Waiting for Godot. After we left, I found myself discussing the production with my escort. It’s something we thespians do to suck the fun out of any show we see, often if only to make ourselves feel better. Crossing over Trafalgar Square we avoided the traffic while trying to make sense of what we just saw.

“Because that is what life is about really.” We’d come to that point in the conversation where we had reached gross generalizations and bromides. All actors hit this point after seeing a show; when their critique runs out but the conversation’s inertia hasn’t.

The reason (largely) that I don’t let the conversation die is that this is a friend I love being around. Actually that’s only part of the explanation. The fact is I don’t want to go home because I feel stuck. I don’t have the energy to worry that my career’s going nowhere. At home there’s a stack of rejected grant applications waiting for me. Each one has a different reason for rejection that conflicts with all of the others. I’ve gone to bed every night this week wondering if I’ve accomplished anything since college.

“This is my friend Athena,” he begins as he’s introducing me to his friends. “She told me at twenty that she was going to move to London and act. Now she owns her own theater company.” The preface acts as a jolt yanking me back from my spine. I am reminded how he sees me, even on the days that I can’t look past myself. He knows where I’ve come from, and can look back to see that progress is being made.  I just don’t always believe him, or the distance traveled.

The men who wait for Godot together couldn’t survive separated. Even if Godot is as wonderful as the other characters seem to think he is, the day to day grating of life, just the mundane things, is enough to make the waiting in faith impossible. Add to that the stress of striving to make something of life, and you have eighty plus years to carry a burden that is impossible to lift alone.

The friends which make life tolerable, are the ones that know you better than you do yourself.  Moreover, the friends who make this life bearable are the ones that can see more depth in you than you knew you ever had. In the statement: “that’s what you think,” there is packed so much hope for perseverance. They push further, knowing that the ineria must keep going.

Godot never shows up of course. Or at least he doesn’t bother to show up during the two and a half hours we are watching it.  But in a world where the dramatic situation never changes the players do change. They wait. They hold onto hope for just that one day longer than they thought they possible yesterday. Even if the hope is just enough for today, its all you need now.

And in that second when a friend convinces you that you can keep going, perhaps that’s when Godot actually shows up. 

I’m disabled, I live in a socialist country, and I live among those very  strange people called artists. My monthly healthcare premium is exorbitantly high due to a preexisting condition. If anyone should be pro universal health care it should be me.

Obama’s current push towards free health care fills me with dread and little else.

Now there are some healthcare practices which everybody should have for free. And if there ever could be such a thing as free universal health care the world would doubtless be a much better place. But on this planet, the terms “free” and “universal” are very often mutually exclusive.  

If someone could just answer a few questions that I have, I would feel much better. The first is: in a government hospital, who do you sue when malpractice occurs?  I only know to ask this question because I have two childhood friends who became disabled from blatant medical malpractice in an army hospital. The problem, of course, comes in when you’re looking for a malpractice lawyer willing to try and sue the US government. And even if you are fortunate enough to fine the one self sacrificing attorney willing to jeopardize his career to prosecute his country’s government, what makes anyone think that the courts will be imperial? In a world where politicians think they are also doctors, who heals the justice system?

People have often reminded me when I bring up this question that I am ‘focusing on the exceptional situation, and the exceptional situation will always be the exception  not the rule.’ Maybe because I consider myself to be an exceptional person, I find this concern valid. Problem is, I don’t know anyone who isn’t “exceptional.”

This ‘exceptional argument’ leads me directly into my second question: when government starts making medical care decisions, who is going to keep politics out of the operating room?

Any healthcare system is going to be working with the problem of limited resources and limitless ailments. Any medical professional that engages in the battle  for health is admirably fighting a loosing  and highly inefficient war.  Government, on the other hand, is inevitably about pragmatism and finding the best answers for the greatest numbers of people. Everyone forgets that ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’ focuses on being efficient and that such smooth running bureaucracies cannot  leave room for exceptional people.

And so, inevitably, when you add politics and government to medicine, everything becomes about cost and value. Limited resources, such as beds, will be  dived up according to which life needs to be saved for the greater good and which ones will be a drain on society.

In America’s national healthcare debate, no one is bringing up that there was a society which tried universal healthcare back in the 1930’s. It was Germany and it lead directly to  the Holocaust via Action T4. For those out there who know their history and still think I am leading to an exceptional leap of logic, let me ask: do you really think that Nazi leaders were all that different  from us? Are we not, as humans, made from the same stuff?

I really don’t have a problem with universal heath care in America as  long as someone could address these issues rather than repeating an ideal. But any attempts to define the limits and concerns about the system are met with harsh accusations of conspiracy theory. These are logical questions  not being addressed, which makes me wonder: what  else will be ignored in the name of pragatism? 

              I realize that when most people my age claim to be boycotting Starbucks, its normally for some social justice reason. People don’t like it because its run by a Zionist, or because they’re opposed to some trace ingredient, or its too hot, or the beans come from the wrong place, or its too overpriced, or its too popular so Caribou Coffee is a much better option. Fair enough, I suppose. And truly whenever I go into one, I get very nervous as well. 

              Someone once tried to heal me at a Starbucks. 

              Let me explain. People try to heal me all the time, I would say at least once every three months. It used to be much more frequent than that but then my family moved to Las Vegas and I moved to London, two places where, apparently, miracles never happen because people don’t do it as often. Perhaps those of us from these two towns are all just godless commies who don’t deserve miracles. Or maybe now that I’m older I seem like I’m beyond all hope so why bother asking. Either way, it used to happen once a month so its become much less common. Of this I am grateful. 

              On this particular occasion I was with my mother at Starbucks, eating a chocolate covered biscotti. The only thing going faster than my fourteen year old  brain was my fourteen year old mouth. A single braid going down my back as I prattle on relentlessly about all things important to being fourteen. And then there was my mother who, having already learned the most important skill of raising a teenage girl, drowned me out by reading a magazine.  

              And then I stopped talking. 

              Upon realizing this, my mother jerked her head up to see a young woman who had firmly taken both of my hands, bowed her head, and had started praying- IN TONGUES! There was no swaying her. Like someone left over from an ancient crusade, she was going to pray for my recovery damnit! Three minutes of the holy ritual passed, then four, then five. My chocolate biscotti was melting into my hands. 

              What is there to do in such a situation? How do you hope to maintain a sliver of political correctness when someone is speaking in tongues and thereby ruining your after school snack. All attempts of me pulling my hand away were failing- she just held on tighter. Besides, as someone who believes in God herself I have to ask, what could the woman be asking God for that could possibly take six minutes? Clearly, He’s very busy and I am too so I try to keep my correspondences brief.  This was now teetering on unedited which is never a good thing. Of course perhaps she was going for something which required six minutes of specification. I couldn’t tell because she was speaking in tongues! In fact, for all I know she could’ve been sending up Satan and his seven best friends, asking them to smite me from existence. I just try to assume the best of people. 

                At the eight minute mark the chocolate of my biscotti was molded to my hands, and she looked up from her prayers, tears in her eyes, and said to my, very stunned, mother: “She’ll be alright now.” 

              I was fine before! I put the biscotti down never to touch that particular after school snack again. And, I must say, if I’m ordering my morning grande mocha I am always on the lookout for possible carriers who may spread a viral prayer vigil throughout the coffee shop, thereby making Starbucks more controversial than it already is. 

              The problem with boycotting Starbucks is you pretty much kill your chances for a first date in suburban America. In high school the ‘good boys’ would inevitably want to take us to Barnes & Noble followed by coffee as a primer. (Yes, I know I had a very exciting love life back then.) So you can imagine the reaction I recieved when I said not only did I not want to go to Starbucks, but I didn’t want to go because I was afraid that cult leaders would try to heal me. 

              Yes, I go to Starbucks now. They are pretty ubiquitous here in London and they usually  have accessible toilets (which is a true Starbucks Miracle). Like all boycotts that are started in young adult life, they eventually end. As we grow up we take jobs we hate, buy things we swear we would never buy, shop at stores we used to have a vendetta against. Our idealism turns to practicality once we realize there’s a little corner of the world we have to hold up. Which, I think, is the greatest ideal of all. 

              But I still won’t order a chocolate covered biscotti.

              Sometimes academics have far too much time on their hands.

              A typographical error on my part allowed me to discover the word ‘womyn’ in Wikipedia yesterday. As with any of my experiences with Wikipedia this leads to what I call ‘justifiable and educational procrastination,’ aka spending hours clicking on links to learn about things that are utterly unrelated to my life. Its an addiction without a 12 step program.

              It seems that the term ‘womyn’ was a product of feminists in the 1970’s wanting to remove the ‘man’ from ‘woman.’ It comes from the branch of feminism that seeks to correct the inherent biases in language because the word ‘woman’ suggests that female humans are a subset of male humans.

              This emphasis shift to gender neutrality rears its ugly head for me as a writer all the time. Several of my friends have vocalized their disturbance that I use the word ‘he’ to refer to an editorial person. “Why not use ‘he or she,’ or better yet, just use ‘their.’” Has anyone ever tried to write in iambic verse or with an ear for cadence while using the term ‘he or she’? It’s cumbersome, clumsy, and sounds absurd. Take the line from The Merchant of Venice when Portia describes any monarch with “His sceptre shows the force of temporal power.” Say that out loud. Now just try to say “His or her sceptre shows the force of temporal power,” without sounding like a legal document. It just doesn’t work. You wouldn’t tell a painter that every time he (or she) used the color red he (or she) had to put the color blue next to it. Why would you exert that level of control over a writer?

              And using ‘their’ isn’t an option because its just wrong grammatically. If you doubt me, refer to your middle school grammar books.

              Which brings me back to the neologism of ‘womyn.’ The fact that there is a little red line on my screen telling me there’s a spelling error every time I write ‘womyn’ tells me there’s a problem. As a writer, I am a firm believer that words mean something. It is because of this opinion that I hope to be careful about the words I use. And while language is a wonderfully flexible thing (Shakespeare, it is said, introduced 1,700+ words into the English language), the fact is the entire basis for the argument of the existence of the term is unfounded.

              ‘Woman’ is not a diminution of ‘man’ as some might suggest. The word is germanic in origin where ‘man’ and ‘mann’ have two distinct meanings. In German ‘man’ is a gender neutral subject (as in mankind or human) whereas ‘mann’  means someone of male gender. Oddly enough my spell check seems to like the word mann much more than womyn.

              If you want to be egalitarian about it, here’s what I propose. Get rid of the word ‘woman.’ (This is the point where all my female friends look for the biggest rock that’s nearby to throw at my head.) Just stop using the word. You don’t need it. Then use ‘man’ to mean anyone regardless of gender. Then use the scientific words of male and female if you need to specify. As science can tell you, using these terms doesn’t denote any superiority of one over the other, it signifies biological difference. That’s all.

              I have now spent some hours contemplating the use of the word ‘woman’ and am surprised at how much time can go into a debate about a single letter. And the thing is, just as in any schism, those who want to be insulted by the spelling of a word will always choose to be.  In this way, 200 years after changing the spelling to womyn there would no doubt be a faction demanding that men and womyn are exactly the same and we should, therefore change it back. 

This unpublished poem by TS Eliot recently appeared in The Times. It reminded me that even the most brilliant of men need  to take some time to play. 

Cows

Of all the beasts that God allows
In England’s green and pleasant land,
I most of all dislike the Cows:
Their ways I do not understand.
It puzzles me why they should stare
At me, who am so innocent;
Their stupid gaze is hard to bear —
It’s positively truculent.
I’m very inconspicuous
And scarlet ties I never wear;
I’m not a London Transport Bus,
And yet at me they always stare.
You may reply, to fear a Cow
Is Cowardice the rustic scorns;
But still your reason must allow
That I am weak, and she has horns.
But most I am afraid when walking
With country dames in brogues and tweeds,
Who will persist in hearty talking
And stopping to discuss the breeds.
To country people Cows are mild,
And flee from any stick they throw;
But I’m a timid town bred child,
And all the cattle seem to know.
But when in fields alone I stroll,
Oh then in vain their horns are tossed,
In vain their bloodshot eyes they roll —
Of me they shall not make their boast.
Beyond the hedge or five-barred gate,
My sober wishes never stray;
In vain their prongs may lie in wait,
For I can always run away!
Or I can take sanctuary
In friendly oak or apple tree.

©The Estate of T. S. Eliot

            OK so… its 8:30 in the morning and I’m rushing through the train station trying to reach the 8:38 to Norwich. It’s pouring rain outside and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Naturally, I think “good, glad I got all the bad luck out of the way.”

              Or that’s what I was bold enough to think.

              As I swiveled into the elevator a priest comes in behind me. I know who he is because he’s in full garb. I quickly start off: Dear Lord please don’t make him start praying to heal me. I never know what to say when they start praying… He gets off at the next floor without even ‘God bless.’ Apparently he’s not on duty yet. I go down one more floor to get off myself. At least in theory that’s what’s supposed to happen.

              Once down to my floor I am met by a large lump. I stop dead. It’s completely blocking my path to get out of the elevator. I can’t move it myself. What a stupid and unthoughtful place to leave stuff. If I ruled the world there would be none of this…  My electric wheelchair bars  the elevator door from closing as I look around the ticket hall for someone to move the obstacle.

              “Um… excuse me, sir…” I flag down a security guard and do my best damsel in distress act. I can still make the 8:38 with very little luck needed. Or there is the 9:08. I laboriously do the math in my head. I haven’t had enough coffee to do higher mathematics as of yet. I need my morning hot chocolate. The guard comes and starts to move the pile of rubbish out of the elevator frame. Then, at the exact same time he and I come to the exact same realization.  

              It’s a corpse.

              He drops what we now realize to be an arm and I jump back into the lift without foreseeing that this action will make the impatient door shut. The guard is now leaning over the body trying to stop the door from closing because, of course, he doesn’t want anyone else to come down in the lift and get an early morning surprise. Without thinking, I pull the emergency stop button which makes everything better for about two seconds. Then the elevator alarm sounds thus bringing this situation to more people’s attention.

              There is nothing in all my years that has even begun to prepare me for this situation. I don’t think that there has ever been a Miss Manners column to date about what the classy thing to do is once you have become impeded by a corpse. I begin to think two things. First I feel sorry for the poor man who has died in a London train station during the wee morning hours. And second, if my mother ever makes me take the etiquette lesson she’s threatening me with, I am so asking about this in class.

              By the time we’ve cleared the corpse out of the way, I’m being bombarded with questions by other station staff. Why is he there? How long has he been there? Do I know him? Will I come down to the office and answer some questions?

              “I don’t know anything. The elevator door just opened and there he was!” Some brilliant officer commented that it seems like an unlikely story. Yeah, you’re telling me.

              For several weeks now I’ve been trying to come up with some higher meaning for the whole incident. I keep thinking this must be a metaphor for something. But I’ve had no luck with coming up with an answer. Life just is messy and sometimes you don’t know what file to put something under. Was it tragic for whoever he was? Was it comedy? Can one negate the other? What am I supposed to be feeling by this? Sometimes in life there is no acceptable response. Even Emily Post might be flabbergasted by what is there once the door opens.

The sun streams into my bedroom window as it rises. Given that its high summer right now, this means that I get woken up by full sunlight at about 5:30 each morning by a blaze of heat and light. The world is ready to go. Boats blaze past, stopping just underneath my window to pick up passengers. Canary Wharf is in constant motion already. And the computer’s email box dings with emails from the USA… friends back there getting ready to turn in are sending final messages for the day. It keeps moving.

Recently I’ve been waking up exhausted.

It’s not the type of exhaustion that comes from lack of sleep. I get eight hours and my eyes don’t want to shut anymore. It’s on the inside, something like inertia that is on a 24 hour cycle and the only reason why I get up is because there is nothing else to do. That and the sun is now burning my eyes like eggs.

The best way I can describe it is fatigue. Its the type that comes when there’s an innate conflict in one’s philosophy which can’t easily be solved. We say to others ‘do what I say, not what I do’ with the realization suddenly that we know neither what we say nor what we’re doing half the time.  Of course, to make matters  worse, we all have these contradictions. You can’t get away from them as long as you’re alive. The best you can do is take a cue from Walt Whitman when he says “do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.” And then you try to push on.

Times like these I can’t debate or even discuss much. I don’t know what I think and really don’t have the energy to debate on sandy ground. I try to listen to what I hear and think it through when I can. These times are for digestion and opportunities to be fed as I am one to starve myself most often. 

I remember once when I was at college I remarked that I found the need to sleep very annoying. My friend turned to me and said “we need to rest so we don’t make idols of ourselves.” And in our strain to make demigods of feeble men we have to lay down every 16 hours or so just to reiterate that the world keeps going without us. It’s like a plant, force anything to grow all the time and the result is something floppy and lanky.

And so, I do get up. I don’t jump out of bed and start making phone calls but I do brush my teeth.  I know I need to do that, and wash my face. I go through all the things even though the list seems so much shorter today. And I know above all else, I must get up if for no other reason than to get out of the sun for a bit.

              The older I get, the more I worry about my philosophical inconsistencies.  This is probably because the more time passes, the more people painfully (and annoyingly) have time to point out my inconsistencies.   For someone who loves philosophy and theology, this can be irritating. And for someone who is your classic type A personality, it’s paralyzing.

              As a young adult, I still haven’t given up on the ideal that there is a perfect moral system out there to operate under.   When I was 17 I learned about the law of non-contradiction. Briefly, it means that something cannot be X and not X at the same time. Which sounds good. My dog cannot be both black and white at the same time. Fine. Makes sense. Certain philosophers now take this to slightly higher stakes when they say that something is A and not A at the same time, it ceases to exist (or it didn’t exist in the first place).

              Yikes!

              Whenever you apply philosophy to real life (as opposed to dogs, tables, and chairs) things get messy very fast. How can I say I depend on faith and I go by what I see in the same day? My fellow young adults (and older ones too) love to point that one out to me. We somehow enjoy making hypocrites out of everyone but ourselves. Once we discover the flaws in our own ontological system we search for a broom and the nearest thing to hide the debris under. They don’t need to be seen. They are flaws we haven’t figured out yet. Please ignore our mess.

              The universe is full of contradictions. If you believe in any sort of god, chances are that god breaks his own rules. A rigid ethical system is something that we all cleave to, especially those of us who are insecure.

              “You can’t use a sledge hammer on a stained glass window,” a friend once told me. Which I’ve essentially taken to mean that we have different tools in our tool box for a reason and someone is only adept in his skill when he knows what tool to use when and how.    If someone is great at swinging a hammer, it doesn’t do a whole lot of good when you need a pair of tweezers.

              And so I contradict myself, and try very hard not to become irritable when others pick at this suture. Chances are they are beings of contradiction as well. We all have to be, to some extent, just to stay sane. And as annoying as they are, and as much as I may want them to, they aren’t going to cease to exist.  

“Nobody laughs at God in a hospital  

Nobody laughs at God in a war.

Nobody laughs at God when they loose everything they’ve got

And don’t know what for.

But God can be funny at a cocktail party…”

The first time I heard Spektor’s new song I was struck. Now before we go any further, I’m no music critic. In fact I pride myself on being a musical idiot. But I am, however quite adept at thinking. This is how I was struck by Spektor’s new single the first time through.  

In the chorus she sings about when God can be funny, such as when we are at a cocktail party or ask Him for something specific as we would do to Santa.  But it’s the juxtaposition of this with some of man’s greatest hardships which made me think: now believing in God is quite a luxury.

See, I think most theists will listen to “Laughing With” will hear the idea that ‘God can be funny’ at places that the elites of society dwell. After all, there is the ongoing belief in our world that we, at our best and most developed, have no need for God or at least to believe in him. We’ve somehow evolved or grown up enough that we don’t need to ask anyone for what we want for Christmas.

Spektor’s family emigrated from the USSR in 1989. As she is often cited as being a Jewish-American musician, one can only imagine the internal conflict between the Jewish beliefs of her family while living within a Communist system. This is where the notion of Spektor’s theism comes into play.

For many of us, not believing in a god of some sort is quite the luxury. What it must mean is the complete confidence in one’s self and one’s position in society. I think it means being able to look in the mirror and say, “this is all I ever need.”

As a disabled women, that is a luxury I cannot afford.

Its not that God is funny, but if you can look at just yourself and say ‘I am enough,’ then yes, why shouldn’t it be amusing? Why should you ever have to wait on something that Santa God is going to give you when you can go out and buy it yourself? And if you don’t get it from Santa God, who is supposed to give you everything you need, why cry when you can laugh about it?

On my bad days I believe that there is a God out there simply because I have to. On these days I am with the ones who need justice and need for the world to change. Doors get slammed in my face, bus drivers insult me, I have no idea how I’m going to eat my next meal. I can’t look at myself and say “I am enough. I am free. This is all I need.” There must be something more. I’m not satisfied here.

But for those of us who do not laugh at God, who believe because we have to, we do it so that we can laugh somehow.

              I think I’m the only child born from the 1980’s who did not grow up with Michael Jackson. In our house, the only thing I remember hearing is Chicago’s talk radio and NPR. I was aware, dimly, that there was a singer named Michael Jackson and that he was a bit odd. That was essentially all I knew him for… until last week. 

              “You never told me he was actually talented,” was how I started a phone call to my mother. Having just watched a number of his performances on YouTube, I was stunned. Within the first fifteen seconds of watching one of his videos, my chin was on the floor. In short, he had everything I wanted as a performer. There was no tension in his body which didn’t need to be there. There was no unfinished movement or half baked idea. There was nothing forced or artificially perfected. At times, when you watch him move, it’s like Jackson never existed, there is only the dance. 

              My mind flashes to one of my movement teachers in London saying over and over “when you lose yourself, that’s when it’s [the acting] working.” Now I get what she means. I finally understand why the Greeks would call down the gods and muses to help them perform. To be creative, to make something beyond yourself, is to reach for transcendence, gently pull her veil away, and understand for just a moment the vitality that connects us all. In a world of prepackaged performers and lip synching, performance without ego is a rarity. 

              Not that Jackson didn’t have an ego in life. Maybe the stories are true, maybe they’re false. But in performance, the amount of time he devoted alone to his craft and improving it won him praises from icons like Fred Astaire and Marcel Marceau. In these days of pop idols its hard to recognize what he did accomplish. 

              I find myself saying over and over that “I am an artist in order to stretch the boundaries of imagination.” It’s a nice bromide to hide behind when I have nothing intelligent to say. On the days that a performer is living up to that ideal, it means he is a servant to the art form, not to himself and his own career. In many ways the people who are talented enough to make it big have the most to loose. They are the ones in a position to take the craft further. An artist focuses on creating excellent work first, which means hours of looking at an empty abyss and wondering what comes next.  

              If you’re thinking that he didn’t add anything to this world or improve his art think again. The world might not be that different without the Moonwalk but think of how many weddings you’ve been to where Jackson was played. It changed the entire atmosphere of the room didn’t it? The joy you felt when you looked over and saw your ancient uncle Barney tapping his toe to “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” long after he started using his cane, is irreplaceable. There is very little as satisfying as cruising down the highway singing “Black or White.” These joys are real, they make life worth living, and they came from a man who danced and sang as if God made him for just that. 

              As I look up more YouTube videos and try desperately to learn more from a shadow of a man I just missed, I am changed as an artist. I find myself rethinking my reasons for creating and the rational for my career. Like every great artist he challenges us to refine the craft and explore the borderlands of creativity. And in between the script readings and the rejections, the dropped lines and the stretching towards an unknown and a possible failing career, there is the dance. There is only the dance.