Mar. 19, 2003 - 20:23:33
Dear Vincent,
What is the difference between a gamble and a leap of faith?
A Random Thought: Today I had a story idea that strikes me as slightly Thurber-esque. Late one evening a bunch of woman are sitting around a table gambling over poker. One by one the women fold until at last two are left confidently in. The women begin to raise the stakes with things like, "everything I know about the Johnson's divorce" or "your Tupper ware I never returned." Finally one woman offers her subscription to Martha Stewart living and the table falls into hushed silence. In response the other woman draws out the lease on her husband and tosses it defiantly on the table. "Oh you can't!" exclaims one woman. "Why?" she asks. "Well doesn't Bob take you tires to be rotated every few months?" queries one woman and another announces "Yes and he did do a wonderful job building your deck." Whereupon the entire table begins to extol the usefulness of Bob, the alleged husband. The woman still in the game silences the other women by flashing her hand at everyone but her adversary. Collective gasps follow and I think the story should end right there. But again, it was just a passing thought.
I have a rather big dance bag. It travels with me to dance class (obviously) and with me to teach dance class. My first class on Tuesdays is a slew of four year olds who could double as crickets they hop about so. A few weeks ago I was discussing something with my boss who'd stopped by and was out of the studio when they came in. When I entered the group was clustered giggling around my bag. When I made my way over they parted to reveal that Christina (already immortalized in this correspondence in the 'only Derek' episode) had deposited herself in my bag. "Look Miss Meghan I can fit inside your dance bag!" she exclaimed jubilantly. "Oh you don't want to sit in my dance bag." I leveled. Her curiosity peaked she asked, "Why?" I was momentarily stumped, forbid her to stay out of it and she'd just question my authority on a weekly basis but now I had to come up with a good reason why it was in her best interest to stay out. So I leaned down and told it to her like a secret- "There are crickets in my dance bag." (The first thing that came to mind...) Christina hopped out instantly.
Practically as quickly, the whole class knew the 'secret' of the dance bag. All it took was a few weeks of jostling my bag, peering into it and whispering with feigned stealth, "Now you be quiet in there!" The girls are always asking each other, "Did you hear that cricket just now?" "Yeah I heard it!" they confirm. "There are no crickets in this classroom!" I admonish sternly, and they smile knowingly at each other. Thus I've come to call them my 'cricket class' and they call my dance bag the 'cricket bag.' They've yet to call my bluff.
Hey look at this---> I am reading a novel called "Wicked" which is a re telling of "The Wizard of Oz." In addition to a slightly twisted none the less entertaining plot, the book moves through a great many political ideas and policies and sets up some very interesting moral and theological debates between the characters. The author, Gregory Maguire, deals a lot in re-tellings but what draws me to his writing is that he habitally writes the 'ugly hero/heroine.' In his "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" the ugly stepsister obviously serves as the heroine. His descriptions of her physical appearence follow the lines of "painfully plain." He places great emphasis on the 'painful,' that the girl is so nonremarkable, so ordinary that it hurts just to look at her. In "Wicked" the heroine is the Wicked Witch of the West and as portrayed in the movie she is green. Maguire does not change events, the Stepsister and the Witch play the roles they've already been assigned to by someone else's story. It's just that by telling it from their perspective everything is explained. Given the opportunity to understand motivation and intent I find myself sympathizeing and forgiveing more easily.
Maguire also deals in doomed characters. The stepsister, the witch, previously laid plots already dictate them to be doomed by virtue of the original tale. Thus, his heroines usually end up failing at everything they've set out to do. The only success they are granted is the success of emergeing into their pre prescribed role in literature. I always feel as though Maguire is asking the question, if someone fails at everything they set out to do, are they then to be called a failure? I highly reccomend anything by him.
I had a meeting today for work. The director of the recreational program is a perky woman. She has perfect hair and I've never taken well to women with perfect hair. Perfect hair usually screams anal. It was the first meeting the Rec. Council had as a group, we usually just meet by department. I was realtively early so I seated myself down one end of the long rectangular table in a spot where I had a good view of the entire table and the door. There was no clock, which was enough to set me instantly at unease. I watched the director warily over my cup of coffee as she flitted blithely around the room handing out papers and the like. I noticed that she wears one of those brat necklaces. In case you aren't farmiliar with what a brat necklace is, (since you're not a mother nor a middle class small town middle aged woman thank god) it is a necklace from which you hang one charm for every child you have. Sometimes the charms are just little birth stones but there is, as there is with everything a more flashy kind. This specific kind of brat necklace features charms that are actually little children with faces. These type have always frightened me a little. All the mothers croon about how darling they are but to me they look like a row of corpses jangleing around the woman's neck. I half expect one woman to say to the other, "How many you kill?" and the woman to answear by gestureing towards her brat necklace.
As people settled at different places around the table I realized I was going to be a minority in the room. With the exception of the director and the other two dance instructors I was the only female, and also by far the tiniest person in the room. The bulk of the meeting was dominated by sports men. As they boisterously greeted each other they curtly and curiously nodded in my direction until one finally asked, "What department are you from?" "Dance" I explained. "Ohhhh." he said as if that explained everything he'd ever wondered about for the last twenty years.
Finally the director jump started the meeting. "Okay!" she exclaimed. "Since we don't all know each other here..." My mind reeled, I sensed a 'get to know you' activity coming on. Damn. Sure enough she finished with, "Let's go around the table and say our names, and what we play!" So we went around the table and one by one the sports men introduced themselves as "Coach thus and so" and "I play (insert sport)." Oh it was tedious. For a bit I considered answearing "I am Meghan Allen and I play it dumb." But after the 8th soccer coach introduced himself I went with, "Hi I'm Meghan Allen and if I played anything I'd play the stock market." The result was something of a mix between dumb founded silence, hostility, and one old referee god bless him laughed hysterically.
I would agree that our differences are vital to our dialogue. Sometimes it just perplexes me that I cannot get along with my co worker Lea even though we are the same age, were raised in indentical living situations and with similar morals. We live in the same area, enjoy the same things and run into each other with displeaseing frequency. Somehow we can't agree on much. I find her cheorgraphy too rigid, her teaching methods too severe and by the book. I maintain that she is stamping the passion out of dance. She finds me too lax when it comes to technique, suggests my choerography is too modern and consistantly expresses that I should teach technique and then let them have fun or they will never learn fundamentals. I even ran into her at a performance of 'Phantom of the Opera' in New York one time. We both loved the play. She loved the costumes and visual spectacle as well as the story. While I harped on the music, and the feeling of the overall experience. She blatently informed me that my comments betrayed an amaturish viewpoint. What this is all leading up to is that I find myself both mystified and bemused that I am hard pressed to tolarate someone so similar to myself and yet I find it a joy not a task to comminicate with someone such as you, someone so different from myself in so many respects. Life is funny that way.
Rapt,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
