In that respect, the Pottery 90210 Holiday Sale was a great success.  What a delight, to spend time with a group of smart, interesting people, in a house filled with beautiful things we’ve made. We sold quite a lot of ware, and had a fun time doing it. We’re thinking of making it an annual event.

The day after the pottery sale, I danced at Anja and Anaheed‘s Holiday party. For the past five years or so, I’ve been behind the scenes at most of Anaheed’s bellydance events, helping to set up chairs, hang curtains, serve food, and clean up when it’s all over. So I’ve been steeped in the scene for a while, but since I hardly ever get up on stage myself, people often recognize me, yet aren’t quite sure from where. Little do they know, I’m the one who keeps the air conditioner running and the cookie tray filled while they are dancing and bargain hunting at the swap meet. This time, I was the one going out in the spotlight, and it felt weird to stand around watching my friends taking care of jobs that I am accustomed to doing with them.

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking to go out in front of an audience, but even more so when said audience is made up of seasoned dancers and their friends and families. It had been a while since I’d gotten up there, and never to live music before. But everyone there was very encouraging, and I had a great time!

So here we are now. It’s 2012, time of great change they say. Welcoming the year in that spirit, I’ve begun a mural in my kitchen. It started out as an abstract doodle, but quickly took on its own character. Right now, it reminds me of a scene from “Pictor’s Metamorphoses,” a short story by Herman Hesse that I was introduced to last October in a painting workshop at the Jung Institute. It’s a fable about transformation and how we are affected by the choices we make. It will be interesting to see where this goes. Stay tuned…

]]> http://kozmique.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/happy-new-year/feed/ 0 Kozmique Pottery 90210 Holiday Sale giraffe2 (480x640) http://kozmique.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/modern-times/ http://kozmique.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/modern-times/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:36:33 +0000 Kozmique http://kozmique.wordpress.com/?p=823 ]]> I’d planned to write about something else, but my thoughts keep returning to those awful machines that were invented for the express purpose of destroying life. Guns. Everywhere in the news, people keep using them to murder each other. You see them now not just in movies and videos, but billboard ads, jewelry, and clothing designs. Not too long ago, I watched a hyperactive 10-year-old girl at the Y pantomime shooting various kinds of guns to the song “Paper Planes” by M.I.A. Let’s not even question the teacher’s judgment in playing that song for a class of 6-10-year-old tap dancers. How in the hell did this girl know how to realistically mimic shooting a pistol, a rifle, and a semi-automatic weapon?  A friend’s first grader was recently threatened by a note, given to her by a classmate, which included her name next to a picture of a gun. Aren’t first graders supposed to be drawing houses and people and flowers and puppies and stuff like that? It’s disturbing! I just read in today’s paper that a mother got the death penalty for shooting and killing her four children. Some guy shot a bunch of his coworkers in an office building. And then there was the man who opened fire in the middle of the street two weeks ago, just a few blocks away from here, at the intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Just out of the blue, some dude flips out and starts shooting at random strangers in the street. What is wrong with this picture? Why did he have a gun in the first place?  Why does anyone have a gun? To protect themselves from people with guns! Or, to steal stuff from people without guns! That’s all.  ’Cause there sure aren’t a lot of rhinos to hunt in Hollywood. Or anywhere else actually, since they’re now officially extinct, thanks to people with guns. Some folks actually think that it’s a human right to carry around a gun, just because a couple of hundred years ago some rich businessmen wrote out a document to protect their interests, which at the time included owning other people.  But really, a right?  Access to clean air, water, and food, a place to live, and being treated with dignity, those are rights. Which, I might add, are hardly being met for most of the world’s population, thanks mainly to the people who claim the right to wave guns at anyone who has something they want for themselves. I’ll say it again. Air. Water. Food. Shelter. Dignity. Those are rights. Anything else is a boon, a privilege, a blessing – call it what you will, but it’s extra.

Over and over again, human beings keep proving that they are not responsible enough to handle the weapons they have invented. In a time when fear is spreading, emotions are rising, tempers are flaring, and old hurts are being exposed and rubbed raw by new methods of mass communication, people are beginning to reach their limits. Everyone’s got a different breaking point. The guy at Hollywood and Vine freaked out after his girlfriend dumped him. Who knows what his life was like up until then, but that’s when he came uncorked. What would he have done if he hadn’t had a gun? Gone and got drunk and got in a fistfight, maybe. Instead, he goes and just starts shooting randomly at everyone he sees, because he’s so full of hate he can’t see straight, and anyway killing is just a thing that people do in video games and movies, right? It’s not real. Then of course, because it’s Hollywood, he actually kills someone famous, and so now his name goes down in infamy. If he hadn’t been shot and killed himself, he would’ve probably been offered a movie deal.

On the day it happened, I was over in West LA, hosting the opening of the art sale with my friends from Pottery 90210. Someone mentioned there had been a shooting, but as we were busy all day I didn’t hear anything else, and forgot about it. On the way home, I discovered that traffic was snarled in a knot, with all the main thoroughfares jammed like a parking lot, but zipping smugly through my secret network of side streets, I didn’t give much thought to possible reasons for the gridlock. Only when I got back and Mr. Koz filled me in on the news did the realization hit home. Just a few weeks ago, Kozlet’s teacher started a class project researching all the famous landmarks in our city. The children pulled their subjects out of a hat, and Kozlet’s came up the Broadway Hollywood building at Hollywood and Vine, which was featured in Charlie Chaplin’s famous 1936 movie, Modern Times. When we were looking it up online, Kozlet immediately recognized the sign in the photograph and exclaimed, “That building’s famous? But I see it all the time!” In fact, we were just there, using the ATM at the bank on the corner, only a day or two before a wacked out transplant from Pennsylvania came down from his overpriced apartment to take out his disappointment on the world in a cinematic flourish custom made for, and by, the city of broken dreams.

Earlier, while helping Kozlet look for information about the historic building for his report, I had been disappointed to find that the only articles available were controlled by the real estate company that recently turned the old department store into luxury dwellings for the Nouveau LA loft-dwelling hipsters, and consisted mostly of advertising, with very little history. Only one site hinted at any of the tantalizing tidbits that make Hollywood history interesting, in this case a secret passage kept by Howard Hughes between his apartment in the building and his office at the Pantages Theater.  The only other article I found was a Times spotlight on three of the renovated units, one of which belongs to Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction. The article wasn’t actually that interesting, though. Yeah, the guy’s a rock star, so he paid a lot of money to get someone else to design his Hollywood pad to reflect his personal style right down to the last cliché. The most interesting space covered by the article belonged to a couple who are actually designers, so they didn’t have to hire anyone to decorate their apartment, and they made some of the stuff themselves. But nothing about their style felt compelling to me either. I think I might actually live on a different planet from the people who can afford to live in that place, even though they are practically my neighbors. Hi Dave! Nice to see you. Ooh, nice chandeliers, they really set off the naked lady wallpaper. Hey, good thing you didn’t get shot walking out your front door last week!

I didn’t tell Kozlet about the shooting. Before it happened, I had promised to take him down to “his” building to look at it and take some pictures, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to go there since, even though it’s practically just down the street. He keeps bugging me about it, but I’m not ready.  I know it’s not likely to happen again soon, not right there anyway, but it isn’t easy reasoning with a PTSD-addled psyche, even my own. I’ll do it. But it won’t be the same. Just like walking down the hall to my apartment hasn’t been the same ever since a year and a half ago, when a disgruntled man broke in to shoot one of my neighbors, his ex-wife.

Yes, it happened here, but these things don’t always happen “only in Hollywood.” People who defend their right to own guns and enjoy violent entertainment get extremely angry at opinions like mine. But what good comes from teaching people to glorify killing, or watching people being killed? Death is inevitable and war may be part of our nature, but it is our ability to consciously evolve  that makes us human.

As 2011 draws to a close, and we prepare to symbolically enter a new era of human consciousness, I truly hope it is one in which compassion paves the way for evolution, and not merely our own extinction.

But now it is time to clear away the clay dust and make way for sparkles! Tonight I will be dancing for the first time ever to live music in front of an audience. Well, maybe not ever. There was that whole thing that happened at the Tinariwen show. But this is going to be a real performance: costume,  zills, veil, the whole nine yards.

The only live music I’ve ever performed to was with the Ben Gunn Society, but that was not bellydance. Tonight I’ll be dancing in the American Cabaret style at Anaheed and Anja’s Holiday party in Granada Hills. In case you’d like to know more about where that style comes from, I just had an article published at FolkWorks magazine. I’m excited, but confident about tonight. I know Var and Ricco’s music really well as I’ve helped out at nearly all Anaheed’s major events for the last 5 years. That’s why a lot of dancers in the local community recognize me, but they can never remember from where, because I so rarely get up on stage. But I’ve been preparing to get back out there for a while. And of course, when it rains, it pours. A week from tonight I’ll be dancing again, to an Egyptian song at Club Cleopatra.

It’s like a faucet, this creativity thing. It builds up inside you, like you’re a well being filled with water from an unknown source.  You have to open a tap to let it flow out or it will only leak out in messy and unproductive ways. I’ve been trying to hold all this stuff inside all my life, bulging at the seams and leaking terribly. I feel like for the first time ever I’ve figured out not just where the tap is, but how to turn it on without soaking or scalding myself. This is good.

Around the same time I was mourning the old school facade, I noticed a lot of old landmarks were going downhill.  Hollywood has, until very recently, had no respect at all for its own history. Buildings constructed back in a time when such things mattered, that would have aged gracefully, are of no use to a transient population who only want to make a quick buck. The weirdest thing is, once a place has been rebuilt, it’s hard to remember what used to be there, especially when every third block has been razed to make way for another Walgreen’s. I still miss the Studio Wardrobe Department, though. It was originally a warehouse in an old building at Hollywood and Highland, but that burned down at  some point and the site  turned into a big mall. The salvaged contents were moved down the street and squeezed into a much smaller space, which became stuffed to the gills with everything you could possibly ever need by way of clothing or costuming, with prices starting at 25 cents. For a long time I wasn’t that keen on going there because once the owner yelled at me when I tried to look in the mirror to see if a coat I was interested in looked OK on me. It turned out he had a strict rule about not bringing the 25-cent clothes inside to look at in the mirror. So I paid a quarter for an ill-fitting coat that I eventually gave to Goodwill. But after the Kozlet was born, I started going there all the time, since it was only a five minute walk away. Kozlet would play happily in his stroller while I tried on vintage dresses and looked for interesting items to cut up and reassemble as new creations. Once I had to dress up my whole family in Renaissance costumes, and in a single trip I found everything I needed, including one large and one tiny leather vest for the Kozlings,  and a woolen one for myself. And when the small creature started taking dance classes, I found enough black jazz pants there to keep him outfitted for several years.

Eventually the Kozlet started going to school, and I took to wandering into the shop on my own once or twice a month, often in the evenings on my way home from class. On those occasions, the owner would always be present to close up for the night. He, of course, had no recollection of yelling at me, and I certainly didn’t mention it. He was always cordial, if a bit distant. One night, he seemed particularly moody, and sensing a sympathetic ear, started telling me about his life. I listened patiently while he told me his story, and then he took out his wallet and showed me a picture of his children. One of them was a dead ringer for the Kozlet. My jaw dropped, and I immediately started fumbling for my own wallet to extract a picture, a school portrait taken earlier that year. Holding the pictures side by side we fell silent. They could have been photos of the same child. It was eerie. Finally we put the pictures away, and I purchased my stuff and went home. But after that the owner always seemed happy to see me when I came in. He’d come over and chat, ask after the Kozlet, and offer me discounts or just let me have stuff for free, especially if it was off the kids’ rack. I brought the Kozlet with me once or twice, but he was old enough by then to be bored by clothing stores, and I think it made the owner a little uncomfortable. The place wasn’t doing too well either, and there were some real weirdos creeping among the racks, although usually they were just the employees. It was pretty plain the place didn’t have long for the world. They tried to resuscitate it by allowing a reality show to be filmed there, but that didn’t help. I avoided the store during filming, even though I was explicitly invited to both the taping and a related party. That whole reality show thing just freaks me out. When the coast was clear, the store’s  inventory had been thoroughly depleted, and the place shut down not too long after that. The owner told me that he was moving what was left to his other warehouse, somewhere in the valley, a real schlep compared to the pleasant stroll I’d enjoyed. Another one bites the dust. Now it’s a yoga studio.

So about three years ago, right about the time I was weeping over the school’s new paint job,  a singular individual known as Trippy the Hippy, who lives in the equivalent of a tie-dyed yurt on a glacier, asked me to post some pictures of Hollywood – my Hollywood – on Hippymom.com. I went out with my camera, intending to shoot some of my favorite spots. But I realized when I actually hit the pavement that virtually nothing was at all the way I remembered, and most of the places that meant anything to me were gone. The few things here and there which remained only made my heart hurt with nostalgia. I started taking pictures, and realized that the reason this city feels so unreal all the time is because it’s not made out of bricks and mortar, but stories. A few of which are mine to tell. The idea of the Hollywood Hermit was born that day.

The first picture I took, of a house in my neighborhood that I am in love with. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first houses in Hollywood.

The view from my favorite table at the Bungalow Club, a little hideaway that Mr. Koz and I used to sneak off to for happy hour. Once one of the best kept secrets in Hollywood, sadly it is no more.

The main problem is that it rains here about as frequently as I wash my car, which is to say, hardly ever, and the city simply isn’t designed to handle large amounts of water. If it rains steadily for more than a day, the roads turn into rushing rivers. I’ll never forget one night when I was still in college. It was my birthday, and two friends from art school were taking me out, although I had to drive since I was the only one with a car. Our destination was a creepy coffee house that used to be in the Knickerbocker Hotel. Considered one of the most haunted buildings in Hollywood, lots of famous people died or went insane there, and Houdini‘s wife used to hold a séance on the roof every year on his birthday after his death.  The guy who ran the cafe, who had been a child star back in the day and never quite got over it, was a total jerk, but the place was still really cool. The room had this kind of gothic art deco thing going on, with half the space devoted to racks of vintage clothing and jewelry for sale. They served great coffee drinks and had a pool table set up in a little anteroom that was decked out like an old-fashioned movie theater. As long as the owner was asleep on the couch, which was most of the time, it was a really fun place to hang out.

That night it was pouring not only cats and dogs but frogs and guinea pigs, I mean it was really coming down. We were creeping slowly along a secret route of steep little side streets in my decrepit old car, the Frankenstang. The tattered wipers hardly made a difference in the downpour, and we all heard it before we saw it: a great roaring WHOOSH from behind and then we were engulfed in water halfway up the sides of the car, which lifted up off the road and began to float downstream, in the direction we were already going. All three of us were laughing our heads off at the absurdity of the situation, especially when we realized we were not alone. A line of similarly incapacitated cars was floating majestically ahead, like a parade of giant bath toys. Another vehicle gently bumped into us from behind, causing us to drift helplessly into the bumper of the car in front of us. Slowly, the train of cars drifted down the narrow street until at last we approached an intersection, where the flood waters gurgled away.  The Frankenstang lowered back down to the pavement with a slight bump, and we continued on our journey as if nothing had happened.

The worst part about the rain is that people here don’t know how to drive when it’s wet. The first few minutes are the worst, when the water hits all the oil and other crud on the street, making it extra slippery before it gets washed away. Then you’ve got all these type A personalities speeding around while shouting into their cell phones. They’re not about to slow down for a little thing like rain. It’s no wonder that you hear more sirens and see more accidents on rainy days. What I don’t understand is, if so many people in L.A. are transplants from places that actually have weather, shouldn’t they know more about driving in the rain? Or is there something about the combination of sunshine and gasoline that makes people forgetful?

I didn’t feel like going out driving in the downpour, but I needed a haircut, and Kozlet was looking forward to the outing. I realized when we got outside that we really needed some boots.  I realized that the last time it rained, but by the time we got to the store all the boots had sold out, since everyone else in town had also just realized they needed some boots. Then, of course, it had stopped raining and I forgot about boots. Now as we neared our destination I noticed that the gushing water at every intersection was higher than the curb. There was no place to park in front of the apartment and the only spot I could find was a block away. At first we had fun jumping over puddles, but the puddles started turning into lakes, then streams, until finally we were trapped, with no way to go but through the rushing river. Kozlet and I decided to make a break for it, and with hearty yells we forded the temporary tributary. At the end of the street, we saw the source, a spectacular waterfall crashing down a flight of steps outside an apartment building. The Niagara Falls of Hollywood! Try going over that in a barrel! By the time we got to my friend’s place, we were soaked, but giggling. I accepted some dry socks and warmed up with a cup of hot cider, then my friend cut my hair while our boys played, as the rain continued to pour outside.

When it was time to go, the rain had eased up slightly, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant to put on our wet shoes and trudge through the damp back to my car. Kozlet was complaining, and I was telling him to hang on, we’d be home soon, and there would be dry clothes, a heater, and a hot drink. That’s when I caught sight of the bedraggled hump of a human being, huddled under a ragged blanket, trying to keep dry in the doorway of an old building. Suddenly I wasn’t just looking forward to a cup of hot tea, but filled with gratitude for my comfortable life and my loving Mr. Koz, who works hard so that Kozlet and I have a place to live and food to eat, and I have the freedom to create art and dance and do things that make me happy. I don’t ever want to take these things for granted because who knows, one day it could all change.

This year I am grateful for so many things. My aforementioned family, who make me so happy that I want to dance; my apartment, which is just big enough to dance in; my cat, for being so fuzzy; my friends, teachers, and mentors, who have believed in me even when I haven’t; and you, for taking the time to read these words. Happy Thanksgiving!

We’re called Pottery 90210 because our studio is in the art department of Beverly Hills High School. For something like 60 years, BHHS had this great adult education department, but last summer they decided to cut the program. It looked for a while as though we would lose our space.  But thanks to the hard work of our intrepid leader, Jeffrey Johnson, we managed to keep our studio. I have been working alongside this great group of artists for something like four years now, and this is the first time we will be displaying and selling our work together.

After sitting through a lot of bands that didn’t interest me much, I was feeling sleepy when a bolt of lightning struck the stage. Old enough to be the grandfather of most of the festivalgoers, Chuck Berry had more spark than any of his opening acts. His set was energetic and the audience went berserk when he did his duck walk. Suddenly, he started pulling women up out of the audience to dance with him on stage. I was bopping along in the front row when he looked me in the eye, pointed straight at me, then beckoned for me to join the party. I was mortified.

Chuck Berry asked me to dance and I said no.

After the concert I was depressed for weeks. Why did I decline? Why didn’t I jump on stage like everyone else? Simply put, because I was fat. Not just chubby or “thick” as they now say, but morbidly obese. And regardless of what Chuck Berry thought, I was afraid I’d get laughed at if I went on stage in front of all those immaculately coiffed hepcats.

I’d struggled with weight and depression all my life, but things really got out of hand when I became a public school teacher. The stress of working a thankless job, with most of my salary going toward student loans, then returning to the crappy co-op I shared with a bunch of other strapped, depressed, alcoholic teachers, had reduced me to a shell of a person. Through the district mental health program I was assigned a psychiatrist, who put me on Prozac. Already sensitive about my weight, in six months I’d gained an additional 50 lbs. I was embarrassed, anxious, and depressed about my size, but Prozac numbed me enough to get through the day without upsetting everyone around me by crying. I wanted to kill myself.

One night I was at the bottom of a well of despair, hating myself, wishing I were dead, when a thought appeared in my head, clear as if someone had whispered in my ear. Take a bellydance class. What??? Why on earth would I do that? I had been teased on more than one occasion that I should be a bellydancer because I had a big belly (and boobs) but that was humiliating and certainly didn’t spur me toward lessons. But the voice was insistent. Out of the ether, forgotten memories shimmered into focus.

I’m twelve and at my first Grateful Dead concert. Beautiful dancing hippie-gypsy-flowerchildren. My world has just grown a thousand times bigger, with more colors than a rainbow.

It’s my thirteenth birthday and I am having a costume party. I’m going to be a Gypsy Fortune Teller with a great big twirly skirt, layers of scarves, and loads of jewelry, dripping with coins.

I’m fourteen, and all alone at home. I secretly put on all the jewelry I own, draping my favorite necklace over my forehead and dancing around. No one will ever know that this sullen tomboy has a secret identity as an exotic Gypsy Princess.

I had forgotten about my old Gypsy Dancer fantasy, but once remembered, it wouldn’t go away. I didn’t tell anyone my plan because I didn’t want it laughed to pieces. When no one was around, I looked up all the classes in my area and, heart pounding, snuck into the private teacher phone booth in the office on my lunch hour, feeling like I was doing something secret and forbidden. One of the few bright spots in my life at that time was my new boyfriend, the future Mr. Koz. He’d been around long enough to experience my mood swings, but unlike the other people in my life he never put me down or said I was crazy. He didn’t tease me about my weight either; on the contrary, he told me I was beautiful and that he loved me. Having chosen a class, I confided in him, and he encouraged me to go.

Stepping into that first bellydance class might be the bravest thing I’ve ever done. It was embarrassing to be the fattest person there, double the size of anyone else in the room. Being forced to look in the mirror was torture. The moves were completely beyond my scope of experience. I had spent so many years trying to be still, so as not to bump into anyone and be attacked or ridiculed for my girth. As a rank beginner, I knew absolutely nothing about the art or culture of bellydance. You’d think that with my exotic ancestry and world traveler pedigree, I’d have had some kind of experience, but no. The go-go dancers dressed up as harem girls on campy TV shows like the Monkees and the dancers at the Moroccan restaurant were all of a piece to me. The teacher I had chosen was an expert on Egyptian Folkloric dance, but I didn’t know that. I was a foreigner in a strange land where I didn’t know the customs or speak the language, and the music sounded to me like fingernails on a chalkboard. Part of me wanted to run away, but something stronger kept me there. It was as if I’d lived all my life in a desert, and had just tasted my first sip of icewater. I wasn’t sure how I liked it, but my body wanted more.

I didn’t last long in that first class. It pained me to see the teacher lavishing attention on the skinny blondes while ignoring me as I struggled to copy moves that looked like turning inside out. In a way, that’s what was happening to me. Mentally and emotionally things were shifting. Little did I know that this dance would take me to the fringes of insanity and back. But that would not happen for some time, because of another impulse even stronger than the need to dance – the desire to have a child. This new way of being in my body had stirred up some ancient life force I had previously been cut off from. I’d never wanted a child before, but now it was all I wanted. I was 30 years old, and it was time to enter a new chapter of my life. In fact it turned out to be an entirely different book.

The people around me expressed fear that pregnancy and childbirth would bring wild mood swings and post-partum depression, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I had been a heavy smoker, up to three packs a day, but now the smell and taste of cigarettes made me want to throw up. I never craved them again. I gave up alcohol, of course, and cut out processed foods in favor of whole, organic food. When I couldn’t find a prenatal dance class, I took yoga. By the time the baby was born I looked and felt better than I had in years. And when he was two months old, I returned to bellydance. Some people might look askance at my going off to dance classes when I had a newborn to take care of, but it was like a dose of strong medicine. It made my spirit soar in a way that nothing, barring the experience of new motherhood, could touch. Once a week Mr. Koz got to bond with our new Kozlet, and I got to bond with the new me.

But first I had to come face to face with the old me. I had gone off Prozac in favor of a new antidepressant called Effexor. The drug worked, but once I became dependent on the dosage the effect wore off and I needed a higher dosage. If I forgot my pill, I would become nauseated, bump into things, and fall down. Whenever the dosage I was on ceased to be effective I would suffer identical symptoms. I would also forget words, or worse, try to speak and say the opposite of what I meant. This bizarre problem was amplified whenever I got nervous and more than once I found myself in a sticky situation because I’d said something completely off the wall. But the doctors told me I had no choice but to stay on the drug, most likely for the rest of my life.

My second bellydance teacher I shall call Candida because she was as nasty as a yeast infection. She would begin each class by badmouthing her competition while preening in the mirror, and had harsh words to say about my belly fat, which prevented her from seeing the movements I was sure were happening underneath. No other students who came stayed more than a few classes, which I should have realized was a sign that my teacher wasn’t so great. I was so used to being surrounded by mean people that I didn’t recognize the red flags; on the contrary, I found myself, embarrassingly in retrospect, behaving like a dog who tries to lick the boots of the master who has just aimed a kick in its direction. One day, frustrated by my seeming inability to do a proper ribcage isolation, she shoved me to the side, injuring my back. I left her studio in tears and never went back. But, amazingly, I still wanted to dance.

I found a third bellydance teacher, and this time I picked a winner. Besides being a sweetheart, on my first day in class she taught me how to correctly perform a move I had struggled with for a year. Tamra-henna taught Classical Egyptian dance, or Raqs Sharqi, which was a real challenge. She also taught me to understand Middle Eastern music, and eventually I learned to like it. After about two years with her, a creative project I had been working on with Mr. Koz started to demand more from me, so I began lessons with a second teacher, Anaheed, a specialist in American Cabaret style, to learn more about stage presence and how to dance with a sword. She ultimately became my mentor and “dance mom.” I was now taking four classes a week, performing on stage, and having so much fun that it came as a complete shock when I discovered I was no longer fat. I really mean that it was a total surprise. One day, I walked into class and stood in front of the mirror as usual, but I didn’t see myself. Stupidly, I looked over my shoulder, as if I would find my fat self standing behind me, but that was ludicrous. I turned to look in the mirror once more, and had to concede at last that the slim, pretty woman looking back really was me. I had lost 130 lbs. I was thin.

All my life, I had thought that if only I lost weight, my problems would be solved. Instead, a whole new world of problems opened up. I wasn’t prepared to have people, especially men, treat me differently. At night, lying in bed, I could feel my newly exposed hipbones, and would cry and grasp at the emptiness where once there had been a belly. I’d hated it, but now I understood what it had meant. It was my security blanket, distancing and protecting me from lecherous men and jealous women. Furthermore, it had acted as an insulating layer, separating me from my own feelings. Without it I was naked and bereft. And that is when I finally lost my mind.

People get really uncomfortable when you start talking about mental illness, and anyway there’s no room for that story here, so all I want to say about it is this: if more people could accept that we are possessed of a psychic metabolism as real as our digestive function, and treated mental illness with the same respect as physical illness, there would be less stigma and better cures for the afflicted. If there is a blessing to be found in my ordeal, it is that I discovered who my real friends were. As it happens, the ones with the most love and support to give were the ones I met in dance class.

While my relationship to dance has shifted in the time it’s taken me to put myself back together, it has remained the catalyst for movement and change in my life. I am happy to say that as I enter my 10^th year as a dancer (and that includes jazz/modern and tap now as well as bellydance) I am happier and healthier than I have ever been in my life. I’ve gained back a few pounds, but I’ve been completely off pharmaceutical antidepressants for the last six years.

A few months ago, my dearest friend from dance class, who is among other things an amateur ethnomusicologist, introduced me to the best band I have heard in ages. Tinariwen are a group of Touareg musicians from North Africa who rock out on electric guitars. Influenced by psychedelic pioneers like Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix, they don’t play bellydance music, but something I find resonates even deeper; their sound creeps into my bones and I simply have to move. Since being turned on to them I’ve hardly listened to anything else. Two weeks ago, Mr. Koz and I, on the rare occasion of a date, went to see them live in concert.

I’d been lucky enough to see Tinariwen twice previously, both times in standing room only venues where I danced my ass off. This time they were playing in a college theater, and I was disappointed when the audience remained seated. We had lucked out with front row seats, but off to the side, with a huge expanse of empty floor in front of our section, just begging to be danced in. The audience was enthusiastic, but I didn’t see any dancing. I tried moving around in my seat, but it wasn’t enough. I needed to dance so badly I thought I might become physically ill if I didn’t! But something held me back. Perhaps it was that time I went to see the double bill of Eric Clapton and Elton John. It really wasn’t a very good show, but I got up to dance anyway when immediately the people behind me started screaming at me to sit down. I didn’t actually think that would happen here, but every time I looked and no one else was dancing I got nervous. Finally, near the end of the show, I couldn’t take it anymore and flew up out of my seat to let the music take over. I saw people pointing and faces turning toward me, and then they started standing up and dancing too! By the last encore, many others in the audience were dancing. I was surprised when the house lights came up and people started drifting over to shake my hand and thank me for dancing. A couple of people just touched my arm and smiled, and a nice looking young fellow shyly handed me my hat, which had flown off when I first jumped out of my seat.

As we were exiting the theater, Mr. Koz excused himself and I went to wait for him outside. I was standing there wishing I had started dancing sooner, when a man dressed in robes and a turban, holding a drum, asked me if I was the one who had been dancing inside. I said yes, and he asked if I would like to dance some more. I said why not, and he started drumming, I threw off my shoes, and before I knew it a crowd had gathered around me, clapping and trilling along. Mr. Koz was still indoors looking at T-shirts and CD’s and didn’t know that I was at the center of all the commotion until I had been dancing for several minutes. Eventually he came out and joined the crowd, and it was a great relief to see him because the experience was so surreal I couldn’t believe it was really happening. There were a few women who looked like they wanted to dance too, and I beckoned for them to join me. One started to step into the middle of the circle, but just then a guard arrived to tell us we were too loud for the late hour and we had to go.

As I was catching my breath, a couple approached me to complement my dancing, and we ended up talking for a long time. It turns out they run an online magazine called FolkWorks, which covers folk music, dance, and storytelling for the greater Los Angeles area. I not only had heard of it, but coincidentally had been thinking about it a few days previously. It just happens that I picked up a copy of their last print edition before they went online several years ago. It had an article about warm-up exercises for singers which I had saved, and I was wondering where I had put it. There were many other synchronicities in the course of our conversation. They asked where they could see me dance and I told them I mostly do it for myself, but I go to events with open dancing and occasionally perform at showcases. They said they were interested in expanding their calendar to include bellydance events, and even finding someone to write about them. I got their contact information, and a few days later it was agreed that I would write for them. I called Anaheed to tell her the news, but before I could say anything she invited me to dance at her Holiday show, to live music, thus providing me with subject matter for my very first article! All because I dared to get up and dance.

Now if only I could get Chuck Berry to come to the show.

I think I had started writing something about straws (or was it chickens?) when the world was literally knocked off its axis by a series of catastrophes, each worse than the last. It seemed heartless to post such fluff when every day the news was full of more accounts of terrible suffering. Then came the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed. I was on my way home from a friend’s house when the breaking news interrupted the radio broadcast; stunned, I pulled into a Trader Joe’s parking lot to listen to a live speech by the President. To my left and right a car and a truck sat idling. By the serious, intent looks on the drivers’ faces, I supposed that they were also listening to the news. When the speech ended, the car drove away and the truck’s owner got out and went into the store. It occurred to me that in another time, we’d all have been gathered around a single radio, hearing and discussing the news together. Now that everyone has individual radios, laptops, iPhones, and all other manner of paraphernalia designed to disseminate information, we increasingly experience historical moments such as this in isolation. Maybe that is why I decided to go walk around the store even though I didn’t need anything, just to be around other people. I picked up some small item and carried it to the checkout counter. “Did you hear?” I asked the cashier. “They got Osama bin Laden.” “Oh yeah?” she replied, snapping her gum. “Do you want paper or plastic?

So much for historical moments and the human connection. Anyway, that’s ancient history by now and the newspapers are back to reporting about Lindsay Lohan, and I can go back to pondering the things people still care about, such as: why is Angelyne lurking around my place all of a sudden? I’d actually forgotten she existed – it’s been years since she had a billboard up. But that’s three times in two weeks I’ve seen her roll by within a block of my apartment building. I doubt she’s stalking me, so I can only surmise that renting all those billboards must have wiped out her bank account and she’s been forced to move into my shitty neighborhood. I wonder if I would recognize her without the tinted glass if I passed her in the aisle at Trader Joe’s?

As far as I can gather, the average Jane (the would-be celebrities who flock to Hollywood are overwhelmingly female) seeks to become famous – or an assistant to someone famous – most often so she will have something to rub in the face of everyone in the backwater town she came from. Actual talent is not a prerequisite to pursue this dream. Just lots of cold, hard cash. Why save for a college education when all that money could go toward a convention in Hollywood where you can parade around in a bikini for a bunch of jaded talent agents?

My thoughts are interrupted here by a young woman waving a questionnaire in my face. For real. She tells me she is an acting student and asks if I will answer ten yes/no questions about her based on my first impression of her. She says it is an assignment to help her discover her “casting type” and to “find out how people perceive me.” Actually, my first impression when I saw her walk into this cafe was, “That woman looks hungry.” It’s not only that she has so little meat on her bones that her butt cheeks, encased in tight black leggings, look like a couple of candy apples on sticks. She looks hungry for something else, something I suspect she won’t find on the menu here.

I look down at the paper she has handed me to see a list of apparently unrelated statements such as, “This person is of Mediterranean descent,” “…is a nurse,” and “…has committed adultery.” It’s a checklist of the basic racist and sexist stereotypes that are pretty much all that is available to “exotic” types who wish to get into the acting biz. I actually overheard an agent once, an obese, middle-aged white guy in a blue polyester suit, with a combover and wet, quivering lips (it is unnecessary to make this stuff up), recite almost the exact same list to a young, pretty, impeccably dressed Asian-American woman, telling her that as “an exotic,” and an aging one at that (!) she would have the best luck looking for roles as a nurse or a “fallen woman.”

Candy-apple butt is clearly irritated by the smart-aleck question that accidentally falls out of my mouth as soon as I glance at the paper (“Are you sure you’re not actually conducting a psychological survey of all the people who answer this questionnaire?”) and disdainfully tosses her carefully ironed hair, repeating that I just need to answer yes or no, and assuring me that nothing I can say will hurt her feelings. I decide it would be best to refrain from asking her if she has moved here from Spitwad, USA to try out for the upcoming season of America’s Next More Famous Than Any Of You Losers Back Home. She looks tired and angry, in spite of the practiced smile she is now flashing the owner of the establishment, having figured out that I am probably not an agent in disguise. He sits down to answer her questionnaire and she flirts professionally while making a lot of lame jokes (“Can I treat you to something on the house?”) and leans forward to expose what cleavage she can summon up on her bony frame, while giving him the same phony spiel I got a few minutes earlier. “Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings!” Feelings are reserved for ninnies who can’t bear the thought of being typecast as adulterous nurses, I guess.

The cafe owner excuses himself, and alone at the table Ms. Wannabee’s face goes slack. She looks fatigued, and much older than she did a moment ago when she was forcing her visage into a more placating expression. I want to ask if I can have a copy of her questionnaire, but the look on her face is forbidding as she begins to text furiously, stopping only to fill up a device that looks like a tube of mascara with some brown liquid from a dropper. She sucks vigorously on the end of the mascara tube, inhaling what I assume must be some kind of nicotine-laden substance, forcefully exhaling a cloud of vapor with a large sigh. She stands abruptly, slamming her clipboard of non-feeling-hurting questionnaires into a large bag, flashes the fake smile briefly toward the center of the room, calls out “Thanks again!” to no one in particular, and stalks out of the cafe on her candy-apple sticks, hungrier than when she came in.