maybe you didn't know

A bit of randomness…

1.) I am hypermobile. This means that my body bends farther than it should. This is both bad news and good news. First, the bad news: if I am injured, it might take longer to heal because things move too much to keep everything stabilized and give it time to heal. The good news: I, too, will become stiffer with age like everyone else, but since I’m starting from an extra bendy-stretchy place, it probably won’t be so bad.

2.) I still have acne, in my 30′s. I photoshop it out of most pictures of me and am quite sensitive about people taking my picture. I have tried everything. Seriously, everything. It mostly went away when I started using Dr. Murad, and then with Bikram and all of the sweating and the detoxing, it’s like I’m living in Breakout City. I am praying it will go away. I am giving it a few more months. And if it doesn’t go away? I will quit Bikram. Nothing is worth living in perpetual adolescent hell.

3.) I am a classical musician. I started the piano at five. Flute at nine. Cello at 14. Viola and the violin at 16. (How could we afford this? The public school system had a funded arts program, which is why I will always–always–support funding for public schools–they make more of a difference than people can imagine). I was accepted to a music school after high school and passed on the opportunity because I was afraid I wouldn’t make any money. At nineteen, I quit playing altogether until two years ago, at which time I took up the piano again.

4.) I have been working on the Mendelssohn piano concerto in g minor, opus 126, a total of 6 years, and still am not even close to mastering it.

5.) I’m glad I quit music all of those years. The intensity with which I drove myself in my early 20′s would almost surely have killed my hands. I know that I would have been relentless to the point of abusing my body in the quest to be good.

6.) I was raised by a Catholic father and an atheist mother. Now here’s the part that’s easy to guess: THEY GOT A DIVORCE.

7.) I grew up in a “bad neighborhood.” Drugs. Prostitution. Gunshots. Thankfully, not a lot of gang warfare.

8.) Now I’ll add the part that I find more complicated to talk about: Being white in a predominantly black neighborhood (we can get into the politics of the word “African-American” later). The complicated and ironically backward layers of living right smack in the middle of a culture yet not being able to claim it as my own (any more than most people of color feel they can fully claim white “culture” as their own) and the years of hot, reactive anger I’ve seen from people who felt I had no right to even discuss such a thing as “minority whiteness.” It’s really odd, and really strange to see the politics of race that up close, and to realize–only after the fact, never when I was actually living there–that just as the statistics predict, somehow I did end up leaving while some of my playmates on the kickball field did not. How many opportunities have I been granted simply because of the color of my skin? I can never know.

9.) The summer I was nine, I ate nothing but pancakes, because that was what there was to eat. It was another 18 years before I ate pancakes again; the very smell of them used to make me sick.

10.) I love fruit cocktail, straight out of the can.

11.) I have no idea how I would contain the grief of either of my parents dying.

12.) Ha–notice I say “would” as if it is something that might not happen.

13.) The most beautiful moments in life move me to tears. I have had a strained relationship with crying. I was raised to believe it was weakness, and now I agree that it is a sign of vulnerability and within that, strength. My heart does this dance with opening through tears. Back and forth, back and forth.

14.) I say the words “shit” and “fuck” far more often than is ladylike. Or classy. Or, really, even appropriate for me. It’s a really bad habit.

15.) So is biting my nails (another habit I’ve not managed to break).

16.) A lot of my dreams circumnavigate around water. Tsunamis, rivers, wading, oceans, lakes, being underwater, water rising and needing to go up a level in a house to escape it. Sometimes the water is calm, sometimes it is blue, sometimes it is muddy, sometimes it is great, sometimes it is not. It’s not every night, but it’s often enough that a number of odd themes have emerged. The most recent? Something to do with Andy and I borrowing a powerboat from a friend (a friend we rarely ever talk to who, to my knowledge, does not own a powerboat) and riding around a lake.

17.) Speaking of dreams, I am a lucid dreamer, which means that I can rewind my dreams and do them over. (TALK ABOUT CONTROL ISSUES.)

18.) I believe in reincarnation, not because of any kind of proof but because somehow, it just “feels right.” But no, I have no memories of past lives.

19.) I have never smoked pot in my life.

20.) The most common reaction I get when I tell people that? “Let’s get you high!”

21.) I believe that my aversion to drug use is likely the result of being a heavy drug user in a previous life.

22.) I have touched the center of myself. I’d like to learn how to stay there.

23.) Sometimes I walk past an older woman who smells a certain way, and in one big rush it brings back the memory of my grandmother who died ten years ago, and right there in the grocery store, I’m trying not to cry.

24.) Thing I’d always wished I’d learned to do: dance. But I am doing just fine bopping around my office with impromptu dance parties, so it’s all good.

25.) I love, love, love The Biggest Loser. I frequently watch it (online) while sipping on a Frosty.

26.) I get occasional girl crushes, and yes, I have one on Jillian Michaels. (Andy was quite pleased to discover this).

27.) I love taking pictures.

28.) Sometimes, I really miss teaching. I miss my students. I carry their stories.

29.) I’m running out of steam at #29.

30.) Thirty seemed like a nice, round number. Now I want to know: What don’t we know about you?