A Blush Gives It All Away

Some people think it's my talent that enables me to blush on cue. Others think it means I'm saying anything and everything but the truth. Lying. Badly. Some people think it means that whatever I'm saying is really genuine. Heartfelt. And some people see it as me being uncomfortable in their presence. Maybe. And in a way, I guess you could say that all of them ring just a little true. But if there was a moral, I'd say I simply blush a lot. I have a oversensitive blush reflex. Woop. And I can't hide it. If I even just think an embarrassing thought, I can instantly feel the squeeze in my core, the surge of blood rushing to my face and no matter what I try to do to stop it, there it goes. A full on, full faced, warm to the touch blush. It comes out at the best and worst of times. It has no preference or jurisdiction. Like when you unexpectedly catch the eye of a crush, or run into someone who definitely wishes you had died in a house fire. Last year. But it often gets misread. Sometimes it has absolutely nothing to do with the person I'm talking with or it comes from a completely separate thought about something or someone not even remotely in the conversation. And when it comes, the person I'm talking to has to figure out why on earth their perfectly tame conversation about un-sulfured dried fruit has made this poor soul across from them turn several shades of red within seconds. Then sometimes I'm caught off guard by someone who has just caught me really scantily clad for a scene for class, who at most times I'm wishing would be in the situation to see me oh so scantily clad, but not like this. And not with these damned extra 15 pounds. And the blush is so intense I have to turn away in hopes of hiding it. Unsuccessful. And then I'm left wondering how awkward that moment must have come across and what on earth they must have thought of me and the ridiculous color I turned when I realized who was walking down the hall. I've tried breathing deeper, hoping to slow down my racing heart, maybe lower my blood pressure or whatever blessed idea I get to try to keep the blood in my chest and out of my face. But no, it won't. It wants to go exploding up to my face, out to the very outer layers of skin as if to show the world what really beats inside me. Which deems the question. What AM I reacting to? It isn't nothing. It can't possibly be. Yet sometimes it takes someone pointing it out to me for me to realize that thanks a lot, it's happened again. And sometimes I can feel it brewing and I know that despite my many efforts it will only be a matter of seconds before it arrives. I used to think it was mostly embarrassment, but then realized I do it just as much when I teach as when I'm consciously embarrassed. I usually get more embarrassed by what people say about it than the actual blush. Then once whomever has kindly pointed it out, I start blushing harder in reaction to the news that I'm blushing. Convenient. Then I thought it was because I wasn't breathing deep enough. Nope. Not that either. Now I am of the opinion that I'm reacting to a vibe I get from something. From the person I'm talking to or the person imagined in my other train of thought. But whatever it is I don't know how much longer I can keep hating it. Maybe I can't. Maybe I would be better off embracing it and knowing that for whatever reason, it is simply an undeniable part of who I am. Maybe it means I'm more sensitive to what people are giving out, or maybe it means that deep down I simply love deeper and care more, or maybe it means nothing at all. But I'd like to think it does mean something because day after day, person after person, thought after thought, it's always my blush that ends up giving me away.

Saturday Night Jams

A half drunk, mostly abandoned bottle of beer sits forgotten on the bathroom counter. So while you pee you can wonder who first brought it in and how drunk they must have been to forget it too. The porch outside is stained with well trodden swedish fish generously tossed about with zealous good will by a jovial Mickey Rourke doppelganger. And still, the cigarettes continue to burn, the lighter gets passed from hand to hand to hand, and voices rise into the semi-clear night sky about bands and boys and sports and legends. Debates unfurl from a mention of best, now furiously countered with options A and B and C, which must mean that the first statement should be retracted, but won't. And offenses get welted and later aloed, first, by whiskey and later by the same method still. But all in all it is people connecting, finding the pieces of their soul that fit another's. And in the corner, I stand and watch, the designated driver for the evening. Not kept awake by the usual sugar alcohols and cocktail mixes, a yawn emits itself more than is comfortable for the people around me. "Don't Yawn!" a slurred voice reprimands, "Don't Worry, I'm Fine, I Just Don't Breathe Right Sometimes" comes my answer to their concerned queries. I am tired, yes, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be here. Meeting new faces and personalities and enjoying the company of loved friends and classmates. But what we all have gathered together for, is not just friends and faces and souls, but sound, and as we wait the anticipation sits inside us like breathing coals. And finally, stumbling and catching each other down the four now treacherous steps to the back house, the two heavy soundproofed doors are swung and into the lights and sounds we go. Only one chair sits in the corner in a square room filled with amps and guitars as numerous as the drugs, sweat, blood and tears, I'm sure can be found in the dingy carpets stapled to the ceiling and glued to the floor. So sitting on the concrete is fine with me. Refusing the same beer more times than my age. "I'm Driving" I say, to discourage the attempts "I'll Pay For Your Cab" he slurs with a lilty grin. " I Don't Like Beer." No avail. "I Can Get You A Whiskey" now with concern, "That's Okay, Thank You, But I'm Driving Tonight" and on and on intermittently this continued. But then the first string was strummed and the speakers came on with a spark and crackle, and soon the room was filled with sounds so loud you could feel your chest cavity vibrate just the same like the metal strings. And before you knew, the sounds were blasting and your entire body pulsing with the rhythm and vibrations of the musician's mind. And song after song, some new, some old, the music drove us to not sit still. And before you knew it, an hour had passed and I realized that I wasn't yawning anymore.

Changing Changes Changing Me

So once again, too much time has passed since I wrote anything about anything. But my life is considerably different now than last time I wrote. I moved into town. Miracle Mile. My address has a half in it, which is already making my year a better memory. In foresight. Ha. I have something of a job. I'm a personal assistant to three real estate agents. Three different ones. What else would they be? The same? And even though I'm earning a little and closer to the things I love like school and friends and the energy of bigger cities, I still have moments of panic that I'll starve and things won't work out and I'll have to go home. And at times, the most desperate ones, I think I'd rather be homeless. Not to say anything about home, but to say something about me and what I've been doing. When you haven't been doing something that lights your fire for too long, that hiatus can make you forget why you exist. Then once you get to do it again, the rush, the passion, the joy, the burden of wanting to do it right, the obsessiveness, the love, the anger at work not completed, the pain and frustration of being stuck, the exhilaration of getting something right, it reminds you of why you were ever put on this earth in the first place and suddenly you realize that there really is nothing else. You could physically do something else and be in another place going through the motions of another life. Maybe even working hard and putting in a lot of effort, but it will never be the same. There will never be another thing like the first to keep your clock ticking and the hands chiming. And that in itself becomes enough to take over, so all the panicky nights and tears over negative numbers and checks that came too small, are not really about the money anymore. They're about what you would be losing if the money ran out, which is so much bigger than dollars and cents. I guess I am both lucky and cursed that I have had the opportunity in my life to have experienced the gain and the loss of this reason to exist twice. I remember the days when the movement would never stop going in my head. And to this day, if there is music on, there is still movement. I don't think that will ever stop. But I remember missing questions in school because someone was making a rhythm with their pen on the desk that brought out a new shape in my head of a movement I hadn't gotten to try yet. I remember is my darkest days as a kid finding the comfort in the fact that anything I wanted to say appropriate or otherwise could be said in a movement without openly insulting or accusing anyone. And even though the movement may never leave, my mind has now shifted slightly to be obsessed with moments. I can't take my eyes off of people who are going through something. Whether it is happy or sad or somewhere on the whole gamut of everything in-between and beyond, the moments captured in every day life are like the tapping on the desk. Enormous possibilities, whole scripts, a good camera shot, all of it just comes up from a facial expression or a few seconds of perceived privacy in a dark corner. And this is what I'm realizing I can't give up. Dance was my life purpose until it couldn't be. Then I spent a few years grieving over it and trying to find closure. Which I now realize will never happen. And that's okay. Maybe I shouldn't really want closure, maybe it is just going to be a path that will always be there despite how overgrown the intruding forest around it becomes. And the when that grieving and loss eventually began to show colors of discontent, I turned to find a distraction to keep my mind off things. And acting became the new reason to be here on this planet. It still gave me the chance to have something to say. Which I believe at the end of the day is why we are all still here. To keep trying to say it.