Go Out Dancing

Is my new favorite acronym for God.

Others I like are:

Grace Over Drama.

Group Of Drunks.

Great Out Doors.

Good Orderly Direction.

But for the moment, go out dancing is my current fave.

I have made a new friend and she has gotten me out twice now in the past week.

We went out to the Polyglamorous party “Left Overs” last week, Thanksgiving weekend, with Dee Diggs from Brooklyn at The Great Northern, and to date myself, I hadn’t been there since it was Mighty, so, like, um, fifteen or sixteen years?

A very good friend and I used to go there in early recovery.

The sound system there was out of this world.

I don’t even remember who I saw.

Once I went there with a room mate to see a famous rapper, who, I really didn’t know, I had never heard of the guy before, but my room mate had a hard on for him and an extra ticket and so I went.

Much to her chagrin, I got pulled up on the stage at the club to dance with him.

I don’t remember the artist’s name, but I do remember my room mates look of incredulity as I was on stage.

Heh.

Sometimes when I went with my good friend and the acts weren’t that great and we’d just go hang out by his car.

He had a ridiculous sound system in his car, a convertible Mercedes Benz that I don’t even want to know how much it cost, and he’d pop the trunk and we’d just dance around the car.

I can remember more than a few times when the best party was not what was going on in the club, but what was going on out in the street.

We weren’t alone dancing around the car.

Last night I went with my new friend to Public Works and saw John Digweed and his opening set DJ Kora with Set Underground.

Kora was beautiful.

It felt like a glorious sound bath.

There was this gorgeous alter with disco ball lights and lanterns and incense that the DJ was playing behind.

Now.

Normally.

I’m not into this kind of spiritual hoo ha.

But.

His music was lovely, deep, soft trancelike house with some Middle Eastern Influence.

The crowd was diverse, older, dreamy, community.

I saw people I knew from years and years ago.

In fact, I told my new friend last night that I recognized the way that she danced, she has a unique style, that I know I must have seen her on various dance floors and clubs in San Francisco back in the early 2000s.

And later when Digweed came on and the floor got too crowded for her, she bounced out to the Mezzanine, and I found her dancing with an old acquaintance, that I knew from back in the day.

In fact, I used to be in awe of this man.

He was the best club dancer I have ever seen, and twenty (fuck my life, really?) years later, he is still a marvel on the floor.

I remember being in the back room at 1015 for Tiesto? Donald Glaude? Scumfrog? Jonathan Ojeda?

God, only knows, I wasn’t sober then, but I had danced like a crazed person and was taking a break with a drink and my friend who had come up from San Jose to dance that night with me, also a very accomplished dancer, and I saw this gorgeous African American man and a white guy with dreads dancing across the club room.

They were dancing so hard.

Enthralled I watched for a while and then got up the nerve to join.

It was magic.

And I was blown away by their beauty and prowess and grace.

I think I held my own for twenty minutes, they were going so, so, so hard, before I had to bow out.

Literally.

I bowed out.

And they both smiled, and bowed back.

Every time I have seen said gentleman since, his dark eyes always smile at me, and he bows.

And sometimes, still, we dance, before my knees give out.

He is tall and slim, almost slight, well dressed, in his own glorious interpretation of club clothes, and last night he had an afro mohawk.

Seeing him and my new friend dancing behind the sound booth in the mezzanine, I knew, I knew I had seen her before.

She was surprised when she realized that I knew him.

Ah, the club world.

So big and sometimes so, so small.

And I don’t know how it’s twenty years later and I’m suddenly back in the scene and dancing.

Granted, I go much earlier than I used to.

I gobble Ibuprofen.

I only drink water.

I’m completely sober, spiritually centered, and drowned in the ecstasy of dance.

I get lost.

It’s exquisite.

It doesn’t always happen, but more often than not, it does.

I love music.

I listen to music all day long.

When my ex in my twenties and I broke up we discovered something interesting–he owned the tv, stereo, VCR, and most of the cds (mostly because for five years when I didn’t know what to gift him, I gave him stacks of cds for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays, which bit me in the ass when I realized he owned most of the music).

I owned the furniture, bed, and all the kitchen ware.

He moved out.

And I had no audio visual.

I was a broke student working at a brewing company getting by on student loans and suddenly faced with paying double the rent I had the previous month.

I had enough to either buy a tv or a stereo.

There was no debate.

I bought the stereo.

I have not owned a television since.

(“I just realized something!” A friend said to me recently as we were hanging out and drinking tea in my living room. “You don’t own a tv, your living room is arranged so that people can see each other when they talk, not a tv!”)

23 years now.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I have HBO Max (pandemic buy) and Netflix–I do watch videos on my laptop, but music, music is where it is at for me.

I dance every day.

Not always for very long, but every day, mostly in my kitchen.

I was dancing before writing this.

And I will go out dancing again this upcoming Friday.

Dimitri from Paris at the Great Northern.

I could even go out Saturday night too, a friend offered to gift me a ticket to a show at the MidWay.

I’m not sure I can do that, but I am tempted.

Go out dancing more, I tell myself.

Between six and a half years of graduate school (three years in my Master’s program and three and a half in my PhD–yeah, I got that faster than the average bear) and the pandemic, it’s been a long while.

I am happy to be back.

My knees are sore.

And I’m a lot older.

But that’s ok.

I plan on dancing until I die.

Music is one of the many ways I connect to God.

And thus, it is paramount to keep listening, keep dancing, keep drowning in the love.

“I love you,” he shouted in my ear, “I saw you up there, you kept it moving, you didn’t stop, you are beautiful.”

He hugged me.

Some stranger in a sweaty t-shirt with a happy glow on his face last night at the club who grabbed me before I left the dance floor.

Grateful to be seen.

Grateful for music.

Grateful for dancing.

Grateful for this rich, full life.

Even when my knees hurt and I rue the nights I danced for hours in platform heels for six, seven, eight hours, when I was young and anesthetized on cocaine, even when I can’t drop it like it’s hot, or even like it’s lukewarm, even when I can’t stay out late or all night long like I used to, or that I have all sorts of laugh wrinkles around my eyes, even when my hips hurt (gah), and I can’t believe I’m weeks away from turning 50, even then.

I am so grateful

So, I’ll continue to go out dancing.

And if you want.

You should come.

I’d love to see you on the dance floor.

Although I might not see you right away as I will be standing in front of the DJ with my hands raised to the heavens and my eyes closed shut in my own private ecstatic moment communing with God as I understand God.

Go out dancing.

It’s good for you.

Seriously.

Back it Up

I mean.

Seriously.

Back that shit up.

I had the most uncomfortable experience today.

Like the fucking worst, I thought I was going to vomit, I definitely burst into tears, and I cried for about a half hour after the event happened.

Slow.

Steady.

Leaky tears.

Which doesn’t bode well for having to see therapy clients when I finished my nanny job.

I cried off most of my eye makeup, and I didn’t wear the waterproof mascara today.

Not that I think my clients ever notice the state or disarray of my makeup, but I felt pretty raw today heading out to see clients.

I deleted my paper.

I deleted a work in progress paper that I have been working on since the beginning of the semester, meaning, I have been on and off writing this paper for seven or eight weeks.

50 pages.

86 references.

Fully formatted bibliography.

Poof.

Fucking gone.

I deleted it.

It was a total accident.

I can’t get into the specifics of it exactly, it would mean trying to explain APA formatting and the technology platform that I use to help me format my papers and that said technology has definitely not been doing so well holding this gigantic thing and it sort of just disappeared.

There were warnings that something like this would happen.

I had a near panic attack at work about three weeks ago when I couldn’t open the paper and I had to send the bibliography into my professor to show the progress on the work.

It’s actually a journal, not a formally written paper, it’s rather like an annotated bibliography where I have a running list of all the references, books, articles, websites, etc, that I have been collecting to help me write my dissertation.

By the end of the semester I need to have 250-300 references.

The one that got deleted today has 86.

So I still have a ways to go, but hey, 86 ain’t bad.

There’s an upcoming assignment that’s due on November 4th where I will have to provide 25-50 pages of the journal to the professor along with the full bibliography and a bunch of other stuff I won’t bore you with.

I have been diligent about doing the work, but the app has been pretty slow, but I’m used to it and I sort of just look the other way and let the damn thing do it’s thing.

Which is what I was doing, I had just formatted another reference and had another queued up to go and I wanted to look at the paper that I was citing and I toggled out of the paper and into Chrome and I was typing something and the app popped me from Chrome back into the paper and I hit backspace and deleted the whole thing, but I also typed the letter e and that replaced the paper.  So when I hit undo, all it did was undo the letter e and leave me with a blank paper.

I couldn’t undo the undo.

I literally just about vomited.

And it was such horrid timing.

The monkey woke up form his nap and both mom and dad were working from home.

I didn’t say anything.

I went to get the monkey.

The mom saw my face though and asked if something was wrong and I started crying and said “no, well, um, yeah, I think I just deleted a 50 page paper with 86 references that I have been working on for weeks and excuse me a second.”

I ran to the bathroom and sobbed for a few moments.

Then.

I washed my face,

Dried my hands.

And.

Walked back out and started to try and get a semblance of normality back together.

All I could think about though was the gigantic stack of books on my desk and how I was going to have to go back through all of them to find the quotes I had pulled, plus all the articles and how long it had taken me to just accrue what I had.

And fuck, would I even be able to get enough together to turn in the upcoming assignment and what the fuck was I going to do about the other two classes I have work in.

I mean I felt fucking floored.

I texted a friend in my cohort who immediately called, but I couldn’t pick up, I had the monkey in my lap and mom and dad doing their work and shit.

My friend texted me a bunch of helpful stuff and I thought, I do know one super tech savvy guy, maybe I can reach out to him.

Then the dad stepped in.

He asked me to show him the app and I showed him what happened and how the paper came up just as 1 page and the letter “e.”

He did the same undo thing and it just went blank.

Then he quit the app and toggled around and found a back up in Word and saved it, cut and pasted the entirety to an email and sent it to me.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.

I have my paper back.

This is not an experience I ever want to have again.

I have another app that I bought and paid for at the beginning of the semester, but being a little tech phobic I never even opened it up to use it, relying on the comfortable and known to do the work for this semester.

No more of that shit.

I will be opening up Scrivener and not using Perrla any more.

I actually couldn’t bear to look at it tonight when I got home.

It’s safe.

It’s not going anywhere.

I have a file.

I have it backed up.

I am taking a break.

I need to do that.

I’m going to post my little blog.

How nice it is to be here again, sweet, sweet blog, I don’t get around to you so much anymore.

This PhD semester is kicking my ass.

And.

I am seriously grateful that I get to be pursuing a PhD and that, thank every freaking God, deity, Goddess, Universe, Spirit et al, that my paper is still amongst the living.

Because if it weren’t I’d be seriously screwed and if you think you don’t see much of me now, there would be none of me the rest of the semester.

Thank god my paper was saved.

Thank freaking god.

And now.

Netflix.

I’m taking the rest of the night off.

I have earned a god damn study break.

Seriously.

I Need Off Canvas

And its only just begun.

I made myself take a break today (I was at work and the baby took a long nap) after two solid hours of writing, engaging and interacting the three different classes I have on Canvas with CIIS.

Canvas is the tech platform the classes are set up on and why yes, not a single one of my professors uses it the same as the others.

Every single one of them does it slightly differently.

And once again I had the feeling of being on top of things to only realize that I hadn’t checked into one of my classes in a few days since I was so busy posting up to the other two.

Sure as shit.

I needed to post and post pretty immediately.

I wasn’t exactly annoyed, but I was tired and I don’t know that I put up the most relevant post, but what I came to understand from last semester is that it almost doesn’t matter.

I just have to constantly be posting something.

Either a substantive post on an assignment or reading, or responding to one of my classmates.

Pretty much every week I need to be in Canvas posting and replying.

I almost didn’t want to write my blog tonight, I just wanted to come home, warm up, eat a hot dinner and crawl into bed.

But if I’m not going to do school work, and I still might do a little more tonight, I am also not going to get into bed and watch hours of Netflix, as tempting as that may be.

I will watch some.

Just not a marathon.

I need to keep that and social media to a dull roar.

The blogging is going to be helter skelter.

I have no clue when I will have time, but I figure, it’s good to stay as close to it as I can.

It’s good for my brain to unload the day and it’s good for me to have something that is not academic writing.

Besides, I’ve said it many times.

The process of writing the blog really keeps me sharp for when I need to write papers.

And boy howdy, the papers are already coming.

I have two due by next Monday.

I also have a training for my internship in Berkeley on Sunday.

I will need to be careful with my time so that I can do all the things that need to be done and all my life stuff as well too.

When I go on trainings I’m gone for half the day, 45 minutes to get to Berkeley, three-hour long training, and then on average the traffic back has been an hour and a half.

By the time I get home I need to eat lunch, which is late as it’s around three p.m. and I need to go to the laundry mat.

I am still not happy about having to go to the laundry mat.

But I am making the best of it.

For instance, this Sunday while the majority of the country was watching the Super Bowl, I was doing laundry and read 46 pages of material in my Varieties of Scholarly Expression reader.

I also did a paper on Sunday as well.

First one of the semester.

And cooked and organized things and went birthday shopping for my oldest boy charge who turns nine tomorrow.

And.

Oh yes.

I took myself on an Artist Date to Cliff’s Variety in the Castro and I bought art supplies for my Arts and Creativity in Leadership class.

I had a lot of fun.

I probably also spent more than I needed to, but honestly, I really think I needed to do it.

It felt good to say yes to myself and to splurge a little.

I mean, it’s art supplies, not crack.

Although when I was checking out I couldn’t help but giggle at all the glittering supplies I had gotten.

Glitter glue.

Glitter markers.

Glitter colored pencils.

Glitter stickers.

Plus some fancy origami paper (I won’t be doing origami with it, I just liked the paper), watercolor markers, pastel markers, and tiny colorful clothes pin holders.

No idea what I’ll do with the latter, but they were so fucking cute I had to buy them.

It was a nice splurge.

I also yesterday, had a Zoom session with one of my TA’s.

This was good, clarifying, and really just sunk it home, I’m in a PhD program.

I really have a lot of work to do and keep doing.

This is a long haul program.

But.

I am hoping to follow my TA’s cue and do some work the summer after I finish my course work so that I can get a head start into that next semester of work where I will be independent.

She told me what she did and it was basically to not take the summer off and work on her proposal for her dissertation so that as soon as the first day of fall semester hit she turned it in to her dissertation chair and was off and running.

She will likely be done in three and a half years as opposed to four and a half.

I’m all for doing it that way.

Get it done.

I am excited, more and more, as the process becomes clearer to me.

Yes, so much work, but rather fascinating work and I’ll be writing about something I am very interested in.

So, yeah, Canvas.

I have gotten three notifications while I have been writing this blog that something new has been posted in my classes, so I will likely hit it up for a few more minutes before calling it a day.

It’s how I managed to get through last semester without falling behind.

The horror stories of people in my cohort who fell behind is enough to keep me active.

Or.

The people who just dropped out completely or disappeared.

I think we lost five people?

I don’t want to drop out and I do want to get my dissertation through, I want to have a PhD.

I want to be Dr. Carmen.

I really.

Really.

Really.

Do.

Get Yer Pink Hat On

I got me a fedora.

I have been wanting one for a bit and when I saw this one, I had to stop and grab it.

Pink.

Sequined.

Jaunty.

Yes.

I said jaunty.

And it works with my hair and my eyeglasses.

Best of all.

The cost.

$4.49.

Courtesy of your local Good Will.

I nanny in Cole Valley Monday through Wednesdays and I walk by the Good Will probably once, perhaps twice a week, depending on what park I am headed to.  It is a great Good Will and it has big windows for “La Leche Vitrine”.

Literal translation from the French: “window licking”.

Now, I am not a typical window licker, I don’t often purchase what I see, I window shop a lot, I am good at it and it’s a harmless, cheap habit.  Today especially.  A girl can’t go wrong with a hat for under five dollars and it’s pink and it’s sequined.

It now also has a pink rose attached to it and a pink feather that I got last year around this time to make hats and all things haberdashery for the playa, from the arts and crafts store on Haight.

I was house sitting in Cole Valley, just off the Haight Street neighborhood, last year about this time and I had decided I wanted to make all my little hair pieces myself, instead of laying out forty, fifty bucks for the pieces that I was drawn to.

Hell I saw some cute ones at Lightening in a Bottle too, but all were quite expensive and I recalled again, with a smidgen of guilt for not having done anything with all the gear I got for this project.

Buttons, bows, ribbons, flowers, glitter, feathers, netting, little metal charms, embroidery floss, hair clips to pin everything to.

I got all the right stuff to make some fascinators and some other pieces.

And I never did it.

I remember taking it all back to Grace Land with me after the house sitting gig had ended and spreading it all over the gigantic table in the dining room, then getting out needle, thread, scissors, the fabric glue and sorting everything into piles and sighing and sitting down to go to it.

And not being able to go to it.

In hindsight, I was pretty depressed and not certain what was happening with my life, having just returned from France and it being a difficult transition from the 9th arrondisement to East Oakland, 51st and International was a bit of culture shock to me.

Granted my dear friend who was letting me stay, was a dear friend, and had all the comforts of a well stocked home, kittens to snorgle with, Netflix on the tv, internet, a big cushy bed, so much nicer than the lumpy futon I had spent the majority of my nights on in Paris, and a big huge vat of popcorn that he had gotten special for making kettle corn.

Thus began my slippery slope that led soon to my relapse on all things sugary and floury and donutty and icecreamy and basically way bad for me and my health.

I picked up all the flowers and ribbons that I had planned to bedeck myself with, shoved them in a hat box and went to the kitchen.

I got out the air popper and poured the kernels in.

I just started with butter and salt, a big glass of sparkling water, and I cued up the first season of the West Wing, which I had never seen before, and proceeded to check the fuck out.

That’s not a solution for me today.

Thank God.

I was reminded of that today and I am grateful to have the way of life I have now.

And also a degree of humility about it, I could have checked out with some booze, there was a fully stocked bar.

I could have checked out with some crack cocaine.

There was East Oakland right outside my doors.

And I did not.

And for that I am ok with the fact that I checked out with the popcorn, then the ice cream, then the donuts and macaroons, and Arizimendi pizza, the hamburger and french fries from Burger Joint, the boxes of cereal and more Netflix, and then lots of self-loathing and hatred.

I got through it with a lot of help from some dear friends who reminded me that this too shall pass and I went to work to get out of the clutches of my historical reliance on food as a means of self-soothing.

It didn’t work for me then, it never had, and it was the place that I went to.

I pray I don’t have to have the experience again.

I lost the weight I put on with that binge that ended up being about three weekends of self-destruction.

And for the first time, for me, it was not about losing the weight (in fact, I have only weighed myself twice in the past year so I don’t even know what it is), it was not about checking out to solace myself.

Buying that pink fedora at the Good Will store when I was window shopping on the way to the park was like waiving a flag of victory.

I wore it all day long.

I even rode my bicycle home with it perched on my head.

Which was a great test for Burning Man.

The brim shielded my eyes and did not get in the way of my glasses and best yet, though it was windy, it stayed put.

That is important.

And when I got home I was happy to deck it out with the feather and the pink fabric rose that I had bought this time last year.

In fact, I am so pleased with the results that I am thinking I may host a little playa prep party at my place and see if anyone wants to sit out in the back yard with me and enjoy the sunshine, drink tea, and make some fascinators and hats and clips.

It would be fun, I have the gear, and so many of my girlfriends are going this year, it might be just the thing to do.

Celebrate my 8th year returning to Burning Man by putting another feather in my cap.

Literally.