A Past Masterpiece

Attention, Los Angeles:

I will be dancing at Froggy’s Sunday afternoon, in Melanie Kareem’s “My Masterpiece” show. Doors open at 2:15. From 2:30 to 3, several of her newest students will be dancing, then her more experienced dancers (including myself) take the stage from 3 to 5.

The bar will be open, I hear there will be appetizers available, and the restaurant opens for dinner right after the show.

This may well be my last public performance in LA, so I’d  love to see some of you there.

Update: I will be dancing between 3:40 and 4, and NovySan and I will be staying for dinner after the show, if anybody would like to join us.

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Part of the reason, of course, is a fear of looking ridiculous trying to do something I’m not good at. (Particularly if I’m trying to do it in front of a bunch of teens who hate me because I’m not good at it, but that’s another story.)

Part of it, though – and this is something I’ve just recently realized – is a feeling that that thing I don’t know how to do, but that other people do? Is something that other people do.

“I’d like to knit, but I don’t know how. That’s something that other people do.”

“I’d like to dance, but I don’t know how. That’s something that other people do.”

“I’d like to speak French, but I don’t know how. That’s something that other people do.”

(Not that I didn’t know I could learn to do these things. I did take French in high school, and I’ve spent nearly six years learning to bellydance. But in both those cases, I didn’t start learning until I found someone who already knew how to do this to teach me. And then I still had to get over the emotional hurdle of letting someone who did know what they were doing see me doing it badly – which is part of the reason I set out to teach myself to knit.)

Gardening is one of those things I’ve always wanted to do, but I grew up in a place where almost nothing would grow, and from there I moved into a series of apartments (and killed a fair number of houseplants), and somewhere along the line, gardening became something that other people do.

This weekend, though, I finally got tired of saying that I’d like to start working on the flowerbeds in front and planning the gardens in back. I spent two and a half hours yesterday tearing out a gardenia that NovySan’s allergic to (and really, Chia? Did you need to leave a bush that makes your husband sneeze right outside your bedroom window for seven or eight years just because it came with the house?), pulling out grass that’s invaded the rosebed, and trimming the jasmine around the front of the house.

I tacked another couple of hours on today, with more weed pulling and trimming, and I even managed to transplant a couple of irises that have multiplied since they were planted and plant garlic around the roses, which is supposed to help them resist mites.

NovySan, meanwhile, took down more than half of the giant prickly pear that’s shadowed the side of the house and menaced the neighbors for years, and discovered that the thick mat of grass growing around it was rooted more or less on itself. We’ve always assumed that walkway was dirt, but it’s not. It’s concrete, and cobblestone, covered with so much quackgrass that other plants had taken up residence and were flourishing, quite happily, without any dirt at all.

The piles of displaced plant matter are mighty indeed. But we’re getting a handle on it.

And gardening is no longer something that other people do.

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Video by Arnie’s Productions, Swap Meet hosted by Anaheed.

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Also, if you’re in LA and reading this, I’ll be dancing at Froggy’s Saturday night, in Melanie Kareem’s “Exalting the Feminine” show. More details here. (And thank you again, Melanie, for making me your model!)

(And to the guy who asked me, “How can you be a bellydancer with short hair?” – like this, asshole.)

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(Never mind that bit where I run into the wall at the end.)

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