After the kids were in bed, G came into the den and found me standing in the middle of the floor, watching “Godzilla” and writhing about.
“WHAT are you doing?”
I continued to flap my arms from side to side and wriggle my hips to the song inside my head. I squatted…rhythmically.
“I’m dancing.”
He kept walking.
Honestly, this is what February has reduced me to. Actin’ a fool is the only solution I have left to escape the depressive gloom that has been sitting on my chest for a month. So I have been actin’ a fool all day.
I have Bruno Mars to thank. While driving in to work in the pouring rain, already feeling like I had done everything wrong before 9 a.m., “Uptown Funk” came on the radio. I turned it up a tad then thought, “Fuck it, why not?” and turned it up so loud that my eyes were throbbing. I sang as loud and flat as I could, because nothing makes me giggle like singing loud and flat. Flat is FUNNY. (Take a second…try it…try singing “Blue Moon” like a foghorn) I danced in my seat, even at four-way stops where other people could see me. I tickled myself and it felt so so good to laugh at my own silliness.
Acting a fool is different from cutting up, showing out, showing up, showing your ass, turning up, etc. I act a fool intentionally. I act a fool when the limits of reason have been reached and I need to jumpstart myself. I’m working on a couple of big creative things and find myself shutting down in the face of all that fear of failure.
I wore a garishly colored velvet scarf today with six inches of fringe. I bought myself an evil eye charm for my bracelet. I said “yes” to the lunch invite when I really wanted to curl up in a ball under my desk. I made jokes about holding a coworker’s taco. I danced like Elaine Bennis every time I passed Nicole’s office on the way to the kitchen for water. I squatted down by the road to take a picture of some daffodils in the rain. I changed my Pandora station from 10,000 Maniacs to Missy Elliott. I wiggled. I bought flowers for myself. I played with Carlos for half an hour instead of starting dinner. I watched Godzilla, for godsakes.
And I danced in the den to a song in my head. All too many pounds of me, shaking it like my rent was due. Instead of cleaning milk out of the carpet, or walking on the treadmill, or filling out those forms for the developmental pediatrician, or writing the RSVP (I’m coming to the wedding, Mandy!), or paying the $401 gas bill, or doing the taxes, or writing a better post than this, or working on that talk I’m doing at Missouri State in a few weeks, or finishing that quilt I started when I was pregnant with Vivi, or getting all those socks matched up once and for all, or writing a thank you note (I love the painting, Little Gay!), or cleaning out the freezer, or plucking these Sasquatch brows, or making plans for spring break next week, or planning our meals for the week, or or or or.
I danced. And I felt some better.
Don’t believe me? Just watch.
So slashed and torn. A Gordian knot is a metaphor for a problem that seems to have no solution, something so tightly entangled that we can’t even find the end to begin pulling the knot apart. It comes from an ancient Greek story of a cart tied by this complicated knot. Whoever could untie the knot would conquer the east. After struggling with the knot, Alexander grew tired of the delay, drew his sword and slashed the knot in two.
This weekend, I took the kids down to the playfort in the backyard and got choked up when I saw that the cherry tree had dropped all of its leaves overnight. One day, a globe of golden whispering leaves and the next day, a silent carpet over the frosty ground. Some trees, like my neighbor’s sugar maple, take weeks to shed their leaves, so long that we get kind of used the change. Others–whoosh and they’re gone in the first hard freeze.
There’s a red maple outside my office window, and as it’s been losing its scarlet leaves this week, more sunshine gets through. I sat there today next to the window, half of my tired body warmed in the light and half of it shivering. Natalie’s words calling out to me from my phone.
