With their latest production, FORCES, the STREB Extreme Action Company is trying to create what director Elizabeth Streb calls “a perfect action show, that also has its version of a narrative.” Divided into thirteen pieces, termed “action events” with titles like Shake, Crush, Fall and Fly, the performance is peppered with big screen video clips of Streb sharing her thoughts about movement. The combination of her heady ideas, industrial inspired music, experimental video and mechanical equipment give it all “a kind of mad scientist” vibe…

I watch this show with my ten-year-old son, Josiah. We have seen the company perform several times before and have observed the evolution of their repertoire, their chemistry as a group. The performance is perfect for kids his age. We are encouraged to make noise, take pictures, share videos, show our enthusiasm in many ways. He’s sitting in the front row this time, and I’m diagonally behind him. He exclaims out loud throughout the evening, sometimes exchanging words with the man seated next to him.

Members of STREB Extreme Action Company walking on the surface of the earth in “Spatial Rift,” where Josiah says, “They crushed Hawaii.”

The company’s home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn is called S.L.A.M. – short for Streb Lab for Action Mechanics. It is indeed a laboratory for the exploration of ideas that Elizabeth Streb has been putting forth for over 30 years. She is interested in the pure elements of movement and action. This show explores these forces in the most fundamental way. Stripped down to their essence, housed in carefully constructed containers defined by custom designed pieces of equipment such as plexiglass walls and revolving platforms, a few carefully chosen movements are executed repeatedly in overlapping, echoing shapes until they lose significance as individual pieces of choreography – bodies slamming against one another, or exploring the centrifugal force of a whirling centrifuge as they jump and tumble into and out of the circle. They become part of a larger pattern, physical mantras, unleashed, exploded, again and again, until we as audience members are caught up in the cumulative effect of their sheer velocity, direction, impact.

There is one particularly scary piece called “Crush” that involves a steel beam, suspended from a heavy chain on a movable winch. It is spun around and around, sometimes raised, sometimes lowered, while dancers jump over and duck or roll under it. Sometimes the chain hangs down straight, sometimes it swings back and forth. At all times we are aware of the beam’s weight, it’s capacity to do great damage upon impact to flesh. Josiah says, “This music sounds like you’re gonna die.” While two dancers stand on either end of it, pushing it around and around so it revolves in an ever quickening circle, other dancers sit in its path, lying back quickly split seconds before the beam approaches their heads. It is a precision operation, a nail biting, adrenaline rush of an experience.

In one piece, “Flying,” dancer Jackie Carlson is strapped into a revolving contraption that makes her soar around and around in a wide arc, suspended in a harness that allows her to careen through the air like a graceful bird, but also enables her to roll and turn as she is being propelled around the circle. At moments she dips down to earth, then jumps up and over the heads of the other dancers who dive out of her way. She is a human physics experiment, a revolving, mechanically enhanced ballerina in space. It is hypnotic, exhilarating and intoxicating to watch her.

At intermission, I chat with Elizabeth about the show. I tell her that I perceive so many more layers in the company now. The level of interaction between the dancers has become more sophisticated, and subtle. The ever changing nature of these pieces has been deepened by the introduction of a narrative, developed with associate director Robert Woodruff… it’s a story of experimentation. Streb says, “… if I get tired of a move, I throw it out… modern dance eulogizes and holds sacred the great repertories, but action needs to be shifted all the time…” I say to her, it’s just like the kind of poetry I’ve been writing that stops on the edge of something, doesn’t end on a complete thing. She says, “…maybe it’s about what you’re wondering about, not what you know… why do it if you know what you’re gonna do? It’s about the exploration.”

Yes.

A week after we see the show, I have a conversation with Associate Artistic Director Fabio Tavares da Silva, who is also one of the company’s dancers. I want to know more about these amazing athletic daredevils who comprise the company. Although they hail from diverse backgrounds including dance, theater and gymnastics, they are all “adrenaline junkies and thrill seekers” with “a pretty high threshold for pain.” In order to be inducted into the company, dancers must pass a three day audition process, and it’s always interesting to see “… who is coming back on the third day.” Although the work is clearly physically demanding, it would seem that the true test takes place on the mental level, where each person confronts his or her own primal fears of pain, injury… and death…

The current configuration of company members has been in place for two years, with some dancers there as long as five or six. Fabio has been there for ten. He has seen people come and go, and understands the difficulty of staying inside this kind of psychologically challenging work that goes directly against the survival instinct. “We’re all there because we love what we do.” And it doesn’t hurt that Elizabeth has so much charm and charisma, that people are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to give her what she wants, to fulfill her vision. There are  magic moments in there, and those who can would like to be alive inside the hyperkinetic events that are the product of their collective process.

The show continues to morph as the relationships between the dancers deepen and Elizabeth endlessly tinkers with movement, music and new pieces of equipment. Her desire to touch people’s hearts with the work is enhanced by the dancer’s deep trust and absolute commitment to her and each other. Fabio’s circus training and his love of playing and having fun is matched by the rest of the company. There is a levity in their performance now that was only hinted at before. “Now it’s like a different kind of explosion – joy, courage, beauty and endurance…” To be part of this collective, visceral experience an an audience member is an opportunity not to be missed.

Afterwards, I ask Josiah what he thought of the performance. “The show’s got more pizzazz to it, more flips and tricks… The girder thing… I’m scared someone’s gonna get hurt really badly. It’s like an inch close… makes me too nervous, but I still love it so much… it’s actually one of my favorite parts. It’s like no, don’t do it, don’t do it! Oh, my god they made it…”

Tickets to the current edition of FORCES are still available here for the final weekend of performances this Thursday-Sunday, April 25-28.

I thought I’d share with you this letter I wrote to Deb when I was still thinking of going.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Deb,

I will tell you a funny story. Stop me if you’ve heard it before.

About six years ago, Suzanne produced Anne Bogart’s play Room at the Todd Mountain festival. In a fit of synergistic ecstasy, I decided that since I knew both women for many years from completely different tracks of my life, that I should drive up to the festival and review this performance, in the context of the larger implications for me and my creative life.

Ellen Lauren in SITI Company’s “Room” – image courtesy of SITI Company

The Saturday morning of the show, I had taken Josiah [my son] to a friend’s daughter’s birthday party in a big playground in Stuy Town, in Manhattan, where he fell on his face and shredded it to pieces. Not to be deterred from my great creative moment, not to mention mom’s first sleepover away from husband and child since childbirth (he was 3 at the time), I decided it was only a flesh wound, and we could still go forward with the “boy’s weekend” (Dad, Josiah and Uncle Hector with pizza, movies, etc.) while Mom drove upstate for a weekend of creative and professional ecstasy. I even carried my bloody child in my arms around the aisles of Best Buy, purchasing the DVD’s I’d promised to bring home…

Despite Ivor almost having a heart attack upon seeing his wounded child and a very traumatic washing of the face that took all three adults to hold my son down in the tub, I remained steadfastly and completely disassociated from any maternal instincts and persisted on leaving for the trip.

Of course, I wept most of the way upstate, and ended up being late for the performance – never a good idea for an Anne Bogart show. She is a former army brat and notoriously strict about classes, rehearsals and shows starting on time. I was lucky I was able to gain entrance.

My interview with Anne went well. It was a great reunion. She and I knew each other back from the early 80′s when I appeared in an accidental production of a deconstructed version of A Streetcar Named Desire, called Sehnsucht, that came about when an earlier show we had been rehearsing lost its funding. It was a post modern tour de force, in the great tradition of Jerszy Grotowski and Squat Theater, occupying an entire three story vacant building in downtown Northampton, MA, where I was living at the time, both inside, in various rooms, looking out to the street from the glass storefront and then at the entire building from across the street. I played one of ten Blanches. Several years later, I was part of an experimental theater workshop we organized with Anne at St. John the Divine, and then still later I took a directing class with her at Playwright’s Horizons, where I was promptly declared one of her weekly favorites. So our history ran deep to my sense of what theater could be and who I could be in it. I was thrilled to catch up with her on the last decade plus of our lives.

That night, I guiltily enjoyed the opening night reception, chatting up complete strangers while trying to ignore the fact that my family was without me in the Bronx, and then even managed to indulge in a bottle of wine with Suzanne and a couple other members of her inner circle who were also invited to stay with her at her residence that night. I was totally immersed, a theater person, dammit, just like I thought.

I drove home the next day, filled with grand thoughts about how I would roll out this post-modern tale that wove together so many strands of my life. And when I arrived, I found grief, relief, and silent judgement. By the time the next morning rolled around, Josiah’s face wounds had become infected, dangerously close to his eye, and we had to take him immediately to the doctor. A round of topical and oral antibiotics later, disaster was averted, eyesight saved, but my conscience deeply, perhaps permanently scarred, like my son’s cheek, that still bares the faint outline of the injured swath of skin that ringed around the outside of his right eye in the shape of a #7.

I never wrote that article. I was never able to complete it. Instead, I was blocked by the guilt of choosing my own need to be an artist over the welfare of my child (an artificial and untrue dichotomy to be sure, but try and tell that to a guilty conscience). I also carried the sense of failure of having promised a piece of journalism to two creative people whom I admire deeply, who took time to speak to me about their life, their craft, their work, and expected me to deliver a story in return.

To this day, although I have pages of notes from my journal before, during and after that trip, the interview I did with Suzanne, the two I did with Anne, one upstate and one in NYC at a SITI Company rehearsal, I have never been able to bring myself to articulate the story I wanted to tell about how everything came together from my past and present to bring to life a show based on Virginia Woolf’s book, A Room of One’s Own, whereupon a woman finds the joy of speaking her voice and baring her artist’s soul. Can’t you imagine the possibilities? With so many layers of symbolism, and parallel realities, and art imitating life imitating art??

So, you can understand why the fact that you are now doing your wonderful show up there stirs up certain desires in me to reconnect, bring the story to the present.

It’s actually not a very funny story. Not funny ha ha. But you know what I mean… Maybe this is just where it all led…

xoxoxo

________________________________________________________________________________________________

It turns out, I did not get up to see Deb’s play again last summer. Instead, I am left to share the vestiges of a vision where art and life intersect in many layered splendor, the desire to re-connect with old friends in this unique configuration relegated to a letter that describes what could have been…

We need some healing, y’all. The world is seriously off kilter. I’m just one person, making my way through my days here in NYC. I certainly do not have any genius ideas for creating world peace or anything like that, but I do know that there is way too much awful stuff going on all around the world, and we can’t just continue to sit back and do nothing.

As seems to always be the case, many of us Americans don’t really start thinking about these things until something hits home. As a people, we were shocked out of our relative sense of safety back on 9-11, and anytime some madman with a rifle lets loose on a bunch of innocents we perk up a bit. Now we have these senseless bombings at the Boston Marathon. But if we take a look around, we realize that shocking and senseless acts of violence happen around the world every single day.

Did you know that at the same time as we were reeling from the shock of the horrific explosions at the marathon yesterday, Iraqis were recovering from a dozen bomb blasts around the country that killed at least 55 people and left nearly 300 injured? It seems this Black Monday was a global phenomenon.

Are you feeling as overwhelmed by all of this as I am? How do we wrap our brains around this kind of willful disregard for human life, the willingness to indiscriminately kill and maim, as an expression of… what? Anger at whom? Hatred of whom?

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that there is much to be angry about in this world. Injustice, exploitation, cruelty, inequality – these imbalances are as old as history, and the messy process of trying to right the wrongs that befall entire peoples will continue well beyond this time. I am talking about how we co-exist with one another along the way.

The names and dates may change, but the dynamics boil down to some basic fundamentals. Someone (or a group of someones) has a grievance. Whether it’s warranted or not is almost besides the point. Whether or not the individual choosing to exact vengeance, or prove some other kind of point is sane is almost besides the point. If you or a loved one is on the receiving end of such treachery, it’s all insane to you.

What we are doing is not working. The cycle of violence is endless. We can’t keep hoping that things will change without doing something to facilitate that change.

There are those who espouse individual redemption as the path to peace. If we each meditate on peace, practice peace in our own lives, live a peaceful existence grounded in a loving kindness, then this spirit will spread and make itself known as a kind of soothing blanket for the world. I agree that this is part of it. However, I suggest that it goes further than that. We need a new way of dealing with the people and situations that anger us the most. The ones that make us want to kill.

What I’m saying is that we need to each take on the job of reaching out across our own personal boundaries of fear, anger and hostility to the people who upset us the most, and see what we can do to raise up some healing. I have no idea how to do this. It could be as simple as looking at the people who piss us off more than anything and trying to locate one, just one thing that you agree on, and then figuring out a way to build on that. It will mean swallowing pride, being uncomfortable, acting on faith, stepping through fear and taking a chance that you will be disappointed.

Total inactivity is no longer an option, people. Remember that adage, if you’re not part of the solution then you’re part of the problem? Don’t be a default part of the problem.

Let’s just get creative. Let’s get a little wild in how we imagine stretching our comfort zones. They’re obviously getting stretched for us, so why not take back a little of the power and push ourselves a little bit in ways we think we can handle. Take a chance on healing something you never imagined would be possible to heal. These are becoming more and more desperate times, and I think they call for desperate measures…

Just for today, why not take the time to indulge some crazy healing idea you’ve been harboring. Share your ideas with others. There’s so much anger and pain and grief in the world. Surely, you can reach out in some direction to offer solace to someone who might be hurting. All that unchecked pain ends up somewhere, doesn’t it? It’s time for all of us to be more proactive and prevent more of this continued violence.

I realize what I’m saying may sound about as naive and simplistic as it gets. But seriously, people. Do you have any better suggestions?

Please forgive me.

I have not accomplished even half of what I set out to do this past week and a half. I am forced to admit that I do not have the fortitude to be a participatory mom during Spring break AND a prolific writer AND a domestic goddess and a savvy businesswoman, all at the same time, at maximum level of awesomeness.

In short. You suck for ever thinking that was possible. But I still love you. Even though you are dreaming.

Sincerely,

Me

PS – Best spring break ever.

I posted this on Facebook last week. As you can see, I was feeling a little conflicted.

Like many of you, I’m in transition right now. Just launched my own company, selling my house… it feels like everything is up for grabs. It’s one of those times requiring a terrific amount of self-motivation. Having a ten-year-old boy home from school for a week and a half was not the magic bullet for productivity, I’ll tell you…

I believe this personal transition of mine is emblematic of the larger one that is happening all around us. The world is changing, faster than you can spit. Bees are dying, economies are crumbling, the ice is melting, and hearts are opening. In some quarters, boundaries between religions and political parties show signs of softening… I feel like everything is shifting and old categories are beginning to lose their meaning. I do believe we are entering a new age.

However, many issues persist, and the one most pertinent to me right now is how the hell I’m going to balance all these responsibilities in my lap! As a woman and a single parent, I think my life is fairly defined in terms of what is expected of me at any given moment. The stakes seem higher to me right now than ever before, so I am as open as I can be to inspiration.

Rather than thinking of “having it all” as rooted in some business model, I like to imagine it as living life by my own rules, and working to develop the structures I need to help support the kind of existence I desire. Having it all, to me, means creating the freedom to step between the raindrops and identify myself anyway I choose, to engage in whatever odd combinations of activities make me excited to be alive, and to feel the excitement of connecting with people, places and ideas regardless of whatever boundaries have separated us in the past. I say WHY NOT??

Enter Sheryl Sandberg. About a week ago on April 3rd, I was invited to hear her speak at an event produced by Levo League as part of their Office Hours platform about her new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of writing about the League’s co-founder Caroline Ghosn as part of the young entrepreneur interview series I author at under30ceo.com. Levo League was formed to help young women develop their careers by offering access to jobs, skills and community. Sandberg has been one of Levo League’s key investors and continues to work closely with the group.

Sheryl Sandberg photo courtesy of Billy Farrell Agency

When the COO of Facebook, who happens to be a woman, writes a book, it’s worth checking out what she has to say. I can’t say I was disappointed. Inspired by her own experience in the corporate world, she shares her take on how to address the continuing disparity of women’s position relative to men’s, in that world. Exploring topics such as fear of our own ambition, success & likeability, the importance of mentorship and finding supportive life partners, she tracks a path to progress that many of us can embrace and make our own.

This particular audience was skewed towards Levo League’s key demographic, professional women in their 20’s and early 30’s. Sandberg seemed especially inspired to address this group who represent, in so many ways, the future of women in business and society at large. It was hard not to be taken up by her passion, as she shared personal stories and anecdotes related to her own life as a high powered businesswoman.

As someone in the midst of my own unconventional journey towards professional fulfillment, I resonated to many of the things Sheryl said during her presentation:

Men still run the world, and I’m not sure that’s going so well.  I think this one is self-explanatory.

Pretend to have self-confidence you don’t yet feel. I often use the “act as if” method to get through times of low confidence… a.k.a. tricking myself out by telling myself somet hing so often that eventually I believe it’s true.

One day the sexiest thing in the world is going to be a man doing laundry. There is data behind this…  This one got lots of chuckles…

Answer email quickly- Two sentences now is better than three paragraphs in three weeks.   I don’t know about you, but I have put this one into action right away.

I think we’re better when we share our real selves.  I couldn’t agree more. Nothing makes me dissociate faster than having to pretend to be something I’m not. Worst. Feeling. Ever.

Here’s the thing. I realize that with every expansion into the unknown, there’s going to be some discomfort, some floundering around in the darkness, some moments of wondering if I’m actually going to drown. I expect it. It’s not to say I like it. Moreover, it does help to know that on some level, what I’m experiencing as a middle-aged single mom rewriting her career path is similar to what a recent college grad is experiencing as she finds her way into the corporate world for the first time.

In some ways, there is not much difference between the quest to break through the glass ceiling of the corporate world and the urge to create a livelihood out of decades of writing, production, small business and other creative experience. Both involve utilizing a multitude of hard-earned skills and either breaking or rewriting many of the rules that are currently on the books. Undoubtedly, each path also involves continuing acts of courage and fortitude.

As women, it’s good to know that despite the natural diversity found within our gender, there are still many things about which we can still come together and support one another. As each of us, in our own unique way, leans into our lives in order to forge our own distinct path, perhaps we can seek increasingly frequent opportunities to support each other and model behavior for one another. I look forward to that!

To see a videotape of the April 3^rd Office Hours with Sheryl Sandberg, click here.

For more information on the Lean In Movement, click here.

On Sunday night, I took him to NYC’s Terminal 5 to see this English indie group, one of my fave new bands of the last year. He’s kind of young to bring to a show like this, but I knew how much he’d get into it. He’s almost 10 and has grown to love their album, An Awesome Wave (winner of the 2012 British Mercury Prize), almost as much as I do, particularly the song Fitzpleasure, which was the first track either of us heard. If you don’t know this recording yet, just go listen to it. Google it. Their stuff is purely creative, hard to define, at turns mathematically precise, filled with literary allusion and primal rhythm and incredibly moving. I’m a total fan.

A word or two about the group. It’s obvious they are well trained musicians, great songwriters and singers, and they bring a deep concentration to their deft blend of art rock, funk, trip hop, rich harmonies, eclectic instrumentation… It’s hard to categorize their sound. It’s wholly original. I will tell you that they engage people in a way that goes beyond commercialism, and I did hear plenty of people singing along to the lyrics. And they are gaining confidence as performers, inhabiting the stage with more authority than the last time I saw them in NYC, at the considerably smaller Bowery Ballroom. Their hair is changing, too… a new haircut on Joe, moustache on Gus…

I was nervous about bringing my little guy – wondered if “all ages show” really meant just that, or if they’d stop me at the door for trying to bring in such an extreme minor. In a last minute panic moment, I even suggested that if anyone who works there asks his age he should say 13… that is, until he looked at me, wide-eyed and said, “Mom, I can’t believe you. What a hypocrite,” for asking him to lie. “Never mind, I was just kidding,” I replied, instantly sorry I had even said something. “Forget it, don’t worry, let’s just go have a good time…”

In the end, I needn’t have worried. At the door, the guy checking ID’s greeted him warmly with a “Hey buddy!” and proceeded to draw giant black X’s on his hands in magic marker, so that he couldn’t buy a beer even if he wanted to…

Once we got inside, we made our way quickly to the front of the house, where people had already started to assemble in front of the stage, easily working our way up to the front row, as I had this totally short kid with me, and clearly that’s the only way he was going to see anything. We landed a spot directly in the center of the house, surrounded by teenage girls, in what would have certainly been a rowdy mosh pit has this been a different sort of show.

I don’t know how to write about this without sounding like a proud parent creating one of those detailed holiday letters. I’m not sure how to convey the mix of emotions I felt bringing my kid into this uncertain environment where people get too drunk, and the smell of weed floats around from time to time (second time that night I was glad that he is short) and random hostilities can surface in a second… yet the thrill of sharing one of the all time best experiences modern life has to offer – seeing a rock band perform live, and feeling the pulse of the music move through your body… I’m pretty sure it was worth it.

“It was making my chest vibrate and then it shocked my bladder.”

Good thing we went to the bathroom towards the end of the warm-up band’s set (a fine job by Hundred Waters). A mother knows when there’s no way you can ignore a request to go. It was a bit harrowing, making our way out of the crowd, which by that point had expanded to at least five times as deep as it was when we first arrived. Leaving out the side was tough, but not nearly as bad as trying to get back into the pack, past some surly drunk guys who mocked me when I said, “We’re just trying to get back to where we already were.” People get so cranky. Fortunately, we squeezed our way back to safe territory unscathed and put down roots until our band was ready to take the stage.

I’m not sure which I enjoyed more, the music or my son’s pleasure. It was the sweetest mix of personal and vicarious thrill. Once Alt-J started playing, any feelings of doubt I had about bringing my kid into this decidedly adult situation disappeared, and all I could think was that he was having an experience that would fundamentally shape his perspective going forward. This was the kind of music that absolutely cemented itself into my soul the first time I heard it, back in my teen years. He’s getting a jump on it, being barely a pre-teen himself. By the time he’s a teenager, he’ll be a seasoned music veteran.

We’ve been to the NY Philharmonic in the park. We’ve seen Dan Zanes outdoors, too. We saw Father & Son perform in a college auditorium, we’ve played west African drums on the banks of the Hudson River and his uncle has taken him to see Wynton Marsalis perform Duke Ellington. At home, we listen to everything from jazz and hip hop to heavy metal, power pop, bluesy funk and classical piano concertos. We groove on gospel and Motown, Nirvana and Stevie Wonder, moody singer songwriters and the Beatles. I can’t wait to bring him to more live music shows. It’s my responsibility to make sure that my son has as broad a musical background as possible. At least, that’s how I see it…

When some women behind us screamed exceptionally loud after one song, Josiah looked up at me and said, “Is that even legal? They should have their own permit…”

And then they played our favorite song, Fitzpleasure. Amazing.

Yeah, Gwil, I dug the smile you flashed at me and my boy. Not your usual size fan, I’m sure. I hope you know how awesome it was for him to be that close to you guys while you played. And Joe, at the end of the encore, when you looked down and pointed directly at us, to give the set list specifically to my son, well that was the coolest thing in the world you could have done. Afterwards, a couple of people asked if they could take a picture of the paper, but then I told my kid to put it into his pocket until we got to the car. I figured that would be the safest bet…

Later on, after we left the venue, he asked me, “How do I get this ringing sound out of my ear?” I told him not to worry, that it would fade…

Pictures above by Deborah Oster Pannell.

Check out more cool concert pics from Amanda Hatfield here (scroll down a little to see one very short concertgoer in the front row)…

I am often more comfortable backing into situations than walking into them with my eyes fully open. I prefer a kind of heavy-lidded soft focus, a few steps past smearing vaseline on the lens, or seeing the world through rose colored glasses. Sometimes it feels like bravado… probably because I often make a big public stink out of it. But other times I just quietly move into something unfamiliar and well, terrifying. It never gets any less scary, but I have become way more comfortable with the discomfort of the fear.

I like a good paradox. I’m at home in backwards world. I love sarcasm and hyperbole and good old exaggeration. I also love it when something is so awful that it flips over into the sublime. Grief, anger, terror… you keep going deep into the heart of those things and you find elation. Like if you keep turning right for long enough, you end up facing left.

I think I’m just an intensity junkie. I love to feel. It almost (almost) doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s deep. Something I can grab onto. Honestly, I find vagueness much more unsettling than out and out hostility. Hostility I know I can’t stand. It’s straight up awful. But vagueness leaves you guessing and of course I’m always ready to jump in and take responsibility because it just might be my fault… (sigh)

Before I think too much about it, I’m going to share some of my other writing with you. I may regret it later, when I’m feeling exposed and raw. But I’d be kidding myself if I thought that 1) you couldn’t easily find any of this stuff online yourself, 2) I really took the whole notion of boundaries seriously (I don’t) or 3) it’s not important for me to be present in all of my dimensions.

http://fictionaut.com/stories/deborah-oster-pannell/boring

Isn’t that the most mind blowing thing of all, when you think about it? That all of this crazy stuff we do, all of the subterfuge of dressing and making ourselves up, and crafting these elaborate identities, and compartmentalizing our lives, our relationships, our activities, the different parts of ourselves so that we can function in so many strictly codified and regulated situations – none of it really matters in the end.

When I look into the eyes of my lover, and it’s just the two of us being, touching, trying to discern what we are feeling in that moment and trying to make it connect and allow us to feel safe enough to experience some pleasure… it’s just me. At that moment it doesn’t matter if what I wrote the day before was a poem or a review or a memoir or a piece of fiction or a press release or a piece of marketing text. I am just me. It doesn’t matter.

The more I write, the more I think it’s just about connecting. Whether I’m having a conversation or telling a story (and I think they are most of the times one and the same), I hope I can just be me. And I hope you will be here in this moment with me and not worry about what I wrote before or what I will do tomorrow.

There is nothing in my experience capable of giving me that gut twisting mix of fear and despair more than the thought that I’m not being a good mother. Those of you out there with children know what I mean. When our kids act up at school, or don’t do as well as they can on tests, or get into fights with their friends, if we’re honest with ourselves, we recognize that core of terror that we’ll be judged harshly for our own failures, exhibited through our children’s behavior.

Maybe that’s one reason we get so angry at them. We expect so much of these little mirrors of ourselves, and they reflect back to us the reality of our shortcomings in such accurate detail. It’s scary. My son is becoming so much like me that I often don’t know if I should hug him or hit him. Fortunately for us both, I’m not the hitting type, because it’s shocking to me the depth of the well of fury I dip into on a regular basis.

In my household, we’re about to take the leap into double digits. We’re just weeks away from the transition into what I know will be a slippery slope to adolescence, hormones, driving tests, safe sex, drugs, alcohol… oh, it’s all waiting out there, ready to embroil us in the mud and muck of young adulthood. I’m not just scared. I’m totally freaked out.

I can see the rebellious young man in my little boy. He is filled with confidence and a swaggering bravado that is fueled as much by the characters he sees on those infernal Disney tween shows as his own inner sense of strength and resilience. At the tender age of 9 (yes, I’m still saying it), he’s already lived a full life, complete with delightful adventures and shattering losses, and they have produced in him a complex and richly layered personality.

But his personal experience notwithstanding, this is a time, as I understand it, of relentless pushback and testing. Kids at his age are doing their job, testing the boundaries of their identities and the limits of what they can get away with in every area of their lives.

Oh, did I mention that boundaries are not my strong suit? Never have been. Neither are discipline, structure or housecleaning. That’s not to say I can’t be very accomplished in these areas when I want to, but it can take an extraordinary effort. So yes, I am sometimes less than consistent in enforcing these very same things in my son…

Aaah, as you sow, so shall you reap. It’s more true than I ever imagined. Children are like this little incubator of all your bad habits. They learn EVERYTHING. Don’t for a second think that they aren’t paying attention. They are. And they will come back at you with all of your worst qualities in a heartbeat, feeling completely justified in everything they say and do, because they learned it from YOU.

Here’s where it gets particularly complicated for me. On the one hand, I am teaching my son the core values of respect and manners. On the other hand, I want him to learn to trust his gut, to be on guard for injustice, dishonesty and personal violation, and to stand up for himself when he feels that his sovereignty is being threatened. I wish it were true, that all of the grownups in positions of authority over him would be kind and fair and consistent, that they wouldn’t be taking out their personal frustrations on him, or expressing their resentment at their own sense of powerlessness or unrealized dreams that his little badass attitude contradicts. But he will run into all kinds of adults as he makes his way through his years.

You know the kind of beat down you get from someone who can’t stand the fact that you are happy and filled with boundless love and exhilaration? The kind of cruelty that comes from someone who is thinking, you little shit, if I couldn’t get that feeling, I’m certainly not going to sit by and watch you enjoying yourself like that. Well, the world is filled with people exerting their power to inflict these punishing cruelties, large and small, some as subtle as a withering glance instead of a nod of approval. I, as a parent, have the awful task of teaching my son that at his age, it’s not OK to tell those people where to go, especially if one ends up being one of his teachers, or someone he encounters who is wearing a uniform of authority, in which case he’s going to have to swallow his objections and just do as he’s told.

Although there are cases of out and out abuse, and even more situations that exist in a kind of gray area, I know it’s not that way most of the time, and I have to teach him to show respect, even if he doesn’t like it. And yeah, he does have a smart mouth on him. Too smart for his own good sometimes. If I think about how angry I can get with him, and mind you, I love him to pieces, then I know that he’s going to piss off the people he’s talking back to who don’t have the same kind of emotional attachment to him than I do… and I’m not sure I can protect him from the kinds of consequences he’ll face from them!

I’m not interested in teaching my child to be docile and passive, and I certainly don’t want to break his spirit. But I am invested in him surviving into adulthood, so I’m also realistic. My son’s dad was African American, and he’s a little caramel colored boy. I understand the deeply ingrained effects of the kind of quiet racism that’s been in the news lately, and while I wouldn’t use it as a reason to excuse any bad behavior on my son’s part, I don’t rule it out as a factor in how he’s perceived by adults in his life.

When I was around his age, I used to attend Hebrew school. There was one particularly sadistic rabbi who taught the Hebrew language class. Any time a child did anything in the least disruptive, he made them stand in front of the class, whereupon he proceeded to grill them, in excruciating detail, about what their parents might do to them if he called them up. “Would they punish you? Would they yell at you? Would they stick your head in the toilet bowl?” I hated that guy, and I hated how he made kids cry with his cruel, frightening litanies. So when I got summoned to the front of the room for giggling with my girlfriend about the way a Hebrew word sounded as an English word, I was defiant.

“Would you like it if I called your parents?”
“I don’t care.”
“What will they do to you if I call them?”
“Nothing.”
“OK, you can go call your mother to pick you up right now.”
“OK, I will.”

I did call my mother, and she did come and pick me up. I felt so vindicated. Until the next morning, after my parents had discussed it, and they insisted that I write a letter of apology to the rabbi. I remember feeling so let down and betrayed by them. It was a seminal moment.

Tonight I’ll be helping my son to write his own apology letters. He was disruptive in a music workshop last week, part of a specially-funded program. In order to show responsibility for his behavior and avoid being asked to permanently leave the program, I’ve asked him to show his respect for the instructor as well as the school principal and guidance counselor, who had to deal with the incident, by writing apology letters to all three of them to express his thoughts and feelings on the matter. It won’t be fun, but it’s his job to do it, and mine to make sure that it gets done.

The ironic echoes of my past are not lost on me. I will be parsing these situations for as long as I can foresee. I hope I get the balance right, but I wonder, when my son is grown up and he’s looking back on the time his mom made him write those apology letters to the teachers at school, what he’ll be thinking…

Photo by Michael 1952

Change is hard – the small changes as well as the big ones. Lately, there are moments when I think, I can’t believe the things I have been through, and where I’m headed – not in a “poor me,” kind of way. No, I rarely feel sorry for myself – I’m far too aware of how many people have it worse than me, and I’m grateful for my relative good fortune. But still, there are those moments when the transitions feel as though they are getting the better of me.

I like to know what to expect as I head into a day, a week, a month. I plan some of my activities seasons ahead, and as my schedule gets busier, I’m getting more of a sense of the overall shape of my year. So when curveballs get thrown my way, I tend to get a little anxious.

There’s the major life curve balls – the death of a loved one, losing a home. Even the good ones can throw your life into disarray – birth of a child, or a new job. With every significant change in our life circumstances comes a revisioning of who we are and what’s expected of us. It can be as extraordinarily unsettling to come into good fortune as it is to weather a tragedy. Just think of all those people who win the lottery, only to find their lives in tatters a year later…

I have lots of experience dealing with illness and death. They’ve been a part of my life and my family for decades now, and though it was never my intention, I’ve become quite adept at dealing with both the large impacts and the daily intrusions wrought by unpredictable health circumstances.

My husband, friend and life partner of 22 years passed away about three and a half years ago, from complications due to a lifelong chronic illness, sickle cell anemia. He left me a single mother to our son, and the owner of our two-family home. Now, my son is almost 10 years old, and I’m preparing to sell the house I can no longer afford to keep. At the same time, I’m busy launching my own business and digging into a new romantic relationship.

My changes are unique to me, and matter most to me and my family. In other words, I’m pretty sure they are not keeping other people awake at night. However, the way in which I deal with them does affect other people in my life. As they are all dealing with their own issues, my anxiety has the potential to rub off on them, just as my relative calm may actually reflect back to them another alternative.

This is the motivation behind my desire to share my experiences with you. I’m not in the business of identifying myself by my trauma. Sure, I could, but I choose not to orient myself around my losses. Instead, I like to think of my life as a series of stories – some more harrowing than others, each with a beginning, middle and end that when combined, have become an amazing blending of lessons and challenges, one informing the next.

And I guess this brings me back around to the topic at hand. Transitions. For me, each day is a series of transitions. Every time I wake up in the morning, I have to negotiate my way out of bed. Moving from one task to another requires a shifting of focus. Getting my son prepared and off to school is but the first phase of the day. From there, I have to put on my professional hat, my creative hat, or my domestic goddess hat (that’s the one I wear when I have to do the dishes, or fold the laundry). Sometimes moving from one small thing to the next can be as difficult as managing a major trauma.

I’m not sure why this is… I only know that fear and anger can rise up, ready to dismantle us, at any given moment. I’m not a psychologist. I don’t have the patience to examine the reasons, and I certainly don’t have any advice as to how to prevent those feelings from occurring in the first place. Just be different? Ha ha.. I think not. We are who we are, much as we’d like to pretend otherwise.

What I do know for certain, is that in every moment of our lives, we have choices. We can act on our feelings impulsively, reflexively, in ways that we may even know to be destructive, but somehow feel helpless to change. Or, we can endeavor to take just a few extra seconds, enough for one good breath, long enough to give ourselves a chance to calm down a little, consider a different path, even wait on a response.

In all the complexity that comprises the many layers of our lives, there is one thing we all have in common. As long as we are alive, each of us continues to breathe. In that one mundane yet somehow miraculous act, we are, every single human being, connected. There has got to be some potential in that – some way to drill down from the biggest, most dramatic and complicated circumstances to the myriad of small moments in a day, each of which gives us the opportunity to pave the way for a smooth transition to the next…

Photo courtesy of LaserGuided

On the first couple of days, there was plenty of ice in the freezer so I was able to use it as a cooler, having moved the frozen items outside. But then, since the unit was completely dead and the ice gradually melted, I eventually had to bag everything else up tightly (protection from critters) and place it outside the front door.

I live on a quiet block in a pretty good neighborhood, so I wasn’t concerned about someone climbing the stairs to my illuminated second story porch to rummage through the shopping bags sitting under my mailbox. Although it was a bit of an inconvenience to have to unlock and open my front door and the storm door every time I was ready to fix a meal or a snack, at least I didn’t have to throw away all my food.

I confess, it took me about a day or so to figure out that I had this great outdoor cooling unit at my disposal. Duh on me. But once I figured it out, it was kind of like indoor camping, without the bugs, or the blackout.

One thing that was a real pain in the ass – I have this front door that leaks air really badly at the bottom. Rather than permanently fix it, I just use a rolled up towel to cover up the gap and stop the breeze from blowing in. I lost track of how many times I had to move and then replace that damn towel over the weekend. Must. Fix. Front. Door. OK, it’s on the list.

Do you know, there are ways to eat that are so simple, that you could get by on about one quarter of the amount of food you might think you need to have in your refrigerator at any given time. For five days, we’ve dined on various combinations of the following staple items: eggs, milk, plain yogurt, butter, cheddar cheese, bread, corn tortillas, pickles, strawberry preserves, avocado, chicken soup (OK, I went out and bought all the ingredients to make that, because my son has also been home sick with a cold this entire time), pan fried fish (OK, I had cooked up an entire batch of dover sole I bought on sale at Whole Foods the night before the refrigerator died. Both the soup and the fish made great, easy to store leftovers that we’ve dipped into over the course of several days), frozen strawberries, peaches and mangoes (slowly defrosting, used in smoothies), kale, mint, celery (all three of which also went into the smoothies), frozen tamales, frozen peas, bananas, and one nutrition bar I ate by myself after my son fell asleep one night. Beverages have consisted of water and various varieties of tea.

What’s my point? Well first of all, things are not as complicated as we think. I know I could do with a lot simpler shopping list, cook meals that last for several days, and not feel like I have to snack endlessly. I could eat healthier and not spend as much money.

Secondly, I am very lucky. So our refrigerator broke. So what. Yes, we were lucky in that I had a service contract. What a good investment that turned out to be. Although we did have to wait for four days to get on the service schedule, since it happened just before the weekend, we were able to make do, and it was only temporary. Also, it wasn’t like we also lost heat, electricity or water, as can happen in large scale disasters. This minor inconvenience reminded me that people can and do survive interruptions to the flow of their daily existence much worse than this. And today, my favorite GE repairman showed up to replace the faulty circuit board that was the cause of the problem.

Having my son home sick this entire time (fortunately, though he feels pretty miserable, it’s only a bad cough and a cold) reminded me of how it was when my husband and I used to cope with his periodic sickle cell crises. That kind of major medical situation would stop the flow of our lives completely. Everything optional got put on hold, and all of the essential activities, such as working at my day job, took on a kind of vibrating intensity colored by the underlying urgency of his condition.

Without the red alert status of a life threatening disease flare-up, what’s left is reminiscent of those times I got to stay home from school as a kid, sick enough to enjoy my mom’s nurturing care, but not too sick to prevent me from enjoying hours of reading a good book, or watching cartoons or other silly shows on TV. Of course, that kind of liminal time-out-of-time is not fully mine to enjoy now. I still have work to do – assignments to complete, deadlines to meet. But in between, I can watch my son, wearing his pajamas all day, lolling from one activity to the next, most fairly mindless, just trying to pass the time while his body fights the germs that take their time doing their dirty work inside their body, just waiting for them to clear out.

I give him as much water and soup and herbal tea as he can stand. I help him blow his nose over and over again, rubbing soothing vitamin E oil onto the irritated, reddened skin above his lips. We spend more than the usual amount of time cuddling together reading Harry Potter, and yes, I’ve seen a few too many mindless Disney Channel pre-teen situation comedies.

I’m sure I will be climbing the walls shortly. Another day of this is about all I can stand. Plus, I have appointments coming up later this week outside the house that I can’t cancel, so I’ll have to start coming up with alternate childcare plans. And my son has some big overdue homework assignments that I will have to help him complete, despite how crappy he feels. Oh yes, I can feel my patience and calm evaporating. I can hardly finish one article on my to-do list. I wish I could just let him play and loll and leave my own work behind and just watch hours and hours of TV with him on the couch, eating soup and drinking smoothies…

But in the meantime, the bags of food are off the porch just in time for today’s icy rains and tomorrow’s forecasted warmer temperatures, there’s still a half a pot of chicken soup waiting for us in the refrigerator, I think I have some stuff to make pasta and homemade marinara sauce, and tomorrow we should be getting the next Harry Potter movie in the mail courtesy of Netflix.

Really, life is good…

I think I’ve found the key to New Year’s Eve happiness. Church. I’m serious. But not just any church. For the second year in a row, I’ve attended New Year’s Eve Watch Night service at Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem. From the exuberant gospel choir to the pastor’s fiery sermon to the commemorative countdown to freedom just before midnight (the Emancipation Proclamation came down 150 years ago, on January 1st, 1863), I felt awash in the glow of faith and optimism in the face of struggle. That kind of spirit speaks to me across all lines.

Of course, after church, there’s a house party, complete with food, friends and my new favorite, coquito – Puerto Rican coconut eggnog with a kick. I was not the designated driver this year, so I felt completely free to get buzzed on my little half a glass.

Heading back into the work week today and jump starting the new year with good intentions, I do have a few thoughts I want to share, in no particular order.

Boundaries. I’ve thought a lot about these suckers over the years. Now that I’m a parent, I understand more than ever the need to impose them on a child. My son, now 9 and a half, has fully embodied his assigned task of pushing said boundaries at every juncture. I realize it’s his job right now. Just as it’s my job to impose as strict a set of standards and practices as I can muster.

Boundaries. I was deprived of them at an early age by a mom who did not know any better. Little did she realize the kind of work she was setting me up for later in life. She enjoyed the comfort and reassurance of having a precocious little friend, and I developed an outsized sense of my own capabilities and responsibilities. It was a curse and a blessing, I suppose. I’m sure I’m also unwittingly giving my son a ton of mixed messages, but I’m really conscious of the process here. Even though I applaud his rebellious super confidence, I know it’s my job to show him the rules before he can grow up to break them in his own way.

These are lessons learned from training in music and theater and writing. It really helps to learn music theory basics – time and key signatures, scales, arpeggios and intervals of all kind, before you jump off into the land of improvisation. It’s good to know all about Aristotelian dramatic structure before you tear down the 4th wall and deconstruct narrative. Understanding the fundamentals of storytelling allows me to play with expectations yet still deliver good drama or suspense in my writing.

I am all about breaking down walls and operating in hybrid territory. I resist categorization of most kinds in my life and my work, and as a human being. Sure, I’m a woman, I was born and raised Jewish, in Long Island. But it was at a time when family structures and notions of personal and cultural identity were breaking down all around me. Now I’m a widow and a mother in an age when family units are being further redefined in countless ways. I pick and choose my elements of worship and belief from multiple spiritual traditions, and I define my politics, like my sexuality, on the relationships I cherish most, and the priorities I see before me.

Nobody puts Baby in a box.

I see a new year full of redefinition on the work and creative front, as well. More now than ever, I’m living my life as an entrepreneur and a freelance writer. Some of my projects take up more of my time than others, and my focus shifts with the priorities of any given moment. Imposing structure into such a free form lifestyle is my latest challenge. How does one create a routine that’s based on an internal to-do list, instead of orders from a boss? Many of you are familiar with this challenge already. Many more of you may confront it, as our economic system continues to evolve at a heady pace.

Do I sound optimistic? I am! Even as I’m preparing for some major and potentially frightening changes in all aspects of my life. I maintain that the calamities and sorrows of my past have armed me with more than enough resilience and perspective to manage whatever is preparing to come my way. And if not, I’m prepared to bluff my way through…

Can you feel the buzz? It’s a new year, a new time, a new day… can you feel it??

The STREB dancers, jumping off into action, 12/22/12