whose heart races
faster than the paces
of her flat-footed step
Andie Bottrell |
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i am of a body
whose heart races faster than the paces of her flat-footed step
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COCOONING
April 18, 2016 a weekend spent cocooning for no known reason hiding out in twisted sheets a metaphor for my twisted needs loneliness visiting, but no desire to reach out to cease it slapping me comfort food and tv sleeping more than i knew i could from an exhaustion that just snuck up out of no where to tackle me bad feelings turn worse in this tupperware of comfort the morsels of guilty bacteria turning to full blown mold that spread across the articles of cells that reach from skin down to soul; speechless and dried out i rode it out and come monday morning's alarm, fought off every excuse not to rise, to make it in to work on time 10 buckets of caffeine and some peppermint for sniffing... ill be back up on the horse again ************** COCOON January 9, 2018 i was about to use the metaphor about the caterpillar and the cocoon the butterfly emerging but i don't feel like a butterfly emerging so perhaps i'm just starting to build the cocoon i know who i was but i don't yet know who i am to become ************* it seems i've been here before when my parents announced their separation
it came as a shock in the subsequent afternoons, driving home from school my mind drifted to the oft heard statistic 50% of marriages end in divorce ours was a religious home a family that prayed together, stayed together until we didn't and then many of us prayed harder and my father bought and blew a shofar --got really into the old testament my mother moved into an apartment across town my brother was off at college it was just me and my dad and his shofar until it wasn't until it was a night here and there that he didn't come home and it was just me praying and it was God I thought I heard speaking telling me to go to Italy and so, I went and when I came back home my dad's shofar was replaced with a blonde, new wife and mother of three and my stuff was in boxes it was out with the old and in with the new and there was an awkward really painful year and at the end of that year a new statistic came true 1 in 3 don't have a Dad in their lives and that 1 was me When I lived in LA, I tried to play the game. This was before social media was as dominant as it is now. I didn't have an instagram or twitter yet. I had a Myspace for the first few years and a barely used Facebook. The game was different then. We were still figuring out what mattered and how much. What mattered was IMDB ratings. It was who you knew in person, rather than online. It was how you looked in person, rather than online. I tried to look the part. Thin. I worked at that. Lived solely on some Nutri-System or another for a year. Eating terrible, dry, pre-packaged...cancer, probably. I ran and hiked and once, boxed at a Korean gym. I did one of those women-centric gyms and then had to pretend to move out of the country to get out of my contract when I didn't have the money to pay it.
I did agent showcases. I mailed pictures of my face. I acted every chance I got--in student films (high school and college), in plays, in scenes, in rooms, in front of my own camera and friends cameras. I drove all over the place and smiled kindly at the most ridiculous requests. I mimed navigating a space ship. I auditioned for a puppet who cruelly condescended me. I hawked magic cloths and mister sticky's in live in-store infomercial performances at every store in a 60 mile radius of Los Angeles. I studied my craft. I shelled out money by the fistfuls. I played the game. But I guess, even then, at my most earnest attempts, even then, there was a rebel in me who rebuffed the rules and held a middle finger to the expectations of me as a player. I shaved my head. That couldn't have helped. Tall, thin, white, lady buzz-head isn't exactly a marketable "type." I'm still glad I did it though--it was a great lesson in self-discovery...letting go of hair, letting go of how much others care about your hair. My hair grew back. I kept at it. Auditions, showcases, mailings. Money out, money out, money out--LOOK AT ME! LET ME IN THE BIG ROOMS! Classes, workshops, internships. Money out, money out, look at me... Nevertheless, I "lost" the game. Had to bow out. Deeply in debt, unable to pay my rent or put gas in my car. A couple years of big tax bills I couldn't pay. I listed everything I owned for sale, measuring their dimensions using my 8x10 headshots. You always hear these stories about big stars who moved to the city with $20 in their pocket, lived in their car, sold and bought back their furniture, but then hit their "big break." You start to think that's all it takes. Hanging in, come hell or high water, until that inevitable "big break," but you never stop to think about all the millions of stories you don't hear about all the millions of people throughout the years who moved to LA whose "big break" never came, who wound up genuinely homeless, who had to go back to the mid-west, who got "real jobs" or simply, literally died trying without ever getting there. Those people don't get book deals, don't go on late night talk shows and tell their stories. But they're out there, by the truck loads, those stories. More common than not. Not that it would have mattered if I'd considered it beforehand, considered I might not "make it," I would have had to do it all anyway...because you never know what luck might shine on you if you only try, if you just show up. So, I showed up, I tried, and I failed. I couldn't make them notice me. I could never get in the rooms where it happens. I drove out of the smog-filled traffic of the city of angels, over the mountains, into the desert and half-way across the country with my tail between my legs and scuttled into my Mother's house in Springfield, MO. The dawn of the social media age was upon us. Twitter, instagram, facebook, snapchat, youtube, blogs, vlogs...a whole new world where your follower count alone could get you in the rooms where it happens. A world where you could photoshop and filter your appearance into oblivion and get free cloths and earn lots of money from a digitally edited version of your appearance. The word "influencer" would rise to stand side by side with "celebrity." There was a way now to play the game no matter where you lived. But now... it was like when I came back from Italy--where I'd gone on my Joan of Arc mission, assigned by God, or so I thought, to witness to people, only to come home utterly broken of my Bible-belt shell and trying to figure out what I really believed about the world with the new information and life experiences I had gained....and I came home and went back to Church and suddenly felt sick to my stomach, struck by the hypocrisy, the arrogance and ignorance of it all. It was like that now with the game. I couldn't play it sincerely anymore. Chasing money and success and validation and opportunity... I couldn't believe in the higher power of it all anymore. I couldn't have hope in there being "more"--it just wasn't out there. All there is is now, is this, is what you've got and what you choose to do with it. So I could spend the rest of my life chasing yes's...or I could just give myself one big YES to do and make whatever I want whenever I want and be okay with the possibility that the audience never shows up for me and my art, that I create in oblivion and never receive recognition...but at least this way, I create. And that is the necessary thing for me, to live, I must create. So I create. And when people talk of how I'll "make it"...how I'll win awards one day...I put on that old familiar smile that is for their benefit, and inside I shave that expectation down to a buzz cut. It doesn't matter if I ever do..."make it," win awards... am I still creating? That's the only question there is. Am I being challenged and stimulated? Am I loved for me, aside from my creations? Am I creating in new exciting ways? Am I learning? Am I growing as an artist? Am I having honest conversations about the human experience? Am I articulating feelings? Am I contributing something of some kind of value? Am I full? Am I energized by it all still? That's all. I can't care about followers. I'm not Jesus. I don't need disciples. I don't need or want fame. I don't invite that level of scrutiny into my life. I don't need to climb some ladder of perceived success. I don't need trinkets that say I'm the best--I don't believe there is such a think in art as "the best." I DO want money to create, but I feel no motivation beyond waking up and doing day jobs to get the minimum amount of it I need to scrape by. I'm too high on creative ideas to be grounded in the reality of finances. I'm easily distracted by my ideas and fulfilling them. If I could really get it together...I would learn how grants work, I would go that route perhaps. Really...I just don't want to beg anyone to let me do what I've figured out I'm going to do anyway. I'll create, no matter what. And that's enough. That's enough because it's all there really, really is. Big house, no house, big crowd, no crowd, big money, no money...it's all the same at the root, and the big stuff, the success stuff is just a different noise, a different distraction than the noises and distractions of no stuff. How I go forward from here: Fuck the noise...just create. Head down. Create. Come, don't come. I'm doing this thing. It's how I choose to live my life. I am owner and audience. And you don't have to get it. We all just have to live to the fullest truths of our heart. i don't want to love you
i don't want to like you i don't want to get used to you i don't want to get comfortable or excited to see you i don't want to pine for you --to long for you when i'm not near you i don't want you because i already do and i know that you're one step out the door of this town and every time i'm reminded of that it's like an electric shock to my heart my stomach drops and i feel the urge to run away also: it's complex because i want the best for you i want you to go-- think it will be good for you but i don't know where that leaves us besides lonely, longing, miserable, crying and i don't want to go through that again so i think i'll just convince myself that i don't care don't love don't like don't want i'll steal away more time for myself when all i want to do is be with you i'll punish myself with solitude now to keep from getting too close to you ... oh, who am i kidding i've never been one for self-control i'll see you as much and as often as i can i'll find new ways to love you to like you to show you i'll fall deeper i'll get more excited more comfortable i'll feel it and when you go i'll cry but i wont die i'll limp but i wont quit and i'll create like i always do and que sera sera i'll love you anyway
I had a blast telling this true(ly humiliating) story for Chatty Cathy (a monthly all-women's storytelling event) about the first time I attempted to have sex.
I am frightened
often by the callings of my heart that soul purpose stuff that beats its demands upon my palms like, "Rise up and follow this path, sister!" When mostly I'd rather swallow that saliva, sit down and wait for my fate to run its course in the background while I soak up the comfort of my cool sheets. I do not want to confront the injustices of my time. I do not want to put a lifetime of effort into a career of "No's." I do not want to give up my peace and quiet to parent a babe. I do not want to be vulnerable and brave enough to admit my human attractions, or let love in. And yet... I do. Oh, my gosh. I do. I do, so much want those things. My insides demand these things of me and I say with such slowness, "Okay," and "One day." I try to stall. I'm as lazy as I am tall. I resist my callings. I argue with them before I accept them. I resent having a voice and a well-body sometimes. I am ungrateful and can be unkind to the abilities present within me. Because it is a responsibility. And I am tired. And I have no reason to be tired, I just am. Fatigued. And so I must daily find ways-- midst often failing--to revitalize my energies and my motivation to keep myself from falling horizontal into complacent waiting for my luck of living to run out. I have to tell myself, "There is time." And, "Get up." And ask, "What do you really believe and why?" And remind myself of the responsibility of those beliefs and act accordingly, and fail more, and feel that, and still get up again to try again. I don't always know how to do it. I don't always try my best. But I will always try again. Historical distance
allows for an anger that gets blinded in today's gaze; a rage that the confident, yet timid can feel safely because it requires no action. The past was bad, but the bad has past. We are awakened now. Reaping the benefits of our grandparent's protests. But, no. That is not true. Injustice persists, and still we sit. We say, in hindsight with such confidence, "The holocost this, and slavery that, pilgrims and Native Americans, the Japanese internment camps--" the horror of those atrocities we wear like the dated, rusty souvenirs of our elder relations that have been passed down-- they remain valuable in sentiment only, as data, dates to remember; because we do not recall the visceral, humanity of those tragedies, nor the hum-drum monotony of the daily life and times of those whose lives like yours and mine, assisted in allowing such tragedies to occur, by doing nothing. But, lo, we have our own. Here in 2018. In the United States of America. We have our own. In the world; we have our own. But understanding what is going on, being informed, caring, and being outraged is to accept responsibility for your part in our shared existence. To be angry is to say, "I cannot accept this, so therefore I must take action." And action is inconvenient, time-consuming, messy. And there are myriad distractions to help you look away... to feign naive ignorance, but-- Hey, hello. I see you. I saw you look the other way. You caught injustice in the side of your eye, as did I--together we both ignored it for a while hoping others would fight that fight, but now here we are. And we must look at it, at the environment our inaction has allowed to permeate. We have ignored it for too long. Injustice is embedded into the DNA of the USA, yes, but that doesn't mean we should stop working for a cure. Start by becoming one less symptom of this oft-corrupt and unbalanced system of States we hope to see one day as truly United and for the good of all who call its land a home. upon the near-end of my life
do not look at me with sympathy in your eyes, nor surprise at my life of soul-mate-less love for the whole of my existence i have carried upon my back the weight of your expectations for my discovery of love as a loss i have mourned every step of my days for a love i expected to come that did not come my way i have shamed myself for being inadequate i have cried, where i might have otherwise found reason to praise; my loneliness was not defined by me, but for me and never gave me the chance to discover all the good that being alone has done for me where you coupled faught and spat hit and manipulated, contorting yourselves into public and private personas--sure, i do not deny some loves are healthful and strong, but you must confess not all, or even most, last so long as my loneliness has--and in my loneliness, look past what you conceit of as deficits, to find with me all the many benefits i am free to explore every thought and interest without courteous split; my time is my own i sleep uninterrupted, and flirt when flirting hits my friendships retain unlimited depths my support is multi-sourced and not just in one house; i dine with friends under candlelight and where i crave, I ask; and where i spare it, i give my love is spread communally i live in a vulnerable state that has made me strong there have been times of illness where i've sung a different song but i survived, and in that survival tamed a perspective that lends me able and willing to be paged in others crisis' besides, one love, nary how deep does not keep you safe it is always in community that we find our most powerful strength the married, the coupled, these are not the first nor final aim to attain; i am not missing a limb of life by not losing my name i am not half of a whole i am whole, autonomously so and i have lived and i have loved in no more or less grand a way than any other If I had it to begin all over, and in beginning again, found myself as the cultural and parental rear-er of my own upbringing, the fairy-tale I would instill upon my young, impressionable hopes and dreams would be much more diverse a story than I actually got. There would be no royalty, no fate, no timeline, no gender bias or sexual preference expected, no numerical limitations, no "the one," and in some of the stories, no romantic love at all. I think much of modern, and even past centuries depression and anxiety come from this grand expectation we place upon our most freshly minted lives to rise and accomplish as a task of self-success and familial pride the events of marriage and children. Often these successes aren't even presented as a challenge, just simply the next in a series of life's steps, like losing baby teeth and growing your permanents; so that the failure to succeed at these simple steps to life's ultimate door, are seen as a rejection of the very fabric of society we are all collectively tethered to. As if by failing to meet these expectations, we are letting go of the large blanket of comfort that keeps our world safe and warm. We erase the narrative stories of others throughout history who do not sate the requirements of this story we've been telling for so many ages that its tradition has replaced reality with a story we mistake for an innate morality. You do not grow up commonly reading of the writers, philosophers, artists, teachers, scientist, preachers, doctors, and leaders who never wed, who fell in love with someone of the same sex, who chose not to create off-spring, who took up residence with platonic friends... these are not America's heroes. These are not the stories we champion into Children's Literature and Disney Animation. And in the few instances where these stories have made their way into print, their lifestyles are heralded as an example of overcoming hardship, rather than legitimate existences of their own merit. Every hero who dared go against the grain, by choice or by bravely honoring their true self, must first defy the normative expectation placed upon them without their permission from birth, and know that from then on each action and word will be judged against their otherness as if they are some strange minority. In fact, however, the more I dig through history on my own, without the stern hand of public education leading my curious pursuits, the more I discover that that which we call so rare, is in fact most common. So common as to nearly be considered boring, if it had not been hushed under the rug of shame and hidden from sight for so many centuries. It's plain as day to say some never marry, that a grand, romantic, and healthy love is neither a given nor something everyone craves. To every human who has fearfully uttered to a friend, "What if it never happens for me?" And whose friend replied, "It will! Of course it will." I must say, this promise is not written in some star whose gaseous output carries every human's fate as some romantic love plot--And that's OK. The lack of this is no more an indication of some profound error of your person-hood as it is a prediction that what has been will always be. What has been can cease to be, can change on a dime--and some never have love that fulfills both sexual and personal requirements for romantic love. And some fake love with all their heart to meet this expectation and find more hurts than gains, even as their pain is praised for its normative additions to our flawed moral cause. Additionally, it's clear that homosexual love dates back as far as heterosexual love, that transgender identities join them from the start, that platonic friendships can be as sustaining and worthwhile a partnership as romantic love, that there are all different kinds of ways to move through life and that one is not more worthy than the next. In short, young self, as you grow and ponder what you crave and how to fulfill your human needs that knock at night upon your lids, erase from your ears every utterance of expectation and judgmental moral platitudes that tradition tries to throw at you. You are perfectly capable of finding for your own self the ways that calm your heart, the people, person, place, or thing that makes your heart sing, the tickling of your private sensations is your own to hone and to be felt and dealt freely (barring injuring to yourself or others and always with consent of yourself and others). As Karamo Brown stated recently about not using the term "coming out" but instead saying he "invited them in" to know his true self... understand that you may be aware of certain truths about yourself that you cannot yet invite others in to know, but that does not make them less true. Do not hide them from yourself. Your house does not cease to exist based on the false beliefs and words of others, your house stands still, and holds your contents, and you alone hold the key to invite whomever you may choose to enter. Make your own way and keep your compass set within your self--outside winds will be strong and try to sway you with hurtful lies that you must learn to tune out. I recommend headphones, daily journaling, an auto-didactic approach to knowledge and truth, an open, humble mind, daily affirmations, and lastly, that you write the stories history has swept under the rug for all to see. And if you do raise children, your own grown or others born of other mothers, that you respect their own search to find their compass and that you provide them a more widely defined version of success to aspire to, to identify with, to daydream about; one that includes examples of every variation of human that you can come up with--one that shows that true happiness is defined within, not by achieving some outwardly put-upon perspective.
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AboutHey! I'm Andie Bottrell, a multidisciplinary creative living in Springfield, MO. I share stories (autobiographical and fictional), poems, and other creative or personal musings here. Archives
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