Savage beauties

One of the things I missed most living in Barbados was culture.  This is subjective, some might say that I was surrounded by Caribbean culture whilst living there, but what I longed for were museums, curated exhibitions, galleries of painting, sculpture, media, theatre, music, concerts and surprises found on line or through friends or journals, little bars and cafes.  I wanted magazines, books, writing.  I would read in magazines either lugged in from the States from visiting friends or purchased at a mark up that would make your wallet explode, about exhibitions, books, TV programs, news articles, whatever connected me to the world and just dream. 

When I read about the exhibition, Savage Beauty: Alexander McQueen, a collection of clothes, archives, collection videos, accessories of the talented designer, I knew that I could not miss this one.  With the Met just a short walk from my former address, I could taste it.  A little background.  I'd often thought, as a girl, that I would be a designer.  I loved clothes, breathed them.  Bought fashion magazines at twelve, before all the twelve year olds of the world were doing so, and dreamt of the clothes I could create.  I loved the artistry, as I'd loved all art then, and was especially drawn to the expressiveness of a collar, cut of a garment as it clung to the figure or gently caressed it, making the wearer even more than when naked.  It was the 80s and there was color and androgyny, accessories and shoes.  There was athleticism and energy and newly adored bodies hitting the gym looking for something to showcase themselves.  I could feel the change in my stride, in my mood when I wore different clothes and I loved that feeling.

Home economics, 7th grade changed all of that when I struggled with the "car pillow."  Nasty little stitches, broken threads, tough times threading that bobbin, pattern making, using patterns. All of it.  I didn't have the patience, nor the talent for it.  I continued to love fashion, however, and looked out for new voices, visions, leaders.  I loved Jean-Paul Gaultier, Claude Montana, respected the perfection of Valentino, Givenchy, Chanel though I didn't quite see my place in it.  And then there was Alexander McQueen.

When I first discovered Alexander McQueen I thought, this is one of mine.  He was shy and crude and elegant and tortured and so extraordinarily talented and skilled.  He was such a true artist that I whispered to myself, I want to wear that, even from the very first.  I waited for every collection, went into the boutiques selling his clothes to see them up close.  I worried for his gentle soul hiding inside that rough exterior.  And when he seemed to get himself on track for the "dream"--new love, weight loss, good looks, sales=money--the mile markers for happiness by most of our friends and family, I sighed with relief that maybe he had really found it.  I knew about emotional and spiritual pain, knew how it ate away at joy and achievements and milestones, knew how it could kill any sense of hope, success, love.  I saw it in his eyes, maybe loved him more for being a "tortured artist" unable to enjoy the mundane and routine.

But I didn't want it to end.  Never thought it would.  At least not as it did.  Those beautiful, beautiful clothes.  And I had to see them.  Today, with my cousin Kelley, after waiting two hours in a line snaking through Mesopotamia and Persia at the Met, I opened my eyes to Savage Beauty.  We must find a way to love and nurture artists.  In the creative, there is everything.  In the exploration, desire, longing can come magic.  Artists are wizards and no matter the medium, they ask/demand of us to consider the world differently.  Reading McQueen's thoughts on his collections, what inspired him, what worried him, called to him, all the things from which he drew gave a glimpse at a man not just tailoring.  He had the technique, the skill, the craft and he had the magic.

I came home living in his dream, wrapped in the world he'd created when my husband called to tell me that another of my beloved artists had passed.  Young Amy Winehouse.  Tragic, flawed, insanely talented, wounded.  The tears came not in a trickle, but bursting out of my face like Pop Rocks contained in a soda can, then suddenly released.  I was bawling in seconds, my cousin sitting next to me afraid something had happened to one of my girls. 

And something had.  Amy Winehouse was one of my girls.  One of the many artists, female voices that moved me forward, onward, through it when I knew I just could not get through.  She had gravel and pain and heartache and longing and love and dreams.  She got locked in her world, a sensitive creative soul who just could not work out the every day.  She was an addict and that seems to have made it easier for people to take potshots.  Don't.  She just wore the wounds on the outside.  She got ridiculous because she hurt so much and looking at her made us see, whether we wanted to or not, that it's hard, no matter the money, the fame, the accolades, and attention, this thing called life. 

They can both be viewed as reckless, Alexander McQueen and Amy Winehouse, in different ways, but they had genius.  They were artists.  Their beauty was savage,  natural and wild and from it, they fashioned something we could all claim, see reflected in our own souls, the beauty and the pain.  The beauty and the pain.  Rest in peace.



(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Limbo

In the game or dance of limbo, participants try to shimmy their way under a pole that drops lower and lower and lower until it is almost on the ground.  It is mesmerizing to watch as regular people contort, twist, and bend to the depths that bar takes them.  The metaphor is so obvious.  In the Catholic tradition, limbo, from the Latin limbus, meaning edge or boundary, presumably of Hell, is the place where souls wait in the afterlife in original sin (occurring in all of us due to the Fall of Man) but not having been assigned to Hell of the Damned.  The limbo dance has its origins in the contra dancing of Trinidad and the word itself is a derivative of limber in West Indian English.  The movements, similar to that of the African legba or legua dance (after the god of fate, chance, opportunities, and crossroads of Afro-Caribbean lore) reflect "the whole cycle of life" according to some African beliefs.


And so we find ourselves as we wait for a decision, are we in the house?  Did we get it?  Have we been approved? We are in limbo, not just in trying to figure out where we are going to live, but once we find a place, we will still be living in a hotel on the edge of New York City for two weeks while we wait until an August 1st move in. It's a strange place to be. We are not on vacation. Not on a business trip. Not in a home. We won't even live in the town where the hotel is, when all is said and done.


With my aching back, brought on by the children, both carrying them in pregnancy and then carting them around on my hip even now, bending like the willow and not breaking like a twig, is pretty tough for  me.  And with my contorted sense of self, just going with the flow and letting go and letting God, though I know the only way to weather life's changes, opportunities, crossroads is close to impossible.  But each morning I get up and ask myself how we are going to do it and try to do it with a smile.  Try to bend backwards and let life open to us and show us surprises. 

The girls, missing a pool, swam in the bathtub with their suits on.  They have built snow forts out of the pillows from the two beds in the suite.  We have gone into the city and walked in our old neighborhood.  Two years has not changed it much except for a few businesses that we feared wouldn't make it and didn't.  On our way to a walk through Central Park to go to the MET(to see Savage Beauty, the sure to be thrilling and haunting exhibition at the Costume Institute of Alexander McQueen's work), Didier and I realized that that was more than likely not the right choice for us.  We were travelling with two little people and where on the Upper West Side should we take these two little creatures while we waited for life to settle?  The Children's Museum of Manhattan, of course!  And it was a blast!  The girls ran all over the place with their aged parents in tow.  Lily spent nearly every single day there as a two year old when we lived right around the corner during the months that play in the park was too cold, too windy, too rainy, or too snowy.  Watching Virginie make her way through the Dora floor, the Curious George exhibit, fingerpaint, feed the letter dragon, I saw we'd really come back. 

We met up with friends not seen for two years and fell back into easy rhythms and patterns, everything seeming the same, except for older children and maybe a little more gray hair for us (probably caused in part by the older children).  There were parks in New Jersey, playgrounds and the zoo in Manhattan, a ride on the NY Waterway ferry between New Jersey and New York crossing the Hudson River, and our first trip to the movie theatre as a family.  We saw "Winnie the Pooh" and its one hour and three minute screen time was just about right for the ladies.  Virginie shouted out to the screen with questions and demands and Lily sat mesmerized.  Like bookends, Didier and I sat with the girls between us, laughing and smiling, getting lost in the picture.

And in limbo, that place, at a crossroads, a place of opportunities, a place of mirrors, a place where fate is decided, I bent backwards, squeezed Didier's hand, kissed our girls, and laughed outloud.  This isn't the first time we have done these moves.  We all do them.  And I am much more flexible that I ever expect, more agile, more light on my feet.  Love is burning in my chest and I trust that the fates are on my side and will help us win.  It might cost more money that I want to spend (I am cheap).  I might miss my things locked away in a container stuck in customs, as we are here.  I might wish I knew the answers already so I wouldn't have to sweat it out.  But maybe I should just stop sweating because it will all be decided anyway.  One doesn't sit in limbo forever.  The trick is timing the perfect moment, with the perfect backbend, at just the right height or depth of the stick, bending one's head back, and letting go.  I am always surprised when I make it under and up again.


(c)  Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.

Hotel, motel, whatcha gonna do today?

I am not sure what I was thinking.  Okay, actually I am.  I thought that if we were travelling for two weeks, living out of suitcases and crashing in hotels, we needed to do our best to save some money, especially as other expenses were soon to be mounting what with the new house, car, school, relocation, et al.  What I wasn't thinking was what an $80 a night hotel was going to look like, smell like, feel like, so I went into it hopefully optimistic.  A very fancy friend of mine had stayed there.  She said it was really accommodating, close to where we were looking for a home, and inexpensive.  She is still very fancy.  The hotel was...not as she remembered.  I think when we overshot the entrance and ended up, just yards away at the corrections facility where two forms of ID needed to be shown to get, we should have wondered what was up.  Or when the parking attendant said, "You know I hate that shit!" when we rolled up and then said, "Oh my bad, you need your parking?"that we were so not in Kansas anymore.

At many of the beaches in Barbados when one finally came out of the water and brushed off the sand, there were makeshift showers rigged out of plastic or metal piping, sometimes some twine, maybe, if the creator of said construction was ambitious an on/off switch other than a simple garden faucet.  Didier and I used to remark how easy it would be to draw tourists with a nicer set up, correct showers, paved floor to stand in, dare I say, hot/warm water even.  I could have made mention of this at the reception desk of the Ramada Inn over by the airport (see, I would tell you eventually about my foolishness.)  Standing in the dark (the dark because the two lightbulbs in the bathroom had burned out and we only discovered this when we returned to the room at night) with a faucet that read hot and cold and then produced the opposite or scalding or ice cold or a trickle with no rhyme or reason, I flinched and twisted and contorted and shivered. 

The girls were not able to take a bath as the stopper did not work and I was extremely grateful for that as I did not want those people sitting, swimming, kicking, soaking in that dark, dank tub.  We had to use the water from the tub to rinse water on our toothbrushes because the sink faucet let out eye dropperfuls of water at a time.  It was clear though.  Thank you for the small miracles.  I made them put toilet paper down on the seat when they had to use the bathroom.  Virginie is potty training.  These are things you learn even if you can barely get up on the seat.  At least with this mommy you do.

As we snuggled in for bed, all four of us a king-sized twin bed combo lashed together, I found a hair on one of the squishy pillows and promptly threw it, the pillow, onto the floor.  When I pulled back the blankets I was greeted with a lipstick kiss on the white cover, which found its place next to the comforter that had already been hurled to the floor.  (Look, I watch Oprah, I know what's on those things and I do that at the better establishments.)  And in a "you can't make this shit up" moment, when I went for the extra blanket provided, it has a cigarette hole burned through it.  We turned off the A/C and slept on the bed, sheet covered, rolled together sardine packing style with the two little ones in the middle and Mommy and Papa holding up the ends to make sure no one fell onto the dirty floor.  The floor that we were all disallowed to walk on without shoes.

It was laughable and we would have moved out after that first night, but we were scheduled to look at a large number of houses and condos in our hoped for new town and had to race out to make our 9:30 am appointment.  The hotel policy was to have notice given before 6 pm the night before check out and we just didn't think we would make it through all the day's events and still find a place and be able to check out by noon.  The search was thrilling, scary, depressing, exciting.  We saw lots of properties, some that had potential, some we adored, and some that were just downright filthy.  Didier, the superclean Frenchy, could not help but remark how dirty some people actually are.  Given a gorgeous property in a gorgeous location, could they not do better than that?

We were exhausted at the end of the day.  Excited that we found a few that thrilled us.  Hopeful that one could be ours.  Bummed that we had to go back to the hotel to think, consider, reflect when we knew it would be impossible to relax.  It was.  Impossible I mean.  We arrived at the same time that the guests from two different convention groups were arriving.  The first group seemed to be a large Latin family gathering from the United States and Canada who had not seen each other in at least the last ten years.  There was a lot of stopping in front of the front door, parking lot, reception desk, elevator, vending machines, business office, restrooms, water fountains, any place really to chatter on and on, "Ah que linda!  Ah que guapo!"  I couldn't be happier to see people reunited.  I wanted to get to bed.

When Bunny in her red wig, cut off jean shorts, tattoo of a cat on her upper thigh, lace front something or other showing her 55 year old plus-sized modeling wares got on the elevator with the Chinese food delivery man, I figured this shit was a rap.  When she said in her bourbon and cigarettes voice (and this from a raspy voiced woman myself), "Ooh baby, y'all's cute!" to my kids, I thought, nice.  Later that night a few of the crews from the Biker Club Convention revved up in the parking lot doing wheelies and giving pounds and hi-fives as I tossed and turned, dreaming of the speed packing I was going to get done to get us out asap in the morning.

In the morning, I awoke to read a message from my realtor with a twelve page lease agreement on a property that we absolutely loved that basically stipulated that we could not live freely in the house, as if it were our own, care for it like normal human beings, and raise our family.  It had clause after clause, loopholes in which to trap us into giving away, signing away our rights.  We had to give it up.  Strangely, I was able to honor myself and my family immediately upon reading this drivel, but never thought for a moment about what booking us into an $80 a night shit hole said about my feelings of worth.  I knew I did not deserve that.  Knew that no one in my life, in my family, would ever consider that for themselves.  Inside I must have known what to expect from a hotel by the airport, with such a low rate in a busy part of the country, (this wasn't some little town with very few visitors and travelers).  I had to have known that I was selling myself and my family short. 

My sister spoke out.  My dad bit his tongue saying only that I should move those babies if it was not good enough for them.  And for me, what is good enough for me?  There are eye opening moments if we stop and check them.  I read my internal gauge and reset it.  I am worth more than that.  I want to be comfortable, to feel secure.  I want my family to feel the same, Didier and the girls.  I used the excuse, and a valid one, that we could not afford it.  It is expensive to relocate, to start over, to change one's life, but what am I willing to pay financially, emotionally, spiritually for my own safety, comfort, security?  It is certainly more than $80.

I booked us into a family style suite hotel closer to the city and it costs much more that the first.  The girls came in, pulled back the sheets on the bed and snuggled in to play with their toys.  They said, "Mommy, we like this hotel better than the other one because it has a kitchen.  It is like a real home."  For the girls, a kitchen where we can sit around and chat while Papa (or Mommy sometimes) can cook, where we can listen to music or watch TV is home.  And when you are in transition as we are, providing any sense of home, of safety, or security is a blessing.  They are all sleeping.  Didier in his/our bed, the girls in theirs/ours.  It is quiet.  It is a hotel and for the next few days/week until we find something to call our own, this will have to do.



(c) Copyright 2011.  City Mom in the Jungle.