Confession

Sitting, sleeping, sulking in my room for an entire sunny day and no guilt, no guilt, no feeling but mild self-pity and angry frustration. No walk, no jog, no facing to the sun in disarray - I eat instead. More self-destruction, one inhaling bite after another. Did Chi-Chun say I looked happy when I eat? Then happiness is self-immolation into a faceful of cereal, chicken salad, breads of any kind, whatever is lying around. It is a desperate reach deep into a bowl of something sticky, leaving traces of sin on the knuckles, on the sheets, on the notes of the keyboard.

But I am being characteristically melodramatic. It's really not so bad. I just decided to have my first lazy day. Days doing nothing but trying to do something don't count. Today, I made that choice. Rather than end up a loser, I chose to be one. And that's almost more allowable, especially since it's new. It still ain't strong.

But it is free weekend minutes day as well, my only one, since Sunday will be a day of work and rehearsal, so I did also allot this day for phone calls. Almost a couple hours with Mummy, some with dear Win, a little Mark here, a little Anna there. Waiting for the latter to touch base again, to see if Melkizedeck of Kenya, '03, is able to rouse himself from his headache to have a night out. We're attempting to drag out Youssef from Egypt, also '03, currently in Jersey City, but, with incomprehensible anti-socialness, will apparently only answer phone numbers he does not recognize. Anna's been jilted enough times, so we wait upon the powers of Arpita Parikh to sneak up on his cellular and demand his attendance to an event that I somehow initiated.

So I think it can be said that I am to some level good at getting people together. Moreover, it is something I both enjoy and think is valuable to society at large and in private. I don't think I can say the same about the other things I am trying to achieve in my life -- studying, dancing, commenting upon and therefore changing the world by making art. I will alternately enjoy them, abhor them, think they are critical to public discourse, perceive them as escapist and irrelevant. Nothing is more fickle than a vascillating and dispersed idealist.

My mother today tells me to "just put yourself together" and move forward. A very present and welcoming woman I met at the Harlem Center for the Performing Arts the other night (at a presentation of Bill T Jones' new work) answers my quiet inquiry of, "How does one know when to let go?" with the assurance, "You know, honey, you know ... leting go is your ability to say, 'I am stronger than my past.'" Win bolsters my doldrums today with the words of our mutual friend at Swarthmore, Brandon King: "Nothing is more beautiful than self-confidence." How I am yearning for that kind of beauty right now. The confidence to say that you are on the right path, the path you were made for, that all your efforts and intentions are not being betrayed. Ultimately, I know too, that through self-doubt, we are our own worst enemies. I am tired of living in ambiguity, although I don't know if that is something I can willfully change.

So how hard can it be to make a decision? "Procrastination is opportunity's natural assassin," I've known for years, and my tendency toward inaction because of fear of the unknown is extending it's full force all over again. What happened to March? I know I moved; I know I moved somewhat traumatically, slowly trucking minor belongings across the M60 from Astoria to Harlem, as much of my minor life as could be carried in my hands each time. I know I had a birthday. I know I ate a lot of cake. I know I held a baby in my arms. I don't think I held a man in my arms. That was one day in April.

And what happened to April? Blossoms emerge, bravely in the late chill and absence of rain, but the opening of my heart is stunted, is unwilling to come out so naked into the sunlight without an assurance that it is finally, truthfully, warm. I thought I was in love, but really I was in memory. My fantasies are vivid, and I almost desire banality so I can forget. But only almost. A part of me does still want to live. A larger part wants someone else to ask first.

Were they right?
Was R Charles right in his observation that I was "afraid of success?"
Was Phil Metzidakis right in his insistence that, among the anvils and the hammers of the world, I was an anvil, only trying to be a hammer?

Is my strength in letting this dream go?

"I can make peace on earth / with my own two hands ..."