TheBanyanTree: What I do on a Saturday

[tobie at shpilchas.net]

Sunday, January 19, 20  (EXTREMELY BAD eyesight)


To Monique and all who suspect they may have a case of the apathies but aren’t sure and don’t give a shit,

	You are brave indeed to go to any class that requires you to move and then not to move. I never have liked moving in public places, especially with my body which has never been my best friend. It isn’t, "body image."  Can’t be because I haven’t looked in a mirror at anything below the teeth I am brushing for a very long time.  So I don’t have much of an image of this thing attached to my brain anymore. The sad truth: I change my clothes in the closet in the dark. That’s for me, not to hide from anyone else. I don’t think my X husband (the last one, #3) saw me naked for maybe the last 10 to 12 years of our marriage. And, because I’m pretty sure he was somewhere on the narcissistic/Asperger’s spectrum, he didn’t notice. He certainly didn’t say anything. I believe the "not noticing" evidence came to the fore about the time that Feyna, Meyshe and I stopped applauding every time he came into the room. (a guy needs encouragement, but a narcissist needs worship).

	More about that body thing: I was always fine playing the cello within sight of others (often enough hundreds of others) but take the cello away and I had to put myself in  some kind of trance to move around in public, unless anonymously. In high school, I wore several layers of clothing, even a jacket when it was warm. On hot days I was scared of fashion.  An 1890s swim suit would have been fine with me, but they stopped making them when women grew legs, then later, midriffs.  My daughter was talking about clothes the other day. She’d befriended a fashion designer and had modeled some of her leggings (phases of the moon running down the black legs). She recommended I go to the site and get all excited about new clothes. I guess she noticed that I haven’t really bought any clothes for maybe, oh I don’t know, ten to twelve years.  I told her that, while I used to be a clothes horse (in my hormonal days) lately, I look in the mirror and think, "Why bother?"

	This is not to say that I hate my body. I don’t. Okay, I don’t like some of the things it’s doing at my age (or not doing), but in general, we get along if it knows its place (way below my brain which is the center of gravity).  I think the phrase that gets applied to this syndrome most frequently is, "body shy."  There’s some irony in this. I mentioned that I used to be a clothes horse. Oh yes. I had a closet full of wildly colorful works of art, embroidered Chinese robes that I’d wear in layer upon layer, eccentric stuff that other people wouldn’t think to wear because they certainly weren’t what you’d call, "fashionable".  And nothing showed much skin. It was like painting a picture, looking in the mirror and layering colors and shapes on a moving canvas.  I used to wear an Italian Borsalino that my sweetheart gave me when I was in my twenties. That on top of my head and this wild array of ethnic disconnect underneath. It attracted a lot of attention, probably, but that wasn’t the point. I like the canvas, not the mannequin. Here’s the parallel irony.  You know the standard definition of introvert/extrovert:  introverts renew their energies when alone, and extroverts renew their energies being around people.  By that definition, I’m definitely an introvert. Hate parties, have to get up and leave the company of people (even people I truly love) after some time because I need a rest. Maybe it’s all the lives around me that I seem to absorb into myself involuntarily. Feel their feelings, their histories, worries, nerves, YIKES! Anyone would need a break. But most people would think of me as an extrovert because I’m funny and energetic and reach out, relate, all so intensely.  But I can’t sustain it. Have to go recoup. Same thing with my body. You’d think I had a working relationship with it. You know, all the sparkle and the un-prim, dashing around the kitchen cooking, showing some flair, some physical drama. But it isn’t the case. I get into trouble because I don’t tend to listen to my body. Distrust what it’s telling me, so after a while I just shut it out. 

	Keep them guessing?  I don’t think so. Maybe it used to be so, but by now, THANK GOD, I don’t think so much about what others say or think. I figure it’s not about me, and when I was younger, like many people, I suspected it was.

	Now I’m going downstairs to bake a fallen chocolate cake with marshmallow icing.

Tobie








> On Jan 18, 2020, at 8:51 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Happy Saturday Tobie.
> 
> Me, I just wait until my mouse stops working and then get batteries out of the freezer. Or wherever they are. We have lots in case the world goes dark and I still want my mouse to work. 
> 
> My Saturday has been nowhere near as exciting as yours, though I commend your mother for living so long. That's the objective, isn't it? To keep going until we can't?
> 
> I'm recovering from a cold, which used to be not so much a problem, but these days everything takes longer. Not for Andrew, who had a cold first, but once he lost weight and started exercising he's been much healthier and recovers faster, like I used to, in the distant past.
> 
> Apathy has been my top interest this week. I'm not depressed, and I have lots of things I want to do, and to do, but I just don't care. They tell me apathy comes with Parkinson's, but I really don't care. I hope it stops soon because it's boring as hell, and it makes me more boring than usual. 
> 
> If possible.
> 
> I did work last week, and billed and got paid, and have much work to do in the next two weeks, so I'm hoping this passes by Monday. Or not. I don't care. I went to my second movement class on Wednesday, which is once a week, and I was late again. The first week I went in the entrance I used to go in, years ago, to see my doctor before she quit in frustration, but the class is on the other side of the hospital in the basement, in something called the Willow Room, or Fir Room, or Room Room. The second week I thought I had it figured out but I did not - I went in the main entrance to the medical building when I needed to go in at Urgent Care, then take the elevator to the basement. On Wednesday I'll review this first and hopefully get there before our instructor starts talking.
> 
> I signed up for this class because a local advocacy group gives it, and it's cheap, or nothing if one is temporarily short of funds. And I need to remember how to move. Not that I've forgotten yet, but I am sometimes stiff and unwieldy. The first week we did all the exercises in our chairs. We rolled a tennis ball with our feet, then played with the tennis ball with our hands, then we tossed the tennis ball from one hand to the other, and if we dropped it, which happens a lot, we couldn't move to get it. We're learning to not move as well as move, because jumping after something that has slipped from our grasp is dangerous and a great way to fall on one's head. There was laughing, instructed and not, and flying tennis balls, and something about a book I don't have. Maybe I should find out what it is so I can do these exercises. There are so many I can't remember them all.
> 
> We take off our shoes in class, and I do have the prettiest socks, which is something I take great pride in because it's all I've got. The class is diverse: old men and old women, but everyone has Parkinson's. It's all old white people because we are not a diverse community, which some people take pride in, but I do not. It is what it is.
> 
> The instructor told us that the second week we'd be getting on the floor, which is a good thing to know since there's no telling how often the hospital cleans the carpet. So we all showed up with our yoga mats, mine being fresh from Costco because Andrew got me one as soon as he heard I needed one. But we did not get on the floor at all. We did have a photographer from the local newspaper taking pictures of us grimacing and being all Parkinsony, but I am comforted by the knowledge that no one in this town will know who I am if there are any pictures. I'd rather be anonymous woman #4. 
> 
> The instructor says it may be a couple of weeks before we get to the floor. Perhaps we're all underperforming? It's hard to tell. 
> 
> On Thursday I woke up with a definite cold, and thought about canceling my afternoon dental appointment. But I'm a lucky sort of person, and shortly the dentist office called me to cancel because my hygienist wasn't coming in. This is not the first time I've wanted to cancel an appointment but wanted the other party to do it so I wouldn't feel guilty, and it happens often enough to convince me that I have found my secret superpower. 
> 
> I need to write some blog posts about business for a client's website. They will pay me, but I've been very lax, though I have several ideas and source documents. Apathy.
> 
> The fact that I've written this much may be an indication I'm tired of apathy. I hope so. I haven't even finished my course on Economic Systems, or learned how to felt. So many things to do. And work even picked up, which is fun. They come to me as a referral from another client and I say, I may not be what you want, and they say, No, you're exactly what I need, which is good for my ego, which sustained some serious direct hits last year. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Monique
> Sent from my iPad
> 



"Burst your bubbles before they form. See your blind spots."  
 
Meyshe Shapiro-Nygren,  2019




Tobie Helene Shapiro
mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net <mailto:tobie at shpilchas.net>