Cocoon

I told you very briefly about an altercation I had with a fellow community member. I've told some of you on and off line about how it's been continuing. It is either cramping my style or I am letting it cramp my style, I can't really say which, but going to the park, something I usually do every morning, is now an act of strength. I'm in performance mode, too. In less than a week I offer up an hour's worth of my soul to people. Except that someone else is taking the reservations so I don't know if I'm offering it up to two people or thirty-two. I am afraid and anxious pretty much all the time. I'm on the verge of tears but not quite able to cry. I wake up early, I watch my brain turn in circles for an hour or so then I get up. I'm energized by trying to race ahead or behind or beside this cranky, crafty, corrosive neighbor. An hour after that I'm exhausted. Every time I strike something from my to do list another thing comes in its place. That's the way of the week before a show. The overarching theme of the days, though, is how hard I am on myself about how I am not standing up to this woman. People have said, and I believe them, that opening myself up to her approaching me again instead of avoiding her and standing firm in telling her that she has to quit her crazy bullshit is the only way to get her to stop but I cannot seem to make myself do it. I had an easy sort of opportunity to allow that confrontation to come a couple of weeks ago and I simply couldn't walk straight into it, I had to veer to the left, to cushion myself from her verbal waterfall of misguided anger and frustration. Why? She's only yelling at me. Sticks and stones, right? How, at nearly 44 years of age, can I not present myself for that harmless, stupid, utterly wrong treatment if it will present me an opportunity to stand tall, say my piece, and (hopefully) put an end to it all. I don't fucking know.

I don't know much about Amanda Palmer that is not filtered through a Neil Gaiman-colored lens. Today, though, I fell down a Palmer-shaped rabbit hole into her blog. She's had some hard times lately and is struggling with how she honors and continues her closest relationships. I could have skimmed the entries like I have in the past but I read three long ones and liked them a lot. In a post about her friend Becca, who passed away last month unexpectedly, she included an email exchange they had about experiences performing as human statues in the Boston area. After Becca describes being harassed by a viewer Amanda writes:

"There is no harder job, certainly performing job, than making yourself vulnerable to the world. And you become a magnet of love and hate and craziness. This is why being a statue is so amazing, you are forced to soak up the world in all it’s highs and lows. It does indeed make you stronger because the more humanity runs through your veins, the more human you become (ah, the poetry of the statue being the most human) and incredibly, the more hate you can stomach the more love you can feel."

How much can I stomach? How much should I stomach? How should I stomach it?

I don't fucking know.

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Don't forget that the world premiere of my new cabaret show, Back Where I Belong, is coming up December 12, January 9, and January 17. Details are here. I hope you can make it and bring all your friends! Please spread the word and use the hashtag, #KizzCabaret.