Grateful to be Me

I'd had no intention of watching "Dateline," a news show, this past Friday night. I just couldn't turn away from the shots of a gaunt, pale woman preparing to shave her head. The voiceover explained that she'd been fighting cancer for several years, and this round of chemotherapy had caused her hair to fall out. Determined to stay in control of what she could, she defiantly turned on the clippers and removed the last few locks clinging to her head like cobwebs in a corner.
At first I didn't recognize her, thinking it was just another unfortunate saga of life threatening illness. Then the announcer said her name: Farrah Fawcett. I froze. This is the actress I was so jealous of when I was a pudgy, socially awkward ninth grader with bad skin? At the time, she'd starred in "Charlie's Angels." I had tried really hard to get my nondescript brown hair to look like hers, tried to starve myself down to her size so that I, too, could wear a red bathing suit as she had in the iconic poster. Boys would fight for the privilige of my company, and so on with the fantasies of a fourteen year old.
It took time, but my skin calmed down, my weight stablized at a healthy if non-Hollywood level for myself, and I started getting my hair cut by professionals rather than trying to do it myself in a bathroom mirror with less than optimal scissors. The guys showed up, too, poets and techies rather than the lowest all-too-common denominator that she appealed to.
I don't recall anything that she'd been in after "Charlie's Angels," save a disasterous appearnce on David Letterman, until now. She'd been a fixture in the tabloids, though, and done a video for "Playboy" for her fiftieth birthday.
I sincerely doubt I will do the same when my fifthieth rolls around. But I am pretty confident that I won't be allowing filming of my final days.

Like Junior High, Only More So

I didn't bother with the Oscars this last Sunday night.
OK, you caught me. I watched a little of the entrance on the red carpet in the event of a fashion disaster, but nothing stood out. One bit of trivia from the commontators caught my attention: there are two lanes for traffic on the red carpet. One is for the writers, directors, composers and so on not considered A-list. They get trundled into the theater at a quick pace. That way, the A-listers get their photos snapped without the risk of commoners contaminating the glamor.
Why do we support these people? I wondered to myself. As much as I would love to say that I have disengaged the buttons about popularity and prettiness installed during my overweight (thanks to much later diagnosed adrenal and thyroid issues), awkward adolescense, my inner thirteen year old cringed. Why do we give money to an industry that has developed ridiculous standards of beauty and wealth? It would be cheaper to hire a dominatrix to abuse us for an hour or so at a time rather than deal with the in your faceness of it all in mainstream media.
Some years ago, I found out that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. In a writer's group that I used to belong to, I met a survivor of the Hollywood scene. Over post-meeting coffee one night, he was asked what working out there was like. "Oh, my god; it's like junior high, only more so," he said, rolling his eyes.
Aha. It wasn't just me. I mulled this as The Spouse and I spent the evening watching a detective film from Sweden.
In the morning, we flipped on the news to see the results. "Slumdog Millionaire's" welcomed but anticlimactic victory for best picture warmed my heart, as did "Juno" winning best screenplay last year. Maybe the Academy will take the hint and start making pictures that will help us all grow up.

Friday Journal Class

Go get your writing implements, your journals, your candles, tea, chocolate. Turn on some music if you'd like. I'll wait.
OK, ready? Let's try a couple of short exercises.
1. Take a couple of deep breaths. We're going to work with the prompt, "Here and now, I am..." Complete the sentence and continue writing. If you get stuck, start over again with the prompt. You'll know when you're done.
2.Set a timer for ten minutes. Write as fast as you can until it dings. You may do this on a selected topic, or you may simply let the pen rip until time's up.
My experience with these exercises? I've had nothing, or apparently nothing happen. I've also had ideas for projects begin to crystallize on the page, like maple syrup on snow. Most importantly, they've both given me insight into where I've been on a given day and direction on where I need to go from there.