Rhythm is a Dancer

Last night I had the following conversation with a woman in the change rooms at the gym:

Woman in Leopard Print G-String: Are you pregnant?

Me in Ultra Stretch Granny Pants : Yes

WILPGS: How many months are you? You're still going to the gym!?

MIUSGP (bristling): Nearly six months. Yes. I still go the the gym.

WILPGS: How do you find it?

MIUSGP: It's good. But you just have to vary some things depending on how you feel.

WILPGS: Good on you. Well done you.

Phew! Cat fight in the gym quickly diverted to sisterhood rulz!

For the record, I did a body jam class. I find dancing in any form really helpful for me during this pregnancy. Belly dance, latin, african. All the styles that make you move your hips. The baby seems to like it as well.




Belly dance is great for pregnancy, and for women in general!


Afterwards I met up with my husband who said:

Husband Who Can't Dance: What class did you do?

Me: Body jam

HWCD: What?! What are you doing that now? Isn't it too vigorous?!

Oh good grief. I can't win.

Still I Rise

The indomitable Maya Angelou put a spring in my step yesterday when I was feeling particularly knackered and fed up with the symptoms of pregnancy:

Still I Rise


You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise
I rise
I rise.

-Maya Angelou




What a woman!



The He(Art) of Society

At uni the other day, I looked up from cram reading in the library for the last four hours and reflected on how lucky I am.  The reams of notes in front of me looked hieroglyphic to my tired eyes and I knew I had another two hours at least to go.

But to be immersed in ideas, thoughts, creativity and abstraction is such a luxury. Especially when I have spent year upon year looking at spreadsheets, production schedules, budgets, funding reports and other crap I had no real investment in.

It takes awhile for the brain to gain legs once you have set it free to roam again. Mine's screaming Bloody Murder as it's un-used to all this space to think and dream and create.

Conservative political and economic thought (such as the policies that are running rife through this country right now) believe that arts and the humanities are novel pre-occupations and not in the same category as medicine or engineering or science or accountancy.

So if you agree, do this. Turn off your tv and smash it. Break all your DVDs. Never go the cinema or theater again. Burn all your books and magazines. Take down any paintings from your wall and chuck them. Same goes for any sculpture, figurines or textiles. Destroy all your music. Have someone else choose all your clothes and decorations and furnishings in your house as aesthetics won't matter to you.

Stop thinking. We don't need you anymore. Bad Rodin. Bad artist.

Humans can no more exist without the arts as we can without food and water. We need it to nourish our idea of ourselves as well as to understand one another. We need it to develop as a society.

Otherwise what is there?

The Kids Are All Right...but What About the Parents?

I have a favourite person that I love to go to the movies with. She never talks to me during an important part of the film. She never asks me afterwards, What did you think? I never have to worry if she is hating the film and wants to leave. We are in perfect sync, always.

That person, is me.

When you visit the cinema on your own you are anonymous in the dark amongst a crowd of strangers; all entranced (or not as the case may be) by the flickering screen. It's not the same when you have someone you know sitting next to you. How can you escape and give yourself up to the movie when the person next to you knows your real name and perhaps what you had for lunch that day? I'm also one of those people that always worrys if the other person is enjoying themselves. That's why for me, cinema is a dish best sampled solo.

Rudimentary cliched cinema picture

Seeking a few hours escape amidst a very stressful week, I ducked in to see The Kids Are All Right recently. The film had been on my radar for several months. All the reviews I'd read had fallen over themselves in gushing praise. This coupled with the fact that it stars two of my favourite actors, Julianne Moore and Annette Bening was reason enough for me to sit back and relax in anticipation of the story ahead.

I emerged blinking into the daylight several hours later. Quite frankly I was relieved to not have to spend anymore time with the film, and by that I chiefly mean the two main female characters who I found annoying.  It's beyond my comprehension why the film has garnered the reviews it has. Is it because it would be seen as non PC to say that a film about a lesbian couple has very unsympathetic characters; one who exerts her control freakery through her family life while the other takes out her angst on whoever comes across her path through sleeping with them or firing them. Both actors fared much better in their other films about dysfunctional families -Bening in an American Beauty and Moore with Savage Grace, Far From Heaven and The Hours.  I thought the kids were all right in this film, but the parents, well, that's a whole other story.