I’m a whole lot of things, just like everyone else. The thing is, I can’t stand labels or the limitations they put in place. I swat them away as if playing a game of ping pong. I don’t want them anywhere near me. So the labels that I do use on myself are really just for descriptive purposes only and not necessarily for the set of rules or connotations that go along with them.
I am a woman who has achieved 34 years of earth age. I say earth age because I swear one of these days, people from my home planet are going to come to take me back. Yes, I realize how crazy that sounds. I don’t care. When you care about as many things as I do as deeply as I do, when you cry real, actual tears for things that happened generations ago and for things that will happen in generations to come if more people don’t start caring as much as you do, you begin to feel like a foreigner to this planet, an alien. As if you cannot possibly be genetically linked to everyone else because if you were, wouldn’t they all care that much, too? I don’t mean to be insulting to others by suggesting that nobody cares about anything. Sometimes I just feel like I care too much about too many things and I’ve been told this on several occasions. How does someone “care too much”? How does someone make herself care less? She doesn’t, but she can talk about the things she cares about in her blog. First order of business, though, is who I am.
I live on a skinny splotch of sand that stretches eastward from New York City and juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, making what looks like a peace sign at the end. Some people say the island is shaped like a fish but I like my peace sign metaphor better. I grew up here as did my parents (same street and all!) which is the same story for many people who are from this area. Everyone’s grandparents are from “the city” as we lovingly refer to it, which means “a borough” – Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, or the Bronx (technically Staten Island, too but nobody moves from SI to LI). It’s tyical American suburbia here but the difference in metro New York is that the veins of the outerlying areas are deeply influenced by the cultural steroid needle injected into the NYC artery itself. In a trickled-outward sense, we are brought up with a rich exposure to the cultural diversity that overflows from the city. Plus, on LI you are never more than 10 minutes away from a beach, which has always been my favorite part of living here. And apparently we have some sort of accent, too.
I was raised by two very young parents who came of age during the Vietnam counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. My mother stayed at home to raise my sister and me until we were old enough to handle things on our own. She instilled in us some very important philosophies on life: 1. There are only two kinds of people – good people and bad people and that nobody should be judged for reasons such as gender, skin color, religion, the person they love, or their appearance. It is the content of someone’s heart and the way they treat others that determines their character; nothing else. 2. To be kind to the earth as she is everyone’s Mother. This means everything our Mother puts here – other humans, all animals (even tiny insects), trees and plants, the soil, the air, the water, and everything that fills all the gaps in between. Nature was, and still is, highly respected and cared for in our household. 3. Always trust your intuition, your instinct, because it will never fail you. There will be times in life when your head is saying one thing and your heart is saying something else. During those times, listen to what your instinct is saying; follow it and you won’t go wrong. 4. She taught us the value of knowing how to curse. Wow, is my mother good at cursing! You have to witness it to experience the full impact and glory. That probably deserves its own post someday…
My father instilled in me the values of respect and hard work. He taught me that there is great wisdom to be learned from your elders. By observing him, I witnessed the way he interacted with his own father and how respectful he was, the way he listened to what my grandfather had to say, the way he always calls him “sir” and I learned that when respect is given, it is earned, that it is reciprocal. Because my mother was a stay-at-home-mom for much of my childhood, my father worked while going to college – sometimes two jobs – to provide for his wife and daughters. Often I’d go days without seeing him. I recall being very young and going with him to his night job as a bank janitor just to spend time with him. He’d let me empty out the garbage cans because they were light and I could lift them. I was four years old. From this, I learned that if you want something, you have to work for it and I learned a sense of responsibility and dedication to one’s family. A work ethic. My sister and I have never just been handed anything in our lives. We were not brats, as some LI stereotypes suggest. We have both paid for our own cars, homes, educations, necessities and luxuries. As a family, we happily gift each other with things when we can because it delights us to do this but the idea was deeply instilled at an early age that if we want something, we had to get it on our own rather than ask someone else. So we did.
I was further impressed upon by a family of almost entirely women. Loud, strong, fabulous, independent women who are unafraid to speak their minds and command an audience. Being surrounded by this ocean of positive female influence my whole life has made me view women as goddesses and feminine energy as extremely powerful. My childhood was spent sitting on the floor gazing up at beautifully coiffed and impeccably dressed females who were all eager to regale one another with whatever thoughts were on their minds. I was never given the impression that women should be in silence. Not in this family!
In terms of the labels I spoke about earlier, sometimes they are just plain unavoidable so a few that apply to me after these 34 years of life experience are:
Aunt, soon-to-be-aunt again, coffee addict, writer, vegetarian, domestic violence/rape survivor, environmentalist, chronic migraine-sufferer, free-thinker, nature-worshipper, intellectual, feminist, singer/dancer, smoker (yeah, I know), perpetual question-asker, obsessive info-seeker, incessant knowledge-dropper, activist, animal lover, neo-hippie, humanist, spiritualist, lover, warrior, friend.
Yes, I realize some of these seem to contradict one another. That’s why I don’t like labels.
The love of my life is a 20 lb. cockerpoo named Nikola (after this guy).
If you’re into the zodiac, I’m a Leo and a textbook example at that. Incidentally, my favorite animal is the lion.
I’m a classic rock girl at heart but I feel no shame in admitting my love for Broadway musicals.
Although, I’m a total sap for nostalgia from my childhood of the 80s and 90s and look back on them fondly, I feel a strange connection to both the 1920s and the 1960s and I find them to be very similar in the way they brought swift cultural change to the world. The identifications are so strong it’s as if I were there, or should have been at least.
I will never say no to a cup of coffee, a smoke, or watching episodes of The Big Bang Theory.
I will never say yes to a piece of meat (14 years and counting) or to being treated like one.
I glean inspiration from anything that tickles my fancy but that usually translates to uniquely memorable women who have changed the world immensely, who may or may not be somewhat odd looking, some of whom are jaw-droppingly talented, who have worked tirelessly for the betterment of humanity and the earth we share, and who nonetheless have made an impact that has earned them the title of “legend”. Examples of such women are Liza Minnelli (who will undoubtedly get her own post), her mother Judy Garland, Cher (whose 1970s hair is the specific inspiration behind my own hip-length black ‘do), Bette Midler, Audrey Hepburn, Mariska Hargitay, Susan B. Anthony, Victoria Beckham, Ellen DeGeneres, Cyd Charisse (just…look), Marilyn Monroe, Rosa Parks, Marie Curie, Julie Andrews, Helen Keller, Janet Jackson, and Diana, Princess of Wales.
And there are plenty of men whom I find fascinating and inspiring, as well. Polymaths, major contributors to humanity through their fields of discipline, and in some cases, nothing less than genius: Michael Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, William Shakespeare, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, Albert Einstein, the Dalai Lama, Bob Marley, Fred Astaire, Nelson Mandela, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Savion Glover, Nikola Tesla, Charles Dickens and Benjamin Franklin…and keep in mind that neither of these lists are close to being all-inclusive.
And of course RuPaul. Because Ru teaches us that, “If you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”.
I’m happiest when I’m trying to make the world a nicer place, which could mean anything from buying a bagel for a homeless dude to refreshing an old end table with a coat of paint to planting this year’s annuals with my mother to walking around my neighborhod and picking up garbage. My life doesn’t mean anything if I’m living it selfishly so I try to do as much as I can to benefit someone or something else at all times. Even if it just means smiling at someone. It might be the only thing I have to give at the moment but I will give it.
Finally, my passion for life is beyond description. This is why I am accused of caring too much. This is why I have an obsession with Liza Minnelli that borders on pathological. This is why I have grown my hair so long I literally sit on it. This is why I procrastinate; because I’m not going to do something if I’m not ready to actually commit myself fully and do it correctly. When I do something, I do it all the way. I half-ass nothing. When I feel my feelings, I really feel them. I use italics a lot to emphasize the passion behind my words (when italics are unavaliable, I use ALL CAPS). So where other people have one or two or even ten things that they care a whole lot about and that get them really worked up, I have infinite things that get me that way. If it is something that I’m not yet familiar with, I learn about it so that I can decide how to feel about it. I don’t allow myself to be the person who doesn’t know something, can’t contribute to a discussion, has no opinion on a topic, or isn’t willing to fight for a cause. I am not that girl. Everything is worth knowing about and feeling something toward.
Life is for living. I want to experience and enjoy every moment of it. If every moment can’t be enjoyable (and it can’t, let’s be honest), I at least want it to be worthwhile and memorable, for lessons to be learned, for feelings to be felt, and for others to benefit from my existence in some way.
To Be In Silence 