Loose Hips

The latest belly dancer painting. She's gouache, on Arches paper. If you want a print of her, click the cafepress button at the bottom of the page. She's on some shirts and mugs and suchlike, too.

Just part of my latest burst of enthusiasm. For those of you that know me, when you start to imagine me shimmying, just picture a big red stop sign, or yell "STOP!!" to yourself, or snap a rubber band on your wrist, or pepper-spray yourself, or consider a tazer, though they are illegal in New York.

But if you are interested in an exercise that will get to muscles your personal trainer has never heard of, that requires so little room it can be done in the bathroom with the door locked, I recommend shimmying. http://www.shira.net has lots of information and instructions, and animated camels besides.

Thrills and Zills, But No Spills

Another belly-dancer illustration. She's playing zills, little finger cymbals. She's a brush drawing using gouache, which is an opaque watercolor (though as you see, it can be thinned to transparency).




If you happened to be driving behind a small white jeep-like object Monday that sometimes crept along at 20 miles an hour, and sometimes left smoking rubber on the pavement before suddenly braking and veering onto the shoulder, I apologise with all my heart. I was learning to drive my father's car, a 1988 manual-transmission Suzuki Samurai sometimes known as the Kamakazi, sometimes as the Ice Cream truck. You might have seen me and Roy, my mother's hapless handyman pressed into service as a driving instructor, with our mouths open in perfect O's. He's very nice, and only screams when he can't stop himself.

For only my second time behind the wheel since I was sixteen, I thought I did relatively well, particularly when that wide road through the quiet suburb narrowed and began to wind up that hillside, separated from the precipitous drop only by a slender wire fence and the unsure touch on the wheel of my soft, nerveless hands.

Like the girl in the Red Shoes, I found that I had to keep going because I couldn't stop. Did I have to shift down through all the gears to first before we stopped? If I braked to turn while in a higher gear, would the car stall?

I couldn't ask Roy, because forming words with my mouth and vocalizing them was too demanding to do and still keep the car on the road. So we followed the exact same route I had taken as a teenager many years ago, when I stole my parents' car. Well, I didn't think of it as "stole."

I borrowed it. Without their knowledge. Having only a learner's permit.

I did bring it back. They'd never have known, if it weren't for the support post I bashed backing out of the garage. That's backing OUT of the garage. You'd think I'd have called off the whole snakebit enterprise after that, wouldn't you? But I figured I had already gotten myself into irretrievably hopeless trouble, so I might as well have the adventure I was inevitably going to pay for. Therefor I headed out of town in another of my father's beloved dangerously tiny Japanese cars, this one a Honda coupe so small it could be picked up by four college students and carried around a parking lot, which of course we know because whenever we parked at a college it was.

Now I know why I took that route: no turns, no stops. A back road, woods, no traffic, no neighborhoods, no kids on bikes. It was a giant loop, so I didn't even have to turn around, and I made it home alive. Which I rather regretted for a while after my parents came home to their bashed-in garage. Instead of suggesting I practice backing up, they grounded me until I was thirty. They should have made me pay for the garage repairs, but under the blood/turnip rule, I was excused.

I never did anything that flagrantly dangerous, illegal and fun again. I never drove again, either. By the time my grounding was over, my driving chops were cold, and the lessons I'd had with Mr Singh (who was moonlighting from his job at yes, Sing-Sing) were long forgotten. I resumed being a non-driver. Then I resumed being a New Yorker (I was removed without my permission when I was nine months old, but I always knew I'd be back), and never felt the need to drive again, not until my father died.

Dancing in the Dark

So much has slipped by since last I wrote, and it's clear that what I thought was recovery was still only shock. A great blow to the psyche is no different, I think, than a physical wound:

First, numbness, curious detachment: "Look, how funny! My arm isn't there any more!"

Next, the pain starts. Realization is far away, but now you know things are awry. At the same time that the effects of the blow are spreading, agents of healing--white blood cells, friends with casseroles--are speeding to the wound site.

Then, the top most visible layer resolves itself into a delicate, protective surface, easily broken, but it keeps the body together. I am here, veneered with a few microns of composure.

Those microns needing shoring up, I cast about for distraction, something healthier than the deadly combo of scotch and brownies I had been utilizing when my father died. Yes, I learned to down Scotch neat in a single night! With a brownie chaser.

I hadn't eaten anything that wasn't beige or brown for weeks, so I began trying to eat a brighter variety of things--fruits and vegetables. And I found FIT-TV, a channel devoted entirely to exercise. Ordinarily I'd have watched those wiry grinning rubber people bouncing on their yoga mats from a reclining position, but a certain program attracted my attention, and it did not star wiry grinning rubber people, it featured lovely curvy slithery rubber people belly dancing.

Belly dancing! Belly dancing on purpose, rather than the impromptu gravity-inspired riffs inspired by scotch and brownies. In the privacy of home, where only my little husband, who loves a shimmy no matter how uneven or how much is shimmying, could see.

So I have become consumed with enthusiasm for Oriental dancing, not just for the spine-tingling, strengthening hip circles, or the Goddessy, fertile-women-have-curves-and-shake-them overtones, but also for all the sparkly, jingly, flowy stuff you get to wear.





It all plays into one of my credos: If You Can't Hide It, Decorate It. And After You've Decorated It, Wiggle It.


So I've been painting belly dancers, and,



THIS JUST IN FROM THE FILTHY LUCRE DEPT:



YOU CAN BUY THEM!



Yes, all two readers besides me, I crumpled in the face of demand and made my blog more commercial. I opened a cafepress store, which means somewhere in time and space are a lot of blank T-shirts and mugs and such-like, which you can order with Snarkopolitan artwork on them (Click on the button at the bottom of the page). Right now, it's rather belly dancercentric, but I'll be adding all kinds of mischief. Yes, I'm flying in the face of half the stated purpose of my blog (frugality) to promote my own welfare by trumpeting a fledgling commercial enterprise to benefit me, your author. Please feel free to revel in the unstated purpose of my blog, blind, unthinking consumerism.


But, shameless commercialism over, I must tell you that if I've ever appreciated the warmth of blood flowing through my veins, I never have done more than now. That is good reason to dance.