center mikey nobody else should be the CENTER of your life. i never again will make anyone the absolute center of my life again. I MYSELF am the center. everything else comes from within then outwards. you cannot love another truly if you dont love yourself. i read so much about everyone falling apart because the one they love left or is leaving or needs space. i was once feeling this VERY often. until i realized why i stayed single for so long. i think its wrong to bring someone into your life if your life is not where you want it. nobody can "complete" you unless you are complete in yourself. if you respond to this stop and THINK before you do. ask yourself how many relationships youve had that you yourself were "content" with yourself BEFORE the relationship started. if you werent..how did it end? this is simply ONE way of looking at it. i try and look at things many ways so that maybe someday i will make myself stronger and wiser. 010318 ... soia I agree with you completely. But this is definitely one of those things that is easier said than done. I've just come to the end of 3 years of leaning on someone completely and totally, of trying to make him the center of my universe. Even now that I can see that I need to stand on my own, I still feel stranded. I still feel scared. I still would very easily let him take his place back if he wanted (oh and lucky me, he doesn't). I've learned how to like myself. But I'm still learning how to fill this hole that was ripped out of my heart. Like cinderella- she took pieces of discarded property to make her dress, and then they ripped it off of her, left her naked. But there's no fairy godmother here. 010318 ... mikey i agree its easier said then done. gosh i wish i could follow it 100% myself. the thing is though its truly a positive. think about it....if we love ourselves...respect ourselves...are happy with ourselves...wouldnt that make any relationship we have..richer? and more fuller and complete? how much do we all lean to much...have to many fears...get scared....mistrust....how many of these negative feelings are simply based on our OWN unhappiness? 010318 ... sober chew it up and leave 010318 ... anonymouse how many licks does it take to get to the center of the tootsie pop??? its actually a very scientific experiment depending on the duration of your licks, the temperature outside, the angle you hold the stick etc...With all these variables one will never know...and until a practical method of testing is made i will die a sad unfulfilled lonely anonymouse 010713 ... silentbob two pills just weren't enough the alarm clocks going off but youre not waking up this isn't happening happening happening happening ...it is. 030930 ... tender square ms. robinson was always telling me i wasn’t “working from my center.” that everything in graham technique came from that place, a necessary core which allowed all movement to unfold. i didn’t know what she meant, and the more i tried to focus on finding the feeling, of concretizing the abstract, the more elusive it became. “center cassie, center!” she would bark at me during warm-ups. i was the only one she’d ever reprimand in class for this. grade nine was the first time i’d ever taken modern dance and it quickly became my favorite class even though ms. robinson played sonique’s “feel so good” and seal’s “kiss from a rose” like they were the only songs that ever existed. even though she wore t-shirts with cutout neck holes and leg warmers overtop her leggings like she was reincarnating flashdance. i didn’t study with her outside of school like the other girls did, the girls whom she preferred and praised. i was the interloper. but i felt free; bare feet callousing against the old gymnasium wood floor, my limbs looser without the constrictive tights and leotards i’d worn for years, contracting and releasing my coiled and electric body. modern dance wasn’t about holding positions so much as allowing yourself to loosen into them. that dance could be about an expression of the individual rather than the pursuit of an unattainable ideal, an intrinsic part of ballet’s agenda, was nothing short of a revelation for me. near the end of freshman year, ms. robinson told us about a summer program at the school of toronto dance for intensive study of graham’s techniques and that she had brochures to take if we wanted them. when i approached her after class for more information she bristled, “are you sure you that’s a good fit for you?” i’d struck a nerve. my parents didn’t allow me to go anyway, even though i suggested living with my aunt in burlington for the summer and paying for the program with money i’d saved babysitting. convincing others of my dream’s validity was tiresome, and i was expected to stay close to home like my other siblings. one year, our high school was planning to put on “jesus christ superstar” and the rock opera lent itself to some new slant in mrs. robinson’s stilted choreography. we had only been working on the musical’s overture, which was this cacophonous, threatening mess of a song. it opens with this dark guitar solo before shifting into unsettling chimes and a frenzy of discordant strings and horns. then it has this psychedelic shift that completely disintegrates into this orchestral revelation before the bottom drops out and eerie voices moan its ending. the song and the movements ignited me in a way that i had never danced before. when we were rehearsing in the auditorium, our drama teacher, mr. lewsaw, and richard, a classmate, dropped in to watch. i gave it everything i had, and for once it wasn’t because i knew i being looked at, but rather, it was because i felt like i was contacting or receiving this primal energy i’d never been in touch with before. maybe it was a lesser version of ecstatic dance, i don’t know. but afterward, richard told me that he and lewsaw were floored by what i’d done, that they had no idea i could dance like that. i guess i didn’t know i had it in me either. sadly the musical never went into further production because another theatre company in the city scooped up the rights before we could and we had to settle for “joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat” instead. there was another time that we had an open call for choreography to present at western university in conjunction with other dance programs in the area and ms. brode, our ballet teacher, asked if anyone wanted to take on a solo piece. when none of the other dancers raised their hands, i volunteered to create a modern dance number. i already knew the song i’d use and had a vision for how i imagined it would look; i’d recently seen graham’s “in lamentation” and wanted to dance inside of the same kind of stretching bag she used for the performance, using moby’s “inside” as my backing track. whenever i presented the piece in rehearsal, it was largely met with indifference by my peers. the same thing happened when i finally performed it in london, but i didn’t care. i didn’t create it for anyone else. after high school i quit dance, my heart just wasn’t in it anymore. in my final class we watched a video recording of our senior dance show and the other dancers laughed whenever the camera caught my stage snafus. i felt that i had ruined the pieces they’d entrusted me to be a part of, to execute with accuracy. all the avenues i had envisioned for that life were blocked; i would never be a professional—i had the presence on stage but my body had its limitations. my development had plateaued. it was a painful break to let go of a talent i had nurtured for most of my life up to that point, my first form of creative expression as a child. after a long hiatus, i found the courage to try an hnm modern class in my twenties and, unexpectedly, ms. robinson was one of the fellow students there. she was cordial but i could tell she wasn’t exactly happy to see me. the teacher asked me how long it had been since i’d last danced seeing that i was a newcomer, an interloper in this clique too. i said i’d do my best but that i didn’t expect much considering how long it’d been. but i managed to keep up with the others even though my flexibility had diminished; my body remembered and responded in kind. after class the teacher approached me again: “when did you say the last time you danced was?” “five years,” i said. he bowed his head slightly and nodded, smiling to himself, an unspoken acknowledgement of what i had achieved there. i don’t know whether i’ve located center yet; my solar plexus twists like a wind-swept stem. i am a living hinge that swings open and shut; my belly a balloon rising and falling, tugged by an invisible line. 210826 ... raze i've got all kinds of stories about all these characters. richard even has his own blathe here. but ms. robinson ... what a peach she was. my first memory of her is having her scream at me because my shoes were "stupid", and then having mr. vacratsis try to brush it off by saying, "well, she was probably having a bad day." which is understandable, really. i also scream at other people's footwear when i'm upset. don't we all? my favourite two episodes both involved jon grieves. when i was in grade eleven, ms. robinson was teaching a music theater class. it had nothing to do with music and very little to do with theater. we were sitting in the first few auditorium seats while she sat on the stage ranting about something that had some nominal connection to acting. i noticed she was using "okay" and "all right" as empty syntax the way some people lean on "like" and "you know". it wasn't subtle. i started keeping tabs on her. every time she said "okay" or "all right", i drew a hash mark on a piece of lined paper. jon was sitting next to me. after a few minutes, he leaned over and said, "dude, she just said 'okay' like forty-three times!" i looked down at my tally marks. there were eight groups of five and three more lines that were uncrossed. on a different day in the same class, ms. robinson asked jon an arbitrary question in the middle of what was supposed to be a group discussion. he said, "that's my business, and i'll thank you not to stare." it short-circuited her brain. she didn't know what to say. she couldn't even dredge up an "okay" or an "all right". some people shouldn't be allowed to teach. she was one of those people. but she was good for a bit of unexpected entertainment once in a while. 210826 ... epitome of incomprehensibility One guy counted how many times our Philosophy of Communication teacher said "you know." The teacher wasn't bad, but it was a class that started at 8:30 AM. On a Friday. (This was CEGEP - think "grade 12 + first year college") James, the student, wrote a story that I ended up editing (I was one of the assistant editors for the student arts/literary magazine in my second year there). In it, a man walks into his room only to see his wife in the "throws of passion" with a stranger. I wasn't the first to see this typo. I was doing the editing at my friend J's house and she saw the file and started laughing. Me: What are you laughing about? J: You'll see. The story didn't do much with what seemed like an overused situation. But? His odd and soulful ballad about a journeying man won one of that year's poetry prizes. ...As for the word, I've just noticed I tend to spell it "centre" - the British way. Canadians are often left waffling about spelling, sometimes looking south and sometimes across the ocean for direction. All I know is that we're supposed to write "colour" but never "programme" (seulement si on écrit en français). 210826 ... e_o_i In case it wasn't clear, it wasn't that the wife in James' story was having sex with someone who was a stranger to HER. And maybe he wasn't even a stranger to the main character either. Anyway, it was an affair that had been going on for a while, so more angst for the character. And maybe I was being harsh yesterday, saying the story wasn't that original. But I did think he was better at poetry. I'm the other way around, though sometimes I happen upon a good poetic line. I think I have a problem finding a "centre" for poems, and I'm not just saying that because of the blathe title. It's hard finding a core to build everything around and stick to that. Maybe a poet would say, "Then find another - you don't have to stick with what you started with," and that's true! But my meandering mind tends to work better with the form of stories or story-like nonfiction. I still write poetry from time to time and I like reading it, but for my own work I'm focusing more on fiction. 210827 ... tender_square "i think you idealize that i have a strong sense of self, of center," he said. "in what way?" she asked. "well, i may have a detailed understanding of what my values and boundaries are," he said. "that comes with being someone who's more introverted. but i'm always afraid of being crushed by the world when i try to enact it." "see, and for me, i feel like if i just knew how to describe what those abstract boundaries are, i would have no problem enforcing them externally," she said. "it's the naming and knowing that i struggle with." 230412 what's it to you? who go blather from