What to do about the celebrity inside...

There's a celebrity inside of me. But there's a problem. Nobody knows it but me...

I grew up a child in the spotlight, always singing, always dancing, playing the violin/viola. Winning competitions, singing the solos, taking the spotlight. But what has happened since?

You hear famous people speaking of their hard work all of the time, about how they just worked their way, and are in hungry pursuit of their ultimate dreams. Here's where I'm confused about my world. What is my hard work? I mean sure, I've said I want to be an opera singer, and that means getting the voice in place, learning the music, and landing auditions...Well, that would be okay if I were content to trot from opera house to opera house the rest of my life. There is a huge chunk of me that wants more. A greater influence. But am I enough of a person to deliver such? Is there enough substance in me to get to the red carpet? I suppose my next question should comb through my motives in wanting fame. Yes, I say that I want to make an impact, that I have dreams. But why? Just because I'm talented doesn't mean I have A-lister potential! I believe that much of it is the competitive, or admittedly egotistical, part of me that wants to somehow be at the very top of my game. And then there's the whole almost 30 issue. I'm majorly running out of time. And the weight? Oh boy, that's a big one. No pun intended.

I'm in such a weird place right now. Not knowing if I want to stay in Fresno, not really knowing if I want to, or need to, do the practical thing and go back...and then, my mother....I heard weariness in her voice today and I didn't like it. There was a piece of life missing. She said she was fine, but it was unmistakable. And in fact, it may be something that she can't feel yet. But I heard it unmistakably. I'm losing her.

So, where does that leave me? WHAT, once and for all, do I want out of my life??????

Dancer, Singer, Writer, Actress, Education Professional...and at one time I thought myself to be a visionary, but it isn't so anymore. I don't see past today. Is that my fault? Is it how I'm surviving? Will it pass? What can I do about it? Now there's a real question...maybe I need a life coach...

Okay, I'm officially on a search for the design of my world, how I want my life to speak of the things inside of me. I'm looking for an "X" to mark the spot for the etching of my footprints...no more elipsces, incomplete thoughts still waiting as a turn the bend on another venture around the same mountain. I'm done with asking these same questions. However, I do have to give myself credit that I have peeled back more and more layers of myself and am finally reaching the core. Yeah, I'm reaching the core. It has purpose and a direction. I just hope that at last I will begin to see it all unfold and be fulfilled.

Question of the day: What are you going to do about the ______________ inside?

Who would I have been?

I didn't dress up for Halloween this year. No parties, no drunken one night stand. And besides fearing that I'd get robbed and shot by this guy with a machine gun who stopped his car right by me as I walked down the street, no goblins or ghosts. But if I would have dressed up, had a place to wear a clever costume, what would I have been?

I suppose the whole Halloween identity is the only time of year when people are allowed the indulgence of being something they are not, and even, someone they wish they were. Don't we women all want to be some sort of tempting vixen, a coveted princess, an exalted heroine? For me, I'm not sure. I mean, these days, I feel like I'm walking around wearing a mask as it is, floundering around in a city I hate, working a job I'm handicapped in doing well, wishing I was anywhere else. Why did my amazing teacher have to live here? Why not some place beautiful with stunning scenery and plucky people? There is nothing for anyone in this town, let alone ME!!

I truly know what it feels like to live day by day. It's so disarming, so driveless. I'm scared of not waking up in enough time to face the day and even more scared to go to sleep for fear I will actually wake up. They say you design your own life, create your own world, but why do I feel paralysed to do either? God, how depressing it is that I'm even writing this, but you know, it's easy to feel like this. Powerless and numb. It's the excuse for not being productive and impacting. Fat and selfish.

What would I have been for Halloween? A selfless, inspired, heartful...me...

Question of the day: Couldn't you stand to indulge in a better you?

Bleeding Through the Bandaid

I'm bleeding, profusely, from a lifeline artery, and I'm applying a bandaid. Why? Because that's how I've survived the many days of my past 10+ years. My former marriage was a bandaid for fear of lonliness. My divorce was a bandaid for fear of suicide. My disease of debt is layers and layers of bandaids pulling away at my hair folicles. A symptom of the fear of lack.

My best friend told me today that I'm not trying hard enough, that I need to stop making such bad decisions out of fear and do what I need to do. My question to her was the same as it has always been. "What can I do?" "What choice can I make?" I feel so burried under a sea of faulty, choices that I don't really see how making good ones now can really save me. But something's gotta give, right? There has to be a day coming in my life when it flows, when it's moving forward and not aimlessly wandering to and fro. She thinks I'm not trying hard enough. Hmmm...I think she's right. In fact, I know she's right. She is always my voice of reason, one of very few people who can alter the course of my thinking. And further, the singular person on this earth I rely on for sound advice. And today, she spoke to me with an authority I've rarely heard from her. She spoke belief into my calling to sing but slapped me into the reality of how I'm standing in my own way. "Faith without works is dead," she quoted. I didn't fully understand what she meant and I tried to argue, but knew she was speaking the absolute truth with pristine clarity. She wasn't just talking about practicing or even earning more money. Putting myself in a position to be blessed with a life full of what I am called to do. "Be completely you," she said.

And here's my next question, Who am I completely? For whatever reason, I thought I had this one in the bag long ago. But I was wrong. I can't answer that question for anything in this world. I mean, I know my flaws. I know my likes and dislikes. I know what brings me joy, pain. But I don't know WHO I am! Like my voice, I'm all fluff and no core. Bummer... and hence all of the bandaids, self-soothing my way through life. Assimilating to the point of compromising my identity, allowing intimidation to . But then, why am I strong? How have I pulled through abandonment, abuse, more abandonment, heart-break, and coerced independence? Have the bandaids just been holding up that well?

These are important questions that have no immediate answers. The most significant thing about them is that are now the pink elephant in the room. And how big and colorful they are. I'm baffled, but what's good is that I don't feel powerless. Doesn't it make things better to know that although you have a disease, that it's treatable, curable even?

I have a severed artery and have nearly bled out, but I'm not supposed to die on the operating table. I cannot go gently into that good night, nor can I slowly fade away. Then I think about the private rantings of others. Their lonliness, their near suffocation at not being able to get things right. Their tears and exasperation. I'm not alone in any of that. It's so dark, all of it, but I'll close tonight with these most fitting words, the most profound set of words I could ever quote:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, `Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us. It's in everyone, and, as we let our light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianna Wilson (not Nelson Mandela as it is often miscredited)

Question of the day: Are the symptoms of your fears severing your lifelines?

I've got talent button

Image via Wikipedia

Four seasons now, I've watched America's Got Talent and have cheered with the best and booed or at least rolled on the floor booing the worst, of what this show portrayed as the raw best of American acts. As an opera singer, I've shunned participating myself claiming that it would cheapen my respectability amongst legitimate opera professionals and thus was not something that I should do. However, in the last couple of seasons "opera" singers have appeared and even won the title of the most talented act in America along with a million dollars and a Vegas contract. And yes, I've sat in front of the TV and critiqued their woefully lacking technique and the hype surrounding them, but you know, they've actually inspired me...

I have two mothers. One gave birth to me and the other raised me. But what ties these two women, besides their niece/aunt kinship, is the fact that both of them had singing dreams that never came true. Life was not in favor of such things for them. My birth mother, nerves and subsequent mental illness derailed her. The mother who raised me (my great-aunt biologically) lived in a time when this wasn't as likely for her race. And although a chosen few inspirators made it through, Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Marian Anderson, Shirley Verette, etc. she chose the road to feed her young family. And that's why I was born. I was born to link together the unheard voices of these women, to bring them to the stage with thrice the impact.

In my quest towards honing my voice for the opera house, there's been a burning desire within to give my voice, compounded with my mothers, a unique path. And I want people to view opera as more than just a big woman making her ascent in a long blonde wig and horns. How human its stories, how tangible its drama, how real its beauty. It's not just for a social class or race, it's for humanity.

In the tab next to the one where I'm writing this, I've got the AGT audition pre-registration site up. Tomorrow, I'm going to make a 2-3 minute video telling a little of my story and singing Io son l'umile ancella. Lastly, I'll click on the "I've got talen" button to submit...

...and hopefully, in some months, I'll be reporting that, "I'm going to Vegas!"

Question of the day:

What's your story and when are you going to start telling it?

The questions?

Oh boy this is gonna be deep. Not really. It's just that this blog of mine has taken on a level of lameness that makes me ask, "Who is going to be interested in reading this?" "Would I even want to read about someone who thinks he or she is all novel in their carthartic 'figuring-my-life-out verbiage? garbage?" I don't know. I was walking yesterday in the hot Fresno sun and contemplated to no end whether I should just erase it all and start over. Then no one would have to know how uncommitted I am to the initial 90-day challenge I set out for myself.

The other day, my best friend forever began quoting me passages from this God-forsaken blog and I all of a sudden felt very exposed, like she was reading out of one of my teenage locked diaries (the only two of which I had that I had to break into myself because I lost the keys...sigh.) I mean, of course I knew that this is published to the internet and anyone can read it, but because I never had a particular audience in mind, really didn't think what could happen if someone did.

So next question, What picture of myself am I creating by post these rantings? Writing has a way of revealing that speech does not. When we let printed words have their say, they speak the truth loudly and vividly until they become a story...so I suppose, lameness and all, a story is what I'll be...

Question of the day: What story would your words tell if they were written?

Prodigal Writer

Well, well...look what we have here! The prodigal writer has returned home to blog once again. Obviously, I've strayed far from the 90 day path, abandoning the logging of many a profound thought. But what can I say, I saw the movie Julie and Julia a couple of days ago and I was convicted. Many critics I've seen have said they could have just done with the Julia part, but I needed that. I can relate to that "what do I do with my life" funk, the "how do I make my life mean something" stagnation.

I've made it to California, to Fresno, "Where California takes you into its Heart." What a strange city this is, big but small minded. Sprawling not too much of anythingness. A place of dry heat and humid quietness where it seems even the trees try not to disturb in their rigid sway. I came here for one thing and one thing only...to sing, and so far I have allegedly made quite the impression in these parts. On August 2, 2009, I sang my very first opera role ever, Suor Angelica. And what a place to start! Though he never knew it, Puccini wrote this role just for me to sing on this day at my age and history pressed up against its gripping drama. This wasn't an accident, but rather a collision with purpose. And isn't that the goal of a life, to create timeless works of art that collide with person after person, universally? Thank you, Puccini!

But here I sit in the afterglow of the ill-fated Suor Angelica and fear that I have somehow never gotten up off the ground from the final high 'C' I was staged to sing flat on my back. "Salva mi" I cried into the rafters of the Shagoian theatre, so the review said, speaking not only for Angelica, but for myself and all the uncertainties waiting to greet me in the wings. the opera was certainly a success, but the woman behind the singer is still in need of salvation. How will I survive the months, years before true success manifests and my name precedes me and I don't have to worry about how to pay rent and how I can be mobile without a car.

This is the cross I bear today and the reason why I filled the final pages of my "Faith" journal, one that I've been keeping for about four years, with words of lament. One may say that these are trivial problems that can be easily overcome, that I should keep my head up because it will all work out. But the root of these difficulties are far more ugly than the symptoms. I'm in need of a cure, a remedy to live this life in a better way, a new way. A way that will lead to the extraordinariness I feel I'm called to, a final way around this mountain and up the steep hike to self-actualization. Wow, now there's a term! Talk about the road less traveled! That final journal entry was a catharsis, a purging of phlegm, of congestive matter that although still sniffling, has helped me see that in a few days I will likely get better. And then I will fully appreciate what it's like to be well, whole. But until then, my back is pressed to the stage floor, SAVE ME...

Question of the day: What do you most often need to be rescued from?

I've been loved and committment

Okay, so I've already fallen off the commitment wagon and missed two precious thought-filled days of writing. Gosh, what shall I do? Shall I fret and and beat myself up? Shall I cheat and write two extra posts and date stamp them for the last two days? Or shall I just
come up with a better way? The utmost latter...doing this thing before the
toothpaste and morning pee. Yeah, halitosis and bladder denial. This ought to be good...


It's surprising I'm even up this early, but I won't claim that I've done it alone. At 7am, I took 30MG's of Adderall. I'm one of the lucky ones. It's actually a prescription. In my last year of college I was sitting on a gold mine and didn't even know it! Hahahahaha...hahaha..haha..ha...ah-HEM...just kidding. I've been feeling so scattered, smothered, covered, the plea I made to my psychiatrist over three years ago. This transition gets makes its next inevitable stop in less than two weeks now and I'm still looking at the four piles of clothes that need to be packed, petrified of putting them in boxes because that means that it's definite, no unpacking til I get to the other side. These last few days I've toyed with the thought that the only reason I'm going through with it at all is because I already have a plane ticket, sigh... I read the other day (via @saralena) that reports now say that ADD drugs aren't effective after two years and stunts your growth. Fortunately for me, I wasn't diagnosed until the ripe old age of 26 and even if I hadn't been, my Amazonian family genes would have made up the difference. I rounded out at 5'9" so I certainly could have spared an inch or two. And as for the only working for the first two years, I made a pact with myself that I would only consistently use it for a year and in that time learn a pattern of non-smothered-covered life. I was successful at such and now am only on an as-needed basis. Oh yeah, I was needin' right about now. It's funny, when I first told my closest friends (you know, the ones who would still love me though I be clinical) they gawked and thought I was even more clinical for actually taking drugs. But by the eighth post-high school year of my wandering existence, still no degree in hand btw, a string of jobs I left because I was "unfulfilled," countless sleepless nights of mind bantering, I wasn't caring how much chagrin they had, I needed drugs!! Take your local ADD/ADHD sufferers seriously people!! But I digress. More on all that later...

The "earliness" of my awakening, Adderall assisted and all, comes just five short hours after 3+ meaningful hours of conversation with a man who is reminding me, laugh after laugh, "thank you" after "thank you" that I have been one loved somebody. And it is this love we have (re-discovered after 8yrs. of estrangement) first discovered as freshman and sophomore in high school, is the standard by which I should expect no less. "You're beautiful," "You're wonderful," You're awsomeness and cake," he opposes to every silence and interrupts in every self-doubting sigh.

I detailed some of the worst moments, make that long stretches of agony, during my marriage and how/when I knew it had to end. It had been a long time since I unloaded those stories on to anyone and it was healthy to let it out once more. He listened, taking my side, vowing to have never done such things to me. And I believe him, even in the wake of knowing that our most monstrous of capabilities are unknown until our virtue escapes us. But it's the laughing, the ease at which we talk with friendship, respect, adoration and reverence for our one-of-a-kind ability to connect. He's a Gemini, me a Taurus, and the Zodiac tells us that we're the best signs suited for each other. I see why. But even all this, it's not enough to make us perfect for each other in life. You don't mess up something like what we have with that "together forever" stuff. You don't mix obligation and career goals with something that happens so effortlessly. What we have is like pricey pottery. It is to be admired high on the mantle, given homage for it's stunning beauty and it's priceless influence on the life of a room. And though we'll part in sweet sorrow just 12 days from now, he's the life of this room. It's filled with all the accouterments of this season, the bouquets of opposes and interrupts. The drapes of laughter that just rightly shades so I can look out in midday pondering why grass grows so quickly and time passes so slowly in summer.

And you ask, 'Shouldn't you want that in a marriage, a partnership?' Sure, but marriage succumbs to the practical, the routine, the get-it-done functionality of life. It forges walls and wages wars over paper towels and laundry. In other words, it's work!! But how I love it so and fantasize about marrying again someday. There's no greater covenant, I've always said. And with the right person, a convergence of friendship, teachable lovers, proportionate money, and dreams unfurled, a heavenly haven.

Yes, I've loved and been loved in exorbitance, but love in itself is not excuse enough for companionship. It flowers and chills the seasons, teaching you, reprimanding you, buffering you. I read once that the mind should guard the heart because of its recklessness design to love, even those things that scar us. I agree to an extent, but to me, love is not completely to blame. The mind is a culprit too, how it uses love to convince us of the perfection of wrong timing, irrational expectation, wayward motives, unnecessary sacrifice. But I'm glad for all of it and whereas I'm advised of my experiences to never do it again, love has been the best part of my life.

Question of the day: Have you ever had a perfect love with someone that wasn't meant for forever?

Is my ordinary extra?

It's Father's Day and mine has been dead for 10 years now, but I don't miss him. I didn't cry at his funeral and I didn't sing either. He wasn't my real father, but he and his wife, my bioligical Great-Aunt, adopted me when I was seven and three quarters.

Ever since I came to this earth, I've done things a bit differently. Iwas one of those babies where the rest of the family looks towards the expectant mother in disappointment, asking, "What are you/we going to do?" No, my mother wasn't a teenager, but rather an unmarried - make that I don't know who the father is unmarried, schizophrenic with no resources whatsoever to fund a child's life. As far as I know, aborting me was never even considered, but who knows, she may have been too well along before her showing belly broke the news. There are few pictures of me as a baby, but they are all of this one day. I had on a pink outfit, almost looks handmade, and telling by the sweater material, it must have been winter. Every few years, family reunions, death, graduations, I find new pictures of this same scene, different family members cawing over me. But there was a new one I saw recently, one where my real mom was holding me, her cheek pressed to mine. She loved me and would have wanted me to be her child. I've often wondered exactly how she felt, having to give me up all because her mind wouldn't allow her to take care of me.

But I digress, this is supposed to be about figuring out whether I really do have any extra in my ordinary. Let me state again. I'm an opera singer. But I didn't come to that conclusion or self-affirmation until two years ago when I realized that singing was the missing link. I was 26 then and just over 29 now. I'm guilty. Guilty of coveting those who seem to have the easyand clear-cut path, who seem to be born to do one thing and one thing only. But I, it seems, was born to do many things, most of which conflict wtih one another.

Prophecy, encouragement, tearful wishes to see my name in lights. I grew up in community spotlight, southern spotlight. You know the whole debutante, Emily Post thing. Smiles, beauty and poise. It was suffocating. But the real problem was I didn't know it until I came up for air at 18 and moved out of the house to go to college. Playing, singing, dancing, starring as Dolly Levi in Hello Dolly, a role that won me a spot in Huntsville, AL history. But that's where I peaked, somewhere between Before the Parade By and So Long, Dearie. And that's what this transition is all about. Asserting a new peak, becoming more that the circumstances of my birth.

So is that my extra? Perserverence and such? There are no answers, only miraculous births.

Question for the day: Are we determined for extraordinariness from birth or can we MAKE ourselves extra-ordinary?

Let the Lexicons rain down...

Deep breath...look up to the ceiling while typing...I can't belive it's taken me so long to do this. Actually, I signed up a very long time ago to do this whole blogging thing, but I wasn't ready to committ to it. I was intimidated by the task, felt as if my thoughts wouldn't be good, witty enough. And I'm not really sure of how much this intimidation has changed, all I know is that like a dark cloud, I'm ready to purge, to rain down. I mean, for crying out loud, I'm a writer, right? And committment...I sit here teetering between leaving off at any one word and finishing this tomorrow. But if I do that, I'll never really stick to this endeavor. And besides, my current stream of consciousness will be cold and that will only equal another lost set of profound thoughts.

I'm in a transition...the single LONGEST transition of my LIFE!! I never knew transition could be so very long! You've gotta get somewhere at some time, huh? But, it's just the impatience, the knowing I belong in another place, hopefully a better stake in life. I'm and opera singer, and that's my next stop on this journey. A career of costume and melodrama...I tell you, there's nothing like being an emoter of every gesture and phrase known to language. Taking four whole minutes to tell my boyfriend, who I only met five minutes ago, that my name is Mimi has got to make me some sort of exceptional rule breaker. What's not to love?

So here's how I want to run this thing:

I was going to spill and sum my whole life story in this one post, but no, I'll pull it along as lexiconical taffy. Each day, typing out a sticky loop from around the tip of my fingers, hoping that it's sweet and melty to my readers (anyone?). If this is a committment, them I'm going to ground myself in this blogging vehicle and ride it out into the blazing sunset, in a convertible of course, just in case it rains...

I vow to write EVERYDAY on this blog for the next 90 days. The first, uh...however long it takes, I will be narcisistic and detail my life story, that which I think is relevant anyway. Then I will branch out into issues and views, and then, well, by then I hope to be on the other side of my transition and who knows...wow, I just looked at my clock on the stroke of midnight, June 20, 2oo9. Sigh of serendipity...I guess that means from here to September 20, 2009, I'm married to this thing and will be either dying for annullment or forever balled and dehydrating myself of profound lexicon.

Question of the day:
Have you ever been intimidated out of doing something because you knew you were good at it?