summer '99

after taking dance class tonight i hugged my teacher and thanked her and she looked at me and said, "you are looking so great--so much passion." there are many times after class when the endorphines are flowing that i feel great, i want to talk to everyone, my overall disposition about life in general is optomistic. but there is a crash, and for some reason, when my teacher said that to me; i crashed. the dance we did had history. it was the dance she choreographed for the scholarship show my year, the year i was on scholarship. we had to audition for all the pieces we were in. i didn't make it in her piece. i remember the talk we had after the audition and she told me my technique just wasted there (this is when i realized that if it wasn't there then after nine months of doing nothing but dancing it was never going to be there). i cried, and she cried too (she is a real sweetie). so when doing the dance tonight i wanted it to be good--it was almost as if i were auditioning all over again. and most people would tell me that, "hey, she said you looked great, that you had passion." but dancers are never happy with themselves, their bodies, their performance, nothing. and i felt like her telling me i had passion was like a consolation prize. so when i got home i called my brother and i asked, "dane, am i a good dancer?" he said, "yeah. i love to watch you dance. i can't give an inspirational speech right now, i'm eating a hamburger." i cried when i got off the phone. i wasn't sure why. maybe i have regrets, maybe i wished that dance was still the huge, overwhelming part of my life that it was when i was in high school and when i first moved here. i know though that i have moved so far from that place that it would be nearly impossible to get back, to get back and have it be what it was. i was struck with such a strong, happy memory tonight of me and tara before we got on scholarship, before we moved in together. we are sitting on the balcony of our friends apartment that we are both staying at on the corner of colfax and burbank. its just a week before the scholarship audition. a warm, summer night where the sky is purple and the air is fragrant, like hawaii. and we are drinking mountain dew and vodka, getting drunk and i love it here so much and i can see myself living here and my future so wide and open but i know what i want so much that i'm not overwhelmed or scared, but just happy.