Honey, hips don't lie.

Dancing was great last night - it was troupe and Renee and Honey came. Zil and Noni both missed it, but sent apologies and promises. Yesterday morning's beginners class was good - 5 students. I don't want any more than that. My favourite class size is 4. 3 is fine, 5 is fine, 6 is too many and 3 is too few. Well, that's how I feel this week, anyway.

Honey wants us to dance to Hips Don't Lie, and is excited about white, red and black costumes. So, I'll take any enthusiasm I can get. And I'm just saying "sure, yeah, great, no problem". Plus Thea is totally besotted and won't let any of us say no to Honey ever anyway which is Just So Pathetic, Thea. Trouble wants me to write "Trouble is helpful" and, honey, I will! but you know, that sounds just like YOU. Don't you want me to say it my way????

*cough*

Trouble has been really helpful.

Conti & charcoal.

Today is the third art class - last week's was quite good - it was about going from detail to simple. We drew flowers and fungi from photographs. It was fine. I was a bit nervous - thinking about Trouble's Farewell (which was last Saturday). Now that is over (it was better than fine and there was a hamper) and also, we got the grant in yesterday, so there is nothing loooooooooming.

On Sunday it was the first of the monthly Bugsplat Life Drawing Group that Trouble has helped me organise and Gray's friend Noel was the model. He chose one of my drawings as his favourite. Yay! He was a great model. The session went really well. Because I have worked for many, many years as a life model it was easy for me to suggest things and when a Very Naughty Lady took a photograph I was very firm and told her to erase it and gave a very short talk on life model etiquette. I have opinions about life model etiquette.

I hope my friends bud and shannon become (a) beautiful bellydancer(s)!

Dance has been really good so far. Trouble has been organising things like grant applications and collecting money and sign in sheets and bringing in suitcase of scarves and water and CD player and CDs and coin belts and zills and drum patterns etc. I am not so good at those things. Also, she drives me there. It's three times a week now and that's working fine.

Zil has returned. I'm glad.

Fabulousity.

It's all going very well.
Three classes a week with the dancing! Lots of new dancers.

And tomorrow is our first life drawing group - that will be monthly.

Our friend Noel is the model. Trouble has done the paperwork and attendance sheets and invoices and stuff. Also Trouble is applying for grants for our bellydancing costumes.

*shimmy*

Shimmy!

So. My knee is good - a little swollen but there is no pain. I gave two classes today; one in the morning and one in the evening. There's another scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Both classes went really well. There was fresh new energy from some new dancers in the morning, including two fitness instructors - they'll be useful if I decide (if Trouble decides!) to seek some kind of certification - I might need peer assesment. They were really nice too. And in the evening the troupe (except Zil) were all there - Nina, Raku and Honey.

Trouble has mended Things With Zil and Zil will be attending on Thursday.

I feel wonderful.

*shimmy!*

Art class back. Topic 1. Memory.

Art Class is back. I love it, but I wish people would leave Trouble alone about her job.

They won't of course, as it's only natural to ask and wonder and ask overly personal questions. I still never really know what the boundaries are - what IS an overly personal question? I used to think ALL my family are Just So Rude, now I think it might be a habit of West Australians - to ask too much, too assume we're all the same, to assume too much, to be too familiar. I don't know. I don't feel West Australian. I'm a Queenslander. I'm from a rainy summer. Maybe it was too loud, the rain on the roof, the summer I was born, maybe nobody could be bothered making small talk, the summer I was born, in that monsoon. Maybe there were too many frogs and everyone was silent. Too tired to compete. I heard them through the phone line - my mum sounded tired, there have been more floods - but the frogs were singing their jubilent songs sung from the drains.

All those years and years (a lifetime) of taking my cues from others as to what is and isn't okay for people to ask me have not taught me anything useful about what is and isn't okay for people to ask me. People give themselves away if they think they're transgressing! If they think they're being fair and reasonable I have tended to assume they are. Then, in reaction to this pattern we've developed another - to be too defensive. I wasn't sure at Art Class whether it was a transgression for someone to ask "So, why did you resign?" but I didn't want to answer so I said "I'd rather not talk about it now." I hope that was okay.

Art class was about memory. We were shown photographs and then had to make a drawing. I was given a meadow full of flowers. Red dahlias, a lime tree, a copse of young karri, a paddock and a forest far away. I liked the buds atop gangling stems. I drew far too many of them and forgot most details of the blooms. I failed to convey the way the afternoon light lay heavy over the petals and leaves. I was distracted by the work talk and also by the possibility of work talk. By the resentment! I felt knowing I had to keep Trouble or Just Jo around in case questions came our way. They make unhelpful remarks. They don't mean to. I work best alone.

And soon, I hope, our situation will be less interesting to others.

Muffin meetings.

Last Friday just gone Lilly & I went to Littlesplat for coffee and scones, and then to swim in the Karri Forest Lake, and she helped us organise a bit of a plan for ourselves. It looks to me as if I'll get support from polly to really chase dance for a while - Trouble is being very helpful on this front, and there's a lot of support for the ideas of me teaching dance, organising to study more dance, etc. etc. So, I am hoping that this will be the direction we take - that I'll be supported as I need to be to do this. I can't drive a car so I will need someone to do that for me and Trouble has been really present with me lately and will do that. I'm getting a lot of support for (as always) reasons other than love of the dance - but it doesn't really matter I guess.
I guess that's multifarious!

Nadia came around to visit with blueberry and apple muffins and we held an impromptu sub-committee meeting of the Bugsplat Arts Association in which I lobbied for support for my conquer-the-world-with-bellydance cause.
Good muffins.
At Trouble's suggestion, I even introduced myself by name, and that wasn't as hard as it might have been. Nadia has known for a long time and she comes to dance sometimes.

Then Lilly arrived by chance and also had muffins. So then I went to the Bugsplat Family Centre and pretty much secured their support too which means with two organisations supporting my proposal we're eligible for a lot more funding and we're more likely to get it.
Now I just have to make Just Jo, Trouble and Thea write the damn thing.
I've got to find out all the details of exactly what I want but my plan is pretty much - a costume making course, travel & accomodation allowances to study what I want to study in other places and to get guest teachers to Bugsplat to teach our group.

After a phone call to Leila, I stew.

Another phonecall with Leila. Not so upsetting for Trouble this time - she's had time to adjust to the last one - the knowledge that she & Leila don't get along. It's not so terrible. There's goodwill, and that helps. Some people aren't right for each other as friends.
It's okay.

She gets along with plenty of people many of us find challenging. And who says that 'getting along' is inherently admirable. Not me. And I 'get along' with everybody. I'm everybody's favourite. And you know, sometimes that's fine, and sometimes, it's not. I like you Trouble, and I like Leila and I'm glad this phonecall hurt you less than the last one, and that you can see Leila is just missing her very best friend Just Jo. Less now, of course, as Just Jo seems very much set for a comeback to front. Perhaps.

Let's see here - Calypso (me), Miss Calypso Green. I am in the running again. I've done it before. I didn't last all that long - but I've realised that it was more my choice than I thought, that I could have stayed. So much depends on how we feel as people. That's what Gray was saying to you, Trouble, that you have nothing to be ashamed of - don't BE ashamed. Our machine (the space ship -don't touch that lever! - the mysterious device that runs things here) must to some extent believe what ever you believe about yourself as much as it does what others believe about you. So don't retreat, young man, Miss T. don't talk yourself into living in exile.
I think that is what Gray was hinting.

New journal.

Trouble made me a livejournal where I can put all my bellydancing links. I'm not really 32! That is so we can remember what we wrote there as a birthday! I don't know how old I am. Maybe 16.

I'm not sure I like the colour scheme, and I want some pictures for myself too, but it is very good. I like. Thank you Trouble.