I can’t stop thinking about the alter egos of Butters and his little friend- the characters from South Park. Hell, I can’t even think of Butters’ alter ego, I can only think of his friend’s: General Disarray. Appropriate somehow that I can’t think of this wee little minor character’s ACTUAL name, only the pretend name of a pretend person.
Which leads me to how I’ve been feeling over the past couple of years. Or maybe longer. General Disarray. I can’t tell. But right now, I’m sitting at my makeshift desk in our disaster of a makeshift office, with piles of paper and stuff that I try try TRY to keep organized, and I just can’t seem to organize it faster than it comes in and demands a fucking space in my life. I’m in a funk (ha- almost typed “fuck”) because I just got a “Dear John” letter from a theatre company with which I am/ was/ will have been affiliated. Deep down, I don’t feel that it’s unjustified, but it feels like a break up nonetheless. It is a place where I generally feel wanted and appreciated, but I haven’t had the opportunity to frequent of late because I have two small children. Still, I can’t help but feel that maybe- maybe– my talent wandered off somewhere, lost, looking for a more worthy vessel. Or, maybe I’m just not talented enough; surely someone who was talented enough could FIGURE OUT HOW TO JUGGLE IT ALL. At least that’s the perception, although I can’t tell whose- mine or everyone else’s. At any rate, I’m sure you know that old saying, “Perception is reality.” So someone around here is perceiving that I’m disposable.
I’ve been trying to start this blog for what seems like forever. I was in a graduate English class studying Shakespeare trying oh so desperately to figure out some pattern or similarity between The Merchant of Venice and Othello – and what the HELL was I going to write about – blah, blah, blah, “Othello is the ‘other’” blah, blah, blah “Shylock is the ‘other’” blah, blah, blah – and then I realized something: there are no mothers in these plays. Alive ones, that is. It’s as if in Shakespeare’s world, these women squeezed out their offspring and dropped dead. Admittedly, that was a very likely scenario at that time, so maybe.
But that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. As if the Mommy Track runs right off a cliff into some God-forsaken clusterfuck no-man’s-land called Youdontbelongmuchofanywhereland.
So you’re dead. Or at least perceived to be.
And it came to me, courtesy of the Moor and the Jew: Motherhood is simply another “otherhood.”
(M)Otherhood 