Happy Skalloween!

Ska music was my first little tip-toe into the vast world of punk rock. The name is directly onomatopoeic to the style, sounding like the drag of a drum stick on a cymbal before they clamp shut. Ssssska. You can hear the blaring trumpets and the walked bass. As an English nerd, I can completely appreciate it.

The Bug Jar is the perfect place to put on a ska show. The relaxed bar with bat-people decorations hanging from the dramatic cobwebs and the local art priced upon the scrawled-upon walls (professing everything from lost loves to political commentary) help to set the mood. But it's the actual venue, a room no larger than the cramped computer lab I type away in, that sets the tone. The DJ stood cramped in a phone-booth sized corner, and the musicians nearly step on each other as they fight for room on the tiny stage. A couch and dining table sit on the ceiling, as if waiting for Spiderman to come home from work and crack open a cold one.

The acoustics in the room are both phenomenal and shitty, wrapping me in the cacophony of horns and drums and guitar. The people dance and mingle amongst themselves, enjoying their private little parties. And then, from where, I'm not sure, two scrawny boys in their skinny jeans and mohawks are on the floor. They cross their arms at the wrists, like the X's marking their hands, and hold onto each other. And they spin. Round and around and around, laughing and smiling and tripping over themselves. How beautiful the world must have been for them at the moment. And then, the skanking begins, a bizarre mix of the Running Man and Tae Kwan Do.

And that's why I love ska, the beautiful love child of punk anger and reggae's one love.

I Was a Teenaged (and then some) Zombie.

I wake up as Ellen, knowing that today is the day it ends. My mind will leave me, my senses will numb, and by night's fall, I will be nothing but a snarling, drooling, lurching monster. I will never again hear my mother's voice and her prayers will do me no good. I'll never feel the soft fur of the calves in the field or smell their sweet breath. Today is the day I will die. Figuratively, of course.

With each layer of makeup, I become more and more detached. With the white base, I become more sluggish, movements slow and labored. The grey around my eyes leaves me feeling as gaunt as I become, hollowing my cheeks and cracking my hands. Green at my temples bring the decay, my body falling apart. Teeth grime and cough syrup-tasting blood and my transformation is done. Close my eyes. Open up. I'm not myself anymore.

I'm out of the cab and amongst my people. Glazed eyes take in the tattered clothes and crumbling bodies and the chorus of undead moans welcomes my arrival. One of us! One of us! Gooble gobble! Gooble gobble! Us freaks belong together.

And maybe it's my mind getting too deep into a "roll", but I can't out shuffle the idea of being dead. I'm back with the demons of my adolescence, a time where the black-tar vomit of too many pain pills was a friend and the idea of my heart giving out under too much fear seemed like a wonderful escape. And how I'm not that girl anymore.

But everyone relapses (which is a term I hate, because it makes it sound like I willing became an anxious wreck again) or just has a bad day. The brain hiccups, the serotonin levels dip just a little and things get a messy again. These are the days where I immerse myself in the walking dead, the people who I once envied. And, in some ways, the people I once was.

If more people did this - surrendered the need for control for one moment and just acted silly - would their be as many muzzles pressed against temples? How much skin would remain intact and how many pills would go unswallowed? The power of pretend is unfathomable to me at times, but it's there.

This play time is far from some FDA approved treatment. But when I wipe away the makeup and see my face once more, it works. I survived. That's enough.

The Weight of the World and Other Podiatric Burdens

Feet are not supposed to be pretty and mine are no exception. 

They are long and wide, lacking the daintiness which is considered feminine and beautiful on someone my height. My toes match, long and stubby all at once, like carrot sticks or the roots from potatoes. The baby toe on my right foot (the tattooed one, not your right) doesn't quite reach the ground, permanently tangled from a break a few years ago. The nails are dirty, visible even with the polish. When they're stripped, the surface always looks a little ruddy, permanently stained by years of lacquer. The heels are cracked, the balls are calloused, and the arches are bruised. They are scarred and marred and bruised and broken.

I have tried to make them beautiful. I have used lotions and pumice stones and keep the nails as trimmed and polished as I possibly can. I have spent hours in The Chair, hobbling away with a masterpiece on my swollen flesh. The tattoo helped, but, in the end, it still has the misfortune of being on the hideous canvas that is a foot.

Feet are not supposed to be pretty.  They are our support system and our guide, the part of us that is the most physically connected to our experiences. 


My feet are my two-part autobiographies.


The peeling skin tells of the pebbled paths I wander at night, of Alumni Walk during my first week on campus. How the dewy grass licked my toes and kissed my ankles and helped me find my way home. The scars sing the water's melody, of the crayfish that lurk beneath Chemung County creeks. The slick rocks send me splashing, catching my feet and leaving their marks behind. The arches hold bruises so my face and pride wouldn't have to, pounding pavement and initiating evacuations. Each purple and green tell the world how I survived and of how he'll never catch me.  


And my ship, the sails flapping in the wind, keeps the story moving along.

What's In a Name? [Workshop Essay]

I went back to Horseheads (speaking of names...) this weekend to celebrate my mother's 50th birthday. As part of the reminiscing, "we're-all-getting-older" process, she pulled out our old year books. While she sat getting misty-eyed over the aging Equestrians, I thumbed through all the messages people had scrawled across the back pages. All the phone numbers I never called, all the promises of continuing friendships that never happened, and all the names of "frenemies" whose faces had slowly faded over the course of four years.

My favorite message lies in the cracked spine of my freshman year, from a senior I knew only through mutual friends and over-congested movie nights. Friendly, but not really a friend:

Ellen,

You, my dear, are a light in a very, very dark world. Don't ever change that.

~ A

I'd laughed the first time I'd read it; my name is derived from the Greek word meaning "light" (as in weight, not  what spews out of a lamp when you turn it on. But, for the sake of this piece, we can look at both meanings). At fifteen, the sentiment was nice, and extremely appreciated, but it was just there, I suppose. A beautiful coincidence. But then, over the next few years, I found myself hearing it over and over again. Classmates said I "shone". Teachers noted how I "illuminated" new ideas. And friends told me how the days seemed just a little bit more bearable when I was around. 

What if there was something more to behind being "light"? Could something as simple and random as my name have any impact on what made me me? Did names impact the outcome of others, or was this a phenomenon reserved only for "Ellen"s? 

All the baby name books in Barnes and Nobles (and Waldenbooks and Borders...) and all the websites told me the same thing. "Light". Sometimes it went on to explain further; airy, gentle, uplifting. Deeper research lead to personality profiles for all the "Ellen"s of the world. According to Kablarian's, having the name "Ellen" guarantees these traits (I have bolded those which I agree with/would apply to myself):

- A friendly, approachable, and generous demeanor

- Good-natured, though prone to being blunt and sarcastic

- Naturally talkative, finding it easy to meet new, varied people

- Sympathetic to the plight of others

- Very firm in ideas, though needs encouragement to actually act upon them

- Respond quickly to affection and praise

- Artistic and creative, primarily in the arenas of music (especially vocal performance), sewing, or interior decorating

- Struggle with emotions

- Prone to depression, liver ailments, and diseases effecting the bloodstream

Other than pretty much being told I'm dying of leukemia someday, the list didn't seem half-bad. What really astounded me was how incredibly accurate this analysis was. But there are thousands of "Ellen"s in the world (it's an old-fashioned name, so that might be dwindling); what the hell could make us all so similar? It couldn't have been a shared history. I only knew two other Ellen's growing up: my great-grandmother, born the only surviving daughter to Slovakian immigrant farmers in 1907 and a girl five years my senior, the middle between a boy and a girl. They were the products of happy marriages, while my parents were falling apart.

Then I started to wonder how I might have been different if my parents had gone with some of the other names they had considered. Would a "Grace" still care about the needs of others? Would a "Paisley" still have loved to sing until her throat went raw? And would one more "Mary" in the family (if my parents had gone with it, I would have been the 4th) still feel anxious in a crowded room?

I'd like to think that, if I happened to be anything other than "Ellen", I would still be Ellen; not the name, but the soul that lives within. It can't be my name that creates me, because I'm pretty sure I'm the only "Ellen" that used REC and El Orfanato to help study for her Spanish speaking exams. I'm probably the only "Ellen" that pounds birth control and Prozac each morning with a 12 ounce Red Bull. I'm the only "Ellen" who finds romance in a funeral home reception hall. Onward and onward, forever and ever, amen...

Being one of the universe's "lights" is just an added bonus, really.