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the 100 strangers shot (the "mermaid"!)
In honor of National Poetry Month, my friend Stephen Elliott has been soliciting “poems I love” for his magazine The Rumpus, a yummy wonderland of writing, sexyness, and politics. I’ve been reading more poetry again recently, and so I was inspired to send him this reflection on a Poem I Love, which, yes, includes a reference to hooping, as part of my rhythm of Desire:
You’d think Stanley Kunitz, near 70 and hobbling through “Touch Me,” would have slid off my 19 year old self. But it was the only poem that stuck, from a night of literary luminaries.
15 years later, returning—not the first time since—and reassured again by the continuum: desire, desire. Tonight it’s the motor of the cat’s purring, drummers sounding from the arts center, and the thump of my hips against a circling hoop. Some tomorrow again there will be a beloved, a darling, do you remember—I’m sure of it. And in three decades’ time, desire still.
Stanley, still winsome
Anyone who has hooped inside for extended periods of time knows whereof I speak.
Have you ever had to explain these to a landlord?
Mine were much worse in the apartment I occupied during the first 2 years of hooping, but here are the signs of a half year of hooping in my current place. The turquoise is the grippy gaffers tape on my PSI hoop and my chubby hubby. The black is from my lightweight twins.
on the ceiling
and
on the floor
and
on the walls
and
on the furniture
For me, the beginning of HOOPING! came at the Tin House writing conference in July 2007. The workshop was a major step to committing myself to my lifelong calling—of writing fulltime. I was also midway through the Artist’s Way, thanks to Philo.
The conference exhilarated and intimidated me—all the references to books I had(ve)n’t yet read and authors I’d never heard of…! The confident MFA students, all versed in the esoteric jargon and culture of “the writing workshop.” Not to mention the impressive faculty, particularly my own workshop leader, Colson Whitehead, a virtual god in my pantheon for his Intuitionist.
It was also a year and a half since I’d left my marriage, and I felt gloriously bold and simultaneously tentative about throwing myself into a big new social pool of people who were passionate about the same thing as I.
And so I spent a chunk of my free time around the Tin House campus hooping… taking refuge in my hoop when I needed a break…teaching students and faculty and faculty kids to hoop… and fielding questions about the hooping phenomenon. I’m pretty sure a number of people thought I was a freak. My hoops and I even got several mentions in the daily conference update (thanks to Katie).
When I sat down with a very simpatico literary agent to talk about my ideas for a book, she asked me for a rundown of the topics I felt I could write about. Zeppelins, I said. Hmmm, what else? Hooping, I said. She loved it. Women’s empowerment, spiritual practice, fitness craze, celebrity hoopers like Beyonce and Gwyneth Paltrow! What wasn’t to love. And so it was born… for me at least.
Meanwhile, Christabel had been thinking about writing a book based on her HoopGirl curriculum for some time. After she asked me to help her with it, I decided it made sense to join forces and talents on one big groundbreaking resource on HOOPING!, which is exactly what we did.
Writing a how-to book is harder than it looks.
Before starting in on HOOPING!, I skimmed a bunch of books on stretching, bellydance, yoga, NIA (one of my faves), Swiss ball exercises, punk rock aerobics (very fun), and striptease workouts. One thing that differentiates hooping from all but one of these movement forms is that it involves object manipulation. And although the ball is an object, it’s the same from every angle, and there are a limited amount of ways your body can interact with it.
The hoop, meanwhile, exists on multiple planes (perpendicular and parallel to the ground, for instance) and levels (at the height of your shins, or above your head). You can grip it from the outside and the inside, with your hand and wrist twisting to every conceivable angle; it can be maneuvered with your torso, shoulders, elbows, neck, feet, knees, thighs, and bum as well. The possibilities are almost limitless.
I was a pretty ideal writer to partner with Christabel because I’d taken nearly every class HoopGirl had offered at the point when we started on the book, and I’d mastered every move we decided to cover in its pages. I already knew the vocabulary: one of HoopGirl’s trademarks is her sassy names for moves. She calls hooping around your waist, for example, “Pump,” and around your legs,“Spunk.” While this is the object of derision among some folks in the hooping community, I’ve always thought it was fun, and a smart business decision. In fact, I’ve had a hand in naming a number of HoopGirl moves, like “Dolphin” and “Pearl.”
So our raw materials at the outset of the project were Christabel’s years of teaching and explaining moves to students, combined with my experience of HoopGirl (and, um, writerly prowess), plus her HoopGirl teacher manuals. Sounds like we had an ample head-start, don’t it?
Being able to explain to students how to move the hoop and their bodies to achieve a desired effect is a gift, as you’ll know if you ever tried to explain a move, especially a more complicated one, to someone else. Christabel definitely has that gift. Even so, translating her explanations to the page was complicated.
Phrases like “bring the hoop down over your head” may make perfect sense when your teacher is simultaneously demonstrating it a few feet away, but for the lone reader squinting over the page in her living room, even with the help of a photo, it just wasn’t going to fly. At first we erred on the side of excruciating levels of detail (“your palm will be facing the floor, thumb on the outside of the hoop, as you keep the hoop parallel to the ground and swing it through the air”) and multiple visual images (“imagine the hoop as ascending a spiral staircase, or a waiter brandishing a plate from behind his back with a flourish”), but ultimately the text had to be pared down to the simplest, most evocative language.
Too much explanatory verbiage on the page, and the reader runs screaming, fearing they’ll never ever be able to master this. Worse yet, it’ll mean the book gets left in the bookstore and never brought home at all.
As a righty hooper (meaning, my hoop naturally rotates to my right; we righties seem to be the equivalent of lefties in the regular, non-hooping world, based on my casual observation, with one or two righties generally present in every class or group of 15-20 hoopers), I felt strongly that the instructions should be worded in such a way to enable hoopers of both persuasions to understand without needing to reverse everything in their heads. That led to a lot of sentences that had Ruth, our editor, cringing, such as “Use the hand opposite the direction the hoop is traveling around your body.” We spent long hours trying to make those phrases as simple and elegant as possible, and I think and hope we mostly succeeded.
…
(More on the Making of HOOPING! to come)
I woke a little sad that I’d had to miss seeing the Hoop Pathers yesterday, and promptly starting hooping to turn that frown upside down. Been doing a fair amount of hooping (feeling good about my body again), often recording it with the handy-dandy video capture on my Macbook, which is great for practicing keeping my isolations centered. And for noticing what needs help, like my usually lifeless arms, upon which I’m focusing in this video (ok, sometimes they’re maybe a little outta control… there’s also a failed kick-out at about 2:19… always endless room for improvement…)
Smiling now!
The long-anticipated book– the world’s first English-language book on contemporary hoopdance (Japanese hipster-hoopers released one not long ago) — is on its way!!!! The stork will be dropping it into bookstores in 2-3 month’s time. Stay tuned.
NB-This isn’t quite the final cover: notably, the final agreement between myself and my co-author will place my name under hers, to be preceded by a “with,” and thus identify my role as more writerly and less hoop-guruly.
OK, I finally thawed my purchasing freeze for the first time in 2009 (food and books/magazines/newspapers excluded, since both feed me, and the latter is also my bizness). If truth be told, the non-essential spending was prompted by the onset of a mild melancholia having to do with the advent of a flu and Valentine’s Day, both in a single week.
So what and who got my dollars? That would be Melodia, enchanted designer of southern CA who makes wicked cool bellydance gear that is much beloved among the hooping community. Now, this won’t be my first pair of Melo’s. Far from it. The usually more less-materialist HoopGoddess does, in fact, already own four pairs of these babies. I’ve got one of each of the basic designs—the fringe, the mini, and the sash—as well as one of the speshal motifed-up ones (the charcoal/black garter stripe) that were part of a collaboration between Melodia and the equally brilliant folks over at Phoenix Rising.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a pair. I was taking a class from my friend and former troupemate Annie, who was wearing a pair of red fringes (hand-me-downs from Christabel, if I remember correctly). Every time she twirled or leapt through the hoop, the long fringes dangling at her hips whipped through the air.
Is Melodia (pitcured above) my friend? Am I on commission? No and no. So WHAT is the fascination with these pants?! It’s hard to overstate the Melo’s comfort, beauty, and ability to flatter the female body. It’s not for nothing that they’re frequently referred to as “magic ass pants.” (In this particular expression, “ass” isn’t meant in the emphatic sense of “that’s my broke-ass friend with her dumb-ass boyfriend.”) Really, these pants do WONDERS for the rear-parts. Fat days, skinny days, no matter. Maybe it’s the flared bottoms that balance out the heft of the upper regions, perhaps the ratio of snug cotton to forgiving stretch, or the angle of the sash or the height of the mini—who cares, really?
The competitors simply do not compare. For starters, there is the tastefulness of the Melo colors—which seem like they could all be taken from real plant dyes: olive and brown and black and indigo and a shade of red that’s not too bright and not too blood. Also, and this is important: no pilling. The best of the competitors pill, while Melo’s hold up, wash in and wash out.
Then there’s the little issue of the slit along the outer calves, which set Melodia’s pants apart from the others. Not everyone appreciates the slit; I’ve known folks who sew them up. Me, I tend to wear my Melo’s with boots (my single favoritest type of foot covering anyway), so the peek-a-boo effect works, is even captivating. Sometimes I tie the ends together at the ankle, too.
I wear my Melo’s hooping (often! Their hoopability is excellent). I wear them on dates. I wear them at home. I wear them out dancing (sans hoop). I wore the garter stripe ones with a black-sequined bustier for New Year’s Eve. I wear them to benefit brunches and workdays in the city and walks around Lake Merritt. Heads turn, compliments roll, and the Marina chicks crinkle their noses. And all is right with the world.
So, yes: my brand spanking new brown sash pair should appear in the mail within the week, after my having coveted them for nearly a year. (You don’t need another pair. But I don’t have brown. And the sash is the best! Wait until another pair gives out. They never give out.) And all week, obscuring any ghoulish glucose-ish Valentine’s Day soundtracks, Frank Sinatra is in my head singing “Me and my Melo’s, strolling down the avenue…”
On January 5th, per my Oh Nein Revolutions, I started a month-long detoxification. Here’s my report back, just a couple days shy of my four weeks.
YES: eggs, nuts and seeds (except peanuts or pistachios) preferably raw, green veggies, fish (the smaller the better because of the mercury), and a small amounts of lowfat dairy like yogurt and milk.
NO: everything else, including any sort of carbs, even whole grains, or veggies that convert quickly to sugar like carrots, potatoes, yellow/orange squashes, tomatoes, peas. And no fruits. No legumes, since the experts were on the fence re their inclusion. No funghi. No alcohol, obviously. As little caffeine as I can manage. And nothing fermented/with vinegar, which makes sushi, and much restaurant food (the sauces, the sauces) out of bounds.
Basically, I’m eating a lot like a bear in the wild. Thank goodness I don’t have to catch my fish with my bear paws.
WEAK ONE: How to manage breakfasts without any breads, cereals, or fruits? Eggs become my favorite food in the world, but after several days in a row of eggs with greens I need some variety. I start eating sautéed chard, leek and broccoli soup, mashed brussel sprouts—for breakfast.
In three days I blow through the green veggies that used to be enough to last me for a week. Back to the market with me! I spend over a hundred dollars on herbal supplements recommended to assist my liver in detoxifying, the heavy metals in making their exit, and the candida in dying off. I’m hungry all the time, despite handfuls over handfuls of nuts and seeds.
Shushing constant thoughts that there is NO WAY I can make it a month on this diet.
Weird sweats and moments where my whole body gets flushed and hot. Sugar (and maybe wheat or coffee) withdrawal? Probably.
I have to wake an hour earlier to prep lunch and snacks, since learning that if I get caught out and about without my special food, there is almost no place I can turn. On the one day this happens, I roam the aisles of Safeway (the only market around) until finally buying a bag of pre-washed broccoli and cauliflower florets, and a bag of almonds. Yes, it’s true, there are always salad bars. Since I hate and usually avoid salad bars, this realization only strikes me in Week Two.
All I can think about is my new diet. I feel like I’m taking care of a newborn baby: my body.
Insights about how privileged an activity this is: the ability to take so much time to think about and prep my food and the requirement to take it easy in my life so that my body can process all the toxins. I realize how many of my social engagements revolve around food and beverages.
I mostly withdraw from the world, except to talk the ear off of any friend who checks in, regaling them with tales of my inputs and outputs. I’ll spare you the details of the latter.
WEEK TWO: Buoyed by the pride of making it to a second week. It’s taking distinctly less time to acquire and prepare my food. Staunchly I ignore the cravings for pizza.
The joy of Rooibos tea! It’s what I order now when I meet someone for “coffee.” When I really crave a glass of wine at night, I indulge in a hot bath or an episode of Buffy. My other big indulgence is good fish. A hefty chunk of halibut-y goodness! Escobar! I make friends with the fisherman at the farmer’s market.
I pick up my hoop. I have some good sessions with it, letting it be mostly on my core and therapeutic, closing my eyes for stints. No bouncing, leaping, squatting, or whooshing it around off-body.
I have a date near the end of the week. I’ve informed him that a meal can’t be part of the activities but he makes reservations at a fish place for after the movie. To my delighted surprise, the grilled fish platter, minus the papaya salsa, minus the carb side, but with the spinach merely sautéed in olive oil and butter, is something I can eat. I apologize profusely to our waiter for my high-maintenance-ness.
I have developed into a fiendish consumer of hot water with lemon juice. I’m polishing off at least four lemons a day.
WEEK THREE:
Old hand at this cleanse thing. It’s re-set my tastebuds: raw nuts and plain yogurt and eggs register as sweet! Sweet.
And then, the day before the Inauguration, I come down with a flu. It might be a flu bug, or it might be that I wasn’t being low-key enough in Week Two for my body to manage it all, or both. Plus I’ve read in all the candida cleanse materials that the starving yeasties get VERY angry and lead violent uprisings in your body that may feel like a severe flu—a fact that makes many people give up this particular type of cleanse. The literature says to push on through it.
So I keep at it, although I’m occasionally nibbling on rice crackers and Mary’s Gone Crackers (aka “Nothing Crackers”). My sore throat is a bitch, and I can’t suck lozenges or use honey in my hot lemon water.
Grumpy, low-energy HoopGoddess watches the inauguration at home online and forgoes the celebrations.
The flu thing only lasts 4-5 days. Just as the week ends, I am overwhelmed with cravings for doughnuts. Crème-filled, sugar crusted. All I want in life is just one bloody donut, or a dozen. Heavens help me.
WEEK FOUR:
I’m incredibly proud of myself. HoopGoddess is not known for her self-discipline. I’m generally Dionysian, a hedonist. I’m thinking I can maybe leverage this accomplishment with the cleanse into discipline in my professional realm.
When I peer at my face in the mirror in the morning my skin looks firmer, the pores cleaner and smaller. I haven’t lost a lot of weight, probably because I’ve done very low levels of physical activity for almost a month– but losing weight was not the point.
I don’t feel super energetic and light, the way some friends who do the Master Cleanse or an all-raw diet talk about their experience. What I do feel is not depressed.
As I launch into this final week I’m incredibly, undeniably randy. It’s one of those happy spells where I walk around constantly enjoying the rub of my jeans at my crotch.
I try out cinnamon sprinkled on my sautéed asparagus one morning at breakfast. Yum! A new favorite. Inspired in part by Neurobics—which proposes that stimulating several senses in new combinations builds and strengthens your neural pathways. For example, listening to a piece of music while simultaneously popping popcorn.
I’m looking forward to my pastry and red wine, but not with feverish intensity. It occurs to me that I could keep this up for another week…
