Pink Pony Club
GOD,
What have you done?
You're a pink pony girl
And you dance at the club
Oh mama, I'm just having fun
On the stage in my heels
It's where I belong down at the
PINK PONY CLUBI’m awake, it’s Sunday. Congested, distressed left shoulder cap, bruised right ribs, crazy-tired.
I made it.
Through.
This weekend. Through aaaaallllll the expansion, manifestation, doing, working, leading, performing, pioneering, dancing, improvising, screaming, crying, being seen, not being seen, being received, not being received, loving support, nose diving depression, insecurity, exaltation, friendship, late-night malnourishment picnics with beloveds, the forging of bonds through performance, through cheering each other on, through shared experience… All while living here, in my solo abode, in which I am presently installed, tucked in bed, mildly infirm, sitting upright, a pillow in my lap, on my computer, typing (an image of my Grand Barbara comes to mind, a writer, among myriad other things- I wonder if she wrote this way too… I look down- half of my sheets were hers, they’re terra cotta-colored and I’ve never been able to find another set as good.)
My fig tree forehead-plants into the window. I sit on the left side of my bed, in the shallow hollow on my half. There are so many blank canvases in my home. Huge and space-sucking.
Yesterday a book mustered all of its meager energy (thin strands of life force petrified inside paper pages—it must have been summoning the energy for months!), and willed itself off my shelf. Not a small book. Hard-covered, beautifully illustrated dust jacket- The Cunning Little Vixen- which this cunning little vixen delicately displaced from my parents’ shelves and sneakily tiptoed out to Santa Fe. Fox medicine brought Arulu down from the mountain for a saturated solstice weekend finale and I wondered if it brought the book down too.
I'm gonna keep on dancing at the Pink Pony Club I'm gonna keep on dancing down in West Hollywood I'm gonna keep on dancing at the Pink Pony Club, Pink Pony Club*
I’m trying not to think ahead, or feel ahead. I’m trying to be with the nothingness of the now, and the belief that there is nothing else I need to do within it.
No pole class today. And likely not tomorrow either. “I’m complete, I no longer need to wring myself out, I’m ready.” I fly out to the northeast on Tuesday, and all of this- my life here- will be on pause.
This is the first time I’ll be returning to my homelands-and-homepeoples since committing myself to Santa Fe. I feel some nervousness at the thought. I will be leaving my home, which I have been deeply implanted in now for 38 weeks. Full term. And this pregnancy has erupted in a planet-popping BANG. I could not have asked for or imagined a bigger birth this weekend:
Performing my own solo work for the first time for a public audience (work I’ve been developing alongside a group of other solo performance artists)
Facilitating the Global Underscore (the culmination of the crescendoing monthly Underscores I’ve been leading here in Santa Fe)
Performing my own solo work for the second time for a public audience (work I choreographed for the Pole Showcase, spotlighting my newest passion)
Not to mention I had to tie up all the loose ends at my day job- as the manager of an art gallery- on Friday in preparation for my one month sabbatical, and I’ve now got to finish preparing my home and my car to be occupied by others in my absence.
I keep thinking of the words “ritual fatigue”, from which I suffered at summer’s end. But this season, or at the end of this seasonal triptych, what it is now is *output fatigue*. It’s SO clear that I need to start to contract, as soon as possible. It is time now for rest, food, water, replenishment, nourishment, earth, trees, wind, sun, sky, weather, tea, family, community, sitting on the wicker loveseat on the screened-in porch with eyes cast out. There is so much more that has materialized since the onset of 2024; it is WILD to me how much has come through in such a short time. Sustainable Expansion. Has been the theme of the coaching work I’ve been receiving. Thank GOD for support in titrating all that is throttling, wind-tunneling through, blowing everything down in its path, flattening trees, passersby, hurling itself through the dark-and-red-city-street birth canal and GASPING (the birds falter at the sudden lack of oxygen) for First Breath at the Light of Day.
I’m a sturdy Mother, with a widened pelvis, and a fatter stance. There is more bone to me. Though my wing-ed insecurities still flit around and about my scaffolding.
Ya know, I SURVIVED this weekend. (And- the long, exhausting, labor-laid lead-up to it.) And that’s a fuckin ACCOMPLISHMENT. Yo, that was A FUCKING LOT. I have to remind myself. I have to realize for myself. Because GODDAMNIT IF I CAN’T ACKNOWLEDGE THE ENORMITY OF WHAT I JUST DID THEN GOD SAVE ME AND ANY FUTURE DREAMS THAT KNOCK ME UP & DARE TO BE DELIVERED.
I’m tired. I’m going home.
And I miss this home, already.
I miss my life here, already. I miss my budding, baby community here, already. I miss the pole studio. I miss the dryness, the gorgeous weather. I miss my Perfect Nest, nestled up here in the tender tree-and-mountain tops. I miss my friends. I miss my time with myself. My showers, my cooking, my plant-watering, my sitting, my TV watching, my writing, my dancing, my crying, my steadfast, habitual, whole-hearted, daily pre-departure proclamations of Love for my Home.
It’s raining now, and nearly noon. I’ve just put water on for tea, and started to think about breakfast. Eggs, spicy micro-greens, boursin, the last hunk of sourdough…
Today, I will endeavor to rest, as much as I can. Before tomorrow, and all the preparations. And another surge of energy. I’ve never flown between New Mexico and New York before. It’ll be a first. Cindy has been my constant cross-country steed, but this time she’s gonna take a break too. And chill out, and make cute little trips around town. Hopefully for ice cream, and dips in rivers and lakes.
The Solstice and the Full Moon coinciding, the last few days have been Blinding. My head aches with the influx of Light. The diminishing sleeps. I long for darkness. To close my eyes and feel the absence of red light needles pricking at my lids.
This morning I messaged with an old friend, a former lover who’s been on my mind lately. I shared in a few words about my enormous outputs this weekend. And he asked of my solo performance on Friday:
“How was it being up there with just you and jesus?”
It took me a moment to papier mache some words to…
“I want to say some word with the root of ‘awe’… Awesome, in the most absolute sense. And also- Awe-some-ful, like, a little awful in its searing awesomeness.”
*Lyrics from Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club (thanks to Anna Maynard)