The Importance of Shoes

I have never considered myself a style conscious person. Which is to say, I like to pretend I live in a realm outside such petty concerns as clothing and status and how one presents oneself, though I’ve come to realize that no such realm exists and that when I say I “don’t care about how I look” I am carefully choosing to align myself with a certain segment of bohemian society that rejects consumerism, but actually cares WAY MORE than your average soccer mom in middle America about how they present themselves, so it’s all bullshit.

Which is all a longwinded way of saying… hello, my name is Faith Helma, and I have a sense of style. It may be a style that is one part goodwill jeans, one part monochrome t-shirt, and one part unraveling sweater – but it is a style. And lately I’ve been realizing that most important component of one’s style is: shoes. I know this is not news to anyone but me. But it’s been a big insight: if you have a pair of shoes that make you feel awesome, it has an effect on every other aspect of your life.

Kick ass shoes = kick ass life. That’s my new philosophy.

I will give three examples to prove my point.

The sandals I had the summer I was seventeen. I remember so clearly being with my mom at a shoe store, and that these sandals were expensive. I even remember how much they cost which reveals a lot about my warped sense of morality/frugality (aka morgality*): $35. She insisted on buying them for me even though I stubbornly maintained that I was fine wearing clogs made out of old bathmats. And thank god she did because those sandals and that summer are fused in my mind. In fact I don’t even remember much about what exactly happened that summer – I just remember that it was fun, and that I loved those freaking sandals and wore them every single day and kept wearing them for years until I wore out the leather. They were beautiful and delicate and strong, and they made me feel that way which, let me tell you, was a sensation that was sorely lacking at that point.

The hiking boots I wore when my dear friend Aryn & I road tripped across America. I felt so strong when I was wearing them. They embodied the kind of tough woman I wanted to be. They made me feel sexy even though I was greasy and smelly – they made me feel sexy BECAUSE I was greasy and smelly. I was still wearing them up until last winter when the soles literally fell off. And whenever I wore them I remembered: oh yeah, I can kick some ass in these boots. As I’ve said before – you can’t kick ass in flip flops. Or in spindly high heels (unless they’re those gladiator ones and if you can kick ass in those, more power to you).

The sneakers I bought the day before I flew to New York a few weeks ago. My old sneakers were fine, but they were slightly too small and I was always happy to take them off (a sure sign you are not wearing the right shoes – if they’re the right shoes, you’ll want to sleep in them). Anyway, I was at my secret-favorite store, Ross Dress for Less, and chanced across some sneakers for sale. And bought them even though it seemed frivolous, and morgality* still burns within my breast. Well, I’m glad I did, because I can’t believe how much better I feel AS A PERSON when wearing them. They are my style. They make me walk with more confidence. I feel light on my feet, but also savvy. I don’t know why. But that’s why people wear what they wear, right? So they can present themselves as they’d like to be to the world. I didn’t even realize it until I bought these new shoes, but the old shoes were making me feel pinched and knock-kneed and kind of frumpy. Now I feel like a superhero! All because of my new sneakers!

Thanks, America.

* oh, and you’re welcome for coining a new word.

NYC, Take Two

So you know what’s really weird?

Last time I traveled to New York City, I felt totally overwhelmed and freaked out. I just wanted to get away from the noise and the people and find some green space.

This time I had the opposite experience. I didn’t find the mass of people overwhelming at all. In fact it felt like less people were there somehow – even though that can’t be true. And it felt quieter! Maybe because it was winter? I have no idea but I was not bothered ONCE by the noisiness of New York.

I went in prepared for the worst – I even brought my I Ching for emergency consultation, and wrote a list of “things that make me feel good and less freaked out,” a list I did not have to consult once. I’m just blown away by how easy it was this time. I didn’t have to try to have a good time – I got up every morning excited and walked out into the street and gained energy and momentum with each step. And this despite going to bed every night at 4 a.m!

And the weirdest part is: somewhere during this trip I got my desire back for working on Undine. A desire I kind of lost after performing in August (which is weird in and of itself, because the performances went well and I loved working with the people at the Ontological and sharing space with Helsinki Syndrome – so I’m not sure why it was so hard exactly). Anyway, I woke up yesterday morning, my first day back in Portland, and immediately dived into work on Undine and didn’t even have to make myself do this – I wanted to.

I am honestly baffled by all this. And thankful. I am chalking up my different experience this time around to:

+ Being there with the whole H2M crew. It was so much easier to be able to share the pressure and burden of performing with my fellow artists. And it’s just more fun to be on tour with H2M. It’s like going out dancing with your best friends versus going dancing by yourself. Even sharing a small living space (and one bathroom) with 7 people wasn’t too bad. There were lots of chances to talk over what was happening, to process and vent and give support and make each other laugh.

+ Wintertime. I think I just like NYC better in the winter. It’s sunny and bracing, the kind of weather that makes you want to go to museums and drink coffee and educate yourself. Even when it was super cold I enjoyed it. Maybe because I got to wear sweaters and scarves and cowboy boots, which served as armor to insulate me from the noise. And in general, boots make me feel more capable. You can’t kick someone’s ass in flip flops (though I’m not sure if I could kick someone’s ass regardless, but I’d be more likely to if I was wearing boots).

+ Knowing the city better – and going in ready to be proactive about figuring out which subway lines to use. I still got lost, but I wasn’t as anxious when I did because I could ask people how to get where I wanted to go, and understand the directions they gave me. This sounds so blithe and breezy but it is a new thing for me.

Other things that struck me as awesome on this trip:

+ Goddamn it, the food! Korean, Polish, Japanese. The soup options alone are dazzling. And you know how I feel about soup. And so many things you can eat late at night. And bagels. And things to eat with bagels like pickled tomatoes. Offered up by the two sweetest men on earth, Larry Krone and Jim Andralis. Larry's bathroom was an inspiration, filled with books by such luminaries as Rue McClanahan, and I’m pretty sure a Dolly Parton action figure.

+ Halfway through I took a day to just putter around the apartment and make borscht (I mean BEET BLAST) and read my lowbrow books. You know what I’m really coming to realize? This is not a searing insight but lowbrow books are fun to read. Especially on the subway or when you’re trying to fall asleep at 3:30 a.m. after a night of shouting about theater over bar noise. I love smart, fierce, complicated books – of course – but when you’re trying to relax, nothing beats The Shelters of Stone.

+ Oh man – I got to see a lot of shows, from companies I admire, like Banana Bag & Bodice, Wax Factory, 31 Down, The Debate Society and Vivarium Studio. Highlights for me included BBB’s Beowulf (they had me at the trombone section and backup singers) and the little booklets that Vivarium Studios were handing out – gems of subtle, gentle absurdity that expressed the nature of the company’s work as much as their show, L’Effet de Serge, did.

+ Oh yeah, and our show. We had a great time performing it. We got pretty solid crowds and good feedback from everyone who came, and we will likely be back next year having learned a lot more about how to prepare for a run in NYC. Unfortunately, no reviews (we were, after all, competing against every other theater performance in the entire known world). But I did get an email today from someone who came and saw the show, who said:

I just wanted to tell you that I thought your show was beautiful. Really so beautiful. I rarely feel as touched or delighted by theater, and I rarely laugh that hard out loud. So I just wanted to say thank you, because watching the wonderful work of theater you created makes me want try to create wonderful things as well.

And really, that’s all you can ask for.

So thank you, New York! And I’m sorry I blamed you for my nervous breakdown back in August.

Beet Blast!

The time has come, to give the world my recipe for BARSZCZ. That’s Polish for borscht (you can read about the variations on barszcz/borscht elsewhere).

Some background on my Borscht obsession.

People of non-Polish or Jewish descent never get excited when I talk about my fabulous borscht recipe, so I call it beetroot soup. But that doesn’t really get people excited either. So now I’m thinking about calling it BEET BLAST.

I’ve seriously been considering starting a company where I bottle up my special BEET BLAST and sell it as a miracle cure for colds and hangovers*.

Because, no joke, that is what it is. In the last year I have made up a big pot of BEET BLAST at least once a month, and I’ve only gotten sick once – and that was over in a day.

I originally tasted this soup when I was in Poland, land of endless tasty soups (including pickle soup). Just about every restaurant and bar mleczny offered the delicious red barszcz (pronounced badly by me as BAR-shuh-chuh). At train stations you could pay like a dollar and get a styrofoam cup filled with steaming red broth.

I loved it but didn’t even think about making it myself because I assumed there was some complicated soaking/extracting/fermenting process involved, and anyway I’d never eaten a beet before or held one in my hands so I had no inkling of how to cook with one.

Flash forward a couple years, and our beautiful, mad Polish director friend Luba is staying with us while she directs a play. I learned a lot from her but the most profound, simple thing I picked up was her approach to cooking. We would come home after a long, grueling night of rehearsal and whereas I might throw a frozen pizza in the oven, she would pull out lentils and carrots and celery and onions and toss things in a pot with water and before I’d even taken my shoes off she’d have a delicious, thick lentil stew bubbling on the stove ready to eat.

One day we had a party. I think we were barbecue-ing, and everyone came bearing six packs of beer and hot dogs. While we sat around the kitchen table gossiping and drinking beers, Luba calmly filled a gigantic stock pot with water and threw in carrots, celery, onion and freshly scrubbed beets. At the end of the night she cut lemons in half, squeezed them into the pot and announced that the barszcz was done. Now, I don’t remember how it tasted that night – but I do remember the next morning when we all woke up and stumbled into the kitchen. Luba ladled rich ruby red broth into mugs and passed them around, saying, “Here. Polish cure for hangover.” OH MY GOD. It restored order to the world.

So, flash forward some more. It is a week before my solo show opens and my throat is sore and I can feel sickness coming on. I need my voice for the show. I panic. I am pacing the aisles of the grocery store late at night throwing garlic and oranges and cough drops into my basket when I wander past some beets in the produce section. The memory of Luba’s delicious soup comes floating back to me, and so I buy them and take them home and boil them up in a big pot of water. I squeeze in some lemon, and then I drink the broth.

People, I have tried the various “cures” for colds – popping vitamin c, gulping cayenne, lemon and honey in hot water, chicken soup with ten cloves of garlic. I’ve always gotten a cold anyway. But after I drank down this elixir, the oncoming cold was GONE. And this despite a punishing schedule of tech rehearsals and neverending singing!

So, I am a believer. I am a proselytizer, even though I know that preaching about something is the surest way to turn people away from it. I can’t help it. I WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW ABOUT BEET BLAST.

Here is my simple, lazy, very untraditional** recipe for…

DELICIOUS MAGICAL BEET BLAST

+ Fill up a big old pot with water and set it to boiling on the stove.

+ Take 2-3 beets. Scrub them clean, and if they’re especially gnarly, peel them. Cut them into quarters and toss them into the pot. The water will immediately turn dark pink or red… if it’s more pink than red I might add another beet.

+ If the beets have greens attached, wash those and toss them in as well.

+ Chop up onion, carrot and celery. One each is good, but if you have less it’s ok. I just use whatever I have on hand. And don’t chop them pretty – you won’t be eating the vegetables themselves.

+ If you have parsley, throw in a generous handful. And throw in a clove or two of garlic.

Honestly, that’s about it. If you’ve got other bits of vegetables around you want to throw in – potatoes, turnips, mushrooms – anything you’d add to a regular vegetable stock will taste great.

+ Let it simmer on the stove for at least an hour. The house will smell so healthy and delicious. Then take a lemon, cut it in half and squeeze both halves into the broth. You can use lime in a pinch, though I don’t think the flavors mesh quite as well. Taste it – you may need to add more lemon.

+ Add salt and pepper. And then you can either drain out the mushy used up vegetables (saving the broth, of course!) or just let them sit in the bottom of the pot while you ladle out the broth. Luba said if you leave them there the flavor will get more intense each day. But some people get kind of grossed out seeing the vegetable parts floating around in there.

What I do nowadays is make a big old pot of this stuff, freeze half the broth and drink the rest over the next 2-3 days. Then you’ve got some on hand if you get sick and can’t get out of bed.

* This will fit in nicely with my kindergarten classroom/karaoke lounge/therapeutic dance party business.

** Supposedly the traditional Polish way to make this is to let the soup naturally ferment and sour (as opposed to adding the lemon). I’m not badass enough to try that yet, though.

The Dangers of Oversharing

Don't worry, this isn't going to be like Emily Gould's 12-page oversharing analysis of her history of oversharing in the New York Times (though if you're reading this, NY Times... I am available). But I do want to talk a little bit today about oversharing. Which is sort of like writing about writing or singing about singing (i.e. usually pointless). But here I go.

So. What is oversharing? Being too honest, being too vulnerable. Opening yourself up for criticism. Spilling the details of your life to any old stranger you meet. Telling your mom too much about your sex life. Risking that people won't like you, will feel uncomfortable, will avert their eyes.

Like high school gym class – when being uncoordinated and self-conscious was not charming or funny. When you walked into the gym for the 80th straight day of kickball and tried to play it cool and pretend that kickball was beneath you, that you didn’t care, but you could hear people muttering and sighing. Well... I guess that's not really an example of oversharing so much as it is an awkward memory. But whatever, it feels the same.

Like wearing the wrong thing to a formal event. Or wearing something too fancy – equally embarrassing.

Like the guy at a party who gets out his guitar and won’t stop playing and doesn’t seem to realize that he sucks. He just sings song after banal song, clueless that he has brought the party to a grinding halt. Like if I opened my journal and started reading it out loud and didn’t stop even when the giggling faded and the room got dead silent.

That is the danger of writing a blog. These are the images that flash through my mind as I decide to make my blog public. Not that someone I know will find it and be offended – but that they will be quietly embarrassed for me and look at me differently when I see them in person. Since it’s in this weird amoral aphysical space/nonspace called the internet, the BLOGOSPHERE – there is no way to read in someone’s eyes if I’ve said too much. So I just have to plow through and hope my instincts about what to say and what not to say are on target.

I guess you could say I’m a professional oversharer. I’m a prude in my private life but onstage I stripped naked to Proud to be an American. I dread the idea of crying in public but in my solo show I crafted a huge, awkward, embarrassing meltdown in front of the audience. So clearly there’s something about oversharing that appeals to me.

But with performing, there is a clear line between onstage and offstage – even when you’re making weird performances where you are playing “yourself” – and the lines are different with blogging. And I don’t know where they are yet.

So I guess what I’m saying is: hello, world. This is my blog. Please don’t hate me because I suck at kickball.

Oh yeah: and happy new year!