{"id":259,"date":"2009-02-18T07:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-18T07:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2009\/02\/marx-beledi\/"},"modified":"2009-02-18T07:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-18T07:44:00","slug":"marx-beledi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/marx-beledi\/","title":{"rendered":"Marx Beledi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry, must switch channels.  I need a sequin fix.  I woke up obsessed with raqs beledi again.  Thank God!<br \/>Here is my favorite these days:<br \/><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_5Mon_lpfYU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s weird; it keeps changing on me.  There are so many days lately where I look at my two garment boxes filled with cossies and I think, &#8220;I guess I should sell these.&#8221;  Because I have not really been wearing them much for dancing, and I haven&#8217;t even been dancing much.  For one thing, it&#8217;s so cold in my living room!  For another, all the cossies need repair and so in order to wear them I have to get Ned to safety pin them onto me.  You can imagine how he likes that:  &#8220;Ow!&#8221;  &#8220;Hold still!&#8221;  I got to get out my sewing kit:  maybe today; we have no vacation plans for the day (it&#8217;s the kids&#8217; vacation).<\/p>\n<p>For another thing, I feel discouraged with my belly.  I dance with two mirrors propped up:  one long one facing me and a shorter one for side views.  I do this to check form, but I can&#8217;t help but think, &#8220;jeez,&#8221; sometimes.<\/p>\n<p>I wish and wish that things were different in the media.  Everywhere you look is plastic and stretched.  There is so little space for a past-40 or 50 to stand.  (and guess what?  I&#8217;m going to be in L.A. on Thursday and Friday!  D&#8217;oh!)<\/p>\n<p>I realized the other day that I was actually feeling ashamed of my changing face.  I was glad to realize this because I stopped right away.  But I see how easy it is to buy into the thin\/young paradigm.<\/p>\n<p>Ned is so thoroughly sick of hearing me run myself down that he&#8217;s halfway ready to divorce me.<\/p>\n<p>On my bellydance website so many of the dancers are thin young things; every part is smooth and flawless.  I feel jealous on so many levels:  mostly, how did they know at such a young age that this is what they wanted to do?  How did they have the confidence at 20 that I only now have at 46?  Why didn&#8217;t I learn and perform when I was younger?  I can&#8217;t do it now, I just feel like I can&#8217;t.  But I also feel like I could.  I do routines now for entire songs, song after song, that look really really good.  Especially when I just forget this self-hate and I just hear the music and pretend I&#8217;m surrounded by happy people.  Then, I smile, clap my hands over my head, and I know just what to do, move-by-move.  It rarely happens when Ned is filming me.  There is too much to be self-conscious about at those times and you cannot be self-conscious and perform well.<\/p>\n<p>That is why I love bellydance so much.  I have always been pathologically self-conscious.  In a debilitating way.  And so bellydance is actually teaching me how to drop it.  By making myself so vulnerable, I am forced to be strong.<\/p>\n<p>So it was good today, to wake up and think about dancing and to feel myself making some of the good old isolations and moves, even in my pajamas.  I feel a little like <a href=\"http:\/\/images.google.com\/imgres?imgurl=http:\/\/collateraldamage.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/groucho.png%3Fw%3D132%26h%3D160&amp;imgrefurl=http:\/\/collateraldamage.wordpress.com\/2008\/09\/11\/headline-of-the-day-teacher-ok-after-crashing-into-bear-on-a-bicycle\/&amp;usg=__gS31xqMCpcRBDA8dTOnNdp4BUVU=&amp;h=160&amp;w=132&amp;sz=9&amp;hl=en&amp;start=17&amp;sig2=QVlrKasY7sixt6N--I9_gQ&amp;um=1&amp;tbnid=yysSue2eFbQguM:&amp;tbnh=98&amp;tbnw=81&amp;ei=WQicSY6NLNuCtweQ2qWsCw&amp;prev=\/images%3Fq%3Dgroucho%2Blast%2Bnight%2Belephant%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN\">Groucho:  Today I saw a bellydancer, in my pajamas!  What she was doing in my pajamas, I&#8217;ll never know!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry, must switch channels. I need a sequin fix. I woke up obsessed with raqs beledi again. Thank God!Here is my favorite these days: It&#8217;s weird; it keeps changing on me. There are so many days lately where I look at my two garment boxes filled with cossies and I think, &#8220;I guess I should [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-4b","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}