Odilia Rivera-Santos
I'm writing about relationships because it seems, for most people, to be the primary distraction from fulfilling meaningful goals. I started writing some relationship skits, which will be performed in June of 2012. I highly recommend writers write and have their work performed in front of an audience; it's exciting to see an audience respond and also helps in the editing or rewriting process.
Pointless Questions
Are you married?
Do you have a boyfriend?
I can honestly say those are the two most common questions people ask when they meet me.
As a person who was married for most of her adult life, the obsession with dating seems ridiculous.
My parents never divorced or spoke of divorce, and we were trained to marry young in the traditional Puerto Rican manner -- no dating, no going to movies with a boy as a teenager like our American friends -- who seemed so hip.
I observe people in their constant search for a romantic partner with an air of detachment because it seems like such a waste of time and energy. It makes me think of junior high school and having a conversation with my friend Digna. Digna was in love with a boy and spoke of marrying him and having his kids. I remember telling her "You're fourteen. This guy won't matter to you next year."
In junior high, all the girls were in the bathroom putting on lipgloss and greasy goop in their hair in an attempt to attract the cute guy -- the burly slightly criminally-minded one with a really cute smile and dimples. I didn't care about the boys in junior high because I was trying to read everything I could find on, by or about Charles Dickens. None of the boys could compete with my reading time and my mother would have beaten me to a pulp if I had a boyfriend at that age.
I now see people who appear to be stuck in that adolescent state of hoping they are pretty enough or handsome enough to attract enough attention on a dating site or at a networking event. I became interested in the work of life extension scientists and Linus Pauling as a teenager and my focus on taking care of my health is related to my desire to be a productive artist well into my nineties, not to be the cute one at a party. I go to two kinds of gatherings: parties with great music so I can dance or networking events.
I go to networking events to network with other artists -- thinking we might actually participate in an art project together. My priorities remain unchanged from childhood: health, work(my work as a child was reading), friends and romance.
Dating until Death
I think it's strange to be going out on dates forever. . . forever at the starting line with another human being to ask those same tired questions: where are you from? what do you do?
The Pathology of Saying Stupid Shit
I am writing a performance piece called Shit Men Say about the inappropriate things men say to women -- my friend calls it a form of mental illness when men make sexual remarks to women they don't know.
My love life continues to be my business and not something for discussion at work or with anyone but my closest friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment