Deadlines all in a row

Lately I have been stressed. I know very well what stresses me. It's absurd, and I can't stop it, but I can recognize it and do my best to settle down. Early nights, exercise and ticking off the to-do list help.

When too many obligations stud the calendar, that's what stresses me. I'm programmed to do one thing at a time. One enormous problem is not an issue: I can handle that. Show me a terrorist or a book to write by Friday, and I will cope on automatic pilot. Show me a calendar with 50 deadlines and to-do tasks, no matter how small, and I crumble.

Right now all is well again. Aaah... When stress lifts, I feel an electro-chemical change surge through my body.

We are nearly half-way through February and I have been ticking DONE beside small items and large. It even helps that three of my to-do things will be over by Sunday night.

1. Tomorrow, a rehearsal for our role in the Chinese New Year show at the TSB Events Centre
2. Sunday, the performance
3. Sunday, an open home for Novella, the apartment I'm selling by private sale.

Odd: as if nearly done is done.

And as if stress is a computable arithmetic progression. Now I'm working backwards. March is equally busy, and in April another progression will begin. It's all logarithms, I suspect. Or logarhythms.

This pattern I cannot blame on age, as I recall spotting exactly the same pattern in my thirties, when I began to perform in public.

What stresses you, I wonder?

Of dancing and books

Last night I went to Dancing in the Wake, a 3-person, 4-performance play by Jan Bolwell with much creative input from all involved.

It was terrific. Unusual in that dancing by Sacha Copland (inspired, demonic, confronting) is welded seamlessly into a literary script (hilarious, rich, shapely).

I say literary with reason, for with Lucia Joyce, her father James and Samuel Beckett as the central characters, how could it be otherwise? The play created a big buzz afterwards, even for an opening night. Insights into the works of Beckett and Joyce abound, but they emerge from the action: nothing didactic, do not fear.

Inspiration bubbled up in our group of dancing grannies. We found an excuse to spend more time with each other in future: we will start our own dancing book club. That means, I think, every couple of months we'll have dinner together and then—yay! Each granny will dance a book she has been reading. Or a chapter. No pressure and purely for fun.

The first book I interpret in a dance will be The Information by James Gleick. Probably Chapter 3, celebrating the miracle of logarithms and Charles Babbage's doomed attempt to create a computer in the age of steam. Bring it on!

So Jan read a book and created a play built around a dance, which inspired us to unite books and dance in another way. The wheels turn.

Advice to a 20-year-old

What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? The Listener asked some prominent Kiwis this question and plenty of good advice was forthcoming.

But now the time travel problem pops up: what if your young self actually took that advice? History would be changed. Then you would not be quite yourself as you are now.

In real life I happily dish out buckets of advice to young people, confident in the knowledge that they'll absorb any advice that they happen to want at that moment and nothing else. (Just like you and me.)

So I won't tell that child bride a thing except what I'd say to anyone younger. If they choose to hear me, so much the better:

'You are perfect just the way you are. Be kind, be happy, be yourself, do your best, have fun and have adventures.'

Which is pretty much the message I got from my parents, bless them.

Fional Kidman's mature short stories satisfy like novels

Fiona Kidman writes with 7 decades of wisdom and skill.

The 11 stories in The Trouble with Fire are wholly satisfying. They range wide and deep, and weave in and out of each other so that one could surely not feel cheated, as sometimes happens with short stories. On the contrary, by the end of the book I felt as if I had lived several lives in several other skins: The Trouble With Fire is as rich and complete as a fine novel.

Fire smoulders and flares here—in peat underground, in a pine plantation, and on the tussocked hills of Lady Barker's sheep station. Obviously, these images epitomize passion that flickers or rampages through the characters' lives. Delicately handled, they're as subtle as the rose petal cover art.

Fiona Kidman is a model of maturity. She knows how people behave: her characters respond to the twists of life in ways that are not rational or predictable, yet seem inevitable. Kidman meets, observes and follows her characters, sometimes through decades.

Her eyes are sharp. Her memory is long. Her words are simple and clear, sometimes lyrical, always layered. Experience has made Kidman wise but not cynical: she retains a fascinated compassion for ordinary people living their lives as best they can, despite extraordinary challenges.

Enjoy these stories. They're a great way to find out first hand why Fiona Kidman is one of New Zealand's most revered authors.

Mortality? Stuff it!

It's about two years since I started this blog. Slightly bewildered about turning 70. Feeling some vague responsibility to accept and understand how old I was—even to believe it, that would be a start.

This odd urge to become conscious of my chronological age was stirred up by the strong memory of my mother's choice: she always swore she didn't want to live past 70, and she duly died before that self-imposed deadline.

At this point, I say stuff it. I have tried. I will never be a Buddhist monk. And I've gone back to living my funny little life with no more age-awareness than the next person. Today I feel about 41, a sprightly 41.

I meditate and do Tai Ch'i and I've lived with tea masters in Japan. So I understand—theoretically—the idea of coming to terms with one's mortality. My friend Maja Milcinski used to lecture on 'The Void' throughout the world, and what intense debates we had. But she is a fey, funny genius with one foot in the spirit world, and I am just me.

Without her permission, I'm going to quote my sister Lesley, one of the wisest people I know.

Me: 'When will we be ready to die?'
Lesley: 'When we die.'

Game, set and match to common sense.

And now the cabbage tree is flowering in sunshine. The cat is searching for mice in a pile of stationery. With friends I'm going to Pina in 3D this afternoon. My family, health, business and life are all thriving.

Mortality? What's that?

Life? Bring it on!

How the show went: Crows Feet Dance Collective in Angle Poise.

We came, we danced, we conquered some hearts if not every single technical challenge. Visit our new Facebook page for a growing gallery of photos of the old ladies dancing:
http://www.facebook.com/crowsdance

And please Like us! Like everyone, we like to be liked. And it spreads the message -- dancing is great at all ages.

Old ladies dancing: what's difficult about that?

As the oldest dancer in the Crows Feet Dance Collective, I need all the help I can get. And I get plenty of help from kind friends and my trusty DIY tools: a notebook and Flipp video camera.

Now Angle Poise, our new dance show, is only two weeks away, which is pretty scary. So what do I find most difficult?

• Very fast or very slow steps. Too fast, and I lose the plot. Too slow, and I lose my balance.
• Orientation: when we learn a dance facing north, and then must do it facing west, I'm bewildered. What side of the stage? Where am I? This may be just a variation of the famous female incapacity for putting flat packs together, but then again, I'm good at map reading.
• Too much spinning. I love a bit of spinning, but too much and I get dizzy. (Don't you?)

When I was a teacher, I loved a little girl called Pam. Every Monday for months she asked me why some words in French were masculine and others feminine, with no regard for gender. I knew that Pam was the brave one who dared to state what others also thought.

So when I'm writing notes (8 back RL, 4 x 1/4 turn, 4 x promenade RL ...) or videoing a sequence, I tell myself I'm not a dummy. I'm not too old: I'm just the Crows Feet Pam. Because sometimes others say they also find these things difficult. (Could've fooled me.)

One thing I'll never know, because I have never met my control-self in a parallel universe. Am I slower than the others because I'm older, or because I only began contemporary dance 5 years ago? Or both?

But this I do know: everything about dance that is difficult is also exhilarating. Where's the fun in doing something easy?