Drama Queen
Someone who spoke with my mother at my house-warming party said your mom is “so dramatic” and then she looked at me and said, “the apple doesn’t fall from the tree.”
I was at Pilates yesterday and L said, “was that you in that big blue truck?” and I said yeah, that bad ass truck is mine. She said, “I couldn’t believe you’d drive a truck.” Weird, I totally see it. And back to Louise Nevelson – I have made my world – I remember watching Cast Away and when Tom Hanks gets back to the states and goes looking for the address where the Heart sculpture came from, he finds that woman working in her large open hangar studio – she’s an attractive woman in her 40s or 50s and she drives a beat up pickup truck. That’s the image I wanted for myself – so I couldn’t wait to get back home and get me a truck. Now that Big Blue has all the dents, and a light busted out, and scrapes all around – it feels more like me – seasoned.
But what is this penchant for drama? It’s not just in my family. My friend K in San Francisco and I used to go to the gym and she would get on that rowing machine and row like a maniac. I asked her what she was doing and she said she was pretending that she was a damsel in distress and in her mind, she was screaming – help me, won’t somebody help me? She was originally from Atlanta.
Is it just the South that breeds women who strut around like actors on a stage? Could be. Here is a great quote from another drama queen from around these parts:
“I don’t believe in dullness. I believe in passion and wonder and excitement. I believe in people having a storm in their hearts, a great big furious storm that sweeps all trivialities away like scraps of paper or dead leaves.”
— from Tennessee Williams’ Mister Paradise