Have I Missed the Silly Season?

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about living in Maryville is what I call the Silly Season. It runs from April through July, and it features little oddities that I’m not sure most college towns (or towns of any sort) have to weather.

The Silly Season usually starts on campus with art projects. Like giant rubber duckies on Colden Pond, or a doorframe set up in the middle of the sidewalk. The Northwest Yeti. Little things like that. Then it spreads to the town, with horses at the local drive-in tied to the order kiosk and a large cow in the grocery store parking lot. Not so much madness as a head-shake and a chuckle. This is our excitement. It’s slow around here.

That has not happened this year. Nothing has startled a smile out of me on campus, nothing unusual has been sighted in town, not even a Weinermobile. I am worried that the Silly Season has expired in Maryville, and I miss it.

It might be time for me to figure out how to revive the season. The trick is that one cannot try too hard to be silly. One can try to get attention, but not try to dictate what kind of attention one gets. And the most important thing, one has to do it without any self-consciousness. One gives in to the awkwardness and goes all-out. It’s the difference between wearing a mascot costume and doing that mascot dance wholeheartedly.

I have too much self-consciousness lately, and I blame my meds for that. Bipolar has a great correlation with unabashed weirdness, but it has a great correlation with other things I’d rather do without. If I had less, though, I’d consider adding some silly to people’s lives here. Set up (with the proper permits) a lemonade stand downtown. Walk in bunny ears through Walmart. Put signs on my car reading “Lauren Leach-Steffens for Whatever” in campaign style. And more.

I hope the Silly Season comes back. It’s good for some Facebook posts from home.

Day 20 Reflection: Play

I have never stopped playing.

At age 55, my hands shape themselves into imaginary critters that talk in squeaky voices or growl and nip noses. I sicc them at my husband in the middle of restaurants when nobody’s looking, and he talks back. I don’t do this when the waiter’s visiting, because adults aren’t supposed to play.

I play with words. I make bad puns, which I’m told is more acceptable play for adults. I rename my cats silly things several times a day (Weeblebuttz sits next to me as I type this). I rewrite songs on the fly as jokes, or commentary, or nonsense.

My mind spontaneously explodes into play. I don’t have to make an effort to be playful. I don’t know if this is because I’ve never quite grown up or because I have bipolar disorder and possess the creativity that goes with the neurodiversity, but play is never far from my mind.

And I consider this a blessing.

I contain multitudes …

Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes)

— Walt Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”

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I was thinking about the poem I wrote Dec. 7th, which I consider intense and moody; and my rebuttal on Dec. 8th, which I consider flippant and a bit silly. Those are both me. I am someone who wants to ask a question that changes someone’s life in some way; I want the answer in a way that reveals their essence. Then I turn around and break the silence in a squeaky voice that owes to classic Chicago children’s television.

I do not look like either of the people introduced above as they look in the common imagination. My intense, moody self should look pale and slender in Gothic black lace and blood-red fingernails. My silly self should look like the manic pixie dream girl trope: Young and bouncy with clothing that looks like a hipster Raggedy Ann doll. Both of these selves will have to deal with dwelling inside a middle-aged woman with short, spiked hair, nerdy glasses, and a style called “classic” in the fashion industry. Except for today, when I’m wearing an ugly Christmas sweater and a string of flashing Christmas lights.

I wasn’t kidding.

I probably contain more multitudes than this; everyone does, but as you’re not aware of the multitudes I contain, I am not aware of the multitudes you contain.

We often don’t know the multitudes we ourselves contain, and we’re afraid to name them ourselves. As much as we don’t like to look at our inner Shadow, we also don’t want to claim our fantastic inner selves — the hero/ine, the rock star, the vamp, the Lady in Red — for fear that we will look ridiculous. We want someone else to give us a nickname. We want someone else to tell us who we remind them of. We want to define ourselves through the meaning that someone else gives to us. We want to see how they see us, because if we admitted we saw ourselves that way, people would laugh.

Sometimes we’re disappointed if our friends see us in the most prosaic way. I once asked a boyfriend “Why do you love me?” His response: “You’re useful for some things.” My multitudes wanted to kick his butt.

The more fantastic of our multitudes often live unrecognized until we find a way to try them on. Reading, dance, acting, writing, music, oral storytelling, fantasy — any way we can try on that other self safely.

When I write, I see myself as that older, intense, provocative woman who asks the questions that change people’s lives. Men fall a little bit in love with me. It’s just fantasy, but the fact that I can see that suggests it’s a solid part of my inner landscape and a sample of the multitudes I contain.

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The fact that I’m writing songs, poetry, and philosophical treatises means:

a) I’m procrastinating from grading

b) I’m procrastinating from writing my book

c) a and b above