Last nice weather day

I think I would give up all the things I owned if I could go hang out with all the people I love instead.  This sounds easy to accomplish - it is not, as many of the people I love live far away, in other countries, perhaps.  And seeing them would involve some other costs.

It strikes me that in a way I want to visit all the other people I've been, and that may be true, but I genuinely  want to find out how everyone else is doing.  I want to sit and drink red wine out of my friend's heavy goblet wine glasses - they're odd, as if they are props and not meant to drunk out of - and I want to ask her how she finds her life these days and hear her call me "Lizzie."  I want to go see another friend's brand new adorable baby.  I want to go and harass yet another friend until his deadpan face cracks and he actually laughs at something I say.  That could take days, but if I could manage it, I'd be gleeful.  I hope he still has the dreadful piano scarf, though I doubt it.

I want to see my best friend, and do something ridiculous with her that no one else would ever bother doing - put on costumes and go on an adventure, go prom dress shopping (no intention of prom dress buying, just shopping), camp, sit at the Waffle House, consult the I Ching or make up fake potions to help us through our lives.

I want to take HG back to London and find Fran!!!  We'd jump back in time and clean house together and then have jacket potatoes for lunch, gossiping all the while.  Hmmm.  Come to think of it, just to move into the present, I want to visit HG in Italy next year and force her to have some adventure she'd never have thought of...possibly involving wine, but perhaps not.

I'd like to have dinner with a friend I never get to see and see them.  Ask questions, argue, persuade, laugh, remember, and plan.  No, not plan, plot.  I need me some new horizons, and I'd like to have old friends on them with me.

I can't think of a single object I own than I wouldn't give up if it meant I could do this.

Some thanks

So, if you haven't ever met me or noticed from the inevitable return to this subject, I have trouble believing that anything I write here could remotely interest anyone else.  Yet I'm still driven to try to communicate, I still find I want to say something, and I want to believe I can do so effectively, even if some worm within me always convinces me otherwise.

The worm has been winning recently.

I'd like to thank those of you who have stopped by and made a supportive comment, and I'd like to thank those of you who stopped by and didn't make a negative comment.  I'm really grateful.

I keep hoping I can leapfrog over this impenetrable insecurity and get beyond it to something magical, and yet it never seems to happen.  I believe I can lose 15 pounds, too, and that keeps getting put off as well.  The me I think I really am always seems just out of reach.

A friend once told me about some tree that grows something like 15 feet every 5 years.  But it grows maybe 1 inch for 4 years, and then shoots up 14 feet 11 inches in the last year.

I keep hoping to reach my 5th year.  I think it could be coming.  I think there's something in me unexpressed, something ferocious and necessary.  I don't know what it is, or if I can ever find it.  Maybe I'm too old and off center, too plain and easily dismayed, too vain and too analytical.

But thank you for checking up on me, because inherent in that is the idea that I might have something to say that will be useful.  I hope some days I come through for you, and me.

I believe, help my disbelief.

Today it is sunny outside and I drank two cups of cappuccino, and I'm going to go running.  Maybe I should stop talking and try listening.  Call me if you want to take advantage of that intention.

As others see us

I had someone critique me recently as an actor and a human being, and I can't shake how uneasy and uncertain it has made me feel.  First, a caveat:  the comments were absolutely true - I recognized myself without fail in what this person was saying, and I recognized that the advice I was getting about changing my behavior was sound.

But what I was forced to acknowledge about myself made me feel...I'm not sure how to put it...sick to my stomach.  I never like making mistakes, even though I realize intellectually that making mistakes is the only way we can possibly learn anything.  So part of this dread is realizing I've been making mistakes.

The other part is that while this person didn't speak for anyone but themselves, I'm sure to have exhibited this behavior elsewhere.  Which leads me to this possibility - do I fail to get work as an actor because I am a nightmare to work with??

That's a terrifying thought.  Horrifying.  Debilitating.  It can't be universally true, because my actor/director friends would treat me differently if it were.  But it is doubtless absolutely true in certain situations.  Which is keeping me awake at nights now.

More and more I feel my vanity is in my own way.  And I'm bored by it!!  Aren't you?  Wow, I wish I didn't waste any time at all worrying about being good or pretty or right.  Someone will always be prettier and better and more right - probably more often as I age!  But I don't know how to do without it, or how to circumvent it, or how to retrain it.


Hmmm.  This is where I desperately need to reinvent myself because I've become an utter bore even to myself.
Maybe that leather miniskirt/taking up smoking thing needs to happen right away.

Maybe I just need habermasgal and tee to move to town and have weekly dinners with me.

I'll cook....we don't even have to spend money...

Always take the weather with you

I spent yesterday lunch with a friend who recently got engaged, and yesterday dinner with another who is currently getting a divorce.  Whew!  Talk about running the gamut.

What struck me in both conversations is how hard most relationships are.  I'm thinking more and more about why we make any attempt at all to have a permanent bond with just one other human being.  It's such a tricky endeavor, and takes so much work, why do so many of us sign on?  (And if you haven't signed on, you most likely have felt the pressure to do so, even if you haven't buckled under to it.)  I am beginning to feel the same way about having children - not one single parent has ever told me having kids is a complete romp.

It seems like it doesn't matter who you are or who you pick, a relationship gets hard at some point. (Although clearly it's possible to pick someone wholly inappropriate and have the relationship always be a complete nightmare...we've all done that.)  Someone shifts in an unexpected way, or doesn't shift when you do, and a balance is thrown off.  People behave in unpredictable ways.  One may find oneself behaving unexpectedly.  No one knows everything about oneself at the beginning of things, or even at the middle of things.

Because the problem/beauty of it all is, things change.  We work so hard to find a place of safety, a place of continuity, but in the end, that's an arbitrary decision - "this place is safe and will not alter" - you can say that, but you can't make it true.

I think about a couple I know who have been married nearly 50 years.  They bring each other equal parts comfort and irritation.  Is the irritation as comforting in its constancy as the comfort?

I also listened to a radio program recently about quitting, and that's having an effect on my musing.  As a society, we're bad at quitting, though sometimes quitting is the best thing we can do.

Except when it isn't.

Wanting to be right all the time is another form of vanity, and boy, is vanity turning out to be my stumbling block.

I'm going to think about this more and get back to you.

Coming soon...a new look

Yesterday, I'm roaming the farmer's market in my neighborhood when I see someone standing at the door of Starbucks waving energetically to me.  "Yo!"  It's R, with whom I was in a sometimes questionable show earlier this year.  He just broke up with his girlfriend, moved to the neighborhood and is meeting our friend J in a minute.  We chat.  It's wicked fun.  He tells me during his move his car got stolen - while full of stuff.  The cops found it that very night, stripped of parts, but most of the stuff was still there.  The thieves left credit cards and checks he had in there, but took all the cleaning supplies he had just bought at Target.  Naturally, we thought of terrible puns - "Dudes, we cleaned up on this robbery!"  (etc.)

J showed up (late, of course) and I started telling them about my new plan to change my image.  "I'm thinking of taking up smoking," I told them, "I just feel like I need to be more of a bad ass."  

"Shit, who you kidding?" R flatters me, "Girl, you're already bad ass - why you think I was calling to you from the door?  I was thinking, who is that hot chick...oh, man, I know her...and damn, she's already married."  

"Whatever, kiss ass.  I'm really looking fine, rocking this socks-with-shoes look.  I need a hair cut, and maybe a miniskirt..." 

R interrupts - "A leather miniskirt..."

"Please, you know I don't have a miniskirt, leather or not."  

"Just go home and grab any skirt, we'll cut it off for you, no problem."

"Or what about a face piercing?" J chimes in, helpfully.  "Tongue?  Nose?"

We continue being ridiculous until we decide that I will find a leather jacket, a leather miniskirt, get my haircut, buy some cigarettes, and somehow get a facial scar in a knife fight.  Then the two of them will come over and we'll do a photo shoot with me leaning out of the window of my new (not cool) car, smoking.  And post it on facebook.

This morning, J emails me that she walked outside to go to work and discovered her car had been stolen.   

I have two responses:

A)  I WISH I could go check to make sure my new car is still there, but I'm already downtown at work, and

B)  I better make this photo shoot happen stat before the car disappears.

Oh, that's right

I was running on the lakeshore a few days ago right as the sun was setting.  I tend to keep my eyes ahead or on the lake, but I happened to look back over the skyline - the sky was that gorgeous yellowy-orange-pink.  The airplane exhaust trails shone silver against it, like jewelry in the sky.  And I was happy.  I didn't need to be anywhere else for that moment, or have anything, or be someone else.  I was glad to look over my shoulder and see beauty and call it home.

I started rehearsal for something else that same day I had that view, something short and simple that will finish up before I really get started on the next exciting project.  It's not an accident that I had a moment of total satisfaction the day I started rehearsal for something.

How do I forget this?  I mean, I have been through this cycle so often you'd think I would know by now:  I love plays.  I LOVE them.  More than people, on occasion.  (Or if you feel less loved by me reading that, think of it this way - I love you by way of plays.)  And there is a part of me that just isn't alive if I'm not working on something.

It's literally like flipping a switch and connecting more circuits of my brain.  

I remember the moment I figured out I was doomed to work at this as a profession.  I was temping by day in an accounting department and could not figure out why the other workers were so stressed and fretful that numbers weren't in the exact right place.  "Who cares?" I thought.  "Why does it matter?"

At night I was interning at a theatre - one of those nights, my job was taking notes during a run of Once Upon a Mattress.  The finale came, the entire cast was on stage, they struck a final tableau, there was a pause...and the director nudged me to take a note: "Make sure Charles in the back moves about a foot to the left."

And here's the crazy thing.  I could see immediately, SEE, why that was important.  Why moving Charles a foot to the left would make a difference, make it better.  The minutae of this process, while just as pointless, made sense to me.

So why am I ever ever even slightly bewildered if I feel grumpy and restless and depressed when I'm not working on a show?  Why on earth don't I get it by now?

Facebook

And now for a mood change (bring those lights back up!):

There are things people do on facebook that drive me nuts - no, wait, that's too strong.  When I'm in a good mood, certain comments make me roll my eyes.  When I'm in a bad mood, they drive me nuts.

I'm frequently tempted to grouse about it in my status update, but then I resist because people are largely well-meaning and it's really my problem, not theirs.  But here are some things that I could do without as regards facebook:

• Couples who use facebook status updates as a conduit for pillow talk.  Hey, folks, get a room, or at least, how easy would it be to send that in a private message?  Do you have to have the "I was just thinking about you, pookie-bear..."/ "Awww, tinsel toes, I can't wait for tonight!" conversation IN MY FEED?  I'm not trying to eavesdrop, peeps, you're making me eavesdrop.
• The person who is always, without fail, absolutely, first to comment on any and everything I post/my family posts/anyone posts.  Especially the things that have no bearing on his/her life.  I could post, "Going to Zimbabwe!" and this person would comment within seconds something like "I've always loved places that start with the letter Z!"  Uh, great.  Thanks for your input.
• People who post about their awesome, amazing holidays in places like France and Cabo.  Sure, it's nice to tell people you're going on vacation, but there is a different between commenting on a fun time and lording it over the little people.  I guess a better way to express this is:  is it in good taste to brag to the homeless man outside your office about the seven course meal you had last night?  Know your audience.
• My exceptionally religious friend who either takes me to task for not being godly enough or willfully misses that I am often joking.  Sweetie, you know I am not the same religion as you.  Why on earth are you continuously commenting as if we have the same goals and tactics in life?  Oh, wait, it's because you're convinced that if I don't believe what you believe, I must be doing it wrong.  Wow, I can't imagine why that would irritate me.  Especially if I happen to complain about something in my life and you pretty much tell me it would have all worked out if I had just prayed harder.  Yeah....

In contrast, I love when people post about their kids (kids are cute!), and put up funny pictures and say witty things.  Hooray for all those people who make facebook entertaining.  I love looking at people's wedding photos and new houses and trips to fun places and general success.  So if we could just clear up these few pesky bad habits, it would be so much better for all of us!

No?  Ah, well....