What's the What?

I spent a chunk of time today writing an email to a friend in which I alternately whined and tried to take responsibility for my whining.

Driving home from an audition, I tried to square two different truths with each other.

The first is that I've always been irritated by people who are unhappy but make no effort to extricate themselves from that unhappiness.  Some unhappinesses are inescapable, of course, grief from a death, job changes, breakups, adjustments from a move, chemical imbalances.  But if you are in a situation that you dislike but make no effort to change that situation, I start to lose patience with you.  I will grant dispensation to those who are unhappy in one situation but find outlets elsewhere - if you have a job you hate, for instance, but you do it to feed your family or fund your travel bug or buy equipment for your photography hobby you love.  I will absolutely buy in to the unhappiness "deal", where unhappiness in one place earns you happiness elsewhere.

I'll also listen with sympathy to the person who is unhappy but is trying different tactics to fix the problem, even if those tactics don't work and the unhappiness persists.

Again, my beef is with the perennially unhappy who make NO CHANGES.  Say you're a stay at home dad but you never ever shut up about feeling emasculated by it.  This is your life and you need to find a way to be ok with it.  Say you're in the corporate rat race and you don't have any time for the things you wish you were doing.  Find a way to love the race or get out.  Say you've always wanted to go to India but your new hi-def tv just absorbed all your disposable income - I have absolutely zero patience for you, sell the damned thing and go do something.

Ah, but today I thought about how, fittingly, I am hoist by my own petard.  My second truth is that I am unhappy that I have absolutely no disposable income because I am an actor and a teaching artist in a rough economy, and there's not a lot of work to be had.  Alternately, I'm unhappy when I'm not spending my time on the acting, I can forgo disposable income when all my free time is occupied with a show.  It's worse than just unhappiness, too - I feel in danger of becoming permanently disappointed, because all the promise I felt I had ten years ago is draining away under the hostile consistency of rejection that being an actor delivers.

(Side note - if you happen to be reading this and you have ever once wished anything bad to happen to me, you have had your wish, time and time again.  There have been so many times I wasn't chosen for something and was left only with the mantra of "what was wrong with me" to pass the time until the next turn on the chopping block - there have been so many times that I truly have no idea what that number is.  I can tell you I did at least 14 commercial auditions this month and booked none of them.  That's a rejection every other day all month.  If you think all actors are self-absorbed twats, we may be, but on the other hand, you try keeping your shit together when you get judged and found wanting nearly every day.  Also, if for any reason you've ever hated me, there is no way you could ever hate me as much as I hate myself some moments. So, if something I wrote here pissed you off, or if I was ever condescending or rude or overly needy or mean or sarcastic or boring, don't worry - I have been repaid in full, and there will always be more coming.)

Back to the point...by my own stricture, the long slow slide into permanent disappointment means it might be time to give it up, to find something else, hell, to just go get a damn job and make money and have this be a fun hobby.

But here's the kicker, for me.  If I give up, actually start spending my time doing something else, I will unequivocally be disappointed.  I might as well tattoo it on my forehead then: THIS PERSON HAS FAILED.  I'm sad a lot now, I have trouble staving off the demons, I sink into a world of self-doubt and inaction, BUT BUT BUT...when the yes comes, when someone casts me in something, or I sing a really perfect line, or I make someone laugh, or someone asks me to be in a workshop of a play, or I have an audition that feels like finally telling a story...it's magic.  It's validation.  It's joy on a scale I can't imagine in any other form.

It's delight.  And delight is transforming.  I can shift and melt and reform into the person I am actually supposed to be, one that has enough personhood to listen to someone else, play with others, love and be happy.

I hate the disappointment.  I hate it.  I don't want to be that, I don't want to feel it, I want to be able to transcend it and I hate myself even more every time it catches me, but if I give up, it wins.  Instead I try to fight it, and when I lose the strength to fight it, I try to live through it and keep it mind that, just like winter, or an evil spell, or a rain cloud, it will lift.  It will lift and it will be spring, or restoration, or sunshine.

So I had two auditions today and someone asked me to be in a workshop, and I have to stop writing to go be in a show.  It's still raining, but I see the horizon lit up over in the distance, and it is beautiful.

Absent

A friend is in London on a training course.  She posts beautiful pictures that affect me physically.  I can see one of those images - the view from Primrose Hill, for instance, and the sight of it blooms in my gut like an ache, a physical loss.

I hate that I feel as if I'm in exile from London, because I know, I just know it sounds absurd and pretentious.  It's not my country.  I don't know it or understand it as a local, because I was always and ever just a visitor.  I cringe when non-Southerners claim to luuuv gumbo and wisteria and I know in my soul they don't have a clue what they are talking about, so I'm painfully aware I'm on non-native ground.

But, in the past, when I go to London, something fits.  The air smells right, my skin does well in the climate, the sound of the traffic, the accents, the echo of thousands of years of literature soothes.  Some unhappiness that sits in my chest eases in London, in church pews and museums and pubs and wine shops and car boot sales and underground stations and Marks & Spencers.  I have at least lived there, alongside natives.  I can identify a Bramley apple and pronounce both Greenwich and Ipswich correctly and really, it's a Marathon bar and Smarties, not Snickers and M&Ms.  I have some minimal street cred, some time on the ground.

Habermas Girl is in Italy.  She posts pictures that make me madly jealous.  I would LOVE to go to Italy, I would hock my last pearl, and maybe someday I will own enough pearls that hocking them would mass enough coin for a trip.  I have memories of lying in a churchyard in Florence in the spring, picking tiny white flowers and soaking up sunshine and feeling as if no one could ever be discontent in Italy.  I long to go.

But I don't think it would ease me the way London could.  There's something about the character of London that appeals, the humor and the reserve and the oldness and the oddness of things.

A friend came to dinner two weeks ago and was flying out to London the next day.  I must have gotten that wistful look on my face as we talked about it, and my husband knows what it is to me, and how long it has been since I've been there, felt that ease, and he very sweetly said he'd give up the new tires we need if it meant I could go to London.  Awww.  Ludicrous, of course,  because we absolutely have to have new tires, we won't survive the winter without them, and of course the money for tires would never cover an entire trip to London.  It was like saying, I'll go without dinner so you can buy a new car.

Perhaps I'm over-romanticizing the country's effect on me.  That's likely, given my penchant for romanticizing.  Eleven years ago, I came back from the UK and moved to Chicago.  It was hard.  I'd left all my friends behind and shown up in a town where I knew no one and it was just going to get colder.  I worked as a temp in an investment firm, I got cast in a campy, silly sketch show.  I thought dispassionately about how much easier being magically dead would be to having to re-create myself piece by piece.  Not that I wanted to harm myself, but "not being" at the time sounded better than "being", which felt messy and sad and painful and lonely.

For Christmas I asked my parents for money to go to the UK at New Year's.  They were very sweet, and smiled, and said no.

And I went anyway.  It was the best decision I could possibly have made. (I charged it, and worked 7 days a week for 8 weeks when I got back to pay for it.)  I was serenely, blissfully, magnificently happy for about 9 days.  Coming back again was dreadful, of course, but I had managed to prove to myself that being that horribly unhappy was temporary.  No, more than that, I could lift that veil any time I wanted to, with just a plane ticket.

Time has passed, and the scales are much more even now.  I can't say for sure where my happiness lives anymore.  Is it somewhere in London?  Or are the relationships I made there less important now than the ones I have here?

Or is there some secret harmonic at work there, some resonance fills me up no matter who is there?  And if there is, how long will it be until I can go relax into it, lie back and let myself be finally at ease?

Words

I just used the word "louche" properly in a sentence.  (Not here - I was writing emails, of course.  To people who respond.)

Here's what happens to me, and forgive me if this is too self-congratulatory - I'm writing along, and a word will come to me, a complex, juicy, enjoyable word, like "louche"* or "inimitable", and it feels fantastic, it feels like exactly the right word, but an unusual word, there's special thrill in it, like having a sandwich with grainy artisan-y bread instead of just slabs of generic wheat.  But then I can never trust the word initially, I nearly always think, hang on, you don't use that word a lot, you'd better check to see if it means what you think it means (and if you are spelling it correctly). You'd better mean what you think you mean.

And here's the best part, the self-congratulatory part: it nearly always does.  The word aligns.  Every time I can remember, I look that word up and think, yep, that is exactly what I wanted to say.  And that, that is...delightful.

Now, I don't go looking for wildly unique words.  I don't try to shoehorn them into conversation (ok, I rarely try to shoehorn them into conversation, mostly because in conversation I can't look the word up and make sure it's really saying what I want to say, and I am guaranteed to mispronounce it).  But when one comes to me and means what I thought it meant, it feels...it feels like having a wild bird eat from your hand.  Like finding the perfect fitting coat in a resale shop for $10.  Like getting a really excellent haircut.

(*I just went looking for something else and found the OED's word of the day for Oct 21 was louche!! Word of honor, I don't follow the OED WOD; the word louche came to me unbidden, out of the mists of memory, probably memory of descriptions of Byron, not from that source.  I've no way to prove it, but it's so.)

For this

I get bogged down in my own shortcomings.  Sink into them like a morass, my negativity never escaping the quicksand of my own judgment.

Then I go see a play.  It takes a really good play, a really blissful, exciting, transformative, imaginative sort of play, one that makes you see the things that aren't there, whether it's a cold winter's night or the inside of your own heart.

And when I see a play like this, everything falls into place again for a few hours.  The world makes sense when we can tell each other stories like this.  We might let the devil capture us for millennium, but one day we will find a way back out of the trap, and when we do we will have landed right back where we were taken, armed with a new knowledge of ourselves.

And if I can do this for people, if I can spend even a fraction of my life making up stories for people to discover themselves inside, I will be happy.  Not every second, and not always as deeply as I wish, but happy, and that happiness will be a thing that the joys of others will only increase, not threaten.

Inside a story, I may yet find the person it is I want to be.

Can't stop

I'm on a destructive path, though I shouldn't say "I can't stop" because I suspect I could stop given the right circumstances.  However, I do not seem to be stopping.

There are a lot of people better than me at a lot of things.  Truth be told, there's probably someone better than me at all things, taken one at a time.  I am not a superlative sort of person - nice enough, good enough, but not someone who ranks high in lists, or wins things, or, truth be told, even gets picked in her chosen profession all that often.  Sometimes I do, yes, and when I do, it feels terrific.  Outstanding.  Those are the good days, the ones that keep me going forward instead of just leaping down a well.

But often in life, a situation comes up where someone is better than I am...usually at one thing, though often at multiple things.

Now I'm in a situation where someone got picked for something and I did not.  To be fair - I was never actually in the running AT ALL.  As in, the person making the decision was not thinking, hmmm, should I take elsbeth for this purpose, or this trulyfantasticamazingperfectthrilling bag of awesome instead??  No, it's just the alternate person was always and ever the right person for the job.

Ok.  Ok.  Fair enough.  Happens to us all.  Best and smartest thing to do (you know this, right??) is just put it behind me and get on with whatever's next.

Except I don't.  I keep checking back in on this situation ALL THE TIME and every time I do I feel like throwing up, but I just don't seem to stop.  I can't seem to look away.  Even though (I think?) I truly could forget about it if I just stopped reminding myself every two seconds.

Which is the point in question.  I'm not enjoying feeling permanently, intrinsically inferior.  So why can't I stop?  Am I desperately looking for evidence that this person made the wrong choice and that The Perfect One is not, in actual fact, perfect?  Do I feel the need to punish myself in some way I'm not currently conscious of?  Do I alternately look for proof that the job itself was not worth having by checking in on TPO?

I remember this sensation from the past - I was cast in a musical in college as an old woman (I wasn't one at the time) and a beautiful, sweet blonde was cast to sing all the really pretty songs.  In keeping with this post, she was an amazing singer and absolutely blew me out of the water - I was jealous but even then I would never ever have expected to be cast in that role instead of her, she was incredible and perfect for it.  To add insult to injury, however, her costume was a dress that had been specially made for me the year before, for a different play.  And they had to take it in to fit the gorgeous blonde.  Which meant I could never wear it again (I'd rented it the year before for Halloween, to be Jane Eyre).

I loved that costume.  It was Victorian, black, off the shoulder, the neckline trimmed with jet beads.  I LOVED that dress.  And every night I would make a special trip during the prettiest song of the show (which of course she was singing), and watch how beautiful this blonde girl sounded and looked in a way I would never be able to match, wearing a dress that even though it had been made for me, looked way better on her.

It made me feel like shit, naturally.  I teared up most nights, more from jealousy than being moved by the singing (though it truly was lovely).  But every night I was in the wings, watching it.  And I didn't have to be there - I could have sat in the green room or stayed in a dressing room cracking jokes with fellow cast members.

So, thinking of that, the only explanation is I must like feeling inferior?  But I don't!

So confusing.  Ok, off to cyberstalk someone who is better than I am in every imaginable way.

Addendum:  someone recently mentioned the blonde to me, and then waxed poetic about the very scene I just described and how absolutely beautiful she was and how every man wanted that girl, and even with a headstart of about 17 years to get over it, I still felt like shit.

Man, I wish I'd go ahead and grow up, certain things would be so much easier.

A Good Choking

It is very tiring to get choked to death on stage.  Very.

And a little creepy.

Turns out, I've never been choked to death on stage before - I've had my throat slit, and I've been stabbed to death in a swordfight, but this is the first time I've gotten to act out being throttled.  It's interesting, because it starts to feel like I am actually being strangled, and I have to go out of my way to breathe in and out to remind myself I can.  Even though I shouldn't because the audience is about three feet away and might spot me breathing while I'm being choked.

On a side note, it's actually waaaaay creepier to then die into a pool of blood on the floor that gradually seeps into my clothes as I lie there "dead".

This is all fiction, of course,  but if you have a secret distaste for me, you might want to catch this show.  I can actually think of a few people who might really enjoy watching me get choked to death - after all, since I can't breathe, I can't talk, so it effectively silences me, and that's something I know certain people have wanted to see happen.

Commercial

I filmed a commercial last Friday and it's left me a bit shaken.  Because it turned out to be wickedly difficult, and although every person involved was overwhelmingly nice to me, I left feeling inept.  Inept at the thing I do to earn money.

Now, I'm trying to give myself a break.  I'm still fairly new at the commercial world, and there were some mitigating factors that made it harder than it had to be.  The text I had to say was pretty long for the 8 seconds they wanted me to say it in, and although they were very very specific about the words, they'd waited on purpose to give me the script about an hour, maybe two hours earlier.  They do this on purpose, because they don't want you to memorize it in a certain way and be unable to change, but sadly, I sort of did get stuck saying it a certain way because my brain was always scrambling frantically to remember what came next so emphasizing certain words gave my poor brain catch-up time.

All of the above are excuses.  My job was to say a string of words in the right order in 8 seconds however these people wanted them said.  And I found that very very difficult, and it's possible I did not succeed, that they just gave up and took "good enough" because it was clear I wasn't capable of anything else.  Not that I'm sure that's true, I just know that is a possibility.

BUT I'm still trying to give myself a break.  The poise and concentration you need to execute these scripts are learned skills, and they are hard to attain when you're also just frightened to death, when the pressure and lights and attention are all on.  I didn't have them last Friday, and I suspect the resulting ad will be hard to watch, to say the least.  But maybe next time I'll feel more confident?  I can hope so.

"A pupil in the art of walking a tightrope, fearing every moment he will fall, cannot be expected to achieve the easy smile of the adept."

I can hope for the easy smile, but I'll have to earn it the hard way.

Filling Blank Pages

On the way to work today, the bus was so slow, I called to tell them I'd be late. "Oh, no, you're not scheduled for another hour," was the reply.  By then I was three minutes from downtown, from a busy rainsoaked street full of shops and businessmen and tourists.  

I scampered off to Starbucks - it's close and has cushy chairs.  I sat down in the very cushiest, leather and air shifting at the weight of me, and took out my poetry notebook. It's been neglected, rather, though that's not entirely an accurate representation of how I treat poetry.  "Neglect" implies some sort of discipline, some sort of regular attack.  Instead, what poetry I write is intermittent and usually the result of a certain kind of down time.  I have a kaleidoscopic relationship to my own poetry (it's painful even to write the word, it feels exactly like last night when I ripped my own skin off near the cuticle of my index finger just because I'd been biting my thumbnail all night and it was sharp - unexpected damage coming from your own hands).  Kaleidoscopic in the sense that how I feel about it shifts every moment, depending on what kind of light is thrown across the page and how I'm turning.

There are days I read through this book and feel, if not wildly talented with words, a certain satisfaction in the stories my words have built.  Not that I think they are good, but that I find myself enjoying them.  The trap here is always that it seems like an easy leap to assume others would enjoy them, but there's no proof to that theory.

Anyway, when I allow and/or force myself to write poetry I use my fountain pen, and it's probably not an accident that today I had a lot of trouble getting it to write.  First it was out of ink, then it just wouldn't behave - I have to lick it to get it started, which feels like some sort of Victorian affectation.  Then it only wrote gunk for a while, things I had to scratch out so that when I double back and read them, I don't mistake them for anything I actually meant at the time.  

I intended to type one out here, but they don't hold up to that kind of scrutiny.  Perhaps I'll go get drunk at an open mic night someday, and spill them out into the air like smoke rings. 

The point

I just looked out the window and saw the leaves of the tree on the right have flushed a brilliant yellow, and it's glowing beautifully out there in the sunny autumn day.  The shadow of the leaves is glittering on the floor of my apartment, giving it a gleeful party atmosphere tempered with the lingering awareness that this is the party we throw before winter, before death creeps over all these plants and the air and the sky.

Then I came to attempt to describe it and for several minutes, I was unable to convince myself I had anything interesting to say about it.  It's a just a tree whose leaves have turned.  Outside my window.  Who cares?  I skittered back away from writing it down and went hunting for funny pictures of cats to amuse my brain, to fill the impulse I have to write something down.

Clearly, I eventually vaulted over such reservations, but it took a battle, and it took reminding myself that by writing this here, I'm not bothering anyone.  No one is required to read this blog - hell, for the most part, no one does read it.  Why not leave myself a marker for my day, a reminder that today I noticed something outside my very own window and it was beautiful?

Well, no reason, obviously.  But it's not exactly enough.  I want to write something I would share with others, want this to be a place someone would happen upon and stick around because they found it charming, or entertaining or informative.

But either I end up judging attempts so harshly that I stall every attempt to write a line or I let myself freewheel into eddies I cringe to read later.

So that's the fight going on over here.  It's a hundred years war, absolutely.  Luck to you all on yours.

Ourselves as others see us

You know that moment when everything turns inside out and suddenly you see yourself from the outside and you realize how fucking stupid you are?  I can't guarantee you've had one of these moments but I'll go out on a limb and guess yes.

Anyway, I've had them, frequently (and recently), and here's another now.  I'm genuinely horrified by myself.

I'm going to attempt to give up blogging.  I can't guarantee I will, because I may decide that since no one ever reads this, it doesn't matter if it's poorly written and merely chronicles my total failure as a human being.  

I know it sounds weak to say I'll try harder not to be a repetitive idiot.  However, I will try harder.

Also, I will get some sleep.  And possibly delete this in the morning.  Things look better in the morning, sometimes.

Just giving in

I had the misfortune of actually listening to myself in the past week.  It's horrifying.

I am going to try to take a break from "blogging", which in my case is hardly blogging at all, it's just keeping an online diary that can't be truly honest because people might see it and be offended, while ironically being something no one ever sees.

Except, apparently, a whole bunch of people in Russia.  Dobryj Dyen'!  I know none of you can possibly have an interest in any of this, so, my apologies that my ridiculous Byron quote of a title somehow shows up when you search "torture."

Thanks to anyone who stopped by.

YAY!!!

I'm going west to see habermasgirl!!!

Also, I had six people over to my house last night and we all drank a ton, so that was also fun.

So...lesson learned, when you're feeling blue, invite people over or leave town.  Done.

(UPDATE:  IT'S SUPER FUN TO VISIT HABERMAS GIRL!!!)

OOOOOOOHHHHHHH

I forgot about McHenry.

I have a bunch of people coming to my house to drink shortly, which never ever happens, so I can't elaborate, but I'm just going to make that little note to myself and say once more:  I forgot about McHenry.

Who is Milne.

In Tom Stoppard's Night and Day.

Sort of.

To me.  In college.  When I was madly in love with 4 people at the same time, none of whom I could even think about having.

Now if I can just remember the other three....I know one was the classical guitar player...one was Quirky Boy.....who was four??

Sorry - no one's reading these, it's just for me.  Hi, person in Russia who looks at my blog!  I'll explain later.

The Mexican Restaurant

When I was living in London in the summer of 1996, it started off a little lonely.  I had the city to keep me company, and I loved the city, loved to trot out to museums or parks or the theatre.  I loved riding the 168 bus back home from the National Theatre, past Euston Station, up Haverstock Hill and off right at the end of the road I needed.

A Mexican restaurant sat at that juncture, on the corner, and it was oddly in the basement section of a commercial building, so you'd check in on the ground floor in a hallway, then duck down a flight of narrow stairs to the restaurant.  The hallway doors opened out onto my street, not onto Haverstock Hill, so I passed those doors to walk home, or walking out to the bus or tube, of course.  The man who ran the restaurant sat up there on a stool - it was the same man every single time I passed, dark-haired and swarthy, possibly Mexican himself, but more likely Middle Eastern or Eastern European.

One night I talked a friend into going to eat there, and we discovered it had none of the virtues of a Mexican restaurant in America: it was neither cheap, nor plentiful, nor satisfyingly tasty.  However, as we came up out of the dark basement, I stopped and spoke to the gentleman I had passed nearly every night for a month.

"Hi, I pass here all the time, and I see you every night sitting here.  Now, we're more or less neighbors, so I'd like to be friendly and say hello when I go by.  What's your name?"

He told me it was Tony, I told him my name, and I made him practice with me.  "All right, when I walk by, I'm going to say, 'Hey, Tony!!'  and you will say...'Hey, Elsbeth!'  Try it with me....Hey, Tony!"  He smiled and gamely gave it a try.  I had him say it a few more times.

He never did remember my name after that night, but for weeks afterward, when I passed I would catch his eye and say, Hey, Tony!  And he'd wave and smile and at least yell hey back.  There was recognition there, even if there wasn't a name in his memory.

Where was I?

I was disgruntled and grumpy.  I'm working hard at chilling out now, because I just don't have any interest in being pissy all the time.  I don't want to be that person.  So, deep breath, and I'm looking for the positive.

There is positive.  I got a wad of checks today for past acting work - that's always gratifying.  I'm working this week but gonna take a quick journey next week to see a favorite person (yeah, that's you, hg!), and then maybe a longer journey to see more family and the ocean.

The ocean.  I think it might just be time to go sit at the ocean with a book and my dad and do some nothing. Want to come?  There's extra room.

I don't know why these past few weeks have been so disgruntling - I mean, I had an entire week with my mom, so that was a test of endurance that I basically failed, but hey, it's my mom.  If there were a way to get it right, I might have some clue what it is by now, but then again, I might not.

I'll tell you - I got close to booking a life-changing commercial.  Not as life changing as some, but it would have been a 2 week shoot, and I got all the way to getting put on first refusal for it, which is like being pre-booked, except you don't know how many people they've pre-booked and if you are first choice or sixth.  So technically, I might not have been close at all - that's a legitimate possibility.

But if felt close - it felt like it could actually happen, and then it didn't, and I was so sad.

I keep trying to tell myself that if I'm getting close more often, I can't be that far from booking one.  That if I get put on enough first refusals, ONE of them will turn out to be for real.  But right now it just feels so damn disappointing.  Like going on 9996 miles of a 1000 mile journey and getting stopped and told I can't go any farther.

Also, as I'm sure any regular reader will know, I had mentally spent the money.  Only mentally, of course.

Wright or Wrong

I went to Taliesin today.  It's a house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for himself.  You might find it beautiful, you might find it strange, but it's absolutely unique, a new way of thinking about buildings that uses styles and references that are familiar in completely unexpected ways.

But, with hardly any evidence at all, I know the prevailing opinion is that Frank Lloyd Wright was an ass.  He was egotistical, rude, presumptuous, spoiled, self-centered.  He ran through three wives and at least one mistress, he was involved repeatedly in scandal, and there are plenty of reports of his mistreatment of staff.

So...how great does his work have to be to justify the fact that he was a shit?  Can it?  Or does his personality not effect the greatness of his vision?

I can look at his cantilevered shelves, their surfaces drifting along the side of the wall, and think, how beautiful, how magical.  Does my respect fade if I know the person who made them was cruel to his subordinates?  Or does his art earn something beyond approval of morals?

I don't know the answer to this question.  I do not think art gives one a right for bad behavior.  But I know a lot of great art that has been produced by jerks.  Does that lessen its effectiveness?  Or is there something about the uncompromising, self-centered nature of certain people that allows them to ignore the approval of the entire world in order to follow their own artistic path?  After all, doesn't niceness just produce "nice" art?

I think for me, I'm willing to put up with some bad behavior in the pursuit of art that can move me.  But I don't know if I can bring myself to perpetrate the necessary bad behavior to open up my own art.  Too much of my programming is about making other people happy.  But I dream of it, sometimes, the idea of shaking off everyone's expectations, even my own, and doing something extraordinary.  Something unexpected.

It's not an accident that the only "art" I'll let myself stand behind is one where I use the words of others.

Parents

I love my parents.  So much.  They are both completely terrific people and I am so lucky that they brought me up and made me who I am.

That said, I am hitting saturation point with my mother.  I kind of want to...no, I don't want to hit her, I just want to start screaming.

It started early.  When they arrived a whole day early.  ON my doorstep.  While I was still three hours away by car.  That's right, waiting on my doorstep a whole day early which meant all those last minute cleaning projects couldn't get done, none of the grocery shopping prep got done, none of the hey-let's-have-sex-before-your-parents-get-here got done, none of the final clean up/get organized/prepare oneself stuff GOT DONE.

So it should be no surprise that three days in, I'm near to breaking.

Oh, this weekend's trip ought to be fun.

But the hard thing is that I still adore them and want to make them happy every second.

Like I said, this will be fun.

Noticing

Life must be improving, because today I started noticing things outside myself.  The pristine beauty of fish fillets laid out along pebbled ice, a road works man checking out a pretty girl walking by, bright green socks on a hipster with black frames to his glasses and a sweep of hair falling over his forehead.

There's so much light and glory out there - people talking on street corners, children playing on the beach.  Last night as I was unlocking my bike I overheard this teenaged Asian girl tell someone, "That's why vacation has gotten so boring for me...."  It made me laugh, but of course in context I'm sure it was legitimate.  She was sitting on top of a traffic barrier and chatting with a man who looked to be three times her age, and the body language didn't read "flirt" but I couldn't pick up what relationship they had to one another.  It didn't sound like he was family.

I get bogged down in my actual life and miss the transitory and thrilling detail of the tunes of others.  I like stories so much.  Maybe it's time to pay attention to everyone else's story for a while.

Real People

I went to see a show the other night with my friend W and it restored a lot of the goodness to my life.

The show, Eastland, was absolutely fantastic.  It will sound as if I am exaggerating to say I wept for the last twenty minutes of it, but I did, big, uncontrollable shoulder-heaving sobbing right there in the second row.  I couldn't hide and I couldn't stop.  It's a folk musical, the music is unbearably lovely, and the story is about a 1915 tragedy that killed upwards of 800 people in a day.  A boat turned over on its side in a river within a few feet of shore, and before everything got sorted out 800+ were dead.  It's horrifying, to say the least.  So I knew going in that I might end up weeping.  After an hour or so of just holding my mouth shut the way you do when you're choked up, I thought, ok, this is sad, but I can keep it together.  Then something happened in the show that completely broke me open, and I was a weeping mess for the rest of it.

Which I don't mind, really.  Yes, I am relatively embarrassed to be seen in semi-public crying, but it was a terrifically moving show, and I enjoy that I can allow myself to be moved by what I experience.

Then I sat around for three hours and chatted about everything and nothing with a friend I adore.  It was surprisingly easy to forget about all the things that make me feel discontented.  It was surprisingly easy to be happy that my friend had been called back for a play I'd hoped to be called back for as well.  I wasn't called back, but again, I adore my friend, she's funny and genuine and a kick-ass actress that I love seeing in shows.

Maybe I'm not a completely contemptible human being.  Though I must say others might disagree.  Another day I'll write about my recurring dream of running into a woman who asks me to stay away from her husband but I don't know who her husband is.  Heh.  Someone in my psyche clearly has a distaste for me.  Wonder who it is.

Addendum

This really goes with the last post, but I didn't have the heart to make it longer.

On the train home from work at 11 pm tonight, I had what might be the breakthrough, the return back to being able to live with myself:

I looked down and saw a pair of really beautiful shoes, and as I scanned up I saw they were on a beautifully dressed girl - adorable dress, very glamorous, short and colorful.  She looked effortlessly fantastic.  And my actual knee-jerk thought was - wow, I bet her feet hurt in those by 11 pm at night.

Not, oh, she's so much prettier than I am (she was).

Not, oh, I wish I owned anything as pretty as that dress (I do).

Not, oh, the sight of someone attractive has made me want to crawl under a rock and hide (though of course now I totally feel that way).

Just a fleeting thought for her humanity and the idea that the perfect-looking sometimes pay in ways you don't see.

Double Bind

What an interesting catch-22 this blog is.

The people who read this blog number in single digits.

I can't publicize it to the entire world to get more readers because it's a place I try to say what I think.  

However, I can't actually write about many of the things that happen to me for a variety of reasons: 

  1. I audition for things that I'm required to keep confidential.  

  2.  I occasionally do things I'm required to keep confidential.

  3.  I occasionally do things that I'd happily write about, but there are people who cannot be allowed to know what I think, and it is obvious that the internet is not a good place to detail information you're not certain someone should know.  Even Luddites can read print outs.

So even though it's supposed to be my place to let loose, it isn't.  And I grow more and more frustrated with my seeming inability to say anything of any interest.  The internet seems to have become a place for re-posting - we're all just swapping pictures and opinions and recipes.

I'm thinking of taking an internet break.  The idea came upon me for petty reasons - I opened my facebook to see someone's wedding picture, and instead of just being happy for them, it made me feel...inferior, imperfect.  To be frank, this is someone I already feel highly jealous of, both beauty-wise and career-wise, so the idea that I might be jealous to see the perfect outdoor shot of her perfectly amazing dress and perfectly dressed new husband against a perfect backdrop is not shocking.  

It's bad enough to feel lousy looking at the perfect people, but add to that the guilt that I'm not mature enough and secure enough just to wish them well.  So I get to feel inferior to the people in every respect AND inferior to the person I think I ought to be.  GREAT!

So I open facebook and get a nice punch in the gut about how imperfect I am.  All the naysaying I try to suppress floods in - in a flash it comes home to me how unattractive, untalented, and ordinary I am (because of course I'm not as pretty as this girl, and definitely haven't worked as much as she has, and absolutely did not have a wedding in a perfect setting like this - it might be a hilltop in Spain, or a villa in Scandinavia).  BUT WAIT!  THERE'S MORE!  I can scroll down and within three minutes I can clock a dozen people have been cast in shows I wish I'd even gotten to audition for, twenty babies that are cuter than the children I'm apparently never having, and at least one person just got an amazing job within a week of moving to Chicago, reminding me of the 10 years I've been slogging away here with nothing to show for it.

And you know what?  I don't want to feel this way.  It is a waste of my time.  I don't know how to be ok with who I am and what I have right now, but that is the person I want to be.  I dislike this jealous, inferior, depressed self.  I mean, FUCK THIS SHIT, am I right??  I wanna be happy for everyone!  I want to feel glad that people got married, had babies, had success!

So I'm considering just staying the fuck off of facebook for a while.  Maybe also checking my email a little less.  Maybe read a few more books, talk to real people more.  I don't know if I can banish the spectre of perfection - I've been jealous and sad about all my faults and shortcomings for a lifetime, and despite effort on my part, I slide into despair more readily than I slide out of it.  

So.  Well.  I gotta do something about this motherfucking problem.  Attack it with knives.  Put some depression canaries out so I can see this shit coming.  And yes, Mom, if someone printed this out for you, yes, I am cursing.  Yes, it does make me feel better.  Sorry.  A couple of things you told me that were completely legitimate for you did not work out for me, and that is one of them - cursing is fun and makes me feel better.  Also the thing about no sex before marriage - completely well-intentioned,  I totally saw your point, but it turns out taking your advice (partly) meant I missed out.  Big Time.  

The irony will be that by the time I'm a widow and I can get back around to sleeping around, it will be too late.

Right, because that's the biggest problem with this post.

Like I said, maybe an internet break.

I bet I end up re-writing this a few days/hours/whatever from now.  If you read it within a day or two of posting, drop by and see what I changed in a week.

Then a tiger attacked me

Look, I don't want to complain.  What I want to tell you (me, when I re-read this later) is that I went on a road trip and figured everything out.  I want to tell you I climbed up somewhere high and looked down to realize how petty my worries are.  Wait, not that, because that sounds trite. Let me try again.

I want to tell you I went on a trip, and it was so beautiful that finally, the entire meaning of the universe exploded out of my chest and rang around the neighborhood and that everyone who heard the sound of it woke up just a little bit and felt happier, like they'd eaten Lucky Charms but gotten the nutritional value of kale.  I want to tell you I waded through my own personal detritus, gathered it up, melted it down, and used the shimmering essence of it to guild  the door I walked out of.  I want to tell you I learned how to fuse all these half-hopeless days where I wait for my life to happen into something purposeful and pure, turning every day I wait into a step on a ladder to more awesome.

Instead, I can only tell you I had a kick ass time with people I love and it made me miss them so very much.  I had a barn raising time with my family and it made me wish I lived closer.  I had a soul-filling time in my home area, the towns and areas where I have logged years of memories, and it made me yearn to still be a part of things.

And now I just have to stay put and work to earn money.  Not actor work, which feels different and personal and exciting because it activates some need to tell stories I have, but work work.  Offices and children and data entry and endless phone calls with poorly organized co-workers.

How do I get past the quotidian to the ineffable?  And how do I ever write that down again without sounding like a complete jackass?

Chemical

Lots of good things are happening, but I have been having a truly lousy few days.  Like last summer, the ability to deal rationally and maturely with minor irritants seems to have fled.  This leads me to wonder:

1.  Do I have some sort of reverse seasonal disorder where the heat of the summer makes me unaccountably unstable?

2. Is it just that I haven't been in a play for over two months and without my work to recalibrate me, I'm unable to function properly?

3. Is my mother entirely right and it's just hormonally that part of the monthly cycle?  I'd vote for this one except I can't seem to cry.  Normally, the only time I can really break down in tears on any provocation is for a short four or five day stretch in a month when things affect me more strongly.

On the up side, if I can find something good to hang on to until December, I'll have a whole 6 months of awesome projects, and that's exciting.

On the down side, I find myself continuing to make colossal mistakes.  I'm old now, when do I learn how to do anything at all correctly or well or successfully?

Ok, that last is hyperbole.  I did something well in order to book the awesome project #3, and I feel very happy about that.  It's just that one lone happiness is getting swallowed up by the ocean of mistakes I'm perpetrating.

So, to recap:  feeling horrible.  Hope it will pass soon.  If it doesn't, I'll snap out of it right around Christmas 2012.

Or....something magical will happen, money will fall in my lap and I can go visit the UK.  I'd like that a lot.  Road Trip #2, universe.  I call on you to make it happen.

Also, I do want to thank the universe for not having anyone die on my birthday this year.  That was a nice change.  I appreciate the break.

TWO!

I have booked, not one, but two awesome projects.  TWO.  As in, they haven't happened yet, but will.  Both are completely different and both have huge great fun stuff in them.  And I have been HIRED to do both.

As in, I will be a working actor for six months straight.

In two different shows.

Making actual money from being an actor.

At theatres people respect and with people I respect (and in some cases, adore).

This, folks, this is a good day.  Days like this...don't anyone send me bad news, I wanna just sit in this for a second.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Elsbeth ReBoot

This is placeholder number two, because I must sleep in order to drive 12 hours safely tomorrow, but traveling is really, really good for me.  Also, seeing my favorite people in the whole world is good for me.  In addition, seeing the people who are like sign posts to who I am is good for me.

I don't want to rub it in, but it's also fun as all get out.

And yes, for those of you playing at home, it has happened, that rare rare combination of me spending enough time at home and being tired beyond tired...if you were to talk to me any time in the next three days, you'd hear traces of my southern accent.

Placeholder

Traveling.  I like it.  Being afloat, being outside the day to day.  Being away from one life, though firmly planted in another, one I leave behind most days.

Things I've been seeing:

The eyes of a friend in the face of their child.
Clouds rolling over a sunset, then lightning scratching at the sky, then hail, then the moon breathing out above the subsiding clouds.
The inner workings of a community I can respect, and people I adore at the center of that community, off fighting the good fight hundreds of miles away.
Friends who abide.  They all keep pieces of me, some I need daily, some I've forgotten about, some that embarrass me, some that appall me, but all pieces, and some of those pieces I have very much needed to see again.
Kind waitresses.
Doctors who have the power to give better life through better medication.
The stubborn, stubborn face of my mother as she decides to misunderstand me.  Even when it takes more energy.
Sexy southern men, the rumpled, khaki-wearing ones with hair that ought to be cut and an accent that can melt my bones...the ones with the Ben Silver bowties. Roawr.
Pictures of myself that wound my ego and my vanity.
The clock turning 3..4..5 am...but I don't want to sleep because there's too much to talk about.

Sleep.  More later, when I can think about it all. Bless you, friends.  There are more of you to see...

Rev it up

Ok.  I've got an adventure on the boil, and it has a lot of co-conspirators.  It's not flashy or intercontinental, but I'm going to get in the car and drive, all by my lonesome, to a friend's wedding.  I'm leaving a full week before the wedding, and I plan to meander.  Stroll, if you will.  I've got a couple of points to hit, and each one has a friend in the center of them, and I am glad.

I need it.  I just need a change of scene.  I got a taste of it last week with a family vacation, which was great.

But now, now I'm going to saddle up and ride out alone.  I suppose I might head off and get tired of all the solo driving I've left myself to do, but mostly I'm looking forward to singing too loudly with the radio and daydreaming about everything I want next.

Things are not turning out the way I'd like right now, but what's funny is I don't mind.  I'm surprised that I don't mind - I find it shocking, in fact, but I don't.  I think it's going to work out in the end.  This just isn't the end.

Also, this post is a terrible example, but I'm looking forward to listening.  To strangers, to friends, to the radio.  Driving home, I'm bound to see things and people that surprise and delight me. I'll try to write about some of it, to prove that I notice things outside of myself.

And there's something else I'm hoping to get back to.

One time I drove 13 hours home from a friend's wedding and I ended up crying the whole way home.  I know that sounds as if I'm exaggerating, so I'll clarify and say that yes, I would stop for minutes at a time.  But I'd always start again.

What was that about?  Well, I'd met someone I really really liked, in a different way than anyone else, and I had very specific hopes about what would happen, although the facts of the case were not bearing me out.  (This was at least eight years ago - maybe longer.  I just know I hadn't met my husband yet.)  Anyway, I was trying to describe my hopeless infatuation to a friend's husband at the wedding, and he just gave me a look that said, "You poor, deluded fool..."  In that look, I realized, even if he didn't know what he was talking about, he happened to be right.  I was completely kidding myself.  It. was. over.  It had, in fact, never begun.  It was like that moment when you finally understand that the deed you're holing in your hand that you feel so proud of did not actually purchase you the Golden Gate Bridge.

Oddly enough, I wasn't crying about him for 13 hours.  I started crying because I twisted my ankle, and I couldn't stop, and I thought, hang on, I can't possibly be this upset over an ankle, hang on, that guy's not this upsetting either what the hell is up with me??

Maybe you've never done this, but sometimes I'm upset and I can't quite find the true origin of it - not the catalyst, that's not the same, that's just a starting point, I can't always find the ROOT.  So I say sentences out loud to myself, and I see what resonates.  Which set of words rumbles through my brain and matches the serration in my heart?  That day in the car, ankle throbbing, I started testing phrases.  I waded through all the little stuff before I started to get brave and lead with the gut.  I started with things like, "I don't like that he doesn't care about me..." which got me nowhere, so it wasn't about anyone.  It must be more personal.

Paydirt a few minutes later.  "My greatest fear is no one will ever love me."  Instantaneous waterworks.

Yep.  That'll keep a girl in tears for 13 hours.  Yes, every time I got calmed down, I said it again to myself and discovered it still had power.

The happy ending?  I'm not afraid of that anymore.  I found it, articulated it, and eventually, found a way to put it to rest.  I can say that aloud to myself now, and it can't hurt me, because I know that it is bullshit.

So, in the weirdest of ways, I'm looking forward to the moment where I whisper something aloud to myself and finally know what the hell my problem is.  If it makes me cry, so be it.  Maybe this one will make me laugh instead.  Or worry.  Or stew.  Doesn't matter, I look forward to saying that magic sentence out loud and finally understanding something new about myself.

Because when I figure it out...then it's just a matter of time before I annihilate that motherfucker.

Elsbeth and the Road: the Epic Adventure.  Coming to a town near you.

Glum

We've got poinsettias in our window.  Our landlord brought them home from a Christmas party in December and drunkenly handed them off to us on the stairs, clearly glad to be rid of them.  Of course by now the red leaves are very nearly gone - just five remain on one plant, none on the other.  But both have out out a significant collection of green leaves.

Do you know how poinsettias get to be red?  It's to do with being shut away in the dark.  Poinsettias require at least 12 hours of darkness 5 days in a row to turn their leaves red - but lots of sunlight in the remaining 12 hours to make the color vibrant.

I don't know why I have to attach an emotion to a biological reality, but the idea of forcing poinsettias to turn red seems sad to me.  My aunt and uncle ran a greenhouse for years, and of course poinsettias were big business.  At some point all of them had to be forced into red growth by shutting them away in the dark for appropriate lengths of time.

Why should this feel sad?  I don't know.  But I look at the green growth and wonder, would I shut these plants away on a time schedule just to make them red again?

Yes, I know.  Not everything is a metaphor.  It just feels that way sometimes.

In praise of the bop

"bubble gum pop songs lakeshore drive summer simple gorgeous"

I wrote that string of words the other night around midnight after riding home on the lakefront listening to really inane pop songs.  It was a note to myself that I wanted to remark on the simple pleasure of the ridiculously catchy and stupid pop song - particularly prevalent in summer, but always great.

Now, I like "real" music, yes.  But there's a case to be made for the summer hook, the completely pointless lyric, the repetitive na-na-na-na of a really great ear worm kind of song.  I want to go on record: I know the words are either stupid or non-existent, the tunes are simple and repetitive, but there are a BUNCH of super poppy songs out right now that I can't bring myself to spend money to own, but when they come on the radio, I turn it way up and dance in my seat in the car.  Or in my living room.

[Side note:  apparently I have a bit of a problem with spontaneous dancing.  A friend noted once that I will dance with hardly any provocation.  I do, it's true, and often badly, but with enormous verve.  Does  my sheer need to groove make up for the fact that I'm bad?  I hope so.  If you've ever witnessed one of my break-outs of dance, I probably should apologize, but I enjoy it too much, so FTS (the shit in that one=me apologizing).

Oh, you thought I forgot about FTS?  Nope. ]

All right, so I'm not a music snob, and it's not hard for me to enjoy a stupid pop song.  I appeal to all of you out there who think you're too good for the summer jam: give it a chance.  If it's really hot outside, go get in the car, or plug in your headphones, turn on the radio, and wait for some CLEARLY INSIPID song to come on.  Then bop for all you're worth.  Lean into the da-da-da-da-da-da.  Head bang a little to the beat.  Dance sideways.  Throw in a boy-band-brand outstretched hand at the end of a big phrase.  And I'm betting you'll discover it's silly, but damn fun.  It is the junk-food of the music world - I KNOW the calories are empty, but every once in a while, isn't it great to have soft-serve ice cream?

Yes, I'm including both "Call Me Maybe" and "You Don't Know You're Beautiful".  Both songs are indeed entirely subpar as songwriting goes.  BUT AWESOME SUMMER JAMS.  Find your own.

FTS

So often on this blog I'm all whiney-whiney, I-didn't-get-this, or I-miss-this, or here's-my-endless-essay-on-longing-because-that's-what-I'm-good-at.

Well, today, all four readers, I'm instituting a new catch-phrase, a clarion call: Fuck That Shit.

True, I haven't booked a job lately, even been released from a few holds (which means I had the excitement of thinking I had the job and THEN got passed over).

Fuck That Shit.

Yes, I lost a few people this past year, and I still feel their absence.

Fuck That Shit.

It's true I had really really hoped to take a short road trip this weekend, but it turns out I don't have the money or a good destination that I can reach in the limited time I have.

Fuck That Shit.

I spend too much time worrying about what I don't have, about missed opportunities and rejections.  I'm drawing a line in the sand.  This is now, I need to relish it.  Will I still get upset sometimes?  Sure!  If so, I have to relish that too, because who knows, maybe something cool will happen and I'll never be unhappy again.

But to let despair be the top-note of my personal perfume?  I don't have time left for that nonsense.  Fuck That Shit.

Now, I'm going to paint my living room instead of whining.  And if I have to play music really loud to shut off my brain, so be it.  If I have to call a friend to get some company, so be it.  If I have to meditate to dump any and all negative thought, my mantra will be, over and over: "Fuck That Shit."

Though I think I'll just abbreviate from here on out: FTS, man, FTS.

Need to sleep

Tonight I miss something that didn't ever exist, something I can't even really remember, and yet it's still keeping me awake.  It's an unreal dream pieced back together from slivers of half-formed images.

The sensation resembles missing a character I played - not the idea of a person I was but a person I pretended to be.  Wait, that's it entirely.  I don't miss this situation or those people, I miss the person I got to imagine myself being while I was in that situation.  And frankly, I cannot imagine a subsequent situation where I can return to being that person.  So I remain disappointed that I cannot find a single day to day entry point to this part of me I really enjoy but cannot conjure up on my own.

It's a loss that makes me want to throw things, to whine, to rage and storm.  I had a fit this evening about something quite irritating but fairly minor, and I suspect this disappointment is partly responsible.  I want to find an open space and rail at the sky, call down curses and weep and generally make such a nuisance of myself that the gods themselves grant me a favor just to shut down my caterwauling.

My only defense against this inconvenient yearning for fictional situations is to measure the disappointment on a scale larger than today.  Take the camera back to a wide shot, and I'll have forgotten all about this.  Or so I tell myself, and so history supports.

Except that I will always miss this part of me I don't get to be anymore, until the day comes I forget I was capable of ever being that person.   Will that be better, to have forgotten I was capable of something else?  Or will it be better to remember her, knowing I cannot be her ever again?

I suppose it's like asking, is it better to forget how to open the door or to forget there was any way out?

Native

I went to see a play tonight about the Civil War - no, a play about General Sherman's march across Georgia and the Carolinas to burn and pillage.

Now, I was born and raised South Carolina.  And tonight it was brought home to me how much that statement might ring differently for different people.  Here's more or less where I stand.

Myself, I have complicated feelings about the Civil War.  No, I do not believe any population of any race should have ever been enslaved.  I believe that was wrong.  I believe it is possible that there were slave owners that were kind to their slaves, even though I'm betting those people didn't treat their slaves as equals and therefore were of course still contributing to the larger problem: that pretending you own another person is disgraceful, dishonest, and demeaning.

But I also think the Civil War had other causes and issues in it besides slavery.  And despite the fact that I do not support the "Cause" that many southerners were upholding, I still have pity and sympathy for the many people who were caught up in that fight and were destroyed systematically along Sherman's way.  I do not find it hard to understand that some of those people were good people who believed their way of life was righteous and supportable.

Fast forward to my experience of living in the South in modern day:  yes, there is closed-mindedness there.  There is bigotry.  There is insularity and misplaced pride and among some a devotion to a lost cause cemented by being mindless and impractical.

Having said all that:

The South is so beautiful, truly beautiful.  There's a care taken that comes from being a part of a place for generations.  Spring bursts from pear trees like someone throwing confetti.  Ginko trees bleach gold in fall and shed all their leaves in one swoop of an afternoon, like a lady flicking off a golden dress.  People smile and ask after your father and mother.  Back roads have decaying barns and cotton fields.  Houses have porches and rocking chairs, lawns have tractor tires.  Snow is a blanket that halts all activity and frees everyone for snowballs and snowmen, but rarely lasts more than a day.  Ocean sand is an open palm into a warm, friendly sea.  And the old houses...so beautiful, corinthian columns and dental work and gingerbread and turrets and wooden floors and fourteen foot ceilings and detail and workmanship.

And the people, the people can be unspeakably beautiful, can bring food to a funeral or help a neighbor in need or feed the neighborhood because a storm knocked out the power and all the food in the freezer would go bad otherwise.  Your family can be odd and crazy, because it's a heritage in the south, craziness, and we cherish it, we encourage crazy, it makes life interesting, and we like things to be interesting.

Above all, the south is haunted by history, buoyed by history, choked by history, hampered by history, obsessed by history, emboldened by history, nurtured by history.  It kills us and frees us all at once.  It's a ladder and a shackles.

I miss the South.  I long for it.  I have it with me all the time.

I need to drive through it soon.  I need to go...home.

Now fog

Last night, I got on the crowded bus last, so I was forced to stand up right at the entrance, right next to the front window.  I put all my bags down and plugged into my iPod and after one last stop, the bus drove express for six miles up Lake Shore Drive, the lake spread out dusky blue in twilight off to my right, apartment and office buildings rising up to my left.  A storm was rising over the city, but streaks of daylight remained out far off the lake.

As I rode, my music raging, I could forget anyone else was on the bus, I could look out the glass ahead of me and just see the cloud creeping closer and closer, lightning splitting the sky like a grin.  It felt like flying, or maybe like being at the prow of a ship (without the crippling seasickness I get on the water).

I owned the city, and I made that storm, and I coaxed it out over the tall tall buildings and I unleashed it, flying low and fast along the avenue that is Lake Shore Drive.

When I got home and was safe inside my house, the rain became hail and battered the house, as if to rebuke me for being so capricious as to tease it out and then abandon it while I retreated to comfort.

I listened to the intensity of its desperation fondly.  From safe inside.  And I didn't go out again.

Today the city is encased in fog so thick I can't see buildings 100 yards away.

Don't worry, nature, I want to say.  I can't escape you.  If you want to crack open my house, shower me with rain, pelt me with hail, or sweat me out with heat, you can.

All my safety is temporary.

All's Well

All continues well.  I can watch theatre without a burbling resentment of the people who got the chance to tell those stories, while I did not.  My next story is on its way, though I don't see it yet.  So I can live and let live.  I can show up with myself in hand to audition, and shrug off the fact that I am not anyone else.

Everyone's still mostly younger and prettier than I am (well, I'm vain enough that I think I'm still marginally pretty, and therefore I beat out the more lumpen and pale ones, but I don't admit that out loud, for fear of being completely wrong), and they are certainly thinner and often have better credits on their resumes, but not a single one of them has my me-ness.  Just me.  I grant you, my me-ness has not been in demand, perhaps, but it's what I've got and no one else has it, and there are days it catches someone's eye and then someone lets me tell a story.

The more I concentrate on my me-ness and on the fact that auditioning is really a great chance to do the thing I love, i.e. sing and act and tell stories, albeit really short ones, the more happy I can be.

And I have a stack of 16 books that I got from the big library downtown.  Ahhh.  I read a whole book tonight, end to end, without skimming!  Actually two - I read a one act play AND a whole book, devoured both with the glee an absorbed reading attains.

So, yes, I am still astonishingly ok.  Again, I thought I would miss the awesome project more.  I loved it, but there are new things to do next instead, even if I don't know what they are yet.

Set your stopwatches, folks.  How long until my internal chemistry betrays my cheer and tips me into some imagined sadness?  Or do I dismiss my own own resources?  Is this mood the delight of living in single-minded pursuit of the next awesome project with no doubt that one will eventually appear  or a result of enough Vitamin D?

Stay tuned, I guess.

Well, this is working out fine

I am a little shocked, and I don't want to jinx it, but everything is going really well.  My show closed, I don't have anything booked, a few other things ended forever, and I am actually pretty chipper.  It's been a good week.  I had the good fortune to book a tiny little commercial - it'll be 15 seconds, and it'll play online and in local movie theatres, so of course it's not an enormous sum of money I'm making.  But it's fun, and I think I'll get a kick out of the end product, and I BOOKED SOMETHING.  I BOOOOOOOKKKKED SOMETHING, HOORAY!!

So it's been a super busy week, and I'm having lots of fun, and every single day this week I get to do something that reminds me I'm an actor.  Not a teacher, an actor.  Auditions, readings, bookings, voiceovers.  I won't get any of it until much much later, but I will earn a nice chunk of money this week from being an actor.  And I'm auditioning for stuff that would pay lots more if I could book it.

It feels great.  I want to stay like this forever.  And in theory, I should be able to keep this going through this summer because a vo/print project I worked on back in Oct/Nov/Dec is being extended through this summer.

And all at a time I thought I'd be depressed.  Thanks, universe.  I'd love a raging success, like booking the next awesome project or becoming the spokeswoman for something, but in the meantime, I am thrilled to be happy with the smaller achievements.  And with sunny weather.

Now, I understand that the person I would say this to will never see this - trust me, I get it, but here it is:

I'm just fine.  My demons and my disappointments are my own, not something done to me.

Byron put it better than me:

"There is that within me which shall tire/ Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire."

Wow.  Maybe I'm turning into a winner after all.  I'd enjoy that.  Come on, universe, I can take it, smile on me.  I won't waste a minute of the joy on offer.

Nuns and Mardi Gras

Today an 80-something year old nun gave me and the rest of an audience an auditory tour of New Orleans at Mardi Gras.  She had white hair pinned under her short wimple and kind, kind eyes, and she said she loves wearing her practical, modern habit because when people see it they know she's there for them, she's there to be of service.  She told us how to get to New Orleans from Chicago:

"Well, you take the Amtrak, it goes right there.  You ride all night, you can sleep through the night, the chairs let you put your head back and your calves up, and my sister and I take food in our baggage, we have our little home right there with us!"  She gestured to her side as if she had an imaginary rolling suitcase alongside her seat.

"When you arrive in New Orleans...well, we head straight for the convent, most of the other people head for their hotels.  But I have to tell you, hotels will charge you twice as much during Mardi Gras, so it's best to have friends there.  Mardi Gras starts about two weeks before the day, when the King of a Crewe takes a bouquet of roses to a young girl of about 18 - that's how she knows she's the Queen of his Crewe.  Then there's a parade every day for two weeks!  Every Crewe has about twelve to thirty-six floats in the parade, and everyone lines the streets to watch, families and everyone.  It's really a family affair.  Everyone always wants their picture taken with the nuns, they say, 'Oh, can we take a picture with you so we can prove that Mardi Gras isn't that bad?'

But of course, in the French Quarter they have some things that Christians probably shouldn't be looking at!"

It made me want to get on the train with her and go to New Orleans immediately.  IMMEDIATELY.  Even though Mardi Gras isn't going on at all.

That sinking feeling

Ok.  The awesome project has closed.  I feel like my stomach is a balloon that just got a tiny puncture, and the air is leaking out, slowly, ever so slowly, but no matter what, the air is seeping out, and deflation is imminent.

Right now, there's just enough air that I'm all right.  I've got a lot to do tomorrow, I'm trying to focus on that.  It'll be a busy week after all, and I might try to go see some theatre, start catching up on talking to friends and exercising and, of course, work.

I don't want it to end.  Of course, I do in a way - I want a new challenge, and new people to meet, and even a few weekends off to go visit people and do something different.  But I don't want working to end, and that's what's hard - I don't have a next show booked, and it feels so tentative, just having to keep auditioning.  Will I ever be one of those people who move from project to project??  There's no way to know.  I have a LOT to learn about my craft before that happens, I'm afraid.  In a way, working shows me my limitations far more than my strengths.  But I want to keep working so I can try to develop beyond my limitations.

I'm not sure I'm making enough sense to keep typing.  I wanted to note some of the awesomeness of the awesome project - that it was a lovely group of people working on a story they could believe in, and that I was so so so lucky to be one of them.  I don't mind that it has to end but I want more experiences like this, and I don't know how long I'll have to wait until the next one.  But I'm so pleased and gratified and grateful to have had this one.

I'm honored.

Easter

Don't miss out on Easter just because it seems like such a mish-mash of bunnies and crucified men and pastels and white shoes again. 

 

Easter is the BEST holiday, and it's easy to miss because it's so multi-layered it's difficult to know what to pay attention to.

 

Taking away what may or may not have actually happened, and remembering that when a story gets retold enough, it reshapes itself into something elemental, something deeply satisfying, we have what is the best fantasy the church has.  (Maybe that should read the "Church".)

 

We have the end of everything good, we have the tragedy of having killed it ourselves, of having taken this amazing prophet who got down in the muck and lived with the murderers and the prostitutes but remained alight with love, we have a mob of people losing themselves to suspicion and hatred and killing their God.

 

Everyone wakes up and realizes that means there's no God left.  No one to make sense of it all, no one to give comfort and clarity, no one to be the bedrock of what is true and decent.  The mooring is gone, the anchor unchained.  We are adrift.  We've killed what is best about ourselves and we have to stay alive without it.  We've snuffed our own candle and what's left is darkness. 

 

So in the midst of the worst possible version of being alive, the being alive with no meaning or joy or laughter, and with our only companion a pain of our own making, we follow these two broken women to a grave.  Or men - it doesn't matter who it is that finds out first.  Because what they find is such a relief.

 

Because what we find out is beyond religion, it's beyond magic, it's beyond our capacity to make up.

 

Life comes back.  We get God back.  We get daffodils and roses and lilys back.  We get babies who look like our dead mothers, we get white dresses and white shoes to start over again with, we get jokes and comrades and sunny days.  We get roads that lead somewhere, we get brand new Ikea furniture, we get blank pages that will soon be filled with something charming and delightful.  We get back the person we destroyed, even if it's ourselves.  It turns out that person was walking along the road with us the whole time, even if we didn't recognize him or her.

 

We get it all back, dancing and laughing and meaning, we get MEANING back. 

 

A light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

 

It doesn't matter if it didn't happen to Jesus.  It's happening right now to the world, because it's spring, and this is one way we can tell ourselves that story.

 

So go buy yourself a daffodil, or a chocolate bunny.  Or eat an egg.  But don't miss out on Easter. 

 

You don't have to believe it for it to be a true story.

Note to self

So, it's been a week of setbacks.  I've overreacted to some things, and underreacted to others, and generally been a mess, as per usual.  (I hope something magical happens to me someday and transforms me into a person who has a handle on things, but somehow I doubt it.  Ah, depression gene, hello again.)

But tonight, at least, I went to do a show at an awesome theatre with a truly lovely cast.  And for at least these last few weeks, I remembered something important: I am still a winner.  Right now, this moment, I get to go do something I love almost every night.  Sure, it's nearly over, and that breaks my heart because I don't have the next project booked.  Of course I'm terrified.  What if I never get to do this again?  When I'm not doing a show, it's like living in exile.

So tonight, I was surprised and pleased to concentrate on the task at hand:  do your job, it's the exact one you wanted.

I got a job I really, really wanted.  And I love doing it.

Now if only, if only, if only....I can get another.

Bad at it

You know what sucks?  Endings.  I am bad at them - awkward, graceless, tearful, over-dramatic.

I am also bad at doing anything the first time.  I'm ok at beginnings in general, just not doing something for the first time.

Right, I don't want to sound like a broken record but I'm really tired at realizing there are more things I'm not good at.  I feel as I get older I have to come to terms more and more with the reality of not being good at things, and that upsets me and disheartens me, and frankly, just for a change, I'm getting angry about it.

Not that life owes me anything, it doesn't owe any of us anything - hell, I could have been born in a war zone or been mowed down senselessly by gun violence or been prey to thousands of other fates that would be TRULY horrific, and instead I'm just irritated when some other red head gets an audition instead of me.

But putting the "first-world-problem" aspect of my existence aside, I am weary of having to accept that I am going to lose because whatever I am or do can't win.

I won big time recently getting cast in the awesome project, and I don't want to go back to being a loser.  I want to keep winning.  I want the universe to smile on me for a change and give me a few more breaks.  I think if I got a few more I could be patient again - not that I ever want to go back to losing, but I would really like to be able to find the sweet spot between wins where I was just waiting for the next one and I knew it would come along, so the little losses didn't affect me.

That would be something, to be able to withstand disappointment because I know it will all work out if I just keep at it.  I would like that.  That is the person I would like to be.

In the meantime, I have a couple of big endings coming, and they are all going to hurt like hell.

On the bright side, if anything good ever does happen to me, I truly, truly appreciate it.  Like the awesome project.  It. Has. Been. AWESOME.

Dammit, I'm tearing up just thinking about it ending.

Just settled down

I should be working.  I'll go back to work in just a minute.

But first, I'm sad tonight, and I wish I weren't.

Peanut butter shouldn't be so tasty but ridiculously fattening.

Spring flowers should not contain so much pollen.

When you find something that makes you happy, you should not have to lose it.

If you have the great fortune to hang onto something that makes you happy, it should continue to make you happy, instead of becoming known and taken-for-granted.

But worst, oh, worst, when you have built yourself a fictional distraction from whatever ails you, and are perfectly aware that it doesn't exist, that the mind pictures you've created and luxuriate in for pleasure are entirely in the mind and have no possible counterpart in the real world -

Your heart should not ache for it to be real.  We, my children, cannot travel to Narnia.  Because it doesn't exist.  Why must we saddle ourselves with the longing?

Today, I wish I could pull a Bruce Chatwin, and leave a note on my desk that just says:

"Gone to Patagonia."

Ok, self, you know what's real and what's not.  Knuckle down and do your work.

Bunnies

I love bunnies.  Their adorable fluffy feet, the wispy flash of their pointless cottonball tails, the way their front legs and back legs work in tandem together, hoppity hoppity.

If I'm in a bad mood, a picture of a bunny can nearly always lift my spirits.  Something about their baleful eyes, silently regarding you as something they could feasibly nibble upon, and the wiggle wiggle wiggle of those noses, these details work on me the way endless beach noises work on other people - a calming, gentle tug toward sanity and peace.

I had bunnies as a kid.  I'd like one now, but our landlord is very against inside animals.

Ok, that's a little bit about bunnies.  Just to balance out the screaming, panic, and distress.  I'm going to go look at The Daily Bunny now.  I highly recommend this website.  A bunny picture every single day.  It's the new ice cream, y'all.

A little calmer

I'm not sure what actions to take to follow through on the seething mania of the previous post.  I'm going to work on it.  I refuse to calm down and just forget about it.



But now I'm going to put something down here in print that I probably shouldn't.  I'm going to put it in print because it's been bouncing around in my head for two days now, and I don't think it does mean what I fear, and if I just write it down and send it out into the world, maybe I can shake it off.

I'm deeply restless.  I'm mind-blowingly, terrifyingly, unignorably restless.  I want something to change, want to have an adventure or a challenge or a brand new experience.  I want to stop being contained by some of the choices I've made and some which have been forced upon me.

I have not made a secret of this.  I never really shut up about it.

About two days ago, my wonderful, awesome, terrific husband said to me (I am paraphrasing), "I love our life.  I don't need anything more than this.  All I want is more of the same."

I'm not going to put in writing what flashed through my mind.  It was not a positive response to what was a very genuinely lovely sentiment.

I have spent the last 48 hours convincing myself that what he's talking about the fact that the changes and challenges we are facing in our life together are the right ones - the ones where we try to make stories and make our living from telling stories.  I can get behind that.  I can see how that aligns with what I want.

However, if what my husband just said was, "I don't want anything to change," when I have been screaming for months that I change like I need oxygen....

Then we have a problem.  A mind-blowing, terrifying, unignorable problem.

Next post - I'm going to talk about bunnies.  Seriously.  And forget I said this.

Truth?

This is a space with no audience.  I put markings on it and rarely does anyone look at them.  Ironically, the few people who do know it is here do know me in real life, so I still edit what I want to say.  Oh, and of course, I edit what I want to say because I keep hoping someone might read it and be interested.  Or entertained.  Which, face it, does not happen.

Well, today, I say fuck it.  This one's just for me.

If you're offended, fuck off.

I'm getting weighed down by everyone's expectations.  Worse, lots of people lie about their expectations, so I'm weighed down by THINGS THAT DON'T EXIST.

Today, I want to throw away my life and go traveling.  I want to talk to strangers who know worlds I do not, I want to wander down alleys I shouldn't be in.  I want to dance on tables.  I've been running through the world with a sparkler in my hand: today I want a bomb.

I want to exit stage left.

I want to lie to everyone because only people who know the truth can really hurt you.  If I give parts of my story away, it should be to children that I never see again, like a grandma handing out chocolates.  I want to be on the move so that if anyone bores me, anyone says something rude or unflattering, I can simply remove myself to other climes and look for brighter stars.  I want to leave, I tell you.

Someone else can pay these bills, teach these recalcitrant children, go on these endlessly disappointing auditions.  Someone else can get judged and found wanting every day.  Someone else can be told over and over and over again that they don't matter, that nothing they do is unique or special or clever or in any way remarkable.

Someone else can be ordinary.  THE LIFE I HAVE IS NOT BIG ENOUGH YET.

I want to be on a camel somewhere, being eccentric and asking questions and learning things.  I won't own anything, I don't want things, I'll be a do-er.  I want to stretch the corners of what is possible until there is no disappointment left, until I have conquered "no", until to think of something will be to begin working toward doing it.

I WANT OPTIONS BACK.  I want choices, opportunities.  Intellectual rigor, curiousity, intrigue.

Now, how the fuck am I going to bust my actual life open wide enough for all of that? Because if I don't start getting it....

If I don't start getting it...

If I don't start getting it, I've really let myself become the most ordinary, boring, waste of space.

Quibble

I am beginning to be seriously peeved at George R.R. Martin.

Every time I get well and truly invested in a character, he kills that person off.  Every time I have decided a character is truly despicable, he shows me that person's point of view and forces a more balanced view on me.

And worst, often someone dies and I think, NOOOOOO, only to find that for various reasons, that character isn't actually dead.

Now, I don't have to have heroes and villians in black and white, I can see the writerly virtue of never allowing any character to be safe, I can appreciate that bringing someone back from the dead is what's known as a "twist", but...

The fair truth is that if not a single person ever gets to be happy, if everyone simply gets more and more confused, flawed, damaged, and disappointed...

I think I might have to stop reading these books.  Because there's nothing left to enjoy.  Everyone I like is doomed to be killed or to be unhappy.  I find that to be true in life often enough - I might have to give the unrelentingly dour and pessimistic world view of George R. R. Martin a rest.

Hey, if you're enjoying it, I don't need to stop you.  I just need a break.

The Cool Breeze

I get to sing with a 17-piece Big Band tonight.  It's one of my favorite things ever.  The band is made up of completely amazing musicians and the tunes are classic, and everything I get to sing is so much fun.  It is stupendous.

I can rarely hear myself in the space we'll be doing the show, so I can't tell you I am any good, but it is SO MUCH FUN I'm not sure it matters.

Last time we did a show, there were actually college kids who came to dance!  It was super cool - there's almost no room for something like that, but they were all so young and eager, and a couple of them asked me to dance when I wasn't singing, and it was pretty close to a perfect evening.

I may not get quite that close to perfect this time, but I'm excited anyway!  I think I'll wear my blue suede shoes...

Working

Hey!  My tactic is working, sort of!  I've had MORE rejection news, and so far I seem to be able to leapfrog over it.  I just ignore all the "oh-I'm-worthless-and-talentless" noise that usually accompanies the act of being rejected, and I go to work every night doing an awesome project.

It's not failsafe, but it's much more entertaining than getting completely bogged down in my own lack of ability.

Because, when I face up to it, I don't have that much talent to start with.  Some, sure.  But I'm no genius.  I'm not being negative, seriously.  Of course I wish I were a genius, but I think if I were, the acting road would probably be a little easier.  I'm right in the middle of the road, and I hope as time goes by I'll get better.

So, I don't really care whether or not I'm a genius or not.  I love acting.  I love telling stories onstage.  So I'll keep trying to do it.  Since those facts are true, why even bother getting upset when evidence of my inabilities comes around?  Surely I'm better off focusing on either the facts that support my choices (for instance, I'm currently working, performing 6 shows a week at an awesome theatre in an awesome cast of people!), or, when those aren't in evidence, trying to improve myself in some area.

This sounds really easy, and cheerful, and like something I should always do and should have been doing all along.  Ha!  Too true.  I think it shows how truly powerful having work can be.

I have a lot more to say about this, mostly so when I succumb to despair later I can come back and remind myself that I'm being an idiot, but I have to go clean my house - I have guests coming!  Ya-hoo!

Struggling

So, yes, I got bad news.  I got the kind of news that slaps you in the mouth, draws blood, and then laughs at you while you try to keep it together.

I'm not going to lie.  Without getting specific, this news hurts, and it will hurt for a while.  As my husband says, getting dumped always sucks, regardless of who has dumped you for whatever reason.  No one likes being told they aren't wanted.

(Oh, just so you know, this is professional.  My husband is still awesome, and keeps me sane with gifts, love, cuddling, and emotional security.  If he dumped me, I wouldn't write about it, I probably wouldn't be able to function.)

So, bad professional news.  I feel shitty about it.  But in the past months I've thought a lot about the bitterness I carry around and how it feels like bitterness itself is holding me back - not the things that happened to cause it, but my especial, sometimes overwrought, reaction to said events.  I dated someone for 6 weeks once and he dumped me and it took me SIX MONTHS to get over it, and I didn't even like him that much.

At some point recently I stated that I want to put the bitterness down.  To a large extent, the awesome project has let me do that, albeit temporarily.  Now I want to take it one step farther.  I want to avoid the bitterness altogether.

Something happened and it's painful.  If I look at it too hard I will see the message is that I am wasting my time trying to be an actor, that I do not have any talent, that I do not have the ability to tell a story onstage.

I am going to skip this message by no longer looking at this bad news.  I'm gonna skip it completely.  I'm going to find ways to lie to myself about what happened if I have to think of it at all.  If I have to, I will drug my psyche with books to shut the thoughts off.  When, unbidden, this news or news like it comes into my head, I plan to repeat the phrase "let it go" over and over and over until something distracts me.

I don't know how it will work.  But it seems worth a try.  If you need me, I'll just be sitting here on this sofa crocheting and reading Game of Thrones until something good happens.

Much worse

Just when things seem to be looking up, something happens to remind you you're completely worthless.

You can try to figure out how having four years of work rejected can be interpreted in a way that leaves you even a sliver of self-respect.  Good luck.