Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Musing on the torridness of life with a little Shakes thrown in for good measure. Where to go, what to do, answer is nowhere and nothing. High on life once, down in the doldrums once more, or maybe just somewhere in the hazy lazy middle.
Does anyone ever know what it is they are doing? How to be serious in a nonsensical world. Parts of me and bits of you and the rest is everyone else screaming and laughing and pushing themselves in where they are not wanted, or maybe they are but only a little bit. Stream of consciousness. Random acts of kindness, calculated moves of bitterness, are they one and the same. What's the new news at the old court, nothing but the old news.
The days take on a semblance of sameness and a soupcon of insanity. How full of briers is this working-day world! But how do we not walk in the trodden paths? If you love me once is that all there is, if you fool me twice is the shame on me alone. Reconcile your differences and feed the kitty and ante up the pot and give us a chaste kiss.
Too much coffee and not enough food and far too much aloneness makes me crazy and aloof. The men and women merely players but who writes these lines and makes up these plots? Everything you ever thought about me is wrong wrong wrong even as it is as true and right and brave as you have your experience to make you rich.
It is humbling, perhaps, to recognize that there is a whole wide world out there that wants no parts of you, or maybe would if only you could slip in unbidden and quiet and become one with your muse. How do these things happen? How does one make them keep happening? And who needs humility anyway. I would prefer more moments, maybe a whole hour, of getting what I want and keeping it forever and a day.
I like my instincts but dislike my odds. Men have died and worms have eaten them but not for love. By my troth though sayest true. So play on. Play for me, play with me, or just play me. Just don't stop because there isn't any more music for dancing--the orchestra in my head will just have to be enough.
Does anyone ever know what it is they are doing? How to be serious in a nonsensical world. Parts of me and bits of you and the rest is everyone else screaming and laughing and pushing themselves in where they are not wanted, or maybe they are but only a little bit. Stream of consciousness. Random acts of kindness, calculated moves of bitterness, are they one and the same. What's the new news at the old court, nothing but the old news.
The days take on a semblance of sameness and a soupcon of insanity. How full of briers is this working-day world! But how do we not walk in the trodden paths? If you love me once is that all there is, if you fool me twice is the shame on me alone. Reconcile your differences and feed the kitty and ante up the pot and give us a chaste kiss.
Too much coffee and not enough food and far too much aloneness makes me crazy and aloof. The men and women merely players but who writes these lines and makes up these plots? Everything you ever thought about me is wrong wrong wrong even as it is as true and right and brave as you have your experience to make you rich.
It is humbling, perhaps, to recognize that there is a whole wide world out there that wants no parts of you, or maybe would if only you could slip in unbidden and quiet and become one with your muse. How do these things happen? How does one make them keep happening? And who needs humility anyway. I would prefer more moments, maybe a whole hour, of getting what I want and keeping it forever and a day.
I like my instincts but dislike my odds. Men have died and worms have eaten them but not for love. By my troth though sayest true. So play on. Play for me, play with me, or just play me. Just don't stop because there isn't any more music for dancing--the orchestra in my head will just have to be enough.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Love, love, love
I am a girl who likes a good time. I like to be surrounded by people I love, I like to make new friends with people I may grow to love, I like to laugh a lot, I like to dance, I like to be happy. I am fairly obsessed with this kind of fun, and am very lucky to have experienced it twice in the past few months. Most recently I got to be eight years old again, except with an over-21 pass, at a very fantastical camp wedding. This lost weekend encompassed all of the above, and more, and it feeds me even as it fades into the not-so-distant past.
It begins, as all great love stories do, with the happy couple. The groom is one of my oldest and dearest friends in an unstereotypical big brother type way. He has never not known how to cheer me up and make me laugh and keep me safe and he has put up with my craziness for years and loves me anyway in spite of it, even when I don't call and I don't write and I don't visit and I suck in the good friend category in actuality he is de trop for me. He makes me so happy just by his essence, and has for almost 20 years. His bride I met a cool 15 years hence when embarking on a cross-country trek by way of the northern climes. Even being a stupid and self-absorbed child I knew this chick was some kind of awesome for my friend. We stayed at her house courtesy of her and her awesome mom for a few days, picked up the rest of our wagon train, and bid her goodbye as we motored out west. I had good occasion to spend times here and there with her in the ensuing decade-plus and have always been in awe of her beauty, her brains, her moxie, her inherent loveliness.
As a couple these guys weathered many years and many states and many distances. I daresay they weathered perfect storms along the way and in the end triumphant they invited their nearest and dearest of now and then to witness the making-it-official beginning of a life legally entwined--making it clear to the world at large what those of us who have loved them have known these many years.
The weekend was a dream. For a bit it was a scary dream, but in the end the waking up was the hardest part. Six hours from home we found ourselves in a grown-up playground full of food and sport and booze and most importantly a few generations of amazing people. Acquaintances were made, old friendships deepened, new ones formed. The jokes served up at weddings since time immemorial never seemed fresher or funnier as we ate and laughed and played and danced our way through three days of good times.
As aforementioned, I love a good time. It seems to me that I have a lot of them but not nearly enough of them. And for me, good wedding is probably the best good time going. It is utter joy for me to be an honored guest in a room or a tent or a church or God's temples and serve as witness to two people I love standing hand in hand, ready to take on the world together and not apart, is probably the closest I get to a taste of heaven on earth. In certain instances I love everyone so much and so hard it leaves me breathless. We can't all be in the same moments in the same time zones forever but goddamnit we ought to enjoy it when we are., so hells bells I do.
I have felt this way at every wedding I have ever been a part of since childhood. Being related to people unwillingly by blood or willingly by soul makes little difference when these magic moments occur. At family weddings I tend to come thisclose to bursting into serious tears because there is always one moment where I am so filled with joy to be with the family that for better or worse I have 84,000 memories with and share genetic makeup with despite our myriad differences. And it always made me a little sad and lonesome that this distilled joy wasn't how it always was or would be. (That's my Irish.) My friends' weddings have all overflowed me with sheer delight at the commitment being made between two mates right in front of all our eyes. For a girl who has been always incredibly loyal to my people I am a commitment-phobe in a big way so it startles me every time that I will, unbidden, feel like the curtain is about to go up--the only other time I ever have this bursting, blooming, waterfall of emotion that is the gift the gods bestow to balance out the bloodcurdling, blackened blows I get in my darkest hours.
A good wedding is the greatest work of art, an incomparable piece of theater, a creation of something at once real and imagined. It is serious. Vows are made, bargains struck, love brims up and overflows an iron chalice. Creation happens and no matter what happens from that day forward, they can't take that away from any of us. Something tremendous has happened.
Mazel tov and salud and slainte my dear friends, and thank you for the privilege of knowing you separately and together.
It begins, as all great love stories do, with the happy couple. The groom is one of my oldest and dearest friends in an unstereotypical big brother type way. He has never not known how to cheer me up and make me laugh and keep me safe and he has put up with my craziness for years and loves me anyway in spite of it, even when I don't call and I don't write and I don't visit and I suck in the good friend category in actuality he is de trop for me. He makes me so happy just by his essence, and has for almost 20 years. His bride I met a cool 15 years hence when embarking on a cross-country trek by way of the northern climes. Even being a stupid and self-absorbed child I knew this chick was some kind of awesome for my friend. We stayed at her house courtesy of her and her awesome mom for a few days, picked up the rest of our wagon train, and bid her goodbye as we motored out west. I had good occasion to spend times here and there with her in the ensuing decade-plus and have always been in awe of her beauty, her brains, her moxie, her inherent loveliness.
As a couple these guys weathered many years and many states and many distances. I daresay they weathered perfect storms along the way and in the end triumphant they invited their nearest and dearest of now and then to witness the making-it-official beginning of a life legally entwined--making it clear to the world at large what those of us who have loved them have known these many years.
The weekend was a dream. For a bit it was a scary dream, but in the end the waking up was the hardest part. Six hours from home we found ourselves in a grown-up playground full of food and sport and booze and most importantly a few generations of amazing people. Acquaintances were made, old friendships deepened, new ones formed. The jokes served up at weddings since time immemorial never seemed fresher or funnier as we ate and laughed and played and danced our way through three days of good times.
As aforementioned, I love a good time. It seems to me that I have a lot of them but not nearly enough of them. And for me, good wedding is probably the best good time going. It is utter joy for me to be an honored guest in a room or a tent or a church or God's temples and serve as witness to two people I love standing hand in hand, ready to take on the world together and not apart, is probably the closest I get to a taste of heaven on earth. In certain instances I love everyone so much and so hard it leaves me breathless. We can't all be in the same moments in the same time zones forever but goddamnit we ought to enjoy it when we are., so hells bells I do.
I have felt this way at every wedding I have ever been a part of since childhood. Being related to people unwillingly by blood or willingly by soul makes little difference when these magic moments occur. At family weddings I tend to come thisclose to bursting into serious tears because there is always one moment where I am so filled with joy to be with the family that for better or worse I have 84,000 memories with and share genetic makeup with despite our myriad differences. And it always made me a little sad and lonesome that this distilled joy wasn't how it always was or would be. (That's my Irish.) My friends' weddings have all overflowed me with sheer delight at the commitment being made between two mates right in front of all our eyes. For a girl who has been always incredibly loyal to my people I am a commitment-phobe in a big way so it startles me every time that I will, unbidden, feel like the curtain is about to go up--the only other time I ever have this bursting, blooming, waterfall of emotion that is the gift the gods bestow to balance out the bloodcurdling, blackened blows I get in my darkest hours.
A good wedding is the greatest work of art, an incomparable piece of theater, a creation of something at once real and imagined. It is serious. Vows are made, bargains struck, love brims up and overflows an iron chalice. Creation happens and no matter what happens from that day forward, they can't take that away from any of us. Something tremendous has happened.
Mazel tov and salud and slainte my dear friends, and thank you for the privilege of knowing you separately and together.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Too Hot to Handle
Is't possible? That we will be performing Shakespeare out of doors on this insanely muggy day? Ugh I suppose it is. When I was a wee chit of a girl I always wanted to live in Victorian times, now I am getting my wish as I traipse about fields wearing long sleeves and skirts that reach my ankles along with the requisite hosiery and undergarments. Hot and bothered, but not in the good way. More in the, I would have gone all Zelda Sayre on their proper asses had I lived in olden times, hacked off my hair and raised my skirts and danced like an Indian chief to a tune no one else could hear. Come to think of it, that last part is essentially what I am doing all the time anyway. Thank the goddesses for central air. Not that I will stoop to putting it on.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
24601
I am way depressed and way giddy and way restless. I am 36 years old, and in sinking in a sea of debt from which I am unlikely to ever see shore again unless some huge windfall happens. I am having serious trouble reconciling the idea of being myself, which means and always has meant being an artist, with being able to live, and live happily. I am all hopped up yet seemingly lazy. I can’t suck it up anymore—can’t look at corporate job ads and the laundry list of requirements and duties and apply for them with any kind of good faith. I can’t pretend a passion that I do not feel. For a damn good actress I am falling down on that particular talent.
And I can’t keep half-assing it in theatrical pursuits while trying to hold down a day job I could care less about. I am the biggest charlatan in the world right now and I can’t stop. I am haunted by the me nobody knows. Tired of being poor and scared and juggling debts and unable to be honest with anyone except maybe one person about my realities. I feel scared and hopeless, but excited and hopeful for big changes. I don’t know what to do. I sleep, I eat, I waste time building up my next appearance in the world at large in my head and devoting so much of my energies towards that mask of the me people think they know that I am exhausted before I set out the door.
I do not want to be 37 let alone 40 or 50 or 90 and in this situation, and I am realizing at last that this will always be the situation if I do not move somewhere, anywhere but here. The problem is, the constant obstacle, the seeming insurmountable barrier is that I do not know where or how to begin. With so much time lost already can one afford to lose more time by taking some horrid better-paying job? Is what I am doing okay for now, but will become dissatisfyingly for always? Life is short but wide—right now it only feels short.
I want I want I want like a tempestuous child. I want a passport to anywhere I want to be, I want to travel, and to live in strange faraway places, and to enrich me with new friends, and to gift my old friends with a better me than the one they have had to know for years now, and to find a lover, and to marry a partner. I want to do good work and be true to what is inside me in a way that reflects to the outside me. I do not regret the choices made that places me on this current path. It all happens for a reason, or at least it happens, and you move on, you deal, you work through and you laugh and you cry and you sleep and you love and sometimes you make things happen and other times they happen to you but you don’t stop, you cannot stop, and that simple fact is wonderful and terrifying.
Always been collected and clear about what I want, feel it is others that make it difficult to get it. Not in a blame way, in a bewildered way. You want a job and you do all you can to get it but if some other person decides no you do not get it and so how do you pursue with any kind of faith what YOU want? If no man is an island how can he possibly have it his way. I study people, I imagine my life if I had their advantages or disadvantages and I see how I would go, how I would not be better or worse but different. But I cannot look at me well enough to figure out how to move a pawn, play the game, checkmate.
I am tired of observing. I need help. I need to be able to stop lying to myself and being a pretty little fool because in this world that is not to a girl’s advantage—not when the girl is no longer a girl but a woman with years of heartache and success propelling her ever-forward into god knows what no-man’s land is off the beaten path.
I never wanted, for a long time anyway, to move away to pursue my craft, to ply my trade. To perform to nameless faceless crowds and have no balance for when the actor me leaves the stage. I crave stability and a home base while I want to be out in the world all the time doing what I do. I cannot reconcile the two right now. I am lonely in a room full of people, I am lonely in the silence of my lonely room.
I work hard and faithfully, I support my dear friends and myriad acquaintances even when it is hard and I do not agree and I do not want to. I believe in all of us—I just want to be believed in too. And I know that I am. But it is very very difficult sometimes to believe in myself.
I am not pitying me, I am just ablur with confusion. “Knowing” is supposed to be the first step but what the hell do I know? Am I the shallow flapper called out years and years ago who thinks of nothing but fun? I may be. But I am not allowed to be. We all have many selves, and mine are starting to resent each other.
For a long while I thought it was the absence of a partner. I know that I am a sun that shines more bright reflected off another—it is what it is. I can be alone, always have been able to be alone and be closer to fine. But with sometime to take the world on with, I simply do better by myself, I take my essence more seriously and I am less inclined to frivolity and excess, I am more inclined to trust and to love, I do better work the same way my best works have been when I threw all else practical aside and indulged, unwillingly even, in the maze of the mind. In tandem, I am free to be you and me.
But when one has been as alone as I for as long as I that excuse starts to wear thin—because this is me, and may be a permanent me, and I better learn to reflect myself since I have been orbiting my own solar system for light years on a solo mission.
And I am not un-okay with such a realization. I am more just driven to tears of frustration and hollow soul-aches because it is the absence of a lot of things that make this mission abortive before it leaves the launch pad.
I love me. I love my life. But I know I can do, and must do, better by both of those things. If only emotionally vomiting into cyberspace would purge me of self-doubt and stock-stillness and make me hungry enough to cook something amazing and eat it.
And I can’t keep half-assing it in theatrical pursuits while trying to hold down a day job I could care less about. I am the biggest charlatan in the world right now and I can’t stop. I am haunted by the me nobody knows. Tired of being poor and scared and juggling debts and unable to be honest with anyone except maybe one person about my realities. I feel scared and hopeless, but excited and hopeful for big changes. I don’t know what to do. I sleep, I eat, I waste time building up my next appearance in the world at large in my head and devoting so much of my energies towards that mask of the me people think they know that I am exhausted before I set out the door.
I do not want to be 37 let alone 40 or 50 or 90 and in this situation, and I am realizing at last that this will always be the situation if I do not move somewhere, anywhere but here. The problem is, the constant obstacle, the seeming insurmountable barrier is that I do not know where or how to begin. With so much time lost already can one afford to lose more time by taking some horrid better-paying job? Is what I am doing okay for now, but will become dissatisfyingly for always? Life is short but wide—right now it only feels short.
I want I want I want like a tempestuous child. I want a passport to anywhere I want to be, I want to travel, and to live in strange faraway places, and to enrich me with new friends, and to gift my old friends with a better me than the one they have had to know for years now, and to find a lover, and to marry a partner. I want to do good work and be true to what is inside me in a way that reflects to the outside me. I do not regret the choices made that places me on this current path. It all happens for a reason, or at least it happens, and you move on, you deal, you work through and you laugh and you cry and you sleep and you love and sometimes you make things happen and other times they happen to you but you don’t stop, you cannot stop, and that simple fact is wonderful and terrifying.
Always been collected and clear about what I want, feel it is others that make it difficult to get it. Not in a blame way, in a bewildered way. You want a job and you do all you can to get it but if some other person decides no you do not get it and so how do you pursue with any kind of faith what YOU want? If no man is an island how can he possibly have it his way. I study people, I imagine my life if I had their advantages or disadvantages and I see how I would go, how I would not be better or worse but different. But I cannot look at me well enough to figure out how to move a pawn, play the game, checkmate.
I am tired of observing. I need help. I need to be able to stop lying to myself and being a pretty little fool because in this world that is not to a girl’s advantage—not when the girl is no longer a girl but a woman with years of heartache and success propelling her ever-forward into god knows what no-man’s land is off the beaten path.
I never wanted, for a long time anyway, to move away to pursue my craft, to ply my trade. To perform to nameless faceless crowds and have no balance for when the actor me leaves the stage. I crave stability and a home base while I want to be out in the world all the time doing what I do. I cannot reconcile the two right now. I am lonely in a room full of people, I am lonely in the silence of my lonely room.
I work hard and faithfully, I support my dear friends and myriad acquaintances even when it is hard and I do not agree and I do not want to. I believe in all of us—I just want to be believed in too. And I know that I am. But it is very very difficult sometimes to believe in myself.
I am not pitying me, I am just ablur with confusion. “Knowing” is supposed to be the first step but what the hell do I know? Am I the shallow flapper called out years and years ago who thinks of nothing but fun? I may be. But I am not allowed to be. We all have many selves, and mine are starting to resent each other.
For a long while I thought it was the absence of a partner. I know that I am a sun that shines more bright reflected off another—it is what it is. I can be alone, always have been able to be alone and be closer to fine. But with sometime to take the world on with, I simply do better by myself, I take my essence more seriously and I am less inclined to frivolity and excess, I am more inclined to trust and to love, I do better work the same way my best works have been when I threw all else practical aside and indulged, unwillingly even, in the maze of the mind. In tandem, I am free to be you and me.
But when one has been as alone as I for as long as I that excuse starts to wear thin—because this is me, and may be a permanent me, and I better learn to reflect myself since I have been orbiting my own solar system for light years on a solo mission.
And I am not un-okay with such a realization. I am more just driven to tears of frustration and hollow soul-aches because it is the absence of a lot of things that make this mission abortive before it leaves the launch pad.
I love me. I love my life. But I know I can do, and must do, better by both of those things. If only emotionally vomiting into cyberspace would purge me of self-doubt and stock-stillness and make me hungry enough to cook something amazing and eat it.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Grow up already
Today I see that Al and Tipper Gore are separating after 40 years of marriage. I could care less about the Gores, and know less than I don't care about their relationship. But I am so sick of these couples who go the distance only to stop. Enough already! How can you possibly weather through 40 fucking years as a duo, good times and bad, and then somebody decides you know what, I don't feel like doingthis anymore.
I don't get it. I don't think people should stay together when they don't want to but how the hell do you go apart after FORTY YEARS, unless one of you is a closet meth addict or beats you nightly or is Tigers Woods. And what hope is there for anyone to form a partnership when people who have weathered almost half a century together can't do it anymore?
Stupid, selfish bullshit.
I don't get it. I don't think people should stay together when they don't want to but how the hell do you go apart after FORTY YEARS, unless one of you is a closet meth addict or beats you nightly or is Tigers Woods. And what hope is there for anyone to form a partnership when people who have weathered almost half a century together can't do it anymore?
Stupid, selfish bullshit.
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