HowNowBrownCow?

Rostopovich digs into Bach vigorously with his bow, releasing a warm wave of sound. The cello-suites fill the coffee shop with a fullness that transports and the world is both new and ancient. Fingers stained with espresso are decorated with swirling lines that...

Blaaaaaa blablabla bla!

Scratch that. Redo.

Rostopovich.

Rrrrrrostopovich.

Rrrrross

toe

poe

vichhh

Rosss TOPOVich

to poe veeeech.

Have you ever noticed how the sound of a word makes you feel? How the 'ha' 'i' 'mmmm' in the word "him" makes you move? The quick 'ha' like a punch in the gut, the intake of the 'i' and the resonance of the 'mmm'. Himmm. Him.

Working on some Shakespeare lately with an acting teacher and rediscovering the power in every word I delight in driving alone, listening to the wind rush by and speaking words.

"Think not I love him though I ask for him. 'Tis but a peevish boy."

Peeeeevishhh b oyee.

Explosive 'p's' and 'b's'.

The roundness of "well" and juiciness of "ripe".

Sharp and cutting "but", "betwixt" and "not".

Actor or not, try it sometime alone. Speaking out loud and savoring, and playing with each word like a candy in your mouth or a river pouring out or a gong or a burst of air.

In what wondrous and wild ways we work!

Sit. Breathe. Sit. Breathe.

The day-to-day is good.

I don't save lives

but I put love into lattes

and give smiles to strangers

and send support to sisters and friends

and receive it in abundance.

The day-to-day is great.

Following my heart (and crazy whims) has always brought me to the exact place I need to be. When I arrive it's usually different than what I had expected but always surprisingly right. This week has been one of those times when things began effortlessly clicking into place. Letting go feels so amazing! I'm free!

Moving to a new place has given me a lot of perspective on my life and what I'm doing with it. Old desires are gently falling away like the skin of a snake and a new kind of clarity is emerging. It must be a "life-phase-thing" or "quarter-life-crisis" moment but I feel some major changes coming on and they are both surprising and yet make total sense to me.

I have finally realized that I'm an artist with no desire to climb any ladder or fit into any box or "type". I don't need to succeed by anyone else's terms to do what I do. I no longer feel the need to pursue acting as a career but rather to nurture all of my artistic tendencies as creative endeavors that require no compensation or recognition apart from that of my closest peers. As far as work and career goes I'm overwhelmed with the desire to help people in a more specific and immediate way and my interest in psychology, art and the human mind are leading me towards a slightly different path...

My womanly nesting desire is starting to bubble up but not in the way I thought it would. I don't want to nest with a guy and make babies or anything but for the first time ever I actually want to live alone. I want to settle somewhere for awhile, without the plan to move, and I think I have an idea of where that place is, but I'm going to meditate on it. I feel the want for a little tiny home and a plant and maybe a 3-legged old dog or something, but I finally feel like the most important thing to me is to be a contributing member of a community. A community is like a family and I want to be a part of one. It's just interesting to notice these thoughts and feelings because I've been searching for a few years now without any solid goal and it's just funny to watch it shift around. Who knows where it'll be in a week.

It's scary to accept change and it's hard to let go of attachments that we've had for most of our lives but when it happens the reward is a sense of inner peace and freedom. I don't want to struggle anymore to "make things happen" in my life, I just want to go with the flow, help others around me and continue striving towards living in the moment. It may seem like an obvious realization but the impact is huge, something is happening, I think I'm on the verge of a new chapter, maybe even a new book altogether! Buckle up, here we go again.

Really good advice to me from a trusted source: "Don't just do something, sit there".

Gotta go meditate.

Non Sequitur or the Saturday 2-for-1!

Part I:  The Sun Goes Down

In school I always doodled in the margins.  Since I moved from California to Virginia when I was five, it was easy to idealize the West Coast and my drawings often reflected that which I was "robbed of".  I yearned for the Pacific Ocean because I didn’t have it and I perfected my sketches of palm trees associating the cliché symbol with the magical place I felt I was meant to be in.  I wanted to live where the palm trees lived.

Later in the middle of my high school years, we did come back, but of course getting what you want isn’t always what you think it will be.  Just like coming closer to an impressionist work, the image changes and change can be ugly.  Some native Californians I’ve met resent the palm trees because they, in fact, are non-native species.  They are an ugly cliché just like the symbols I used to sketch and they just don’t belong.

As the sun goes down on another hot day in LA I stand on my balcony and enjoy something else as cliché as “long walks on the beach”.  I enjoy a beautiful sunset that no picture can capture and no words can describe.  Peeking up among the buildings are scattered palm trees and as I look at them my heart opens and softens like the pink light all around us.

We may not belong here, we may be loved by some and resented by others but we’re here.  We are all here together for whatever reason and we are all native to Earth.  Hot and tired I enjoy one of nature’s beautiful offerings with the palm trees as my fellow audience members.  The sky is on fire and a moving painting is being created in front of us, more inspiring than anything I have to offer and absolutely free.  It may be cliché but I’m grateful that my breath has been taken away tonight on this balcony.  Maybe one day I’ll have something as lovely to offer to someone too.

Part II: After Dark

It’s 3:19am and I’m awakened by the smell of smoke.  I look around to see where it might be coming from and realize it’s arrived on the slight breeze that finally makes the temperature bearable.  Southern California is burning and I’m being cooked alive.  San Francisco seems like a distant, little heaven.  Dolores Park a lush green oasis and here I am in the smoggy city of [fallen] angels breathing in the smoke and pollution.  But I have to be here.  Too much of a good place can lull me to a dreaming sleep and this dramatic setting is starting to wake me up…

In the meantime, I’m also kept awake by thoughts of my newest guilty pleasure, the British Comedy “Pulling”.  Finally, I’ve had time to watch some (Internet) TV and it’s been pretty damn great!

Unemployment = Finishing “MadMen”, gorging on “30 Rock” and completing seasons 1 and 2 of “Pulling”.

This show is a brilliant dark comedy that has been called “the anti-Sex and the City” and the “anti-Friends” and it is both.  The story focuses on the life of 30-year-old Donna, her radical quest for happiness in a humdrum life and the heart-breakingly tragic ups and downs of her two best friends Karen and Louise.  The three women end up living together and trying to figure out what they want from life and how to get it, helping and hurting each other along the way.

The comedy is the darkest, the plot lines are heavy and the characters are extremely human.  I found myself laughing out loud throughout the entire 12 episodes and already dying to find out more.  I’m completely drawn in.

Another reason to love the show is that the actress playing Donna is also co-creator and writer, Sharon Horgan.  Much like Tina Fey and “30 Rock”, Horgan seems to pull from her life experience and is carefully carving a new place for the female lead in our collective imagination.  Her lead is not a wife or mother, not an ingénue or merely the counterpart to some man, she is a courageous and yet deeply flawed, narcissistic and yet loveable, female anti-hero.

Now, this isn’t to say that the show is overtly Feminist or that there isn’t also a male writer/creator involved, a male love interest character and other ridiculous (but hilarious) portrayals of women.  But what inspires me is the fact that another high profile, female writer-actor is telling a story and acting it out too!  This is exactly the kind of career I fantasize about and I’m just happy to see it becoming a possibility, at least for some!

I don’t want perfect in my characters, I want interesting and funny and complex!  Donna, Karen and Louise possess these qualities among many others and they aren’t anorexic, twig-figures either.  They’re real looking women with interesting bodies and faces and they’re all wonderful actors.  I don’t know where you can get these DVDs, (I borrowed them from my new roommate) but if you can find them, check out the show!  You won’t be disappointed.

No More Room

Friday morning was my last in San Francisco. When I left for Santa Fe earlier last week I didn't have to feel sad.  Although, only for one night, I knew I would be back in my city and since all of my belongings were waiting for me in Potrero Hill I felt like I was coming home as usual.

Thursday night, I munched on pineapple and jalapeno pizza, sipped a can of Tecate and tried to get a good night's sleep. In the morning Lissy and I had another goodbye breakfast at Boogaloos (you can never get enough of that biscuit with vegetarian gravy) and headed back up to her house for the dreaded car-loading.

Since the poor girl is completely incapacitated at the moment, due to some serious back problems, the loading was up to me and me alone.

Box by box I brought my things down to the curb and worked on stuffing it all into the Honda. The sun was shining and the huge drops of sweat dripping off my head, neck and chest splashed against the cardboard and milk-crates full of books, notebooks, pictures and art supplies. I squished in bedding, clothes, shoes, toiletries and other odds and ends around the edges and I even managed to arrange about nine canvases throughout car, in various nooks.  

I had already gotten rid of all of my furniture (and have been sleeping on a floor for the past two weeks, might I add...) but I still had two bulky items to worry about. The blue bike and the blue guitar. No way in hell could I part with either, at least not yet, so I stubbornly found a way to get them both in. A few hours and a bunch of bruises later the task was complete. 

Covered in a crust of dry sweat and bike grease, I hugged Lissy goodbye and climbed into my temporary, moving home. With a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, I made my way down to Santa Cruz to see my sis. Blasting some tunes and singing at the top of my lungs I felt a rush of excitement and freedom!

This is the movie of my life, here I am setting myself free, following my dreams, taking a chance, going on an adventure! Moving alone for the first time ever! Doing my thing! Plunging into the unknown! Here I go!  

I pull up to Nish's house, get to see her for a bit before she has to head to work and then I'm left alone. The sun I had driven down in has been covered by a thick layer of fog, I haven't eaten in hours and I'm starting to come down, way down and fast.

I'm alone, I walk to the Whole Foods nearby, I feel a pain in my stomach and chest and immediately start dialing all my friends. Nobody answers. I leave messages. I stand around the Whole Foods parking lot and stare at the grey sky. I want to cry but mostly just feel annoyed and confused. Low blood sugar? My mom calls and I get snappy and we get into a little fight. This sucks! This is not my big, exciting, fun moment! Where's my soundtrack? Hello???

I go into the store and buy some crappy Indian food from the buffet and a Kombucha. When I get back to Nish's house her roommates are all hanging around eating so I decide to stop moping and join them.

As the food makes it's way into my system and the conversation starts to flow I feel much better. Everyone wants to know about my journey and why I'm going to LA. I begin to give my usual modest answer, "time for a change of scenery, I have some friends down there, bla, bla, bla..." and then somehow the truth comes out, "I'm moving for my acting".

Everyone is full of questions and instead of feeling nervous or uncomfortable I realize, I have nothing to lose! I am moving to get closer to more acting opportunities. In fact, I am moving to do the thing I love most in the world, or to at least try to do it! I'm moving to do something I'm good at and something I understand and something I believe in and I need to start believing in myself. If I don't believe in me, then what's the point?    

The mopey brain-fog has lifted, I am more than ready to jump and fall, or roll, or find out I can fly, or realize I'm a kangaroo, or whatever!  There's no more room in the car and there's no more room for fear. I will ride the waves of emotion as they come and ain't it good to be riding! 

Monday I drive down to LA. I have very little money, a beat-up car named Henry, a few boxes, a blue bike and a blue guitar but best of all I have imagination and determination. Although I secretly wish I had a sword or something, I suppose a pen will have to do for now.  Here goes nothing, and everything!

Cue soundtrack music, please.