Men at Work.

  2/17/09: G-d Jar Projects:

  - My band

  - my mural

  - the play or musical I will be in

  - the songs I write

  - the essays and poems

  - the bass I play

  - the vacation I take to Hawaii

  - the sketches I make

  - the painting I do

  - the creative job I am making

At the time I wrote this list, none of these were true or in my life. Today, of this task list I wanted “God” to complete, all except two have come to fruition.

It would be a year from putting this list in my “g-d box” when I would apply to graduate school for creative writing in poetry. It would be two years from then when I would take my first oil painting class at that college and start writing my daily blog.

It would be 4 years from putting this list in the jar when my friend would become a flight attendant, and ask me if I wanted to escape winter and my chemo treatments and go to Hawaii for cheap.

A few months from there, a year ago, I would finally accept the invitation to be a part of the band my friend had been asking me to join for years, and actually use the bass I’d bought for $5 when I was 19. And not long from then, I would begin auditioning and taking acting classes, and eventually be cast in a play.

The only items on this list that haven’t come to fruition yet are the mural and the creative job.

The mural seems less important than it did 5 years ago, though it would still be very cool to do.

The creative job “I am making” (whatever that means!) is still in flux, in process.

Astonishing, isn’t it, that things I had no idea how they would come to pass have all come to pass? I could never have imagined when I wrote that list that I would actually be in a band, or be able to go to Hawaii. Those were the gifts and “rewards” of successful, other people. But, some part of me has always believed that I can be one, or they wouldn’t have been in the box.

I love looking at this list. It is so concrete. I can check each off with a stroke of joy and elation: I painted! I wrote! I acted! I vacationed! WHOOP! Look at me, enjoying a life (in spite of my self).

We all know what I’m going to say: If everything else on the list has come to pass except the last one, then there must be hope that even that can come to pass as well.

I am not sure I’m exactly an optimist, but I am a believer in the efficacy of asking for help, not doing it alone, but doing it. Eventually.

Because, I should mention that going to school has saddled me with nearly $90,000 in student loan debt and sent me into a recovery program around my relationship to money and scarcity. I should mention that my airline friend offered me the trip to Hawaii because I needed a break from cancer. And that I only finally reached back out to my friend with the band as I was sitting alone and bald in my apartment, listening to a CD, and busted out crying because I wanted to be a part of something like that – because I didn’t want to be taken from the chance to have that in my life.

It’s not as if this list got checked off according to the “easy way,” is my point. It took a lot of work, help, reaching out, despair, action, pleading, and god damned willing it to be.

I would not have chosen this route to getting these items checked off, and yet, here I sit elated that so many of them have been. They say that it’s the journey not the destination, but these journeys sucked. The routes to getting here, to crossing off these accomplishments that have brought me joy, were really horrible, scary, and painful.

It’s a strange dichotomy to sit with: The immense gratitude for being where I am, and the questioning of the benevolence and efficacy of the path that brought me here.

So I guess what I sit with now is whether I want the road to crossing off the last item on this list – “my creative job” – to be as arduous as the roads before it. It is true that sometimes we don’t have a choice, and choices are made for us, but I feel today that I do have a choice on whether I want to struggle toward this final goal, whatever the circumstances, or if I want to acquiesce toward it. Maybe not even “acquiesce,” but move with joy. I mean I have a whole list of accomplishments to buoy this part of my journey, right? 

Maybe, just maybe, it doesn't have to be so hard. 

"We Need Back-up!"

I have no back-up, she said.

My friend with two kids, impending divorce, move, life, told me a few weeks ago. Trying to figure out if she could go back east for a family reunion and see her great-aunt probably for the last time. To figure out if she should bring her kids, even though she couldn’t afford it. Trying to figure out who would take care of them if she went, because “he” wasn’t available.

She felt alone, lost, and hopeless.

When I was leaving, she picked up her phone to check a text. The kids’ other grandmother would be happy to come up and stay with them, it read. No problem.

Her eyes went wide. She laughed. I laughed. We laughed about the energy we put into feeling terrible about things. 

A few days ago, I saw her again. She was telling some of our friends how she’d found a house in the town she wanted to be in because of its school system for her son. I hadn’t heard this part yet. Only how pained she’d been in the looking, months and months of looking. Fearing, wondering.

She regaled us with how she went online on Wednesday, saw the house on Thursday, and on Friday, signed the lease.

She told us how there was another house that she really wanted for $800 more a month. The kind of dream house she “really” saw herself living in.

But guess how much the tuition will be for her girl at the school she wanted to be in? $800 a month.

The litany of things that lined up were astonishing. Each little piece of it having fallen firmly into miraculous and perfect place. Each need met, better than anticipated. And “right on time.”

My friend was ecstatic and a bit winded with all the resolutions that worked out in her favor. Eventually.

I said that it was like the “Universe” was tittering with a present hidden behind its back. “Oooh… Look how upset she is that she has nothing, that nothing’s coming out right – She’s gonna be SO BOMBED when I show her what I have for her!! What I’ve had for her this whole time -- Ha! It’s gonna be AWESOME!”

And it’s true. It’s not that these things just came about “miraculously.” It’s that she had been reaching out for help, grasping at any straws, and finally, some of those straws bore fruit (to mix metaphors).

Desperate and despairing though she was, really distraught at feeling abandoned by the Universe, lost in this HUGE transition in her life, she was asking for help. She was taking action.

And that’s what produced the miracles… to my mind, at least.

I report this whole story, I think, for obvious reasons.

I am currently grasping at so many straws, I could line the Augean stables.

I am reaching out to places I haven’t before, and listening when people have things to say. (Even if I’ve heard their advice or platitudes before and are silently telling them to shut it.)

I am feeling so lost and desperate and hopeless and wondering and flailing and floundering. In short, I am feeling just as she was.

I know that we humans are meaning-making animals. We, or at least I, want to make sense of everything, even the things that don’t. So, I know that I want to make meaning out of her story, make it into a tale of heroic action and divine desperate patience.

I want to make this story Job. Because if it is, then in the end I get a flock of sheep, too. 

* Epilogue

Look. I know this sounds like a lot of self-obsessed, self-centered bullshit. I know this isn't Rwanda, or even East Oakland. I know that no matter what happens, I'll likely have clean water to drink.

I suppose, having always been a late bloomer, I just am getting an advanced jump on the whole mid-life crisis thing.

I think the argument with authenticity is an important one to have. I think the screamings of a soul that feels trapped is an important one to answer. I get that that looks like a lot of navel-gazing sometimes, and I get the pain all that staring causes in my neck.

But I just want to say that I see both sides, here. I see that I have it immensely "better" than a hundred million people around me. I get that my life is infinitely better than it was 10 years ago.

But, I also have the capacity to listen to myself at a level that I have never been keen enough to hear before.

Last night, someone recommended I read the chapter on Withdrawal in a 12-step book. I did. This "not quitting my job without having another one lined up" thing IS withdrawal for me. It's causing me pain. It's causing me to act out. It's causing me to have conversations and intrigue with inappropriate people, and to eat enough cupcakes to stock a shop.

I'm in pain, and it comes out here. This is my place. I feel badly about putting it up so that you have to read daily about it. But, you don't have to read. And I don't have to feel.

And yet. Here we both are. Xo.m

Nasty Jenga Partners.

I wanted to be a botanist. In 8th grade, I decided that if I were a botanist, I could live in a tree, far away from people. It had little to do with botany.

It’s funny to see that what I wanted most, isolation, is what I’ve actually been fighting against most of my life, into the present. For someone who purports the necessity of community, and told my interviewers that what underlines all of the work I want to do in my life is a passion for bringing people together – they sure do scare the crap out of me most of the time.

Not surprising. Not unique. But funny to have a primary motivation in my life be the thing that is also hardest for me to let in, let percolate. I suppose it’s that way for most people. Or not.

I told my therapist the other day that I want to strive without questioning/battering myself at every step. I asked her if that was possible, if “normal” people can actually do this? She said, Yes.

I told her that I’d once admitted to a mentor that I was scared I was too analytical to be happy. I told her I still have that fear. If at every turn in your life, you hound yourself, where is there room for happiness, satisfaction, self-acceptance?

Where is there time?

Because time continues to be a mindfuck for me too. I’ve been typing up this woman’s life stories she’s compiling at a workshop where I work. The one that’s sticking with me is entitled, “Turning 80.” At 60, her family brought all her old friends from her home town whom she hadn’t seen in years, and had a big party. At 70, she got together with the close friends she’d met while living here in the “new” iteration of her life.

What will she do at 80? How will she celebrate? What’s important?

I was driving my boss’s dad to and from dialysis in San Francisco several years ago a few days a week for a few months. He was probably about 80, too, and I asked him the key to life, as he seemed happy and satisfied enough. He answered, Do what you love, and Travel.

Simple enough… if you’re not also standing at your own heel questioning the importance and wisdom of all your moves, like a crappy Jenga partner.

But, my therapist seems to think it’s possible. No. She knows it’s possible for people to go through their lives, interesting, interested, engaged, without the “itty bitty shitty committee.”

I’ve said that I don’t think that committee ever actually “goes away;” I just think the volume gets turned down. On good days, it does. And certainly, I can admit with fervor that my own self-doubt is light-years (light-decibels?) quieter than it had been.

Because it is those voices – those nagging thoughts to be better, wiser, travel more, act more, play music more, paint more, engage more, be friends more, be available more – that serve to do the exact opposite. Leave me the fuck alone, voices! And the lie is that being alone is the antidote, is the cure, for those voices. That isolation is the cure for loneliness.

The lie is that isolation is the cure for loneliness.

Of course I’m not meant to live in a tree, or observe the apes, or tick away hours in a lab, or in front of Netflix. My primary motivation for living is to engage with people, connect with them and help them connect with each other. I am the diplomat incarnate. “Did you meet so and so? They make jewelry, and you make hand puppets, maybe you should talk.” “I know someone who just did what you’re looking to do, I’ll give you their number.” “You’re both writers, bakers, candle-stick makers, let me help you connect.”

Bringing people together means that I have to be willing to get together with them. I know my hesitations, I know my underlying reasons and history, I know all the "justifiable" reasons not to. And I know how that looks like me abandoning relationships, abandoning hobbies, abandoning myself.

But this path has become boring. Not to mention lonely. And if I’m such an intrepid world/life traveler, then (my breathing becomes shallow as I even contemplate this) I will have to allow myself to try this other route, this one called Sustained Human Connection and hope the voices get bored of me not listening, and fade out.

Did you live happy? Did you live well?

I don’t really believe in heaven and hell. I suppose if I believe in anything, I believe in some kind of version of reincarnation. Not that my soul gets inserted into some new being on the planet, but that the anima that makes my heart pump disseminates into other things – surely, the worms, and dirt, and grass that’ll be fed by me, but also, I feel like there’s some way our spirit gets to try again.

Maybe not. Maybe we’re all worm food. But I think about the concept I've heard that we choose the life that we’re born into. That we somehow float cosmically one step outside of this reality, and when it’s time, we are born into the lock that our life provides the key for – and the lessons and situations we walk into in life are what turns the key. Toward what? Who knows. Enlightenment sounds like such a heavy word. I don’t know that there’s ever any “fixed” or “done” for us. I think that’s part of what our souls, for lack of a better word, enjoy about the whole thing.

It’s sort of like an infinite book of Choose Your Own Adventure. We’ve all heard me talk about how the lessons we’re here to learn aren’t always the ones we want; it’s not like I would have chosen some of the circumstances that have surrounded my life or the situations that occurred in it. But, on some level, perhaps I have and did. And perhaps for some benevolence greater than my own. – Or not.

Sometimes I ask my cat what she did in former lives to be a cat this time. What she was before? And who she bribed to get to be as pretty as she is?

Sometimes I think about the Indigo Girls’ song Galilleo, and how maybe the being we’re born into next time will have so much baggage from our fucking things up, or not “evolving” enough, to be the next great writer and artist, or inventor fixing the world.

Sometimes I sit home sick and watch Saving Grace on Netflix and write a blog about theology. Like today.

I have heard about the whole Pearly Gates thing, and we (or Christians, at least) get asked questions. And I wonder if I were asked the questions in the title of this post, what my reply would be? And if it will continue to change, as it’s surely changed before.

A friend of mine has a mission statement for herself and her life, and squares the actions and activities she engages in against it. If it doesn’t jive, then she finds a way to align her wants with its message: To be of maximum service to myself and others, for the good of all involved.

The other day, as I was sitting in my car, waiting for the call with my potential new somatic therapist, I was struck with a phrase for me and for my life that feels pretty appropriate. It was less a mission statement at the moment, and more a simple observation of the sum total of my actions & endeavors, at least in adulthood: To voraciously expand my consciousness of love.

It’s sort of what I have been doing lately, I think. It’s sort of what I think I want to continue to do. It’s a tall freaking order, for sure. And it’s uncomfortable and vulnerable and occasionally plain biting, but at its base, at my base, I think it’s a pretty good mission for my soul to have chosen.

Once, in meditation, I got this edict for my life: To love, as much as you can. What comes to me from that is that it’s also really as much as you can on any given day. Do your best on any given day, and that level will change, and sometimes will be really freaking low. But if I believe, which I do, that I am here for a purpose, and if I believe today that that purpose is to voraciously expand my consciousness of love, then it’s sort of like when they put those bumpers in the gutters of the bowling lane: I’ll never be too far off center. 

For those of you playing along at home. . .

For those of you playing along at home, below are a few updates on things I have here written about:

• The caffeine-reduction experiment has been a near-fail since beginning the temp job, but continues to remind me to feel guilty.

• I realized this morning that the free bus I sometimes catch to BART can take me all the way to the city, instead of transferring to BART (thank you to my school’s student bus pass, making bus transit in the East Bay free).

• I put back up the series of my paintings that I’d taken down during Calling in the One, at which time I’d realized that women not looking at their lovers was something I wanted to move away from. I put them back up when the okJew was potentially going to come over, and I didn’t want a blank expanse of wall over my bed. I'm not sure if I'll take it back down. 

• I have not yet finished, but I have begun, the art project for my friend’s wedding. It sits on my desk, accusing me.

• I bought cat food.

• I graduated with a Master’s degree a month ago. And I was offered a weekend job at said pet food store. Generously offered (not the compensation), but no thank you. Not yet, at least.

• I have art that I need to make for the September art show my friend invited me to join. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’s been backstroking through my psyche for a month or so.

• I must follow-up with the boss at where I'm temping to ask her precisely what she meant when she said she would be happy to give me "a recommendation" for auction houses here and in the city (um, I meant NY city – I guess that habit still dies hard).

• My dad will be closing on the sale of my childhood NJ home in the next month or so, and is planning to move with his fiancé to their new Florida home toward the fall.

• I am eagerly awaiting June 20^th, when the results of the daily sweepstakes I’ve been entering for a trip for two to Italy will be announced. You may be the lucky winner.

• My writing style is influenced by who I’m reading currently.

• At the moment, I just finished Nora Ephron’s new book, and began a collection of essays by David Foster Wallace, whom I’ve never read, but seen the author’s name so many times on my BART rides that I thought to give him a whirl. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I will be art modeling this Sunday for the artist who I first worked for, and two of her friends. I’m not sure I will continue.

• I have 9 new voicemails I haven’t checked.

• I went on the walk I’d planned to take on Tuesday evening yesterday evening, and it was glorious. I ate what must have been a small, cherry-sized peach, unless it was of course, a cherry, from a nearby tree which I jumped to pluck from the low hanging branch. I’m not dead, so it was not poisonous.

• As soon as I get paid this cycle, I’m going to register for the summer acting classes at A.C.T., and I can’t f’ing wait. I looked up all manner of electronics yesterday that I could hypothetically use my more regular income of the next 6 weeks to purchase, and yet, I realized that what I really want are those lessons. And new shoes.

• I’m now working one-on-one with a woman who’s found recovery around negative patterns of behavior with sex and men, and I’m infinitely looking forward to freedom around some of this.

• I’m continuing to work with a woman one-on-one around financial recovery stuff, and am looking forward to being “placed in a position of neutrality” around money.

• I love Patsy.

• I haven’t yet played my bass with my friend with the drums up in Berkeley, and it too stares at me, not gently weeping, but with silent mewling.

• I realized that most of the writers I’m reading right now have written as freelance writers, and it occurs to me, that I might be able to do that, if I look into it.

• I haven’t applied to any jobs since last week.

• I used my 3 lb weights yesterday after my walk for about 3 minutes. And began to dread the 3 hour posing/drawing session on Sunday.

• Dr. Palm Reader’s office wrote to ask after me, and so I looked up my soon-to-end chiropractic benefits “in network,” so that I can get back to that kind of thing, without breaking my bank, or participating in a somewhat murky flirtatiousness.

• This is the end of my list. 

Day Jobs.

Yikes. Unintendedly, I apparently freaked my mom out. I guess "What goes around comes around" is a less than spiritual comment here.

When I was camping this weekend, one of the women said she’d used this 23andme site that did genetic mapping and testing. She said she found it to accurately confirm things she knew she had and “labeled” her cousin as her own on the site, so she felt it was reliable when it came to the things she wanted clarity on or might not know. So, on a whim, I looked it up yesterday. Part of it is my own rampant curiosity about my dad’s father’s side of the family, about whom we know nothing (very hush hush, gramma got pregnant at 15 in an Irish Catholic family under-the-rug), so I’d like to know about that fourth of who I am.

Secondly, and importantly for me, my mom’s mother died from Alzheimer’s and I want to know if I have the gene or not. You can get it without the gene, and you can not get it with the gene. But, I’m curious. And a little excited. If I don’t have the gene, I can (and would) worry less; and if I do have the gene, they’re coming up with all kinds of new things people can do these days to stave it off or minimize the effects – and I’d look for more information on stuff like that.

So, in an effort to “share the good news,” I emailed my mom and brother yesterday to let them know about it (though women are more likely than men to get Alz). I got an email back this morning from my mom saying that no matter what to never [BOLD FACE] EVER tell her the results of it.

Yikes. Granted, my mom is a class-A worrier, anxiety-disordered woman on medication, but… yeesh. That obviously wasn’t my intention, to freak her out – I guess I imagined she’d react as I did – “Cool, what can I learn, so that information can be useful in how I lead my life?” … Best laid plans, I suppose.

It’s Friday, so it’s a little rough to go into what I remember of my mom’s parents’ deaths, and what I consider to be and have been “wrong” ways of grieving. And so I won’t do that today. It’s NOMB – None Of My Business.

So, I’ll undeftly switch topics, as I’m uncomfortable. ;)

Yesterday, in reading Tina Fey’s book, I had a sort of realization about “day jobs.” Fey worked at a YMCA for $5/hr in Chicago when she left undergrad. She wanted to take improv classes, so she angled for a job “upstairs” in the office of the YMCA. When she was asked on the interview why she wanted the job, she replied unabashedly, So I can afford improv classes. She got the job, took improv classes, and quit the job less than a year later when she got work with the improv group.

I had my informational interview with my former acting teacher last Friday, and she said nice things like I have “great instincts,” and that "it’s obvious [I] really enjoy it.” She didn’t really give me the “constructive criticism” I was looking to get – areas that I could improve in, and as I was recounting this to my friend last weekend, she said it sounded like I wanted to hear places I could just do X, Y, and Z, so that I could “fix” it, and suddenly everything would fall into place. Yes, give me a set of movable problems, let me fix them, and then let me be free of problems forever. That sounds about right.

So, I didn’t get that. I got what felt like nearly reluctant suggestions. Again, I guess I had expectations. But, I heard that acting classes would be a good idea to continue with. So, yesterday, I looked up the classes at A.C.T. Studio, and their summer program. It’s not very expensive, but surely more than I have now.

And I remembered what Tina Fey had said: she took a job so she could afford to do what she really wanted to do. For SO long I’ve been agonizing over what is my “ideal” job, or what will feed me spiritually, intellectually, and creatively – what one thing would fit all my needs. I don’t feel this way about people, why would I feel this way about work? I don’t expect one person to fulfill all my needs – that’s ridiculous, unfair, and leads to disappointment. So, why should I feel that a job would or ought to do the same.

There’s something in this. It takes a shit ton of the pressure out of whatever job comes to me next. That it is a means to an end. And further, I’m honing in more closely on what I’d want those “ends” to be – what I want my job to afford me to be able to do. Lessons, classes, (acting & music, for now). I’m not sure what this realization will bring me – except that I already feel less internal pressure about “What I’m going to do next.” Chances are (G-d willing!!!!!!) that the job that I get next can afford me the disposable income to take classes like that. Or, rather, the chances don’t have to be there, I can just start angling the satellite dish of my focus in a slightly different direction, picking up on things that I’d dismissed, as they wouldn't “fill me spiritually.”

Like a person, it’s not a job’s … job to fill me spiritually. That’s up to me. That’s up to me to take the kinds of actions that will allow me the freedom from financial worry to do things that do feed me spiritually and creatively. I have a phone call date with another acting friend next week, having been inspired by the new angle of my satellite to be able to continue having these conversations with people.

What comes of it? Who knows. But I feel more open to things, and I’ve noticed that makes a world of difference.

(Sorry, Mom – didn’t mean to freak you out. LU, m.)

Pulling a Carmen: 2

When I began this blog-a-day back in November of last year, my first post was called “Pulling a Carmen,” as I'd been reading and was encouraged by her own blog-a-day postings. In the time since, sometimes I just find it hugely funny how parallel my path is to my fellow blogger and friend.

For recent example:

• I also just starting going back on to the internet dating scene. In fact, I have a coffee date today with someone I met on JDate

• I too have said fuck it, and asked out a dude yesterday. Unfortunately, turns out he’s married, but it felt really good to do so.

• Several of the books that are lining my desk and bedside table are travel books about Europe, underlining my intention to take a real freaking vacation some time this century.

• And, I also rented a camera and video camera from the school’s A/V department to begin taking pictures again. 

Sometimes I feel awkward about our exceedingly similar trajectories, as if I’m copying her, but the reality is that independently, we come to these things, and then come here to write about them. It’s really funny, and also somewhat comforting to know that there is someone who is traveling a similar path toward “To thine own self be true.”

On that note, I went to see my friend’s band play in the city last night, and then headed with my girlfriends to go out dancing in Oakland. Prior to both these… we went to the Dharma Punx meditation – nothing says spiritually fit like meditating for 40 minutes before downing coffee with an add-shot. ;)

But to relate it to the ‘self be true’ part – each of these are places where I want to feel more connection. I hadn’t been to see live music in MUCH too long. It’s on my current list of “Serenity Moths” on my refrigerator (a list of things that aren’t cataclysmic, but slowly and subterraneaously eat away at my serenity and foundation). Yes, “Absence of live music” is on there, and so should be “dancing.” I’m a white girl. I have no ambition or goal to be anything but a mildly flailing Elaine Benice, but … i love it. The absence of self, the absence of self criticism or posturing or need to be anywhere or anything else. Lost in the music.

The band brought something else up for me. Like the “dropping” of the whole acting bent at the beginning of this year, what I’ve dropped more often than anything is the “being in a band” idea.

As you may know, I have 2 guitars, a bass, and a small USB plug in keyboard. Each as dust-covered as the next. The bass amp sits as a monument to abandoned dreams in my apartment.

Last night, watching my friend’s band, I remembered that this is something I want to do. In fact, I’d emailed one of the guitarist’s wife about 6 or more months ago to talk to her about her own process of getting toward singing in a band - embracing her inner teenage rock chick. If I had my … well, if I had my own back, I guess, I’d play bass, and I’d sing. Talk about vulnerability.

This week, I stood practically naked in front of an audience and spoke my poem into a microphone in a moderately full theater. That isn’t nearly as frightening to me as standing in front of an audience, singing, or playing.

The truth is that for several years, I’ve been gathering information about the whole bass playing thing. But, no, I haven’t been playing. A few years ago, I asked a guy I knew for bass advice, and he sent me a long list of places to start (which I didn't pursue). About a year later, I contacted this other guy about bass lessons (which I didn't pursue). … And the guy I asked out yesterday is also a bass player. Apparently, I have a thing.

Every few years, I’ll troll craigslist, and I’ll answer a few ads for singers. I even recorded myself a little on my computer’s Garageband to send as a sample. I got a “not a good fit, but thanks anyway” from one, and no reply from another. And, hey, I don’t blame em. When I’m terrified, it comes through. I don’t know. I’ve written here about it kind of frequently – and dismissed it and been “embarrassed” by it just as often.

However, once again, the thing that occurred to me last night as I watched my friend’s band was another case of “I want to do that” … followed by “I can do that.” There is no one stopping me, obviously except for myself and my fears, and that critic that says “Not good enough” and chops me off at the knees before I start.

One thing I’m working on releasing at the moment, a pattern and belief and behavior that is just not fucking serving me anymore, is my need or habit to stay small.

When I was living in South Korea, my friend nicknamed me “Ballsy Mollsy.” I had the absolute chutzpah and hubris to ask anyone anything, go anywhere, and do pretty much whatever I felt like doing in the hedonistic way most drunks do.

However, there is a quality of that Ballsy woman who still I am, somewhere, and who I want to resurrect or reveal or uncover or let loose – or even just let into the light a little tiny bit.

I find it’s happening in some ways. And I know to have compassion for myself as I try to aim in this direction which has been a Siren song for me (uh, no pun intended) for … oh, 15 years.

But compassion for slow progress, and acceptance of stagnation are two different things. And I’d really like to move forward from here.

So, for your reading pleasure, here’s a poem composed about a year ago. Reading aloud is encouraged.  As is recalling the line "So let it be written, so let it be done." Cheers. m.

Band Practice

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In All Its Forms

Yesterday, I got to cross a few more “Serenity Moths” off my list, including letting my apartment get messy (kitchen, another story); no fuzzy socks (my clothing allowance this month will now be worn on my very toasty happy feet); and not using my art and craftyness.

Today is the birthday of the woman who I have known longest in my life, second only to my family. We met when we were both three-years old in a story both our mothers love to tell.

Soon after my brother was born, my family moved from Brooklyn to northern New Jersey. Maybe that same or maybe next day, our new door bell rang. The story goes, that the little blond girl who lived just next-door stood on the door-step, looked up at my mom, and asked, “Does a little girl live here?” I peeked my head out from behind my mom's legs and we have been friends for nearly 30 years. (wow, I'd initially wrote 20!, but no, it's 30!!)

Like most friendships, it’s seen its fair share of trials, but through a fair share of miracles, we have found ourselves to be strong friends again, across the sands of time and Minnesota.

So, yesterday, I made a crafty little gift for her. I took out my tools I laid down since my Christmas card puttering-out, and infused as much love as I could into it.

I also put up a handwritten sign in my apartment, just below the very tall almost 12 foot ceiling: "Love, as much as you can." And put little hearts around it. ;P This was the edict, the command, and the hope, from the workshop I did a month or more ago when we meditated to ourselves as really old people, and asked ourselves what lessons we needed to learn. Today is the final of the 4 in the series of workshops on relationships. Spiritual Contracts and Inner Archetypes.

On the note of that type of work, I did get an email back from the Sacred Stream meditation school, and they do have a scholarship, but it’s itty bitty, and I can’t afford the course right now – particularly after I pay the security deposit to the Bay Area Modeling Guild, which I found out last night that I got in to :)  But, that’s alright, I feel like I’ve got enough spiritual shenanigans happening around and in me at the moment, that I’m not quite sure now is the right time to blow the top off myself anyway. Sometimes, I just need to regroup. Ground myself again.

So, doing these sort of “of the earth” type activities has been nice, cleaning my apartment, making art, finally in-putting my numbers on what I spent in December. (which, I was probably right to fear! oh holiday spirit…) ;)

On another note completely, so, I’d been praying for an acting coach. That was the suggestion I got from my acting friend in SF, and although I’d been half-heartedly looking, I’d also been dragging my feet feeling that I didn’t have the money to really afford a coach.

Then, I went to my Thursday afternoon class. Acting Fundamentals. I had completely forgotten that I’d signed up for this course. But I had. So, maybe I don’t have an individual acting coach, but I now have an acting teacher. Included in the price of all that I’m already paying for school. She’s the casting director for Berkeley Rep, and has been teaching acting forever, and has acted forever, and although at the moment she seemed a little sharp at the edges, I think this is just what I’ve been asking for.

After class, she said that it seemed I had more experience than the other girls, and I said, I’m open to any help she can give, and she said she tries to challenge and meet people where they’re at. I also found it rather hilarious that I’m more experienced than anyone in my theater experience, as I feel like such a novice I can’t even tie my shoes straight!

But, it’s not about comparison. It’s about what I can learn, and how I can inhabit my body and my emotions more fully. It’s about WAAAAYYY tuning down the cacophony of my heartbeat in my eardrums when I stand in front of a panel at an audition. I think the audition is the hardest part – for me at least. Good thing I have two more over the next two days. ;)

So, here’s to Love, which finds it’s way back to us, over 30 years of friendship, in the form of a needed teacher, and in the self-care which buys me these awesome fuzzy socks. 

Ocean Liner

I retract my endorsement of Airborne.

Just kidding. I just am not feeling as better as I’d like, especially as it comes up to New Year's Eve tomorrow.

Although I remember the last several New Year's, which was a new development, none of them have been particularly outstanding. Last year, I was on the roof of a friend’s condo in SF, watching the fireworks over the Bay – which was wonderful – with my soon to be ex – which was less wonderful, but a great attempt at shoe-horning romance into a moment.

This year’s remains to be seen, with a party with some local friends’ bands, and some dances out in SF that could be a raucous good time. But I’m not feeling particularly raucous at the moment. But things change. And this is the season for it.

I was reminded this morning as I was writing my Morning Pages about a conversation I’d had with my friend Luke on our Misfit Christmas. We were talking about the economy, and he was saying that people’s expectations are that things can change on a dime, in an instant, immediately show results. Whereas the more accurate truth is that change is like the course of an ocean liner. It.does.not.stop. when you want it to. (See: Titanic) ;P

He drew his finger in a long, wide arc along the coffee shop table and said that as an ocean liner begins to change course, it continues to look like it’s still going along its original path, it continues out into the treacherous water, slowly evening a turn-about. It is not instantaneous, and it is not immediately obvious or apparent.

Which means, that for anything that does change in this manner, like most things in this world, it requires patience.

This morning, I was reflecting that the change of the year, a sudden WHAM BANG HELLO NEW YEAR!, might not equate with the reality of the subtlety of change. But, personally, I feel it. The planet changing its course in the cosmos, slowly slingshotting back around. The impending change of the year has begun – it’s not one moment at midnight when Dick Clark leads us all in some bedazzled primal chant. It’s more covert, and ultimately more kind than that.

Changes that happen all at once are called emergencies. Lucky for us, life is not always in the habit of confronting us with change in these violent manners.

I’m not sure of my entire point here, but I suppose I’m attempting to provide a bit of cosmic comfort, reinforcement of the positive course I am on and perhaps you are on, and g-d willing the economy is on! Or maybe I’m just being wistful at the close of a year, which, of course, it also is.

I was 14 and at a new year’s dance and a girl friend of mine was in near hysterics. She said that the change of new year’s always gave her anxiety. I got a text just now in which a friend asked me if I didn’t also have the new year’s depression.

Lucky for me, no. I’ve bought my ticket on this ocean liner. Cast in my lot. Threw down the gauntlet. Thrown in my hat. I am down with you, Ocean Liner. I am concerned that I don’t know where you’re going once you make your change in course, but I'm also mildly thrilled to see where you will go. To call on the spirit of “Must be present to Win” and “Just Row,” I will make my best attempt to stand like Rose at the bow of the ship and throw my arms open unto the unknown. 

"Forbidden", Make that "Attainable" Joys

I have a piece of paper dated in October of 2008 from an Artist’s Way exercise. It’s entitled “Forbidden Joys,” and is a list of ten things that we would love to do, but feel we can’t or are not allowed for whatever reason. It could also be called a Bucket List, I suppose.

Dated about 6 months later is a strike through of the word “Forbidden” and above which is now written “Attainable.”

I’ve added three more things to the list, but the last thing added was dated in 2009. I’ve carried this list through my move, and found it maybe two months ago when I took The Artist’s Way book down again while looking for quotes for my workshop on Creativity and Spirituality in the Spring.

The list is only about a third accomplished. And I’ve decided not to “update” it from what I’d written, as I know there are now more and different things I’d add. But, I want to honor this list, because there are still things on it that I would really love to do, if I let myself.

The things that are now crossed off are: Go blonde; Audition for a play; Get furniture and paint my place (prior to that, I’d been using Office Depot boxes as night&coffee tables); Ice skate; and Paint a canvas.

I still want to continue to audition for plays, and I still want to Ice skate, and I want to paint more canvases, but “breaking the seal” as it were, or going on an inaugural run through each of these is a great beginning.

Those that still remain are: Bass lessons; Camp in the wilderness; See the southwest again; Go on a real vacation; Sing in a band; Have a dog (not sure if now having a cat counts, but I’m leaving it!); Build a (non-Ikea) bookcase; and Take flying lessons.

This last one, I am most poised to do at present, as I got one of those LivingSocial, Groupon-y type emails last week…For a two-hour introductory flying lesson.

Typically, these are really expensive. I’ve actually looked up this company before, during this past summer, when I was trying to find work, and thought that maybe volunteering somewhere I was interested to learn would be good experience, so I emailed a whole bunch of flight schools in the area, as well as a whole bunch of sailing schools. But none had any openings. But, I did get to see what was available out there. … And to see how insanely expensive it is to get licensed to fly a small plane, which is ultimately what I’d like to do.

I love flying. I have found over the past few years that I write pretty well and pretty prolifically at 30,000 feet. There is a level of suspension of reality, of detachment from every and anything that may be going on – I feel freer and more unfettered than I almost ever feel. The only thing comparable to me is really hiking out somewhere, or being up in Sonoma, for whatever reason. I once about Sonoma that “my guts release the strictness I didn’t know they were in.” And it’s true. I feel open, unclenched, serene.

So, in an effort to follow my nudges and listen to myself and take responsibility for my dreams, I bought the intro flying lesson. It’s a step. And I’ll get to cross it off my “Attainable Joy” list. And “Sing in a band,” I know you’re there, and I’m listening. 

The Power of Love (yes, I mean the song)

Yesterday, I went to the 3^rd of a series of 4 workshops my friend has been facilitating over the last few months. Yesterday was Relationship with the Divine. I imagined I sorta had this one “down,” that I could relatively expect what would come up – places where I trust, don’t trust, know I’ll be taken care of, am scared I’ll be taken care of(!). But, a bunch of things happened that I did not expect.

The first of which was in response to the question, What would happen if we shift our current (and assumedly not completely accurate) belief system? What would happen if I really allowed myself to step into full faith in my path, my internal nudges toward art, into the fullest idea that this is a world of abundance? What would happen then?

What occurred to me was that I would need to begin to take responsibility for my dreams, for these nudges and instincts toward joy. And that’s when it happened.

I’ve known that I have shirked responsibility for my needs and my dreams for years, hiding them under “just stay within the lines.” I know that it has become so painful to stay in the lines that I’ve quit jobs with no safety net, moved across continents and countries, and previously fallen into addiction and self-defeating behavior to cover up the distance between what I was doing in my life and what I wanted to be doing. So, I’ve known that I’ve not been responsible to myself.

What I didn’t know was that in sitting with what would it truly look like to step into that responsibility would bring up the fiery reaction of an inner child saying F.U., I’m exhausted from responsibility, responsibility sucks.

Now, sure, many people feel this way, but many don’t. To me what this question tapped into was that my previously held beliefs of responsibility were of ones that were beyond my resources. Like I’ve said, responsibilities that I had to take on when I was younger, like a lot of people I know, were beyond what a child normally ought to take on. Responsibility came with resentment and a feeling of exhaustion.

So, to sit now with the possibility of stepping in and taking full reign of my dreams, nudges, creativity, “power” even, I come up against this out-dated idea of what responsibility means, and of course I’ve run away from stepping into ownership of them. If, to me, responsibility for myself has equaled a burden, something beyond what I’m able to give, a frightening amount of giving, then it is no f’ing wonder that I’ve avoided it.

The bright spot on all of this, is that now I see it, and can dismantle these false ideas. It would be nice to assume responsibility for myself in a way that felt nurturing, caring, and perhaps even refueling. My needs are not exorbitant, they are doable, if I also am willing to tap into the HP (sorry to get G-dy for a minute) and the abundant source of energy that is there.

I’m not a religious person, but I believe there are things beyond me which are much more powerful than I am, and if I can tap into that resource, I don’t get  depleted. If I act as a channel, instead of charging off my own battery, then I don’t get depleted.

So, I’ve known that it’s been hard for me to color outside the lines, to stick to the course that is within me. But i haven’t really known why I’ve continued to avoid the path, besides the normal fears(!). We’ll see how I am able to incorporate this new idea, how I’ll be able to shift the belief system, but awareness is the first action.

Secondly in this workshop, lol, if you’re still reading!, there was a meditation on impermanence. This was So crazy intense, I’ve never had a meditation be so evocative – and I’ve had some whacked out powerful ones that I still remember. The meditation was to ourselves as a very old person, on the doorstep of death. We were to enter the space of this person, and make ourselves known to her (in my case), and to ask what she had to tell us. The whole time, nearly from the beginning of the meditation, I’m streaming tears. Not from grief or sadness, sadness was there, but it was just more this overwhelming sense of emotion.

The woman, me, all frail and skeletal nearly, had my eyes, and they were still bright and kind and alive. There was the smell of cinnamon, something baking elsewhere in the house. And as I held her hand, she told me to “Love, as much as you can.” And to be with my family (which I am not entirely sure what she meant, my current one, the one I’ll have, my family of my friends, or all of these). She was content with her life, ready to go.

Then we were to imagine her passing away, and not to get gross, but imagining her decomposing, to bone, to dust, and perhaps blowing away, and then to sit and “sense or feel or imagine” (as my teacher likes to say) what remains. What remained for me, as I continue to drip saltwater all down my neck, was both the Love this woman had, had around her, in her, in her life, and gave to me, and the edict to Love. Which I interpret as two different things. The sense of love, and the command to love.

What also remained was the sound of children’s laughter somewhere else in the house, downstairs or down the hall. In my meditation of impermanence, laughter and love remained. In my meditation where I literally (sort of) watched myself die, what was left in the world wasn’t diminished.

You can imagine this was pretty intense ;)

But how encouraging. And I’ve been given something to do. To love, as much as I can, and to hold my responsibilities for myself with love, not rejection.

Big tasks, but apparently, I have a very long time in which to accomplish them. 

Alright Sports Fans

You know those montage-y frenetic moments in movies or, well, Looney Tunes, where they play “Flight of the Bumble Bee” and everything starts moving insanely quickly?

Well, it’s sorta like that. I feel like saying, Drivers! Start Your Engines!

This morning, Monday of the beginning two weeks of school/work insanity, I emailed my boss at my temp gig and asked her if I could have Wednesday off. I also asked her to get a little more clear with me on when this assignment ends, as it’s really vague, and I don’t like my income hanging on “really vague.” So she said, Yes to Wednesday off, and that she’d love to keep me into January, so let her get back to me on Thursday. So, Okay.

PHEW on Wednesday off – my crazy long day with evening class, and now I can meet with my professor to talk about my final project – due next Thursday. I emailed him this morning too and suggested what I think I might do for my project – it might be a script involving the two heckler muppet dudes. Yep. He wanted creative! I’m thinking of having them, as images of the upper class, watch several scenes from the Shakespeare plays we’ve read this semester – scenes where Shakespeare seems to be calling out the upper class. He’s got a lot of commentary on classism, and I found myself drawn to those pieces in all the works. So, we’ll see. That does not seem like an “easy” thing to do. But, it could be fun – they get all ruffled and heckle-y, and then maybe that bald eagle guy comes in at the end (You can tell I’ve been influenced by the Muppet Movie advertisement at bus stops…)

After I emailed him, I packed up my shit and went to school. I knew that hanging out here would only mean distraction – facebook, cat, tea, nibbling, general procrastinating. Luckily, both the girls I was supposed to meet with this morning cancelled – which was totally HP doing for me what I couldn’t do for myself, as I really didn’t have the time to meet with them, and would likely have been distracted.

So, I went to school, and plunked down in the English Department with my tea, my laptop, and my homework. I got pretty far. (Poem for evening class, two singing critiques for Friday, printed thesis draft.) There’s still a lot to do, but I am feeling better about it.

I have to do a teaching demo on Friday of the workshop I’m piloting in the Spring – “Creativity and Spirituality”. I co-facilitated this workshop last semester with the Director of Spiritual and Religious Life at school, and it went pretty well. So on Friday, I have to demo a portion of the workshop to my professor and my classmates. I’m not too worried about it – but I do need to get my own script down a little more. Leading people through spiritual processes – well, you have to have a degree of confidence in yourself and the work, to come from a calm position, or else people who may already be nervous about WTF is going to happen – am I going to speak in tongues? is there going to be “G-d” stuff? – feel like they are being led by a knowledgeable guide.

Luckily for me, this is all work that I’ve done. Some of the pieces for the full workshop next semester (3 times, 3 hours, for 3 different groups of women) I haven’t done, I’ve created from my own imagination, but I believe in them. The whole workshop is about helping the participants to see that they can access creativity in a variety of modes, and to call that pathway by which they access it “spirituality.” To begin (or continue) to understand that we always have something to say, to give, to create, to invent, because we have the un-tap-out-able well of creativity inside us already – we don’t have to “hunt” for it, “work” for it, we just need to access it.

And sure, it sounds “woo woo” hippie shit, but, I believe it. I don’t always remember it – and try to create from a place of desperation or scarcity – but the real juice is always there.

So, that’s my workshop. I also have 4 reading responses and a final paper to do for this class. … And a final paper and an end of semester portfolio for my poetry workshop.

BUT, on top, next to, in spite of all this – the Universe works without me – often.

I get an email this afternoon while writing with frenzied fingers that a slot opened up in the auditions…and I can get in Sunday at 8:30pm, if I want it.

I want it.

Of course, this week of ALL weeks (cue “Bumble Bee”), I now have to memorize 2 one minute monologues, get my headshots printed, and read up on this Strindberg fellow. But … it’s general auditions for a bonafide theater company in SF for their upcoming season in a bonafide theater – and *I’m* auditioning. Holy Crow.

The very next email I get? From another theater company (no lie) I emailed in my diligent action moment of a few weeks ago. They can’t fit me in this time, but will keep my info on file. Fabulous.

Just when I was beginning to feel like I was watching myself retract from the whole acting thing again, the Universe throws me a bone. I was watching myself follow the pattern of “flurry of action, then nothing, flurry of action, then nothing” – but, this time, with my small little actions, these self care little moments of listening to myself, this comes along. It is just an audition, I have to keep reminding myself, because I get easily scared the f out.

To counter the crazy “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I called in help. I called Lorraine, my acting friend I called a few weeks ago. We just spoke, and she gave me some good tips on the monologues I’m choosing, a classic and a contemporary: Gertrude from Hamlet cuz I just read it– and The Flood from Vagina Monologues cuz I know it, as I’m cast in it at school in the Spring! Plus she gave me head’s up on a place to get my headshots printed in the city, precisely where I will be on Thursday at noon.

So, yeah, I’m alright. A little dazed. But, I did a lot of work today (and some action a few weeks ago) and some unexpected bounty happened. Fancy that. 

Hunkering Down & No Drastic Movements

These were two things Patsy said to me this morning – to hunker down in school work mode – which I have actually diligently done today – you can check out the most recent installation of my poetry thesis on the MVD page (it’s 9 poems, laid out to sort of make sense as a mini-collection). I have to meet with my thesis advisor tomorrow for our second meeting.

At our first, she said, “over produce and cut back.” So, I got paralyzed by that(!), and blundered along writing my poem-a-week for my workshop class, and that’s pretty much what I’ve got. But, today, I did sit in a café with ALL the comments from my peers and professor, and sifted through it all. I copied the comments I liked onto my master copy, making my own new edits, with fresh eyes and some space from having written them.

Just now, I put them all into one document and edited the hell out of them. And in very much likelihood, they still need or want work – it’s like a painting, or a recipe – sometimes you’re not sure there’s something missing till you add salt, and suddenly it comes alive – poetry is like that – there can be one thing somehow off by a degree. But also, people’s barometers are calibrated differently :P

But, it’s done, for tomorrow’s purposes at least, so that’s one huge thing off my mind/plate.

As to “No Drastic Movements”, Patsy suggested that perhaps this week of all weeks (the 2^nd to last one of school when I am so aggrievedly badly procrastinatorily overworkedly behind), perhaps I shouldn’t: break the 6 months silence with my mom; look at ads on craigslist for SF apartments; look at ads for hybrid cars; flagellate myself for going over my monthly spending plan; or do any other such thing as would be drastic.

This week at least ;)

Despite the fact that I am over my spending plan for this month (an interminable month, if you’re looking at it through my financial numbers; though staggering to realize it’s nearly December!), I am in need of groceries. So, today on my way out of the city, I bought myself a pound of coffee. I still need to get to the real grocery store over here and stock up, but it felt like, SO THE FUCK WHAT – YOU NEED TO EAT – GO BUY SOMETHING silly girl, for christ’s sake. Martyrdom is way overrated. And I’m really f’ing sure that not having any groceries is not what this whole “financially solvent” thing is about.

Yes – I bought clothing that wasn’t in my plan (work appropriate! Though I did turn away from the oh so sinfully supple black leather jacket at Bloomingdales) – and I also bought myself a facial yesterday, because I’m exhausted and needed the recharge. I knew these weren’t in the plan – but I earned more than I anticipated this month ...

However, I know that pattern of my behavior – it looks like, Eh, a little more won’t hurt – it’s self care, or it’s my friend’s favorite color, or so what, my dvd from the library is two weeks overdue. …

And then finally, it once again looks like an empty fridge without the finances to refill it. It always looks like that in the end. I know that place.

So, here I am, seeing it early – “Awareness, Acceptance, Action,” right? But, I am also self-flagellating ;P

I’m a little punch-drunk from staring at my poetry and reading the rest of The Tempest today, so I’m signing off.

Lastly though, I did all of my dishes this morning. And, really, that counts for something.

I love Mondays. & A Return to Art.

It’s my least busy day of the week, and I get to see some of my favorite people. My friend came by this morning and saw my holiday cards pinned up on a string of ribbon and said, you painted those? or maybe it was you painted those? ;) in any case, yes. it’s strange, i still get pretty thrilled when my paintings turn out well – it’s something I’ve had to cozy up to, work at, come back to.

a few years ago, I’d stopped drawing completely. i had too long associated doing art with drinking a 40oz – well, whatever the Korean measuring equivalent was (they had 3 types of beer: piss, pisser, and pissest, but, they worked). It’s funny cuz art was really the one thing my roommates there knew about me, about my hobbies – besides the drinking – and so each gave me some kind of drawing or painting set for Christmas.

I lived with two guys, one a Canadian, one a Texan, that first contract year. Their contracts run February to February because of the whole Chinese New Year thing; it was October when I got there in 04, and February of 06 when I left. But that first 4 months, I spent in this smaller more agricultural town – there was a pig slaughterhouse not far, and the lunch lady at the school would go into the hills/mountains to get some sprouts and things for the lunch … the always popular hot dog soup.

My Canadian roommate was the adventurous type, he found the well of fresh mountain water where you could stand with your jug and some ancient Korean woman. He also once reported a troop of Korean soldiers passing by him in the pitch dark one night when he was up the mountains alone.

In any case, when I stopped drinking, I stopped drawing. I used to sit with my 40 and draw or paint (infrequently) until I couldn’t really see the lines so clearly anymore, then stop – drawing that is. So I didn’t know, for a while, how to draw sober.

When I finally did take my things out (the end of my sketch book is pretty hilarious, lots of fucked up looking women – i’ve always drawn women, bodies, faces, i don’t know why – maybe cuz it’s what I see most often, or because there were fashion magazines around when I was little – but also, women are beautiful. just beautiful, i love drawing them, still). So, i took my things out about a year and a half after I’d gotten sober and tried to sketch one of these magazine women. – Utter Fail.

Well, at least, I thought it was at the time. I spent the longest time trying to get the lines just right, and got so frustrated over and over till i just quit the whole thing and shoved the sketch pad and pencils back into some drawer. Done.

Then, I started to host parties.

Somehow hosting became the thing that brought out my creativity again. The first party was a holiday one (Star of David Christmas Cookie party), and I didn’t do any “actual” art, but I rearranged everything (moved my bed onto it’s end up against the wall!) and I went to the party supply store and got some fancy looking sheets of scrap-booking paper and arranged them on my bedroom wall in a diamond like pattern, and I took all my variously received holiday cards and taped them in a pattern on the living room wall.

Come to think of it – when I moved into that one bedroom apartment from the room I was renting in some (very nice) lady’s house in the outer Sunset is when it all started again. I had all sorts of creative ideas for the apartment – i got to choose the paint colors, the flooring, and I had a semi-disaster when I decided to paint half my bedroom a crimson, bordello red, and left the other half white, as I intended to do a stencil of a damask pattern in black and white all over the other side … this never came to fruition, and finally my house painter friend came and painted the rest of the room red!

The next party was a “Pre-Val Hearts&Stars” and I created a whole tableau of mushy words in a crossword pattern and cut out each letter and pasted them on my wall (among sex, lust, and other words, “conceive” got a few eye-brow raises) ;P But still no painting.

HollerWeen! 2009, I painted. Well, I started with oil pastels. I did a version of Munch’s Scream with a jack-o-lantern head instead, and I was thrilled with it. I loved to get my fingers dirty again, smushing the colors around, messing up, going over, and just getting in there. It was wonderful. I did a few other riffs on some famous paintings (“Cece n’est pas une pumpkin”, and Warhol’s Marilyn with jack-o faces instead. And one in the kitchen I wasn’t sure was “okay” of Jesus on the cross with a jack-o head...!)

I loved it – and so I intended to do Valentine’s again the following Spring and I wanted to do something big – really big. I began these enormous sexy lips with a white flower in between them in oil pastels and colored pencil. It was daunting, I was frustrated, but I had a party to finish it for. This was why I had been doing all this art – I had a party to throw – my party was my muse. And it worked. I didn’t feel satisfied with that one for some time, it didn’t feel “done” till I got some good suggestions on it (drawing a flower on a 5 foot piece of paper is really hard!). But finally, I signed my name on that paper, and it was done too.

So, then, here I am now (this blog is getting long, and maybe you don’t care), but it’s wonderful for me to remember how tentative I was, how frustrated and upset and worried that I’d never be able to draw again. And now? Over my bed hang 7 sexy paintings of people, body parts, attached to a garden trellis like a headboard – and like I said, it’s not perfect, there are things I see that I know others don’t. But I love it. It makes me happy, and it’s hot.

And now here are my holiday cards, beginning to line my wall, and they’re silly and fun, and somewhat impressive even to me.

That’s what I love about this work – I continue to amaze myself especially when I come with a spirit of fun. Creating paintings for a purpose (a head board, a holiday card, a party) gives me the juice, the north on my creative compass – and even though, sure, I’m in school for writing, and I’ve been trying to get in to acting, watching one branch of my creative tree flower is actually pretty encouraging.

Though, now I drink tea, not Hite.

oil pastel on posterboard 2009