Res ipsa loquitur

Every day I'm hustlin'

2012-01-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

I didn't actually mean to take a month and a half long break from posting. Honestly. But if I gave you a laundry list of what my December and first half of January has been like, your brain might explode. Or you might just die of boredom, considering it's a list. So I'll try to re-cap in a way that doesn't garner either of the aforementioned reactions. Just because I love you guys.

On Thanksgiving Day, Benni proposed to me in front of my family and I (of course) said yes. What followed in the month of December was a training montage of Benni and I trying to find a caterer and venue before the end of 2011, seeing as how we had chosen October of 2012 to be the month we get married and we were already behind schedule. This was both easy and hard, easy because both Benni and I are incredibly laid back, hard because, as I'm discovering, I am a Wedding Asshole. Which is to say that I have not dreamed about my wedding since I was five, I don't really care about coordinating "color palettes" (sorry, sweet girl at David's Bridal whom I inadvertently mocked when she said that), and I am somewhat confused by what a "rustic wedding" means and why on earth it involves a truckload of burlap. To be more clear, I'm not overly sentimental, or emotionally attached, to many things. Except maybe my Battlestar Galactica DVDs.

So we found a caterer, and this is when I learned the number one rule of weddings: which is that most of the venues are actually just catering companies that happen to have a space. Having a caterer beforehand eliminated 90% of all the locations Benni and I were interested in getting married at. Also: it is hard to have a wedding when you are poor. Just putting that out there. Because most venues were several thousand dollars over what we could afford. Some venues were OUR ENTIRE BUDGET. I seriously began considering a wedding at In N Out and a reception in the drive-through line of In N Out (hey, the line takes long enough.)

Meanwhile, what I was trying to do in December when I wasn't madly trying to secure locations or buying presents off Amazon like a fiend was attend pre-production meetings for the second season of my web-series, Hell Froze Over (which is now currently shooting); work a full time job; shoot a print ad that I'd booked for a full day; spend a day at Disneyland as someone's guests (meaning we got in for free but we were on our generous host's schedule); and do a 36 hour, fully live-streamed horror movie on December 12 and 13th.

Yes, folks, the horror movie I did (Kill Cam Live) had a live element to it - throw the actors into the "kill room" and stream the footage live for as long as the characters survived. My character and her boyfriend found themselves trapped in the kill room for all of Monday and a good part of Tuesday - up until about 10 pm that night - when we finally both met our bloody ends. During the 36 hour time period, I had to be in character the entire time and pretend I was suffering from dehydration and starvation, that I was terrified to death, constantly interact with the audience and the killer (who was outside the room), and constantly interact with the other actor I was placed in the room with. And in two days, we got half a million views. Not bad... not bad at all. Overall, the project got almost 3 MILLION views. You can read about it here and here.

When I got out of the Kill Room late Tuesday night, I had a voicemail message. It was from the assistant to the hottest casting director in town, wanting to know my email address. The casting director (a casual friend of mine) wanted to email me the contact info of a few agents that he had personally called and pitched me to, and wanted me to follow up with meetings. And after my own brain was done exploding from such extraordinary kindness and thoughtfulness, that's what I did.

So I took two meetings right before I was supposed to leave town, got positive feedback, and was told to check back in after the holidays. The third meeting would have to wait until January. Benni and I drove an hour down to my mom's house, the Tuesday night before we were set to leave for New York and New Jersey to go visit his family for Christmas, in order to have an early Christmas dinner and celebration with my family. We opened presents, we ate a ton, and then we drove back up to LA.

At about 4 in the morning on Wednesday, I got out of bed and started throwing up. And I didn't stop for a good six hours. I'm pretty sure I threw up everything I have eaten since, oh I don't know, THIRD GRADE. It was that bad. Benni got me towels, and stayed with me in the bathroom, but nothing stayed down.

10 am rolled around. We needed to get on a plane to fly into New Jersey. I couldn't do it. I could not physically get out of bed, I was so tired and dehydrated. Benni had to leave without me, and even though I wanted to go with him more than I've ever wanted anything in my life, I couldn't make my body do anything anymore. It had just quit on me.

Sobbing, I called my best friend in the entire world, and she sprang into action. "Do you think you'll be feeling better by Friday?" she asked. "I better be, I don't have anything left to throw up," I replied. And then she did what every best friend in the entire world does: she bought me a plane ticket to go to New Jersey for Friday afternoon, having me arrive in Philadelphia late Friday night. "Merry Christmas," she said. I love that girl. There's a reason she's walking me down the aisle in October. She damn well EARNED it.

Friday night I fly out to Philly, and Benni and his sister and brother in law come pick me up. We spend the weekend with his family, then get ready to leave for LA Monday afternoon. On Monday morning, around 3 am, Benni gets out of bed and starts throwing up. We have a plane to catch at 4 pm. I am PISSED at the Stomach Flu Gods. PISSED.

So help me God, we are getting on that plane, I tell Benni. He nods weakly. And by the sheer grace, or determination, or stubbornness of me, I start him on a juice diet that morning, which he manages to hold down, I haul us off to the airport, and we get on that plane. We touched down in LA that evening, took the bus home from the airport, and just collapsed into bed. And that was Christmas. And in between recovering and resting during the remainder of December, we found a beautiful venue for our wedding that fit our budget, fit our every need, and let us use our own caterer. THANK YOU BABY JESUS.

When January hit, we jumped full speed back into filming Hell Froze Over (which we've been doing on the weekends), I met with the last agent and got signed on the spot, I jumped back into acting class, I signed up for another semester of American Sign Language, and I have been hustling. Every. Single. Day. to keep making these opportunities happen, to keep kicking ass as an actress, to keep myself employed, fulfilled, healthy, well-fed, well-rested, and bringing my A game.

It's hit and miss. But the point is... I'm still trying to hustle. And it's the trying that counts.

because

2011-11-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

Because... the first time I met Benni (on set), he didn't talk to me for the first four hours (he told me later he was intimidated),

Because... we were both with other people romantically when we met so we struck up a very natural friendship while our relationships ran their course,

Because... after we got out of those relationships we waited a while so that we didn't make each other the rebounds,

Because... he makes me laugh harder and smile more than any man I've ever been with,

Because... I am a better person because of being with him,

Because... he kicks my ass at Scrabble and chess but he lets me kick his ass when it comes to grammar and vocabulary and Shakespeare quotes,

Because... his eyes are the brightest blue I have possibly ever seen,

Because... he's a better cook than I am, so he cooks four out of five meals (hey, I do the dishes!),

Because... he has faced unspeakable tragedy in his life, losing two family members before he reached the age of 25, and he still has the most open, non-cynical heart I know,

Because... he is the sweetest, kindest, most thoughtful guy I know, but doesn't take crap from a lot of people,

Because... he is patient and understanding with me, but doesn't hesitate to kick my butt if I need a verbal butt-kicking,

Because... he loves long walks in the evenings as much as I do, loves hiking as much as I do, loves hot chocolate as much as I do, and loves small, furry animals as much as I do,

Because... he looks at me like I'm the most beautiful girl on earth (this is even at 8 am when I'm in PJ's three sizes too big and my hair looks like it came from a Lady Gaga video)

Because... he forces me to put my b.s. aside, shoot my ego and ask questions later, and be an adult and have adult conversations,

Because... he wears his heart on his sleeve (literally, he has a freckle that's the shape of a heart on his arm),

Because of all these things, and a few thousand more...

When Benni got down on one knee and asked me to marry him on Thanksgiving, in front of my family, I said yes.

yes yes yes yes yes.

Feast on your life.

2011-11-23T13:17:00.000-08:00

Love after Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Here I sit, at the end of November, and feast on my life. I just spent two days on set after booking a national commercial at the beginning of last week, and being on set is always something to be grateful for, more so when my co-stars are adorable 8 month old twins that I get to hold and play with between takes.

But it is not just having work that makes me grateful. It is having purpose, and having purpose gathers and gains its own momentum until it's a wave that you swore was behind you and now you realize you're just along for the ride.

I am getting sharper, clearer, stronger, about the ways I fit into this world, the ways I fit into the lives of others, the way I fit in with myself. My bristled edges are getting smoother, my heart is becoming more graceful and grateful, and I am able to sit just a little bit longer with myself, following my breath with its rise and fall in my chest. My intuition is stronger, I am less reactive and more responsive, my fists are a little less clenched and my heart is a little more open (but as an adult's, not like a child's.)

Give back your heart to itself. I am giving myself more credit, I am giving others more credit, I am becoming aware of how often people do kind things for me that before I just took for granted, and I am here, now, saying thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you.

I am drowning in a sea of gratitude and I am feasting upon my own life, which, incidentally enough, is interwoven with yours, and is plentiful because of yours, and is rich because of you. All of you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Let the beauty we love be what we do

2011-11-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

November is finally here, and with it comes autumn, Daylight Savings Time (FINALLY), buckets of nostalgia with a side of wistfulness, and for me, a chance to rest in the work I have already done while gearing up for more of it. If October is about grieving, November is about taking stock of what's been accomplished, of what there is to be grateful for, and resting while still in motion.

Don't ask me what December is yet. One thing at a time here, people.

The super top secret horror film that I've been working my ass off for months on has finally come into the public, and I'm so proud of it. You'll follow a group of college students through a psychology program that asks them to cut off all contact from social media for a week, and then asks them to cut themselves off from the rest of the world for a week with ONLY social media connecting them to others.

And then, of course, as it happens with horror... things go terribly, terribly wrong.

The website has several aspects to it - one is the webisodes, presented through YouTube, and one is a live streaming video of the "Kill Room" - where one unlucky participant in the program will find him or herself trapped at the start of each week. So tune in if you're a horror fan, because you'll get to see characters "killed" live - and you never know when my turn is coming. :)

(FYI - this site is Not Safe For Work, has strong language, is meant to be offensive, bloody, frightening, disturbing, blah blah blah words.) Enjoy!

The other thing I'm excited to talk about is that I got to cross a major item off my Bucket List when I was contacted by Comics on Comics to be ON a panel of geekery at the Long Beach Comic Con last week. I think I threw up out of excitement when they asked me, I'm not even kidding. (And apparently they think I'm funny?! Hey, I'll take it!) We discussed the new season of The Walking Dead, DC's new comic book reboot The New 52, Frank Miller's Islamophobic new comic book Holy Terror, and loads of other geeky subjects. This was the first time that anyone had ever said to me, Hey, you seem like a geek, and that's what we WANT. Talk about mind-blowing. And the panel was a blast to be on. I am so grateful.

I'll have more Hell Froze Over Season 2 updates closer to the end of the year - we are shooting in January and February of next year and there is some incredible actors already involved that I'm dying to work with. :)

In the meantime, I've got pictures! of other things I've been up to (because who doesn't love pictures!, right?)

On the set for the film. Yes, I permanently make that face.

I ended up going apple picking twice last month - once with my friends in early October, and another trip up on Halloween weekend to celebrate my mom and aunt's birthdays (they are twins.)

picking raspberries

One of the apple farms.

Pumpkin patch!

One of the apple mills.

Apple cider donuts. Yessssssssss.

I also ate WAY too much candy corn in October. Yummm....

Benni and I also celebrated our own Tim Burton Day, by seeing his exhibit at the LACMA with friends (pictures were not allowed to be taken of his creations, so there's only one picture that's his and the rest is of other exhibits at LACMA) and then we capped off the night by seeing "Nightmare Before Christmas" at the historic El Capitan Theater in Hollywood. It was an excellent day.

"Urban Lights," or, as I call it, the Lamp Forest at LACMA

Benni looks overwhelmed by the size of those dishes.

At the very end of the Tim Burton exhibit.

Various animal heads greeted us outside the Tim Burton exhibit.

And finally: we made it to the movie :)

I hope you had a lovely October, and that your November is just as nice. I will catch you next week!

Shake It Out

2011-10-19T15:37:00.000-07:00

I've never done this before, so bear with me. I'm trying to post a video onto my page and until I hit "publish post" I'm not even sure it's gonna show up. So... here's to taking risks! (If it doesn't embed, you can find the music video here.)

I first heard "Shake it Out," the single off Florence + the Machine's second album (which will be released on November 1st, Dios de los Muertos, fittingly enough) a few weeks ago and I sat back and thought, this is going to be my theme song for October.

And it still is.

"Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play."

It's true that I regret very little in my life, the choices I make and have made. Part of what is wonderful about being a "present-focused" person is that I live in the immediate here and now. Of course, this does provide an astonishing lack of perspective occasionally, but most of the time, I am happy because I am not wishing for the future or longing for the past. Things settle on my skin and the tip of my tongue and I stay with them, allowing sensations and memories to melt and breathing it all in. But October is always a month to look back, to dig up the dead, even for me. I find myself looking at the past, not with regret, but certainly not without sadness. October, of all the months, is the month in which we grieve, and stand in front of death and birth, and feel the changes that are happening in our lives the most.

I've spent the last month and a half surrounded by tasks, tasks that required me to be fully present and 100% on my game, even as there were things swirling around me at all times. The last forty days required absolute focus and left me with very little room for error. As soon as I got back from Yosemite, I spent 11 days on set, from 6 pm to 6 am, and since this project was strictly a labor of love, I would then drive to my job at 6 am and work an 6 hour shift before returning to set.

In the middle of the shoot, I planned a lecture for my church that required me to organize reaching out to the community, advertise to other churches in the area, plan to feed everyone who attended, pick up the speaker at the airport, and do generally everything else that goes along with planning a huge speaking event. And it went fabulously, without a hitch.

Towards the end of the shoot, I was also blessed to officiate Lira's wedding. You can check out pictures here (I'm in a couple) and I have to say: the wedding was beautiful. Even running off the tiny amount of sleep I was going off of, I was able to officiate quite well, marry Lira and her boy Anthony correctly, and then designate myself Wedding Coordinator for the rest of the day, making sure Lira and Anthony actually got to eat, sit down, and enjoy their own wedding.

As soon as I was done with the still-under-wraps mysterious horror project that I will plug as soon as I can, I went straight into pre-production for season two of Hell Froze Over, the web-series I was in in 2009, and started shooting ANOTHER web-series, Living with Frankenstein, a supernatural British comedy where I play Mary Shelley, who, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley (and Frankenstein's monster) is living in modern day Los Angeles. :)

"And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn."

And it's true that I like to keep some things private. It's always tough with a blog to balance what belongs in the public and what belongs in the privacy of our own hearts. When I am having a tough time, my friends and family are not always the first to know. But I am learning to put into words the feelings I feel when I'm not quite sure how to react or deal with the things that upset me. And I honestly think I'm getting better.

"And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around."

What October teaches me, more than anything, is that it is not letting go of the past that is the most important. It is coming to peace with the fact that the past will never be let go of. I grieve but I also sit in the grief, carry it like a blanket, and it keeps me company and the less I try to shoo it off my porch and the more I just let it keep me company... the quieter the past becomes in my head.

"And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it's always darkest before the dawn.

"Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh"

So I shake it out. I shake the grief, the tension, the sleeplessness, the stress, the frenetic frenzied energy, I shake all of it out my body and I keep on doing what I've always done. Which is put one foot in front of the other.

"And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn."

I am done picking fights (did you SEE my last post?), done with my own graceless heart that cuts impatiently across conversations and memories and full-bloodied emotions, done being tired and less than understanding towards what others are going through, done being less than sympathetic and done being a full-blown workaholic who puts her best friend's wedding on her to-do list instead of her to-celebrate list.

Because it's hard to dance with a devil on your back, and October has more devils than most months. But man, you gotta just shake that crap out and restart. Because October has a lot of endings, for sure. But it also has beginnings, too.

Rape is not a metaphor.

2011-10-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

I did NOT want to write this post.

I tried my damndest not to. But it kept boiling inside me, all the things I needed to say, and if that's not what a blog is for, then I don't know what is.

I would love to be filling you guys in on the new web-series I've been working on, or how the horror movie I've been shooting was 11 days of fun and blood and screaming and sleep deprivation, or how Lira's wedding (which I officiated) went.

But first, I have to get this off my chest.

A blogger that I absolutely adore and respect to the highest degree (whom I STILL adore and respect to the highest degree, but I absolutely disagree with on this point) blogged about the Johnny Depp Incident. Basically, Johnny Depp, in an interview with this month's Vanity Fair, compared the act of sitting through a photo shoot to being raped. His words were: "Well, you just feel like you’re being raped somehow. Raped.... It feels like a kind of weird –- just weird."

And this blogger said there was no need to apologize (which the lovely Johnny Depp did, after being called out about it by RAINN) and that we had become too hypersensitive in this day and age about the meaning of words. Commenters agreed with her, saying that many, many things can be raped, including Mother Earth, celebrities by the media, etc.

So this is what I wrote:

"I'm going to have to disagree and say that I'm pleased that he apologized. Part of what is now Rape Culture is using the word "raped" to mean things that do NOT mean raped. When Johnny (whom I adore to the highest degree) said that he felt raped by a photo shoot, he did not ACTUALLY mean that he physically had someone shove a body part into an orifice of his while he repeatedly said NO and that he will have to deal with the guilt and shame regarding what he was wearing and how he was acting for the rest of his life. He will not have to deal with society judging him, labeling him a slut, telling him he "asked for it" and to just move on. He will not have to take a pregnancy test and wonder if he might be carrying the baby of the person who violated him, he will not have flashbacks of being raped while he's trying to be intimate with his wife, he will not find himself afraid of the dark or back alleys or wonder "What if" for the rest of his life. He will not spend a large amount of time (perhaps the rest of his life) being ashamed and afraid of his own sexuality.

He will not do any of this because he was not raped, yet he used the word raped. I don't think it's Political Correctness, and I don't think sexual abuse survivors have "hijacked a word." I think they know all too well that rape is serious and horrific and loaded and comes with a slew of baggage put upon it by society, and it is Rape Culture that says that is acceptable to use that word casually and throw it around and take the seriousness away from it. Rape Culture is making it casual and funny and when people STOP wincing at that word, then fuck it, we have a much bigger problem on our hands.

Thanks for listening."

And I thought that was that, and I moved on with my day. Except for the fact that I didn't move on. I couldn't. I got more and more frustrated the more I thought about it. Because I don't think the word "raped" should be used as a metaphor, much like I don't think the word "retarded" or "gay" should either. The definition of rape is not "whenever I feel particularly violated." It is an act of sexual assault, and if you take the sex out of rape then you are watering it down to a PC Diet Coke version of something very real, very tangible, and very traumatizing that happens to a lot of people. The very definition of rape includes sex; the word "violate" does not.

A few years back my car was broken into. Did I feel violated? Sure. Did I go around telling people I was raped? No, I did not. Violated is not the same as raped.

But people are now raped all the time. They are raped by Netflix raising its prices, raped at gas stations due to raising prices, raped at copy centers due to raising prices.. come to think of it, I don't hear people use the word "rape" as a metaphor NOT related to money very often. How do you think that makes actual rape victims feel? Do you think if someone came to you and tearfully told you that they were raped, that you'd nod and say, I was raped last week too when I was asked to pay more than I thought I should for a goods or service! We have so much to talk about now!

No. You wouldn't do that.

Celebrities are also raped, sometimes for hours on end... on red carpets, at photo shoots. In interviews. So let's imagine that scenario, shall we? Imagine a loved one calls you up. You ask how they are. Not so good, they say. I was just raped. Oh my God, you exclaim, what happened? Your loved one goes on to explain that he or she willingly showed up to a job, where he or she proceeded to work at this job for several hours, didn't express any feelings of uncomfortableness or reservations about this job while the work was being done, was paid for this job, and afterward felt taken advantage of in some way. Now, I'm not undermining this experience. To feel taken advantage of, even when you are getting paid, and you showed up willingly, and you expressed your feelings to no one (because if you had, people would have rushed to rectify this) is not a fun one. But it is not the same thing as being raped.

You cannot have rape without sex, my friends. You CAN.NOT. If you have rape without sex then you are taking the very loaded, complicated, horrific aspect of this crime and putting glitter on it. The Mother Earth can be violated, trashed, taken advantage of, used, spat upon, and neglected. But until someone finds a way to sexually assault an entire planet, no, it was not raped.

There are millions upon millions of people out there who have suffered sexual violence. Some are women who have been forced to marry their rapists to protect their honor, and so they continue to be raped. Some women were raped on dates, some men and women are raped by their partners, some men and women who are raped while passed out at parties. Rape is humiliating, and shaming, and is rarely punishable or provable in court (leading to the statistic that only 1 in 20 rapists will ever see a day behind bars, and that a rapist, assuming correctly that he will not be prosecuted, rapes an average of 6 times in his life time. Yes, even date rapists.)

Rape is a struggle for one person to exert power over another. Rape is something that happens to everyone, of all races, incomes, religions, and cultures. Rape seeks to silence people by creating a bubble of shame around it. Society encourages this by saying "she's asking for it" and putting the sexual history of rape victims on trial when the very rare incident of a rape going to court actually DOES happen.

Rape is many, many things. But rape is not a metaphor. And it should not be used as one.

What I did this summer: a visual book report

2011-09-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, I'm fully aware that my posts this summer, have, oh I don't know, sucked righteously? (As Bath pointed out: only I can get away with posting about how I'm going to post something. But I only get away with it because you guys LET ME, you enablers you.) But I guess that's what happens when you step away from the computer and put yourself into perpetual motion for three months straight, and I guess I'd say that even though I've missed you all terribly, and missed blogging regularly, I wouldn't have had it any other way :) I sort of had to take a step back from blogging about how ungrateful I was and instead get off my chair and go live myself back INTO gratitude. If that makes any sense, or maybe it just sounds like it belongs on the side of a Starbucks cup. But either way, it worked.

So behold: What I Did This Summer, by Tracy Clifton.

Both my brother Jeff's and Benni's birthday is Independence Day, so we caught an Anaheim Angels game and then watched the fireworks at the stadium. (cough:: go Red Sox ::cough) And if you were at all a little doubtful that after eating a huge hot dog and an ENTIRE bag of Cracker Jack by yourself at a baseball game you would still be able to devour ice cream birthday cake, people, consider me your Myth-buster.

I have no idea what I was wearing to make it look like I have
awesome cleavage in this shot, but hey, I'll take it.

baby, you're a firrrrrrework

Next up was San Diego's Comic Con, where all things nerdy and geeky unite. I went dressed as Neil Gaiman's Death (it was a Halloween costume a few years ago) and Benni went as the Eleventh Doctor from the Doctor Who British television series. Fun fact: dressing up as The Doctor gets you more squealing fan-girls than I would have thought. Benni was a lucky man at Comic Con this year. :)

Benni posing in front of his blue phone booth, complete
with the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.

Me posing with Wendy Pini, creator of Elfquest
(my first comic-book!) and all-around feminist bad-ass.

Darth is the MAN.

I met another Death! She was more old-school but super-sweet.

Benni and I battle it out in front of the Emperor's Throne from Star Wars.
C'mon, people, if you put a sonic screwdriver up against a light-saber,
who do YOU think would win?!

Yes. Yes, that is Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker from Star Wars.
I about died. I was going to tell him that when I was little,
I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I grew up, although
that's obviously a lie. Everyone knows I wanted to be Boba Fett.

Benni and I in full costume.

When Benni and I got back from Comic-Con, we got to go to the new Dino Hall Exhibit at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum (I'm a museum geek) and it was awesome! If you're in LA I highly suggest going.

grrrrr argh

A few weeks after that, Benni and I were invited to go The Magic Castle in Hollywood, one of the top places to go and watch magic. We got to see a lot of sleight of hand tricks in the close-up gallery (I was sitting two feet from the magician and I STILL couldn't see how he did his tricks) and a lot of illusions in the big theater room. It was fantastic. The Magic Castle has a dress code, too, so women have to wear dresses and men are required to wear coats and ties, so you feel super fancy when you go. :)

super fancy clothes require that you kick one foot into the air behind you. FACT.

And then two weeks ago I started shooting on my top-secret horror film (so no pictures allowed, sadly) and then I went to Yosemite National Park last weekend with Benni, my mom and aunt, my brother Jeff, my cousin Tom and his girlfriend Val. We road-tripped up with Tom and Val in his SUV and opened the sun roof and just soaked up the fresh air and sunshine.

View from the back of the car.

bliss.

When we got to the campsite, we set up camp and had dinner, then got some rest. The next day we all hiked to Yosemite Falls and then my mom and aunt took a break while Benni, Jeff, Tom, Val and I rock-hopped over to the base of the falls. Here's Yosemite Falls:

We then took a drive up to Glacier Point, where you can see almost an entire 360 degree view of Yosemite Valley, and I took a picture of Half Dome in the valley:

and got a picture of (from l. to r.) Benni, Val, Tom, and Jeff standing on the wall that looks out over the valley. Gorgeous, no?

I also tried to be artsy and take a picture from inside a rock shelter of the valley outside, complete with Half Dome in the forefront. If you notice the bunny ears on the right hand side, that's my mom(!!) photo-bombing my picture. As you can tell, my mom has as much emotional maturity as a I do. Which is to say, zilch.

The following day was our big hike day. My mom and aunt decided to accompany the rest of the gang to Vernal Fall, which is a 2.5 mile hike round trip, and then the youngsters would continue up to Nevada Fall, which is an 8 mile hike round trip. Here we are at the top of Nevada Fall, just before a huge thunderstorm rolled in:

(l. to r.: Tom, Val, Jeff, Benni, me)

Here's an unobstructed view of Nevada Fall:

And here' s Benni and me at the top of the fall:

Right after that picture a huge clap of thunder sounded, we put on our ponchos, and hustled our butts 4 miles back down the trail so as to not get fried by lightening. Good times!

The next day we relaxed and drove all around the park. Here's a deer tail for you! She was just sort of cruising a parking lot, looking for fallen apples off the apples trees they have, and wasn't really intimidated by people at all until they got a little too close for her liking.

The final day we drove to the national Sequoia park that Yosemite has on the outskirts of its own park, and saw The Grizzly Giant, which is roughly 18 stories tall and guesstimated to be approximately 2000 years old. I left the people there at the very bottom in the picture so you can see the scale of this thing. Absolutely amazing - if you put a full-sized jet alongside it and propped it up on its end, the tree would still be taller.

Overall, I had a wonderful experience camping and hiking, but I'm glad to be back where there are warm showers, soft beds.... and cell phone reception. Check out what this guy had to do just to have a conversation :)

And that's my summer in a nutshell. I've still another week of shooting The Sunshine Project, and I've got a road-trip up to Santa Barbara for a friend's wedding this weekend, and I'm officiating this pretty girl's wedding at the beginning of October. So I'm still staying busy but I'll always remember to post pictures! Even if they're three months late! YAY!

September

2011-09-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

(photo credit: I got it from here)

“Here is the truth about September: it sneaks up on you and all of a sudden it’s autumn, and you don’t know what to do with your recently orphaned August daydreams so you tuck them between the pages of brand new notebooks and leave them in the corners of your sweatshirt pockets to gather lint and you set them on fire until all the trees are smoldering red and orange and yellow.” - unknown (meaning: I don't know who said it. If you do, please let me know in your comment?)

I am busier than I have been in a very, very long time... but tomorrow I leave for Yosemite National Park and I plan on not turning on my phone once, not answering a single email, just spending time with my family and boyfriend and taking photographs and hiking until my heart quickens and my breath deepens and I am grateful for every last ounce of my life.

I will be back next week with a GPOY post (Gratuitous Pictures of Yourself) that will cover everything from the Fourth of July to my new headshots to a few pictures on set of the horror film I'm still shooting to Yosemite, and everything in between.

Have a beautiful week, everyone. I'm so grateful to be a part of this blogging community.

mid-air suspension

2011-08-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

Do you ever feel two things at once - 1) like you are moving way too fast, and there's way too much happening, for you to be able to really take a step back and assess, and 2) that you're a trapeze artist, swinging from one pole to the other, suspended in mid-air, waiting, waiting for that moment when everything comes into reach...

That's me these days. Things are moving fast, very fast - there's a lot of change, a lot of things happening that I will catch you up on - but other times I am suspended, weightless, in mid-air, waiting, waiting, waiting.

The movement in my life includes the fact that I SUCKED IT UP and bought a beautiful, brand new car (seriously, not a used new car, which are the only kinds of cars I've had all my life, but a NEW new car), and I participated in the LA 48 Hour Film Festival, where each group gets assigned a genre, a prop, a line of dialogue, and a character that must be used, and each team has 48 hours to write it, shoot it, edit it, and deliver it back to the post-production house. We screen tomorrow, and ours is a dark little comedy that I had a leading role in, and I'm very, very happy with my work and how it turned out in general.

I am also planning an event for my church, which I'm really excited about; I increased my work hours at my job, which will mean a slight increase in my income, which is why I sucked it up and bought the car; and I booked the lead in a gritty, low-budget horror movie that's set to shoot in a few weeks, and then literally the moment I wrap the film I'm going up to Yosemite with my family and spending five fantastic days getting zero cell phone service, taking a lot of deep breaths, walking a lot, taking four thousand pictures, and eating my weight in marshmallows.

Movement, indeed. There's a lot going on, a lot of balls up in the air that I'm using every ounce of my not-so-existent coordination to catch, and there's a lot of responsibility on my shoulders to get everything done, and organized, and taken care of.

Frankly, I'm a little burned out.

And then there's the other side of it, where I'm still waiting for movement, inertia, ANYTHING, to move ahead with me getting a theatrical agent in this town, and wanting to go on more auditions, and create more opportunities for acting for myself. And it just feels like it's crawling at a snail's pace. How can one area of my life move so fast and another move so slow? I feel like I'm permanently getting whiplash. Or at least carsick.

But that's me, I'm here, I am getting back into the swing of things and I'm working out more, which means less anxiety, and I finally bought that damn tree-hugging hippy New Age meditation CD which will probably work wonders as soon as I get over myself and open the damn thing. (Remember, I'm from New Hampshire. Robert Frost musing about giving into frostbite is about as sentimental as we get.)

To quote another poet: We're clear, we're ourselves, we're sailing.

I'm not dead/ just floating

2011-07-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

The problem with using your blog as a diary and simultaneous motivator is obvious, when you look at it: it's the very simple fact that when things are hard in your life, you don't want to make a record of it to go back to; but then you can't really blog so you end up feeling alone. And as someone who considers myself a fighter, with that very New England spirit of hating whiners, even more so when it's myself doing the whining, I basically boxed myself in, and left myself with no one to talk to. And I shut you all out. And for that, I'm sorry.

I think blogs are supposed to represent us at our most honest: the good days and the bad. And when I'm doing badly, well, I tend to push people away and not want to talk about it, because I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear it. And I hate talking about it, I really do. And I sometimes think this blog is supposed to be the place where I put my best face forward (except for the occasional hilarious story about me knocking myself unconscious on a tree) and I think I need to just knock that the hell off.

So many of you left beautiful, wonderful, amazingly supportive comments that I just never even responded to - which is crappy of me - and I want to say belatedly that every single one of them made me light up inside and grin and tear up and feel like you guys really do understand me. And a very special shout-out goes to Bathwater, who not only left me incredibly supportive comments but also tirelessly emailed me to check in on me. Bath, you are an amazing man. I can't thank you enough for being such a good friend.

Things are moving ahead slowly and steadily. To be absolutely and brutally honest, which I'm trying to be a bit more, I have stopped being able to make it to my martial arts classes and without those natural mood-lifting endorphins I get when I exercise, I relapsed into my depression. I don't talk a lot about my depression, mostly because when I work out three days a week I'm usually beating it, but sometimes it gets the better of me, and I hate feeling like I'm admitting defeat when I post about it. But there it is. It is a constant weight on my shoulders, and I am always aware of it, looking for signs of it, looking for when I open my mouth and instead of it being ME who speaks, it is the depression - and it knows all of my back doors and cracks and buttons, this demon, and it's really damn good at making me want to give up.

So I have that to wrestle with, and I'm going to try meditation (if you just rolled your eyes, believe me, I did too, but I'm out of drug-less options at this point) so that I can actually sleep at night and concentrate and not tear up when things aren't 100 percent perfect. I'm also going to be buying a new car in September that I can't really afford, but the constant repairs that I ALSO can't afford will cease and I will be driving a car that I actually like for my two hour daily commute, and that will make things better. I am also auditioning more, moving forward with a second season of my web-series, and I'm going to go restore my soul by camping at Yosemite in early September.

So good things are happening and are on the horizon. I'm horribly behind on reading and commenting on everyone's blogs - again, my apologies. I took a giant step back from this blog, but honestly, now that I think about it, I moved in the wrong direction. I see now that with blogger friends like you guys, I didn't need to step back. I needed to step forward and really listen to how amazingly supportive you guys were, and I'm gonna try to work at doing that from now on.

Much love and light,
Tracy

Gamblers All (by Charles Bukowski)

2011-07-14T16:04:00.000-07:00

sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
i’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you’ve felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.

you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.

you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.

it’s been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.

**************************************************

I've been reading this poem a lot lately. Not much new to report, still suffering minor setbacks and minor triumphs. But as Bukowski also once said, "It's been a beautiful fight. Still is."

I'm making my way back.

(I WISH the fort I've been hiding in looked like this. I got it from here.)

I quit

2011-06-29T13:53:00.000-07:00

I called it quits last week. From life, from TRYING so hard to do everything - and I must say, it's been rather nice.

Two weeks ago, my car broke down - yet again - and cost me another $50o I did not have. I can't afford car payments on a new car, and I can't afford to keep spending $500 fixing the car I do have, and both of my jobs are two hour daily commutes, with no bus routes to either one. I went round and round in my head, trying to think of solutions, resources, things I could do differently...

Nope. Nothing.

I got my car back the next day (it spent the night in the shop) and spent the day driving around Hollywood, trying to drop off headshot submissions to theatrical agents. I had six to drop off... traffic was so bad I was only able to drop off two. I spent five hours in traffic, getting sun-burnt, no air conditioning, just to drop off two envelopes. And when I got home I realized that I had forgotten to attach resumes to the headshots of those submissions. I guess it's lucky I was only able to drop off two of them, eh?

I finished up my submissions and haven't heard a peep. Not a single word. And last week, I spent most of Monday night/early Tuesday morning vomiting violently, to what I can only guess was food poisoning, because I have not felt that ill in a very, very long time. Benni got it a little bit too (for all those smart-asses about to suggest maybe I was pregnant) but he didn't have to throw up, thank God.

And I had friends and family members on both ends telling me to work harder. Work even harder to submit to agents, work even harder to figure out what to do with the car, work even harder and longer hours doing this, or that, or organizing this, or planning that...

No.

I quit.

This week, anyway.

flood stories

2011-06-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, my friends and I visited the Skirball Cultural Center, a museum in LA that tells history from a Jewish perspective, for their new exhibit on Harry Houdini, arguably the most amazing magician and escape artist the world has ever seen. The exhibit is incredible, and I highly recommend going to see it, but while you're at the Skirball I also highly recommend the permanent Noah's Ark exhibit they have, primarily for kids (or, in our case, for adults that act like kids).

The Noah's Ark exhibit is built like a huge ark that you walk through, with stuffed animals and cubby holes and other larger animals made out of all re-used, found objects like spatulas and rubber tires, and it has roped passages running along the top for kids to crawl through. My friends and I had a blast playing like little kids around this ark.

But something stuck with me besides just the playfulness. When you first enter into the exhibit, you sit down with your group around a pretend campfire and listen to a storyteller who tells you what you are about to experience. Our storyteller noted that across land and time, different cultures and religions from vastly different regions all had mythical stories about A Great Flood. The storyteller went on to explain that each culture's story of a Great Flood was very similar - it starts with rain. The winds pick up, the thunder booms and the lightening crashes, people gather their loved ones together into a boat or a house and they ride out the storm together, less afraid and strengthening the bonds of love with each other.

Our storyteller asked us - a few adults and mostly small children- what every flood story had in common after it started raining. The adults wavered. They got in a boat? "No, before that," our storyteller said. "What did the people do after it started raining but before it started flooding?"

A little boy raised his hand and said, "They told someone."

The storyteller pounced. "They told someone!" In every flood story, the main idea is not that it was pouring rain, or that there was a boat, but that the people told others and asked the ones they loved the most to get in the boat with them.

Ever feel like when it rains, it pours? That your own life is flooding? This past week has been like that, and even with its highs (successfully raising enough funds for a second season of my web-series; my kickass Boston Bruins winning the Stanley Cup for the first time in over thirty years), I also hit some serious lows, most involving my car being in the shop for two days and me spending, once again, the equivalent of several months of car payments to get it fixed. Again. I've also been overwhelmed career-wise, and let's face it, I've just been feeling... well, like I was drowning.

But I'm ridiculously bad at telling someone. RIDICULOUSLY. Maybe it's the Robert Frost-Stiff Upper Lip-New Englander background, or the fact that I'm stubborn, or the fact that I like to focus on the positive and not talk about the negative. But whatever it is, when my life is flooding, I don't tell anyone. I just sort of sit there and watch as the water inches up past my chest and seethe. (I'm sure none of you know what I'm talking about here.)

But as I listened to this storyteller talk to the kids, I started to realize that maybe she was on to something here. After all, why do we tell stories in the first place? Why do we blog, why do we post Facebook statuses, when things aren't exactly going well in our life? I think we do them to gather up our friends and family, into one safe, small place, and feel comforted, and loved. And it doesn't start until you tell someone.

Lately I've been leaning a lot on Lira, my "sister", who has literally dropped what she's been doing and driven over to my place numerous times just to sit down and talk me through my discouragement, and I lean on Alyssa, my best bestie, who always knows exactly what to say and when to try to help me fix it and when to just listen, and of course, Benni, always Benni, being there, being consistently wonderful, picking my sad butt off the ground again and again and giving the best hugs in the world. But lately, I've brushed this amazing trio off with mutterings of "I don't want to talk about it," because I'm sick and tired of feeling like a burden, like my life is ALWAYS flooding in one capacity or another, and that I should just suck it up and fix my own damn problems without a word to anyone about needing help.

That hasn't really worked out so well, so glad you asked. So Plan B, which is supposed to be Plan A but it's funny how we reverse those sometimes, is going back to basics:

Pick myself off the ground. Put one foot in front of the other. And start telling someone.

House-keeping

2011-06-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

Balance is a funny thing.

And by funny I mean that it's hard, like in the way I say that playing darts is funny (well, it is when I do it.) I mean, let's face it, I suck at balance. A lot. And I'm not even talking about physical balance here, either. I'm talking about the balance that all of us carefully navigate each day of physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental balance. I spend a lot of time in the zone when I'm really trying to accomplish something in my life, which is great, because then I become uber-focused... but then I look up from what I've been doing, and oh look, the dishes are piling up the sink, the cat has died of hunger*, and I haven't blogged in three weeks.

Whoops.

So hello, blog world! How have you been? And where have I been, you ask?

I've been working my butt off, actually. Doing that other thing that I love so much besides writing - acting.

In 2009 I was the lead in a little award-winning web-series called Hell Froze Over (I'm not using "little" ironically, sadly, but the part about it winning an award is true). Hell Froze Over is a quirky, hilarious, occasionally raunchy and sometimes blood-splattered show that I just fell in love with and had a blast working on. (You can check out all ten of the episodes here and a pretty fair review of the series here.) And since it debuted two years ago everyone who worked on it has spent a lot of time and energy trying to make a Season 2 happen.

So we decided to use Kickstarter, a fundraising website that asks the creators of a project to set a financial goal and a deadline, and then the creators in turn ask friends, family, frenemies, and total strangers to "pledge" a donation to get the project funded. If we hit our goal by the deadline, we get to keep the money - if we don't hit our goal, we don't get to keep ANY of the money. So it's an all or nothing thing here, folks.

I have spent the last few weeks beating the pavement, asking people to donate money over Facebook, in real life, and on YouTube... while not wearing a shirt. (Yeah, you read that right. Um, this video of me is not quite safe for work, as I would rate it PG-13.) But in the end- WE HIT OUR GOAL!!!!!!!!!! And we still have 8 days left for people to contribute (people have been going here to donate) and are still getting more and more contributions a day. You guys, I am so excited, and so completely and utterly grateful for how generous people really are. We start shooting in a few weeks and I'm just about hyperventilating in anticipation of all the fun things I get to do this season. YAAY!!!!

The other news is that I got cast in a low-budget feature horror film which will be shooting over the summer, and I've never acted in a horror film before so I'm excited to scream my little blonde head off and possibly be soaked in blood while running away from a psychopath. All at the same time.

And I also got new headshots taken for my commercial agent, I've been doing the rounds to get a new theatrical agent, I started a new acting class that is kicking my ass, and oh yeah... it was my birthday on Saturday so I've been feeling spoiled rotten by my friends and family (and I think I'm still on a sugar high).

So I know I've been gone, but I'm gonna be better about keeping everyone updated on what I'm doing and trying to stay up to date with everyone else's lives. In the meantime, I'm off to go visit some of your blogs and looking forward to reconnecting with everyone.

Have a wonderful week, guys!

* the cat didn't really die of hunger, but acts like she is going to Every.Single.Morning.

but fear itself

2011-05-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

I would like to take this moment to give everyone else the credit for this post. I had something very specific in mind that I was gonna post about, mainly apologizing for being behind on posting and commenting, followed by a little bit of the blame game on Blogger for throwing up on the only two days last week that I actually had time to post, and then following it up by giving you guys some spiffy updates on what I've been up to.

But then I read my dear friend Robin's letters to her father who has probably less than two weeks to live. And I read my best friend Alyssa's post about how her sixth graders fear that this Saturday will be the end of the world and how frustrated that makes her feel. So this is what I came up with instead, because instead of telling you what I wanted to say, I listened to what some of you might like to hear.

Despite what the news these days might try to convince you of, fear is not a new thing. Oh, no. Fear has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions, if you think back to probably how terrified the little itty bitty dinosaurs were of the really really big dinosaurs. Fear is what kept us in our caves during lightening storms thousands of years ago, fear is what kept us from eating that bright red plant that turned out to be poisonous hundreds of years ago, fear is what keeps us from running naked in traffic (fear on more than one level on that last one, if we're gonna be honest. I am not brave enough to jog naked.) Fear keeps us alive, keeps us alert, keeps us safe.

But fear has a season. It has an expiration date, it has a time and place where it is no longer needed and no longer useful and IT EXPIRED YESTERDAY. We have lived with fear for so long that these days we breathe it and think it's air. And then we wonder why we're choking. We find it normal to be afraid, possibly even wise, and we exist in such a constant state of fear that it controls the way we think and move and breathe. And all the ways that we DON'T think, or move, or breathe. All the ways that we just stare, like a deer caught in the headlights, and read the doom and gloom of a society and a world that would keep us afraid for the sheer fact that we PAY THEM to keep us afraid. You and I subscribe every day, line up for it, give us this day our daily fear, and when we run out of things to be afraid of we create more things to be afraid of. Give me the number of terrorists you think we should kill before you start to feel safe again and I will show you what fear really is. Tell me the number of people in your neighborhood whom you wish worshiped and looked the same as you and I will show you what fear really is.

Because fear is a bottomless well that you are dumping your food into and then waiting beside it, starving, for the bones to be spat back up. And when nothing happens, when you still do not feel safe or full, you start pouring yourself into that well, until there is nothing left of you but emptiness.

It's tempting to think that the world is chaotic, dark, troubling and, yes, perhaps ending. That things are getting worse, that the greedy are getting greedier and the poor are getting poorer. But being afraid or angry doesn't make these things go away. Fear doesn't offer solutions, and it doesn't bring us closer together. You think the nut who came up with the idea that the Rapture is on May 21st did it so that we could all come together as one, so we can all learn how to love each other and accept each universally, regardless of nationality, sexual orientation, religious creed, race, or sex? Do you think this guy wants peace on earth?

No. He doesn't. He's not interested in the least. Because last of all, but never to be forgotten, is that fear has an agenda. It will fight to keep you looking only at the surface of things so that you forget to live your life, so that you stop seeing, really SEEING, people. It will fight to keep you locked indoors all day and suspicious of others. It will fight to keep you fighting with so many others, others that you could just as easily love.

Love is the most amazing gift we are given, and the choices we make are what define us. Love in the face of fear is what sends us across borders and across cultural lines, it's what lets us treat homeless people like humans and lets us write beautiful, incredibly strong letters to our parents in their last days. It lets us carry our strength inside us, our faith, and keeps us connecting with each other when it feels like all hope is gone.

Love is what not only lets us live in the face of fear, but also helps us overcome it.

5...4...3...2...1

2011-05-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

5 events I am totally looking forward to in the next few weeks:

5. Houdini exhibit at the Skirball

4. Tim Burton exhibit at LACMA

3. Mother's Day picnic on Sunday with the family

2. Going to Magic Mountain

1. My friend Anthony's comic book signing next Wednesday

(yes, I'm aware most of those events were definitely nerdy in nature)

4 things I recently bought and I could not BE happier:

4. I'm not a purse person, having bought exactly two in my life, but here's the purse I just bought and I am in LOVE. I never thought I'd like an inanimate object so much in my life.

3. These four Beatles prints. They are gorgeous, and I find it hilarious how clearly they show just how useless Ringo Starr really was to the Beatles. Benni and I found album frames at a craft store and hung them up in our dining room, over our record player (Vinyl FTW!)

2. Tank tops from Target. They are $8 and they go with everything. I don't think I need to explain this one much more...

1. $1.29 daffodils from Trader Joe's. How many times can you say that something you spent a $1.29 on made you blissfully happy for an entire week? But flowers just do that.

3 of the best things I have read lately:

3. The Happiness Hypothesis - amazing, incredible, very non-new Agey, very practical and scientific exploration of happiness. Best book I've read in a very long time.

2. A Short History of Nearly Everything - hysterical, makes science absolutely fascinating, and makes you giddy just to be alive.

1. This commencement speech by David Foster Wallace, which is heartrendingly beautiful and inspiring and I try to read at least once a week. (It's floating around the internet under the title This is Water)

2 books I WANT to read so badly:

2. The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

1. Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

1 funny story about LA:

I'm sitting in my car in downtown Hollywood, waiting for the light to turn green, when a homeless man carrying a sign that says "Love One Another" ambles over to my open window. I'm not going to be rude, and I have a strict policy of treating homeless people like humans, so I smile as he comes up to my car.
"Excuse me, ma'am, do you have a hundred dollars you could spare?" he asks, eyes kind and smiling. I burst out laughing. Surely he knows how ridiculous this is, right?
"No," I said. "I'm sorry. I have no hundred dollar bills to give you today."
"That's okay," he says, still grinning. "I'll take a fifty if you have one."
Again, I crack up. "Nope, no fifty's either."
He shuffles from foot to foot and pretends to look confused. "How about a gift card to Best Buy?" he asks. By this time we're both laughing.
I look him straight in the eye and tell him, "Man, if I had a Best Buy gift card to give you, I honestly would."
"Next time," he says, and we fist bump, and all the other people in all the other cars can see me laughing and are rolling down their windows to give him money and the sun is shining and life, life my friends, is very, very good.

Poetry Fridays- poetry potpourri

2011-04-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

For my very last Poetry Friday, I thought I'd shake things up a bit. Yes, I will still post poetry. But like I did last year, I will make my last Poetry Friday of 2011 a little different. This year I will include (gasp) two poems of my very own (Eric, quit asking me to do stuff, you know I'm bad at saying no to you), something I've never done before on this blog, mostly because you guys really don't need to read my tragically emo poetry that I wrote way back when I was a super depressed, hyper-aware 20 year old; and I'm also giving a nod to Bath and posting the lyrics to one of my favorite songs of all time (and my personal anthem), "Take to the Sky", by Tori Amos. Bath frequently writes posts that start off with song lyrics to tie into what he's going to talk about, and honestly, it's so genius, I don't know why I haven't stolen the idea yet.

So enjoy poetry of all different types today, and again - happy National Poetry Month to all of you. I hope you enjoyed the posts and I will be resuming more personal posts next week.

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
what you held in your hand,
what you counted & carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
how you ride & ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize & chicken
will stare out the window forever.

before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
you must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
& the simple breath that kept him alive.

before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
you must wake up with sorrow.
you must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
& you see the size of the cloth.

then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
& sends you out into the day to mail letters & purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is i you have been looking for,
& then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan. 14th

by Tracy Clifton

What’s the point of being

A poet

If no one believes me anymore?

I have earned the lack of trust

That follows me around these days,

Clinging to my jacket like smoke,

Entering a room

Long before I do.

My consistencies are outweighed

By my insecurities,

Jumping like a dog

To please only those that kick me.

Who do I need to apologize to?

Look in the mirror, love.

------------------------------------------------------

I Wish in the City of Your Heart

by Robley Wilson

i wish in the city of your heart
you would let me be the street
where you walk when you are most
yourself. i imagine the houses:
it has been raining, but the rain
is done & the children kept home
have begun opening their doors.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Nov. 6th

by Tracy Clifton

Something is without

You here

Writing myself into a wall

We try to capture

The flag right back

But it’s changed loyalties

Don’t you know

I have paper cuts

On my lips

From kissing words too much,

And your silence is

A blindfold.

Let’s call a truce,

Just you and I,

With the way the world

Just doesn’t work out

I got ten dollars

That says

You can’t find another universe

Before I do.

------------------------------------------------

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

to live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
&, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

--------------------------------------------------------------

So Much Happiness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

it is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
with sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion & cloth.
when the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

but happiness floats.
it doesn’t need you to hold it down.
it doesn’t need anything.
happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
& disappears when it wants to.
you are happy either way.
even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
& now live over a quarry of noise & dust
cannot make you unhappy.
everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake & ripe peaches,
& love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens & scratched records.

since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, & it flows out of you
into everything you touch. you are not responsible.
you take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, & share it,
& in that way, be known.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take to the Sky

by Tori Amos

(You can listen to what the song sounds like here)

This house is like Russia
With eyes cold and gray
You got me moving in a circle
I dyed my hair red today

I just want a little passion
To hold me in the dark
I know I got some magic
Buried, buried deep in my heart, yeah

But my priest says,
You ain't saving no souls
My father says,
You ain't makin' any money
My doctor says,
You just took it to the limit

And here I stand with this sword in my hand.

You can say it one more time
What you don't like
Let me hear it one more time then
Have a seat while I take to the sky

My heart is like the ocean
It gets in the way
So close to touching freedom
Then I hear the guards call my name

And my priest says,
You ain't saving no souls
My father says,
You ain't makin' any money
My doctor says,
You just took it to the limit

And here I stand with this sword in my hand.

You can say it one more time
What you don't like
Let me hear it one more time then
Have a seat while I take to the sky

If you don't like me just a little, well
Why do you hang around
If you don't like me just a little, well

Why do you hang around
If you don't like me just a little, well
Why do you take it take it take it

(this house... like Russia)

You can say it one more time
You can say it one more time
You can say it one more time
What you don't like
Let me hear it one more time then
Have a seat while I take to the sky
Take to the sky
Take to the sky
Take to the sky

Poetry Fridays: Volume 3

2011-04-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

Four “Addresses”

by Peter Davis

POEM ADDRESSING BOYS, AGE 5

This poem can turn invisible and it can beat up bad guys! When people read this poem it is like a laser shooting bad guys right in the stomach! This poem knocks bad guys on their bottoms! And if you need a force field you can get one from Dr. Defense who lives in this poem and makes a number of bad-guy-fighting tools and weapons. Sometimes giant robot bad guys try to kill this poem by bopping it on the head, but this poem doesn’t allow that and sends ninjas and wizards out to reverse time and destroy the robots. Dr. Defense jumps up and kicks everyone in the face and he, like, flies through a window and then, like, this poem explodes!

POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WHO ARE TIRED,
HUNGRY, OR HORNY

These things can wait. This is a very good poem and you’d be very myopic to lose sight of this beauty simply because some of your baser needs are asserting themselves. I’ll keep this short, but you should exercise some control, okay? Stay with me here. Allow this poem to carry you beyond yourself, transcending your mortal flesh as you wed yourself with the potentially infinite.

POEM ADDRESSING PEOPLE WITH CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS ABOUT POETRY THAT ARE NOT FULFILLED IN THIS POEM

Change

POEM ADDRESSING PRISONERS

How this found you I don’t know, but this is a good event, a good omen. Not because it’s mystical or mysterious, but because you’re actually reading this poem and I have actually written it. I know that this poem is a sort of prison too, but it’s a much, much more beautiful one.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Darker Sooner

by Catherine Wing

Then came the darker sooner,
came the later lower.
We were no longer a sweeter-here
happily-ever after. We were after ever.
We were farther and further.
More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.
The day was duller, duller
was disaster. Our charge was error.
Instead of leader we had louder,
instead of lover, never. And over this river
broke the winter’s black weather.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Lime Light Blues

by Kevin Young

I have been known
to wear white shoes
beyond Labor Day
I can see through
doors & walls
made of glass.
I'm in an anger
encouragement class.
When I walk
over the water
of parking lots
car doors lock-
When I wander
or enter the elevator
women snap
their pocketbooks
shut, clutch
their handbags close.
Plainclothes
cops follow me in stores
asking me to holler
if I need any help.
I can get a rise-
am able to cause
patrolmen to stop
& second look-
Any drugs in the trunk?
Civilian teens
beg me for green,
where to score
around here.
When I dance,
which is often,
the moon above me
wheels its disco lights-
until there's a fight.
Crowds gather
& wonder how
the spotlight sounds-
like a body
being born, like the blare
of car horns
as I cross
the street unlooking,
slow. I know all
a movie needs
is me
shouting at the screen
from the balcony. From such
heights I watch
the darkness gather.
What pressure
my blood is under.

-------------------------------------------------------------

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer

by Wendell Berry

I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
so often laughing at funerals, that was because
I knew the dead were already slipping away,
preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
be resurrected by a piece of cake. “Dance” they told me,
and I stood still, and while they stood
quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
“Pray” they said, and I laughed, covering myself
in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray
into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
When they said “I know that my Redeemer liveth,”
I told them “He’s dead.” And when they told me
“God is dead,” I answered “He goes fishing every day
in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.”
When they asked me would I like to contribute
I said no, and when they had collected
more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t,
and then went off by myself and did more
than they would have asked. “Well, then” they said
“go and organize the International Brotherhood
of Contraries,” and I said “Did you finish killing
everybody who was against peace?” So be it.
Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
I say I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

Poetry Fridays - Volume 2

2011-04-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Love After Love

by Derek Walcott

the time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
& each will smile at the other’s welcome,

& say, sit here. eat.
you will love again the stranger who was yourself.
give wine. give bread. give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
sit. feast on your life.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

INSTRUCTIONS

By Neil Gaiman

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before.
Say "please" before you open the latch,
go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the
green-painted front door,
as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing.
However,
if any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty,
clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can, ease its pain.

From the back garden you will be able to see the wild wood.
The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's realm;
there is another land at the bottom of it.
If you turn around here,
you can walk back, safely;
you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

Once through the garden you will be in the wood.
The trees are old. Eyes peer from the undergrowth.
Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman.
She may ask for something;
give it to her. She
will point the way to the castle. Inside it
are three princesses.
Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.
In the clearing beyond the castle the
twelve months sit about a fire, warming their feet, exchanging tales.
They may do favors for you, if you are polite.
You may pick strawberries in December's frost.

Trust the wolves, but do not tell them
where you are going.
The river can be crossed by the ferry.
The ferryman will take you.
(The answer to his question is this:
If he hands the oar to his passenger, he
will be free to leave the boat.
Only tell him this from a safe distance.)

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that
witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well-hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.

Do not be jealous of your sister.
Know that diamonds and roses
are as uncomfortable when they tumble
from one's lips as toads and frogs:
colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Remember your name.
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have
helped to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.

When you come back, return the way you came.
Favors will be returned, debts will be repaid.
Do not forget your manners.
Do not look back.
Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall).
Ride the silver fish (you will not drown).
Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).

There is a worm at the heart of the tower;
that is why it will not stand.

When you reach the little house, the
place your journey started,
you will recognize it, although it will seem
much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden
gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Descriptions of Heaven and Hell

by Mark Jarman

The wave breaks
And I'm carried into it.
This is hell, I know,
Yet my father laughs,
Chest-deep, proving I'm wrong.
We're safely rooted
Rocked on his toes.

Nothing irked him more
Than asking, "What is there
Beyond death?"
His theory once was
That love greets you,
And the loveless
Don't know what to say.

----------------------------------------------

Longing and Wonder

by Myra Shapiro

“Talk to Myra you talk to the wall,”
Mama announced when I lived

so long in my head. Behind
my lids was where I fit.

O world, be small enough to hold me,
slow enough to let me swallow.

Maybe I belonged back inside her. Or
beneath the spine of a book. Maybe

among tall buildings to incubate
between their legs. The warm kitchen

was never for me though I wanted
to shine. Passion I called

the pressure wrestling underneath.
Yesterday, in an audience listening to

my first book of poems,
a full professor asked me: “Longing,

how is it different from wonder?”
Astonished, jack-lit as a robber

caught with the goods, I felt my eyes
struggle to withdraw—and then

in longing you close your eyes,
but in wonder you open them.

When those words went
ZINGing through the lovely room,
you bet your sweet ass they opened.

It's National Poetry Month!

2011-04-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

April is National Poetry Month, guys, so I'm gonna do what I did last year (you can check out last year's National Poetry Month posts here, here, here, and here) and post some lovely, totally inspiring, jaw-droppingly beautiful poetry for the next four Fridays in April. Feel free to just read and enjoy, leave comments if you like, and let the poems carry you through the weekend and on into the week. I know I always do. :)

Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars (Hope is Not a Course of Action)

By Buddy Wakefield

If we were created in God’s image
then when God was a child
he smushed fire ants with his fingertips
and avoided tough questions.
There are ways around being the go-to person
even for ourselves
even when the answer is clear
like the holy water Gentiles drank
before they realized Forgiveness
is the release of all hope for a better past.

I thought those were chime shells in your pocket
so I chucked a quarter at it
hoping to hear some part of you
respond on a high note.
You acted like I was hurling crowbirds at mockingbars
and abandoned me for not making sense.
Evidently, I don’t experience things as rationally as you do.
For example, I know mercy

when I have enough money to change the jukebox at a gay bar
(somebody’s gotta change that shit).
You understand the power of God’s mercy
whenever someone shoves a stick of morphine
straight up into your heart.
It felt amazing

the days you were happy to see me

so I smashed a beehive against the ocean
to try and make our splash last longer.
Remember all the honey
had me lookin’ like a jellyfish ape
but you walked off the water in a porcupine of light
strands of gold

drizzling out to the tips of your wasps.
This is an apology letter to the both of us
for how long it took me to let things go.

It was not my intention to make such a
production of the emptiness between us
playing tuba on the tombstone of a soprano
to try and keep some dead singer’s perspective alive.
It’s just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there
and that you meant it
but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open

so I ate ear plugs alive with my throat
hoping they’d get lodged deep enough inside the empty spots
that I wouldn’t have to hear you leaving
so I wouldn’t have to listen to my heart keep saying
all my eggs were in a basket of red flags
all my eyes to a bucket of blindfolds
in the cupboard with the muzzles and the gauze
ya know I didn’t mean to speed so far out and off
trying to drive all your nickels to the well
when you were happy to let them wishes drop

but I still show up for gentleman practice
in the company of lead dancers
hoping their grace will get stuck in my shoes.
Is that a handsome shadow on my breath, sweet woman
or is it a cattle call
in a school of fish? Still dance with me
less like a waltz for panic
more for the way we’d hoped to swing
the night we took off everything
and we were swingin’ for the fences

don’t hold it against
my love
you know I wanna breath deeper than this
you know I didn’t mean to look so serious
didn’t mean to act like a filthy floor
didn’t mean to turn us both into a cutting board
but there were knives s-stuck
in the words where I came from
too much time in the back of my words.
I pulled knives from my back and my words.
I cut trombones from the moment you slipped away

and I know it left me lookin’ like a knife fight, lady
yeah you know it left me feelin’ like a shotgun shell
you know I know I mighta gone and lost my breath
but I wanna show ya how I found my breath
to death
it was buried under all the wind instruments
hidden in your castanets
goddamn
if ya ever wanna know how it felt when ya left
yeah if you ever wanna come inside

just knock on the spot

where I finally pressed STOP

playing musical chairs with exit signs.

Forgiveness
is for anyone who needs a safe passage through my mind.

I’m gonna cause you a miracle
when you see the way I kept God’s image alive.

If I was really created in God’s image
then when God was a boy
he wanted to grow up to be a man
a good man
and when God was a man
a good man
He started telling the truth in order to get honest responses.
He’d say,
“I know.
I really shoulda wore my cross
again
but I don’t wanna scare the gentiles off.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Sciences Sing a Lullaby

by Albert Goldbarth

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Deliverance

by Lee M. Robinson

There’s no such thing
as the necessary poem;
that’s what saves poetry
from a life like ours,
from desire and striving.
That is not to say a poem
can’t yearn for something
it isn’t yet, can’t crave
a meal of only apricots
or want a one-way ticket
to another country.
It can. We know
how a poem can need so much
it turns to mush, and how
sometimes even out of mud
and mildew rise the most
fantastic flowers. No,
what I mean is different.
That the poem is redeemed
by indifference, that before
it’s written, the world
does very well without it.
Therefore it is free
to be what it wants to be
or not to be at all.
That’s its deliverance,
its saving grace, and why
when it decides to speak
we listen to a language
that is ours, but so unlike us.

straighten up and fly right

2011-03-29T17:03:00.000-07:00

It's morning. You're running late, again. You always do this, don't you? Hit the snooze button fifteen times, let the alarm clock play alternative music intermittently for over an hour. But you're tired, of course you're tired. You didn't sleep again last night. Same as the night before. And the night before that. The nightmares, the anxiety, the fact that your brain never stops racing, the fact that your body stops breathing when the anxiety gets too bad and you wake up, panicked, gulping for air that you don't even let yourself breathe.

The commute's not too bad this morning, sometimes it can take over an hour to drive down Santa Monica Blvd from one side of town to the other, with you sitting in the car, trying to not wonder how much the stop and go traffic is gleefully murdering your car's engine, trying not to get hit by SUV's full of one person, reading their iPhone and steering with the hand holding their latte, who ends up swerving in and out of your lane. You try not to think nasty thoughts about people who can't be bothered to just focus on driving. You try to appreciate the fact that the radio is playing the same ten songs it always plays. You try to appreciate the fact that your iPod plays the same ten albums it always plays because you don't have enough money to buy new music, because any extra money you're earning these days is going towards filling your gas tank to get you to your job that gives you the money to fill your gas tank so you can get to your job. Because life is cyclical like that.

Work is okay, nothing special, you sit in front of a computer all day long and do what it is you do, the sort of menial task you get paid well for but it's not like you majored in it college and want to do it for the rest of your life. The window view is nice, your boss is kind and not that demanding and lets you play Pandora in the background, the clients are polite and respectful and things could be a lot worse, you could be one of 14 million unemployed Americans who would kill for your job, but you still wish you were out there, auditioning for acting roles and feeling like you were actually getting somewhere with the career you actually want, the thing you DID major in college for. But then you remember that you've still got time, there's always time, and things can change in a day out here in bright and sunny Los Angeles.

You get home, and your cat, whom you swore was a cat when you adopted it, has turned into a dog, a whiny, needy dog that shrieks if you don't pet it immediately, and you think to yourself, I swear I thought cats were supposed to ignore you, and your boyfriend, your wonderful, sweet, kind boyfriend is already making dinner, even though he's made dinner the last eight nights and it's probably been your turn to make dinner for at least a month now. He's making dinner, and he's twirling around in the kitchen doing eight things at once, and you drop your stuff and come into the kitchen and he stops whatever he's doing (unless he's carrying something hot to the sink) and pulls you into his strong arms and he smells like home and everything you've ever loved, and the cat twirls between the feet of the two of you and begs for food. Because she's actually a dog.

You sit on the couch, eating another amazing dinner compiled mainly from random things your boyfriend found in the fridge (you do not have this gift, alas) and you wrap your fingers around his as you both watch a funny television show that takes your mind off of the fact that your career isn't where you would like it to be, and the late afternoon sunlight dips through the window and hits at just such an angle that it feels like you are actually witnessing a memory or a photograph being created before your very eyes, and you look over at this boy, who makes you so completely and fully happy, and you look at the food sitting in front of you, that you had enough money for in your checking account when you bought it, and you look at the apartment that you love and have decorated with love, and you look at the cat that is now ignoring you as all good cats should do, and your heart fills with warmth and love about how every single thing in your life is amazing, even though it wasn't a particularly amazing day, because you realize just how truly loved you really are, and something expands in your lungs, and it's hope, hope that things will get even better, hope for the future, hope, hope is the thing with feathers, hope floats, hope springs eternal, hope hope hope hope hope....

balancing act

2011-03-15T15:56:00.000-07:00

These are the words I'm forcing myself to write.

I have not written a post in the last couple weeks because I literally had no idea what to write about. It's not that there's nothing going on in my life. There's actually tons. Producer session callbacks for major tv shows, hanging out with friends, throwing a Dr. Seuss themed baby shower for friends who are set to have their first baby any day now, a second semester of American Sign Language that I'm taking, events, trips, surprises... you name it, it's been happening, and I've been high on life. I've been so deliriously happy and grateful.

And yet.

I can't help but feel so saddened by the events that are going on in the world. Earthquakes, tsunami's, floods, drought... from Haiti to New Zealand to Australia to Japan...

What right do I have to post about my little life when there is so much loss and sadness in the world? What right do I have to be happy with my Stuff and my Things when I go to bed at night and when I wake up the next morning there are ten thousand less people on this planet?

It seems like there is a huge lack of balance in the world right now. And because of that, I've been feeling unbalanced in my own life. I swing from joyous about my own life to discouraged about others. And I have been trying to share my "wealth" with others, in the form of money donated, time and energy spent, gratitude and graciousness towards others expressed... but everything still feels so extreme and out of balance.

What on earth could I possibly blog about that could make whatever I have to say anything less than trivial?

Just this: that balance is achieved, one step at a time, not through guilt at the blessings we have, nor ingratitude of them, not through ignorance of what is happening to others, nor journalistic voyeurism, but through love. Love of each other, across oceans and tectonic plates and political parties and religious beliefs. And it is right, when we have been feeling lack, to receive joy and love into our lives, to celebrate. And it is right, when we have an abundance of joy and love in our lives, to share it with others, across oceans and tectonic plates and political parties and religious beliefs.

The sentences above is the only tiny, humble thing I have to offer right now to those of you who read my blog. I hope it is enough.

"I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality."

Balance. Pure and simple. And loving.

luck is the residue of design

2011-03-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

I will just go ahead and say, without self-pity and without pride, that I have always thought I had weird luck. It's not always bad - Weird Bad Luck happens to my best friend Stacey - but I definitely have weird luck. It's luck that clumps together so it comes all at once and people shake their heads at my life and say, "What are the chances?" But having had weird luck for most of my life - I know exactly what the chances are. The chances are freakin' HIGH.

By the way - if you're wondering how exactly I define Weird Bad Luck I'll give you my favorite story of Stacey's. Being raised a Good Catholic girl, Stacey decided she was going to wait until marriage to have sex, and to avoid temptation, would never spend the night over at her boyfriend's (now her husband's) dorm-room during college. Except for that one rainy night, after they both got back late from a concert, when Stacey thought, What the hell, I'll just sleep here one night, and won't tell my mother, and then found herself confronted by her Even More Catholic mother a few weeks later. Are you having pre-marital sex?! Stacey's Even More Catholic mother screamed, and Stacey had no CLUE as to how her mother could have found out that she spent the (sexless) night over at her boyfriend's dorm.

Turns out, there was a drug bust in the parking lot of campus that night, and the police took photos of all the cars and then mailed them back to the registered owners to make sure the vehicles weren't stolen. Stacey's Even More Catholic mother got photographic proof from the police that her only daughter spent the night at a college campus. With a boy.

And that, my friends, is Stacey's Weird Bad Luck.

Two weeks ago, I decided I was going to take a majorly fat step towards my own happiness by paying off my car with my savings, thus allowing me more room in my budget to take every other Friday off of one of my two part time jobs. I drive over two hours a day, five days a week, and it was running my car (and my soul) into the ground. So I decided: pay off my car, pay myself with the money I save each month, work less, have the same amount of money, and be more happy. Sounds simple right?

The day I mailed in the check to pay off my car, my car died in the middle of the intersection I was driving through, literally on my way to my tire mechanic's because my front brake sensor was going off. I had just enough in my checking account to make room for paying for brake pads, and enough in savings to pay off the car.

What I didn't have money for was the distributor in my engine, which was what quit on my car the day I paid it off. Which was about $350. That I did not have. And after I finished paying the $350 to my regular mechanic, I drove straight to my tire mechanic's, where they happily replaced my front brake pads. For another $200. I will be honest here, guys - I cried. Like a girl. My money was gone, my car was working - for now - and I had very little hope that I would recoup my money losses.

Except that Thursday, three days after having one of the most expensive days of my life and a month after I'd asked my boss at one of my part-time jobs for a raise, when I'd just about lost all hope - my boss came back and told me he'd agreed to give me a raise. A $5/hour raise. He explained the reasons why, something about me being a great employee who works hard, but honestly, I didn't hear a single word because I was CRYING OUT OF JOY INSIDE MY BRAIN.

Then, on Friday, at my other part-time job, I told my boss how happy I was that I had received a raise at my other job after waiting to hear back for more than a month - and as I left that day and my other boss paid me, she included a note with my payment - that said she was also giving me a raise. I cried out of gratitude the entire hour long drive home.

And lately I've been thinking - all my life, I have taken responsibility for the bad things that have happened in my life, but I've chalked up the good things to luck. What if I got it wrong? What if it's been the other way around my whole life? What if there was nothing I could have done to keep my distributor from dying (which my mechanic confirmed), but the fact that I got two raises in two days IS something I made happen? I work hard, I'm loyal, and I'm damn smart. I've put in the work that caused me to deserve the good things that have happened in my life. And what if it's good luck that my car died while I was on a surface street, as opposed to going 70 mph in the fast lane on a California Highway?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that part of why I'm so happy, why I'm so deeply, incredibly grateful for my life these days - is that it's full of good luck, great people, and wonderful opportunities. And I'm beginning to think that almost all of that is my fault. It's a result of how hard I work to create my own luck, to maintain friendships and relationships with great people, and track down and explore new opportunities.

And every once in a while, when things get weird, I can just shake my head, laugh, and know that it's gonna pass.

(photo credit: I got it here)

Things I hate

2011-02-17T16:10:00.000-08:00

Is this the one you were waiting for? I spent all week thinking about this post. What is it that makes us bond more over hatred than love? I think maybe it's authenticity. You see, someone can plaster a fake smile all over their face and pretend they're loving, and we can see right through it. But hate... people just don't bother to fake hate, do they? And so we can come together and gripe together and nod in agreement and think, Man, I hate that too.

I'm sure some of you feel that I'm probably a little Pollyanna in my ways. Always looking on the bright side and all that. But I'm acutely aware that the things I hate define and sharpen my edges, like my love does, and I wrinkle my (cute little button) nose at the idea of hate. After all, if I have such a huge problem with these things in my life, doesn't that just make it MY problem? My hatred doesn't affect anyone else. It's like taking poison and expecting someone else to die from it.

Nonetheless - I will say that there are quite a few things in life that honestly bug the crap out of me, and when I'm feeling thin-skinned, the following things DEFINITELY push my buttons.

Without further ado:

I hate high heels. I want to time-travel back to whenever someone thought to himself (because you KNOW it wasn't a female who thought it up), You know what would make women more sexy to men? If they wore shoes that were elevated by a tiny, minuscule little stick at the end, underneath the heel, where all the balance goes, wouldn't that be glorious? Wouldn't women wincing in pain and falling over on their asses be so incredibly sexy? and I want to punch that person in the face. Guys, if you want, I'll do the same thing for whomever invented neck ties.

I hate writers who don't read, and actors who don't watch television. Know your craft, dammit.

I hate that some people insist on not having a cell phone because they claim that they don't want everyone to be able to reach them. See, there's this nifty thing on your phone, called voice-mail, and it totally solves that problem.

I hate poachers. I don't think I need to explain this one.

I hate tailgaters. Please don't make me break down the laws of Physics for you, because I won't, but a general rule is: you cannot go faster than the car that's in front of you by driving up its ass. Also, if you think that by closing the safe distance that is supposed to be maintained between two moving vehicles weighing approximately 4,500 pounds is somehow going to make me speed up so that you can do that all over again, you are sadly mistaken. I'm just going to daydream about slamming on my breaks and how lovely that insurance check would be.

Tracy hates when people refer to themselves in the third person. She finds it annoying. Even more annoying is when someone refers to themselves in the third person plural. We hate that the most.

I hate drivers who think they can multitask. I've seen women curling their hair with a curling iron; men shaving; people reading books, magazines, and printed out directions that are propped up on the steering wheel while going 80 mph on the freeway; women doing makeup at red lights that turn green and they don't notice because a mirror is in front of their face; people drinking coffee in one hand, texting in the other, and steering with their knee; and people who drive with their dogs freaking out in the front seat on top of them. Stop it, all of you. Before you kill me.

I don't hate ignorant or dumb people. But I do somewhat resent intelligent people who claim the right to be ignorant.

I hate when people put chewed gum underneath desks, chairs, or movie seats. It's disgusting and are people THAT lazy that they couldn't wad it up into a napkin and throw it away?

I hate it when animals are used in the circus. And I know - I hear it all the time - "Those animals are so pampered, they've got it so good, don't feel sorry for them," well, I do. A zoo or animal sanctuary is one thing. A circus - that travels hundreds of thousands of miles, forcing their animals to travel in cages, something already stressful for a domesticated animal, let alone a wild one - takes an animal, puts it in front of hundreds of loud humans each night under bright lights and loud music, and asks it to perform tricks that are not natural to its behavior. No. The animals do not have it good.

I hate torture porn. Do I really want to watch some attractive teenagers get the hubris tortured out of them so I can feel morally smug to the sound of chainsaws and carving knives? No. I don't.

I hate fundamentalism. I hate it in religion, and I hate it in politics. This planet will not survive if we demonize those who do not agree with us instead of having thoughtful dialogue and working towards accomplishing common goals together.

I already really don't like most gossip and fashion bloggers, but when they target children, I genuinely hate them. Honestly? You can't find anything better to write about - anyone else to make fun of - other than the outfit a 12 year old girl wore to an awards show? She's TWELVE. When she's eighteen, fine, give her hell. Until then, leave her alone and get some self-respect.

I hate that Disney has no strong mother characters in almost any of its movies. Go on, think about that. How many of the mothers in Disney movies are either already dead or die during the movie?

I hate that when I tell someone I'm an actress, if it's a single male his response will usually be something along the lines of: "Oh, so you're just a really good liar." Yes, you presumptuous ASSHAT, I studied at one of the finest theater companies in all of Southern California as a teenager, learning mime, clowning, mask-making, interpretative dance and comedic timing for over five years before attending this university, where I learned Suzuki, Tai-Chi, Tolstoy, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Moliere, Shakespeare, Strasberg, Stanislavsky, Linklater, and Mamet while interning at one of the most prestigious Shakespeare Companies on the entire West Coast, after taking a quick break to go to London and study Chekhov for half a year, then moving up to Los Angeles so that you could stand there now and tell me you're pretty sure I'm just a flaky bitch whom, if we dated, would just manipulate you because I know how to cry on cue. To which my reply is: Kindly get over yourself and get out of my way so that when I take over the world, you're standing there on the sidelines, still bitter about your life.

So there you go - and now it's your turn. What do you hate?

Things I love

2011-02-08T15:39:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from Snowbrush, one of the newest bloggers I follow, I am going to do a two-part series: one about the things I love, the other about the things I hate, just in time for Valentine's Day (when there is some serious love and hate going on.) I was going to do my Hate post first, since I wanted to save Love for the week of Valentine's Day, but my last post was, how shall I say, a bit vitriolic? So I shall save my hate for next week. I'm sure you all will survive.

Also - I wanted to thank everyone for their very kind, very respectful comments about my last post. There were people who disagreed with me (which I love) but did it in a very mature, understanding way (which I also love) and for that I thank each and every one of you. I turned on comment moderation because I was afraid someone was going to spoil the party by leaving some hateful, over-simplified, politicized comment on the post, and holy crap, no one did. So this week comment moderation is back off because you guys don't need a babysitter ;)

Let's get this party started.

I love summer evenings on a porch, with a chair swing, and an ice cold glass of pink lemonade, watching the sunset.

I love the soft, rope hammocks that are tied between trees.

I love ice cream sandwiches, year round.

I love Christmas lights in July.

I love drinking hot chocolate in bed.

I love getting hand-written thank-you notes in the mail.

I love honesty mixed with kindness. Anything else I feel has an agenda. If you're too nice to tell the truth, you're just worried that the person isn't strong enough to handle the news. And if you're mean with your honesty, then you probably don't actually care about helping someone out, just feeling better about yourself. Either way, it's not honesty for the right reason.

I love chocolate. Seriously. LOVE.

I love kittens, and I love cats, but I love kittens more. Except at 2 am when the kitten has decided to try and eat my face.

I love comic books, cartoons, animated movies, and anything else that makes me feel like I'm eight again.

I love playing. Take that any which way you want to, but there it is. I try to play every single day of my life, keep a playful attitude, play games and sports and music, play jokes, play jump-rope, whatever. Every day I try to make room to play.

I love my mother. I love the way she laughs, the way she smells when I pull her in close for a hug, the way she has the same dark sense of humor that I do, the way she frowns when she's thinking hard. I love every single thing about my mother, so much that it hurts.

I love clean sheets. I am a sucker for clean sheets.

I love being warm. Not hot, mind you, and definitely not chilly. Just...warm. The only real proof I have that I'm a girl is that my warm-o-meter hovers somewhere between 75-77 degrees and after that I'm either too hot or too cold.

I love driving, though LA is trying to rip that one out of me as hard as it can. Suck it, Los Angeles. You can pry my love of driving out of my cold, dead hand (dead at the hands of a soccer mom in an SUV on a cell phone, probably.)

I love patriotism and religion when they are used for the express purpose of spreading love. I do not like them much when they are used to propagate fear, but you can check next week's post on hate for more details on that.

I love other people's babies. They are cute and when they poop or throw up I get to hand them back.

I love thoughtfulness, kindness, patience, gratitude, and compassion. I am trying to recognize and nurture these qualities in myself.

I love short blog posts. Alas, I'm not very good at keeping them short.

and last but not least, I love this picture so much:

It's a hamster attempting to eat spaghetti. OH THE STRUGGLE OF EPIC-NESS.

(photo credit: I got it from here)

I hope everyone has a very (love-filled) Valentine's Day!

Give me something I can hit.

2011-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

I would like to point out that, at the very core of my being, I am a geek. Why do I bring this up now, when I'm about to talk about a very personal, very serious subject? Because I, like most geeks, use fantasy and fiction to cope and deal with very personal, very serious things. I'll get back to this in a minute. But first, my actual point.

A couple weeks ago, a bill was proposed by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey - H.R.3: "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act." Now, maybe you don't think I get it, but I do. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, likes the fact that abortions exist. We can all agree that if we lived in a society where there are less abortions, it would be a more emotionally healthy place to live.

But let's deal with the harsh reality that right now, if the new healthcare plan goes into effect, taxpayers would help women afford abortions for rape and incest. These are abortions that, should the woman choose to have one, are going to put the woman's emotional and physical well-being first before anything else. And as much as abortion saddens me, I cannot look a woman in the eye who was sexually assaulted and tell her that she should not have access to the Plan B Morning After pill, that she should not be able to have an abortion if the pill is no longer an option, that instead she should be forced to carry her rapist's baby for 40 weeks, if she cannot mentally, physically, or emotionally do this safely.

Fortunately, Chris Smith of New Jersey agrees with me. Which is why he is sponsoring a law to legally re-define rape.

Were you drugged at a party and raped? Not anymore. Doesn't count as rape.

Are you mentally disabled and you were coerced into sex? That's not rape anymore.

Did your father, uncle, or grandfather rape you, therefore committing incest, but you're over the age of 18? You weren't raped.

Did your date rape you? Nope. He didn't. Because you weren't raped if he didn't beat you up.

Mr. Smith decided that instead of telling a rape victim she couldn't have an abortion, it would just be a lot easier if he pretended she wasn't a rape victim in the first place. Under this new bill, only "forcible" rape counts as rape if a woman needs her rapist's baby aborted. But if a woman had the ever-living shit beaten out of her, congratulations to her! The United States government recognizes that she was, in fact, raped. Everything else is a little hazy and gray. And the bill even takes it one step further and notes that "it would deny tax credits to companies that offer health plans that cover abortions and it would block anybody with insurance that covers abortions from receiving federal subsidies, even if the abortion portion is paid separately with personal funds."

PERSONAL FUNDS. As in, nobody else is paying for this abortion of a baby that a woman became pregnant with because someone physically forced her to have sex with him, just her - and she still wouldn't be able to get an abortion.

Dealing with the tragic reality of the existence of abortions is one thing. It takes sensitivity, kindness, empathy, and an honest look at the problems in this society that lead to unplanned pregnancies.

Punishing rape victims by violating their rights all over again is an entirely SEPARATE UNIVERSE.

So when I heard this, my brain exploded, my heart sobbed, and I immediately went to my safe little Geek heaven where I thought: Man. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a superhero who fought rape? And better yet, if this superhero not only fought rape, but fought those who seek, unintentionally but mean-spiritedly, to keep rape victims even more powerless?

I wanted a superhero - a female superhero - who was strong and smart and kind, to fly around at night and kick the crap out of would-be rapists everywhere. I want her to have her day job as someone who testifies before Congress as a survivor herself of physical assault - and who changes minds daily about what rape really is, who it really happens to, and what we can do to prevent it. I want this superhero to talk not only to girls about defending themselves and staying in safe situations, but also to boys about what it means to really be men - and encourage them to never stand by and watch as a friend of theirs becomes a rapist, either.

And I thought about this particular comic. It's from The Ultimates, Vol. 1, issue #9, where Captain America is with The Avengers and he finds out that one of his "friends", Hank, has been beating his wife. Repeatedly. Since college. In fact, Hank once hit his wife Janet so hard he broke the upper part of her mouth into two pieces.

Captain America, being Captain America, goes out on a revenge mission. And when he finds Hank, who can change size and grow bigger, he says to him:

"Give me something I can hit."

No, this is not my art, buy it off Amazon, please don't sue me, Marvel.

And then he beats Hank down, even as Hank has grown twelve times his size, until he's nothing but a pathetic pile of bruised, terrified little boy under a bunch of pipes. And as Captain America walks away, he asks Hank over his shoulder:

"How big do you feel now?"

No, this is not my art, buy it off Amazon, please don't sue me, Marvel.

So let me ask you, Representative Smith: Now that you've told America what you feel defines rape, now that you've told the women of this country whether or not they've been raped or not, now that you've told rape survivors that you would like to have further say over what happens to their bodies:

How big do you feel now?

2011...

2011-01-27T13:32:00.000-08:00

I have to say, I'm digging this year so far. Lots of things have kept me busy lately, but they are all good and productive and I am on fire these days (Details to follow in future blog posts.) Fist bump, indeed! (Thank you to everyone who gave me one for my last blog post. Each and every single proverbial fist bump kept me grinning like an idiot throughout this month.)

I usually do two posts for each new year - one looking back on the previous year, and one reflecting on the changes I want to make for the new year. Last year, for my 2010 post, I wrote about a dream I had - a dream where I was going to start putting myself first, before anyone else, for my own health and safety. And I think I can say, with total pride, that I accomplished that goal in 2010. I slayed dragons and I saved people, but I always saved myself first - I always made sure I was safe. Because at the time, last year, I was surrounded by people who didn't give a damn whether or not I could swim, and just kept trying to drag me under.

No more.

So, with that goal accomplished and some of those people neatly kicked to the curb (or at least fenced in more properly), what do I do with 2011?

2011, my friends - is the year I Get Happy.

Now, I'm not talking about The Secret (apologies to any of you who really enjoy The Secret - I do not) because I don't need Crap. I don't need Stuff. My main interest every day is finding more of the happiness that already exists within me - and then being able to express it outwardly towards others. I don't need a new job, or more money. My Get Happy isn't a wishlist of all the things I feel I'm lacking. It's a list of all the qualities I want to express more, it's a list of simple, free, easy, joyful things I want to accomplish and do with the people I love, and it's an examination of the things I do - those pesky patterns of behavior - that keep me from being happy and how to kick the ever-living crap out of those patterns.

I'm so excited, guys. You have no idea. I know 2011 is going to be amazing because I'm determined, no matter what happens outside myself, to feel grateful, confident, loving, and more relaxed.

Let's DO THIS THING!

(photo credit: I got it from here)

2010...

2011-01-10T16:30:00.000-08:00

All I can say about 2010 was that it was, in fact, NOT 2009. (That's a compliment.) I had spent most of 2009 wanting to punch it in the face, and when 2010 came I greeted the new year much like the Parisians probably greeted their Allied liberators from the Nazi invasion. As in, Oh thank God you're here, can we kick this scum out now? So a lot of 2010 was me thinking, Well. At least it's not 2009. At least Nazi's aren't still running around the damn place.

And 2010, for the most part, was not bad. Oh, sure, it was challenging, but every year is. But as I settled into my new relationship with Benni, as I took more and more steps towards personal self growth and getting things accomplished, as my confidence grew... it slowly and steadily became a good year. Looking back, I wish I'd put less pressure on it and less expectations of how much better it was going to be than 2009, and just let it stand for itself. But at the end of the day, as I reflect how much I grew in 2010 and how many new things I tried... I wouldn't change it for the world.

To sum up 2010:

1) I rang in the new year with an incredible Flogging Molly concert on New Year's Eve. Amazing. One of the best New Year's celebrations of my life.

2) I got to visit Seattle for Valentine's Day, as my Christmas gift from Benni - and had a wonderful time exploring the city!

3) I threw a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies engagement party for my friends Eric and Stacy, complete with cucumber tea sandwiches, scones, and dismembered body parts.

4) I got my first tattoo!

5) I got to be a steampunk bridesmaid in a steampunk wedding.

6) I came out on my blog as a survivor (and took back my power).

7) I kicked some serious ass at San Diego's Comic-Con as Harley Quinn.

8) I took a leap of faith and love and moved in with Benni (and had one of the most terrifying conversations in my life).

9) I took a deep breath and made some important changes.

10) I went camping in Yosemite and then got some nifty new headshots taken.

11) I told my entire American Sign Language class that... well, just read the post.

12) I forced my family members to build gingerbread houses and take Awkward Family Photos for Thanksgiving.

And that was my year! Some of it was fun, some of it was hard, ALL of it contributed to making me even stronger and more kick ass than ever. I don't regret a single moment of 2010 :)

CAN I GET A FIST BUMP?

Thanks.

(photo credit: I got it from here)

I know this much is true.

2010-12-29T13:51:00.000-08:00

Sometimes during the holidays I feel like the Ghost of Christmas Present. You know the one - when Scrooge first meets him, the Ghost of Christmas Present is buoyant, energetic, like a sixteen year old kid totally high on life, and by the time they depart, the Ghost of the Present has aged into an old man and is ready to pass the torch onto the much more terrifying Ghost of Christmas Future, who freaked me out when I watched Scrooged as a kid. (I have a low threshold for absolutely terrifying things.)

I feel like I spend the entire month of December as the Ghost of Christmas Present, starting off the month giddy, young, charged with fire and ready to tackle on the world, loudly. But by the time December 31st comes along, I am a wizened, tired, slightly cranky senior citizen who kind of just wishes those damn kids would get off my lawn already.

So here we are, in my olden days. I am feeling aged, slightly cynical, more relaxed and less neurotic after having celebrated another beautiful Christmas with my family, a bit saddened to once again have spent it apart from That Boy I Adore, (who heads home to the East Coast for Christmas) and just kind of wishing 2011 would pop its head in already so that I could be done with it and go take a nap.

But as I am in my Wise(r) and Old(er) state right now, I thought I would use this post to impart some of the wisdom I have learned through the year, and invite all of you to do the same. So I ask each and every one of you: what's something you learned this year, about yourself, life, the universe, the mechanics of gravity versus coffee... whatever it is, I'd love to hear it. And, for what it's worth, here are my tidbits:

Get your tires rotated every time you get your oil changed. Two birds, one stone.

Everything is comedy. If the memory still hurts and it's not funny yet, give it more time.

Don't hang out with anyone who revels in your failures and don't hang out with anyone who doesn't get high off your successes.

There are two types of critics. The first are critical because they think you can do better, and they're willing to point out how and help you reach your full potential. The second are critical because they're threatened by how well you're doing without them. Keep the first. Ditch the second.

The amount you are offended at something is directly proportional to how much you need to work on coming to peace with it in your own life.

People who can't respectfully disagree about politics or religion are just children in adult's clothing. You grow up the day that you are able to look people in the eye, people who completely disagree with you on every political or religious matter to which you hold dear, shake their hands, and wish them well. Children demonize those who look at things differently. Adults learn that there is always more than one perspective and learn from it.

The only difference between a leader and a follower is that leaders are able to get people to work together, and followers are too busy trying to be leaders to bother.

Criticism is the first form of violence. Humiliation is the second.

Have at least one friend who would be willing to pick you up from the airport at 2 am. Or willing to help you stay awake until 2 am if you're the one picking someone up.

Nobody likes a martyr. They say they do, but they're lying.

and finally, one of my new favorite quotes:

"The truth is that things don't really get solved, they come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

-PEMA CHÖDRÖN

(photo credit: I got it here)

Happy New Year, everyone! And don't forget to share your own sage advice when you comment :) I need all the help I can get...

(oh, and PS - I'm over at Tay's blog today telling people what other things I believe in. Go check it out! Thanks Tay!!!!)

the space between

2010-12-21T16:17:00.000-08:00

Do you know what the space between is?

No, it's not a Dave Matthews song, whoever said that, you're fired. (Does anyone else associate Dave Matthews Band songs with making out with people in college? No? I'm the only one? Right then, moving on.)

The space between is the space that exists between where you are, and where you want to be. It can be an emotional space, a physical one, a spiritual one...whatever. It's the gap between reality and expectations, it's the sinkhole into which unconditional love and radical self-acceptance falls and cannot get across. Mind the gap and all that jazz.

During the holidays, the space between grows even wider for people like me (read: people with abnormally high expectations of themselves.) In my own mind, I'm supposed to host parties, make homemade food, have enough funds to buy each family member and friend the perfect thoughtful-yet-unexpected-present-that-each-person-was-missing-from-their-lives-yet-didn't-think-to-ask-for, make quality time for my loved ones (not just buy them perfect presents, that's shallow), and constantly express the Christmas Spirit while others are driving me crazy with a lack of their own. The natural sadness that comes during the holidays is to be shoved down and carols are to be sung even louder, otherwise I'm a Grinch.

Holidays are hard like that. We try to have the perfect Christmas, or Hanukkah, or New Year. We build up our expectations, or we look around at what others have, and what others are doing. We are told that this is a time of rejoicing...and any feelings that seem less than joyous are put aside, judged, or squashed down. Mixed emotions at the holidays are never quite as accepted as they are during any other time of year, no matter how normal it is to experience grief, loss, disappointment, or longing. We judge ourselves for not feeling what we think we should feel... and it is there that the space between widens even more.

A couple weeks ago, I was seriously feeling down. I wasn't where I wanted to be in most aspects of my life - career, friendships, health, family, job, funds in my bank account, personal sanity time allotted - and Benni, my favorite of favorites and the only relationship I'm kicking ass at these days - sat me down for a bit of a pep talk.

Life is like a game of miniature golf, he said. If you only have fun when you score holes in one, then you're not going to have much fun. Learn to enjoy playing the game again, no matter how well you do.

That's what he said, more or less, between feeding me cheese while I sat crumpled on the kitchen floor and letting me interrupt to blow my nose in a very pathetic-like fashion.

Learn to enjoy the game again. Remember how much fun it is to play, to be playful, to be unconditionally accepting of whatever knocks on our door, whether it be joy or grief or anger or love? It's all part of the game! It's supposed to be there!

And it is there that the space between closes a bit.

There is a bridge between where we are and where we think we should be. It's called love, and it's the only way to get across. The holidays give us ample opportunities to see love expressed everywhere - but most of all, in ourselves, towards ourselves. We don't need to be anything else than what we already are, and we don't need to be anyone else than who we already are. We are enough - and we are loved because, not in spite of that.

(photo credit: I got it here)

Happy holidays, everyone. May your days be merry and bright (and brimming over with unconditional love.)

what gratitude looks like

2010-12-02T18:22:00.000-08:00

Benni and I hosted my family for Thanksgiving this year. It was Benni's first turkey (I'm a pro, having hosted about four Thanksgivings now) and he was so worried, and I kept saying, baby, it's not that hard to cook a turkey. Just baste, and everything will be fine.

Are you ready to get basted, turkey??

And it turned out fine. Better than fine, actually. (The vegetables we roasted underneath the turkey made it smell AMAZING.)

After dinner we all watched some football, and then I decided to have a Gingerbread House competition. I had purchased two gingerbread house kits from Bed Bath and Beyond the evening before (the woman at the counter: "How cute! Are these for the kids?" Me: "No, they're to keep my parents occupied so they don't ask me why I'm not married." I love talking to total strangers so much). And my family peeled themselves away from the television and worked hard. We separated into two teams, and my brother Scott was deemed Judge and Executioner of the Gingerbread House Contest. (When you put things in caps it makes it sound more official.)

Here's Val, my cousin Tom's girlfriend, concentrating hard.

Here's Team One's Gingerbread House! (Team One consisted of: Benni, my mom, Val, and Tom.)

Here's my aunt Darlyne and my brother Jeff working hard on Team Two's Gingerbread House (Team Two consisted of: me, my aunt, and my brother Jeff.)

Jeff puts the finishing touches on our Gingerbread House. He created the frosting "icicles" by using a wooden skewer to drag them down. Can you tell he's the artist in the family?

Here's Team Two's finished house! (I think ours is pretty awesome.)

Scott decided it was a tie. But I just think that's because he doesn't want to jeopardize his chances at getting Christmas presents.

Two houses, both alike in Gingerbread, in fair Burbank, where we lay our scene... The required family photo behind the two houses. Left to right: Benni, Me, Aunt Darlyne, Jeff, Scott, my mom, Tom, and Val.

Of course, we never really do things the same way everyone else does. So, just in case you were wondering about me... yes. The Weird is genetic. I was born that way.

**********************

And finally, to move on to the holidays... Lori over at Lori Times Five makes the cutest little coffee cup sleeves ever. She knits them and then sews on different plants that represent qualities like courage, and compassion. (Her Etsy store is here.) She calls them Green Sleeves and I sort of fell in love (not that I don't already adore Lori - she's beautiful, inside and out, and takes breathtaking photographs and is the owner of the world's CUTEST DOG) when I first saw them so I had to buy a couple to hand out as gifts to my coffee-loving friends.

So when I got my very own Green Sleeve over the Thanksgiving holiday (along with everyone else's), the first thing I did was rush out to our neighborhood Starbucks with Benni and ask that he take a picture that I could send back to Lori.

So Lori, this is for you... thank you, a hundred times over, for making my day every time I get my hot chocolate fix. :)

And yes, I did get whipped cream up my nose in order for Benni to get this shot. Because I'm professional like that.

Love to you all,
Tracy

Take from me these myths

2010-11-23T14:52:00.000-08:00

Myth #1) When you get sick for almost two weeks, missing a full week of work (with no sick pay, ouch) , you are being punished.

I am the worst sick person in the world, and it's not because I whine. It's because I'm guilty. I am guilty for whatever sins I have committed to make me sick in the first place; I am guilty because I am not getting better right away; I am guilty of not being a productive person while being sick; and I feel guilty because I am no longer a Useful Person while lying exhausted and beaten in bed. If I have one obsession, it's with Being Useful. Every day, when I wake up, I ask God for two things: to make me more useful, and to help me love my neighbor better. Being sick makes me feel like a failure of a human being. And this drives the people who are trying to take care of me absolutely nuts as I try to do chores, errands, and work while being sick.

Myth #2) When you put yourself out there for others, it comes back to bite you in the ass.

Right before I got sick last week I had something happen in my life where a big mistake was made - and the harder I tried to fix it, the worse it became. Ever have that happen to you? You feel like you can't win for trying, so why bother caring? This mistake came from me doing someone else a pretty big favor that ended by blowing up in my face - and I walked around for a good week with the bitter taste of no good deed goes unpunished in my jaw and my fists. I was so tempted to take my love away from the rest of the world in some weird act of revenge, and sit there smugly and watch as the world collapsed in on itself the second I wasn't around to fix everything and keep loving it into existence every morning. Which brings me to myth #3:

Myth #3) You are the center of the universe.

Your love will not fix everything; your failures will not break everything. Everyday the world spins madly on and we screw up and apologize and then screw up again and as much as we think that we have a deep effect on what happens to those who around us - we don't. Our friends and family function and cope and survive and breathe and love with or without us making things better or worse for them, and some days this knowledge is a crime and sometimes it's a gift. When I say there is only a limited amount of what you can do you can take that as freedom or you can take it as a jail sentence. But either way it's true - because it's both.

Myth #4) You shouldn't be grateful.

There are two camps that the ungrateful fall into; luckily, being the overachiever that I am, I swing from one to the other in order to partake in them both (high five!). The first group thinks I have no right to be grateful; gratitude is a mockery at the unhappiness and misfortune of others. When the rest of the world is miserable, who are we to be happy? Doesn't our happiness take away from others? And, laden with shame, we lay down our happiness and wallow in the ingratitude of guilt.

The second group feels that with gratitude comes settling. If we're grateful for the crappy job we have, we will never be inspired to find a better job, one that actually helps us fulfill our purpose and use our talents to their highest ability. If we're grateful for our romantic partner no matter how small their tokens of love, we will never declare that perhaps we could do better and move onto a relationship that is mutually fulfilling and blessed. To be constantly unsatisfied with what we do have is to be ambitious; to be grateful for the small crumbs that have been thrown our way is to settle into the mediocrity that will become our lives.

Except gratitude is the path where things grow. Health is gratitude expressed (the gratitude that I have knowing that no matter how I'm feeling or how much I'm accomplishing, my love is always useful), love is gratitude expressed (the gratitude that I have knowing that when I do something kind for someone else, no matter how it turns out, I made that effort and gesture with the best of intentions), true wealth is gratitude expressed (the gratitude that I have knowing that being grateful only opens doors and opportunities and doesn't close any of them). Everything we live and breathe is gratitude being expressed.

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. I'm feeling much better and I'll be back next week.

the one where I explain everything: Part 1

2010-11-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, that's not technically true. I can't explain EVERYTHING. That would take a super long time, and I have yet to find a satisfactory explanation for aardvarks or the book of Leviticus, so I can't really be expected to explain those to you when I don't quite understand them myself.

I am the essence of the middle of a thought, and I try to make my posts reflect that. Maybe it's because I'm a Gemini, perhaps it's because I have the attention span of a breath mint. I'm not quite sure. Oooooh, something shiny, be right back.

But I do know that every so often I leave you guys with a "and that's another post for another time" cliff-hanger and I have yet to ever follow up with any of the explanations that I promised. So I'm trying to change that with these next couple posts, but it's okay if you get bored. You can skip them if you want. I won't tell. They're filler posts while I'm sorting out my life.

So long ago, in my very first "here's what I'm about" post, I mentioned that I once accidentally called Pamela Anderson stupid to her face. Now, that isn't technically true. Technically, I accidentally insinuated that Pamela Anderson was stupid to her face.

Big difference, people.

I was at one of those big Hollywood charity events, where the celebrities show up just to get a bag of freebies and photographed for InStyle Magazine, and it was getting late. We were all outside a huge house hidden far back in the canyons, waiting for our cars to be returned to us by valet parking. Well, I was waiting for my car. I turned to my left and noticed that standing right next to me was Pamela Anderson, who was clearly waiting for her limo.

She turned to me, probably in expectation that I was going to say something, and I felt a certain pressure to do exactly that, even though I'm not usually the kind of person who says something just because there's silence. I quite enjoy silence, actually. Particularly when it's not my voice screwing up the silence.

"It's nice to meet you," I say, and trooper that she is, Pamela automatically sticks out her hand to shake mine. Think, brain, think. Say something that she probably doesn't hear very often so you can be different and then she won't think you're a sycophantic imbecile.

"I really liked the articles you wrote for Jane Magazine," I offer up, and she brightens, and it's true, she used to write very honest and intelligent articles for what used to be the coolest magazine on the planet. "I really like how intelligent you came across, and I figure, no one ever says that to you..."

She stops shaking my hand and we just stare at each other, probably because she's trying to figure out whether or not I just called her stupid. To her face.

"'Kay, gotta go, nice to meet you," I mumble, and am forced to haul my freezing ass out of the very long valet line simply so that I don't have to keep standing next to someone whom I just called out as not coming across as very intelligent. Stupid, stupid, my brain kept chanting to me, as I walked back inside the house and waited a good 45 minutes before risking going outside again.

On the plus side, at least I didn't tell one of the biggest spokespersons for PETA that the M.A.C. makeup she advertises for not only isn't vegan, but also uses animal hair for their brushes.

That makes up for it, right? I'm still a good person...

formal complaint

2010-10-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

To: The inventors of American Sign Language

Re: Some of your signs

To Whom it May Concern,

Hi. My name is Tracy Clifton. I have been learning ASL for approximately 5 weeks now, in addition to the signs I've learned here and there over the years from some of my friends who know ASL. It's a wonderful language, it really is; highly expressive, deeply emotional and incredibly intuitive. Every week after class, when my brain is crammed with new signs to practice on my bewildered boyfriend and my friends that I'm taking class with, I'm so excited to be learning this language and be able to communicate with the Deaf community and those who know ASL.

I just have one complaint though. A tiny little complaint. More of an observation, really. Um, why is it that you felt it necessary to make some signs so very close to each other, and make some of those signs Very Bad Words? I don't mind, really, because most of ASL is also built around context, but did you have to make "bitch" and "mother" so incredibly similar? And how about "shy" and "whore"? Really guys? Really? You couldn't, like, use a whole different hand for all the bad words in ASL so that no one ever uses them mistakenly?

Because the thing is, Inventors of American Sign Language, I like ice cream. And I have no problem sharing this fact, because, quite honestly, who DOESN'T like ice cream? So when we were doing exercises in last week's ASL class of "I like________" and then we'd fill in the noun, I decided to tell the class that I like ice cream.

Only I didn't tell them I like ice cream, dear Inventors of American Sign Language. Oh no. That would have been too easy, in a class full of high school students and single mothers, to tell them that I liked ice cream.

Nope. I did the sign for "ice cream" just ever so slightly different than the way I learned it in class, because, hey, I'm a human, I can't always remember signs PERFECTLY, and people use their tongues to lick ice cream off their cones so it makes TOTAL sense, right??

Which is how I ended up telling my class in American Sign Language that I like blow-jobs.

Inventors of American Sign Language - you're officially fired.

Sincerely,
Tracy

PS: Speaking of nothing to do with that, The Kid in the Front Row interviewed me as an actress - head on over and check it out :)

this wicked dance

2010-10-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I blog about a specific idea or topic because I see it circulating around the blogosphere, and it's not like I'm the kid who sits outside an adult conversation and says "I wanna turn! I wanna turn!" (though I'm sure I did that as a child) but because I have a very not so minor obsession with Here's My Take On It.

Ego aside, I've noticed that lately, quite a few blogger buddies of mine are wrestling with the expectations put on them by their readers. (See here and here for two interesting examples.) And while this isn't earth-shattering, it's something we face everyday as bloggers.

What are our expectations for our own blog? What are the expectations that our readers have put upon us? Let me put it to you this way: How many of you, after being absent from blogging for a while, or maybe even just a few days, have apologized to your readership?

Why is that? (And I've done it too.) We don't owe our followers anything, we probably know less than half of them in real life, and let's face it, no one is the Most Awesome Blogger of Ever that if he or she were gone for two weeks, the world would explode. (Except maybe Alli. God I love her blog.)

But there's expectations, aren't there? There's an exchange of energy, information, trust... our followers start to expect a certain tone or format in our blog, or maybe they check in on a certain day because that's when a specifically themed post will go up. And when we become the followers to others' blogs, we do the same thing. We expect.

Except...

Who does our blog belong to? Our readership? Or us? Certainly there's a careful balance there. No one enjoys reading blogs that are so self-involved that it's hard to create dialogue with the blogger. But how much say do our followers have in what we put on our blogs, what we post on a day to day basis, simply because they feel they have a right to voice their opinion?

Notice I'm asking a lot of questions here, because I don't have the answers. But expectations, while intriguing, also kill. They kill energy, acceptance, growth, change, and most of all... creativity.

I'm starting to check in and ask myself what I expect from the blogs that I follow, what I expect from my readers, and how I want to dance this dance. Because I don't like letting people down, ever. But I'm also very protective of my own space and wouldn't really be willing to compromise on how I live my life just to fit other peoples' expectations. I did that once, and once is enough. It's stifling and cuts off breathing room.

I don't blog as much when things get active in my life, and I'm careful not to apologize for that, nor do I make excuses. (Okay, this post sort of had excuses.) I also try to avoid posting in any one mood for too long and and try not to do specific posts on specific days (not that there's anything wrong with that - I just don't do it for my own blog, please don't leave me sad comments) because I try to keep my readers on their toes. I want this blog to be as free as possible to change and grow and I want the space to have posts fall flat or succeed beyond my wildest bloggy dreams.

So how do we navigate this delicate relationship between being the readers and the writers? It's too complicated to just say "screw 'em", nor would I want to. But it's something to think on, because in the end, the expectations of others are just that - of others. I'm trying to be careful not to let others' expectations of me become my own; and I think most of us face that in some avenue of our lives, blog or otherwise.

In the end, we get to do what we want, and the haters will hate and the complainers will complain. If we could just surround ourselves with people and readers who allow us to always be us, and drop any expectations, and leave guilt behind... maybe we could allow the same thing for ourselves?

no but seriously.

2010-10-11T14:55:00.000-07:00

Yay for blogging regularly again! I had a lovely week of catching up on all your blogs and playing tourist in my own city as Benni and I hosted his sister and brother in law,visiting from New Jersey. We all went to the Griffith Observatory, stuffed our faces with In N Out, went to Six Flags Magic Mountain on Friday and rode all the terrifying roller-coasters, and then Benni and I treated our guests to some yummy frozen yogurt awesomeness on their last evening here.

Also, for those who threatened/promised to stalk me in my last post, just consider yourself forewarned that stalking me involves witnessing lots of air guitar and consumption of Rocky Road ice cream, along with plenty of Buffy the Vampire Slayer re-runs when I can't sleep. Don't say I didn't warn you.

A few weeks back I was tagged by the lovely Purple Cow over at Australian in Athens to answer even MORE questions that she thinks I should answer, so here I am, doing my homework. I better get a cookie after this. And maybe some spiced apple cider. And some candy corn.

So here's the questions. Purple Cow came up with these, so I have to come up with some new ones to pass along to everyone else, which I'll do in another post later on down the line when I'm not still playing catch up from being gone from the blogosphere for three weeks.

1) Why do you blog? Have the reasons changed as you've been doing it?

I blog because I love telling stories. I also love connecting with other people and hearing their stories. And I think my voice comes out best when I write because sometimes my mind doesn't work when I speak, and a lot of times I talktoofast because my mind is going 3 million miles a second. I also blog because I love blogging and we should all be able to do the things that we love (it's a wonderful life philosophy). I don't think these reasons will ever change, but there's another reason I'm excited about blogging and it has to do with a Big Idea of my very own and I'll be letting you guys know very, very soon as soon as the details are worked out. (Add "cryptic blogging" to the list of reasons why I love blogging.)

2) Why do they ask "What animal are you most like?" at job interviews? And what could they possibly learn about the person being interviewed when they ask this question? (Also feel free to share any other stupid questions you've been asked at job interviews).

I've...never been asked that question before at a job interview. Purple Cow, are you sure that's not just a Greek thing? Unless I'm applying for a job at Sea World I do not expect anyone to ever ask me that question. Maybe I've just been blessed with mercifully boring job interviews... you get that when you work primarily at bookstores and accounting firms (as I have done.) I suppose I could tell you all the ridiculous things that have been asked of me at auditions, but they are too numerous to count.

3) If you were to arrange a rendezvous with your 18-year-old self what would you say to yourself? How much would you have in common? Would you accuse yourself of something?

I don't think I'd bother going back in time just to accuse myself of something...that seems like a waste of a time-travel trip. Why would I travel through space and time just to give myself grief? I can do that anytime I want...

I guess if I had the chance I'd sit down my little 18 year old twerpy self and say, "Hey kid. It's me, I'm you from the future, stop looking confused, your face will get stuck that way. Couple things you should know: number one, I know that you've been through a lot of bad stuff already and it's hurt you a lot. And you probably think that the world owes you something for all the pain it's dealt out to you at such a young age. But it doesn't. The world doesn't owe you anything, least of all your own happiness. You have to go out and fight for that everyday and you can't count on anyone else to hand it to you. Get over yourself.

Number two, you're probably fairly confident that things are going to stop hurting. They're not. Things are gonna hurt a lot more once you get to college and un-numb yourself. You'll start to let yourself feel, for the first time in years, anger, grief, betrayal, and confusion. But let me tell you something: you will get down on your knees and cry with gratitude that you can feel emotion again, because with the bad comes the good, and you were meant to be filled with rage and confusion and love and understanding and sadness and heartache and joy and enthusiasm. You don't get one without the other, kid. So take it all, let it all in, and become stronger for it.

Finally, number three: I know you find instructions and explanations boring, but they are going to come in handy. Particularly in this thing we call life. So please, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, start listening to your Chemistry teacher and stop blowing up thermometers in the back of the room. There's only so many times you can clean mercury off your hands and your ~~lab partner~~ backpack."

PS don't make out with Adam. He's a dickhead.

4) Imagine me? What do I look like? (Skip this one Robin as you've already seen me on FB)

That's easy. I picture you as a cow, that's purple, who speaks with an Australian accent while living in Greece. ;)

5) Have you ever surprised yourself with your own wickedness?

I stopped calling wickedness "wickedness" a long time ago and started calling it something closer to "missing the mark." That way I can remove my failures from my personality and it's a lot easier to correct behavior when it doesn't have Ego hitchhiking on its back. (Ego packs a lot of baggage.)

6) What makes you special and different from this blob called humanity?

Absolutely nothing. But I think I'm fine with that in part because I don't think of humanity as a blob but rather as little individual pockets of absolute untapped potential.

7) Do you ever wonder if you are wrong about everything you currently believe and hold to be true? And if it turns out that none of it is as it seems would you wish to be told the TRUTH a minute before you die or die not knowing at all?

There's this quote I love:

"Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much." - Milton Glaser

And I used to think this way too, Milt. (Can I call you Milt?) But then I discovered that I truly, absolutely, with all of my heart believed in a God composed of absolute and unconditional love. And instead of that belief closing any doors on anyone else's beliefs, it opened a thousand doors of acceptance towards everyone and everything that is different from me. Suddenly the world was full of possibility because everything was loved into existence for a reason, and fear didn't even factor into the equation.

8) So how come it's 8 questions? Why not 5, 7 or 10? Why 8? Do you want more or do you wish you'd had less?

I find that 8 signifies completeness in most societies and cultures, although 7 works just fine too. In the end, this was the perfect amount of questions to answer on my lunch break.

Thanks for tagging me, Purple Cow!! You're the coolest :)

And finally, the news I'm excited to share: during my bloggy break, my girl Lira got engaged to her adorable boyfriend, Anthony...and while I was busy jumping up and down in my seat in excitement when they told me, they asked me if I would be the officiant for their wedding. To which my response, when I stopped doing the Muppet Dance of Joy, was:

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!! Of course I will!!!!

Now I have about 355 days to get over my fear of public speaking. HOOOORRAAAAYYY!!!!

it's been a month...

2010-10-05T15:58:00.000-07:00

...for the books, people. I looked back through my posts and noticed I only posted ONCE the entire month of September. And I can't really sum up everything that's kept me away from the computer or you'd die crying of boredom, so instead I'll try to express it through pictures and numbers as best I can. Let's just say that September consisted of 5 separate trips to 2 different auto mechanics, (with 1 serious brake-pad scare that turned out fine, and a $300 repair on a smashed front headlight when I hit something on the freeway going 80mph); over 650 miles driven to Yosemite National Park and back; many miles hiked at Yosemite; many pictures taken while camping there with my family for four days; 1 agency meeting down and 3 million to go when I got back into LA; 3 classes a week as I continue learning knife fighting and add American Sign Language to my schedule; and over 1,000 headshots that I have to go through (and narrow it down to 5) after 2 different headshot sessions over the past couple weeks.

Damn, I'm already tired. Screw it, here's the pictures.

Bangs for the first time since I was thirteen.

Beautiful Yosemite Valley.

Benni and me* on our first hike of the trip.

Coyote!

Doe, a deer, a female deer...

I swear he posed for me.

Yosemite's Bridalveil Fall ...and a rainbow!

Hiking with the family. From left to right, my aunt Darlyne, me, my mom, and my brother Jeff. Yes, my mom and aunt are identical twins.

The gorgeous Hetch Hetchy Reservoir

My faithful companions, my hiking boots.

In the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite, the fallen trunk of of a huge Sequoia tree.

Had enough nature? Now for some of my new headshots:

So...much...pink...

I could totally beat you up.

Mad for plaid.

I'm more emo than you are.

Okay! Bored looking at me yet? I totally am! I will be back and blogging regularly starting next week... and I've got a survey to fill out, another award to pass along, a Big Idea to share... and some really cool news. :)

Love and miss all of you!!

*yes, that's grammatically correct.

the fear is falling away (like feathers on fire)

2010-09-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

I promised explanations and now I'm kicking myself for it. I really, REALLY hate explanations. There's a reason why my blog title translates to the thing speaks for itself.

Explanations are boring. And I have a low threshold for boredom. But some of you asked me to tell the long version of stories and I agreed because what I hate even more than boring is having people feel left out or lost. So tell me if you've ever felt this way: that you weren't good enough.

Tell me if you've ever sat in the room and thought, I have no idea what I'm doing and if they find out I'll be shot for sure.

Tell me if you, like me, grew up in a house of grenades, each step or word the possibility of an explosion, and it made you so nervous to draw attention to yourself that you cloaked yourself in silence so that when the grenades went off you were far, far away from the shrapnel. Tell me if you still carry that on your jacket of self-worth, that quality of staying in the back of the room, flying low under the radar, the fear you carry like a knife to protect you but you're noticing more and more that it just ends up cutting down all the growth in your life.

I walk this walk every day, in an industry that tramples on people who don't think they deserve attention. I have been blessed by the opportunities I've had so far in trying to be an actress - people who have literally written roles for me, or jumped on board a project when they found out I was involved, or looked me straight in the eye and told me they'd go wherever I went because they trusted me. I'm honored by this - and I don't take it for granted. Not even for a second.

But the other side of it is that I suck at marketing myself and I'm pretty much my own worst enemy. If you read my guest post over at Lira's you know that while I was already going through a fairly big life change of moving in with that boy I adore, she helped me pack and shrieked a lot - at the same time, seriously - about how I needed to use this momentum to finally DO.SOMETHING. with my fairly stalled acting career. I had put it on the back-burner yet again because...because...wait, I'm thinking...

Because I'm scared. Because the voices in my head that scream the loudest are the ones that tell me that I don't have any talent, that I've got a one in a million chance to make it in this town, that I'm nothing.

That I'm worthless.

So I gathered what momentum I could and cut my hair cuter, gently "fired" my talent manager (who's still one of my best friends, thank god for his emotional maturity when it comes to business), scheduled not one but two different headshot sessions, and called in a favor. This favor was that I needed a referral for all the new managers and agents I'm gonna submit myself to and therefore risk rejection from - and I knew who I wanted to call but was afraid I'd piss off this casual acquaintance who also just happens to be one of the biggest casting directors in Hollywood right now. But you know what sucks more than rejection? Not trying.

So I bit the bullet. I asked the casting director for a referral. And do you know what he said?

He said not only would he love to refer me but that he would personally meet with me so that he could recommend some specific agents and managers that I should submit to.

Now, I know that I want to be a success, and that my friends and family are interested in it because they want to see me happy.

But with my low levels of self-esteem these days... I never dreamed that someone who knows my work and isn't related by blood or love would actually be interested in seeing me make it in LA. I didn't know...and I never expected it.

I'm starting to get bolder, and less scared, and starting to think this crazy notion that maybe, just maybe, I deserve good things to happen to me. That's tough to explain to someone who grew up thinking she was a magnet for all the bad in the world; it's tough for me to understand that maybe I deserve good just as much as other people. But I'm working on it, and I've come too far to go back now, and the changes are coming a mile a minute and I'm working my ass off to make sure I land on my feet when the fire's gone out and there's nothing but smoke left.

(This is also the reason why I named myself Phoenix.)

And for those who asked about my friendship with Lira - I'll just say this. There are many, many guys in my life whom I call brothers. There is only one female on this entire planet that I call my sister, and that's Lira. She grew up in the same kind of home that I did, so she knows. She gets it. And when things got really bad in college she physically took my hand to the student counseling center and stayed with me while I filled out the What's Your Damage form and counseling got me talking and talking got me less angry and less angry saved my life. So you could say that when she tells me to do something (shrieks, even), I listen.

Eventually.

Not all who wander are lost...

2010-08-30T16:52:00.000-07:00

...but I'm a little lost in my new apartment right now, buried under boxes and trying to figure out exactly why I thought the sofa would fit in that one spot.

As a result I'm behind on a lot of things, including changing my address for all my bills, figuring out exactly where all my underwear got packed, eating a real meal that doesn't come with Fire Sauce or french fries, and of course, reading all of your blogs. So this post is just me taking a breather before I dive back into my to-do list and I'll be back and in better shape next week.

The always lovely Robin over at Your Daily Dose tagged me to answer eight questions about myself and because there's too much going on for me to sit down and actually blog about it I thought to myself, Hey, why not? Answering eight questions can't be too hard. So thank you Robin for tagging me - you are always so consistently thoughtful and such a great blogger friend :)

Robin thought these questions up herself and now I have an extra homework assignment to think of eight different questions to tag others with. I'll do that later too.

Here we go!

1. We all dance with the seven sins from time to time. Which of the seven sins do you dance with most frequently, and why? They are wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

I think I probably dabble in all of these in some minor form or another during my day. Except pride. I'm really, really good at not showing pride.*

2. If you could live for a week in the body of someone famous, who would it be? You would still be you, but you could access their need to know info as you needed to know it. Of course, the kicker is that they would live in your body and have the same privileges.

I would live for a week in Stephen Hawking's body. That way, I'd be brilliant for a week in his body, he'd be able to move and speak clearly in my body, and we'd both be richer for the experience.

3. Do you believe that angels walk among us? That there are true psychics, mediums, or anyone who is more connected to God than the average person?

This is tricky. I don't believe angels walk among us physically but rather come to us as inspired thoughts (maybe it's that little voice inside all of us) and I don't think anyone is more connected than anyone else to God. I just think there are people who are better listeners than others. I'm working on becoming a good listener.

4) Have you ever dreamed about a future event that happened, a past event that happened when you were but a very young child, or anything that was just so real, but otherworldly, that you felt its truth in your soul? If so, I'm listening.

I've never dreamed about the future... my dreams are usually very obvious though, so I almost always feel their truth. I don't usually get too much otherworldly activity in my life...for which I'm very grateful. Once upon a time I took two weeks away from everyone and everything in my life and just prayed and meditated in a hotel room by myself. I grew so much spiritually that one morning I heard what the sunrise sounds like...but that's another blog post for another time. That's about the closest I've come to otherworldly (except for that time I was in the same room as a very cranky ghost...but that's ANOTHER blog post for another time.)

5) Do you feel like you have a gift that you aren't using? It could be for anything. Design, writing, art, photography, decoration. The list is endless.

I think I'd be a really good suicide counselor. I don't think I'm strong enough to use this gift to its full potential though.

6) Is there someone that you are unwilling to forgive? Is it weighing on your heart? Eating you up on the inside? This is a yes or no. If it is yes, I hope you make the choice today to want to forgive and then let it go. Throw out your desire into the universe.

I have forgiven everyone who needs forgiving - not for them, but for me. Forgiveness is a two-way road. It blesses both people and allows movement and freedom on both sides - and if one side isn't moving, the other side isn't either.

7) If we were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every man, which one would be the one that would make the most difference in making this world a better place to live?

I wasn't sure if this question meant "man" as in "mankind" or as in "males." So I'll answer both. If I were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every person (mankind) I would take judgment away. How many times do we needlessly judge others? And for what? To build ourselves up? To tear others down? Our judgmentalism keeps us from reaching to those in need, to realizing that everyone is doing their best, to letting ourselves lead guilt-free lives full of unconditional love for ourselves and others. What does it matter how the person next to you is living their life? It doesn't affect you any. Let it go, get over it, live your own life and stop telling people what to do with their lives.

If I were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every male, I would take away the need to dominate women physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. If someone sat me down and explained to me for a thousand years why men need to keep women from having power over their own lives, jobs, bodies, sexuality, and happiness, I still wouldn't get it. What is it that drives so many men to want to control women?

8) What is the last movie you saw at the movie theater? Using the five star system, how would you rate it?

Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I'd give it 6 stars out of 5. It's one of the smartest movies about relationships that I've ever seen. Don't let the 8-Bit video game fighting montages scare you away. Go with your loved one, giggle and laugh out loud, and then get over the past.

That's all, folks! Also, just to let you know - my girl Lira over at The Struggling Actress is away at Burning Man (that dirty hippie!) so she asked me to guest post for her. She's putting up my post Sept. 1st so go check it out!

*irony alert

best birth control....EVER

2010-08-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

*the following is an actual, word for word conversation I had with a friend over the phone*

Me: Hey S., how's it going?

S.: Good, it's going great!

Me: Yeah? How's Alora? Is she getting big?

S.: Oh my God, she's growing up so fast.

Me: Really? Awww, does she remember her crazy Aunt Tracy?

S.: Right now I'm not sure she remembers ME. But sometimes when I tickle her and she giggles, then she looks at me and... uh oh.

Me: What?

S.: Uh, I gotta go.

Me: Why, what happened?

S.: (cheerfully) Alora just pooped so hard it sprayed up the back of her shirt and onto my pants.

Me: OH

S.: Wow, it's on my shirt too.

Me: MY

S.: K, call you later, alright?

Me: GOD.

S.: ::hangs up::

Dear Universe, if and when I decide to ever have kids, could you just send me one in the form of a well-adjusted 19 year old English Lit major so we can talk and have coffee and stuff? And spare me the poop-spraying and sleep deprivation and temper tantrums and teenage dating ordeals?

mmmmkkkay thanks.

pardon our mess...

2010-08-10T13:17:00.000-07:00

Things are under construction in my life once again.

About 98% of my belongings are now in boxes, thanks to three intrepid friends of mine who, when I posted on Facebook on Sunday that I was doing some serious procrastination with my packing, invited themselves over one at a time to help me pack. I stood there, overwhelmed and a little freaked out, as they helped me neatly pack books (WHY DO I OWN SO MANY BOOKS?!) and dvd's, trinkets and memories, vases and tea light holders, bowls and spoons, into box after box after box. I have the best friends in the entire world, of that I am certain. I must have been Joan of Arc in a former life to deserve such loyalty.

The apartment Benni and I are moving into should be ready hopefully within a week. We won't be signing the lease until the construction is finished, which freaks me out. Right now I have to be out of my current apartment by September 1st and I don't have a lease signed for the new place yet. I am in mid-air, suspended, between two trapeze bars, with a very long fall and a very shallow safety net if this new apartment doesn't work out.

As Benni pointed out, worst case scenario, the apartment we're in love with doesn't work out, we're out the $1100 security deposit we put down, and we have roughly ten days to find another apartment and do it all over again.

As I pointed out, that's a pretty damn awful worst-case scenario.

I also can't find my current lease agreement, (I couldn't find it even before my life was put into boxes) which probably has it very clearly written that I paid $200 for a cat deposit, and my apartment landlord is now arguing and saying, No, you only paid $100.

Breathe and smile. Breathe and smile.

In the meantime:

Go and read this post about fatherhood. It's amazing, honest, and captures a sentiment that I think a lot of men feel but rarely get a chance to put into such well-written words. Read the post right after it too, if you want, because it's just as good but for completely different reasons.

And a long time ago, The Purple Cow over at Australian in Athens left this for me as a comment. It's kind of changed my life, and I printed it out and read it and re-read it almost daily. Purple Cow, if I didn't thank you before... I'm thanking you now. Thank you, a million times thank you.

I think I'm somewhere between Change #3 and Change #4.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

FIVE SHORT CHANGES ON CHANGE - Author unknown

Chapter 1.
I walk down a street and there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. It takes forever to get out. It's my fault.

Chapter 2.
I walk down the same street. I fall in the hole again. It still takes a long time to get out. It's not my fault.

Chapter 3.
I walk down the same street. I fall in the hole again. It's becoming a habit. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4.
I walk down the same street and see the deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5.
I walk down a different street.

twitterpated

2010-08-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

In case I hadn't already mentioned it on this blog...

I am absolutely, head-over-boots, completely and utterly in love with this guy.

Don't throw up on your shoes all at once. I'm not sappy that often so I deserve a Get out of Jail Free card every once in a while.

Who (or what) are you guys in love with right now?

...and the geeks shall inherit the earth.

2010-07-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

If you're not a geek and/or nerd like I am, feel free to skip this post. And by "geek and/or nerd" I mean any fan who's interested in any of the following:

DC or Marvel comics and the characters in them (ie Batman, Superman, X-Men, Spider-man, Wonder Woman, The Avengers, Iron Man, The Hulk, etc etc etc)

Vampires, werewolves, zombies, wizards, witches, psychic waitresses, pathetic and utterly useless human females named Bella, etc etc etc

Science fiction and steampunk characters and shows like Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Dollhouse, Quantum Leap, Caprica, Tron, Sherlock Holmes, etc etc etc.

Role-playing games (known as RPG's) like Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, etc etc etc

Phew. Okay. So, if you're geeky about any of the above, you should have been at San Diego's Comic Con this year. I spent the last weekend there and it was AWESOME.

Let me tell you a little something about Comic Con and why the real world should be the same way. All those geeky things you love? That you may or may not feel comfortable telling other people that you just met that you love them, for fear that they will look at you like you are a weirdo?

At Comic-Con it is not only safe to assume that everyone loves the same geeky stuff you do, it's also expected, welcomed, and encouraged. And if you're in costume, like I was, people freakin' love you. I had over 50 people stop me and ask to take their picture with me. Lots of girls dressed in hot outfits came over to me to tell me how much they loved my costume and I told them the same thing - there was none of that girl competitiveness that the "real world" has. I even got called a "Hot Babe" by the Comic-Con guys doing press and I've never been called a Hot Babe in my entire life, holy frak. Everyone was so nice and friendly and it was an awesome little community nestled right in the heart of the Gaslamp district of San Diego.

I loved every freaking minute of it. So...if you're a geek, you should go next year. Just think about it, k?

Left to right: J. Jonah Jameson (Spider-Man's boss at The Daily Bugle; Toy Box from the comic Top Ten; Benni as the Joker and me as The Joker's main squeeze, Harley Quinn)

Posing for pics.

Two Harleys. Lots of trouble.

Harley-Palooza! A special meeting for just Harley Quinns and Jokers and Ivy's! RAD!

I ran into my friends Jeff and Ian at Comic-Con and they suffered through taking a picture with me. :)

I hope that dragon is a vegetarian...

Lounging on Odin's throne from the new Thor movie

Yes, that is James Marsters (Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) signing autographs. He is still incredibly hot and one of the nicest working actors in Los Angeles.

"this time baby, I'll be / bulletproof..."

2010-07-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like you wanted to be bulletproof? Like your sensitivity and the fact that you care only makes you weaker, makes your skin thinner, makes it easier for people to get in and hurt you?

Yeah, me too. It's one of my least favorite qualities about myself, my sensitivity. Because sometimes it doesn't seem very useful.

A couple weeks ago I was going through a really hard time with someone I used to be very close to. I'll spare you the boring details but it came down to the fact that this person, who is smart, funny, kind, and just my kind of geek, doesn't really have much interest in being my friend anymore. And besides the obvious Ego Flail of my inner Fourth Grader, this person is in my immediate group of friends. So it is hard to see this person and make polite chit-chat, knowing full well that this person doesn't have much interest at all in what I have to say or what's going on in my life.

It hurts. Like, a lot.

What hurts even more is that I just can't freakin' get over it. But emotions are cyclical like that: we get angry because we're still angry. We are afraid of being afraid. We can't get over... the fact that we're not over it. Like a tiny drill, the more we freak out over freaking out, the deeper it burrows itself in.

There's this great ten second essay from the poet James Richardson that says, "The part of myself I like is the part that works, like a good tool. The part of myself I love is the part that loves you."

Isn't that how we all feel? We love the parts of ourselves that are useful, functional. It's easy enough to be patient and loving with ourselves when we remember to floss, pay our bills, wash the dog, and give our partners the appropriate amount of attention.

What is hard is to love the parts of ourselves that are not as useful. The parts of ourselves that are over-sensitive, impatient, insecure, jealous, easily frightened. It is easy to look at these parts of ourselves, the parts that remind us of how young we once were and how young we still are at heart, and call them unusable, broken. It is easy to be embarrassed that we never really break out of being in high school sometimes. It is easy to try to lock these things away or pretend we never, ever feel them. Because they are not useful, and therefore are not to be loved.

Or is it that every single part of us is useful?

Because it is us. The good, the bad, the ugly... all of it is us. And all of it is useful in that it constantly gives us information about ourselves and how we act on this information is a choice, not a pattern we are destined to repeat and certainly not out of our control. The jealousy, the over-sensitivity, the small, insecure parts of ourselves... it is so easy to not love what we claim to have no control over. Someone says something, a button is pushed, and we react.

But to love is to accept, and to accept is to take control back again. When we are acting childish, we do not fix it by having childish reactions to our childishness (everyone got that?) We nurture the childish parts of ourselves by parenting them with unconditional love. And so then these feelings, even though they might be crappy, have a place in our hearts. And so then they become useful.

We are all so useful in our lack of bulletproof armor. Don't ever let the world tell you any different.

what dreams may come

2010-07-15T09:16:00.000-07:00

I dream of predators more often than I dream of anything else. Recurring dreams, too; not just once or twice. Consistently, repeatedly, repetitively. My dreams like to remind me that no matter how far I think I've come there's still a small child inside me that is afraid of the monster under the bed.

No matter how many years I've trained myself to use that damn baseball bat.

Wolves show up a lot; so do coyotes. The predators change but the game remains the same: save the innocent. Sacrifice myself if I must, but the innocent ones are the ones whom I must protect at all times.

Freud would be bored with my dreams, they're so obvious. When I was younger and we moved from New Hampshire to Southern California we didn't know that we were supposed to bring our five cats in at night, that coyotes would come down into our backyards and snatch our furry little family members away. We learned the hard way as cat after cat disappeared, and I still dream at night that whole droves of coyotes are making their way down our old backyard slope and there's my cat, my orange cat Motley, who was the first to die, and he's scared and I'm trying to get him into the house as the coyotes are closing in. I can never move fast enough to get him inside, but thankfully, mercifully, sometimes I wake up before the coyotes get to him.

Last night in my dreams we were trying to decorate the house for Christmas, but a huge pack of wolves surrounded our house as a circle and attacked anyone who tried to put up any decorations. I clamped down a wolf's jaws as it struggled while someone hung Christmas lights off the roof and it snapped at me in vain as the red and green lights reflected in its hungry yellow eyes.

You have to admit, it's kinda funny.

He shows up more than anyone else, though. I know this game well; I've had this dream over 20 times. It's a house, sometimes one I've lived in, sometimes not. Friends and family are scattered all over, their bodies still warm in a pool of their own blood. I was unable to protect them. He moves through the house with a gun, always a gun because I do not like guns and no one is bulletproof anyways. There's one last person I have a chance to save, and she is scared and hiding and it is my responsibility to make sure she lives and that she's okay.

I find her, my mother, hiding under a staircase or in the back closet of a room, and I hold her and tell her it's going to be okay, and then he arrives and guns her down in front of me and I have failed. I wake up and life goes on and I try to eat breakfast and shake off the heaviness and I call my mother just to hear her voice and I have holes in my shoes so that I can pay to tell my therapist what I already know, what I will never be ready to hear, that there will always be those wounds inside no matter how much I dress them up as sardonic barbs or clever machines. There is only so much I can heal but my dreams will not change their relentless march through my head.

What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause.

odds and ends.

2010-07-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I don't blog for a while, not because I don't have anything to say, but because I have too much to say. Since I usually write my posts like short little essays with clear beginnings and middles and ends and some "the moral of the story is..." shenanigans, I hesitate to dump prose soup on you guys when my thoughts are a jumble. But then I look up and it's been a week and a half since I last blogged and there's people who literally check in with me if I don't post stuff because somehow they're worried I've gone off the deep end or had a mental breakdown.

Apparently the only week I'm allowed to disappear off the face of the planet is when Discovery Channel has Shark Week, because Shark Week is like, the coolest thing ever so it's okay to be glued to the TV.

My July 4th weekend was lovely. Benni's birthday is July 4th so we made one big birthday weekend out of it, which included a day of adventuring on July 3rd to the Santa Monica Pier and a ride on the big Ferris Wheel that overlooks the sparkling blue Pacific; playing around on Santa Monica's famous Muscle Beach; taking in lunch at a cute little cafe that's getting a lot of press called Huckleberry (if you go, try the marinated peppers and burrata sandwich - I almost died out of happiness); and then I forced Benni to start watching the Harry Potter movies because I saw the trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and I died and went to nerd heaven.

On July 4th we bbq'd and played Lego Rockband in the afternoon (I know, did your brain just explode from Awesome as well? Rockband + Legos?!) and then headed over to the CBS studios, which are opened up to the public for the holiday, to watch a great fireworks show over the LA "River" and eat unnatural amounts of kettle-corn.

On Monday we rested and watched two more Harry Potter films. I am officially an enabler.

Not much else is new. Drama comes and goes, as do challenges and the ups and downs life brings with them. I'll blog about that when I feel like talking about it, I suppose. For now my head is kind of quiet in its busy-ness, if that makes any sense. There doesn't seem to be much to talk about even though there's always a lot going on.

I should also probably officially report that I have decided that I like this Benni guy and so we are moving in together in September. And do you know how to tell when you're moving in with a New Yorker, besides the fact that you're fairly sure the front door will always be locked and your normally very sweet and friendly boyfriend will refuse to make eye contact with any of your new neighbors for fear of building a relationship with them that later bites him in the ass?

This is how:

Benni: "Hey, when we find an apartment, can we look for one that has a backyard?"

Me: "Sure."

Benni: "And if we're really lucky, maybe our backyard will have a guacamole tree!"

Me: "A...guacamole tree? Don't you mean an..."

Benni: "GUACAMOLE COMES FROM TREES!"

Yup. He's a New Yorker all right.

gravity sucks

2010-06-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Just a thought here, guys -

After I decided to turn my life upside down and change the way I was doing everything and how I was conducting my relationships, I floated for a good ten days on a pure, exhilarated air of confidence and joy. Then it ended, as it always does, and I was left shaking the dust off my boots and trying to get back to where I once belonged, upset and confused. Did the fact that I was no longer cruising in fifth gear mean that the changes weren't real? Or that they weren't big enough?

It only occurred to me a few days ago that what I experienced is what I like to refer to as a runner's high. If you're a runner, which I am not, (and never will be unless I'm being chased by zombies, or a Tyrannosaurus Rex, or I have a bucket of chili cheese fries being dangled in front of me), you know what I'm talking about. It's this burst of energy that hits at some point in the middle or two thirds of the way through your run and it propels you forward and gives you additional momentum. What it does NOT do is finish the race for you. And it doesn't make the fact that you're running much easier either.

It took me a while to be okay with the fact that I was no longer soaring above and beyond my problems but was instead back down on earth where there was still a crap-load of work to do. I tend to get inspired easily, and, like most artists and Gemini's, feel the weight of what uninspires me pulling me down just as easily. Maintaining that runner's high is difficult because it requires me to keep running in the first place - whereas whenever I have a success I convince myself that the race is over and now I can go home and sleep.

Um, it doesn't work that way.

So if you're going through some hard stuff right now, and honestly, who isn't, and you've just hit a milestone or had a major breakthrough and thought, whew, now the hard work is over, and found yourself slightly crushed when you looked up and noticed that there are still 14 more miles to go...

Well, this post is for you. Because we are all running a hard race and doing the best we can, and the times when we are floating on air because we just did something awesome are definitely worth celebrating. But when you find yourself back on the ground and a little tired and wishing you could be above it all like you used to be...

Just remember that you're doing exactly what you need to do. The only way out is through, and no matter how rad we are (yes, I just used the word rad) we don't get to cruise through life. It takes hard work and guts and showing up and discipline and consistency and patience to get back up from a fall, or come back down from a cloud, and just keep going. You don't need to hang on to those victories and successes because I promise you, there will be more of them.

The only way out is through. And you're exactly where you need to be.

shameless self promotion

2010-06-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

So here's the post where I plug myself for a bit. I'm so sorry, I try not to do it that often, but every once in a while I have to self-promote myself or my blog. Have no worries, I'll shower later to wash off that dirty "I just bragged about myself" feeling. If I'm feeling ambitious, I might even use shampoo AND conditioner.

First and foremost, I am thrilled and more than a little bewildered to report that I have been nominated for The Best Blog about Stuff (really? I blog about stuff? When did I do that?) for the 2010 Blogger's Choice Awards. I was nominated by this lovely girl and so far I have three votes, which is two more than I ever expected to have, considering one of the votes is from myself and my mother was not one of the two other voters.

So if you want to vote for me, please, by all means, go sign in here and vote for me here, but honestly, I'm sort of the Ralph Nader vote because you voting for me means that you know I have no chance in hell of winning but you think I'm just too darn feisty not to vote for.

Want to know who I voted for? In addition to paying The Struggling Actress back some love, I voted for Hyperbole and a Half as The Best Blog of All Time, because it's probably the funniest blog I have come across in the past year and when I read this post I literally laughed so hard I cried. LITERALLY. I'm totally in love with this blogger, don't tell her, k?

Anyways, moving past shock and odd to grateful, I have some awards to pass out, lest you think I'd forgotten.

Both the lovely Heather over at The Dream Machine and the awesome Robin from Your Daily Dose bequeathed to me The Sunshine Award, which is supposed to be given out to people who you feel leave a ray of sunshine on your blog when they comment, which I take to mean that I leave some pretty damn chipper comments on some of your guys' blogs. It looks like this:

(ooooh, pretty...)

I like to think I got this award because I want people to have kind and positive experiences while blogging and a lot our experiences are dictated by the kind of comments we receive. I wouldn't wish on anyone what has happened to some of my friends, which is that they have received rude, snarky, judgmental comments simply because in the blogosphere, people can hide behind their screen names and therefore display piss-poor manners and be internet bullies. I find that kind of stuff just pathetic. So I try to leave bright, positive comments that make bloggers feel loved and worthy, because they are my friends.

I have to pass this award on to some other bloggers that brighten my day too, so here we go:

Alyssa at A Polar Bear's Love Song, because she's my best friend and because she writes blogs with titles like "The Great and Mysterious Lesbian Code."

G.Fox over at And I am Marie of Roumania, because everything she writes I end up nodding my head and thinking, yes, exactly, and I love her spirit and the fact that she has a bigger vocabulary than I do.

Maggi at Maggi's Misadventures, because she always makes me smile and cracks me up with her gentle sarcasm and awesome geeky sense of humor.

Kate, from The Cow Jumped Over the Moon, because I've got a soft spot for people that I can relate to and she's a Boston Bruins and Boston Celtics fan. And yes, she is a silly-pants. ;)

And finally, not that they aren't rays of sunlight on their own, but I'm passing along this award because they both just became fathers for the first time: Jonas at Beyond Wunderman and B.Nagel at the self-titled blog B.Nagel. Congrats, gentlemen. Now go out there and be the coolest fathers ever.

Also, the wonderful Tricia from Talespinning gave me the Versatile Blog Award, and it looks like this:

And since versatile means "changing or fluctuating readily" (I really love that idea, thank you Tricia!) I will pass it along to Krista at My Life as I See It, Robin at Your Daily Dose, and Maggie May at Flux Capacitor - because I have grown and changed along with them and every day they impress me just a little bit more.

Finally: one last self plug, my website. It's now completely updated and online, so if you've ever wondered if I can actually act, or what I look like with Really Good Lighting and Makeup, or how the hell to find the Twitter account that I update once a month, then you're in luck. My website has my professional head shots, my acting reel, and a link to my Twitter account.

Knock yourselves out. I'm officially done talking about myself (exhausting, isn't it?) ;)

surfacing for air

2010-06-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

Hey kids! I'm back! (::cue Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"::)

I hope you've all been well while I've been away... it was a stressful couple weeks but I'm through the worst of it and I'm back to blogging and catching up on everyone else's blogs, HUZZAH.

First and most importantly, a big huge thank you to all of you commenters who trusted me enough to be super honest about the crappy people that are sucking your energy away from you. I am constantly kind of humbled and ever so slightly terrified by how much you guys open up to me and I'm trying my damnedest to be worthy of your trust. I know it's not easy out there with a universe full of clueless people sometimes but I can say, since I pride myself on getting to know just about every one of you, that you are all so strong and kick-ass. It might be hard right now (it still is for me) but I really believe it's gonna get better. So thanks for all your comments that made me laugh, tear up, or really think. You guys are the freakin' coolest.

Second and only slightly less importantly, great white sharks do not attack kayaks very often, for those of you who were worried when you saw that photo in my last post (you can read the full story of that photograph here, no, it's not fake).

And now for the FastPass version of what I was up to while I was away:

1) Celebrated my 200th blog post (I vaguely remember giving my cat my password to blogspot, while face-down on the kitchen floor)

2) Celebrated my birthday - my friends threw a picnic party for me in the park and it was lovely - the highlight was meeting my best friend's two new dogs and Krista's gorgeously adorable little girl, Finn (and seeing Krista for the first time in, oh, five years?)

3) consumed an unnatural amount of red velvet and cream cheese concoctions, including red velvet frozen yogurt, red velvet cupcakes, and a red velvet and cream cheese cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory

4) Was bitten on the face by a kitten while I was trying to use the toilet (no, I'm not making that up)

5) Hit someone in the back of the head with a blueberry that I accidentally launched off my plate at a party (sadly, also not making that up)

6) Tried to carry the neighbor's cat into my mom's house, not realizing it was, in fact, NOT my mother's cat

7) Have been secretly rooting for the Boston Celtics to win the NBA Championship (shhh, don't tell any of my LA partners in crime!)

8) Received "YOU ARE A DOUCHE" business cards for me to leave on cars clearly parked by idiots from this lovely girl as a surprise birthday present

9) Opened up a book given to me by aforementioned best friend only to be facing the poem that has followed me around for the past several years and pops up when I need it most

10) Cooked this with a few minor tweaks (I took out the bacon and smothered the toast with goat cheese) and didn't burn down the apartment OR poison my boyfriend

11) Received some very cool blog awards from Robin at Your Daily Dose, Heather from The Dream Machine, and Tricia over at Talespinning - thank you ladies, I will pass these along shortly!

12) considered tossing the book I'm reading for my Sci-Fi book club across the room

13) Have been playing this album over and over again as my summer chill-out album, particularly tracks 1, 4, and 9

14) Saw a BMW delivering Pizza Hut pizza (how LA is that??)

15) Bought this and this for myself with some birthday money.

k, off to catch up on your lives! ::hugs!!::

Guest blogger - Mocha the cat

2010-06-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone.

I'm Tracy's cat, Mocha. Some of you might have noticed that Tracy's been missing for the last couple days from the blogosphere, no, I haven't eaten her, I RESENT THAT.

Sorry, calm again.

Anyways, Tracy came home sometime last week freaking out that she had several huge projects dumped on her lap by a client and that since she was taking Friday off from work to celebrate her birthday she was gonna fall even more behind. And on top of that, this was going to be her 200th blog post and she just couldn't handle the pressure.

Which is when she collapsed into a heap on the kitchen floor, sobbing hysterically while simultaneously eating an entire tub of hummus. Two words for you, people: WHINER.

So I told her that if she shut up and fed me I'd write her extra-special 200th blog post for her, and lo and behold, here we are. Except that there is a lot of pressure to writing someone's 200th blog post because it's supposed to be cool and exciting and blow people's minds.

Anyways, I decided to post ten pictures of things that I thought people might find cool and that I know Tracy is passionate about so I could kill two birds with one stone.

Mmmmm....birds....

Hope you like it. Tracy will be back sometime next week with lots of stories. She waves hi from the kitchen floor.

energy conservation

2010-05-27T13:16:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of conserving energy, I really am. I have my computer and printer plugged in via a power strip that I turn off when I'm not using it; I unplug my cell phone charger, fan, and lights when I leave every morning so no extra electricity is getting sucked out.

But I'm an even BIGGER believer in conserving emotional and mental energy.
Think of the last time you were completely mentally or emotionally exhausted and were left feeling a little used up and unhappy. Was it because of someone you spent time with? Was it the evening news? Was it a crappy conversation with That Really Bitter Co-worker? (C'mon, we all have one, and if we're self-employed it's probably our cat.)

What if we could conserve our energy in another way? You see, when I wrote a few weeks back that there were big changes coming in my life, I didn't just mean confronting one person. I meant changing the way I deal with everyone and everything. And yes, progress is small, because it's supposed to be - the only change that sticks is the change you make one day at a time, one step at a time. Anything bigger or more radical and you end up bouncing right back to where you started, because that's just not how people work. (Not for my lack of trying, rest assured.)

Lemme give you an example: I have a lovely friend named Sara. Actually, she's my friend because she's dating one of my ex-boyfriends, but that just means her fabulous taste in men is yet another thing we have in common. Anyways, Sara is a lot like me - feisty, opinionated, and likes to be caught up on political and current events.

So there's this asshole douche-bag somewhere out there in the blogosphere who is claiming that men raping women is merely "equalization" - that, because women have affirmative action, the violation of womens' bodies is merely equalizing the power shift and that men should not be condemned for such actions.

Well, you can guess Sara's reaction as, oh I don't know, a member of the human race, unlike this piece-of-work blogger who probably climbed up from the same primordial ooze as the Westboro Baptist Church, those classy kids who protest at the funerals of military servicemen and servicewomen because God hates the United States due to the fact that we haven't branded The Gays and locked them up in concentration camps yet. (I think the question What Would Jesus Do? is a tad hypothetical at this juncture.)

The truth is, a couple weeks ago I would have been right there with my friend, all offended and worked up and pissed off and wanting to give this guy a piece of my mind (and no, I'm refusing to link to his blog, I will NOT give this guy more blog traffic)...

but I didn't care. It was energy conservation at its finest. He wasn't worth my time or energy. This blogger's point, coming from a place of ignorance and a button-pushing attention-whoring, was deemed unworthy of even the slightest glance backwards. I didn't read the blog my friend linked to. I just simply told her that it wasn't worth it for her to even pause in her life for a millisecond to get worked up about it.

This is evolution, my friends. Evolution of an attitude and perspective shift that is so powerful it can take the smallest moments and make them victories. We don't have to throw any more emotion than we want at people or places or events. We get to choose - that's why we're adults.

When I told my therapist about this incident, she clapped with such an amount of force and glee that somewhere in Neverland entire hives of faeries probably came back to life.

Conserving energy works the opposite way as well - sometimes the world is a bad and scary place. Instead of standing in the face of what is wrong in the world and freaking out at it... why don't we just turn on a light? Doesn't it take less energy to light one tiny little candle than it does to curse the darkness?

So here's where I turn the microphone to you guys, and you can answer anonymously if you want (it's not just for leaving snarky comments with no repercussions! Who would have thought!) - Do you have something, or someone, in your life that takes a lot of emotional energy out of you and leaves you feeling kind of crappy? If so, what can you do about it? I wanna hear all about your own efforts at energy conservation - because I'm digging how much happier this is making me and I can't help but want to share. :)

speaking of nothing to do with that

2010-05-24T14:07:00.000-07:00

(photo credit: I stole it from here, a website that has some of the yummiest visuals I've ever found)

Over the past week or so I've been feeling all sorts of love from you guys - for which I am truly, truly grateful. You have no idea (or maybe you do) what it means to put something really vulnerable about yourself out there for the blogosphere to weigh in on and have so many supportive, purely fantastical people jump on board with the warm and fuzzy and insightful comments.

I'd say about 5% (on bad days, maybe 10%) of me is defined by what has happened to me in the past, and the other 90-95% of me and my crazy life is defined by what I love the most - exploring Los Angeles, being outdoors, humiliating myself in front of ten year olds, spending time with my friends and family, learning knife and sword fighting, acting and modeling, having hilarious conversations with my mom, dressing up like only nerds do, and taking photographs, just to name a few. And, of course, blogging about all of it and reading your guys' blogs too.

I know the last few posts have set a different tone for my blog and while I'm nothing but gratified with my decision to do so, I don't want to spend the rest of the time I have with this blog dwelling in the past; nor do I want to move ahead with it by pretending I never wrote about the challenges I've overcome. The balance is in there somewhere and although I've always been more than slightly crappy about finding balance in my life I'm trying my hardest to do so with this blog. I want to keep it uplifting and inspiring while not shying away from the days when I am crumpled on the bathroom floor and not having the best time of it ever. I want to keep my blog authentic and honest and not lie when I'm in a great mood or lie when I'm in a terrible mood. Most of all, I want you guys to turn to this blog because you know that whether I'm doing well or doing not so well, I'm gonna respect you and treat you as a friend who just asked how I was doing - and I'm never gonna simply answer, "Fine."

How's that sound? :)

to love and to be loved...

2010-05-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

One of the comments that struck me the most when I wrote "Riot Proof" was Eric's. You can go back and read it if you want but the gist of it was how hard it is to be a man in love with a woman who is a survivor of sexual violence. I don't really think that these men get enough credit for how hard their job is - to love someone who has been so deeply hurt and betrayed in such a physical way. So I'm writing this post for those men.

This one's for you, Eric.

The first thing to know, guys, is that you aren't the doctor OR the wound; you're the nurse. This means that whatever is going to get healed, it's the woman's job to heal. You cannot heal her wounds - she must learn to heal and to find her own power and strength again. If you do that for her it's not going to work. Trust me on this one - I spent a good couple boyfriends putting any hope I'd ever feel normal again on them. So not fair.

As much as guys long to fix and save the women they are with, women who are survivors have to learn to rely on themselves. So, guys, you're not the doctor who heals a patient - you're the nurse who can make things better by listening when she tells you what hurts, being supportive, and assisting with the first-aid when there's an emergency.

Nor are you the cause of your partner's wounds. She might try to make it seem that way - but no, not all men are equal, and you loving her and wanting to be intimate with her does not make you a lecherous, insensitive dickhead. It makes you human with a pulse. Congratulations.

The two things I hear the most from guys who are with women who are survivors are: 1) Why can't I fix it, and 2) I feel really, really guilty for wanting to have sex with her.

I've already addressed #1. It's not your job to fix her, heal her, or save her. It really, REALLY isn't. She's on her own path towards recovery and you don't have to carry her down that path; just hold her hand like she's your equal, not your project. She's not the bathroom tub. She's a living, human being who might be a little chipped and cracked here and there but she is not broken. (I am of the opinion that it is physically impossible to break the human spirit.)

#2 is harder. When you love someone, madly, deeply, Shakespeareaningly (totally coining that word), you want to be close. You want to be intimate and you want to feel like the two of you are the only two people in the entire world, regardless of how thin the walls of your apartment may or may not be. I get it. I've been there.

It's important to remember that when you're dating someone who has had sex turned on them as a weapon, to be used for the purposes of control, power, anger, or force, instead of love - that you have to start over from the beginning. You have to give these women intimacy in the form of love, kindness, gentleness, patience. You get to show how unalike some men really are from others. For this reason I advocate cuddling like there is no tomorrow. And guys, I mean cuddling with no expectation of sex ever happening. Cuddling while watching television, cuddling while reading books with each other, cuddling while eating ice cream. Cuddling while paying the bills. Whatever.

For a girl to simply be held, with no expectation of sex, is to feel safe and loved. It is a huge, huge step for girls who have been violated in the worst way to feel safe in your arms. And it's an incredible turn on. Try it sometime - and this is for everyone, including women - try just holding your partner in your arms and brushing your fingers through their hair and nuzzling their neck and telling your partner that it's not about this ultimately resulting in sex, it's about being in love and showing how much love there really is.

It's a game-changer in a relationship, it really is. And it breaks the spell. Because here's where the pain of what happened really lives: that a woman at some point or another cannot always distinguish between the people who have hurt her and the people who mean her no harm. It's not always clear in our heads; sometimes everything is gray and everyone is suspect. And we feel horrible that we can't see the difference between our predators and our partners. But that's not your fault, guys. And if you stay patient, if you listen, if you love us the way we need to be loved, everything can change.

I'm living proof. As are a lot of my friends.

the kids are alright

2010-05-17T16:15:00.000-07:00

I know that last week I wrote a deeply personal post about what I'm going through right now and then just sort of left people hanging - I didn't mean that to be the intention, but sometimes, when something FINALLY gets out of your system, you just sort of sit back and let the arrows hit what they must. As a result of my post my family is now going through some pretty dramatic changes, none of which I feel the least bit sorry about. It was change that needed to happen because it was the sort of change that happens when the truth is revealed, and too many families with experiences similar to mine drown under the weight of what is not being said, what will never be said.

A couple people emailed to ask how I was doing, and my very honest answer is: I'm doing great. I'm doing better than great. I feel freer than I have in ages. And I have many of you, both my personal and blogger friends, to thank for that, as your support and love and kindness and understanding has traveled through the wires and onto the keyboard and into my heart. Thank you, each and every one of you: thank you so much.

Although I would like to ask some of you who called me amazing and incredible and strong and beautiful that you know I once closed the refrigerator door on my head, right? Right then, moving along. Nothing to see here.

Some of your comments were so incredible, in fact, that I am writing another post in a few days just so I can directly address them. But I wanted to write a quick "Hi, I'm alive and well" post first so y'all didn't worry.

Before I take off, quick anecdote on how to tell if you're an A-Type like me:

I got food poisoning late Saturday night (did you know that you're not supposed to eat a bleu cheese burger with mayo after it's been left in a hot car for four hours? Why didn't anyone tell me this? Sometimes I'm such a guy) and as I'm leaning over the toilet, knowing that I'm about to lose my stomach any minute, I notice...

...that my toilet is way too dirty to throw up in. So (and I am not making this up), I grab the toilet brush and promptly scrub down my toilet and then clean the seat with some moistened toilet paper to get it all pristine-

- before promptly throwing up in it. A girl's gotta have standards, people.

I'm feeling much better now!

Tracy: 1 Mayo: 0.

riot proof

2010-05-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are.

Apologies to all of you who, when I wrote that I was prepping for some serious change in my life last week, were thinking, ooh, haircut, yeah! while I was thinking more along the lines of ooh, unveiling my emo drama that I don't even talk to my closest friends about...yeah.

I'll just come right out of the gate with the fact that I'm much, much, MUCH better now.

I came to a realization a few weeks ago that I was Very Not Okay. I suppose you want the back story; I suppose you want to ride along with me on the journey. That's okay, today I can do that. Not many days can I let myself take people's hands and say let me show you all of it, the whole big mess, but today is different and the sun is shining and last night I fell asleep feeling brave. Today I have strength enough to outshine the stars.

I am a ~~victim~~ survivor of sexual molestation. It started when I was young, very young, long before I knew what words to call it but the wrongness of it still settled in my tiny body and troubled my small heart. It continued on and off during my teenage years with a relative of mine, until my situation changed and that relative no longer had the same amount of access to me. It took me until my freshman year of college to call it by its true name and start learning to take the anger and numbness that had built inside me like a wall and start dismantling it, brick by grieving brick, and turn it into tears. It took this girl physically taking me by the hand my senior year of college, after three years of public meltdowns and panic attacks and nightmares, to get me professional help. Lira, thank you. You saved my life.

I am not on any medication. I exercise 2-3 times a week to keep the darkness at bay. Most of the time the endorphins are enough. Sometimes they are not.

I have confronted my abuser, who is now getting on in years. Each time I tell him what he has done, he is humbled, he apologizes, he says he is a changed man, and that he is deeply shamed. I do not doubt the genuineness of his remorse, but what I doubt is the capacity for this man to change. For here is where it all goes even more wrong.

Each time we have a conversation where I inform him of what he has done to me and then politely and respectfully ask him for the only thing I have ever asked of him in my entire life - to simply be left alone to live my life in peace - a couple months of silence go by. And then the phone calls, emails, and letters resume. Why aren't we talking? they all beg. What did I do wrong?

Turns out, this person wipes their memory clean of any conversation we had regarding what was done to me. I relive, again and again, my loss of innocence while my abuser conveniently forgets what part he played in it. Again and again, we did our hellish dance, abuser and survivor, me reminding him, him apologizing, then him forgetting and picking up right where he left off, trying to get me back into his life, the never-ending persistence of phone calls and heart-broken letters.

So I ended the dance. I stopped responding, I stopped playing the game altogether. My sanity was at a breaking point, my heart was heavy, my appetite non-existent and my sleep occupied with terrible, terrible nightmares. In order to survive, I chose me over him. I've never regretted it.

But I still protected my abuser - from himself. I stopped confronting him and instead let him name the terms and try to step over boundaries while I turned myself into a ghost, drifting this way and that to avoid the inevitable confrontation that gives no closure, only opens the wounds that cannot heal because he will not ever let them close.

I am done with that too, now. Because what drove me to the edge and parked me on the cliff, what made me stare down into the deep, dark pit of what I'd created for myself, given my non-existent ability to say no and to keep letting others walk all over me, is that my tormentor found my blog.

And he began reading it and sending me emails commenting on it and telling my family about the pictures he saw of all of them on it. Every time I sat down to blog I felt like a piece of tape was over my mouth, knowing that whatever I wrote he would read, and I would feel violated all over again - hunted, trapped. Angry. Very, very angry. Fucking furious, you might say.

And here we are. Backed into a corner yet again, I contemplated flight, I contemplated shutting this blog down permanently, I considered turning it private (with Blogger that's a pain in the ass) and I considered moving to Hawaii where no one could ever find me ever again. (Okay, not that last one, but that's because of my budget.)

Or I could stand and unfold myself. Because here it is, here's the huge thing I was missing, the perspective I was so badly lacking:

I am not a child anymore. I am not backed into a corner because there IS NO FUCKING CORNER. There is only huge sky and I'm the one with wings, not him. Trapped down there by his own limitations with his limited view of the world, stuck in the past ... I'm not down there with him unless I choose to be. And I choose not to be ever again.

Childhood trauma hurts us in so many ways, but the way in which it hurts the most is that we can be 47 years old, eating cereal one morning, and someone can say one thing and suddenly we are four years old and helpless all over again. The trigger is pulled and the gun goes off and we are so, so small and wounded and helpless and angry about all of it. And that feeling doesn't go away until we let it. But we are never trapped with those triggers, nor do other people have power over us, even if they once did. I used to think that only death would give me peace.

I got it so wrong. Love gives us peace.

Love of self, love of others, love of this stupid gorgeous world and how incredibly beautiful and ridiculous it is. I have never sought revenge, never meant to hurt this person anymore than they set out to hurt me, but it is not my job anymore to take care of him at my own risk.

So I'm changing the way I look at things. If I'm not trapped in ANY thing I do, how much power do I really have? I don't have to be in relationships or friendships that suck... I don't have to feel trapped by a job or a certain situation... I don't owe anyone anything except to take care of myself.

I just got that. I just got that for what feels like the first time in my life a couple days ago, and I feel so old and so young at the same time because I want to laugh and cry.

It's all going to be okay, people. I promise you - it's going to be okay.

ohhh....we're halfway there....

2010-05-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

"You were happy once; you were sunshine and smiles and a brightness that radiated. You may be cloudy now, you may not want to sing. You may just want to fold inside of yourself, on the oldest couch you can find, by the biggest window, and watch it rain.

You used to find that little things made you happy; now you can’t even find the big things. Somehow, along the way, you lost yourself.

One foot in front of the other, sweetheart, and you will find your way back."

- working on it, kids. Change is a foot (get it, get it? Double entendre FTW) and I'm going to be making some big decisions soon about how I've lived my life...and how to move forward and live MY life.

Stay tuned...

"Miracles are to come" ... Poetry Friday, Volume Four!

2010-04-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

Okay so this might technically be Prose Friday this time around...there is too much good prose out there that is so incredible it could be considered poetry... so I'm changing things up a bit for our last Poetry Friday. For those of who have hung in there through each post, or shared poetry of your own, or just been all-around enthusiastic about my poems as I've posted them, I thank you. You're all awesome.

First up is some aphorisms from James Richardson. What are aphorisms, you ask? They are usually quick-witted statements or sentences that make an observation about philosophy, morality, or the meaning of life. These are collected from two of Richardson's books, the first being the aptly titled "Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays," and his more recent book with yet more aphorisms, entitled "Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms." I highly recommend both books; see for yourself why.

Selected aphorisms by James Richardson:

What you give to a thief is stolen.

Despairs says I cannot lift that weight. Happiness says, I do not have to.

Failure is freedom.

Of all the ways to avoid living, perfect discipline is the most admired.

Why would we write if we'd already heard what we wanted to hear?

Path: where nothing grows.

Do we return again and again to our losses to get back what we had or lose what remains?

Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer.

Easier to keep changing your life than to live it.

The saints and sinners say the same thing about life: Only for a moment.

The tyrant has first imagined he is a victim.

No matter how much I lend it, life owes me nothing.

Birds of prey don't sing.

What clings to good moments, or labors to repeat them? Not happiness, which is what lets you let them go.

Stand watch over your peace and you will be peaceless.

Singing is a way of remembering to breathe.

If the sky falls you get to see what's behind it.

The wounds you do not want to heal are you.

Impatience is not wanting to understand that you don't understand.

Time heals. By taking even more.

I could explain, but then you would understand my explanation, not what I said.

What exhausts imagination is fear of exhausting it. The gods detest hoarders, giving nothing to those who do not trust them to give.

I lie so I do not have to trust you to believe.

So many miracles that we only notice the ones that keep on not happening.

Anger has been ready to be angry.

What I hope for is more hope.

*******************************************************

Amazing, aren't they? Right then, next up is one of the most amazing speeches you will ever read. When William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, most people were very curious to hear what he was going to say because he was well-known for hating having to give speeches. The ideas he spoke of in his acceptance speech astonished the entire world with their beauty and truth, and yes, optimism - things that were very badly needed in the 50's.

William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Speech
Stockholm, Sweden
December 10th, 1950

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

(That, right there, THAT speech - that is why I write. I read it in high school and something flickered on in my heart and it has yet to burn out. To this day, this speech makes me cry every single time I read it. And not just because I'm hormonal, shut up. )

***************************************************

Finally, because I love this guy to death and I don't care that he's over-quoted and every other hipster has a tattoo of a line from one of his poems: e.e. cummings makes my heart soar. He truly does. And the only thing that came close to competing with the brilliance of his poems was his reluctant but still mind-blowing introductions to the books of his poems, which his publishers often insisted he write. So without further ado, here's his intro to one of his books:

Introduction by ee cummings from New Poems

The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople-- it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they'd improbably call it dying--

you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings; for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery, the mystery of growing: which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life, for eternal us, is now and now is much too busy being a little more than everything to seem anything, catastrophic included.

Life, for mostpeople, simply isn't. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by "living"? They don't mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail, a mountain's a mammal. Mostpeople's wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.

-luckily for us, a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving, the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality, the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king, hasn't a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus, would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn't a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation, or a transcendentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily

complex, a naturally homogenous, citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture, his any birth of breathing, insults perfected inframortally millenniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything ,he is democracy; he is alive: he is ourselves.

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being; somebody who said to those near him, when his fingers would not hold a brush "tie it to my hand"--

nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false, nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary, nothing emptied or filled, real or unreal; nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous, true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden, but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface: nowhere hating or to fear; shadow, mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making; only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening; only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno, impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong; never to gain or pause, never the soft adventure of undoom, greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have; only to grow.

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question

Have a fantastic weekend, guys...

"This Ship of Fools"...Poetry Friday, Volume Three!

2010-04-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

Better late than never...you'll have to forgive the tardiness of this post and the absence of any other posts this past week, as my brain is completely fried and honestly, I really think it caught the midnight train going anywhere... and now you have that song in your head.... ;)

Missing: Tracy's brain, average in size, pinkish-grayish in color, probably somewhat skittish and covered in sparkles, stickers, and Popsicle sticks... tends to have a short attention span unless you put on any program from The Discovery Channel or the original Star Wars trilogy...if seen please mail back to Burbank, California and I'll reimburse you for the shipping charges....

Yeesh.

Anyways, here's your poems this week to celebrate National Poetry Month... I'll be back next week and blogging ~~normally~~ er as normal as I get, anyways...

For My Daughter in Reply to a Question

by David Ignatow

We're not going to die.
we'll find a way.
We'll breathe deeply
and eat carefully.
We'll think always on life.
There'll be no fading for you or for me.
We'll be the first
and we'll not laugh at ourselves ever
and your children will be my grandchildren.
Nothing will have changed
except by addition.
There'll never be another as you
and never another as I.
No one ever will confuse you
nor confuse me with another.
We will not be forgotten and passed over
and buried under the births and deaths to come.

***************************************************************

September Twelfth, 2001

by X.J. Kennedy

Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,

aren't us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.

Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.

***********************************************

Yes

by Catherine Doty

It's about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.

************************************

Meteor

by Larissa Szporluk
I chose this. To be this
stone, grow nothing. I wanted this
absolute position in the heavens
more than anything, than you,
my two, too beautiful, my children.
A man I knew once
muttered in his terrors of the night,
no, no, no, instead of yelling.
It was this, this dismal low,
that made me leave him. I will leave them.
All the butterflies the lord above
can muster, all their roses.
I will leave whatever colors
struggle to be noticed. To leave,
to leave. That's the verb I am,
have always been, always will be,
heading, like a dewdrop, into steamy
confrontation, my train of neutral green
lasting half a second
before casting off its freight -- his arms
outside the sheet, how warm they were,
like Rome the year it burned,
Nero at the window, loving no one,
fusion crust. I fly because
my space is crossed
with fear and hair and tail and hate,
the bowels of a lioness,
iron in her roar.

*********************************

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

***********************************************

Sea of Faith

by John Brehm

Once while I was teaching "Dover Beach"
to a class of freshmen, a young woman
raised her hand and said, "I'm confused
about this 'Sea of Faith'. "Well," I said,
"let's talk about it. We probably need
to talk a bit about figurative language.
What confuses you about it?"
"I mean, is it a real sea?" she asked.
"You mean, is it a real body of water
that you could point to on a map
or visit on vacation?"
"Yes," she said. "Is it a real sea?"
Oh Christ, I thought, is this where we are?
Next year I'll be teaching them the alphabet
and how to sound words out.
I'll have to teach them geography, apparently,
before we can move on to poetry.
I'll have to teach them history too --
a few weeks in the Dark Ages might be instructive.
"Yes," I wanted to say, "it is.
It is a real sea. In fact it flows
right into the Sea of Ignorance
IN WHICH YOU ARE DROWNING.
Let me throw you a Rope of Salvation
before the Sharks of Desire gobble you up.
Let me hoist you back up onto this Ship of Fools
so that we may continue our search
for the Fountain of Youth. Here, take a drink
of this. It's fresh from the River of Forgetfulness."

But of course I didn't say any of that.
I tried to explain in such a way
as to protect her from humiliation,
tried to explain that poets
often speak of things that don't exist.
It was only much later that I wished
I could have answered differently,
only after I'd betrayed myself
and had been betrayed that I wished
it was true, wished there really was a Sea of Faith
that you could wade out into,
dive under its blue and magic waters,
hold your breath, swim like a fish
down to the bottom, and then emerge again
able to believe in everything, faithful
and unafraid to ask even the simplest of questions,
happy to have them simply answered.

And my two poet bloggers that I am highlighting this week: Wine and Words, over at Quiet Commotion, who writes with such an astonishing grace and tenacity that her poems sometimes grab me by the throat and don't let go for weeks. Take this one, for example, or this one; beautiful, hard to read, unflinchingly brave. Please go check her out.

Next up is Maggie May over at Flux Capacitor. I really, really wish I had a proper warning for what you are getting yourself into when you read the way Maggie May writes...about her day, her health, her children, her experiences...but I don't. Words do not do justice to how beautiful her writing is, how amazed I am every time I read her blog and how my heart soars or plummets along with hers as she blogs about her daily struggles. Just...visit. See for yourself. Dare to disagree.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Catch ya next week...brain tied to a freakin' leash if need be.

"Miles to go before I sleep"... Poetry Friday, Volume Two!

2010-04-16T08:59:00.000-07:00

Praying

by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

*******************************************************

Advice for a Stegosaurus

by Jessica Goodheart

Never mind the asteroid,
the hot throat of the volcano,
a sun that daily drops into a void.

Comb the drying riverbed for drink.
Strut your bird-hipped body.
Practice a lizard grin. Don't think.

Stretch out your tail. Walk, as you must,
in a slow deliberate gait.
Don't look back, Dinosaur. Dust is dust.

You'll leave your bones, your fossil feet
and armored eye-lids.
Put your chin to the wind. Eat what you eat.

*******************************************************

When Your Face Came Rising

by Yevgeny Vevtushenko

When your face came rising
above my crumpled life,
the only thing I understood at first
was how meager were all possessions.
But your face cast a peculiar glow
on forests, seas, and rivers,
initiating into the colors of the world
uninitiated me.
I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid,
the unexpected dawn might end,
ending the discoveries, tears, and raptures,
but I refuse to fight this fear.
This fear - I understand -
is love itself. I cherish this fear, not knowing how to cherish,
I, careless guardian of my love.
This fear has ringed me tightly.
These moments are so brief, I know,
and for me, the colors will disappear
when once your face has set...

************************************************

Earth

by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily
The Martian Astronomer, gazing off into the air -
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

*********************************************************

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

*************************************************

Curiosity

by Alastair Reid

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

As for my two blogger poets that I'm highlighting, I count myself as disgustingly lucky because I actually knew them in person long before any of us started our crazy blogs. I went to college with the incredible JMarls over at Snapshots, and let me tell you: all the rumors of her being the hot, quiet girl who blew everyone away with her acting talent are absolutely true. And to make things worse...ugh. She's an amazing creative writer and fantastic poet. (She actually labels her poetry under "Bad Poetry." Gross, I know, right?) So please...go check out her blog for yourself and prepare to be blown away.

The other gorgeous girl that I'm introducing to you has a wicked wit, a freakin' awesome tattoo, and a vocabulary that could make you cry. Introducing Mildly Sensational over at Sunlight in my Threshold, who doesn't blog nearly enough for my liking but when she does...wow. Just...wow. Her cute little throwaway poems, like this one or this one, are fantastic...and her creative short stories? Also kick ass. So not fair.

So that's all folks...enjoy the poetry, I hope each poem livens your spirits and your Friday just a bit, and please, go give some of these blogger poets who pour out their hearts a little love and some kind comments. They deserve it :)

Have a fantastic weekend!

steampunk wedding pictures!

2010-04-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when two people really love each other, they decide to throw a huge party and make their vows to stay with each other for a really long time public. And sometimes, when those two people who love each other and are throwing that party are my friends, it means they are sci-fi and literary geeks who decide to make their wedding steampunk themed.

What is steampunk, you ask? Good question. Steampunk originated in the 1980's as a literary term for science fiction that took place in Victorian times - think HG Wells with his time machine in Victorian-Era England. So it's lots of corsets and bustles and full skirts and top hats mixed with combat boots, clock and watch gears, test tubes, mini-telescopes, pocket watches, keys, etc. Steampunk is all in the accessories. If you want to American-ize steampunk you go with aviator hats, goggles, bomber jackets, things like that. Some movies that have good examples of steampunk are: the latest Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey, Jr; the movies Wild Wild West, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and even the third Back to the Future movie.

Here's your ideal steampunk girl:

(I sort of have a crush on this girl. How much do you want to be her? Oh, and I got the image here)

So with that in mind, I present to you just a few of the many, many pictures I took at my friends Eric and Stacy's steampunk wedding of AWESOME.

Me and my friend Alli. Yes, she has a metal clamp for a hand. It was rad.

My friend Jeremy was the officiant and official Sky Captain. He's holding what I think is a modified hair-dryer; I'm holding a can opener. Most people were betting on me with the can opener still whupping his ass.

The beautiful bride and I :)

Me with the groom, Eric. Here's our normal faces...

And here's our Muppet faces. We were both Muppets in a former life.

Trying not to laugh hysterically (or get hit in the face) as Benni and I open our favors, traditional Christmas crackers from Victorian England that usually have a small gift inside.

My friend Jeff and his beautiful girlfriend Somer.

Some of the gang...from left to right, the maid of honor Monica, me, my dashing roommate Peter, his insanely hot girlfriend Kelice, and Alli.

Yes, this IS the wedding cake. I'll let you take a moment to absorb that fact. Every part of it was edible - and it was so freakin' incredible that not one but TWO separate film crews were swarmed around it - one for the restaurant itself (so it can show off the wedding on its website) and another film crew for the reality show Amazing Wedding Cakes.

The bride and groom have their cake and eat it too.

Benni rocks the aviator look and you guys get a full view of my outfit.

From left to right: Kelice, Mandy, her wonderful husband (and my martial arts instructor) Isaac, and me.

The bride and her two bridesmaids!

And for those of you who are into making outfits like this: I got my dress from Clockwork Couture, a steampunk clothing website; my black widow necklace is from past fall's jewelry collection from Anthropologie (the body of the spider is a canister that opens up to reveal solid perfume inside), I wore arm length, fingerless gloves from an Etsy shop that I don't remember and strung a necklace with a key on it around my waist as a belt. The calf-length combat boots I got from Delia's a few years back, and I stuck a brown and black feather I had in my hair.

Oh, and the purple drop earrings I got from Etsy too. I'm so bad at remembering names... they were in a goodie bag from a blogger get-together that this awesome chica hosted a few months back. She would probably know better than I!

Thanks for indulging me...blogging will be light this week as I'm prepping for some extra business before tax-day but don't forget to tune in on Friday for another dose of poetry to celebrate National Poetry Month! Yay!

Happy Tuesday, y'all! :)

"For we are the last of the loud"... Poetry Friday, Volume One!

2010-04-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

No title

by Charles Bukowski

all theories
like clichés
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird.
wish us
luck.

*********************************

"let it go -- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise -- let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go -- the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers -- you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things -- let all go
dear
so comes love"

- e.e. cummings

***********************************

Blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back    may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

*************************************

The Second Sermon on the Warpland

by Gwendolyn Brooks

For Walter Bradford

This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

Salve salvage in the spin.
Endorse the splendor splashes;
stylize the flawed utility;
prop a malign or failing light–
but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.
Not the easy man, who rides above them all,
not the jumbo brigand,
not the pet bird of poets, that sweetest sonnet,
shall straddle the whirlwind.
Nevertheless, live.

All about are the cold places,
all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft–
all about are the stormers and scramblers but
what must our Season be, which starts from Fear?
Live and go out.
Define and
medicate the whirlwind.

The time
cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.
Whose half-black hands assemble oranges
is tom-tom hearted
(goes in bearing oranges and boom).
And there are bells for orphans–
and red and shriek and sheen.
A garbageman is dignified
as any diplomat.
Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business,
but she stands–bigly–under the unruly scrutiny, stands
in the wild weed.

In the wild weed
she is a citizen,
and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.
Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the
whirlwind.

**********************************

The Master

by Donald Hall

Where the poet stops, the poem
begins. The poem asks only
that the poet get out of the way.

The poem empties itself
in order to fill itself up.

The poem is nearest the poet
when the poet laments
that it has vanished forever.

When the poet disappears
the poem becomes visible.

What may the poem choose,
best for the poet?
It will choose that poet
not choose for himself.

****************************************

from "Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved"

by Gregory Orr

Weeping, weeping, weeping.
No wonder the oceans are full;
No wonder the seas are rising.

It's not the beloved's fault.
Dying is part of the story.
It's not your fault either:
Tears are also.

But
You can't read when you're
Crying. Sobbing, you won't
Hear the song that resurrects
The body of the beloved.

Why not rest awhile? If weeping
Is one of the world's tasks,
It doesn't lack adherents.
Someone will take your place,
Someone will weep for you.

******************************************

And my two blogger poets that I am highlighting today:

Marion, over at Dragonfly's Poetry and Prolixity, because she writes beautiful poems of her own, shares the gorgeous poems of others, and occasionally leaves me comments calling me an enlightened being. :) Can you tell she's one of my favorites?

Another poet I highly recommend you check out: Akka over at Drunk Love Heart writes all of her own poetry (this one is one of my favorites) and then illustrates it too. It's amazing... and totally inspiring.

Happy National Poetry Month, guys! Have a wonderful weekend :)