meh.

I had a slightly rough weekend of not feeling so well, which made me miss not one but two parties that I'd been looking forward to for quite a while, so I'm a little bummed. And I've really got no real reason to be bummed, as I've got good and great things happening in my life that I will be sure to post on this blog later, but I won't today- today is a day for a little perspective. Let me tell you a true story from a couple years ago, okay?

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It's my first year of being out of college, living on my own in LA for Christmas, and it's hard. I have three jobs that I work at seven days a week, one of which is holiday retail, and I'm barely making my bills and surviving off of ramen and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lots of macaroni and cheese for dinner. One of the jobs I'm working is at an accounting firm as a file clerk/girl Friday, and I've been sent off, along with my best friend Stacey and her then-fiancee-now-husband Ben, to find authentic Mexican decorations for our company's Christmas party. And even though at the time I've been in LA for less than a year, I already know where to go: Olvera Street.

So off we go, the three of us, and Stacey wants us to take the Metro instead of driving. Okay, fine, whatever, we take the underground train, we get there, have dinner, shop for some party favors and leave fairly late at night. The train ride home is quiet, each of us resting and exhausted from the day, and the train stops, people board, and there's one girl in particular that grabs my attention: she is fairly intimidating in size, she is aggressive as hell, and she is obviously hopped up on something. Her friends provide her with an audience as she loudly berates and makes fun of every single passenger that makes eye contact with her. Nothing is off limits - their race, their clothes, they way they stand or sit - she aims to humiliate everyone who dares to cross her path. I ignore her and close my eyes, daydreaming of a sun-washed beach on a warm spring day.

An older man boards the train at the next stop and finds nowhere to sit, so he plants himself almost directly in front of me as he hangs on to the handle bars. In this tired, worn out man, the girl finds an easy target - his clothes are torn and faded, his hands grimy from a hard day of labor, his eyes cast down at the floor.

One stop goes by, and another, and then another as she continues to focus her taunts on this particular man. It's making the rest of us slightly uncomfortable now, as the man just stares up at her (she is almost twice his size) with confused and tired eyes. He shifts where he is standing, looks around the rest of the train at all the rest of the tired people who have spent the day holiday shopping in the cold and just want to get home. And as I have a perfect view of his backside, I am the only one who sees him pull out a knife from his back pocket.

It's one of those moments that you tell yourself, if that ever happened to me, if someone ever pulled out a knife and I happened to see it, I'd be totally cool, I'd be able to pretend like I never even saw it. Yeah, I could totally do that.

That's what I used to tell myself. Now I know better, because he turned ever so slightly towards me, to see if I'd seen it, and here I am, this barely out of college IDIOT, staring at the knife. I can't look away. I look at him. He looks at me. He looks at the knife. I look at the knife. We finally look back at each other.

His voice is quiet and tired and if I could put a voice to all of the exhaustion that I feel sometimes, it would sound like his.

"I work hard." he says, flicking the knife nervously. "I work hard and long hours and all I want to do is get home to my family and this is what I get?" He nods towards the girl, who has moved on to another unlucky subject and has yet to notice the knife. In fact, no one has noticed it except me, and I feel like I'm in a completely different universe from the rest of the oblivious passengers.

Think think think think think. Say something. Think. God, help me do this better. Think and THEN say something. Don't do it the other way around like you do all the freakin' time-

"I know," is what I end up saying. "I know you're tired. But you don't want to do this. It's not worth it. Your family needs you to come home tonight." I have no idea where I got those words, but I managed to choke them out.

He looks at me, and I look at him, and it has not even occurred to me for a second to be afraid of him. There simply isn't enough time. Years pass before he answers.

"Okay," he says, and that's it. He puts away the knife, the girl and her groupies get off at the next stop, and he gets off on the one after that. About three stops after that, I remember to start breathing again.

When someone asks me what I love most about the holiday season I have to admit that I don't say it's giving and getting the perfect present, which is what I used to say. The reason I love the holiday season so much is that for approximately one month, we remember that each and everyone of us is innocent. And as we see that innocence in each other, it is reflected back as our own innocence. We are all good people at heart, I really do believe that, just trying to get from one place to another, just trying to get home to our families at night, and even if we forget it the other 11 months out of the year, at this time of celebration we always remember how similar we all are, and how easy it is to love one another.

things we lost in the fire

Hey kids,

Sorry about the blog tease on Monday and then leaving you guys hanging. Also, for the record, I don't have asthma, and Drollgirl's breathing exercise helped a lot (thanks!) , as did everyone's suggestions that I try yoga or some other sort of exercise.

I actually do martial arts about two or three times a week, so that's plenty exhausting and a great way to blow off steam; however, I still hold my breath quite often, even as I'm working out. I just need to become a better breather, and I'd study meditation if I wasn't so damn squirrely all the freakin' time. In case you can't tell from my writing style and thought process, most of the time I am a high energy, A.D.D.-soaked spaz who runs from one project and person to the next trying to do everything and help everyone at the same time. And sometimes my body just forces me to stop, or starts issuing me not so gentle warning signs. Like when it wakes me up in the middle of the night because I've stopped breathing.

I've been talking to a lot of people over the past few days about fire, and change, and more than one clever person has pointed out that my blog name is Phoenix. I've always loved that image, and have always associated myself with a phoenix, finding strength and resilience in the trials of fire, always changing into something bigger and stronger and from early on I learned to use what others intended to destroy me with to instead create growth within myself. Basically, I had to learn to grow what others had tried to kill.

The irony is, I'm also very afraid of change. (Refer to earlier post of "what kind of girl loves the things she's terrified of?") And as I pursue a career in what can be termed loosely as a very unpredictable business full of change, it's not always easy to roll with the punches. I have my habits, my systems, my patterns, and when I have to deviate and improvise, I can occasionally go from mostly mature young woman to brat in a matter of seconds. I'm not proud of this, by any means.

To add to this, it finally hit me why my breath was so short while the fires are roaring away in SoCal...and no, it's not just the air quality.

It's very hard to breathe when you're grieving.

As I spoke with a friend on the phone Monday night, I told him that at times I feel what the rest of LA feels; that it is very difficult to live in this city. There are so many people crowded into the same streets and buildings and jobs and land that sometimes I feel like I'm running out of breathing room. So in true New Englander fashion, I go for a hike. I get out of the urban jungle gym, I walk down the dirt paths, past the trees waving in the wind, through the streams and across the rocks and I let all the grubbiness and stickiness of the city wash away until I feel clean again.

This fire is burning up everything in LA that I love, leaving only the hardened ugly parts behind. How is that fair?

But my friends are more clever than I am, or maybe simply less emotionally involved. They are quick to point out that fire cleanses too, that it burns off everything old and rotten and decaying and makes room for more growth. My hiking trails are not gone. They are changed. What's been burned will regrow into something healthy and flowering and beautiful, and it is not my place to grieve when such a transformation occurs.

As for those who have lost their homes, their pets, their land, and their lives - my heart goes out to every single one of you. I would never tell you that this fire has been "for the better" or that your homes or your land was something rotting that needed to be cleansed. I speak only from my experience, living safe and sheltered at a good distance away from the fires, and my heart grieves along with yours for all the change coming your way that you might not feel ready for. I am so sorry for your loss.

breathing room

So, I'm not a good breather.

I don't know any other way to say it, really. When I'm stressed, I have to stop and follow my breath, all the way down to my core, to where it begins, full and lilting, at the bottom of my lungs, coming all the way to the top and expanding my ribcage, helping to uncurl my fists and drop down my shoulders. When I'm stressed and trying to sleep at night, I wake myself up in the night, pitched forward on the bed, gasping for air; I've stopped breathing. And when I'm underwater, I stop breathing. Well, that last one is probably for the best, but you know what I mean. You go underwater, you hold your breath, things are still flowing and you're calm and trustful and relaxed and oh look, a shiny quarter at the bottom of the pool.

I go underwater and panic seizes the tiny amount of air in my small lungs, I flail, twist this way and that, and come up sputtering. This even happened while I was learning to scuba -- I'd have a breathing apparatus, pumping air into to my lungs...and I'd still panic once I was under water. The scuba instructor would just shake his head at me and motion for me to come up to the surface.

"You need to relax," he'd say. "Or just quit trying to do this."

"But I can't quit," I'd tell him. "I love the ocean too much. Even though I'm terrified of it."

What kind of girl loves the things she's terrified of?

Me. I do.

Southern California is on fire. Don't know if you've heard. It's now threatening Mount Wilson, home of an amazing hiking trail and incredible observatory; it's creeping along the edges of some of my favorite hiking trails, trails that I walk and explore and visit when I need a little breathing room.

Today it feels like I'm running out of breathing room, just a bit. My weekend was busy, and I worked most of it, and while some parts were very enlightening and a good investment in my future acting and writing careers, none of it was relaxing and now it's Monday, I didn't catch my breath over the weekend and my hackles and boundaries are up a bit. My teeth are bared a little bit more than usual and my hands are closed a little bit more and my breathing is a little bit shallower, the full breaths that I usually take to deepen it and drop it down and let it go are leaving me full of ash and smoke and impatience.

I'll blog more later today about the good things that happened this weekend, including having a great time at the UCLA Writer's Faire and spending a good portion of Saturday morning with a casting director for a hit television series; just had to get this post off my chest and clear my lungs a little. You know how it is.

because we all need reminders every now and then

I got these here - and they're on sale, so if you want some of your very own, go get 'em!

"transform our hearts / into melodies"

I took Tai Chi in college, and sometimes, instead of doing the movements, the instructor would have us sit down and just follow our breath, to get us to focus. But she'd warn us.

It's very hard to get your body to focus if you're in pain.

Right now I'd love to be blogging, eating, sleeping, hell, even working. But I'm waiting. For a phone call. To tell me if someone that I care about is okay after an accident. It's very hard to focus. My excess energy goes into my right leg and bounces, shaking my chair along with it. I am waiting. I am waiting. I am waiting.

I listened to the new album by Great Northern on my drive into work this morning. It's fantastic. All of the songs on the album "Remind Me Where the Light Is" are fantastic, but right now I'm liking the song "Fingers." The lyrics start like this:

"Transform our hearts
Into melodies
and remove the parts
that know tragedy..."

I am waiting.

imagine all that is shining and new

It's the end of what's been a long, frustrating week for me, not without its good moments, but certainly a few bad moments as well. Today I had another setback and felt, well, a little defeated, to be honest. Feeling discouraged and a little beaten by life, I did what I usually do when things aren't going well -- I go someplace else, in my mind. The change of "scenery" always gives me new perspective, and I remember how transitional life is, slipping from one moment to the next like a cloud changing shape, and nothing is forever except love.

I close my eyes. I breathe. I open them. I am in Laguna Beach, with my mom, sitting on the warm grass in the Friday sunshine, watching the aqua blue waves crash against the shore, the volleyball players, the little kids swing on the swings. We eat mozzarella and tomato sandwiches and ice cream cones and I listen to her tell me stories about when she moved to Boston by herself without knowing anyone, or how she once got to interview the prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, before he was assassinated.

My toes are warmed by the sand and I can practically feel my shoulders freckling, and there are jokes and stories told and a lot of them are about all the cats we've owned, and we give each other advice and make references to how we still think The Gilmore Girls totally borrowed from our lives, and when my mom gets home she will play Jeopardy! over the phone with me because there was a Shakespeare category again and she loves how I know 95% of the answers to all the Shakespeare category questions. And when I get home I will dust the sand off my flip flops and put some aloe on my shoulders and go to bed, dreaming of summer days of warmth and love, and I will know that yes, this too shall pass. It always does.