My Sanctuary

last week i went hunting through my backyard with a determination to see it with new eyes. I unpacked my camera, slipped off my shoes,  grabbed a cup of tea and headed into a world i last explored as far back as the sixth grade. 

what i found looked like it was out of another country. 

it looked like a place that could house magic.

it looked like a place the childhood me would be sure not to forget... 

and i guess a piece of me didn't. because this morning, the dew and the porch were calling my name, and i followed. 

the storm (an age old intervention)

It started where it usually starts. A bad rehearsal. There's no use getting in too deep into my post-rehearsal conundrums. They happen often. They last far too long. This is surely one of my top 5 mental quandaries.
This time I found myself sitting in the driver's seat of my car, looking into the rear-view mirror. A simple sight line check became an investigation of my face.
Dark smudges of fallen mascara beneath my eyes.
This lead me to unearth the traces of what I know will become crow's feet in ten years or so.
Which lead me to thinking about my future.

And the future got a little out of control.

I felt my heart beating at a heightened pace as I pulled out of my spot and drove home. The whole way I bombarded myself with questions: "How will you fix this scene?", "what can you do to make it better?", "what if you embarrass yourself?", "can you convey this extreme of a struggle?", "is your scene partner feeling sorry that he signed up to do this with you?", "if you can't do this how are you going to be an actress?"
"Could Naiomi Watts do this?...Probably yes."
Every time I stopped at a stoplight, I had the urge to plug in my ipod and drown out my thought, but I always negated the urge, with a feeling of obligation to keep going.
I felt like if I didn't ask the questions, and more importantly if I didnt have answers, then I lost.
When I got home I shut off my phone and plans and turned on the T.V.

I didn't watch good T.V.

Fuck good acting. Fuck any acting.

This lasted a while.


And then I noticed the rain.

I love night-time rain.

I love the feeling of brief containment.

I love my childhood notion that night-time rain is nature knowing every one's plans have passed, and that it's ceremony of sorts can begin.

My ceremonial response is... smoking a cigarette on the porch.

I sat, and watched, and pressed my legs against the cushions in different positions. And this storm grew wild. Awe...awesome. In the midst of my gaping, I heard the door open. In the lamp light my brother's figure sauntered out, prime time in one hand, lighter in the other. "Whoa. It's crazy, right?",he said. I nodded, and motioned for him to come over.

and we sat together, talking against the storm.

and after a while he looked back to me and smiled

"you left the window of the car open", he said

and my, "oh...shit", and his chuckle, became a dare we were both willing to take up.

and we ran.

past the car and into the street.

with porches of neighbors as an audience to our spectacle.

and I felt brave and small all at once.

and we kept on running until the storm expanded beyond our imaginations

and the sense in our feet

and reminded us we were mortal.

As I plodded into my bathroom to change, sucked into my flower print dress, I turned on the light and smiled at myself in the mirror. I could see my face, without the weight of my thought. And I loved what I saw.

king lear in the storm by john runciman 1767

Listen to these. they work magic on me.

press yourself up against the wall of a hallway and flip upside-down....then stretch and fuck around. 

A Max Poem

The Fourth

on the fourth of her wine glasses
I wrote in permanent marker “say
sorry! you must even if you don’t know why” only
to find that permanent ink is
easily re
moveable when
scribbled on secondhand glassware.
I lay on a bare mattress in
empty room
vacant house
everyone is interning for the summer
sleeping in their old beds
sleeping with old girlfriends
or the old girlfriends
of old
friends.
I am paying utilities for the first time in
my life
the whole thing makes me think
the way I thought I’d feel after a
graduation
or triumphant
promenade or
maybe even a success in criminal
activity (but I never felt this after any photographable event)
costly, I curl and ball into
invisible sheets drawing
invisible curtains so as not to
glimpse the cleared
out room where she used
to sleep
(the room where she never read
any of the obvious signals)
(or
emails
I invisibly sent her) with the
backside of my eyes
and the frontside of my
inexcusable silences.
oh! the hobbies we hope
to tragically acquire from the dealers
of substances we are too
old to pretend
we don’t use.
the fourth of her wine glasses was only a fifth of my
problems, which maybe points to the
idiocy of permanence on glass. yet the promise of
seventh chances remains
intact.

for max

I have always kept my limbs in check for you.
Each month I stamp them with the patch of a picture I found on facebook of the girl that you once sat on.
The girl who was clearly widdling down the pretty personality she scripted out in highschool, shaping her laugh into something that may fit in better to the new-found hip of the Ivy Leagues.

It looked to me like indian feathers and a paper-bag oragami hat cropped into a polaroid frame and skinny jeans.
Whatever,
you like it, and I obviously appreciate the kodak chrome lines enough to envy them.

My legs, fractionally, don't add up against the rest of me. Not like hers.

I never understood this love you had with the small and sweet.
When we drove through magnetic fields up to whyoming, you looked so comfortable against the window that I imagined you loving a girl who looked like the landscape that was pressing against your face.
Simple and beautiful with a long nose, like your mother.
I imagined a girl with a big mind, and a broad laugh, and a bad back.
And glass beads
And a skirt that looked as if the air beneath it had potential for something more than what we could offer up in highschool.
Yesterday you pulled out a picture of another.
She seemed like something new, and her face held an air of something that I think could match your mothers.
and your confederate boots would look good on her.
and I liked your smile when i said that she was hot.

everybody knows

Ryan Adams, is my new infatuation. An expensive one at that. To start, I made a serious dent on my itunes budget trying to find all of the songs I could that caught my interest in the 20 second (or so) clip. This didn’t work as much of a sift, because all of his songs are rad. After listening to him as backdrop tunes to my domestic life, I was determined to be able to play him while I was driving. Thus began my three hour "Spring Wireless" experience, which ended in a forty dollar media card. Since then I have burned his Easy Tiger album three times, and spent a good five dollars at least on extra gas trying to finish the current song.

I consider myself beyond frugal. 

He is worth abandoning habit.

I want to love so hard when I listen. I want to be infatuated and heartbroken and self-deprecating in the name of love.

 I am not in a relationship. I have not felt the pain of ending a relationship since the summer after my high school junior year, when I was broken up with at a coffee shop and couldn’t stop crying for long enough to be able to drive the ten minute drive to my house. Little me downed jager bombs with the sole intent of having the courage to drunk dial, cut off my hair and dyed it black, and wrote long (pathetically desperate) emails about my feelings on a weekly basis. (poor guy). Since then it’s been pretty smooth sailing. I haven’t been the one left behind since then, nor have I put much into any (more-than-plutonic) relationship.

Now, of course, isn’t the time to change this. I am more than occupied with a school curriculum that could be described as nothing less than life-consuming, but Ryan Adams’ lyrics on heartbreak are turning my blood in a way that makes me want to jump in to love and get totally fucked up.
You should really listen.

A Prayer For Her

A Prayer For Her

To her, 

I thought a lot about you today. 

Today I read over a case huge case. It concerned bank fraud. It told the story of  62 year old man, working his way through life, taking on one challenge at a time, trying to create a story he could be proud of. He talked about growing up in a small town, working his way through high school, and earning his way through college. Graduating and working as a grunt man to pay off loans. Taking the risk of starting his own business. Laboring through nights and weekends, giving up his social life and putting his life on hold in order to create a product. His business grew, he began employing more and more people, until the ball was rolling and he could finally rest. He married, and bought a little home, investing in it bit by bit, saving what he could. Him and his wife worked their way through parenthood, earning enough to send their children through college, and finally were back on their own. When they realized that, at the end of all this, they still had some money they could save, they invested it...their entire life savings, in a trust. A trust that happened to be involved in a huge Ponzi scheme. They lost everything.

As I read their statement, I nearly cried. I could feel how broken this man was. How he had lost something so precious, and all he could do was beg for someone to be accountable. I could feel how angry he was at the unfair circumstance. I could feel a sense of hopelessness. And still, he was putting up a fight. 

I have seen you go through a similar battle. You have been stripped down to a circumstance that is anything but fair...and there is no one to account for it. You are the one who has taken on  your health, your employment, your lack of employment, your empty nest, the errors in the paths of others. You have taken on many burdens.

It is clear that it hasn't been seamless. I can't say that you handled it with an air of ease, and that I haven't worried about you along the way. There have been times where I felt more afraid than I have ever felt before. Afraid that your spirit would break, or that your body couldn't take it. 

I can say however, that this is the strongest fight I have ever seen.

You have conquered the demons that come with  the doctors orders, you have drowsily emerged from the surgeries, you have had your neck braced, your back broken. You have had your trust crushed, and your hard work dismissed. You have had half of your home abandoned for "the next chapter". And through this and more, bitterness has never reached the table. Instead, you have never stopped picking up the phone, the ingredients, the puzzle pieces, in a brave attempt to shuffle things around until they work again. You haven't stopped showing that you still have a lot of love in you.

I am in awe of you, little woman. 

And now here you are on the first journey of what both you and I hope to be your next chapter. 

My four hour road-prayer is this: 

When you leave our driveway, acknowledge how well you prepared your suitcase of work...you are equip. Even without the papers.

When you look in the rear view mirror, please make sure you aren't backing into anything...and then recognize how beautiful you are. 

As you leave town, get excited to leave. 

When you merge onto the highway, roll down the window as much or as little as you like... you're the only one you have to accommodate. Bring a little of this back with you. 

Get lost in that book on tape. If it's bad, put in the CD I made for you before I left for college (and remember it was made for you when you listen to the lyrics). 

When you drive by Boulder, think of dad, and know he's thinking of you. He always is. 

As you enter the mountains, take in the air, live in how lucky we are and the knowledge that this is what is real... forget the petty parts of your past. 

When things seem long, recline... let your back be bossy for once. 

When you get bored, stop in a station and buy a pepsi and some lays... when I think of you, often what comes to mind is you laying out by a pool with these in hand. 

Relish in the silence that comes with not having dad deciphering a map next to you, colin playing crappy rap, or me complaining about having to eat real food. 

Enjoy being alone, enjoy starting fresh, enjoy having something to look forward to. 

you are a superior human. 

and if that's not enough, you can always look down and acknowledge the 6 missed calls I've left you today. 

 

I could feast on this

Have you ever walked out of a movie theater filled with a craving to be like the woman you saw on the screen. You think about how you could manipulate your style, clothing, hair, sense of humor, hobbies, way with men, vibe, hips... to be more like her?

I feel this way all the time. A jealousy of fictional characters consumes me far more than it does for any "real" woman. Perhaps it's because they're virtues are highlighted in response to elevated circumstances (that we never see). They are pedestaled for us to observe at the height of fruitful love, or the greatest fight of their lives.

And, of course, they do it with the heat that's inherent when 4 makeup artists, a wardrobe, and lights are present.

Here are my current 10.

The ones that have me re-evaluating my life (and for the record...I'm self admittedly not envious for all the right reasons)

1. Maria Elena from Vicky Christina Barcelona (erotic, wild, dangerous)

2. Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility (smart, passionate, lovesick) 

3. Sheba Hart from Notes on a Scandal (stunning, etherial, lost) 

4. Stephanie The Science of Sleep (dreamy, whimsical, smart, understated)

5. Poppy Happy go Lucky (brave, quirky, lighthearted)

6. Em in Adventureland (bad ass, sultry, 80's rock) 

7. Amelie in Amelie (curious, simple, colorful) 

8. Bellatrix in Harry Potter Series (Dark, sketch, magician)

9. The Bride from Kill Bill (killer cool, fit, ambitious) 

10. Margo from The Royal Tenembaums (tragic, erotic, chic)

watch these movies to see some great stuff. 

A Collection of Hearts

Our second sunny day in Laguna, California, felt like nothing less frantic than a fire drill. Every morning that trip, my parents woke early to drink a cup of jo and scavenge the sky for a chance of sun. The moment the sun did manage to burn its way through the clouds that morning, my brother and I were promptly awoken, and our entire family racked the hotel room in a free-for-all search for for swimsuits, sunscreen, glasses, umbrella, sheet, a deck of cards, henna kit, water bottles, and the complimentary oranges we had received from room service the night before. And in five minutes or so we were wading out the door like zombies with a need for speed. When we reached the water we set up camp on a sand slope and then ran for the waves.
My family has a strange relationship with the ocean. After the five second initial skin shock of being in water that cold, we become a clan of children no older than 8. All inherited behavioral patterns we've accumulated since elementary school seem to be shaken off with the waves and the water becomes our war zone of fun. I looked over and saw my brother get straight up giddy as he stared out into the distance stating "I can read the waves Jus!!". In front of me stood my dad my dad, leaning into the water with a runners stance...and ten seconds later he was laying on top of a wave, riding it to the shore. I watched as he stood up, turned to me with the air of a champion and hollered "Whoa!", as he dripped from every angle with sand. Behind me swam my mother, with her hair tousled into her face in a bright salmon pink one piece. Her name should have been Sophie (a name I correlate with a fictional freckle faced, five-year-old ). She was litter ally toddling around, grinning from ear to ear. And as for me. I couldn't stop jumping. I felt like I was in a rave with the forces of nature, and the only thing to do was dance, and laugh, and yell back at my dad "How do I do it?"


If there was sun, we were there at that beach. Spending the whole day picnicking, body surfing, playing cards, reading, and hiking our way around the surrounding coast.

When my dad got back from his last walk on the beach, I was laying on our sheet with a towel over my head, taking a cat nap. He scratched my head. "Pick a hand." he said. I chose one, he rearranged. "Pick a hand." he said, smiling. I picked the same one. I the palm of his hand lay a shell fragment weathered into the shape of a heart. He does this a lot. Over the years since I was about 8, he has always gifted me with heart shaped rocks and shells. It's a constant. I've treasured them, boxed them, displayed them, pocketed them, scattered them about, and lost them. And he never stopped giving them.

This time, I lost my heart. I lay it in the sand and left it. But two days ago, back at home in the kitchen, dad came to me again... "I have your heart", he said. "I picked it up since you didn't bother to take care of it." And I winced and laughed it off. But today, I've thought a lot about those hearts, and my dad has earned just another reason for me to love him. These gifts are the most sincerely genuine little trinkets I have ever received. He always picks them when he is all alone with the world, with no one to dictate his attention On a day like this. He did it in a time with no demands or obligations, when he was happy and at peace... in this quiet time he scavenged through thousands for a heart shaped stone... for his daughter.

Maybe this was a long winded way of recognizing this small series of lovings acts, but I think it's pretty neat :)

(yesss, that is a clown nose around his neck...)

I just wiped your steam stain tag off my bathroom mirror

the little plastic heart figure, reading: "your cute" (suctioned by my dad into the space next to your writing) made me smile afterwards.

I'll miss you just enough.

Enough with the cupcakes. (an entry with the possibility of smugness)

I was introduced to the cupcake phenomenon two years ago when I visited my friend Ed in Greenwich Village. He's an old friend of my dad's. Short guy, with a vibe I can only trace to my fictional composition of what Bob Dylan must be like away from the cameras. He has tousled grey hair, lives in a loft that he's owned since the early seventies and has a Korean artist for a wife. When I arrived at his apartment we chatted for a while, browsed his record collection, I sat on his futon while he fed his dog, and then we watched layer cake together. After this he insisted we try the local cupcakes from magnolia bakery. So we leashed up his dog, lit him up a cigarette and started walking.

Ed hated this shop. He ranted the entire way about the history this bakery had gone through with law suits in regards to ingredients, the long line we had to wait on, the way cupcake vendors had erupted into chains all over his neighborhood along with the yogurtlands, and his ultimate dissatisfaction with the product. Even so, he wanted me to "experience the hype."

I thought they were pretty good, though I would much rather have indulged in a scoop of corn ice cream from the local Cones ice cream shop, or a Levain fist size (right out of the oven cookie). These were fair.

And so it began. From that point on I have seen cupcakes all over the place. They've gained rule over cookbooks, little lots dotting every neighborhood up to the Heights, friendly conversation, even blogs. Oh, the blogs I have read. Is this for real? Are we all really that into cupcakes, or is this just a quarter-life equivalent of the Pokemon/pog phase? A way of showing off how careless we are with our eating habits? I'm overwhelmed by the cuteness of it all...the way it flirts up the profile of a woman like butterfly clips and gel pens did the girls in middle school. And I usually love cutesy.
Enough.

Lets get back to the real goods. Let's go crazy about the ginger cookies dad makes as a gift to us for his birthday, or the pie that you can only find midtown, or the berry pound cake you discovered after scavenging through cookbooks, and made perfectly.

Maybe this proposition is just as romantic. Oh well :)

my favorite accessible treats (in manhattan)
1. Levain cookies of any kind
2. Cones Ice Cream preferably Corn with Cinnamon, or plain yogurt
3. Little Pie Company
4. The Grey Dog's Coffee- Massive Cheesecake Marble Brownie
5. ChikaLicious desert meal

This Man Earned the "King"

"And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.
If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.
If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are."
— From the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

My dad posted this quote next to our computer and I just got around to reading it last night. This speech turns me on. It makes me want to crack open Shakespeare's cannon, ride a bike to work tomorrow, watch a movie with my parents. Doesn't it seem so easy?

Before I left school I saw a performance out of a girl in my class, that literally made my head spin. She had every ingredient I have ever attributed to a great performance. She pulled off an emotional state in a way that was so tactfully spun, and truthfully filled, that I felt leagues away from her. I wondered how I ended up in the same place, in this program, when I'm still working on alexanderizing my spine, and pronouncing "men" and "send" in proper Standard American. And then, unlike all other times in which I have self-deprecating thoughts... I dug myself out.
I was ok.
I was more than ok.
I was good.
I am good...really good, at doing what I do.
Working hard has earned me the indulgence of recognizing this.

All we have to do, is do what we are doing the best we can. Whether being the best daughter to my mother I can be, the healthiest woman I can be, the best actress I can be . I don't need to be the tree at the top of the mountain... There may be a time that I am... but for now I can be the raspberry bush hidden on the slope, with the beautiful view of the river. As long as I try my darnedest to bear fruit.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. -Anaïs Nin

This just may be the most intimidating quote I've ever read on writing. This concept has over and over again filled me with a self doubt in regards to sharing my thoughts on websites like this. Or even to myself,really. I've never kept a diary more than a week. I always seem to find myself curiously looking over pages from the night before, feeling an escalating amount of embarrassment as I go. The words seem contrived and stale. Their like kitsch without the cool part...just completely syrupy and overly manipulated...and I get scared. I become afraid of becoming uninteresting even to myself.
When I was younger, I was never afraid to share my writing. I remember the first poem I wrote was about jello wiggling on a spoon and lasted about 5 lines. I drew a picture to match, with crayola markers, glue stickied it to the rim of the text, dug into our "artists pantry" and squeezed out a folder, placed my poem carefully into the pocket, and fastened my gift, promptly, into my backpack. This poem was then entered with no second thought into an elementary display contest. I won... me and 13 other brave little babes. That day, every time our buddy line passed by the shiny glass case I would point, shuffle kick the kid in front of me, and gloat like lightening, trying to make sure they saw my name before the short window of opportunity passed.
That afternoon, I ran out to my fathers old white dodge van (where he sat waiting for me everyday outside the school), and dragged him out of his rumpled up seat. My self esteem beamed beyond the usual embarrassment I felt within 15 feet of his car on any ordinary day. As we entered the lobby of the school, I bolted up to the glass case, as if to present myself as part of the piece. And I was. Standing there erect, right next to my work, my spirit out on the table for him to see, I'm sure my piece became complete.
This completely unabashed motherly-like glow I had for my poem lasted until it came down, and was packed away, or tucked into a keepsake box, or lost.
And so I write again. Not with the lack of reservation I had before, or a confidence in my ability to verbalize what any one else cannot, but with a trust that this will feel good.