triumph!

crap--i had such a great, post that the blogger just ate.

Well, basically, my improv teacher told me today during our evals that I 'had it' as an improviser, that i was on the right track and to screw the boys club that is improv. That i was playful and bold and willing to play anything and a good listener and supporter and then another girl noticed how much i'd improved this session. Clearly, not being jet lagged and love lorn helped muchly. Listening=excellent step.

Anywho, im tired but, the most imporant thing he said aside from start being a dick and breaking all the rules onstage--was that I deserve to be up there. Which I had been seriously doubting for the past weeks. I wondered if maybe this was just a huge waste of time and money--because in my 'seriousness', it had stopped being fun. As soon as I gave myself a whallop and remembered why I loved improv to start with, the laughs started a-coming again.

AAANd I was also advised that i had to start being bigger and louder than the biggest and loudest guy on stage. It's mildly ironic, that now i'm living out all of the issues that were discussed in my article on women in improv, but I'm ready to fight for stage time and prescense.

Level 4 awaaayyyy!

And the fish can do it...

I know, alot of posts of late.

How to reconcile different wants and desires amongst friends and acquiantances? How to miss people in a healthy manner? I wish that I knew a better way than not making eye contact with people; pretending things are fine is the opposite of truthful. Or, natural. There's this song that I listened to with great frequency my senior year at tufts--a year drenched in endings. It's called, "Have you forgotten" by the Red House Painters.

"We listened low to kasey kasem's radio show thats where friends were nice and to think of them just makes you feel nice..."

I feel happy, but so heavy. Weighed down being the sole owner of an idea. That myself and another COULD be such great pals! Could learn so much from each other! But, NO....I hate speaking in generalities, so i apoligize. I'd like to say something new, or, at least, something that could be argued. All I can come up with is that feeling anything, anything at all can be a beautiful thing. A slow, sad, spinning thing, as it is for me now, or the quick spring of a yo-yo as I felt as late as last week this time. I'm not ashamed to need people. To fight for that connection.

"Nobody's nice/when you're older your heart turns to ice."

A fellow co-worker's wife is having a baby. Such a joyous affair, such a life changing event. I see myself alone on a mountain looking forward, nothing but air hugging my back. A lake or ocean within view. The accomplishment of that climb. I wonder, why angst is so associated with teenagers...the irony that their life is so simple in comparison. No one tells you that once you climb that mountain--you then have to climb down.

"Have you forgotten how to love yourself...Have you forgotten."

Sure, sure, maybe. Maybe some of us never do. I've always thought that I could be friends with anybody but someone who was insecure. It thwarts the body and numbs the mind. Such an obvious thing, no? Try your best, do you best, what more can you want of yourself? All these nature images now, I'm watching a movie in the third person. Me leaning against an oak tree. I've always loved oak trees--loved the feeling of wrapping my arms around one, that hard security. There was a tree, in Ireland, along the Corrib river path that I frequently reached out to. It held me. How I need that tree now--

BUT YOU KNOW--NO-- if my old improv teacher were in my brain, she'd scream her mantra--HORNY GAY! And ask me, is anywhere better? Really, is anywhere better than you? Here? Does it really feel better to stand over there, to play over there? That first day of class, I'd move around the stage amidst the people, trying to find a 'better' place to be, a better partner or character. The first day, I quickly realized--there's nowhere better. Nothing else, is better. You as a person are continually in the thick of it, digging. Convincing yourself otherwise will only distract you from the great goal of finding yourself, finding any meaning at all. Furhermore, it's only after you realize that you can't find an easier way, that you force yourself to dive in and amidst all the muck, find something good. Find something extraordinarily real.

Sometimes I think that my whole life, I will try to support arguements of emotion by citing art as example. How empirocally preposterous. But, earnest. And, amusing. Por fin,Mary Oliver's poem Dogfish:

"...I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while. .....

....And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*
And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it."

Just friends, just friends

I love Amy Winehouse's voice. It's insistent, but lyrical. I dig that.
Being strong and simple. Recently, I feel like I've allowed myself to
compromise those aspects of my personality--in hopes of becoming 'just'
friends with another. I hate that saying. JUST friends--as if that
couldn't ever be enough. Such aslippery slope, friendship. That harmony among two separate entities.

A fellow I work with, he's neat. I find him to be kind, funny, and quite
intelligent. He told me this week that he thinks our friendship is
progressing too quickly for him, that we're reaching a greater intimacy
than he would like. I feel, as much as I know that this isn't about me,
I feel burned. Ouch! Yes! Moreover, I feel embarrassed, that i shared so
much of myself with him when he must have been thinking what an
attention whore I was. I don't feel embarrassed because of the content
that I shared, but that I dared entrust him with my most precious self,
my writing.

I gave him a poem two weeks, three? ago, in good faith. I respected him
and there was implicit trust. Now, I feel like he's made it clear that
he would like to be work acquaintances--and I do not share my work with
such people. My stomach curdles at the thought of my little poem, so
unfinished and uncertain in this world being read by him. I'm not sure
why--but after three weeks, he's finally read it. It is a page and a
half. Oddly enough, had he wanted to talk about it a mere three days
ago I would have been so excited. Though, I knew something was wrong
when he hadn't come to talk to me about it within a week. If you are
interested in anyone as a person, simply, a person, you read their work
veraciously. Even those who...lack a certain writing finesse--I can't
help but read what is put in front of me. So, by saying that he didn't
have time, it felt like he was saying, you don't interest me enough.

Th saddest part of all of this--is that I will have to injure
our floundering friendship further, by telling him that he can't be
part of my life like that, now. Maybe, ever. He smashed that implicit
trust to bits when he decided not to reciprocate. We all must protect
ourselves. I understand this, but I must enact this as well. I'm such an
open person, but I feel like I must put up walls between us now. He
must understand, that by making such a public scene about my
willingness to trust on good faith--he has made me feel incredibly
naive and foolish. As such, I can't act that way around him anymore. I
need collaterol. Not any deep dark secret, but something of him that must be entrusted. In order for me to trust him, he must trust me.

And then, then I will happily discuss a baby poem with him. Until then, I
must take precautions myself. Pull up the drawing gate--no one is
coming in.

Last Year in Ireland, Next Year in....Jerusalem?

We got to school to learn. We learn that if we multiply two by five we get 10. If we write 9, we get a point wrong and correct oursleves on the next try. But, how wonderful would it be, to have the confidence to write 1,082729--just once? I mean, how much would it hurt to lose those measily 2 points, right? I don't think i've ever thought that before--I don't think I've ever lost on purpose, just to see. It's an oddly liberating feeling. I mean, isn't life our classroom? Aren't there mistakes to be made on a daily basis?

If i'm to be a writer, an investigator of the human spirit, perhaps I need to start losing more. Or, experamenting with losing. Because maybe then, I could start experamenting with success. I've never been much of a bet-ter. I'm too cheap. I'd rather hoard my $2.56 than gain it twiceover. It's a guarantee. I think i've started taking myself for granted--that I'll always be here for me--the logicalness of it all. So what if I do something irrational. I wonder if all my travels have been tests. HA-you are comfortable with your life and friends what would you do if--you moved to an isolated town in spain, a social town in ireland, what would you DO.

I know now. But part of me was always fighting with the other, pleading for a bit of order, the other fighting for the uncertain, the possibility for other possibilities.
Friends, when hearing my plans, would always laugh, shake their head in confusion. "But you HATE change!." It would seem I'm either more masochistic than previously thought--or refuse to settle for the ordinary.

It's valentines day. I have possibilities on the table. But again, the spain, ireland, fighter pushes her teeth forth. Even those who get burned by the hottest flame survive. Or, they don't. But, there is no debate or waffling about it. Terminado.

I applied for my dream job yesterday--that was scary. I expressed feelings today--tht was scary. Both were real. I'm real. And the opposite of stationary.

Thank you, Ireland. For letting me make mistakes in a safe, controlled setting. And, for once, for once, in last year + a week or so--letting me win once. Now, I know why we lose so often. What's at the end of the fall. Honey and sweetness and new years and new hope and a boy who would walk to the bus station for me.

* I tried to be sentimental, to break into my irish phone and remember that time. My memory forgot the password and clearly knew better. Onwards, Upwards, Let's go go go...ouch!

Naysayers's no-no

My roomate's mother constantly tells her stories that sniff of failure. That leaves stains on her day and on her, not to be obvious, dreams--of becoming an actress, or, professional improviser. It's what she has in this world. I'd like to think we all have something, some talent that we can hug to our chests as uniquely ours. Maybe I can act relaxed most of the time because I know I have this gift, so I'm not constantly looking over my shoulder waiting for my desires to be scooped from me by some eagle with deeper claws. That doesn't mean I don't have other torments--that i'm not using my gifts enough--that in taking them for granted i'll never publish anything substantial--but my concerns are within arms' reach. My arms. As are Katy's. We know we are lucky.

Her mother, my mother...so much maternal angst. I am trying to understand bitterness. Or, what the appropriate reaction to it is. How much forgiveness can one produce from such a small body. Forgiveness for malicious advice, forgiveness for advice based upon sadness, forgiveness for...it all. Can our mother's not control themselves? How much can any of us control ourselves and should we have to? Maybe we can learn how to store the sadness, the way that squirrels can collect acorns but leave them at home. I wish I had a blue room. I wish I had a blue room with a door that could close. We could unload her bricks and bones. Until we were little woozy marshmallow pieces floating.

I've always thought I could be friends with anyone--as long as they themselves weren't insecure. I see insecurity as a time bomb. Don't want to be around that when it diffuses. Maybe my mother is unhappy, maybe she is bitter, maybe she deserves my forgiveness. That doesn't change the power of her atoms as they explode one after another, gathering power with their years. I hope Katy doesn't let her mother stop her; I hope she can use the negativity as fuel to her creative fire. We know that we are unlucky, too.

But, mostly, we seem to be finding out own way, which is not the easiest way, the easiest way is to follow, but it is ours. And we can sit back, leave our chests exposed, just daring anyone to come and stop us, take anything from us. We know we have much to give.