stealing toilet paper, mooching chocolate chip cookies and missing home

that title probably sums up this week of my life--or is about to sum it up. so i went down to the boardwalk again tonight to write and ended up writing 6 pages in my journal. i won't bore you all with the hodge-podge of ramblings that i scrawled down on 4 of those pages--but i'll let you have a peek at numbers 5 and 6. they are of course, hopelessly romantic as i seem to become when im sitting on the benches at 10pm looking out at the city. ugh. gross. i know. but just let me gush awhile. i daydream about my future way too much--but i kind of have to slip out from reality every now and then-but doesn't everyone. so here goes.

"A few nights ago I downloaded 'Both Sides Now' by Joni Mitchell. Partly because i just watched 'love actually' and i want to be like emma thompson and partly because it's a song i just cry to. is it bad that some nights i know- even look forward to turning out the lights, putting my headphones on, kicking the wrinkles and kinks out of my sheets and cry myself ot sleep? it's not a bad cry- but it does hurt a lot sometimes. I went to sleep dreaming of my house with the red door--in 15 years or so with wood floors underneath my bare feet and my husbands feet sticking to the floor as he gets up and creaks his way to the kitchen on saturday mornings to make waffles. my house smells of orange peels and cinnamon and week-old wildflowers. in the window lima beans are growing and a red kettle screeches in the kitchen where darjeeling tea is ready to be steeped. the light is peering through the parallel cracks in the blinds--beckoning my eyelids to flutter open as my dog petey jump onto the foot of my bed and with his wet nose, nuzzles my one uncovered foot off the bed. i have a wooden spice rack and a box full of recipes that my sister gave to me one year for christmas. my house is cozy with love, radiating and warm and the timer in the kitchen goes off for the french press. i pull my foot under the covers to hid and burrow down like a butterfly begging to stay in its cocoon. i hate moist noses and am also embarrassed by the sight of the chipping paint on my toenails. i pick it off when i'm anxious. petey's warm body sinks into the covers and curls into a little ball. he kicks and cycles in his sleep--like a little fox running from a hound. he snores too... thank God i didn't get a pug-he would've really caused a noise.
i hear billie holiday drifting in on the citrusy air from the kitchen but i roll over, curl up even tighter under my layers and layers of covers and slip away.

petey's gone, the window's open and the breeze is rustling my hair and whipping it over my eyes. i brush my loose, tangled hair away, close my eyes and feel the rich, lavish impression of a kiss on my eyelids and a bristle of scruff brush across my hand. the smell of cinnamon and smoke mingles with the fresh dry breeze and i lap it into my lungs.
i tell him i hate being tickled.
the waffles are ready."

today i left a letter to a friend on the subway
i have no idea who picked it up and who knows if anyone did
but i assume curiosity is common among all humans. i keep doubting myself like who i am-really at the core. and it hurts, but it's more of an ache than anything else. today my teacher told me that there is something cheap about me. something that i don't hold myself as expensive or with high worth. i was wearing a dress and he asked if i was pregnant and if i wasn't i needed to open up my heart, raise my chest and stick out. i kept telling myself 'i can't i can't i can't'. there comes a time in every female's life where she realizes the awkward but necessary and beautiful transition from little girl into woman. in my mind-i'm not a woman, i don't have it. the 'womanness' the beautiful natural and sometimes sensual quality that God inherently placed in every woman, or i don't know really. it is weird to stand in front of a classroom and know that someone can see right through you down into the very unseen fibers that hold you together. it's weird when a man that is 70 years old can see the deep dark sooty secrets that lie dormant at the bottom of my stomach and smoke up into my heart and are supressed by little girl awkwardness and chipmunk voices. i find that i'm learning more and more about myself more than anything else this summer. yes, of course i'm learning about acting, but more, much more, i'm learning about myself as a human being. about how hard it is to know who you are, about how much I need God to mold me because I sure as hell can't do it without falling completely apart into thousands of pieces.
i miss my mom

i haven't written in quite a long time and i can't figure out why. i have so much to say and not enough words to rightly say it.
In august I'm moving to New York and starting school at Atlantic Conservatory and don't get me wrong, I'm very excited but at the same time I am shaking in my boots. I'm scared of living ini a world that I never knew as my own and I'm afraid of finding people who understand me. I'm afraid that I don't know what I'm doing with my life and that I don't have enough faith to carry me through to find out day by day what plan is unfolding. but i do. i doubt, but i do and it's not of my own doing.
i miss my friends. bo came up here last week and it was fabulous. i don't think i ever realized until he came up that he's another one of my friends taht I can just be content being silent around--which is freeing but weird. we were walking around Times Square each observing the brigh lights and the odd idiosyncrasies of the city and neither one of us spoke to the other, we just were. kym and i do that. we can just be laying around tint he same room and not feel like we have to entertain each other.
ugh i feel like i'm writing fluff. all of this is surface stuff. there's something boiling in my bones making my muscles ache and pulse with something that makes me angry at times adn so full that i just want to open up and pour out whatever it is that is making my skin ache because it's pressing my pores and seeping out every hair follicle and freckle. A few nights ago i had my first taste of what adulthood friends are like adn it was beautiful. i went over to my friend katie's hous on the corner of 76th and park avenue. katie's 3 and graduated from the new england conservatory with a degree in vocal performance--she's like a mother hen, but in the best best way. she's got the soul of a 50 year old mom who would die for her kids and the heart and wisdom of a soulful ella-fitzgeraldesque jazz singer. you could just imagine her saying "mmm HONey child" absolutely fabulous. Melis is 30 but she has the soul of a 62year-old and the vitality of a fresh twentysomething. she's from turkey and i've never seen someone so warm, bursting with rays of love and compassion from the tips of her fingers down through every orface and appendage to her toes. we ordered take-out, drank a bottle of wine, tipsily laughed and mused and searched and questioned each other and loved each other--talking about things that 50 year old women talk about, the things that are in the very essence and heart of humanity, and at the heart of a woman who is growing from teh awkward transitioning state of girl to woman. we stayed up til 4 laughing and fallling down and doubling over, losing our short term memory for brief hours and talking about love and life. it was beautifully joyful to be up here for only 8 weeks and be able to have a deeper-than-surface bond with two women who don't necessarily believe everything the same as i do, but love and know love with a fervor that is unmatchable. i never realized until i came up here how desperately in need of God i am. really--bread of life? it's true. and starving hurts. i find Him everywhere-from the rocky bay of brooklyn to the eyes of children on the subway giggling to the people who bum cigarettes and start conversations to the women that i've grown to call friends. He's everywhere-in everything, it just takes noticing. i'm scared, but this life is sure to be beautiful if i follow.

don't worry mom, i spent the night.

untitled

just like all the modern art in the MET that chase misenheimer hates this post is going to be called untitled.
because i can.
today was a weird day. want to know why? well here we go.
i woke up too earlly today and decided to look like a lumberjack and wear a plaid shirt and not wash my hair and roll up my shorts and go into manhattan for practice. during rehearsal i just spent the time talking to my partner and becoming more of a listener. we didn't really do much rehearsal. we just talked. about life. and then i felt myself getting older because i was sitting across the room from her and begging her to come out of her shell and let other people see her for who she is because she's awesome and intense and quirky and smartass on the inside but she doesn't let anyone see that. and i felt like my mom because i felt myself saying things, giving advice that my mom would give--which isn't bad. it just made me realize that i'm growing up.

i came back home and lint-rolled my carpet. yes. lint-rolled. the entire floor. i don't have a vacuum so i spent my time tearing off strips of a scotch lint-roller that my mom sent me in the mail for some reason and i thought it was worthless--apparently not. bo knox should be very happy that he won't have to sleep on a carpet that has become a reservation for tiny hair ball clusters. when i spent over an hour lint-rolling i noticed that the world is much different when you put yourself in a position to look at things from a different perspective, even when it's just the corners of a room or the pieces of frosted flakes in your carpet. it's like a whole different world and things stick out that you would've never known if you hadn't put yourself in a position to see them. then i thought how crazy my neighbors across the way looking in through my window would think i was if they saw me spending an hour on my hands and knees lint-rolling my carpet. they probably think i'm like Monk or something.

i went on a walk today and just kept on walking. past atlantic. past lover's lane. past montague street. past churches and houses and shops and blocks and trees and subway stations. i found myself at a smoothie store no bigger than a cubbyhole where i had visited during my first few weeks here. smoothies here are expensive and not nearly as good and icy as smoothie king. here they're just organic. i saw an old couple holding hands and wanted to take a picture of them but i was afraid the click of my camera would be heard and they would turn around and demand that i destroy my film. i don't know why. i also saw a pile of clothes and high heels discarded and disheveled by a doorway and i wanted to take a picture but i was embarassed. imagine that. embarassed to take a picture. yes, but moreso embarrassed to look like a tourist. the only picture i took of was a feather, very stealthily on the way home.

i regretted walking the 15 blocks to i don't know where. but i liked exploring. i need to have an explorers club where we all take pictures and have bikes with spokes and baskets and have homeade maps with X's to bury treasure in old crevices of abandoned buildings or under stoops of old lady's buildings off the corner of court street. i need to be a part of something, something big and full of love and abandon. i need to join a pack of adventurers. let me know if you see any looking for new members.

now or never kiddos

well tomorrow is the big day.
i'm actually auditioning for Atlantic Conservatory and I'm so excited but nervous at the same time.
i believe that i can do this and if it isn't supposed to happen, then i'm in for something else exciting, i have to know this and believe this--which is so hard so so so hard sometimes.
i have no idea what my life's journey is going to look like. tomorrow could change a lot of things, or it could change nothing and i'm excited both ways--i have to be you know?
by the way i have no idea what the heck i'm doing and i still feel like a 5 year old compared to so many people. it's so weired living up here where everyone looks at me and sees me as innocent--which i am, but they assume i'm naive, which i'm not. yesterday in class i was doing a scene where my teacher told me that this scene was like being drunk. and i told her i've never been drunk before. and then i turned red and pulled my dress up over my face. 5 years old? 5 years old, but it's okay. created an awkward moment for everyone, but it was hilarious annnnd super embarassing.
i cannot tell anyone how scared i am about my life, because i really need to be alive and in every way, in every single moment of my life i HAVE to live or being here is of no use you know? i listen to my ipod i brush people off i don't talk to people that i want to talk to or tell them the things that i want to tell them like i love you or i'm proud of you or i'm freaking pissed at you because i love you. and the thing is, my life's too short not to say these things. oh man oh man oh man--we freaking walk around in masks because a) we're afraid that we don't know who we are and this way is safer or b) we know who we are but are convinced that people don't want us as we are, so we mask it, we bend it, we change to "please" or at least become the image and facade of something that we assume is "pleasing" to others. ugh. i really don't want to wear a mask anymore. it's too much work, it's sticky and soon enoguh if i keep putting it on, it will form to me and i'll just easily assimilate into some cheap mask and costume that the world has made up so that we can "cope". please, coping? really? coping is for people who don't believe in themselves enough to actually live instead of exist. it's settling. it's safe and slightly painful but it's safer than the possibility of getting burned and ending up broke in a stranger's home. and even though im scared to end up that way, it's exhilarating, it's freeing, it's raw and stripped and adventurous. and i've got to believe my life's going to be an adventure if i let it instead of a series of endless, joyless days and nights that drudge on. i'm here. i'm here. i'm here. and there's a reason.

On the Boardwalk, or rather the Promenade

I wrote this in my journal while I was sitting by myself on a bench on the promenade by the water tonight. It's a lot easier for me to actually write than to type sometimes. Annnd I haven't written in a while, so here we go.

i just noticed that i've never actually dated any entries in here. maybe because i never wanted anyone to think of it as a diary and be nosy enough to read it.
the city looks a lot different-"a lot different"-what the heck is that? ok it looks really different when i take my glasses off. it's hazy and mysterious and sort of like how christmas tree lights are when you try to take a picture in front of a christmas tree-the picture turns out ok-faces in tact, but the lights never appear to be little contained bulbs of light. instead they run and drip and sneak across the picture in a trail of haze, of glazed, stained light. that's the city to me right now with my less than 20/20 vision. hazy, soft and without its harsh angles and the singularity of every rectangular window spitting its singular polygon of light into my mind's eye.
One of the most beautiful things without my glasses through are people. the couples sitting together on benches, one arm over the other--but i don't know whose arm. all of their shapes blurring and slipping together. and yet.
and yet when i hear their voices the haze disappears. their voices are pointed, direct, resonant and clear. it's as if their sounds are hitting the front of their teeth and tongue and flipped and molded into words and syllables that flow out of their mouths into a megaphone of air and into some direct current which flows down down down into my eardrums. i adore voice.
there is a blur of a man sitting caddy-cornered from me whose voice sounds like a sputtering flow of water from a hose-blubbering spatting, hitting kinks and stops and then rolling freely into the ground, splashing everyone with his sound. he talks of business in his russian accent.
i am sitting alone on this bench and i hope desperately that no creepster sits down beside me. and yet at the same time in the shmucky hopeless romantic corner of my mind i wish that someone maybe a few seats away was falling in love with me. its creepy and crazy and idealistic i know. and come to think of it, i actually don't think that i would want someone to fall in love with me that way-i mean how could they? they don't know me, i don't know them-for all i know i'm just this bookish redheaded elizabeth bennett wanna-be figment of their imagination that they've seen and imagined that i take old photographs and drink orange tea and eat macadamia nut cookies and like to read tom sawyer and can make a mean pumpkin pie with lots of nutmeg. all of which would be complete figments of their imagination that they've decided to takc on "the girl on the bench" who would not fit any of those dimensions at all.
so...don't fall in love with me on a park bench because i can't cook pumpkin pie. and i'll just not fall in love with the next bearded plaid-shirt-wearing laughing guy i see. fair? sure, fair.
sometimes, like right now i wish i had meg ryan's voice so that i could inwardly narrate all of this little visit to the promenade. well suck it meg ryan--you're like 50 and in my imagination you can narrate and i'll find my own Harry Burns. But Harry meets Jessika doesn't sound nearly as bouncy and upbeat as Harry met Sally. Harry met Jessika would probably end up in an awkward break up where Jessika would be the name of the awkward ex in the prequel to "When Harry Met Sally". I'm better off. Besides the named Harry reminds me of a stuffed bear.
I have seriously gone into Bridget Jones' Diary mode. My hand won't stop. Oh God. That was definitely a Bridget moment because i thought about writing 'Oh God' before i actually wrote it which means it's time to cap the pen and go home.
annd memorize a monologue for betsys class and analyze a scene and it's almost 10pm. heavens.
life is beautiful"

as you can see, the promenade makes me a ramblin hopeless romantic mushy mush mush. whatevs