wendybirdstory

roadtrip day 1&2

2010-05-11T01:55:00.001-05:00

a letter a day

2010-03-31T23:41:00.002-05:00

ok. so i'm trying something. and i don't really know why besides the fact that i can't control how it's received.
every day for the next few weeks i'm writing an anonymous letter to a stranger and leaving it in a public place. it's up to me to write the letter and leave it. it's up to some one, for some reason or another--whether it's curiosity or fate, to pick up the letter, read it, and hopefully do the same for someone else.

i think i was inspired to do this because a) no one writes letters anymore. handwriting is a lost art and i think it's one of the most beautiful gifts you can give b) for some reason, in whatever weird, i-don't-know-what-the-hell-i'm-doing-with-my-life state i'm in right now, i feel like i just need to send something out into the world. i don't know what i'm going to write in all the letters. maybe send someone on a scavenger hunt, maybe ask some questions, maybe tell a few secrets that you can only tell to strangers. who knows. and really, there's no way for me to see how anything's received, i can only imagine and maybe hope---for what? i don't know, but just hope.

i need to buy some more envelopes.

2010-03-29T19:49:00.002-05:00

so. in with the new news.

i'm driving across the country this summer with my lovely best buddy rachael.
and i can't even tell you how excited i am. i was planning to stay up in nyc this summer, but with me not being certain if i had a job, and this opportunity just springing up--i had to take it.

i don't have many things that i'm absolutely positively sure that i have to do before i die, but driving across the country is one. so. on may 9(ish) i'm flying out to los angeles and then we make our break--las vegas, flagstaff, grand canyon---wherever the road leads us. and that's all right by me.

i wish i had a video camera on this trip. i've got a big question to ask and i'd like to ask strangers and see what they say. we'll see what happens along the way.

2010-02-13T22:00:00.003-06:00

right now, i could really just punch you hard in the face.
i'm not a violent girl, but in an instant, that could all change.

sometimes people just deserve to get punched right smack dab in the kisser. and you are one of those people and now is one of those times.

maybe it's the way you just kept on talking when i was trying to tell you something exciting. or maybe it was that you didn't care after the fact. or maybe it's the way you never close your mouth when you chew and i can't listen to a word you're saying because i'm preoccupied by the slurping and smacking and lolling of your tongue trying to spit out word amidst a sea of meaty debris. i've always hated the sound of chewing. or maybe it's your scent that makes me want to punch you. i avoid everyone who smells like you because i'm afraid that it might indeed turn out to be you, and right now, i just don't want to talk--unless, of course, you're ready to get your lights punched out.

i really do want to punch you in the face, partly because i think you deserve it, partly because i've never punched anyone before, and partly because i'll be amused to hear the story that you come up with to explain your shiner. it'll be a good one and involve you in some sort of chivalrous role, no doubt. only you and i will know that i gave you one good punch and made you stumble backwards, and i could tell by the look on your face that you didn't even expect me to say 'i'm sorry.' i guess we're even now.

you guys/y'all

2010-02-06T22:07:00.002-06:00

i've started saying y'all (again?) or maybe i've never really said it before living in nashville. there's something about living in new york that is making me want to OWN saying 'y'all' who knows

all this to say---i think i've moved to tumblr?? or maybe i jump back and forth between tumblr and blogspot. i don't really know how to work tumblr but that intrigues me--so check it out http://whyioughtta.tumblr.com/

i'll write somewhere

smattering smattering on the subway platform

2009-11-02T07:35:00.002-06:00

f train notes:
women: why can't we be silent for a while instead of talking non-stop to fill the 'dead air' which is in fact, totally alive? i'm sure whatever guy we're with would rather just hold our hands anyway instead of being forced to nod and smile and pretend to understand that ridiculous fight we had with our mothers last week.

tonight:
it was odd and uncharacteristic tonight that i wanted to hold someone's hand. i wanted someone to lead me with their hand in the small of my back. why? is it because i'm lonely or interested? sometimes i can't tell and i'm too scared to decide. in uncertain terms i'm curious--and oddly happy.

this i know:
i know i want to travel. i know i want to be a part of a creative community, somewhere. i know that i want to fall so passionately in love. i know i want my husband to have rough whiskers and soft lips. i know i want to go camping with people i love and snuggle in sleeping bags too small for the both of us. i know i want to see the northern lights on a day where everything is vibrant and magical. i know i want to go to london and buy fresh produce and really have neighbors. i know i want to live in a house with a red door. i know i want to make my own recipe for apple pie. i know i want to be grabbed by the waist and spontaneously kissed. i know i want to not be obligated to a religion, but be alive in realized hope. i know i want to have a library like grandad's someday. i know i want to have someone to pass down mamaw's owl necklace to. i know i want to say 'i love you' first for once and mean it. i know i want to be with someone who sings, however off-key. i know i want to ride more horses. i know at my grandad's funeral i'll sing 'down by the old mill stream.' i know by the time i die i'll know where to find the best vanilla latte. i know that i'll teach my children how to say 'mama' and 'daddy' and 'go'. i know i look forward to the day when i'll get to have a daily chat with a four-year-old. i know there will be so many moments in my life when i'll sit back and say 'i'm so glad i met you.'

2009-10-04T21:51:00.002-05:00

so today i:
had a coughing fit on the subway and looked like i had SARS/was sobbing
stood on the subway without holding on (it CAN be done!)
gargled 3 cups of saltwater (disgusting)
walked by right as a man pulled a woman into the street and laid a smooch right on her
(i felt awkward, then sad, then happy all at once)
saw a girl with an old cameo ring
thought i saw denzel washington, but was regretfully mistaken
ate strawberry gelato that was 5.25 in chelsea market
(and made my stomach hurt)
realized that i'm addicted to oyster crackers
ate a spoonful of honey hoping it would help my raw throat
mimicked some guy clip-clop staccato walking through carroll gardens
did NOT drink coffee
wanted to cuddle with a cat, not a kitten of my own
went (in route) to bed early

in chekhov class the other day, my teacher anya was talking about love and what an infinite, inexpressible phenomenon that it is. she heard this story of a child who was asked by his mother "how big is love? how big is your love for momma"
and instead of spreading his hands out and saying "THIS much" as so many kids do
he thought for a moment on "how big is love?"
and then he said
"it's the outside of the outside of the outside"

just think about that.

2009-09-21T18:54:00.002-05:00

sometimes you just have to stand back from your life and say
ah.
ah.
okay.

and know that even with this ball of stress tucked up in the top of my ribcage
and even with the fact that i get awkward all the time
and blush
and have random zits on my face
at the worst possible time.

i know i'll wake up tomorrow and it'll all be ok.
i can be free. it's all in the letting go.
ah.
ah.
ok.

2009-08-20T01:52:00.002-05:00

dear brooklyn home,
please let that GIANT cockroach that i saw on the toaster oven
last night be a figment of my imagination.
please somehow eliminate it from the universe.
i'd rather have a mouse if you must send a replacement.
love,
jessika

one hour too shy

2009-08-11T00:47:00.002-05:00

oh, why didn't you muster up the courage to take your hand out from under the blanket?
silly silly silly
too scared too scared
just take out your hand and set it beside you.
it's that simple.
done done done
oh me.
silly silly silly

herz schmerz

2009-07-13T22:23:00.003-05:00

there was once a man who was never a boy.
he always wore a clip on tie and asked for coffee in his bottles.
his name was sam.
sam grew up as normal children do, with all his book reports and good night stories and fears of monsters in basement crannies.
but sam was never squeezed. ever so tightly, ever so warmly. he was never rocked, his hair was never smoothed and combed through by a mother's fingers.
and slowly sam begin to forget that touch was such a sense.
to him there were only four.
sometimes sam would lay in bed at night illuminated by his white nightlight and play shadowpuppets on the wall. he would take both of his hands and squeeze them tightly together until his face was red and his fingers tired from hugging so desperately around each other. but it wasn't the same.
and sam grew up as most men do. but he never fell in love.
and one day, something inside him dropped. with a thump and a purple feeling.
sam would diagnose this bruise.
and sam became samuel, phd. the doctor specializing in herz schmerz.

up and at'em

2009-07-07T11:12:00.003-05:00

i never understood that phrase when my dad used to wake me up on saturdays by stomping upstairs and banging on a huge metal pot. up and at'em? really dad.
today. today i am going to be productive. i don't plan on it. i will be.
today i'm putting a letter in the mailbox to my sister from hogwarts. because she dreamt about getting accepted into hogwarts when she was 12 and now she's 19 and i'm feeling creative.
today i'm going to hang out with friends, even with friends that i don't really know and am scared to hang out with because i'm afraid of awkward moments or not knowing what to say or that i'll be that kid on the playground that looks nice, but secretly smells and eats dirt (neither of which i do, but still).

today is going to be a good day and i'm going to decide to be happy.

half the summer, good heavens

2009-07-06T23:37:00.002-05:00

i know i know i know
i haven't written in over a month.
it's been for good reasons, i promise. i've been making that cash money yo.
(i keep second-guessing if that was too ghetto for me to say, but it doesn't matter)

tonight i feel like that little sick child colin in the secret garden.
granted, i don't have to take ice baths or live in a huge mansion with a mean old biddy, but i am still cooped up under my down blanket drinking cranberry juice. i don't know what's wrong with me honestly.

i've been feeling quite. dull. spacey. wandering. lately.
every time i go out of my house i want to yell at the top of my lungs and just YELL/SHOUT/SCREAM.
maybe i'm outgrowing my comfort zone, but i'm clinging to all the things that i think will keep me safe because i'm afraid of jumping out and getting hurt. by life. by actually COMMITTING to something. by love?
i'm quite a cynic about love. oh boy oh boy, change is a'coming.

home again home again, jiggity jog

2009-05-23T00:47:00.001-05:00

i'm back home in my bed--which alone is the size of my room in brooklyn, well almost. home still smells vaguely of cat pee in the summer time even though the last cat died last year--the smell will linger here for.ev.er. but i guess that's why i have a fan in my room and the choice to either use electricity or air conditioning--i choose the latter.
since coming home, i've gotten a job as a hostess at sambuca (thank heavens,) i've eaten at greasy greasy waffle house, i've gotten a few bear hugs, and i've been feeling uncomfortably old.
i don't know what this feeling is.
and i don't know how i feel about this feeling.

maybe i shouldn't psychoanalyze so much.
in other news, i'm going to experiment will the notion of not having to prove myself to people, but seeing what i have to give to them instead. also, just the idea of 'letting myself be loved' is something that is taking time to mull over. but i'm tired of closing my doors and pushing people away because i'm afraid.

so, i guess
i guess i'll just see what happens.

in other news, photobooth never grows old...especially on 20 hour car rides from new york to nashville.

2009-05-03T14:14:00.000-05:00

I think I'm in love with making lists. i swear i'm going to be one of those old women who makes lists not out of necessity but out of enjoyment--like cataloging all the ceramic figurines in her house. hopefully i won't have ceramic figurines though, that would be an all time low. even lower than my grandma's nutcracker collection. heavens. anyways, i've got to get organized. i'm sitting here in brooklyn procrastinating analyzing a scene for script analysis because i could be WRONG, but whatever. i'll be productive in other ways. so this summer, i must move forward and not waste my time moping aroud wishing i had a boyfriend or wishing i did this or that or wishing i could be in europe. because, i'm just going to make things happen for myself. i'm tired of the waiting game.

1. read rainer maria rilke's works this summer--letters, quotations, ALL. i'm going to become quite well-versed in this area
2. look into applying for LAByrinth theater company's summer apprenticeship for next year
3. start looking into williamstown theater festival for next summer.
4. find a job where i can be a barista again and learn to make latte art. it's a secret passion.
5. go to arkansas and record nanny and grandad's stories. 1 week is alotted.
6. finish writing the stories that i start, and not be afraid to finish them.
7. read o'neill plays
8. read albee plays
9. read more than my brain can handle.
10. stop putting my thoughts in the 'incubation tank' because i'm too afraid that writing down what i'm thinking or feeling and i think that i need to hold it in and wait awhile and allow time to pass so that whatever i write down has time to become un-embarassing and less awkward. screw that, huh.
11. go camping.
12. watch charlie chaplin films
13. actually put on a bathing suit once this summer. i didn't wear one last summer and that's just sad. i'm fair-skinned, i know it, i'm cancer-free.
14. make an impromptu trip to the beach.
15. have more picnics.
16. learn to make snickerdoodles.
17. finish the script that i'm writing. write more.
18. figure out options for finishing my undergraduate degree. new york classes? claim ny residency? mtsu summer? scholarships, yes please.
19. get a cat.
20. wear fewer layers.
21. make my own skirts and dresses and just wear skirts and dresses and sandals all summer.
22. collaborate artistically with people i love.
23. finish 'heartbreaking work of staggering genius'
24. go rock climbing. for real.
25. have more sister days at the mercantile.
26. finish my french lessons.
27. become a wine connoisseur. or at least start.
28. help my mom plant flowers.
29. figure out my family tree. see grandma's old photos.
30. go to wafflehouse with will and ak and bo et. al

that's all for now. i'm sure i'll find more later. i've got to be held accountable for these, because there's no 'maybe' when it comes to making these things happen.

1 year

2009-04-30T20:02:00.001-05:00

It's been almost 1 year since I came up to the lovely and smoggy new york city. I can't believe it, really. Tomorrow I'm going in for a final performance of scenes and I'm not scared shitless like I used to be....instead I'm excited, scared, basically open to anything happening and dealing with it as it comes. there's so much joy in the unknown. i think i've discovered that this year. as i was going to sleep a few nights ago, i began to make a list of all the memories/discoveries that i've made since last may---in no specific or important order:
1. everyone is now aware that i love to peel paint. i peel old radiators, bathtubs, walls. the peeling paint on subway ceilings really taunts me.
2. the never-rotting apple outside of stella adler during the summer. it was a feat of nature.
3. artichoke pizza and union square with chase
4. singing 'three's company' with kevin and ashley in the teeny tiny 3rd floor kitchen with no faucet
5. seeing 'the seagull' on broadway and being utterly enrapt for 2 hours
6. the promenade--i still go there when i'm feeling homesick
7. lint-rolling my entire room---it's a new form of vacuuming
8. ice cream runs at 3am
9. the new discovery of saltines+icing
10. getting caught in a rainstorm inside 'Heights Books'. it's now closed down.
11. governor's island bicycling. going inside haunted prisons and eating lemon ice with kelsey and discussing 'diving bell and the butterfly'
12. first audition for student film. oh heavens.
13. anthony paige and late night carroll gardens diner runs
14. going to the abandoned zombie yard in red hook with anthony
15. tea and sympathy
16. gray's papaya hot dogs are NOT worth crossing central park for. thanks A LOT chase
17. extraordinary coincidences
18. learning that new yorkers and foreigners kiss each other on the cheeks all the time
19. the 6am commutes on the Long island railroad to Ronkonkoma
20. chris at the Fall Cafe makes the best vanilla lattes. i know his name but i'm too scared to say it.
21. cinnamon raisin bagels have been my comfort foods.
22. the humming song of the subway when it leaves the station
23. getting my foot stuck in a subway door and thinking i was going to die for .5 seconds
24. waiting in line to see 'dark night' for way too long
25. tap dancing on roofs in brooklyn
26. crunching leaves with kelsey
27. 2am cookie delivery
28. following woody allen's best friend, the tree-toucher
29. halloween in new york, just don't go there
30. the year of making banana bread.
31. the old woman who always walks around the neighborhood and wears a pink hat and oakley sunglasses and scowls.

.....i'm done for now. no one will probably understand all these, but it's ok.

Ye Olde

2009-04-21T05:20:00.001-05:00

I'm just guessing, but since it's been a monthe there have probably been a lot of things in my life that I haven't updated on. Most recently, I have decided to become a connoisseur of olde english and tack on an extra silent 'e' to whatever I feel like needs/warrants some pizzaz(e) in my life.

not really.

i think i've become more sarcastic and cynical lately and i don't know why? am i becoming one of those jaded new yorkers? maybe--because sitting room on the subway becomes prize treasure that i will indeed fight for. on the subway i did see kenneth the page from 30 rock and almost peed my pants. i tried to be oh so cool when i got on the train, but i saw him and unbeknownst to me, my heart did a huge break dance k-kick spin around into my throat. so i was cool. i kept it together. i ran through my mind the various things that i could say to him. i deemed all evasive and possibly inappropriate. so i sat 6 or so seats away and did my best rendering of nonchalance. and then. the moment where i realized kenneth the page was a real human being...

we made eye contact.

ugh. stupid stupid stupid. i should've been the one to hold the eye contact, to smile, no smirk (would that be creepy?) at least. but i, like an awkward, obviously star-struck human ripped my glance back to my book of O'Neill plays. great jessika. just great, you could've been a normal human being making eye contact with kenneth the page, he could've become intrigued by your boldness to commit to eye contact, even to an awkward level, he could've smiled and THEN told me that he wants me to help out on the next episode of 30 rock and that I and Tina Fey would be the best of friends or I could at least pick up her latte and babysit for her every other week and then I'd get a background part on 30 rock which would bump up to a recurring role as kenneth the page's sister, or even better, his secret love and then we fall in love and get married in page suits with tina fey as the maid of honor and lorne michaels officiating.

that's what i missed out on, dammit.
it's 6:30am, this is what my brain is like at 6:30am.

also, i am thoroughly disgusted with myself for eating icing out of the container with a fork last night. who does that? i then reminded myself of the 'spread' that many women get and that made me put the fork down and fight the dreaded spread (in all senses of the word).

ramble # 99: walked home in the rain yesterday. looked like the girl from 'the ring'. decided i would NEVER want to kiss in the rain--it's like the sky is spitting on your face when you're cold and shivering and your mascara's running and now you have clump lashes. dancing in the rain is different, i mean, if i had a yellow slicker and a lamp post and could tap as well as gene kelly, it wouldn't matter if it was a flash flood.

i've got to make coffee now. expect more updates (hopefully less cynical) soon.

le pomme dit du lapin: donne-moi beaucoup des bisoux! j'aime toi j'aime toi, mon petit chouchou!

2009-03-09T22:19:00.000-05:00

learn a little french today:
chouchou: a term of endearment (pet, darling, what have you)
lapin: rabbit
pamplemousse: grapefruit
there you go.

i ripped up a canvas in my living room today. found it on the street, this pastel mess of art just thrown out with the empty tuna cans and year-old magazines. i'm thinking of writing or painting on it and putting it up in my room. my little 8 X 10 nook can hold more than i thought, ceiling space included of course.

i think i'm turning into bridget jones. not only have i been wearing a sweater with a ballerina on it for the past few days, but i bought a carton of bryers chocolate ice cream not two days ago and now i'm almost through with it. am i ashamed? ehh. do my pants still fit? i don't know...i wear leggings and dresses, kind of like a prego woman, wahoo. also, another bridget jones tendency that i'm falling into is (no, not granny panties, sorry hugh grant) but falling in love with people on the subway. i swear i think up the most ridiculous monologues in my head as i'm sitting on the F train riding into the city. I'm sitting there, eating my cinnamon raisin bagel, hoping that butter is not all over my hands and face, hoping that i do not in fact look 12 to everybody on the train and hoping that i didn't accidently sit down in some unidentified liquid on the bench in my rush to get a seat on the subway.

also. i just found this. i think i wrote this when i was dozing off a few nights ago. pathetic. i swear i'm becoming more like miss bridget jones every day, and sometimes it's fun to be just that loopy and whimsical. take a gander, and please, laugh.
_________________
ramble 1 (most likely 1am):
Brooklyn boy I think of you often. You and your beard and your barely sipped stella artois. You drink and read and muse the day away. You (oh you philosopher) with a BA in photography. You’re probably gay though. And why do you make me fall in love with you? With your disheveled hair and cabin hat and scraggly beard that is not in the least bit patchy and preteen. You are a man. And you are gay and wearing skinny jeans and air force ones, which by the way, look very stupid on your feet, with the skinny wash jeans tucked into them. I’m telling you. That won’t make me fall in love with you and it’s probably better that way.

ramble 2 (a variation of setting, most likely 1:08am):
Dear subway boy,
Scratching you corner of your mouth and tapping your toes as the car makes us lean this way and that. You have no earbuds, your hands are free, you stare about and scratch your beard and every now and then dart away from looking at your reflection in the window or at the eyes of that man or woman (two seats caddy cornered to the left of you). You grip the metal poles, oily hands smudged with grime from the subway rats of people. You’re reading a yellowed copy of an old book which I lean over your shoulder to try and glimpse what it might be, but you pull your legs in tighter and cough into your scarf and curl even tighter into this little shell that you’ve molded into. What are you? Who are you? Let me see your left hand? are you in love, married, do you have a dog? Is it a bitch dog. I hope it doesn’t wear sweaters, if so this may not work out because I am in love with you. Don’t wear those shoes with the pointy up toe, unless you're going to be a professional who kicks people in the rears. I’m just saying, you look like a bird. I much prefer you in your dad’s old flannel, with your khakis that haven’t been washed for a few weeks and your tattered sweatshirt underneath this pilled wool coat with the scarf that you attempted to knit on top. It’s unraveling, just tuck it in. no one will notice if you act like it’s supposed to be that way. you get that sausage egg cheese bagel and bring it on the train. Come on, Brooklyn boy, don’t you know better? Put it in your man satch and wait until you’re darting through the endless queue of people into the elevator at work that’s three sizes too small. You’re the guy who keeps checking his watch every 7 minutes on the train because it makes you feel like you have everything under control, but you don’t, and it’s ok.

oh, and hey mom and kym and will and all you dear blog readers who make it to the end of my ramblings. i love you for it, you know.

2009-03-01T22:48:00.000-06:00

owls courtesy of a photoblog that i used to follow in high school (wvs.topleftpixel.com) it's pretty fabulous.

i am more and more starting to realize that it isn't the huge things in life that make you happy, nor is it really accomplishing the plans that you set up 5, 10, 20 years ahead of time. i really don't think it's about that. i'm reading a biography of gilda radner right now--she was on snl in the 70s and was fantastic. anyways, she married gene wilder, and i mean who wouldn't want to marry gene wilder--they were perfect and made each other laugh. here are some lovely quotes from a book she wrote while she was fighting ovarian cancer in the 80s. she finished her book and was only able to have a live with gene for less than 10 years and she died in 1989.

"it was a very lonely, hard time for me because new york was so big and wo weird and i was always wandering around looking for the sky like a country bumpkin" gilda radner
"anytime you want to get up in the night or you are scared, or afraid about something, just wake me up and we'll have a cheese party" [gene wilder to gilda when she was going through chemo and would wake up a lot in the night nauseous or feverish, or just scared of what the cancer was doing to her]

in other news, it is quite blustery outside my window right now and i hope that i'll be ankle deep in snow when i wake up and step outside tomorrow. also, i saw grizzly bear with the brooklyn philharmonic orchestra last night and it was magical. also, i am marrying chris bear, he wears a bowtie and two toned shoes and is lanky and tall and has the potential for a rugged beard. plus he head bangs when he gets into playing his drums.

yes yes it's messy

2009-02-21T23:33:00.001-06:00

it's time
the time has come to write.
i've been putting off a lot of my writing lately because of no specific and valid reason but more because i've just been afraid of not finding the right words. but we all know that is a poor and puny excuse not to write. new blog picture, because a) i am bored and b) those are probably all the faces that i make on the subway during the day to people and to no one in particular, especially to the sleeping man across from me or to the smudgy reflection in the plastic windows.
i have seen the most beautiful and interesting people lately. today i went to the new york public library because i was determined to get a library card and become an official new york snubby nose library card holder. that, or i just thought about the royal tenenbaums and how margot would sleep in the library and stay there for weeks and i thought, well, if one were to have that sort of adventure, one would be in dire need of a library card. so anyways, tangent not withstanding, i went into the big library on 5th ave and sauntered up to this old wooden desk with pamphlets stacked up everywhere with an INFORMATION sign hanging right above it. and this woman, this patron of greatness who probably smelled of old books was nothing short of extraordinary. her hair was dyed carrot orange and was sculpted over with aquanet super-hold into this magnificent updo that looked like two waves hugging each other. i swear i looked at her and i thought, why isn't this woman being written about? she had on a teal skirt suit with a rhinestone brooch and she wore glasses. not just any glasses. i'm talking tinted gold rimmed, straight out of another decade or universe glasses. her lips were glossed over with some sort of coral shimmering smacky moisturizer and her nails were perfectly manicured to match the color of her lips, which is a color that should only belong in timeshares in destin, florida. this woman was going on and on to an australian man in front of me about how the children's section of this research library was fantastic and how they were having a guest speaker about all the uses of peanuts later on this afternoon. she was the woman who always had a kleenex, a wadded up shredding kleenex in her right hand, just in case. and she knew everything about the library and prided herself on it. someone, please write a screenplay about this woman, she's just begging to be seen by the world. i'd think her name must've been gladys and at home she had one of those hairless dogs waiting for her, who'd she sleep with and turn out the light after reading the last chapter in book 17 of 187 in a series of harlequin romance novels. we'll see, i'll go back and see what i can find out.

fewd

2009-01-24T21:02:00.000-06:00

Campbell's chicken noodle soup is thoroughly dissatisfying tonight. i don't understand why anyone would think it's some sort of magical remedy for any kind of sickness. that said--recent food intake has been more out of necessity and less enjoyable when trying to save money and ration food. i'm writing all of this right now and yet in the back of my mind i know i should be doing my script analysis but i ridiculously talk myself out of it or avoid the topic altogether. i swear, when i'm grueling over a script for 4 hours it's like pulling teeth even though i have absolutely no idea on earth what that's like. so...bad comparison.

today i got onto the A train and somebody was eating mexican. it was horrible. the smell just filled up the whole car and smelled like a pack of businessmen who take their clients to el chico restaurante and forget to bring those free packs of beano that everyone has in their medicine cabinets JUST IN CASE. well if beano could be turned into an aerosol spray with a slightly lilac-y, clean laundry finish--this woman needed it. i was sitting on a bench about 8 feet from where this 50 year old woman was chowing down and i swear i had to put my scarf over my nose so my brain wouldn't be overwhelmed by the fact that my senses were going haywire and about to revolt from this flatulent smell. yes--it did smell worse than panera's broccoli cheese soup left in a hot dodge stratus for 2 days. today, God was laughing at me because when i could stand the smell no longer, the woman gets up with her styrofoam box of cheezy beans and sits next to me.
it still escapes me why she chose to do this.
i didn't see anyone dare try to steal her feast nor did i spot any shadesters aboard the car. i mean, was this lady lonely? was her food really that good? why was she drinking a bottle of hawaiian punch with it. that had to taste bad. and why, oh why did i have to have an awkward moment with this woman? yes. i did; because at the canal street stop a group of kids get on the car and start break-dancing. and it's great. i momentarily forget that i'm sitting next to a giant refried bean. that's how great their dancing was. then the woman turns to me, takes a swig of the hawaiian punch and asks me a question. twice. i know it was a question because her voice went 'quesTION'. and i awkwardly paused. then chose one of two answers 'yes' or 'no'. the safest answers. short. no follow up. highly new yorker answers. i muttered a quick 'yes,' thanked God that the train had finally reached my stop and bolted out the subway doors and breathed a deep breath of lovely, musty new york subway station air into my lungs.

2009-01-12T10:27:00.000-06:00

there's this horrible habit about me that i can't seem to shake. euch. i cant even admit it because it leaves a dirty taste in my mouth that's sour and lingering. procrastination. lack of umph. sometimes i wonder where all the faith in myself that i used to have the huge, childish dreamer in me has gone. i feel like i've turned into a cynic and my worst critic. but this must not be true, it cannot be true, i desparately hope it's not true. and i can't firgure out why i am all these things. has there been anything to make me lose my faith in myself? i don't know. was it ever there to begin with? why don't i believe in myself? is it because i think that i can't hold my own, that i'll never be skinny enough or pretty enough or just enough of enough to be anything worthwhile? this is so meladramatic, i need to get over this pity party. i think what procrastination and all these things stem from is fear. fear of failing, or succeding, fear of being vulnerable, fear of becoming someone that i might even like, fear of loving and actually actually accepting being loved, being worthy of being loved? is it possible. i hope so. this is such a rambling, but right now that's what's on my heart.
now i need to stop procrastinating
man oh man.

le rêve

2009-01-02T14:47:00.000-06:00

I had a dream the other night and some weird part of me thinks its about racism. I don’t want to write the whole dream down because it didn’t makes sense to me, but I remember being closed off in an office, it this little corner office with two women, one with blonde hair , one with brown and they were both white. They were in a heated discussion and all I remember seeing is the woman with brown hairs hyes growing brown like someone dropped a piece of melted chocolate into some oily substance and the brown grew and grew and washed over the other colors of the eye and vessels emerged and then it was sucked back into the pupil and all was normal. But everytime she was angry the pupil would burst forth with the brown inky iris and it would ripple out like a magicians fabric and spread past her eyes onto the creases of her sockets and then would be sucked back up in a matter of seconds and we all knew that she was hiding something. Another image I remember is talking to this girl who was not a woman yet, not by age standards, but just by looking at her and the smallness of her eyes. She was a receptionist of some sort and was sitting behind a desk like I had in fifth grade with the hold underneath to put pencil pouches in. she was the color of a velveteen rabbit that’s been slightly loved and she had only one tuft of hair on her head that was coarse and waved to her right in one single bend. I kept talking to her and asking how to get out of this place, what it was about and that everything was ok and that she could escape if she wanted to and every now and then this purple sparkely eyeshadow would start at her tearducts and bend outwards over her eye and they would grow large and then retract like something was pulsing inside and needed to be birthed, I kept getting closer to her and bending down and telling her it was ok, she needed to explain, give me some answer to why we were here and what was going on and her eyes would grow so lovely and plum like and spread out and then retract. And her hair, her hair began to grow out fro its frizzy tuft and spiral out like some sort of waving sea anemone and then it would shrink back down. Her purple eyeshadow kept spreading out and her hair kept morphing until she became something that resembled a bulb of some sort, something that was blooming or had bloomed or was holding something that was about to be born. It was very light green and was almost like the very core of lettuce when you get down to the last leaf closest to the fore and she sat still, with no eyes or human features, just small photosynthetic veins reaching out to the rippled ends and there was no mouth, no words to answer my question. Only a post it note stuck on to her head of a lettuce leaf/ flower that said something along the lines of go to this site called le blage and read the blog and there you will find the answers. It would’ve been right above her left ear. And it was bittersweet and I didn’t know what had happened, whether she had died or somehow was just being born and freed and escaped, but i took the note and left.

**(I looked up le blage online and the closest thing I found was le blague which means: the joke/the hoax/ the fib)

oh subconscious how i will never understand you

2008-12-07T22:26:00.000-06:00

so much of it hurts. it's less of a searing pain and more of a throbbing ache, like someone punched you with bony knuckles deep under your skin in a place where no mother's kisses or bandaids can help with the healing. don't worry, im not in some sort of state, it's just a dull ache that comes when truth or beauty hits you so hard that you lose your breath and are left standing gaping.
i've become fond of the wind. in new york there are these huge gusts of wind that sweep in between buildings and force people to bump into one another and drag their coats against a passing stranger's legs. that and they make the trees tremble. i'm avoiding.
this is what i'm writing about. and i don't care if you like my style or not. i went to see chekhov's 'the seagull' on broadway and time an d again konstantin says 'it's not about these new forms or old forms or the creation of forms. i'm beginning to think more and more that when you write it needs to come from the heart' horrible botched paraphrase, but you see. here is the drivel that has been living in my gut. i am desperately afraid of love.
there.
i am afraid to be loved and to give it, or at least give it in a way where i am left standing with nothing, where i am so vulnerable that i don't keep a string attached to every word i say, every gift of love that i give so that i can quickly pull the string and retract everything in the blink of an eye. and then i think, you're 21 why haven't you been in love? what is wrong with you? are you heartless? no, that's melodramatic, i know. maybe i am too idealistic.
kym and i tell each other stories of our future husbands to each other from time to time. when i was home for thanksgiving she laid her head on my stomach and i just got lost in the fantasy of something that could possibly never come to be. well, most likely whatever i tell her won't, whatever beautiful story she tells me won't happen, because it's not realistic.
how i loathe that word. it's a cop-out for people who are trying to justify settling into the life that they're leading.
but love. can i do it? i don't know. and then i beat myself up because the opportunity hasn't really presented itself. what? am i supposed to go and talk to guys at bars? hell no. im not doing that. and i'm not buying high heels for anyone either. maybe it's that i just have this fear of being single the rest of my life so i'm rushing to become a woman and find the love of my life and force myself to have a crush on any male being that makes the cut, which is rare even at that. ugh.man oh man.
it hurts to watch people hold each other on the subways. it does, i'm not going to lie. the deep gut ache that is there i don't know why, and part of me doesn't want it to go away right now. because it's there for a reason, i guess. and i know if it's gone then i've given something up. and at the same time i want to learn how to love, because part of me doesn't believe i know how.
this is rambling. this is journaling. if you made it through i commend you.
by the way, i'm not unhappy, i have a lot of joy. i just need to slow down and realize that i am enough.

Continuance from July 28...

2008-11-03T22:36:00.000-06:00

" No lights are on in the house when I get home--save the little floodlight that often needs replacing outside. That and the ever present Christmas lights coiling down the stairway into the den.
I can't stand you today. It's nothing you've done or not done or said or failed to admit. It's just you. I'm beginning to understand why men don't understand women if we don't even understand ourselves.
Lately I stand outside our little red door and stare at the knocker-wondering if my grandpa's face will suddenly emerge from the tarnished handle like Jacob Marley--leaving me scared shitless. I leave my hand on the door wanting to turn and run and buy a pack of Marlboro lights and smoke two and a half while walking around our uneven streets--throwing the smoldering butts into pretentious gardens. I blow the smoke up so that i can walk through it because i love going to sleep with a cold head of hair latticed with cigarettes. that and i know you hate it. at least i won't be the one to wash the sheets this week.
i stand here at our little red door musing on all these possibilities, peel a little chip of paint off an indented panel and wonder if i'm the type of woman a man would cheat on. Not with- but on. it's morbid and ridiculous i know, but sometimes i stand here--knowing that you're upstairs in bed, smelling your stale unshowered smell, mixed with hastily-applied aftershave and downy--one sock still on your foot, the other barely hanging on like the socks of babies who kick them off until the ridiculously useless pieces of fabric trip and flop beneath their clumsy feet. i know where you are--where you always are-curled up next to petey with his soft shedding fur and rampant breathing. i know this--but sometimes i just--i just.
i need to stop.
you left the light on for me. i'll walk up our creaky stairs and fumble my way past door frames and bedside tables and the cat beneath my blind feet. you're still here, your sock foot dangling over the side of the bed and the sheets awry from your fruitless attempts to kick petey out. you roll over and kiss me goodnight.
you didn't brush your teeth--i can taste the banana bread i made on your lips.
you smell like marlboro cigarettes--the red ones. i guess no one will be changing these sheets tomorrow."

bang bang bang

2008-10-27T22:47:00.000-05:00

man on the subway rattlin' around for change singin' sam cook amongst the gum chewing, ear-plugged, stiff spine cartload of suits and their attache cases on the F train early this mornin'. a man standin next to me already had a small pool under his arm as he leaned against the silver pole gripping tightly while his sweat loosened his baby rattle clasp. somebody had pancakes this mornin. heapin stack of flapjacks with a slab or two of butter and god-forbid aunt jemima syrup. butter him up before he goes to work honey, you're not a fifties wife but baby feed your man.
jingle jangle, clinking up and down the man saddles through the subway car, meetin eyes of neighbors, strangers to everyone else, friends to him. "a change is gonna come" he sings as his voice grows closer and less faint to my muffled eardrums. he goes into a verse that i've never heard before, one of those verses that you skip over like in hymnals, only singin 1,2,5 amen. a man waves a dollar his way as his voice carries him past, kind, raspy, worn and cold. he's still singin' "a change gonna come" he's on his own verse now. 2nd Avenue stop. a group of suits and sleek boots rise as a unit and hastily canter out of the car.
this time he speaks 'change gonna come' 'change gonna come' 'be thankful you alive today and you have one more chance to get it right. be thankful for that and jus smile. jus smile...it won't mess up yer hair' i hid my smirk behind my coffee, smiling only at reflections meeting my gaze in the dark window. West 4 street. Excuse me. thank you. whispered apologies that need not be said. another chance today.
_________________

heard gunshots reverberatin' outside my window tonight. one two three. breath. hand on the trigger. bustle up that jolt of courage. FOUR. i undress in my lukewarm room and can feel every potential splinter in the scuffed hardwood underneath my feet as the gunshots hit a bull's eye directly into my eardrum and stay there, echoing. i barely have my pajamas on when FOUR rings out and i cover my eyes and stay. wait. wait.wait. i'm not unsafe. i don't feel unsafe.
someone just died.
the wind blows swiftly in the trees outside my window carrying with it the sounds of screen doors creaking open only to slam shut and the revs of engine motors barreling down my street, bee-lining with no regard to any warm body standing in the way. i don't know why i cover my eyes when i hear the familiar shots. i shouldn't be surprised anymore. i can go to sleep tonight safe in my nook, underneath my covers, dreaming of stars and fields and christmas and the warm bear hugs of friends and the enveloping arms of laughter.
it's raining outside now. and tomorrow's a new day.
'change gonna come'

we wash our mouths out daily

2008-09-29T01:15:00.000-05:00

damn writer's block.
i don't think it's really writer's block as much as it is the case that i use the backspace far too often in my writing. that, or i feel like i have nothing to write about. some days i feel like crying. right now i do, and i don't know why. have i hit menopause prematurely? is it because my allergies are taking over my body and forcing it to revolt? is it because i ate 5 cookies today and indian food and am utterly disgusted right now? blah blah blah goes the little voice that sits above my right ear and whispers hissing noises that trail into the darkest corners of my mind and resonate within the cavities of my chest. i woke up with the worst case of halitosis sluggishly seeping out of my mouth, turning my tongue greyish yellow because of all the rotting inside. and yes,, i ate cookies for breakfast lunch and dinner. but maybe the stench, this languid seeping sewage inside my mouth goes deeper than just the last bits of cookie lingering in my teeth. maybe it's because i still listen to the lies of satan. maybe it's because i envy people on the subway who hold hands or sneak kisses to one another. maybe it's the green jealousy that seeps up from the tar pits in my organs and spews out into my mouth. maybe this stench is from the fact that i worry too much about never getting married, or never being loved, or being fat, or never feeling at right with my body or never measuring up to who i want to be or dfjkljlkj;, just all of these things that are churning and gurgling inside of me that i suppress with ever smile and absent conversation when really all i want to say is---WHAT AM I DOING? ugh, man, Lord. it's at these times when we don't brush our teeth that we realize all of the refuse that sin has built up in our flesh. i don't know why i say 'our' maybe it makes me fee better. self conscious again. listening to the lies again. how desperately i need God, it's indescribable, really, the stench that emanates from my body. i want to scrub it off, scale it off, shed the pounds of grease and filth. not now not now. my muscles are tensing up inside of me as i cling to my burden--why do i do this? it's my ball and chain and i've grown accustomed to the weight, the sick little indulgence of pain, of chastising myself for this that, for looking one way, talking like so, eating this and that, living inside this white picket fence of society---and i'm fucking sick of it. i imagine all of this, it's the ball and chain that i have the key to, slipped stealthily inside my mouth, behind my tongue with it's coppery taste settling inside my mouth. i'm free. i'm free. i'm free. praise God. and yet i don't dance, i don't jump, i cry, and smile out of the corners of my mouth, raw from washing, and i rest.

and tomorrow i will wake up. and still be alive. alive and not existing. but beyond existing, walking without ball and chain, breathing free from pestilence and shame. walking, lightly, powerfully. loved and free.

Nostalgia

2008-09-22T21:26:00.000-05:00

i love these old pictures. i hope they make you laugh.
i shall write more soon

i hate the word succulent

2008-09-17T00:20:00.000-05:00

it sounds like wet play dough.
and wet play dough is not succulent, trust me, i've tried it.

i'm a list maker. my life operates around lists. my goal in life is to kill the list--make one and take it out, putting the most mundane, detailed tasks on it and jotting down things i've already done just to have the pleasure of crossing them off. and sometimes i hate lists. lists of things i'm afraid of. lists of things that i think are true about me. lists of people i've loved or had crushes on. lists of the opportunities i've missed. lists of the things that i would say to a person that i met eyes with if i'd only had the courage to say hello. lists of the things that i would change out myself. lists about my future. lists of dreams of hopes, of realities. these are the lists that i don't necessarily look forward to crossing off because i'm too afraid to make them. so we'll start out by checking a box off of the 'things i'm afraid of' list and make a list, a public list about all the things that i dream about and in my own little world, in my little nook, these are the things that i day dream about, however mundane, and stupid and inconsequential--these are the things of my dreams.

1. to go to montana
2. to own a little coffee shop in new york with a porch adn chipped paint and a red door. to make my grandad's homeade potato bread and invent drinks with espresso and foam milk all day long.
3. to meet my husband in my coffee shop.
4. to actually watch star wars adn not hate it.
5. to be a part of a theater company who are my family
6. to perform things that matter, and push the envelope, not because it's inappropriate, but because plays are the messy, incongruous thoughts that go on inside everyone's head that they're too afraid to speak
7. to learn how to do latte art
8. for someone to figure out how many freckles i have and what constellations are in them
9. to learn how to rock climb--really
10. to have a husband who is the perfect combination of a lumberjack, peter pan and the cs lewis all wrapped up into one. who smells like bonfires and wears plaid and has a scruffy beard and is burly but not a douchebag.
11. to eat grilled cheese and tomato soup every sunday night for the rest of my life.
12. to learn how to speak fluent french and go to france and have un cafe and all the nasty kinds of cheeses at a hole in the wall restaurant.
13. to be a wine connoisseur
14. to have a shiba inu named petey that looks like a fox and a calico cat that kneads my stomach before going to bed right beside me
15. to have a house that smells like cinnamon and bonfires instead of baby throw up and cat pee
16. to never have more than i need and learn how to throw away crap
17. to parasail and scuba dive on a reef and get the crap scared out of me by eels and sharks
18. to have kids who shoot bows and arrows and take them on fishing trips like my dad took me and my sister
19. to start eating pb&j sandwiches in cookie-cutter shapes during holidays, just for fun and save the crust
20. to meet someone who my kids can someday call aunt... without her actually being their aunt
21. to have tropical fish and name them
22. to write a book, not just to write one, but because i believe in what i'm saying and because it needs to be said--i still haven't figured out what that is
23. to learn how to cook frou frou things like salmon and cobbler and to actually be able to make my own recipes
24. to have a husband who likes to go on adventures and knows i'll kick his ass if he'd rather stay home and melt his butt into the couch
25. to NEVER have a house where i have to mulch, but plant wildflowers everywhere
26. to learn how to crack an egg with just one hand
27. to tell those that i really do love that i love and appreciate them and not take them for granted
28. to never straighten my hair again (this is a hopeful)
29. to roll down more hills and get bruises and scratches
30. to laugh more often and surround myself with those people who don't just make me laugh, but make me fall to the ground holding my sides, gasping for air and wetting my pants. those moments really are to die for
31. to know with confidence that i am here for a reason. to know God in all his delight and to know joy. constant, hot, radiating joy.--this was added because although a 'dream', im praying to God it's my reality.

*thanks margaret becker (author extraordinaire) for inspiring this list

my shoulder hurts something fierce

2008-09-13T00:54:00.000-05:00

i haven't written in a while. it's not that i'm not inspired to write--i write in my head all the time when i'm in the subway or walking down the street or cooking pasta in my little abode, it's just when it comes to writing things down, i get all critical like nothing is good enough...for a blog. i'm stupid, it's ok.

today i made an omelet and almost became a strict vegetarian because i saw something i've never seen before in y cracked egg: twins. yes twins. i was trying to be quiet an d not wake christy with my cooking frenzy and i cracked open one of the little brown eggs into my skillet only to see two yokes attached together instead of just one. and for some reason attaching the word "twins" to it made me not want to eat it. i felt like i was commiting some sort of crime by eating twin yokes, so i just cracked another egg on top, grabbed a fork and smushed those suckers around the already sizzling skillet.

heartless, i know.

i had a series of revelations today. it was one of those things where you start laughing outloud by yourself because you realize how rediculous somethings in the world are and you have no idea why they are the way they are and people around you think you're crazy.

cast of revelations (in order of appearance)
1. men and women stil subconsciously segregate themselves on the subway because to some women, men are sketchy. thus making me laugh with strangers when an old woman won't sit down to a young man but makes christy scoot over to make a new tight spot for her. young man and i laugh at her. conclusion: laughing with strangers is fun, and also at them, but in a nice, unassuming way.
2. my friend justin clark is right when he says that crunchy leaves are the best noises ever. i constantly go out of my way to crush an extra-crunchy one. it's ever so satisfying.
3. ok dentyne ice ads. picture this--girl and guy making out in the grass, the slogan is to share the wealth or the experience or something super cliche like that, however in said picture of make out, the dude's arm is underneath the girls shoulder and i'm thinking. there has to be some more cmfortable way to make out. i mean, his arm is going to either get crushed, or it's going to fall asleep and he's going to be shaking it out or trying to get it to wake up and still be making out, because the guy won't want to sacrifice prime lip-locking time to get his crushed arm to wake up. conclusion: i really don't want dentyne ice anyways because the girl that was making out with the dentyne ice dude didn't look all that intrigued/blown away by the minty ice flavor--hence the reason her face looks like those old church women who pucker up and blow you kisses when you're 3 and they have old women powder-smell breath. gross.
4. why do you say bless you when someone sneezes? also, many people don't say bless you, they say bleshhew. i laughed at a man after i said bless you to him today and i was like, what if i just went up to him, if he didn't sneeze and said 'bless you' he would think i was crazy or weird or some modern day mother teresa right? conclusion: sneezes must have a holy/saintly magic in them that makes you want to bless people.
5. listening to old people at starbucks talk about the internet and insoles is the most hilarious conversation i've ever heard. conclusion: i need to be fabulous and hate technology in 40 years and buy insoles and forget where i put them.

in the next week or so, i'll write some more, some creative, some drivel, something just to write.
it's raining tonight, and it's lulling me to sleep, so i'll go now.

today's goal: to be

2008-09-07T01:10:00.000-05:00

i just dropped my glasses in the toilet.

happiness is a choice isn't it? that's what i keep telling myself even though in my head i'm cursing up a storm. over glasses. really, jessika? really now.
lately i've been thinking about optimism and pessimism. i mean, i can never really remember a time when i wasn't the glass half empty kid. and i don't know why. what happened during my kid years that turned me into this doubtful, worrisome, cynical person? it's a choice. i think. i pray it's a choice. my friend chase says that i'm a 'realist' which is really a nice way of saying pessimist, it makes us (at least me) feel better. and the thing is, while i'm not a disney princess who enjoys sprinkles and rainbows, i can be happy. but even more than that, even more than the fake happy that is crest smiles and puppies and bows and jauncy walking--i can be joyful. joy. it's otherworldly and that makes it so much more desirable. and i know that happiness--theres a choice, but joy--thats tangible. i may not have the senses to feel it now, but it exists in that sixth mysterious sense--that's where you can experience it fully-touch,taste,feel,hear, smell--it's all those plus something i can't describe.
i crave that.

today i went outside without make-up on. and to many people, no big deal. they do that every day. not me. i'm not a high-maintenance gal, but i have this image of myself without makeup that is etched in my mind. a face without makeup is for me, my family and my pillow only. but today, christy said let's go, and i went. slipped on some rainboots, and left the house. i mean, i didn't have my contacts in either so if anyone gave me 'what the heck is that girl doing emerging from the house without makeup look' then i paid no mind to them, because unless they stared into my eyes 2 feet away from my face, they were justu another color-running blob in my field of vision. nice cop-out huh?

i have so much more to write that i've been thinking about, but it's late and i should be in bed 2 hours ago. i'm scared, i'm confused a lot, but somewhere deep down, buried there's a hope and a knowledge that everything's going to be ok, going to be beautiful.

eavesdropping over your shoulder

2008-09-03T20:25:00.000-05:00

i went to the tea lounge again today. ever time i go in there i feel like i'm somewhere safe, and cozy and homey. I almost fell asleep there today but i got scared of looking like an idiot and people laughing at me. right now i'm reading perelandra (from christy's loverly library) by c.s.lewis--it's delicious, except now i want to read that instead of actually doing my reading for school. oh well, i'll just train myself to be able to do both, i mean, it's possible. at the tea lounge today, i settled into this plush armchair on top of a stained oriental rug and just started writing. maybe because it was so cozy in there, or my head was in the clouds, or my body was so relaxed by my coffee that i slipped down into the crevices of my armchair and started writing ridiculousness, but i was inspired in a weird way. so here are the thoughts of a girl who wants to be wendybird, sitting, dreaming in a little coffee shop on the corner of court and douglass:

i have all these little writings an ramblings and earlier this summer i was going to write about moments in people's lives--just snapshots of tics and idiosyncrasies that show something deeper underneath. it's like all these moments in the human journey to find something, some meaning, some love, some purpose. i was brushing my teeth this morning and the idea just came to me to write a book of moments--from the most mundane and odd to the most beautiful and big ideas that are broiling underneath that ultimately give way to all the existences of all these people.
i had a book when i was little called "outside-in" where you see how people look on the outside and then lift a flap and see all their insides and muscles and things that hold them together but are concealed from the outside. i was just thinking about that idea combined with writing.
all of us, like it or not, are made up of moments that give way to experiences which birth truths and eventually make us into who we are. we all have those defining moments when something clicks or pushes you over the edge to act or make a decision or think a certain way...and what if i could get those, observe those and put them down into moments. usually when we look back on moments where we made up our minds about something or started to believe something--it was small at first and unmemorable to people passing by or observing us. what moments are in a certain person's life that are key?--but not cliche--i mean of course the moment when you realize you're in love with someone or the moment you make up your mind about a certain person or group of people--the moment when you decide what beauty is and whether you encompass it or not. i don't know...the interesting thing about all of these moments is that they don't just happen once but have the potential to be re-experienced and in turn change you again. and all these moments layer and layer and layer on top of each other until you're old and wrinkled and all you have are these layers of moments that made up your life. it's beautiful, really.
i sound stoned"

hopeless romantic that i am

2008-09-03T02:17:00.000-05:00

this here is a little song that i've rediscovered recently by the lovely rosie thomas (and friend sufjan stevens)

Say Hello

If I find him, if I just follow
Would he hold me and never let me go
Would he let me borrow his old winter coat
I don't know
I don't know
If I see her standing there alone
At the train station three stops from her home
I have half a mind to say what I'm thinking anyway
But, I don't know
I don't know
There's an airplane in the sky
With a banner right behind
Loneliness is just a crime
Look each other in the eye
And say hello
Oh oh oh oh
And say hello
Oh oh oh oh oh

Hey there, how you doing?

Hi, my name's Mary!

sleep don't weep

2008-09-02T01:08:00.000-05:00

i keep erasing everything i write. although it is far from good, it's something and in my mind, unworthy to be read or even exist in this weird little blogosphere that houses all my ramblings and nonsense.
The other day i was sitting on the F train, which i must admit, is not nearly as bright and lively as the old 2 train, partly because the seats are crammed against one another and an awful orange light pervades the entire car, because the seats area ll painted a mandarin orange circa suburban 1972. Anyways, i was sitting crammed in my little corner, knocking knees with the stranger diagonally from me when out of the corner of my eye i spy a man that i immediately pen as a guido. unbottened shirt, gold chains, pressed pants, cabbie hat, slicked hair. guido. and i'm thinking to myself, what is that guy up to,just don't look at him, he's all about the ladies, he just wants to make eye contact with the next chick that comes his way. and then the guy gets bored. he gets bored and starts pulling receipts outta his pocket, all folded and crumpled and he takes each one and smoothes it out, irons out al the creases and folds over his knee and begins to make a paper airplane. at first i can't believe this guy is doing this. he's like 50 and making paper airplanes outta reciepts on the subway. he folds, meticulously creases, folds again and sets his finished work on the empty seat beside him. reaches in his pocket, pulls out another faded receipt, and does the same thing. he repeats this fro four or five reciepts and i'm entranced. this man's body is doing something that seems so unnatural--something that first-graders do when they're bored, and as weird as it was, it was so beautiful and so, surprisingly refreshing how people can surprise you again and again without doing anything, by just being. and then i though, i would like to have one of those little paper airplanes, but my nerves got the best of me and i got out of the train empty-handed.

you know how people, when they get married have people throw rice or blow bubbles or release birds or something? well, at my wedding, i think people should fly little paper airplanes. for some reason, it seems unbelievably fitting, and a little absurd, but i like it.

insomnia's kicking in, i should probably turn in for the night before more absurd rambling takes over

something new

2008-08-29T22:23:00.001-05:00

oh bid me well goodnight. i have found a corner of dust and secrets to call my own, hollowed out from the damp earth under boards rotten and worn being too long trod upon. bid me i pray, goodnight, to burrow my head among the sandy-eyed beetles and ripple skinned grubs that wake with nights dark tide. i pray, kiss my eyelids soft and gently, let not my lashes linger on your lips, and if one strays, make a wish for my waking. i pray you as i hold your ankles tight and grip your strong calves planted firmly in your worn boots, pry my pulsing fingers from your safe warmth and bid me goodnight. tuck me in amongst the moths and and mossy blankets of the earth. i pray you, bid me goodnight and let me slumber with the cobwebs and musty dank where i belong, where i belong. look not upon my ashen puffy face in this veil of night, but let your roots grow deep, your boots mix deep into my borrow of dirt. for even though i bid you goodnight, i pray that my limp lichen soul becomes one with the deep that when light finds my corner, i may be a speck of soil upon your boot that walks across the earth and in your deep path, nurture flowers that arise and bloom.

but now darling, bid me well goodnight

nooks and crannies to hide my secret notes and crumpled gum wrappers

2008-08-28T23:06:00.000-05:00

it's much cozier here now, is it not? i'd like to think so. cozy is such a languid word, it makes me want winter so badly--wearing my pumpkin hat and peeling layer upon layer of clothes off once i get inside to a warm, cozy, cider-smelling home.

these days i don't really know what to do with my time. i shouldn't waste it, but i'd waste it even more if i just sat here thinking about what to do rather than just doing whatever comes to mind. i'm afraid to go into a coffee shop on smith street. really, i swear i've walked by it at least 5 different times and told myself to go in and then my legs just keep up the bouncy pace that have propelled them thus far and i keep walking, looking back, wishing i had gone in, but being whip-lashed forward by the pace of my swift steps.

the neighborhood is lovely these days. i have to keep reminding myself to slow down when i'm walking, especially when i have nowhere to go and no one to be with. it's that simple--why can't i stop hurrying through life. i become antsy, agitated when i slow down and allow the gaze of strangers to see me slowly sauntering down the uneven sidewalks. walking past stoops of perching old women i smile gently and quickly look down if their gaze catches mine without returning a painted on smile. i'm afraid i'm being judged, a swift brush of my hair out of my face and a hurried jolt of energy into my step should reassure them that their unreturned looks meant nothing to me. but that's all a lie.

it's funny being up here pretty much alone. it's not lonely, it's a displaced, unsettling feeling that hooks deep down in my core and shakes me when i'm least expecting it. this life feels so much like plaster sometimes, so crumbly and replicative of something more alive, more urgent, hotter, lovelier, more enchanting. hrm. the things i think when i sit in my bed at night and just let my mind go. it's weird. i miss the promenade, maybe i'll saunter down there tomorrow and go out of my way to crunch the first leaves that have fallen from the trees along the little brownstone streets.

greasy fingerprints

2008-08-25T22:33:00.000-05:00

every time that i write something on this dad-gum thing i always title it with whatever is coming into my head at the time. thats a lie. i don't. but tonight i did so let's let all that lie be a truth for just tonight.

i just want to molt. i have this skin-crinkling, itching, metamorphic desire to reach down and peel away all the ashy, sticky film that has accumulated on my body and soul in the last few years. or really since i was born. not that i can remember that far. by the way i think that it's silly if people say that they can remember the moment they were born, i think that they are lying. nobody can remember that. anyways. i do. i have this utterly inexplicable desire to just burst, to erupt--but in the most delicate, beautiful, chrysalis-exploding kind of way. but i don't know what im going to become or what's going to happen when i do burst out of my cocoon, when i shed this dirty, melted plastic from my body and wiggle out. and even worse, i don't know what the old skin looks like--sometimes i do--i can see the tendencies, the jealousy, the self-consciousness, the quick anger, the anvil on my chest, but other days it just blends in and decides to melt itself into some sort of invisible presence that clings to my body and can't be seen--it's almost parasitic.

i swear i'm not doing drugs in new york. it's just. i don't know. i have this picture of who i want to become in my head--of who i wish i was--who i can be. i still can't figure out if that's wrong. i mean, i want to be this radiating woman, content in who she is and how she is, braving every day with a vigor and a fire that's so ethereal and eternal and otherworldly--i want to be free. and yet, i hold myself back. i can't go outside without wearing a tanktop underneath my shirt. i have to have layers. kym tried to make me go without it and i couldn't. there is no way. and i don't know why. i can't do it. i can't bear to feel the fabric wrinkling and rubbing up against my skin. i can't feel protected if i don't have my under-armor on guarding whatever figure's underneath against the judgement of passerbys. i can't bear to look and see the indention of my belly button against my shirt or the fear of my less than toned mid-section making its way to be seen through dresses or sneaking into wrinkles when i sit down. this has to stop. i have to stop this nonsensical mindset and behavior. i keep asking myself--how does a woman become beautiful? is she born that way--some, yes and i find myself wanting--which is such a lie that satan puts in my head. does it come from a woman finding that she herself is a beauty, is indeed full of beauty and made from it and in that sense wshe can be nothing but beautiful? do beautiful women hold their heads high on a street next to woman with 20 inch weists and 6inch pumps and clinging dresses? yes. i think so. there is something to be seen in a woman who knows who she is and doesn't have to apply a dab of makeup or jewelry in order to be beautiful. not just to herself, but in radiation. does that make sense? maybe. i just don't know what this beauty is, i know the source, but for some reason it still eludes me.

give it up jessika. there are so may more beautiful and complex and lovely and delightful things to be thinking about than clothes, or weight, or male attention, or masks of beauty.

look at flowers, look at crooked baby teeth wandering around inside a child's gurgling mouth. look at old couples, look at exhausted mothers of three. look at the people who choose to walk slowly and see and smell everything around them. look at the women who sit on their stoop in their nightgowns. look for those that are sleeping in public. look at eyes, irises, pupils. there is beauty. there it is. even if just a momentary glimpse.

i've got to begin again

2008-08-25T15:30:00.000-05:00

i just erased everything i had written. i promise i'll write tonight

lovelies, im coming home

2008-08-05T08:56:00.000-05:00

lovely lovely day.
i'm sittin gin the floor of my peeling paint apartment, listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the sounds of cars yelling and exhaling in puffs of black soot as they make their way into manhattan. today i leave. more and more i figure out i have no idea where home is anymore. i feel home here, but i feel home when im hugged by my friends and family back in nashville. more and more i'm beginning to realize that 'home' isn't at all the walls of family photos or the bedroom where all your stuffed animals still lay positioned to play, collecting dust bunnies and fading in the sunlight of an open window--home is really wherever you choose it to be. and i know it has more to do with people than place--weirdly enough. i'm ready to go back--just for a little while to the people back in nashville--to my best friends, my mom my dad and my sister, the faces i know, i hug, the faces that i put up on my bulletin board to remind me of home. i miss coffee at a shop where i can actually sit and talk for hours and feel like i belong. i miss sitting up until midnight eating milkshakes at sonic. i miss going on random adventures with my sister. i miss bear hugs and people who say they're sorry when they bump into you even though they don't have to at all. i love new york. or really--i love brooklyn. manhattan--it's for the dogs. i really can't think clearly right now and so my writing is jumbled and i'm starting to be self-conscious of it. blech. i'll be home on thursday. i'll bear hug you if i see you. hold on tightly, please.

stealing toilet paper, mooching chocolate chip cookies and missing home

2008-07-28T21:43:00.000-05:00

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."

2008-07-22T01:26:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-21T06:00:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-13T21:33:00.000-05:00

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

2008-07-10T20:05:00.001-05:00

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

2008-07-06T21:01:00.000-05:00

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

I'm not scared...

2008-06-28T11:36:00.000-05:00

Right now my life just is in the present. and I'm not scared. For some reason sitting here on this Saturday morning where my life could be a complete trainwreck because of me playing tug-of-war with God over control and plans and worries just isn't. there's no tug-of-war, no competition for control. just me standing in an open field just ready and moving forward. and there's this anxiety deep down that pulses inside me, but it's also an unknowingness, a sort of tingling suspense that just breathes life into me. but i have peace. I'm not scared for some reason. and i don't know why. I'm auditioning for Atlantic theatre school on July 11 and i have no idea what the hell i'm doing either if i do or don't get in. and for some reason that excites me but it doesn't scare me. i don't know why. for some reason in this city, i just feel extracted from everything i know and that i am just being, just alive in the present which is such a rushing sense of light and joy and aliveness that i am a human being but so much more than merely human. i met up with my cousin jason on thursday and he's 36, writing, acting and co-directing a pilot for FX and if the network picks it up it could be really great for him--really really great for him. and it's so cool just to sit down with someone who's almost double your age and ask them if they've got it all figured out yet and to hear them say no--but just enjoy it. i don't want to live my life trying to figure everything out--i need to learn how to bask in the mystery-how to experience it instead of figure it out or intellectualize it, you know? for some reason i have peace right now because for once in my life and hopefully for years to come i feel deep down in my heart and in my sinews and bones and everything that's inside me that i'm doiong something right--and it's not because of me or anything that i decided to do, it's just letting go. just letting go and not worrying and taking action and not giving into fear. because that's one of the hardest things to do is not give into fear. i swear that people blame all their worries and complaints on external things when it all comes down to the stripped away bare fear that stops us all in our tracks and leaves us pillaged and living merely human, settled, merely satisfying lives. i'm 20 years old and i'm not going to live that way for the rest of my life--be it 5 more years or 70 more years. i just refuse.

on a side note-1. i saw spring awakening 2. ashley has a stalker/lover 3. i have decided that i don't hate WALL.E 4. i am now a regular at starbucks and need to work at one but i don't have a freaking hat 5. i love watching babies on subways 6. i have survived 2 weeks without grocery shopping 7. when i am awkward i revert to playing with animals and will go looking for them even at a party
also, people should check out my friend Will's writing. it's fabulous.

2008-06-21T11:23:00.000-05:00

i think i just love the word abide. i don't know why. it just kind of has this ring, this comfort to it. this wasn't the point of my post anyways.
So i had a long talk with mom last night and it was one of those that I probably should've journaled about because i know it's one of those conversatins that i'll be having with my children somedaya nd i think it's also one of those conversations tha informs the rest of your life. epic would be the word here. i think. no it is.
i always have these talks or moments where i just break down. it happened at college. it began happening senior year of highschool and it's happening now. i feel like when it happens i get so embarassed and so freed all at the same time. it comes down to the fact that i hate growing up. it's one thing that i can't do anything about, and i feel safe having control--and in my life right now, I need to just do. just be. and give up control to God. I need to stop living in this little world that I've created where I feel like I have to please everybody or that I'll never be good enough. that fear haunts me daily and it can't be remedied by someone telling me that I'm good enough or anything. I have to believe it for myself.
but then mom just said. it's not all about you. it's not. it really isn't. so who cares if i make a fool out of myself or if i live so that i'm drenched in joy and everyone thinks i'm crazy or if i put my all into pursuing him and have faith that he has something brilliant and joyful planned for me if i am faithful to give, to be open, to serve and move forwards. i was talking to my mom about being obedient--which is what i want to be because then it results in this beautiful strong connection, this heartstring between you and God and others. and it has this insumountable joy attached and i want that with every cell that's inside of me. thing is i don't know what to be obedient to. it's not like God sent me this checklist or whispered in my ear "hey jessika, i want you to do this and this and this--get to marking off the list" it's not like that. it's being open and available for every opportunity. it's being open for God to use you and flow through you and for you to just be an instrument, a bondservant to christ--which is inevitably delightful. so it's not about me thinking "what am i supposed to be obedient to. crap i don't know. i guess i'll just wait around" it's about taking steps and having faith that God will use you. Because it's not like you have to wait for God to do something or that anything you do will screw up his plans. please. wake up. he made the sun, i mean, really? you can't screw up his plans--you can just ignore them or choose not to be open. and then it's a missed opportunity to be used, to really FEEL joy and know God.
so. now, i need to be held accountable. i have to move forward and not just saying that i will. i have to not be concerned with how i look or talk, but just be a mirror and have peace. the ways of man guides his steps, but the lord directs his path. God, i hope in everything that i am that this is true.

Petahh Pan

2008-06-16T23:07:00.000-05:00

Oh by the way, i will marry a guy that is a cross between peter pan and paul bunyan. yeah, i know. good luck finding him, right?

this is my essay that i have FINALIZED for my application into atlantic acting school. the prompt was to write about a character in fiction who has had influence on you and what that influence is. so here goes:
I FINISHED SOMETHING!

Once when I was young, I dreamt I could fly. In my dream I scrambled to the top of our saggy, worn-out den couch, spread out my scrawny arms, uncurled my clenched fists, closed my eyes to wish upon happy thoughts, and jumped. But instead of flopping onto a pile of pillows as I had done in countless games of make believe, in my dream I actually flew. With my scratchy pink nightgown, and arms spread out like a bird, I was Wendy Darling.
Having been raised on a steady diet of dusty, yellowed books and 2-D Disney animation, I was thoroughly acquainted with the enchanted characters that lived in fairy tales. Yet there was one story that continued to draw me back even after I had let go of nightlights and good-night kisses. In it lived a girl I believed to be real as a child and whose image I vividly remember even now. Her name was Wendy Darling and I flew with her once in a dream. Through the years she has had the ability to not only reflect parts of my own personality, but also impact many of my views, attitudes, and experiences in life.
Wendy Darling taught me how to grow up without becoming a grown-up. In J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, and in practically all fairy tales, grown-ups are those who have lost the enchantment. They have forgotten the sparkle of possibility and the longing to dream. Now they are held in a concrete world of obligations, societal rules and stoic masks. Grown-ups don’t embark on quests of adventure, where danger is welcomed and fear is brushed aside. Instead they dream up worlds of security and comfort. They try to please those around them by putting on corporate costumes and wearing alternating masks at home, at work, and at “play”. I will never be a grown-up, but I will always be growing up.
The day I turned eighteen, my father said it was time to start acting like a grown-up. He said if I wanted to be taken seriously and treated as an adult, I damn sure had to act like one. There I was, about to be pushed into the adult world where creased pants, button-down blouses and patent pumps threatened to take the place of my ruffled tutu, knee-high socks and scuffed-up shoes. With my feet slipping and my knees buckling, I was straddling the chasm between childhood innocence and the reality of adulthood. Life had given me an ultimatum: either enter the swift, practical and independent world of adulthood, or cling to childhood and long for a past which time only sustains in a memory.
But, I realized I will never have to choose—Wendy Darling didn’t. In Peter Pan, Wendy is pulled in one direction by the desire to remain in Neverland with its endless realm of imagination and childhood creativity. Forcing her in the opposite direction are Wendy’s parents and the unspoken laws of society which command her to grow up, move out of the nursery, stop her silly nonsensical dreams and become a lady. However, Wendy refuses to be torn between these two worlds. Unlike most children who relinquish their dreams as a right of passage into adulthood, Wendy ages but never lets go of her Neverland. She continues to believe in a world of radiating beauty, in a world of buoyant hope, and in a world of boundless imagination—in a world so many have lost and forgotten.
Because of Wendy Darling, I will never be one of those who have lost their hopes and forgotten their dreams. Inevitably, I will grow old; my skin will loosely sag from my brittle bones, my hair will glisten with emerging strands of grey and white, and my body will declare mutiny as it aches and wilts. But I will never allow my imagination, and the radiating life that dwells there, to die. Wendy Darling taught me growing up is inevitable, but glowing embers of unencumbered dreams, hopes and imaginings must be plucked from childhood and clasped tightly in adulthood to breathe fervent life into mere existence.

ps. dad your dialogue was changed to protect you for artistic purposes. HA. well "damn well" sounded more dramatic didn't it? it's what you meant anyways :)

2008-06-15T23:26:00.000-05:00

uagh! i haven't written in such a long time, i wan to say that so much has happened--and it probably has, but in my mind i just forget a whole whole lot. i am really bad at deadlines. really i think i've found out i am. and it's not that i can meet them or don't wnat to meet them--i just have no consequence for meeting them. jeepers. this hurts writing this. like that sinking feeling deep down in your chest where your heart is, or where your parents tell you your heart is when you're a little kid and you're playing doctor and trying to find the heartbeat with that little plastic yellow and blue stethoscope. i can't even place it. but i missed another deadline. it was a personal deadline. and i had all intentions of meeting it and doing it, but i just...didn't. WHY. why why why why why? i have no idea. and then i beat myself up about it (haven't got fully to that point yet) and then i have to move forward. I HAVE TO move forward i have to keep telling myself this. i have to stop talking to myself and just let my body do it. because there's no reason not to. today ashley and i went down to the radio city music hall to see the red carpet for the tony's. ash loves it--it's like how the academy awards are to me. but the whole time we were down there i couldn't stop thinking how weird our culture is. we line p to see people get out of cars with black windows to walk on some red carpet. everyone that isn't nominated for an award folows this unspoken rule of wearing black and i actually heard people on the streets say "wouldn't that be nice. people screaming your name" maybe i think too much about this stuff. i mean yeah it's glamourous and all, but it really amounts to what? people feeling obligated to get dressed up to walk around with this mask of celebrity on. we stood next to a little girl who was about 8 and she was telling a little boy a story, then a limo pulls up and she just starts screaming. she yells and shouts and yells to her dad " i don't know who it is but it's a celebrity!!! you're a celebrity! you're famous!!" it was just kind of sad to me to see this little kid have so much feeling towards someone just because they were a celebrity. i don't know. it was weird. i was just watching the man who was telling the limos to pull up and where to park. it was such a big to do. this guy was a heavy-set guy in a tan suit and dress shoes wearing sunglasses at 7pm who thought way too much about his job and thought he was in the parking car mafia. the funniest thing was how super pissed off he got when this tour bus somehow managed to get through and was just trying to go down the street. he started yelling at the bus and no one knew what to do--it was what they would call a "situation". dude, just let the bus through, no big deal right? wrong. i swear after the bus finally went through this man was standing there with clenched fists dangling off of his arms; he was trying to disguise the fact that he felt threatened at his job and wanted to maintain this weird facade of intimidation in his tan suit and camel shoes and sunglasses. it's just funny.
funny funny people

oh ps. i think im starting a book about seconds in people's lives. it's like looking through a photo album of strangers and in the few ticks of a second it takes to actually take in a photograph--it tells a story of a life. i'm thinking of calling it Momentics. that sounds weird but i don't care

Today was a hard day

2008-06-12T00:35:00.000-05:00

Yeah, today was hard, to say the leaset. I get frustrated when I'm writing this right now because so much of me just doesn't feel good enough. I know I deserve, deserve is the wrong word, I don't know what word is right so I'll take it. I deserve to be here just as much as anybody, but some part of me is just, so afraid. I was washing my face tonight and thinking about the drive to murfreesboro and how don't ever want to make that drive again, ever. But I HAVE to move forward. I HAVE to stop telling myself that I'm not good enough. I HAVE to stop being afraid. It's that simple. Moving forward takes actiona nd initiative. It just does and I have to DO.

ehch. today I presented something from the book the prophet by kahlil gibran in adler class. the book is all about the ideas, the BIG ideas that affect humanity and we had to choose one to present (get the book, read it, understand it by the way). so i went up there and i tried to give away the big idea. patrick my teacher stopped me and told me that i needed to use basically what i had, my experiences, my personal life. and i swear it was one of the most vulnerable but freeing experiences ive ever had. there was nothing but the present. and i said somethings that i couldn't believe that i opened my mouth and let people in to. i don't know--like the fact that i sleep next to the wall with a pillow beside me and a small corner of my old blanket draped across my side and lower back because i imagine that instead of a blanket there will someday be my husbands arm around me and i will feel beautiful. the fact that when i'm walking down the street i look in every shop window and mirror to make sure i look okay. to fix my hair. to keep up this illusion of trying to be "beautiful". the fact taht i have arm fat and i get disgusted by my stomach still and compare myself to girls who are half my size hoping that if i could only be like them then i would be beautiful. the truth that i am mortified when i wear a leotard leggings and a skirt to movement class and the teacher tells me to take off my skirt and then everyone can seel the places where my body curves or sticks out or my panty lines and my roll indentions. things like that. but the fact that i have to understand that beauty isn't about any of those things. the fact that beauty isn't something to be obtained--it is freely given and should be received. it is forever in action like "a garden always growing or a flock of angels always in flight". gibran says that beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. but we are life and we are the veil. we don't look each other in the eyes and exchange beauty. we hoarde it and de-sanctify it. we plasticize it. we turn beauty from something unique and ethereal into something whorish and simply tactile.

i'm going to stop because im just rambling. but i am so passionate about beauty. so very passionate. mm it radiates, it pulses, it just is so warm and i want to bask in it.
just think about beauty.
and look people in the eyes when you talk to them because you'll see something.

So Today

2008-06-09T22:59:00.000-05:00

I got to see Phylicia Rashad talk. In other words--Clair Huxtable--Mrs. Cosby anyone? yeah that's the one. It was so cool- like inside the actor's studio but for my school and no stuffy james lipton who asks "what turns you on" and "how did you feel about your mother's rocky relationship with you step-father". james lipton is mr. potatohead. anyways--i swear this woman is one of those women who are just beautiful and at peace with themselves. there are types of people who glow and are beautiful because they know who they are, they speak and are mindful of their words, they are centered and just basically radiate. i hope that when i'm old i'll be able to be like that; it's just inspiring.
I'm memorizing Shakespeare right now and have a scene to present tomorrow from Twelfth Night. I'm stressed out because I have a scene partner who is nice and sweet but just doesn't have the drive to work and it's awkward. I swear I'm having to learn patience and self-control. I'm so glad I have Ashley here because I've discovered that when I get stressed, I get nervous and antsy and negative and then I beat myself up. She just sat me down and was like "ok, listen what's the worst that could happen? it'll be fine" and it will be.
i had to be a meerkat today. I don't think i did enough work or observation. you look at people around you and we're learning that so much in acting can be derived from nature. you can use mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, habits from nature to inform the creation of your character---instead of trying to conjure up feelings that will end up being fake and forced and playing a type or imitating and not being free to just do. it's fascinating-i'm learning a lot.

sorry this post was kind of generic. i'm tired and tomorrow i have to say this:

"Look, sir! Such a one I was this present! Is 't not well done? 'Tis engraved, sir; 'Twill endure wind and weather...Your lord does know my mind. I cannot love him. Yet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble, of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth, in voices well-divulged, free, learn'ed and valiant, and in dimension and shape of nature a gracious person. but yet i cannot love him. he might have took his answer long ago."

geez louise, my tongue and mind are having seizures.

Can you see him? I hope so.

2008-06-07T23:52:00.000-05:00

A little something I wrote tonight about a man I saw on the subway; I hope you like it, but more importantly, I hope you can see him:

"Bigsby Rysdale frequented the subway stop at chambers street every morning at approximately 6:03am. He preferred caked not glazed donuts and enjoyed the occasional game of Parcheesi with Madge, his next door neighbor.

Every morning at 5:11 Bigsby hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. He counted 58 seconds I his head before rolling out of his tangled sheets and slipping his stiff small feet into cotton slippers. Even though Bigsby was 57 years old, he still laid his clothes out nightly for the next day as his mother had taught him to do more than 50 years before.
Of course, bigsby’s mother was now dead. He stole a box of recipes from her house before the lawyer came to appraise everything as Bigsby’s sister, Laine, had arranged. Every now and again, when he was feeling quite saggy and bland in his heart, Bigsby would take the box of recipes down from the top shelf in his closet and make his mother’s famous potatoes au gratin. They were still his childhood comfort—cheesy soft potatoes, sliced into thin starchy saucers, warm and slippery in his mouth, salty and chewy and somehow extraordinarily comforting…"

Holey Moley

2008-06-06T10:52:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I haven't written since this past Monday--I just guess a lot has been going on. Sorry Mom for not updating :)

This week has flown by way too fast and yet at the same time, I am so exhausted--my ribs ache, my butt muscles hurt from moving like a giraffe and then like a hippo, I've read at least 2 books this week and have to read 3 or 4 more by the end of the next. A teacher almost made me cry; I've been pissed, I've been embarrassed, I've been growing--and it hurts, I've been restless (but not in a bad way), and I'm learning what beauty is.
So that's why I haven't had time to write. Plus I need to get at least 4 hours of sleep a night.

There's so much going through my mind right now that I have no idea of what to write about, so maybe I'll just tell you what I've seen this week. On Tuesday I went up to Spanish Harlem with Ashley to the museum mile where all the museums were free entry that day. Unfortunately, the museum "mile" is more like 10 so we only got to go to the city of New York Museum which was okay, I guess. We went up to the top floor where it was sweltering and everyone was fanning themselves with maps of the museum. The air was thick and because it was a museum it was musty and yellowed-smelling (do you know what I mean?). We saw some old dollhouses and then decided to leave. But the best thing about that trip wasn't the museum at all.
Outside on the pavement there were chalk drawings. Sidewalk chalk was given out freely and everyone was putting down what they had to say to the world. Kids were drawing stick figure portraits of their family, young and in love teenagers were etching their chalky names inside hearts on the street like someone might carve names into a tree. Older people were writing quotes, life lessons that they deemed worthy enough to pass on to the rest of the world. And I just looked. And walked. I should've written something, but I guess I didn't know what to say and didn't want to fill the pavement with some jumbled up quote that I just happened to have floating around in my mind. I should've though.

On the way back home I saw a man in the subway station that was doubled-over on the floor. I wanted to stop. I wanted to jump out of the spawning stream of people that was overflowing into the downtown platform. I wanted to put my hand on his back and ask him if he needed help. But I didn't. I guess the whole--you're in spanish harlem; you're 20 and female--he's a middle-aged man--fear stepped in the way. I don't ever have a lot of regrets in life. But that's something I do regret. I went down to the platform and these two kids my age were flinging their backpacks about with their caps tilted just slightly to the side--one was trying to explain to the other that up at the platform he had knocked down a man with his backpack; he was trying to justify it by the fact that the man should've gotten out of the way, it was an accident--no big deal.

but I knew that man was still up there doubled over on the floor and I did nothing.
In life you can't just stand by HOPING that someone will get up okay or that someone older, someone more inclined to help will stop by and help. You have to be that which someone is hoping for. Hope is a powerful thing--but if nothing is in action, hopes will just end up being thoughts selfishly stuck in independent minds and never taking on fruition.

it's weird, huh?
yep. but so beautiful.

Today, you need to laugh

2008-06-03T00:10:00.000-05:00

I don't have a whole lot to say today. Class was good--the one class that I had. Ashley and I spent the last two hours tonight doing 3 point entrance scenes--basically knowing how to enter a room and have purpose. I have to read twelfth night and perform a scene next tuesday-wahookaboodle. jeez ive never done shakespeare before and so it will be quite interesting. my character teacher is AMAZING. she's this old little woman in her 70s with thick glasses and a certain life about her that says "I don't give a crap what you think about me. i know who i am and baby, i'm glowing. i know im old but thats not stopping me from doing what i want to do. you better live life on the edge of your seats" i had to act like a giraffe today. it was fun. i felt like i could get away with it like those kids who go around pretending they're dogs when they're 5--woofing and slobbering and climbing and only communicating in dog-language. it's pretty hilarious when you see a kid do that.

speaking of. here are some pictures of what nyc has done to me as a person.
personally, i feel that once in everyones life they need to pee their pants laughing. i hope it happens when you look at these.
this is how i looked when i came to this city. normal? by most standards.

slowly the city began to morph and shape me as i took on new personas.

new identities began to surface within me. i felt like i was turning into what would be the incredible hulk version of jessika erin doyel.

my appetite began to swell and i had an intense craving for lemonade and my double, triple and quadruple chins, my sidekicks began to emerge from my own flesh!

soon, i recruited a friend to my cause and she began to see my ways, to see the hulk in her and morph into her true being.

with the powers of earth, wind, fire and heart our bodies were molded and contorted to show the true beauty of earth and GAEA GODDESS OF EARTH!

soon, we became a force to be reckoned with. our largess spilled from our bellies on to the subways of new york city. our heroism rivaled that of skinny jean wearing peter parker and our appetite that of godzilla. we were goddesses among wom men? anyways we drank a lot of lemonade elixer and made youtube videos even better than BLUHD baby and screaming britney spears boy.

I forgot...

2008-06-01T10:12:00.000-05:00

I forgot to write last night. Well, not really. I didn't forget--I think I chose not to because I couldn't think of anything interesting to say. That happens a lot with me.
It's sunday morning and a part of me wishes I was back home going to the church that I love with my family and then going to fido with my sister and rachael afterwards, sitting in an over-air-conditioned booth or next to the place by the window where my name is carved to people-watch and dub over people's conversations across the street. but im here. and it's an uncomfortable feeling to be here. i realize that im not bold enough, not yet sure, strong enough in so many ways. I'm scared to say what i believe anywhere because i'm afraid to offend then then not make friends. but this truth is at the core of me. its like this suppression that im doing for no reason besides the fact that im afraid of what people think of me.
so that's whats in my heart.
today i woke up and i could hear singing across the street from a church choir--it was one of the most beautiful things i've heard. the voices were all one together, rising and falling sort of like a tide and everyone sang so loudly and fully. funny. there's a lot that i want to write, but at the same time i have a habit of opening my mouth about anything and not mulling it over inside first to make sure i say what i think in the right words
blah. there are no right words.

i have to read a whole lotta today. but today will be good. im convinced. ill write more tonight

You don't even want to know what I ate today...

2008-05-31T00:39:00.000-05:00

dinner: a can of chicken
salt and peppa
sort of cut apples and grapes
smushed up triscuits
mix up for a bowl of dry deliciousness? yeah, right.
Day 5.
Note: i skipped day four because it was utterly boring in nyc.
not really. I just was at school all day and watched LOST-which if you have never watched you can not ever talk to me. im mourning until february.

anyways, today was our first day off from school so ash and I took the full liberty of sleeping in until noon. little did we know that both of our parents were feverishly texting and calling us to make sure that we weren't dead because a crane fell in manhattan today. i swear i wouldn't know if anything happened--the rest of the world knows before people actually living near the situation do; maybe thats not entirely true, but I don't have CNN on all the time.
after we flipped on the tv to get a quick story about the crane form a very nervous news anchor, we decided that today we were going to get some business done and see the telectroscope--which is a sort of telescope that lets people in brooklyn see people in london in real time. we thought about drawing HUGE posterboard signs with messages on them and holding them in front of the telectoscope to see if people on the other side would respond. here's the website:http://www.tiscali.co.uk/telectroscope/

but we, being the horrible navigators that we are, only managed to make it to fulton street and then on to a huge crowded subway at 5pm to times square. let me tell you about subways passing through about 6 stops at 5pm. if you're claustrophobic-don't. if you have germ issues-don't. if you don't want somebody practically touching your butt and kneeing you in the back and breathing in your face or standing in someone's armpit-don't. ash and i don't necessarily like those things--but we did it. holding on to a greasy rail on the red line squashed up next to a man sitting down in a seat crouched over his tan leather bag and stealthily unwrapping gum and then spraying some sort of man perfume that smelled like fake flowers and cucumbers, he sat there just squnched up next to an asian woman who was most likely a fashion student of some sort. the man whose armpit ashley was nestled into was trying to prove his knowledgeability about new york as he explained to his friend that people were BOUND to get off at the next stop-Penn Station and he went on and on and on practically being a tour guide. Ashley and I almost got off a stop early to actually breathe, but we held it in and emerged in times square where even the sidewalk sparkles (im not kidding) and immediately squirted a quarter size of purel sanitizer all over our hands.
we got lost a little. thank goodness for verizon having a gps system in the phone--genius.

later this evening we saw a play that was being put on at Stella Adler (the school that I'm at) by the 1st year conservatory students called Dog sees God. it was good...and interesting. Going in, Ash and I thought it was going to be some sort of metaphorical thing--like most titles in nyc are--but no, it was the confessions of CB (charlie brown) in his teenage years. basically charlie gets depressed and falls in love with schroeder. sally is now a wiccan-still in love with schroeder. peppermint patty is a skank/mean girl. pig pen is a manwhore/douchebag/germaphobe, linus is a stoner, lucy is in a mental ward for burning of the little red head girls hair, marcy follows in pattis footsteps and is a psuedo-skank and schroeder was molested as a child and then is teased for being gay and then falls in love with charlie brown and then gets beat up by pig pen who goes crazy if people call him pig pen. pig pen apparently loves charlie brown and gets pissed when he finds out that schroeder and cb had a thing going. slams schroeders fingers in a piano and then schroeder gets so depressed that he can't play the piano anymore that he brings a gun to school and kills two kids and then himself. charlie still writes all this to his pen pal.
oh and snoopy eats that little yellow bird and is rabid and dies.

wow. charles schultz would be so proud. i just know it. his uplifting message of blockheads just lives on.
of course whoever wrote the play must've written it from the subtext evinced from the comics, i mean, obviously.

Antique book smells, the 3 train, one meal a day= profound self-discovery

2008-05-29T00:20:00.000-05:00

Day 2? 3?
I am so bad at days, thank goodness I have a schedule to keep me on track and a clock to keep me on time.

Today was glorious. The classes today at school were much less awkward than the first day--now we at least had played the name game at least 30 times, so everyone knew to say names instead of "hey you" or awkwardly avoiding addressing anyone at all and smoothly playing it off as if they were talking to the whole group in large.

i did, however get the crap scared out of me today.

we were all sitting in a studio room, listening to ipods, talking about classes, waiting for the adler technique class to begin--just sitting on the floor socializing. our teacher walks in and looks around and takes us in and immediately says "what are you doing, why are you sitting on the floor, get chairs." we set up the room, not understanding why this man is so urgent in his request, confused if we are being reprimanded or simply taught. class begins.

"do you all understand why you're here. do you?" no one answers, but we get out our notebooks and pens.
"have any of you even done research on ms. adler and her history, her background, the history of this studio?" a girl in the front row half raises her hand. no one else dares to move.

"do you have any idea what this studio is? do you have any idea what goes on here? here, you are driven, you are here to learn in a classroom to experience to grow. acting is fun--but we're not here to hang out. you do not 'hang out' here. if you want to kick back and hang out you shouldn't be here. don't bother. just leave. do you know what i saw when i entered the room today? not professionalism, not an attitude of serious actors who want to grow who want to learn, who are serious about this. from now on, show me. do not let me enter the classroom without you being ready to learn. do you understand?" we all nodded, scared, enticed, drawn in to this man with his booming voice and presence that filled up every corner of the room and struck us as we sat, quiet in our chairs.

somehow, i know it will be the best class. this guys for real.

the rest of my day was amazing. ashley and i went down to the drama bookstore and got some books that we'll need for class--and trust me, it's just like college--they'll tell you what you need and then add about 100 dollars more in books/clothes/classes that you must have after you've paid the tuition. that's life, isn't it?

took the 2/3 subway back home and decided to explore the neighborhood. let me tell you--we totally lucked out in our little shoebox with peeling lead paint and leaky radiator. walking down the street, people were walking dogs, riding bikes, just strolling past brownstones on either side of the quiet street. we turned down montague street to explore our little grid and came upon an old bookstore with a sidewalk sale of books flooding the pavement in front of the store. i get awkward when i come to sidewalk sales becauase i think if i browse, someone will think im stealing--so we walk in. the place was the kind of place that had old postcards that wre yellowed, the aisles were so narrow that two people would have to hug to slip by one another; it was the kind where you pick up books just so you can smelled the musty, woody, old paper as you flip through the faded, torn pages of books like shuffling cards of old, bent worn out card decks. it was the smell that sticks in your memory, that nostalgia smell. we stayed in there, leafing through copies of plays and poetry until i finally settled upon an old 1940s edition of john donne's poetry. next we walked down the street to where ashley thought the water was--we were just two girls exploring the city.

it took our breath away. at the end of the brownstone-lined street there stood the city, glowing with its twinkling lights that were reflected across the water. soemthing was so movie-like, so perfect about that setting, about the picture of new york city silhouetted by frames of couples leaning over the fence railing, the man with his arm around the girls waist.

it was a picture that made me want to fall in love. not be in a relationship, but deeply, madly have someone to love. and i thought that was so beautiful.

we felt a little awkward walking down this little brick-walk area with no one but couples lining the way--but it was such a beautiful awkwardness--it was like you could feel their love radiating, it was just joy--these people were sharing something with us passers-by that they had no idea that they were sharing; and it was so beautiful. when ashley and i were walking back home i swear we both agreed that the only thing we wanted to do right then was grow up, find out leading men, get married, live in brooklyn and go down to that bridge with the person we loved. it's just that kind of place that's in all those movies where the bumbling girl goes just to think, to read and some guy comes up to her and asks her if she dropped a book that he found, she says no, but he gives her the book anyways. they stand there in the awkwardness of two bumbling single people amidst couples in perfect bliss and laugh. it's just a place for falling in love.

im way too much of a hopeless romantic, jeepers.

I am so awkward...

2008-05-27T18:49:00.000-05:00

Day 2:
for the first time in my life i had dry mouth. not just dry, i need a sip of water, kind of dry mouth--but the kind of dry mouth where your mouth is a huge foam pit/sand dune and there's nothing i can do about it.
i was standing up in front of my first class today doing a monologue and it was the most terrifying thing thinking--what the heck am i doing here? what am i doing with my life? is my teacher going to think i suck? why am i doing the awkward dance? why is that kid not paying attention? why didn't i just stay home and go to school and get married and have kids and make slice and bake cookies?
but it wasn't that bad, i mean after saliva came back into my mouth and after the fact that i found myself laughing very loudly at inappropriate times and then making the situation twice as awkward by muttering under my breath "uhh.that was so awkward. im so sorry" and having people think that i'm the crazy laughing/dry mouth kid who talks to herself.

the things i learned on New York day trois:
1. murphys law happens--if a subway train CAN get stuck, it CAN and WILL get stuck--especially when you don't have an alternate route to the first day of class
2. i met our pothead elevator friend, lovingly named "the doob" and it turns out he's british and likes to awkwardly hit on desk workers
3. the twins from the matrix do exist--and i saw them in the subway, with matching chinstrap beards, shaved heads, bluetooth phones, bald heads and awkwardly matching leather shoes
4. if you try to explore staircases in old hotels and you don't think that it's a fire exit and that the alarm won't go off--it is a fire exit and the alarm WILL go off, forcing one to stealthily escape and pretend to take the elevator. see murphy's law
5. there are still newsies in new york who WILL scream at you to get a free paper

also, there is a kid in my class who, when asked to describe one thing on his wall at home, said he had an alien poster who was meditating, flipping the bird, and smoking a joint at the same time with the words "OMMMMM" written across the top. apparently he loves meditating. and pot-smoking aliens. that's classy art, my friends, classy art.

oh and i've never taken a rediculous ID picture, and i figured, now's the time to let loose, right? right

Brooklyn and Doobies and ear wax cleaners

2008-05-27T01:24:00.000-05:00

New York New York!
Day 1:
I have decided to officially enter what my more technologically savvy friends know as the "blogosphere" and really write about all the crazy shenanigans that happen in my life (not that they happen regularly) instead of venting and writing philosophical ramblings. Please Jessika, it's time to stop being verbose--or not; we'll see.
At approximately 7:45pm I boarded a Boeing 747 with my one-way ticket in hand to New York City. I didn't cry. I didn't reminisce. But I swear I almost pooped my pants. And not just because I had just had a cup of coffee and two shots of espresso.
unnecessary, unladylike, sorry mom.
Anyways, I get on this plane with the rest of Group 6 thinking "oh yes! Maybe dad totally went all out and got business class!"
i was very wrong. very very wrong.
I ended up sitting next to a man who would pick ear wax out of his ear with his pinky; and granted we all have those times when our ears are just dying for a q-tip, but this man (and I watched him stealthily) just flicked it.
he flicked his earwax and im sitting next to him.
awesome, just awesome. of course what can i expect from the guy who has downloaded National Treasure 2 from Itunes on his Compaq and listens to mp3s on tape of "who moved my cheese"? I totally should've struck up a conversation with him.

So now I'm in Brooklyn Heights.
and living in a shoebox. I think the educational housing people lied to Ashley and I. Half of the building is hip and trendy with tangerine walls and andy warhol prints and our side has walls that are painted what ash and i agreed to be the color of baby spit up and have duct tape around the windows to keep the bugs out. But it's home. And I think it's the way it's supposed to be. Ashley and I start classes tomorrow and hopefully we won't be in movement classes where we have to be tulips or feel the emotion that a jello jiggler has when it is taken out of its mold.

ashley made a new australian neighbor (as in he lives here somewhere) who freely rolls joints in the elevator.
boy, are we in for a summer.

2008-05-18T10:03:00.001-05:00

ok. so every time i write i close my eyes and just let my fingers go.
i've been wanting to write something---a play a screenplay, something for a long time so i fiddle with a lot of ideas.

this is so random. i swear im not a depressing person, it just all comes out.
so here.

"C ca cat. D da dog. Say it again. Do it slower like this: c. KA Kat. D. DA. DOG. You see. Put that down. Put it down and listen. C ca cat d d dog"

My parents were convinced that I was going to be their prodigy. From the time I was actually confirmed as an embryo, mom began to put headphones on her stomach. Dad read chemistry books to me, history, we practiced flashcards. All I wanted to do was sleep. Brahms was nice though.

"Draw this. Olook at me. Look at my face. No. do what I am doing. Go and get the A from the fridge. Bring it here. Get it. Now. go get it. Good. Good girl. Now bring the B. no not the D. the B. stupid. Bring the B. you know this you know the B. Get the B. good girl. Again."

When I was three I used words like vernacular and effervescent. I couldn’t stand classrooms where the kids read out loud because they would smatter the words everywhere. Bothching sounds and rushing words together. I was sent home for hitting a child because he pronounced schooling like sk. Ch. Ew. Lin. I didit hit anymore

At home I would read to myself. Mom would always have me read to her. To read out loud and record it on a tape so she could make sure I was reading. Secretly, I would read my father’s dragon over and over instead of reading books on philosophy or nitche or solipsism. I didn’t care for those things. I was made to. But I wanted a dragon.

I think I developed autism or something like it over the time during when I was 3 and 5. If that’s possible. Possibly.

I think my mom was always more comfortable when I was in her womb. When the only picture she could see of my was in black and white. And all she could hear was my heartbeat instead of my voice. She could dictate what I knew, or what she wanted me to know, to hear. She never lost me and could dream about what I looked like. She could worry about herself and wear flowy dresses and act like she was glowing and get attention because everyone loves a pregnant woman. Everyone loves that magic. i think she would’ve kept me inside for another three years and just imagined how her child would be. Frame the ultrasounds instead of balding pictures of crying baby. That’s how she would’ve preferred it.

my sister used to read with her middle finger...

2008-05-10T23:01:00.000-05:00

she did and mom taped her "pointer" and "tall man" together and she never got sent to the princiPALs office after that.

anyways, that's not what this post is about, at all. I just got done watching Dan in Real Life and if you haven't seen it you should. Anyways, I won't ruin it for those who haven't but at the end steve carrell's character has a voice over that says something along the lines of " normally we tell our kids that they should be making plans about the future. plans about what they will do, wo they wil be, who they will be with and so on. but really we should tell them to plan to be surprised" and for some reason I thought that was so cool and true. All of these plans that we're making right now, they aren't going to turn out just so--i mean that's just the way the world works. I guess it's the way to keep us humble and to just assure us that we aren't superheroes and that life is going to suck a lot sometimes. I was also thinking about scripts when I watched the movie and about how people become screenwriters. I googled screenwriting and came up with this site that was basically a "how to" site. I mean, it had some good points, but when a person honestly alludes to "Jingle All the Way" with Sinbad and Ahnold as an example of good screenwriting, can you really trust it? no. i mean sinbad was only good at being a genie in that magic basketball movie. anyways, i was thinking about that and then I was thinking about life and how I listened to Donald Miller once give a talk or whatever about the story and about how our lives should be like the stories that people write and the stuff that people use as templates for movies--i mean, that's what many movies are based on--right? so here's my deal. every good movie has the protagonist involved in a conflict---they need to get something, they need to fight for something, they have to overcome things in order to resolve their conflict---and a lot of the time I feel like my life has no conflict--no epic desire or thing that i really, passionately seek--even though there are things that i WANT to seek. but it really all comes down to fear. it comes down to the point where you see this desire, this passion off, driving away and someone whispers to you "go, now" and you have to say screw it and just do it or end up kicking yourself for not taking the chance. i hate diving into conflict, into muddy waters, but thats what makes life exciting, that's what makes movies worth watching--nobody wants to watch a person just being, just painting their nails or watching tv--that's just boring. and i mean, i know where i'm going to be at the end of this life and it's so short, so logically what do we all have to lose? nothing really. nothing at all. but prepared to be surprised.

and probably scared to death.

2008-05-04T21:46:00.000-05:00

ok so that's a galnapper.
pronounced GAL-nap-per as my grandfather (from arkansas) would describe it. but let's be honest,

it's just a freaking huge mosquito. i mean, really.

i found this little critter just hibernating on my screen door, like i do most nights and ususally i don't mind him, as long as he isn't flying in my hair or crawling up my thigh or anything. but tonight was just too much to handle.

i kid you not, the world is ending.

so you know when there are plagues and stuff in the bible and the locusts come out basically eat peoples brains out like little zombie bugs, this freaking galnapper is the modern-day zombie locust.

this dude is what killed pharoahs. this thing is what made dinosaurs extinct (not a meteor). this freaking steroid loaded mosquito probably will end the world.

so anyways, i looked outside and this is what i saw, beneath that singular, seemingly harmless galnapper:

yeah. it was like galnapper holocaust.

sorry that was uncalled for. but really. look at them all.

i don't care if they do kill mosquitos, they need to go away, or at least clean up after themselves when they all decide to get together like some freakish cult and die together. i swear that little one that was alive and looking down on them was the leader.

consider yourselves warned about these beasts.

2008-05-04T03:43:00.000-05:00

so this is what i'm thinking. i don't know a whole lot about life, and deep down i'm afraid i never will. I'm one of those kids who is afraid to grow up. I'm really afraid of growing older and the thing is--i can't stop it. it's out of my control, and that in and of itself scares me.

but cry me a river,jessika, everyone gets scared to grow up--so just enjoy it.

no, i dont normally talk to myself in third person. so here's what i'm thinking, instead of being afraid of everything and so conscious of getting older, i'm going to pay attention to things outside of me--which life is really all about, beautiful things. and just the things that make up definitions of beauty and truth and things that are of substance in this life. sohere goes. the list of beauty for me, as of today:

things that i find to be truly beautiful are:

women who have salt and pepper hair and don't care to dye it or do anything to make it look tame.

my mom's smile wrinkles in her forehead and around her eyes because you know that, sort of like how you can count the rings aroound a tree trunk to tell how long its been living, i can tell how much my mom has smiled

people who go around barefoot and have callouses because they would rather have their feet tough so that they can finally feel the grass beneath their feet.

old people hands--like my granddads with agespots and scars, because hands tell a life's story and are so rich.

the eyes of little children because they will stare at you and not look away when they get caught. children are unaware of awkwardness and fully aware of themselves, and most of all--curious.

women who are completely comfortable with themselves, even if they never have skinny arms or thighs that never touch at the top or tummies that are concave naturally. women who believe that they are beautiful and don't need a guy to tell them that to believe it.

the sound of wind rushing through the trees and being so powerful that it can knock something over with a whisper.

laugher that makes you pee your pants and not care who's around to hear you snort. laughter that wracks your knsides and cracks ribs and consumes your being and makes you silent laugh until a huge burst of laughter emerges as you attempt to catch your breath.

reckless abandon and seeing people who live inside of that

and that is all as of today, i'll probably add more every day, who knows.

a rumble a rant a rave

2008-04-24T23:52:00.000-05:00

ok so i'm not really gointg to pitch a fit and whine and cry one here at all, but really, a lot of things have been bugging me lately and this is what i want to say.

listen. last night i had to sleep on the floor of my sisters bedroom and i didn't flip you off in public. you know why? because you'd probably think that had the power to send me to hell for eternity. bullcrap. so i just put my hands inside my sleeping bag and flipped you off like 30 times instead. let me tell you, that middle finger after having no solitary time onstage since that time i was dard to walk down the hall in first grade with the bird held high, it felt good. i had a flipping off frenzy, just me and the floor. but you were on the floor. duh. i don't think its fair whne you say "hm" to what i want to do or be. you ask me where im going to school, i give you an honest answer and you "hm" me. is that fair? no. ok, if you don't believe in me, just say so. that or don't say anything at all. i spent 4 hours at a coffee shop by myself today. i preferred to be in a booth eating by myself where it was 40 degrees and my butt got tired of sitting and i read 50 pages of ibsen all because that was monumentally better than being picked at by you.
and yet i feel bad. i feel bad for seeing you only 3 times a year. im afraid i'll turn into you. i'm afraid that when i get old like you i'll try to climb stairs only to find out that i can't and that i need to hold on to something. im afraid that i'll turn into you and think that having children and cleaning house and cooking hot meals every night are the duties of a woman, which aren't bad, but they're required, apparently. i don't want to tell my daughter that her husband is fat. i don't want to tell my daughter that if she doesn't stop eating then she'll look like her daddy's mother, who was fat and soft and died at 52 years old. hell, i think, at least she was happy. i just don't want to be you. i love you, but i can't be myself around you. you were the one who told me i couldn't have communion because i wasn't baptized. but mom still said you loved me and i didn't understand.
but i still sleep with that blanket that you crocheted me every night, because you said it was made with love, and on that day i believed it.

2008-04-17T22:10:00.000-05:00

this is the best thing i've read in a long time. and basically the only thing that i've liked in english class this year.

"Love Poem"
My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
And have no cunning with any soft thing

Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people:
The refugee uncertain at the door
You make at home; deftly you steady
The drunk clambering on his undulant floor.

Unpredictable dear, the taxi drivers' terror,
Shrinking from far headlights pale as a dime
Yet leaping before apopleptic streetcars—
Misfit in any space. And never on time.

A wrench in clocks and the solar system. Only
With words and people and love you move at ease;
In traffic of wit expertly maneuver
And keep us, all devotion, at your knees.

Forgetting your coffee spreading on our flannel,
Your lipstick grinning on our coat,
So gaily in love's unbreakable heaven
Our souls on glory of spilt bourbon float.

Be with me, darling, early and late. Smash glasses—
I will study wry music for your sake.
For should your hands drop white and empty
All the toys of the world would break.

i love that poem. in other news, i have to wake up at 3am to write a paper about it because i have no motivation to write that paper as we speak. noice

hi. i'm lesa kochecki. i'm 42 and 18 at the same time. i think i'm going through a mid-life crisis.

2008-04-14T01:24:00.000-05:00

i wrote this when i was falling to sleep. it's so strange what just goes from brain to hands to keyboard when you're dozing off or right when you wake up--like the odd boundary between dreams and reality. i certainly hope this isn't my reality--but i was thinking a lot about middle age, and about how people say that they never really grow up, they just literally grow out. and this is the beginning snippet of a story. i hope a good story. but a very messy one too.

Lesa Kocheckie: age Middle. sitting reading a janet evanovich book in bed under a qvc ordered booklight that clips to the page.she has cotton balls in her ear so her husband's snoring, despite breathing machine and nose strips, won't disturb her. her husband's arm is draped over her forearm and she has to avoid it to turn the pages of her book.
"Get your arm off of me. No I know that your left arm always has to be draped over me when you go to sleep at night or it’ll fall asleep and then blah blah youll lose circulation and die. You big oaf. I don’t smack you in the face for having that loud breathing machine and disrupting my dreams of making out with george clooney. The least you could do was keep your arm on your side of the bed and not resting on me.
I have to pee"
Lesa kocheckie flings her husbands arm over his stomach and gets up, goes ot the bathroom, flips on the switch and we see a middle aged woman with showing roots in a tigger nightshirt and her husbands boxers. She squnches up her face and makes an o face to smooth out wrinkles. She pulls back her face and turns to the side sucking in her cheeks. After peeing she gets on the scale and weighs herself, looking away. The scale reads 142.
"Excellent. Just fantastic. The last two digits are my age. Damnit. I guess I've reached the golden weight."

i feel awkward writing that because i have no idea what it feels like to be middle aged. weird. i even had to invent a word--squnch. noice. it'll be in webster's with "bootylicious" someday. one can only hope.

someone needs to make a movie of Winesburg, Ohio

2008-04-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

I'm not a writer, I'm more of a rambler.
I think both on paper and when I'm talking to people--like I just spew out these unintelligible strings of sentences. My storytelling teacher told me that, well I mean, not really that but a version of that when I went up on the stage to tell a story about new york last week. I go up there in my rain boots and mismatched dress and something like 3 layers of shirts and i somehow sit indian-style and tell my story. and when im done he goes "you got up there and you're all slouched down in your chair with your rainboots and i thought: lily tomlin. and then you started talking and i was like: you are lily tomlin!" i, of course, have a very vague idea of what he is talking about. maybe lily tomlin wore rainboots at some point in her life and sir crosby hunt just decides that i resemble her. well, i go onto youtube to see about this resemblence and what do i find but lily tomlin and the director of I Heart Huckabees fighting and cursing and yelling at each other. That or a clip of her sitting in a huge rocking chair talking like a 5 year old.
so either a) i have a horrible temper like lily tomlin or b) i resemble a 5 year old.

great, just great.

anyways. I had to write a lesson plan today for school, and (even though it was a day late) i actually enjoyed it a lot-weird. i think it was because i had to teach a lesson on winesburg, ohio--by sherwood anderson and someone needs to make it into a screenplay and then a movie. here's a little snippet.

"In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. . You see the interest in all this lies in the figures that went before the eyes of the writer. They were all grotesques. All of the men and women the writer had ever known had become grotesques. The grotesques were not all horrible. Some were amusing, some almost beautiful, and one, a women all drawn out of shape, hurt the old man by her grotesqueness. when she passed he made a noise like a small dog whimpering. the procession of grotesques passed before the eyes of the old man, and then, although it was a painful thing to do, he crept out of bed and began to write.

At his desk the writer worked for an hour. In the end he wrote a book called "The Book of the Grotesques."

I saw it once and it made an indellible impression on my mind. The book had once central thought that is very strange and has always remained with me:

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a gerat many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. The old man had listed hundreds and hundreds of truths in this book. Hundreds and hundreds and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as hea ppeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesues..."

i love it. plus Wing Biddlebaum is the name of a main character. Can't get any better than that, can you?

shellfish

2008-03-31T18:20:00.000-05:00

today came banging down on my head like me in my rainboots standing under a waterfall and hit on the head with not gentle water, but banging clanging, heavy dishes.
two by fours.
i am such a selfish human being. i say it needs to stop but i don't do anything about it. i spend too much time on facebook, too mcuh time figuring out what outfit that i'm going to wear and planning on telling people that i just threw it together. i care too much about making my red hair look just so messy. i care too much about what people think. and i m caring too mcuh right now about me. about what to write. i am so very scared about the future. i really am. i scared that no one will ever love me enough--this is not a pteous thing, i promise. but really, i get scared that i pray for this guy, this best friend, and that's just not going to happen, im afraid of that. i'm afraid that by beating up on myself i am being selfish and thus am caught in this cycle of endless self-criticism and then it all boils down to me hating me, which is not loving people outside of me, which is what im meant to do. i wish all the selfishness and annoying things that satan throws against me could just dissolve becaues i really don't know how to fight and I need God to show up and fight them. i get afraid that my faith is just something that i tell and dont act out for fear of not knowing how to actcorrely or in what direction. i am so scared that in acting i'll becomes selfish and just do it for me and become so self-absorbed. and i don't want that. i hate that. i loathe that--and so it's always on my mind. endoing up where i don't want to be. the think lies in the fact that really, really truly i'm not actively committing. really. i am just being a sacka dn i have no ida why. pot called the kettle black at mr. sawyers house this week when i said the reason we don't commit is simple--we're not acting. it's simple to fix--just do.

and i need to do. to do outside of me. not for face or for looking good, or for church or God points , or whatever. i just want to be free and actually acept, no not accept love who i am created to be. not because it's me, but because in essence, it is not me. i don't know how many people will understand that, but it's ok. It's true, one thing does matter in this life--obedience to God and then all the joy and the hardness will come and the uncomfortable hard times that you just want to dissolve but then just when you think you're going to drown, or are so lost, something will happen. and even though it hurts, you'll realize youre alive.

i want to be alive. every single day of my life. i really do

2008-03-11T00:30:00.000-05:00

i hate w.a.l.l.E

2008-03-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

My house smells like beef jerky. not just the normal kind that comes in one little stick and is dried and petrified and squeezed through a tootsie roll mold, no. this smell is from a big poppa. it's from one of those cajun wrinkled sausages that only manly men eat just to prove that they're manly men. at least that's what i picture a manly man eating. beef jerky. from the name and it's stench only a manly man would chomp at the bit to get his ands on a piece of that..meat?
gross.
my house hasn't smelled this bad since we had a 20 pound cat originally named Shady Lady who peed in every corner of our house. she was like this fat stripper-named cat who i never was convinced was a female and had the brain of a pea.
i want a dog now. and i won't name it a stripper name. i think people name pets the most stupid names sometimes. i hate it when i go over to people's houses and their pet's name is anna or meredith or shannon or brandon. some people names are just reserved, or should be, for people.
for goodness sake, i never want a dog named meredith.

im going to take a nap. i have to go to traffic school tonight or my license is revoked. dangit.

life this little thing that is oh so confusing but so delicately beautiful

2008-03-07T22:16:00.000-06:00

i wish that there could be a degree in college for quote finder. i love quotes. so much to the point that i try and take a little time out of the day to find new ones to add in my ever growing book of quotes. i shall share a few:

"when you look closely people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually beautiful."
"the echoes of beauty you've seen transpire, resound through dying coals of a campfire" hemingway
"beauty is not caused. it is" e.dickenson

the end

Snippets and Scraps

2008-02-25T20:44:00.001-06:00

I just found these little 2am writings on a sticky note and thought that I'd post them. Maybe I'll actually use them for something someday, who knows?

ONE:
sometimes i don't even know which hand is my left anymore. I wear rings on both of my ring fingers hoping that maybe one day i'll have it there permanently. or maybe im just trying it out on both fingers because i knew this one teacher in primary school who had his ring finger chopped off by this huge stateue when he was three. now he walks around with a ring on his nub of a finger. i would rather just try it out on my right hand instead of putting a ring on a left nub.
TWO:
she walked as if her shoes were a size and half too small. like a person who would curl up her toes at the edge of her shoe, wincing with every step as the sides of her pinky toe dug into the side of the soft canvas shoe. a highly uncomfortable situation.
i lost it.

sorry these are both utterly rediculous

Can I please be a flapper doing the charleston in the woods with my lumberjack husband already?

2008-02-17T20:26:00.000-06:00

i think that was the most rediculous title that this post could follow, but it doesn't really matter. i think i'm stretching and im not adapting well to this change at all. I feel either like my veing is just wanting to be free of my body and i'm just bursting at the seams to escape the one thing that i can't-myself. either that or my skin is just hanging off of my bones while this little light, this meager ember of a person is perched inside my ribcage just barely fighting to hang on. tht sounds so rediculous and depressing, but i guess i can't really describe it. one thing that i know is true--londliness is the worst feeling that the human soul can experience. it's such an odd thing too. we have all these people around us, begging to be loved, to be a part of other people's lives to be "a small piece of furniture" in someone elses life and yet we're too afraid to ask. i'm too afraid to call anyone, to be vulnerable, to say ntohting and everything all at once. i'm afraid that if i tell someone something, they won't want to be near me for fear that i'll unload on them everytime we see each other...and i don't want that because i won't. it's hard to think about what true friendship is---and if in fact, the friends that you have are true friends. the ones that won't care if you cry around them. the ones that you can sit for hours just saying nothing. the ones that you want to just be there and they know that all they have to do is be present. they don't have to fix. they don't have to advise. they just have to be. those few friends that i do have like that, the ones i can really be awkward or quirky or weird, or unladylike, or childish around--those are the ones i want.
i think i've realized in the past few years how importatn friends are and how sometimes you have those friends who blur into the realm of family, and that's just a beautiful thing.

this rambling makes no sense, but i'm not trying to be a novelist, so it's ok.

2008-02-15T01:58:00.000-06:00

i love what my friend ashley said to me today at the end of an email

"here's to getting the moon"

so simple. and just simply beautifullly put. thanks ashley for making my night and making me feel like i lived in the 20s at least once today

2008-02-12T22:02:00.000-06:00

what an aweful (in the fullness of awe sense of the wword) kind of adveture would it be to just pick up and drop through the earth,to hold your breath and let your toes mingle with the sands of soil until you are no more but a part of teh gardenia dirt under the feet of old women in their overgrow overloved gardens. How I wish I could hold my breath for as long or even longer than I used to when I was six and I would drop to the bottom of the shallow end of the pool and open my eyes to this silent, bubbly bright world around me while my cheeks puff out even further, teh air pushing against my body beckoning to return to the surgace. But I want to stay sunk. Sunk underwater where there are no words, just the beauty of mothers swimming by with their ruby red painted toenails, holding up their little babies who can't seem to understand that floaties, not mamas arms are what are keeping them above water. Everything is still when you sink--except it's also so alive, but in a sort of slow motion, fighting agains this force that wants to keep everything calm and still and soft.
I want to layin my bed right now and not feel pulled down from the springs like tentacles coming up through my cotton brentwood 900 count sheets to strangle me. I want to sink lower and lower like into a mold of myself and drop to the other side of the world. take a tripw here my heart is for once out of my chest and working to stay alive, and where my stomach jumps up and does acrobats in my throat. I love that ffeeling. crave it in fact. everyone should once in a while. i[m not scared of what's ahead...i'm afraid like a little kid would be. but i don't know when. thank God he has a plan even though right now i feel like becoming mush and sinking through the cracks. Thank God for love and beauty and silence.

this should probably be untitled because just because

2008-01-15T22:08:00.000-06:00

i'm not perfect. i can't be. and its just that simple. I think the other day in class i started to get freaked out when i was writing because i was afraid that it wasn't going to be good or profound or even interesting. i find myself in that situation a lot--wondering what people will think abut something that i do or i say and then just worrying about it all the time. i realized, or more just thought about today that if i want to become a better wrier, i have to start writing. it doesnt just come to people who are excellent writers--this magical power and swayoover words--they have to work at it, master it, just rein the words and harness them. its such a fun thing when you learn how to do it--not that i know because i don't but just those times that you come pup with a great word or sentence after gureling over it for 2 hours is osmething that is fun--i mean after the fact of course. i can't spell very well either. i thought i could because i got 3rd place in the 3rd grade. then again i lost for not spelling liquid correctly so that tells you a little about my spelling.

so i've been thinking lately...

2008-01-05T19:10:00.000-06:00

first off, i'm not crazy for saying this. ok, so i've been thinking a lot about time lately. like what it is and if it's really relevant. i think that people think of time as this spiral staircase that humanity is constantly climbing--reaching new floors and new advances, but the staircase spirals the same way, its shaped the same---basically it's this cycle. and i think time is like peanut butter.
it's like when you get your Skippy non-chunk peanut butter out on a knife and spread it out over a piece of bread--this vast (to an ant) plane of something that ebbs and flows and spans out flat--not like a staircase. I think i've started to view time as something that is the present and that's what matters. i mean, it's so much trouble to worry about tomorrow or my future or who i'm going to marry or what im going to do in my life when i know those plans are going to change inevitably. and i'm thihnking about how cool it is that i've lived on this earth for 20 years and thats the same earth that flappers lived on, that great actors and singers and political leaders and fighters and peace-makers lived on--its not something that's in the past--its just on the other side of the plane--but its flat and it's spread out the same. and i think that's really cool.
someone was telling me about how when the astronauts go out into space and look down at the earth and its just this beautiful messy swirling mess that we all are just here on, out of all places, all of humanity has lived, loved, experienced on this earth. i mean because, in the end, we're really all the same. just these bodies wandering around trying to find a purpose, loving, giving, leaving. i think thats more reason to live with such a keen, heightened sense towards aliveness.
i love peter pan: "to live would be an awfully great adventure."

For a split-second every day...

2007-12-17T21:41:00.000-06:00

I realize that everyone in the world is just human. It happens a few times a day where I feel like we're all in this boat together and it doesn't matter where you live or what you have or what you lok like--we're all just here. It's a aconstant. A sameness. I think i was thinking about htis because I hate the feeling that people give you when they think they are better than you or just too good for other people. I was working at starbucks yesterday and this guy came through and of course got a triple enti nonfat something sort of drink that everyone in brentwood gets, and I asked him how he was doing and he just stated at me. No grunt. No nod. just a blank stare. Surely the fact that I am leaning out a window talking to him is some indication that I am not speaking to anyone else. But he just stares. I give him the total. He hands me some cash. He gets his caffiene fix. And that's that. And it ended up being the lead singer of that band Train. And I'm thinking---dude all I asked was how you were, I didn't even know you were "that guy" from Train--you were just a person, at least acknowledge me as a person. I'm not below you or above you, I'm just here, I'm just present and the least you could do was say hi or nod or blink or something to just acknowledge that I was visible. I think it's funny how all of life could be a movie..when you think of it that way, it's so much more enjoyable, living as some sort of protagonist getting caught up in all these bumps and meeting other people along the way. The other day I went into PF Changs to pick up some dinner and I was just standing there, people-watching, trying not to get caught and feel suddenly awkward, so i just looked at this lady in front of me in line. She had these capris on with Asics on with purple stripes. And she had ankle socks on..except the place where the heel is supposed to nestle into (you know that grey heel) well, it's pulled up and it just bunches over the back of her shoe. She's got this kid who's wearing a puffy sparkley marshmellow jacket and is running around everywhere, squatting by the kitchen door, picking up dropped fortune cookies and smashing them into her mouth (they were wrapped). And this kid comes up to me and puts her head right up to my stomach and looks at me and says "Wooow. you're pretty." and I'm completely caught off guard because 1. I was people-watching the awkwardness of her mom/grandma/babysitter and 2)I'm not good with the invasion of space, especially by kids who put their chins on my stomach. And i'm just like...uhhh ohhh ok. thankss and i think that will be the end of her head-resting-on-my-stomach conversation. But no. she just keeps resting her chin there. Mom does nothing. Roles are reversed, now she's the one people watching me, and I am in a very awkward place. She says "yeah. you look like one of the girls in my programs. I mean, she's younger than you, but you are definitely looking like her." I pat her puffy jacket as if to say...ok you can go now, thanks for that information. But she still stares. Mom turns around and is perplexed and ass if you're supposed to tip the people at to-go places. Kid (Lorelai I found out her name was) thankfully stops resting her head on my stomach and goes back to fortune-cookie sniping. I tell mom yeah, she grabs lorelais hand and says "Come on now, you need to go to the bathroom, don't you? That's what you said a few minutes ago. Let's go." and I'm standing there awkwardly half-smiling and laughing because of the whole situation. So. Yes. Those times are priceless, when an awkard moment is happening and there's nothing else to be done but just be there and laugh about it. It's painfully amazing.
ps. I can't wait for Juno to come out. I wish I could do something like that--it looks so real and so quirky and so amazing.

I don't know where my bed is any more--and that's ok.

2007-12-10T17:24:00.000-06:00

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."

So today I took down everything that was me in the dormroom. My postcards. My Eiffel Tower picture mom and dad gave me when I came to college, the little french pictures kym brought me from New York. I took them all down and now everything that's me except for, actually me, i spushed into a pile in the middle of this room on a 3x5 scrap of carpet.
ANd I'm scared to death.
Maybe it's because yesterday I turned 20. Or maybe it's because I am so unsure of what I'm meant to do in this world and I'm doing this thing, taking this step, concoting this plan that could be all wrong. Really. Latel I've been so frustrated with myself because I keep having these doubts about acting--can I do it, can I do it for the right reasons and stay doing it for the right reasons, is there something else I'm meant to do, what if I fail, what if I'm too timid, what if I'm not pretty enough, what if I'm not good enough---all these things, these realities (that actually aren't but I've let them become so) are just pulsating around in my head punching my brain to a pulp and making me so utterly confused.
I don't know what I want to do with my life. But honestly, it's not up to me and what I want, and its so much better that way. I don't understand myself. IT's like I know that God exists, I know that He's the reason and purpose in my life, and I know that I should be talking to him, running to him, resting in him--but I haven't been and I can't figure out why. Is it because Im too prideful to just let go of everything and give up control--maybe. THat's what I feel like I'm doing right now--I feel like i've lost all of my control on things and it's just all up in the air--I have no idea of what's going to happen and that scares me more than anything has ever frightened me before.
I was thinking about it and I've never told anyone that I'm an actress, that that is who i am and that is that. Because it's not. My dad was asking me why I wanted to do this and the only thing that I can possibly figure out is that it is this window for truth. Maybe lots of things in life are, but to me, acting in its odd, backwards way is a porthole to show truth. I feel like walking around in this world is not living in reality. I don't think that people acknowledge reality, instead they chose to create their own and give it a label of "reality". I don't know, because I'm rambling on and I am just convinced that what I want to do, what I feel like my purpose as a Christian in this world right now is just to show truth, to show beauty, to show these inescapable things that are so much more real than money and cars and clothes and earthly beauty and competition and gosh I just don't know.
When it comes down to it, the only times I've felt truly alive, like in this oneness wiht God (getting into odd mumbo-jumbo here) is when I'm onstage and its nothing that I'm doing but everything that God's doing that brings joy into my life. It's the experience of being a vessel, of being used andit's the most amazing feeling. ANd I've only had that happen a few times--but to know that that experience has happened when I'm just being, letting go and being open to be vulnerable is the most joyous experience and something that I want to pursue. I don't know. I really don't know.
I feel like the only thing that matters in life is being turly alive, and I feel like it's something htat to be truly alive you have to realize the beauty of God and bask in that, become immersed in that love and living in that. It's so simple and so beautiful, yet so incomprehensible at times.
"We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about"

that rapture is what I live for, what I seek, it's what matters. and it's more than just survival or being aware of who you are and where you are--i'm convinced of that.