Home Is Where the Art Is

My roommate flew in from Washington state yesterday, and already we've managed to designate a weekly/biweekly/monthly/whenever the hell we feel like it ART evening. When the ragged comforter gets spread on the floor, it's time to put on the tea kettle, pop in some music, and pull out our paints. It was so soothing - even though we have a CRAPTON to do before school (it's actually nauseatingly terrifying, thinking of all the things I need to do), it's quite necessary to create a zone of quiet, escapist happy. So I painted. :)

That's a crappy webcam of it. I think it's full title is "The First (A Tribute to Plaid/Highland Rape)." Alexander McQueen had a line called Highland Rape and it was beautiful. And very plaid. I don't paint much, so I paint abstract to avoid coping with my lack of acrylic ability. We have lots of cardboard, plenty of paint, and LOTS of wallspace, so who knows how many more there might be. If we have time.

I also landed a job yesterday, which is fucking fantastic. :) I have some paperwork to do before I can start, obviously, but hopefully the week after next I'll be starting a couple shifts at Halloween Adventure, NYC. I feel so much better already, knowing that I'll have even a tiny little paycheck coming in. It's something (and it's the EFFING HALLOWEEN STORE I'M SO STOKED.)

I have way too much to do today (work to do, people to see ((text me, George! I'm sorry!!!)), monologues to memorize, plays to get, it never ends), so I'm going to go do some of it and try not to go crazy in the process. Classes haven't even started yet (and classes are going to be a madhouse this year), I can't lose my marbles quite yet.

Love to you.

Avant

Something funky fresh that won't send me into a tailspin. Let's give it a shot. Pale skin, red hair, colorful eyes and red lips. Let's see if I can't set my own fashion.

Having a welcome back/housewarming party this evening. I love having my own space, but it's getting a bit lonely, so I'm filling this tiny apartment up with my music theatre studio friends to share summer stories and feel the love. Because there is lots and lots of love to be had.

Here's hoping I get a job interview soon. I need one so badly. Got my fingers crossed!

Landed one theatrical project already - a reading of a new musical. I'm very excited. Time to dust off the acting chops and see what's cooking inside.

Cheers and love! More info when I get it. Getting some new books for school soon, and at least one of them has been on my WANTNOWPLEASE list for a while, so I'll share that when I get my hands on it.

One Year Ago

Exactly one year ago, today, I was waking up in NYC alone for the first time. I'd moved into my new dorm on Lafayette Street and was more than a little nervous.

Oh, how times have changed.

It always amazes me, how things change in one year - every year it just floors me and I know it shouldn't surprise me anymore, but it does. Weird. Rolling right along, we are.

Beautiful day today - got a workout to do, school stuff to prep, and I definitely want to get outside today.

I'm feeling better already.

Have some music it's impossible not to smile to. Now I want to dance. My darling Michelle gets here on Friday and I can't waitttt :)

Blow Myself Away

Hurricane Irene was a little bit of a let down - some late night gusting had me edgy for my windows, but New York made it out only slightly waterlogged. Everyone I know is safe, and now my hometown is waiting for the battering to be over.

Hurricane Harley, however, is another story.

I've had a melodramatic, confusing couple of days. I feel like all the stress of the past few weeks has just been bubbling up and bubbling up and in one, fell, disastrous swoop, it all came to a peak and forced me to sit down and examine what's going on in my head and my life.

Trying too hard to fix something has the distinct probability of only making things worse - I've never gone wrong letting life play out, and I should keep that in mind, from now on. That doesn't mean letting everything happen passively, hell no, but it means trusting where I'm going a little more than I have been.

Doing my first work out session in probably over a month. My body is aching for movement, for release. The joys of a yoga ball - simple happiness in plastic rubber sticking to my humid skin and my muscles burning. I'm going to work out until I can't think, and then I'm going to eat lunch, shower, and possibly investigate the streets of the Village to see what it's like, post-storm. It's like investigating myself, after Hurricane Harley has passed over.

My theatrical passion is, in fact, a metaphor for my own life, methinks. Trying so hard to force a mask to fit, to squeeze into a personality, it just looks false and ends badly. Peeling off layers is gentler, more freeing, and far closer to the truth.

Let's straighten up, Harlequin baby. One more year at NYU and then you're a real person, with a piece of paper that says so and everything! We have to make it worth it.

Love to you.

Irene

I take a leap and extend myself, reach out, try to shake things up, expand who I am a little, and, in response, the universe throws shock and shame and embarrassment my way in forms I could never imagine. Unfortunate coincidence of timing? Probably. But that doesn't make me feel better.

It's a curious coincidence that, for major expansive movements I try to make, personally, where I try to stretch and see if I can't change my shape, something crashes down that makes me want to retreat into the safety of my antisocial, geeky, artistic little shell and remain as I am. Mistakes or coincidence or happenstance, whatever it is that messes so fully with me, it gets me good. I don't know whether it's a test for me to keep pushing, or if it's a warning to stop losing my balance.

In conjunction with my stormy mental/emotional state, there is a hurricane creeping up the east coast, and the rain has begun here in Manhattan. All transportation has been cut. No trains in or out, no subways anywhere on the island. Battery Park and Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn have been issued mandatory evacuations (though anyone who is still here is stuck - no transport).

I'm not too worried - I have food and water and enough of it to last for a good few days, worst case scenario. I just wish I weren't by myself. Kinda sucks on my own right now. Too much thinking, not enough living.

Have some music. Long live the Lizard King.

Cosmic Love

Some words from the Village Voice for my star sign.

"If you're in the mood for outlandish feats and exotic adventures (which I suspect you might be), I suggest you try something more life-enhancing, like making love for an hour, eating an organic gourmet feast, then making love for another hour. It's a good time for you to be wild, maybe even extreme, about getting the healing you need."

And some music for the day.

Contents May Settle

Back in New York, New York, and I'm closer to content. Somehow it's soothing here. I'm restless and shaken and bothered, but being here makes me feel better, I guess.

I received a new deck in the mail yesterday, and I did myself a reading this morning. It's going to take a while to learn the cards and get used to them, but I think they'll be good for me. I'm starting something new, they said, but I'm confused and unsure (90% were reversed, how fun) and I feel stuck by a lot of things out of my control. I just have to keep going, though, and it won't end pretty, I just have to keep trying.

I need to shake up my life. The past few days at home really rattled me, and I feel like I need to find the seam of myself and rip it open, pull myself out of whatever I am right now and become the next phase of me. I need something dangerous, I need something new, I need to be doing.

The job hunt continues and success continues to elude me. I feel out of shape - I've been eating emotionally for weeks now. So much for all the work I did earlier in the summer.

Shake it up like a bottle of paint, splatter the canvas and see what happens to me.

The Look

That tried and true and ever impossible question has arisen again - to cut or not to cut?

Part of me wants long, thick, shiny hair, as far as it will go. Gorgeous artsy waterfall hair to catch the light. The other part of me wants to hack it off and give it shaggy, sharp edges, short and quirky and dangerous.

I've wanted both extremes for a while, but always been too indecisive to really have either. So here I am, hours before a hair appointment (the last for a while, since I never make it home during the semester), debating.

The main factor influencing my decision is always the theatre. What look do I need? What look will get me parts? How do I flaunt my best features with what I can manipulate on my body? What look is manageable? What look will limit roles for me? That's why I'm afraid to hack it off. Wigs exist, but I'd rather not bank on those. I'll talk to my hairdresser and see what she thinks.

This trip home has not been what I expected it to be. The past few days in particular - I feel like someone drained my brain out, or drained something out of me. I think it's time to head back to the city. I can't find too much peace anywhere, but peaceful isn't for me, perhaps.

And today is the birthday of a very wonderful and magical unicorn. :) Happy Birthday, Jen!

Looking for Light

We are not saints, we are not heroes. Our lives are lived in the quiet corners of the ordinary. We build tiny hearth fires, sometimes barely strong enough to give off warmth. But to the person lost in the darkness, our tiny flame may be the road to safety, the path to salvation. It is not given us to know who is lost in the darkness that surrounds us or even if our light is seen. We can only know that against even the smallest of lights, darkness cannot stand. A sailor lost at sea can be guided home by a single candle. A person lost in a wood can be led to safety by a flickering flame. It is not an issue of quality or intensity or purity. It is simply an issue of the presence of light.

Kent Nerburn

No Exit

I should write a play about the people who have exited my life. More have left because I love them than those who have left because of dislike.

"Life isn't fair. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

I learned that when I was eight years old, reading The Princess Bride. Hit me in the face with it one more time, universe, why don't you. Stop making me bitter before my time. Let me feel something good.

Did some splatter painting yesterday, as part of the decor for my apartment (home in CT covering pegboard with color to make some storage in my teeny space), and I understand now why Pollock painted the way he did, or any violent abstract artist does what they do. It's fun to fling and twist and throw and let your anger or joy fly out of you with the motions you make. It's a release. It's almost a more pure representation of emotion, because the brain can't get in the way by trying to make it something else than what it is.

I have to check on it, see how it dried, and then decide if it needs more color. It might. I want lots of color. Today will be an artsy day. A crafty day. I want to make things. I want to paint my face. I want to vomit my feelings where others have to see them, have to feel them, have to wonder what makes that kind of thing happen.

I understand why he has to leave. It just sucks. Again, Harley? Again. You were drunk, but not that drunk. You heard him.

Seeing my photog darling Karen Schlink this afternoon, hopefully. :) Some shutter speed smiles for me will be nice.