Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Lately I'm having an issue with blaming everyone except for myself for my problems. That, and jealousy. And I'm too angry and pissed and exhausted to even write about it.

Second Day Home

Day two after moving back to Raleigh. I am uncomfortably full from a pork chop dinner at the Country Club. My sister is tired of hearing me say "I just feel so whacked out and overwhelmed!" about coming home like this. I feel like a little plastic toy boat that's lying forgotten on the bottom of the bathtub after you've drained all the water out.

I'm going to try really hard to explain how I'm feeling here so that I can quit mashing it around in my head and torturing my family with a need to talk. I want to hit the ground running and move forwards, but can't somehow until I've taken a mental step back and said "ok, this is where we are now".

I am amazed that I extricated myself from LA. I felt like a fly untangling herself from a spider's nest. There were so many things to take care of- moving away was a full time job. And yet, the last month there I kept feeling slightly bad about it all... the last week I could barely leave my temporary apartment because I didn't want the sunset to look too sweet, or the hills too etheral, or have my friends make me laugh too hard, or the city lights sing to me too sweetly. I relished the final parking ticket I got, the way the palm trees looked half dead in the evenings, and the smog outside my window as my departing plane took off. Please... world... convince me that I've made the right decision to leave here.

I was on a mission the last three years to be an actress. It started out with some very passionate feelings in Rhode Island (and secret dreams from long before)... and a deep sense of destiny and pleasure... and once I moved to LA I started feeling really confused. There were just so many ways to skin the cat, and yet seemingly no clear way to really get from A to Z. I started recognizing that I was looking to everyone but myself for how to accomplish things... and yet no one had any satisfying answers.

I have no idea what to do with myself now... do I?

I went with my sister to the gym last night and felt more grounded after an hour on the treadmill. She showed me how to play World of Warcraft a little... I found it really confusing and frustrating. Then we watched 5 episodes of True Blood together... a very sexy and romantic vampire show on HBO. We both love the somewhat old fashioned and passionate romance between vampire Bill and Sookie. We're going as vampires for Halloween... although I'd rather be vampire bait.

I've spent a lot of time here looking at everything that technically is familiar with alien eyes. The street I grew up on, the furniture in my mother's house, the restaurant I used to work at, the mall I've been to a million times. I look at these things and want them to feel like part of me... or maybe just a bigger part of me... again. A beautiful plate of food is put down in front of me and I just feel like "Gosh, do I deserve this?". I'm sleeping in my sister's old bedroom... feminine in pink and white... quaint and lovely and so elegant in detail and so much nicer than everything I've been around for so long now... so much nicer than what I've been able or willing to put together on my own... and I feel very small. Like a souvenier from a metropolitan gift shop cowering under the covers... a little useless and confused and foreign and out-of-place.

Everyone is being so nice to me and there are no expectations right now, but they will come. I'll have to dive back into the river of life soon enough... and I want to because this fish-outta-water syndrome is painful.

As I was lying in the pink room tonight my brain was churning over everything... grumble grumble grumble... I was trying to decipher what I was so worried about... and all I've come up with tonight is the philsophical quesiton "Is it all right to be happy?". I think I've been carrying around the weight of that query for a while now.

To me, I'm not so worried about figuring out how to make myself happy, as I am allowing myself to actually feel it. I don't know when that concern started or why it's here. I do know that during some of my warmest moments, I let a little grimlin inside me pull a worry string, or think on something unpleasant so as to taint the goodness of that moment with a touch of anxiety... and I guess it's some sort of masochistic means of self-protection. Perhaps some way of trying to defend myself from being let-down, from uncertainty, from change, from dissapointment. But... none of those things hurts as much as constantly sabatoging happiness.

I know I can never be poor enough to make anyone rich or unhappy enough to make anyone happy. I respect those who are self-assured and upbeat. I think I am innately joyful and spiritual... but I've been wrestling with this quesiton of happiness "being ok" for a while now... and accepting the fruits of life and relaxing into them is something I want to master in the coming months.

Chris Jordan and America by the Numbers

Our out of control consumerism is displayed in a compelling way by the art and photography of Chris Jordan:

Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours.


Detail:


et Trails, 2007
60x96"

Universes Unknown

I've been prone to anxiety for several years now... and while reflecting on that belief today I realized a component of it, for me, is the assumption that "I know everything" and "It's gonna end badly cause there's so much badness".  And then I realize how absurd that is. How there are universes of beauty unknown to me; what a relief.

This gorgeous macro photo of a bug covered with morning dew helps me realize just how complex and fantastic our world is:

How there are enough mysteries to fill infinite lifetimes. Look at the beauty of this wet leaf: 

And how I don't need to be anxious because it's all so much bigger than me.I can be brave, just like this ladybug:

Pandora Rocks

While cleaning the apartment today I wanted to listen to music, but I'm so ill equipped at the moment... no cool set up. However I do, obviously, have a computer and the internet so I started googling for "Free Internet Radio" and found this AWESOME site:

http://www.pandora.com

You go, enter the name of one of your favorite artists, and it creates a station based around artists like that. I put in Zero 7 and after a few secs of loading "Red Dust" by Zero 7 started playing, with Thievery Corporation up next. WHAT A KICKASS WEBSITE!

Phuket

Tonight I had some wine with a friend and watched the movie he just finished directing/shooting in Thailand. It was another labor of love on his part... and will be one of his biggest releases to date. I see him, and he is very determined to be "this". "This" is some idea he has in his head. I think he has sacrificed a lot for it. I sense tons of stubbornness and some dissatisfaction.

He asked me what has been up with me lately, and I went on a monologue of the changes I'd made these past few months.

I have put down the acting cross for now. The funny thing is, I had truly put it down months ago, but wasn't willing to mentally relinquish it for a while. When I commit to something, I do it very deeply, and I do not believe in failure really. But life was happening, and I've been changing a lot- challenging situations out here made it necessary. I'm happy about it.

I didn't want to officially retire my pursuit because I felt like it meant I was giving up. I also felt like it made me "one of those dreamers" that flies out here and burns out after a few challenges. But the reality is, it is not negative thinking that is making me stop. It was negative thinking that was making me continue.

This was not sitting well with my friend. I think it's because I was saying I didn't want to be a part of the industry he's fought tooth an nail to move up through, that I didn't want to live forever in a town he feels tied to. Maybe me making a break for it made him feel disapproval of his choices. Or maybe they just teased out his own underlying dissatisfaction.

He always talks about how he's one of the few that believe in me, but I don't feel that at all. He's never helped me in any practical way - believed in me enough to give me a chance to do something on a project that was well within my capabilities. I've felt he's just wanted to take something from me... And you know, I think he thinks he cares about me, and that maybe he loves me (not so secretly), but I've never let it go there because I'm not attracted to him, and also because I sense that it's all about him. And that to me is not caring, love, or anything close.

It's frustrating. I wish we both felt bigger, stronger, and better after our conversations. It's one of those people who I don't think I'll ever be able to honestly communicate with, we don't have the same mental or emotional tools, but it is what it is.

Grains of sand in the desert

Portraits before and after death.

"This somber series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study. The work by German photographer Walter Schels and his partner Beate Lakotta, who recorded interviews with the subjects in their final days, reveals much about dying - and living."

Be sure to read the text accompanying the photos.

When my father was dying, my sister and I drew pencil sketches of him. Taking a photo would have felt so vulgar (Walter Schels photos are beautiful however- and consensual). One thing that touched me in this series was how one man said his friends tried to "cheer him up" by watching football, bringing beer over, even saying "get better soon mate" as they left.

I saw people doing that to my dad too when he was dying of cancer. I felt like it was a selfish thing for people to say to someone who is dying.... they say it because they feel too awkward to accept the reality of the situation and be there for that person. I didn't say get well soon... I had my quiet moment with him, the details of which I will keep private, but I did not bullshit him about what was going on and let him feel... I let it all be real in that moment then... real and ok.... I'm proud of that and I hope he is too.