serious thinking happens on the subway

Xmas, yet again I have defied you!

i love christmas. i hate christmas. i love beautiful snow laden trees and moon reflected glowy nights. i hate dark days and freezing solitude. i love the rebirth of a fresh year. i hate the emotional upheaval of lost days, endings, and missed moments.

yes, i am a soldier of the winter doldrums. i'm not sure when it started. on the one hand, it seems like it has always been this way, yet on the other, i remember a time when xmas was only about santa clause and presents and school vacation. i think it must have been high school. there was one winter that is pristine in my memory, the penultimate for a young teenager with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes. that makes it sound much more dramatic than it should. but i suppose the important thing was that in the moment, nothing could be better.

and of course, what solidifies such a moment? the moment's end. and once life was once again tarnished by so many things, you are drawn back over and over to that seemingly perfect moment. you polish it reverently, till the edges are smoothed away, till it becomes something it never was, gleaming, perfect, infinite.

remembrances are all well and good. but a pearl is a dangerous memory. nothing in the moment can ever compare to something enhanced by such attention. if you are lucky, you have other good experiences, good days. and with time, these events will also be lifted above themselves. perhaps only your own memories can save you from your memories. the brightness of the new cherished memory dims the glow of the old.

as a child you have endless hope and future opportunity. then you have successes and failures. you lose things and you gain things. as you get farther down your own time line, you begin to see -or imagine you see- the endgame. with the end come the limits, not of your abilities or even your chances but of your time to reach those abilities, fulfill those chances.

how easy it is to get lost in the past, polishing, instead of living and creating new moments to remember a decade from now.

my sister recently talked about getting rid of her "box" -that collection of items that link you physically to memories, people, time. my "box" still lives on the walls of my childhood bedroom--mementos, pictures, posters of productions from high school to college to grad school and beyond. my mother told me she takes my little cousins on trips into "the museum" as they call it. that is frightening.

but i'm not ready to throw my box on the funeral pyre. i'm taking another tactic all together. i'll let them grow dusty, forget about them from time to time. then i'll add new moments to the old. i want to fill the museum of my heart all up till it's full to bursting.

we do this in acting. prepare, prepare, prepare. image, elucidate, fill out the corners of the imagined life, till you walk out on stage and it pours through you unconsciously.

course, the danger is living in the old and not making the new. this is my challenge for the new year. to prepare my real life as i do for the stage, to keep making the memories to out shine the old.

eh, resolutions!

 

facebook, friends, and growing young

what did we ever do before facebook? (i mean other than call each other, write letters, and have coffee)

it always surprises me when someone is getting married, having babies, and sadly even divorced. especially when i think of that person as i remember them- lounging in the cool coffee shop, scrunched in a hot school bus, slip-and-slidin' down my lawn...

yet another of my good friends is having a baby, i've just discovered, and it makes me miss crowding in her car along with too many others. afternoons spent at her house. even the "abs of steel" we did for a few months. it's hard to wrap my brain around.

so my introspection for the day: before the quasi-closeness of technology, did people suffer this conflict of past and present? i imagine one kept in touch and thus your perception of a person changed as life changed for both. or, you didn't. and they were relegated into anecdotes and memories and maybe old journals.

don't get me wrong-- i like the technological updates and sometimes it really does help you reestablish someone you shouldn't have lost. it's especially helpful for someone like me who is absolutely terrible on the phone. but i'm also a self indulgent wack job.

a couple of friends have recently been plagued with ex-partners and friends suddenly showing up back in their lives. live, in person. but me, i find myself half expecting a 15 year old to walk in the door.

then again, maybe it's not such a terrible thing. maybe it's nice to have these other versions of ourselves walking around, fresh in someone's head. i may be different than i was 8 years ago, even 3 years ago, but knowing that for some old friends, that's the me they carry around--well i guess i like that. maybe the versions of you that follow me around will help me remember the versions of me.

no i have not been drinking this morning. kisses.

when did everyone else suddenly become an adult?

a couple weekends ago my besties was quasi surprised by her beau proposing. quasi because she has badgered him about it for months. so much so, in fact that when he actually did propose, she thought he was playing a joke.


it was actually a very sweet, spur of the moment change. too many friends were risking giving away the whole surprise, so he just called me- said come take the camera and hide, i'm doin' it now. and really it was the best. maria is a fabulous mix of fancy hotness, hiding in a pair of holey sweatpants and donald duck tee. so proposing in the middle of the farmer's market in union square was the best thing.


though i was hiding behind a statue and couldn't hear, my favorite moment was when he got down on one knee and she's like, "what are you doing? get up!" even when he showed her the ring, she was still busy shaking her head and gesturing around her, looking for the gag. it was incredibly sweet.


i unfortunately had to run to rehearsal, but before i did we celebrated with some champagne and oysters. my rehearsal was - ehem- well lubricated. ;)

the weekend was also a good excuse to see some people i haven't seen in a very long time, despite living at various times on the same island as them.

the only problem now, is i'm pretty sure maria is now an adult. boo.

does this mean she's now going to creep over to that third of my facebook friends who all have babies and pta and all sorts of other things i can hardly even imagine??? i'm not too addicted to facebook, but each time i'm on, i stumble across something from at least one person i last remember sauntering down the halls of high school, complaining about a crush or gossiping about an outfit or hanging "being cool," and now they are building houses and running carpools! this is meant in no offense to any of these people. you guys are still awesome. it just... your adults!

i may work a million part time jobs to cover my acting habit, my own apartment, a bottle of tequila in the freezer, and yes, i do have a spoiled cat, but somewhere along the way i missed the adult train. i'm still kissing on cute boys, wear way too many hippy clothes, and like my pigtails.

hmmm. i do live in new york. i guess none of those things really mean much one way or another.

can i buy my ticket to Where the Wild Things Are yet?

boone

how sad that the weekend is already over! i love the mountains. but even more than that i love going to Brooks' Mountain in boone, nc. i've been going for as long as i can remember, literally. first to the Register's cabin and then to our own cabin. slowly, all the cabins on Brooks' Mountain have been taken over by mother's friends.

it's a good plan. see in order to spend as much time as possible up there, first mother and john built a cabin, then stocked the liquor cabinet to smooth the edges, then they got a satellite to watch the basketball games, then wifi to do work, then put friends next door to drink with.


my younger siblings all got to have their 16th birthday parties at our cabin, with gasp a co-ed sleep over! my 16th birthday was spent in Saudi Arabia, so i suppose i can't complain. besides, i have many wonderful memories with friends at the cabin, including a couple of new years with all those people i would've invited to a sweet 16, but instead we were older and legal, though obviously not wiser.

that porch has seen many a debauchery, i'm sure. though, this was my first time to smoke a cigar on the porch!


this was also my first time at the cabin as an old auntie. but that's alright too. though it might not make me the best aunt when i bite off lyriella's little fingers and toes. (they were very delicious-- who could possibly resist?)

michelle and i with our babies.

happy baby

sweat tea and lemonade

...as my sister would sing.

i am counting down the hours before i hit the road with my baby (yes, the cat) and embark on a 10.5 hour drive to boone, cakilacky! woo hoo!

i need to revamp and recharge for a summer in the city. it has been a difficult couple of weeks, but i'm determined to enjoy every aspect of this trip, especially meeting my new niece!!! woo!!

more exclamation points!! woo!!

alright, maybe i have not had enough sleep the last couple of days. there might be a slight possibility that i am unprepared for the ridiculousness i have completely thrust upon myself. 10 hours?? ten and a half hours?? yes. i'm an idiot.


but i did want to drive instead of fly. i admit to having a momentary tinge of jealousy upon learning katrina is already in town after a very early morning flight. however, i am reaffirmed after reading of the latest "bird strike" on a flight at la guardia--the plane landed safely this morning and no one was hurt, though paramedics were called. this was what befell flight 1549 that landed in the hudson - it was attacked by the hordes of geese that live in manhattan.

now am i afraid of a hitchcokian geese attack? perhaps when i have to run through a stubborn flock of them, refusing to move from the path in the park, but i'm not particularly concerned that one might take my plane down. unfortunately for the geese, the city does not share my faith. new york will be culling 2,000!! of our geese in the next couple months. it's pretty sad, especially as the humane society is crying foul -hardy har- and saying the geese that took down the hudson river flight weren't New York residents at all, but migratory geese.

i'm not sure how i would expect them to get the job done, but i am sure i wouldn't have imagined that they would be trapped and gassed!! we might as well write the disney movie right now-- or maybe it would be more appropriate as Hayao Miyazaki film... dark and subtitled.

this started so happy and now it is saddies.

no! happy times! with a little bluegrass, featuring my uncle Jim and one of his bands to lead the way

no habla espanol

I find it rather sad that my very next post is yet again the trials and tribulations of walking my cat. my only excuse is that this past week has been rather overwhelming. the show that i'm in is about to open so rehearsals have ramped up, but that's not really a problem- i live for that type of business. no, between the rent-paying jobs and certain maddening individuals, i've been wishing for some kind of prescription that will allow me to turn off and on my ability to care, think, and feel. or at least something to reduce the anxiety and allow me to get a little sleep at night.

so with that in mind, i decided to spend the sunset at the park with my cat. phbbbbt. :p

it began well enough. hard to say whether she enjoys the outings or not, but i prefer to think that it gives her something to dream about outside of my four walls. the park is quite full these days. families with their lawn chairs and cabanas, kites and barbecues. i chose a spot rather far from the water this time, as Chui can't resist the water and it has a few too many bitey bugs if you sit for long. we did do our requisit creep to the water's edge to investigate, but then i hauled her back so we could bask in the sun. unfortunately it was enough to alert a couple of nearby toddlers to our presence.


they were delighted at a cat oudoors and Chui was remarkably behaved, though she did climb back to my arms after a bit too many exhuberant little hands. it was really baby Miguel that put her over the top. he would wander away, then wander back babbling as a two year old is want to do, then insisting in spanish things i couldn't begin to answer. he poked and grabbed, till Chui retreated to the bookbag, shaking. eventually she made her way back to my lap, but that left her little carrier free and the next time baby Miguel showed up he decided he was a cat. or at least that's what i got from the only word i could understand "meow! meeeeoooow!"


where was this child's parents?? how did i end up with a baby instead of a cat? a baby who proceded to throw grass on me, pick through my belongings, try to take my camera, my earphones. another child, a bit older and with some english, came over to drag the baby out of the carrier, but minutes later he was back, trying to squeeze into the holder, while Chui cowered in my lap.

ridiculous. we survived Miguel, and i huddled Chui against the cold wind, hoping to calm her before we gave up on the park. but we are still away from leasurely walks. and hopefully Chui will be dreaming sunshine and flying things and not of scary children.

most adorable niece

i can't stop buying things for Lyriella. but this is by far the best gift: the Daddy doll. well, actually it is shakespeare, but the bard does have an amazing likeness with daddy Lexton!

http://baby-raleigh.blogspot.com/

babies!