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!

 

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.

tongue tied and foolish

how is it that i go from normal -well, sort of :| - normal human being to tongue tied mute? clearly the question of the day. what is this, high school? the pathetic thing is, i know how i come off in these moments- stand off-ish, uninterested. when really, it is simply my own awkwardness.

but it was a beautiful day. and perfect for a run- though i didn't manage the full 12 miles. sigh.



thump thump thump- i'm not a very graceful runner. still, the first time out not dressed like an eskimo was nice. in another life, i'll be one of those perfectly matched joggers, stylishly taking on the hudson with a breezy smile.

spring was in the air. the sun, the flowers, the nannies with their babies. riverside park was overwhelmed with babies and toddlers as their nannies gossiped or chewed out their phones.

each time i lumber through the park i find myself imaging a traditional life. what would it be like to be one of those professional mothers, my children trotted out for sunshine? what if i used my time in africa to get a "real" job, a husband, a family? it makes me feel much younger than i am. that i am so far from where my contemporaries are. to be single in the city one has to be much more suave than i have in me. i'm too much a home body.

thump thump thump. american idol. a guilty pleasure. "idol gives back" to "africa" though africa was clearly only east africa- kenya, uganda, my own tanzania. there they were with the dala dalas! crying over the mud huts! where were they? not moshi, but dar? heartsick for a world away. but here i am in the apple. with people i admire. with my work. my friends. muted.

thump thump thump. it is easy to imagine conversations, actions- play them out in my head like a 2nd rate novel. but, truthfully, i play it too cool- masking my fiery emotions- i'm reserved when i should be pushy, smile when i should laugh. life shouldn't be saved for the stage. you should live it. right?

what will it take to break the pattern?

Siku ya kufa nyani miti yote huteleza ~ the day a monkey dies, all tree are slippery