Only you...

Can make you happy. Only you can organize your own life. Get a vision board, he says. Take one day at a time, Mom says. Pay more attention to yourself. Wear your favorite clothes, spring for those white jeans even though its winter and don't hate your family its not their fault you came home. Drink coffee to stay awake at midday. Ride my bike to pretend that I like living in the country and anyways I need to get in shape or the mint pants I paraded myself in back in California will never fit again. Swim. God I miss swimming. This is the moment in my first part of the day that I try to forget that I sabotaged my life and moved to the Midwest. The wind is constantly blowing the harshest cold wind in my face. Walk out to the mailbox, blast of Arctic wind. Walk to my car, blast of Arctic wind. Nothing stops the wind because mountains don't exist here. As I slowly acclimate to my life here I also am coming to grips with my reality is today. I am growing older. I can be replaced in relationships, workplace, etc with a new younger model fresh out of college whose waist size is still 24 and she is that girl that bakes cakes for her sorority sisters and makes her own dresses. Those kids a few years behind us got really crafty. Etsy, I guess. I listen to self-help podcasts constantly and every one of them tells me to dream big and execute my plans for those dreams. No matter how foolish. So I dream. First dream, I have a non-profit in Brooklyn for kids. A sort of foundation for them to come to after school and learn and get help with college prep or if they are little just play duck, duck, goose. Second dream, work at a publishing company where I spend hours on the phone with my literary heroes, if they aren't already dead, and plead with them to put down the drink and produce. "Knopf loves you and we want your novel, you know that. Now put the drink down and write." I would say something like that while fidgeting with my new scarf I got at a thrift store in Harlem. In all these dreams, I have some position of power. I matter. None of these dreams include a husband figure. I've assumed thats not going to play out for me. I only really wanted it to be this man I met a couple of years ago but he's in love with a woman named Mary and I doubt he'll ever come back. That's ok. If a man should pick not to love another, he should probably go ahead and love Mary. She did give birth to Jesus. So they say. None of those dreams are happening. I did drag out my equivalent of a vision board, a white board, I write my goals on that almost every morning. Almost always the list requires I go to the library. In an effort to self educate myself during this downtime of unemployment I'm almost always at the library. I read a lot about grad school, a lot about people who didn't go to school and a little about art news. Oh and the local paper. Everyone talks about the local news here so one has to keep up. Life is quite different here but it's just as lonely and confusing as its ever been. The winter doesn't help. My family doesn't help although I love them. I feel like the little tin wings I've been flying around with were shot through with a bunch of little pellets. Probably from the weird pocket of energy that sits in the corner of the room at night and stares at me. I wait every night for him/her/it to move closer to me and grab my feet. I'm positive that it wants to hold me down and keep me here. To admit to myself I never really was anything and I probably wasn't going to be anything. Best leave that to people with better ideas. Third dream? Go back to California. Buy a farm in Salinas, educate the migrant workers and drink wine in the sun with someone I truly love. The year is 1925 and I have black hair and am five years younger. That dream is my favorite but also the least likely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hZ6BpyyQzk

24 hours

Everyday I get up and sit in my chair and drink coffee. Sometimes I get up barely before noon and sometimes I’m up at dawn. I drink coffee and tell myself for the next five minutes that today will be a good day. An even day. I will hear back about work, I will have a good bike ride and I will work on my short story. After I tell myself that everything will work out and there is no reason to be anxious, full of regret or angry I go about trying to make my dream of a good day come true. Then sometime around 9pm that day I will creatively destruct the last 12 hours and try to make sense of it. Did I do anything progressive today? Am I still a relevant human being? Am I loved? Do I love myself? Why does everyone else seem to have all the answers, all the friends, all the fun, all of California, all of New York City, all of God’s love, all of the total Milky Way? Why? I think about all these things and manage to gulp down a couple of glasses of water. Toss and turn. Get up and write some more. Toss and turn. Listen to little noises. Try to shut my brain off by pretending my feet are asleep or dividing numbers by three. At about 3am I finally fall asleep with the computer light seeping into my eyelids throwing off my circadian rhythm. 

That's it.

John Irving

I recently attended 'An Evening with John Irving' at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. His new book is out and the subject largely focuses on bisexuality. I can't stop thinking about bisexuality. Or sexuality in general. For such a long time I've regarded the subject as a fringe sexual preference. Something I didn't know anything about and something I didn't feel comfortable commenting on in certain groups or any groups at all. Then an event happened and suddenly bisexuality and the reality of the thing was in my life. I struggled, blamed myself, thought briefly that I should probably call it quits on my whole life and give up. How selfish was I to think it had anything to do with me. I think this country largely fears any kind of sexual difference as having something to do with them. It doesn't. America, you can calm down. What goes on in other people's bedrooms or marriages have nothing to do with you. All this reality television isn't helping matters either. The public feels entitled to know everything about everyone else. I often wonder if we stopped worrying about what Jessica Simpson was doing with her little newborn, what kind of work we might be able to finish. I know I'm not the only person to write about this and certainly someone famous, better educated and better looking has said these things on television. I'm saying them for myself just as I am saying them for you. Anyway, Irving put into context some long lingering frustrations I had felt about my place in the world as a female. I am expected to love and nurture and support and all that. Except, sometimes, I don't want to do any of that. All I want to do is sit in my kitchen, drink coffee/sometimes beer, write and smoke cigarettes. Its hard to admit to a date that I drink let alone smoke and also I would rather not spend very much time with him. Would it be harder to say that I was nurturing, supportive, baking, baby-making but bisexual. Somehow I think both would be a revelation that the American male wouldn't be receptive to. Unless of course he was a hipster and then he would say he was OK with all that but I doubt it lasts very long. Although, I am not myself bisexual, I think I somewhat somehow maybe 'get it'. Or I don't.

Here are the things I love lately:

Blackbird Blackbird - So Sorry Girl

Sophia Tolstoy - She would copy his manuscripts by hand.

She sighed, folded her hands and began to whistle.

E

Riotous calm

I heard the term this morning on NPR during a discussion of a Southern California artist. I did not catch the name of the artist. The term was used to describe his demeanor as he painted. I like the term very much but to me it means something completely different.

Riotous calm: in between conversation in which both people have an urgent need to express something to each other but instead say nothing and the moment builds.

I have thought out the definition completely but this version makes the most sense to me now. This is my movie version. Is this also my movie life? A friend of mine made a point the other day to say something to me about my perceived reality. The point was correct but I have to figure out if I accept it. That statement probably sums up my own riotous calm as an artist. I like the in between parts. The not so very high and the not so very low. Those moments or spans of time are the most important in the process of growing.

Because what does one do after they have 'grown' or have become successful. Does it mean anything then or it is dust?

Goodbye Santa Monica dreams

In an effort to be a more total and complete writer, I've decided that I will spend more time on this blog. For those of you who subscribe to me please excuse the unedited writing as I am more comfortable not editing this for the sake of my own personal truth.

This morning, I am in a state of realization. I am remembering now why I came to California and how much I have done here and how much I long to do. I have finally moved to a more perfect area of the city and one in which I hope will offer more opportunities if only by physical proximity. My roommate and I have discussed several times our need to express ourselves and to be creative. I hope to work on my insecurities and occasional alcohol abuse. I would like to live a clearer life and feel less weighed down by hangovers and mild depressions.

The man I left Indiana for has not only moved back to our home state but has met someone else in LA and will probably move back here for her. At first I felt rejection. He is over me and ready to explore his life with someone else. I googled this morning 'how to move on after an ex' while still in bed and it was surprisingly helpful. I'm not really holding onto him as a person but more holding on to what I thought my future was going to be. To be frank, I'm actually glad my future does not involve that person as it was full of nightmarish trauma. We were both at fault and now we are both free of fault. The situation no longer matters.

Now to define California and Los Angeles on my own terms. What is most important to me right now is that I make a priority to become physically and emotionally well. I can't be creative if my mind is reeling or my body is aching from last nights abuse. I must move on from my mid-20s and accept that a new chapter is here. There is no need to hold on to the memories of the past or my past behavior. I would like to wake up and fully enjoy all parts of my day without the shadow of all of my bad habits.

It is possible.

I applied for a job this morning. The job is copywriting work and seems easy enough. I quoted the guy for .10 a word as it seems to the be the low end industry standard. He did not post in his ad for sample writing material but if he needs it and he gives me a couple of days I am sure I can come up with something. You have to fake it to make it sometimes. Really, most of my fake writing is probably better than if I were to present some of the other pieces I have done in which my heart wasn't in it.

The dream goal is to work freelance and to work my full time job. For now. I want out of the full time job but I need the paycheck to transition and it provides the stability I need should the first freelance gigs I get fall through. I am sure many of them will as that is the struggle with being an 'artist'. Not everyone wants your first work and assuredly as the 'artist' also doesn't really want it. Reminds me of when I started painting, almost everything I produced at first was awful and discouraging but if you stick with it long enough you get better and you accept and work around your weak spots.

As Vonnegut would say, So it goes. Let's hope I can get this ship out of port and to the vast seas of the unknown but perhaps this time I might not be so drunk behind the wheel.

Morning run...