Like A Sneeze Guard to the Soul

Day 11 of the sinus infection / cold thingy. Used tissues overflow from the wastebaskets in every room. When my head is clogged up like this, my emotions feel a little dull. Everything seems fuzzy around the edges. It's like a sneeze guard to my soul. I understand that the world still has crisp lines and vibrant colors, but I just can't quite experience it through the thick plastic.

For this reason I feel I am not quite appreciating a couple of nice things that happened over the weekend, but I completely recognize they are things that, once the sneeze guard is removed, will be entirely worthy of celebration.

1) Our landlord decided to only raise our rent a third of his original increase. This is excellent. The original increase was way too high, and this is reasonable, and saves me the trouble of trolling on Craigslist for a new place to live... and MOVING. In my dreams, we will not have to move for a very long time.

2) A woman I have asked for life-rights in order to write a screenplay has agreed. A happy occasion.

Follow to Last Post

By 9pm feeling much better, less convinced of cancer.

And I ORDERED A KINDLE!

So happy? It's an odd phenomenon, the way buying something that you can afford, even though you shouldn't afford it, gives you a little rush. I think it has to do with feeling a little sense of control in a life that is otherwise uncontrollable.

I swear I'm going to do good things to deserve it. I started by calling the company of my desired internship, but apparently the production office isn't open yet, so they aren't taking any applications. Off the hook.

That time of year again

In my more zen moments I always think I can, through self-awareness avoid the ones like these: sick and stressed and extremely insecure about my abilities to achieve the goals I set for myself.

I love that conversation in Joe Vs. the Volcano where Joe's boss is talking on the phone, saying "I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?....I'm not arguing that with you, I know he can get the job. But can he do the job?"

Right now there is an internship that I would like. I've revamped my resume (i.e. cut it down by two pages and tried to emphasize admin). But I haven't called. Why not? What's the worst that can happen, they'll say no? No, i'm more worried they'll say yes, and where will I find the time to give them. On an energetic, healthy day, no problem. On days like today, when I wake up sore, with gummy eyes and a desire to cry, the idea of sacrificing a day of writing time and still making my deadlines seems overwhelming.

I try to remember when being sick was just being sick. You just went on with your life, except sick. It's not like that now. Waking up sick is like waking up with a bowling ball of anxiety in my heart. And I know I probably say this every time I blog when I'm sick, it's a cancer survivor thing, blah blah. If I get sick twice in three months, I think my cancer is coming back. If it takes longer than a week to recover, same thing. I start imagining in the back of my mind about how I will handle various obligations when I get the diagnosis. I buy the insurance on my classes every term. I'm making a production book for script list so that if I ever had to hand it off, everything would be there. And at some level, I think that's why I'll put off the call about the internship--because a cold=undiagnosed cancer, and I'm just going to have to quit, and I hate quitting? Wow, that's all pretty messed up.

Oh, and on a completely different note. I still really want a Kindle. The want has not subsided. I'm thinking of ordering one now.

Context Post

My life is kind of insanely busy right now. So much so that I can't even bring myself to write about it because I'm so amped in that not that great way where I can't really calm down enough to focus on what I'm saying. I'm all over the place.

But, I'll try to make sentences enough to note a few news events for when I look back at this time. Remember this is the news filtered through my understanding. There has been no (or very little) fact checking, and sometimes just make up shit to fill in the blanks in my understanding.

On January 12th there was a really big earthquake in Haiti. 7.0 on that scale they use for earthquakes. Lots of people died, and were trapped and the news footage was heart wrenching. "Texting" money to aid agencies gained a lot of publicity. I don't know if it's been done before, but this is the first time that I and so many others were aware of it. You could donate $10 to the Red Cross or other agencies from your phone. It got a big response from folks. Which is great. Because, as I know from the PSA Paul and I did--Cash is Best.

In politics, the lawsuit challenging Prop 8 (eliminating marriage for same sex couples)--began in San Francisco. I cannot be nearly as eloquent in my current state as I would like to be about this subject, but it's happening now, and John August witnesses the proceedings here.

In entertainment, Conan O'Brien and the Tonight Show is the big news. See, NBC decided to try this thing where they gave Jay Leno, who used to do the Tonight Show, a talk show every week night at 10pm, replacing of prime-time shows, that had to employ writers, actors, thus making it cheaper to produce for NBC. However, the ratings were not great, and even worse, the affiliates began to lose money after prime time and got pissed. So NBC decided to call the Leno experiment a wash, and give him back his old time slot at 11:35, bumping the "Tonight Show" an hour later. Conan O'Brien, who inherited the Tonight Show when Leno left feels this time slot undermines the integrity of what the Tonight Show has always been. So he's going to leave.People in the younger demographic--our friends and housemate included--are up in arms about this, to the point of having rallies on his behal. Conan makes lots of jokes about the whole situation on the show, and everyone is enjoying the furor.

Those are the big things...Little things...here in L.A. it's raining, and yesterday there was even a tornado warning, which in all my time here, I have never experienced.

At our house we have had a back-to-back chain of house guests for months, which has been intermittently cool and stressful. The last batch is moving tomorrow and I'm looking forward to writing in my office again by the end of this week. We also have a new roommate, which I think will be good, and hope will be at least neutral, but honestly I can't get really get a bead on it, perhaps because of all the guests. A roommate was going to alleviate some financial strain on the household, but unfortunately, as soon as our landlord realized, he raised our rent substantially, which decreased the benefit by more than half. I didn't realize the husband hadn't told the landlord in advance until after the roommate had already moved in, which has me somewhat pissed, especially as the husband continues to be singularly unapologetic about the whole thing, feeling that his decision to just do it without negotiating upfront was somehow justified by the cultural context of the situation, and that my opinion that it should have been handled in a more straightforward way is indicative of a kind of arrogance, possibly born of my midwestern upbringing. Although I don't miss the extreme slowness of the midwest--when I go back, I am flabbergasted by how long it can take for someone to count out some damn stamps at the post office--or the the preponderance of republican worldview, I do occasionally really miss the directness that one occasionally finds there. Does his make me overly rigid? I don't know.

I know I should just be happy I'm not in Haiti. But then, everything is context specific, and the fact is, that since I'm not in Haiti, I find plenty of things to be anxious about in my own context...and that's the news for today.

First Day, Spring 2010

Today, by the way, is my first day back at school. And, as often, I am feeling unprepared (thus my keying in on the the word "preparation") physically, mentally, and perhaps most of all, emotionally. I have a class this morning that I don't quite trust. If it's not immediately fabulous, I plan to go to another section that meets might afterwards. If that one seems better, then I should attend an alternate section of a class I have on Tuesdays, that meets on Monday nights, in case I need to optimize my schedule... so potentially nine hours of class today. I don't know if my entire way of handling things is good strategizing, or if it's really a lot of indecision and wheel spinning. Although I have had some grand spelunking classes here at spelunking school, I've also had some less grand ones... enough that I don't feel I can rely on the spelunking administration--as well meaning and hard-working as I truly think they are--to be an advocate for my very best education. They just have too many pressures from too many places, and truthfully, they aren't in the classrooms.

I was talking to a friend the other day, who was expressing a kind of mortified admiration for my willingness to rock the boat in terms of rule-bending. This is one of the things I learned during my cancer experience. The function of the hospital is to tend to sick people, but the functioning of the hospital, of the entire medical community really, is to keep functioning. It's not illogical, if they keep functioning, they can keep offering help to sick people. But don't be confused that this functioning is about making any single individual well. The resources are often there to do that, which is great--but the advocacy is something the individual has to bring to the table herself. Family or friends can fill this roll as well--but it has to be someone who cares more about the state of that individual than about the community as a whole. If handled correctly though, this is not a needs of the many vs. needs of the one situation though. In cases like this, I don't believe that stretching the boundaries of a bureaucracy is to the detriment of other users-in this case, hospital patients. Rather I think it sets precedents within the bureaucracy allowing it to stretch its boundaries to help other individuals as needed, and at the same time models self-advocacy behavior to others. People who see themselves as individuals rather than statistics, and who realize that they don't have to adhere to every rule, are in a better position to survive and thrive (according to some stuff I've read, not just my own opinion.).

And now I have to leave in 20 minutes and I'm still in my pajamas. See what I mean about lack of preparation?

New Years Intentions Post #3

And, I think, my first of three words: Preparation

The specific intention I have been thinking of is getting all our ducks in a row-presentation wise. Paul does not have a website yet--and much as I try to let him run his own life and career, this makes me almost insane. So many job postings and just people that you meet ask "is there a link to your reel somewhere?" I know that if I were ever going to take a chance on someone new, I would, at worst, be very tempted to discount someone who couldn't even manage to post some short films on a blog with his name on it, and at best, could be very compelled by a clear presentation of where a person was coming from, artistically and technically, and of course, some examples of his work.

That being said, the time is fast approaching for me to put my money where my mouth is. I need to have some kind of web introduction myself. Am undecided about whether or not it might link to this blog, but the thought is there, particularly as it would give me an impetus to find a new visual format. I feel like a website for a writer of long form media is a little more difficult, but I would at least like to have a list of my work with synopses, and then folks coudl request samples.

Which leads to part two of "Preparation, the intention," which is that, by spring ideally, or at least this year, I'd like to have more polished versions of everything I've ever worked on, essentially, so that when someone asks for it, I don't have to say "I just need to....can I send it then?" And truthfully, I don't even keep a good list of people I promised to send things to "after the next draft." It's awful.

"Preparation, the word as a life direction," is even bigger. It has to do with things like the above--not having any defined location to keep contacts who have asked to see my work, to daily things, like not having clean clothes that fit to wear in the morning, or food to pack for lunch, not knowing where my water bottle is to get me through a 12-hour day at school, and not having read either of the scripts I have to give notes on in two days....oh, can you tell that this is today?

New Years Intentions Post #2

Go to bed earlier.

The ideal would be 11pm I think. That would translate to a wake-up time of about 6:30 am, which would be really cool.

However, it's 1:25 a.m. and we just got home and I'm doing my staring-at-the-computer-screen-decompression thing. And, you know, writing a little blog post here. I'm a little sweaty and smoky from sweaty bars and smokey sidewalks, so maybe I should take a bath. I think we're lookin' at about 2 a.m. once again.

Still, I'm going to keep affirming on this one, for at least a good portion of the year. The process of affirmations is (I am told) this:

You begin an affirmation, say, for example, "I am going to consistently go to bed by 11pm."

At first you only remember after failing to enact: "Shit, I was going to go to bed early."

Then you notice during the process: "Damn, I want to go to bed earlier than two, but I'm still blogging at 1:30 a.m. and I can't seem to stop." But then you start to notice mid-process and change your behavior. "It's midnight, but that's an improvement. I'll go to bed now." And then, one day, you do go to bed at 11 p.m.. It feels pretty good, so you do it again. You do that a few times, then relapse but realize you feel like crap in the morning, and think how good you feel with enough sleep so you jump back on the pre-midnight wagon, and after awhile...you've created a new habit.

Three Words...

Interrupting my my series of posts on New Years intentions (yes it will be a series I believe), yet in the vein of the new year-new page spirit in which I am writing them, I'd like to say I'm happy to see my friend Rosie back in blogging action with an excellent post wherein she chooses three words to inform her upcoming year. We often do things like this in my writing program at school. "Describe your character in one word." "Tell your story in one sentence." At first (okay always) these are frustrating requests. It feels like you are being asked to summarize your profound opus into a sound bite. But after a while you realize it's not about that, it's about understanding what is at the core of your creation, if you scrape all the other layers away, what is the most important element that remains. The more you struggle to articulate, the closer you can come to knowing what the thing is that motivates and enlivens the creation. And knowing that actually brings a certain kind of freedom, because a lot of stuff becomes expendable or mutable--or, to bring Buddhism into it as I like to do, you become less attached to things--and then you can be a bit more objective perhaps. If I understand that a scene is about reconciliation, then I perhaps change the locations or the people or the time...I now know I can do any of that as long as it is about reconciliation.

Not that that is easy... At least half the time all I know is that it takes place on a subway. I write the whole thing, and still don't know, and then finally I figure out what it's about and I realize that if it's about reconciliation between two specific characters, it would be better expressed on top of a building.

So, if our live are our creations, and I think to a large extent they are, that struggle for three words seems worthwhile. I'm going to be thinking about it as I complete my list of intentions.

New Years Intentions Post #1

Volunteer

It's not that I didn't do things for my community last year: I was part of a human wave because a friend had organized a huge environmental awareness event for 350.org. Another friend did a charity show for the Downtown Women’s shelter, I went twice. Friends directed documentaries about Darfur, and modern architecture, and I bought tickets and attended. And some other stuff. And what I learned is this: My friends are really passionate about enacting change in the world, and I’m interested in making my friends like me.

So this year, if just to prove that I can be socially conscious all by myself, I decided to add one activity beyond going to plays, films, readings and other escapist activities that I gravitate toward. Something grittier, like working in a soup kitchen, or delivering meals. I looked at a “volunteer in L.A.” website, and saw “Reading to Kids,” an organization that deploys an army of people to go into a dozen L.A. schools to read to kids. I immediately recognized this as an opportunity to share my love of escapism with others! Also, some of you may not know that my earliest career aspiration was to be a librarian, because I imagined myself leading the the Children’s Story hour they had at our local library. I re-examined my lackluster ambition to deliver meals, and had to admit that it didn't have the same appeal. I figured everyone’s food would get cold as I drove around lost in South L.A. anyway (I went to meet friends last night, used my GPS , and STILL got on the freeway going the wrong direction). This was better, it would resolve some core childhood need, I'd be less likely to get lost, and I'd get to read a new book, something I like to do anyway. I signed up as a reader.*

The structure seems like it will be a story hour. We read a specified book to out group of kids, (the book is then donated to the school’s library) and then facilitate making a craft that is related to the book.

I’m also happy because it seems a sustainable activity for me as it is only one Saturday a month, which will allow for all the Saturday First Pitch meetings we have at school this semester.My first session is this Saturday.

I do have a couple of small trepidations. One is that given options from a drop down menu of grade levels, I chose third grade, because I have vague recollections of Mrs. Decker reading my class “How to Eat Fried Worms” and “Old Yeller,” and that was always the highlight of my school day. But then, that might have been second grade. I actually have no concept of what that age is like. I’m more familiar with the six and under set, as my neice and nephew are four and six, so I have more recently interacted with their age group.

Second, I have to arrive at the school for a training session at 8:45. A.M. My friends with jobs are scoffing right now, but this is sadly a real issue. For instance, I am right now still in pajamas writing this post at 9:30 in the morning. It’s not that unreasonable for someone who regularly goes to sleep at 2 A.M.

Which brings me to another new year’s intention:

Go to bed earlier.

*Because my treatment of this choice is rather tongue-in-cheek, I should say on a serious note that I do strongly believe that literacy, and beyond that, love of literature, is important, not just for getting jobs so you can eat, although that’s certainly a good reason, but because it builds empathy for different people and cultures, and to my mind, that’s step one of almost everything we try to negotiate in the world, like climate change, civil rights, and peace treaties.

The Spirit is Willing, for a limited time only!

I just read another article about how willpower exists in finite quantities. So if you have have to expend a lot of willpower to complete a task, there is less willpower to resist the next temptation. People who have to watch a boring video and are then assigned a boring task are less likely to complete the task than others who did not have to watch a boring video. If you don't eat any of the cute pastries at the conference, it's harder to resist stopping at the donut shop on the way home.

I still owe a post on New Year's resolutions, but for the moment will just mention that I have some goals, and as today was the Monday after the holiday, it seemed time to implement. Thus I returned to the gym this morning. And since Paul is still sniffly, he stayed home, so I couldn't ride his wave, it was all my will, and will it was, because every cell in my body was resisting.

Afterwards, I hit the grocery store, bought carrots, kale, cabbage and beets. I came home, washed, chopped, juiced and drank them.

I emptied the stinky tofu and old coleslaw from the fridge, and tried to put them down the garbage disposal, which was ill-fated. Our garbage disposal does not like small grated items.

By the time I had disconnected the u-pipe under the sink and releases the vomitous tofu cabbage water into a bucket, it was over. My will to do un-fun things was entirely depleted.

Pity, since I needed to proof and mend my first draft to turn in today.

It just wasn't happening. I couldn't make myself do it.

(I should say that I also consider the deadline to be "soft." It's officially today, but only one of nine people expects it, and that person I know from Twitter is drained and exhausted from travel so unlikely to read until tomorrow anyway.)

So, I went and looked at Indian comic books at the museum, took a nap, watched some Iron Chef, and only then had my willpower retrenched. I began in earnest at 8pm what ideally would have been done by then. And needless to say, my launch of the new 11pm bedtime for the semester has not yet been entirely successful.

I'm halfway through, so tomorrow I'll start with the writing. When it's done, I'll see if there's anything left for the gym.

UFO's and Conspiracies

One of the things that I like about writing is researching. I'm working on a piece right now, as I may have mentioned, that involves some aliens. And I've thought for awhile that the protagonist might work with a guy who is into conspiracies and alien cover-ups and stuff. I want to really ground his dialogue in "conspiracy talk" but I don't really know what that is yet. So I was sorry to discover that in the last six months I have missed both the 2009 Conspiracy Con, which was in June in Santa Clara, and more recently, something called the "Alienenvent for a New Humanity" which was right here in L.A. in November, and the Annual Ventura County UFO Festival that same weekend. There is a world out there I have never experienced.

Looking forward, I have the time, but not the money to attend the "Earth Transformation Conference" In two weeks in Hawaii, and though I might be able to drum up the money, the timing of February's "19th Annual International UFO Convention and Film Festival" in Laughlin, NV, is really bad, conflicting both with weekday classes and weekend commitments.

I am happy to see, however that some of the guest speakers for that conference will be in L.A. the week before, for the "Conscious Life Expo" at the LAX Hilton. I've spent way too much time on the site today, but think I've found a few events with alien subject matter. It's no Conspiracy Con, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

The expo happens a mere couple weeks before I think my final draft is due. This is lucky, because it is before the deadline, but less lucky because it's not enough before the deadline and I feel like it will just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding the community. I'll probably start trying to find some of the speakers on YouTube in advance and see where that leads me as well.

Often I start researching something because I want a couple lines of realistic dialogue, and end up wanting to research enough to make a documentary film.

If you want to find an otherworldly conference near you, you can check out this link.

Two ways about it

Today, someone in Taipei reached me via googling "Two Ways of Seeing a River." Mark Twain lives.

And me? I made it back to the gym, and my Sunday morning yoga class today after more than a week off due to illness. That's nice. I'm in a weird mood, half sad, half gearing up for things to come next. Maybe that's an appropriate feeling as the year comes to a close. For some reason as I drove home from yoga, my mind drifted to disappointments and slights. I have an acquaintance at the gym who I start to talk to, but rebuffs me (at least in my mind) with her body language, turning her back to me and moving closer to the woman she is talking to. I smile and give a wave (unacknowledged) and go on my merry way as if it doesn't matter, but the first domino has tipped, and as I get in the the car I wonder about that college friend who found and friended me on Facebook, then after the exchange of a couple, seemingly friendly, letters, "unfriended" me without a word, and as I drive I think about an old housemate who enthusiastically arranged a coffee, only to show up with minutes to spare, talk of future plans, only to disappear. I am lucky to have many friends and acquaintances who are wonderful, and seem to think I'm okay. The majority seem not too annoyed by me. I went to a party last night, hosted by my friend who I have known for over a dozen years now. And more callous part of me realizes that certain amount of attrition, which is to be expected, actually relieves some burden on my schedule, gives me more time for people who want to spend time with me...but still, those few who don't, is there something about me, something annoying, something everybody sees but I don't realize, do they have some insight the others don't? This is how the dominoes in my mind tumble sometimes.

My mom leaves on Tuesday after a five week visit in town. My sister is dropping her off here today for the afternoon. I'm thinking of taking her to Loehmann's for a little shopping, and maybe also to the museum. It has been nice having her here, not in an every moment is magical way, but in a real way, where you realize that everyone still has the flaws they have always had, but you still love them anyway, and hope they love you. Undramatic, which I think is what I expected, and yet some part of me must have expected something more. Since my dad died, this holiday seemed a kind of end point to work toward as a family, and now the future seems rolled out ahead without landmarks. But that is me looking at my mom's future, and it could be she has her own landmarks I know nothing about.

I've not worked on my script for several days now, which means I'm back in a tough position of having to do a greater number of pages each day until the approaching deadline on Jan 4. But I have not been able to drum up the anxiety required. My body and mind feel like an exhale, a sigh. I'm lying on the ground at the base of a cliff and see the large wobbling rock that I know is going to cause the avalanche, but I'm just too calm to run. I think, "when it starts to roll, I'll have impetus to move, until then, I might as well enjoy the stars."

May all beings be happy

May all beings be safe and healthy

May all beings live in peace

Happy holidays

"Define happiness, someone asked me recently. Absorption, I said instantly, and anything that gives me an inner life and a sense of spaciousness, intimacy and silence." Pico Iyer in this article I half-read in the L.A. Times.

I read it, then forgot where I read it, then went looking for it, which is how I found the Joseph Campbell quote, and then as I contemplated throwing out last Sunday's paper, which I still haven't finished, I found this one again. The idea of "being absorbed" in something as equal to "being happy" has been knocking about in my head this week, a week in which I have have been particularly unable to find that "zone" of absorption (have you noticed how the spelling changes from "b" to "p" depending on the verb form, how confusing is that?"), due to my mental state, easily influence by bodily sickness, the slippage of routine, the upcoming holidays etc. So my periods of absorption in tasks have been short-lived. Have I been less happy? I'm not sure. In that I have been less productive, I am less satisfied with myself I suppose, but there is nothing like physical illness--whether it be cancer, as it has been in the past, or simply a cold, as it is at present, to bring home how much of an "illusion" our arbitrary end-points really are. Even though I normally define my writing as the thing on which I am pinning my hopes of earning a livelihood, my opportunity for reflection, self expression, the thing that is "who I am," it really only takes one week of a hacking cough to shrink all of these conceptions to relative non-importance next to the more looming issue of simply NOT coughing, and also of finding some physical and mental comfort--a state of relative rest.

But, generally, on a day to day basis, I would agree. Absorption is what I aspire to. Falling into an act of creation, or into a book or a movie... these are the easy ones. What about a conversation? Or a walk? Or washing the dishes. These are the hard ones, but the ones where the Buddhists would encourage us to be "mindful and present." Is this also a kind of cultivated absorption? I think it's easy to equate absorption with the more "escapist" activities, but this week I have tried, to some extent, to accept the experience of being sick. I haven't tried to be absorbed in the sickness, per say, but perhaps in the qualities that surround it--being home and allowing my mind to skip from one occupation to the next. It does have a certain timeless quality, but I'm not sure it's absorption. It's more like a kind of mental purgatory, a no man's land. Even as I write this, I am aware of only being able to skirt around thoughts, regard them obliquely. As soon as I try to engage a line of reasoning head on, it has floated away.

"Happiness is absorption in a cause which in the end is but illusion."

--Joseph Campbell

Filing and Listening

Since I'm sick with a cold and classes are over, I don't HAVE to go out. So I'm not going out. It takes a few days of being cooped up in the house before I actually want to start organizing. That time has come. So I am slowly going through the pile of papers on top of the filing cabinet. It's a little unfortunate that my yen for organization tends to visit me after business hours. I can call to activate the Macy's card I let myself get talked into back in October. But the AAA card that says it will renew automatically has an obsolete credit card on file, and I can only change that from 8-5. And, as I unpack my new Film Independent membership materials, and registration documents from the WGA, AND the Macy's card paperwork, I realize these will require new files, and I don't have the files. I need to go buy more files. So for the moment I can only make piles, and by the time I have a pile of piles, it looks very similar to the pile I had to begin with.

Anyway, as I do this, I am also listening to Radios by Jerome Stern. His is a name I am familiar with, as he directed the Creative Writing Department at FSU for a time, and wrote articles and texts that I used while there. He died of cancer in 1996, almost ten years before I arrived to study, but I could feel that for many of the professors there who were his friends, his loss still felt fresh, his contributions present.

He wrote a lot "micro-fiction," very short stories or essays that today are more popularly called "flash fiction" or "short-shorts." I think he might have been amused by and written some brilliant Facebook status posts or Twitter poetry. Here's a piece from his I've taken from an old Florida State Times:

MORNING NEWS
by Jerome Stern

I get bad news in the morning and faint. Lying on tile, I think about death and see the tombstone my wife and I saw twenty years ago in the hilly colonial cemetery in North Carolina: Peace at last. I wonder, where is fear? The doctor, embarrassed, picks me up off the floor and I stagger to my car. What do people do next?
I pick up my wife. I look at my wife. I think how much harder it would be for me if she were this sick. I remember the folk tale that once seemed so strange to me, of the peasant wife beating her dying husband for abandoning her. For years, people have speculated on what they would do if they only had a week, a month a year to live. Feast or fast? I feel a failure of imagination. I should want something fantastic - a final meal atop the Eiffel Tower. Maybe I missed something not being brought up in a religion that would haunt me now with an operatic final confrontation between good and evil - I try to imagine myself a Puritan fearful of damnation, a saint awaiting glory.
But I have never been able to take seriously my earnestly mystical students, their belief that they were heading to join the ringing of the eternal spheres. So my wife and I drive to the giant discount warehouse. We sit on the floor like children and, in five minutes, pick out a 60-inch television, the largest set in the whole God damn store.

Christmas Time in the City

This is a dude dressed as Santa who is eating a sandwich while playing pinball on Hollywood Blvd. You can't really tell, but it's also raining.

I took these on Saturday after we did an improv class at Second City for Paul's Birthday. It was really fun. You can definitely see why people say improv is good for writers, as you do end up thinking of the most random stuff. Unfortunately, ongoing glasses are a bit expensive, plus the Hollywood Blvd. location would require an additional ten bucks for parking every time.

After I took these pics, we went to ice-cream, then back to our car which had a flat tire. So we changed the tire in the rain to find out that the spare tire was also flat. But you know what, it was still fun. We didn't have to change the tire, we could have called AAA.

Filler

I'm actually going to post a picture, soon as I fine the cord to download my camera's contents.

Until then, a fun fact... I think that I get about 10 hits monthly from people who search for the title "Two Ways of Seeing a River" by Mark Twain which I once referenced it in a post title. The post itself quotes and has little other commentary, which is perhaps a disappointment to people who are trying, perhaps, to write essays? Is that's what's happening? It must be an oft assigned essay, or perhaps one of those national schemes where all the kids have to read a book or something.

I can't really tell who looks at my blog, but I can often see locations, and if they arrived through a google search. This is how I know that a lot of people search for this phrase.

Today's searcher was from Pennsylvania. Another day I had a hit from Hawaii searching the same topic.

So, that's some random information.

Tonight I saw "Reverse" the Academy Award entry from Poland.

I finished a script and turned it in on Tuesday, and have been a little lazy since. I gave myself Wednesday off to transition, but I was supposed to start writing again today and it was a bit of a wash.

Instead, I slept in, finished "Chocolate" (the screenplay) on the elliptical at the gym. Went to look at these new studios that have moved in on the corner, had some Indian food for lunch...and also investigated how to become a notary since I need on again tomorrow. It costs more than I'd really want to pay for something I don't think I'd do a lot.

Immersed in Vietnam

Since last weekend I have had the luxury of thinking about only one script for a several consecutive days. It has been great. I may have already mentioned that the script is an adaptation of a Vietnamese novel that I am co-writing with another woman who has actually read the novel (which is in Vietnamese.) But during the writing I started to feel like I wanted a little more sense of place than I was finding on travel sites on the web, and stumbled across The House on Dream Street by Dana Sachs. It is the memoir of a woman who spent a cumulative year or so in Hanoi in the early to mid-nineties. This was exactly the kind of thing I needed, since the script is present day--I know the nineties aren't exactly present day, but in that is is a generation post-war, and the story I am working about is NOT about the war--and the first act takes place in the Old Quarter in Hanoi, which is where she stayed as well. On top of that, her book was a real joy to read. About the only time I get to read these days is on the elliptical machine at the gym, and for several days I looked forward to the gym just because it meant I could read this book.

The Secret Birthday Post

Today was not really a "secret" birthday, but it was kind of a secret. What made it kind of a secret was the fact that I switched the date of it on Facebook to an earlier date. I did this for a few reasons.

1) I'm not really a birthday person. If you are one of my friends who really loves having birthdays, and actually makes a list of things you want, and you have not just one, but several birthday parties, who likes to turn your birthday into a week long series of events, please know, I love you. But I don't really like your birthday. I don't like eating at restaurants with big groups of people and having waiters circle around us and sing alternate non-copyrighted versions of "Happy Birthday." The optimal number for a dinner out is four. Six is acceptable. Anything more than six means that I'm eating with the three people next to and across from me, but I have to shout and somehow at the end of the evening the bill will be astronomical. I'm not a fan of going to bars in large groups either, or even to Vegas. I will go club dancing in a large group, for a "girls night out" thing, but I'm embarrassed to dance in a circle, and eventually I will leave you and dance alone. I like bowling, but once you have a butt in each of those five chairs, you don't need more people. I will go camping with a a large group--but that's an entirely different thing, and really, who does birthday camping? I get the reasoning for large birthdays, because you like all your friends and you don't get to see them enough, I feel that. If I was to have a birthday party, despite everything I just said, I would want to invite everyone. But right now is not the best time to have a birthday party, which brings me to

2) I'm just too busy....really. Not busy with glamourous stuff or even some high-stress job. I'm just writing. But i'm writing on deadlines which require a certain amount of output each day, and if I don't complete that output I cannot leave my house. Which would suck if I had arranged to meet 23 of my closest friends at the bowling alley. Today I skipped breakfast, the gym, getting dressed, and managed to write ten pages before 5pm. Yeah me. But yesterday I finished at midnight. If I were more devil-may-care, or just capable of surviving on less than six hours of sleep, I'd just say F**k it, I'm going out, I'll write when I get back and I'll sleep when I'm dead, but I am not like that, mostly because I am OLD. which brings me to

3) I'm old. Not old as the hills, but significantly older than my counterparts at film school / facebook friends. I'm told that these folks are my network, that someday in the future, we will trade favors and give each other jobs. And I'm a little old to be someone's assistant. I understand that. My fellow students are not unaware of that. Still, no need rub anyone's face in it

So there you go. After all of that, if you are wondering, I had a lovely secret Birthday. Four friends--who are the kind of people who remember these things -- remembered, and wrote or called, which is about perfect. So did my family. Everyone else just went about their normal lives. I, as I mentioned, wrote this morning. I went to the gym around 5pm, then decided at the last minute that my ideal birthday evening would be to go catch part of the broadcast version of the Metropolian Opera, and then go swing dancing--which is a very hard thing to get Paul to do when it's not my birthday.

So that's what we did, and it was a lot of fun.

Early December

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. He would have been 80. Rest in Peace.

This is always a weird week anyway. Cancerversary. Like unmarried couples who have a hard time choosing a date to commemorate--the day they met, the day they fell in love, the first time they had sex?--I have a hard time pinpointing the highlights of my whirlwind relationship with cancer.

Was it the day the ultrasound technician first detected a mass, shortly before Thanksgiving? Or a few days later when a specialist looked and said it was almost certainly cancer. Or was it this first week in December, when we traveled to the big city of Melbourne and met the surgical team. The surgery, I think was December 4th or 5th, and I think at the body level, these are days that resonate, simply because this is the experience that left a physical scar, and it hurt. Pain is memorable, the memory of it lives in your cells for awhile. I don't mean scientifically, although maybe that too. And although we always concentrate on the fact that the surgery removed "the cancer," this included, of course, removing over half my large intestine and (as a bonus), my appendix.

For a few days I've had some abdominal discomfort. Bad food choices, or is it also psychological? Do you think that people who have phantom limbs feel them more acutely around the anniversary of their loss?

I want to go research that right now. I am suddenly fascinated by all aspects of phantom limbs, but I cannot, because I need to stay on task and work on screenplays.