Shirt Inspiration

These are images from two shirts I have recently ordered from shirtWOOT. Shirts from this site cost ten bucks, including shipping, and are created by various artists from all over who send in their designs. I think there is some kind of voting process as well, but I don't vote, I just check in once every twenty-four hours. If I stay up late, one of the last things I do at night is check the Woot shirt. Many are clever, but I gravitate toward a particular tone that I think both of these shirts capture. I'd call it Ironic+Poignant. Maybe. How would you describe it?
(artist's credit Boots)

(artist's credit Jewelwing)

I've yet to write for animation (or children's books), but both of these shirts make me want to do so. The adventures of a fish out of water... literally.

Maybe the time will come, right after I find my way through my current assignments, alien babies, incest-obsessed ghosts and invisible teens. My life is good.

Hiccups

I've had them three times today, including right now. The ones I have right now have lasted for over an hour. I'm tired of them, but too tire to anything about them, like trying to stand on my head and drink water, or hold my breath, or scare myself. i'm thankful I don't get hiccups very often.

It's Thanksgiving (or eleven minutes after) and I'm thankful for so much. But I'll start with the hiccups.

Crochety

Went to early morning gym class and stayed the entire hour. Accomplishment!

It's a fine class, with stepping and moving of weights, but the teacher plays the music so loud I want to smash my mini-barbell into the mirror right where her face is reflected.

Can I really be the only one who feels this way? In a packed class that includes 60-year old orthodox Jewish women in stretchy skirts and head-scarves? (does that make you orthodox? I don't actually know) The teacher sounds like the teacher in a Charlie Brown TV special to me--how do the ESL speakers have any idea what's happening? My right ear is still ringing and I don't have any good "last night at the club" stories to tell about it.

Or maybe I'm just getting more crotchety than I realize.

And now the neighborhood gardner's are blowing those four leaves with everything they've got. Maybe I should go to school early and lock myself in the script library.

Week at a Close

And overall, not a bad week.

The short film script of my short story "My Panda" adapted by Paul, was named second runner up in the CAPE digital shorts contest. Prize: $100 and a mentor. The mentor is the cool part.

As a balance, my first rejection arrived (from Shenandoah) for an essay I recently submitted. Rejection is of course not the preferred outcome, but the comfort comes from the fact that it is evidence that I actually printed a dozen copies and wrote a dozen cover letters and put them in envelopes, and put those envelopes in the mail. Yea, me.

The other night I went to hear a writer speak at the Writer's Guild, and met a guy who knows a guy who runs a meditation session on Sundays. I've been looking for a place to go periodically, to encourage my own practice, which suffers without present reminders, so that seems like a nice piece of serendipity. The other thing is that I've wanted it to be nearby... a little shallow, but like with yoga and acupuncture, I'm kind of over things that are de-stressors, but involve so much traffic and logistics that they become stressors. So this one is NOT nearby, but it seems very close to Paul's parents house, and when his mom is in town, we often try to visit her on Sundays, so this might be a nice convergence. The man has a website with talks that you can stream, and I listened to the first one today as I folded laundry and was quite pleased. Just the recorded talk recalled to me the mindset that I have had in the past about finding time each day to "sit." And so I did so today. That's a little like winning a prize. too.

And tonight at poker, I didn't lose. In fact, Paul came in 4th and I came in third, 10% and 15% of the total pot respectively, so we made a profit of $60 over our buy-ins, so that was very cool, although in the scheme of all combined poker nights, we are still down by $60. However, I would never have thought that far back, Paul calculated that.

Oh, AND my new laptop arrived. It is very nice. It has glowing keys so that I can wake up in the middle of the night and type something that occurs to me, and it has a battery life that is insanely longer than my old laptop's battery. I went to two industry panels this morning and didn't even have to sit in the back by the outlets.

And, you know, I live in a nice place, in a nice neighborhood, and I get enough to eat. I have friends, and Netflix, and family. I'm quite privileged in many ways. And I have the opportunity in my life to try to make things better for others. I'm a pretty lucky girl, and I'm thankful. I don't know where that came from, just how I was feeling all the sudden.

Processing

Paul and I have discussed it, and come to the conclusion that with the fast-approaching birthday, we're going to stop our fertility related activities...not ALL of them, but the extracurricular ones. The monthly blood tests and ultrasounds, weekly acupuncture appointments and ceramic pots of Chinese herb teas. To be honest, we've only been doing a half-assed job in recent months anyhow. And I guess by we, I mean me, since I'm the one who needs to make the appointments, get to the appointments, eat the right things, make the right things, drink the right things at the right times.

And I'm feeling, it's just too hard, and too expensive, and I did this once, with the diet and the meditation and the positive thinking, and it was good, but it was a full time job, and I had the time and the money and what else was I going to do in the middle of the Australian Outback anyway, and even with all of that, it was still hard. This time around, I just don't have it in me, I don't have the sense of hope in me that I had then, and I feel like I'm already trying to do something impossible with the whole writing, working in LA thing. I felt alone in my project the first time around, and I feel doubly so now, surrounded by all this aspiration and lifestyle. And impossible things take so much more commitment that impossible things, you can't really pick two. Picking two just means you get torn apart and fail at both. At least that's how I feel right now.

So I told my wonderful but not really affordable acupuncturist that we were giving up, and end up crying, and crying for forty minutes on the table in the darkened room, and crying as I got dressed. And then I went and bought shoes. And now I'm crying while I write this, crying and writing this using the time that of course has been set aside for other things, like my thesis script

But soon it will feel better, I hope, and I'll be back to enjoying my life, which I do, very much, and maybe I won't feel like such a failure on so many counts, and I'll quit blaming myself for never liking baby dolls or Barbies and thus sending the wrong message into the universe at a young age. Soon it will feel like the right kind of acceptance and everything will be easier. Maybe.

More Angels

"ABC is close to giving a pilot order to a modern version of the classic 1970s TV actioner "Charlie's Angels."

When I read the opening line in this Variety article,my first instinct was to punch a wall. Like many others, I'm quickly feeling over-saturated by the seemingly constant stream of adaptations of properties that in many cases were pretty cheesy the first time around. The desire to make profits in the easiest way possible by capitalizing on "brand familiarity" of anything with legs long enough to hobble is just so nakedly transparent that it gives me the "icks." At the same time, I get it, I totally sympathize with being risk averse when it comes to money. Still, I yearn for a little heroism sometimes.

But then, I continued to read
"Josh Friedman, who recently adapted the "Terminator" franchise for his Fox series "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," is onboard to write and exec produce the new "Angels."
and I felt better. Because, although I wasn't a loyal viewer, I thought the Sarah Connor Chronicles was interesting, and I felt bad for the creative team when it got canceled. So I think, maybe there could be something there. Strong female characters maybe? Who have complex lives and/or inner lives? It could be kind of dark and interesting, like the first season of Alias...or, the Sarah Connor chronicles. Who IS Charlie? And do they really know they're working for the good guys?

Also in questionable-gender-politics entertainment news, Dollhouse has been cancelled. Sad, it was getting much better. But maybe some of the dolls can get jobs as angels.

Upcoming Farewell

I so desperately love my little 12-inch Mac Powerbook. But I am not posting from it today. As of yesterday, whenever I try to access any internet-related applications, it provokes the spinning ball of death icon, and I am forced to do a hard shut down. I am going to the "Genius Bar" tomorrow to see what can be done, but I know the sad truth is that a lap-top generally has a life-span of two to three years, and I've had this one for about four years. I had it for the length of my first MFA, and the first year of this one... so I guess you could say I learned to write on that computer.

I'd like to think that it is trying to help my writing in other ways, by severely curtailing my internet related activities. But I am not unaware that even isolated spinning ball icons seldom bode well for longevity.

I don't like the shiny-screened laptops I see at the Apple store, with their no click thumb pads. And I also feel guilty thinking about it. I have a tendency to vaguely anthropamorphize inanimate objects, and currently I entertain a paranoia that my laptop, which sits across the room, knows what I am typing here, that it knows I am contemplating its replacement before it is even gone.

Tightropes

I woke up this morning thinking about how soon after I was first diagnosed with cancer, I went to see a lecture by Buddhist teacher Soygal Rinpoche. He gave us a visualization to work with that was about a Buddha floating over your head, who poured a kind of golden elixir that would enter the top of your head and slowly fill up your entire body, (kind of like a plastic honey bear). He told a story of a woman who was trying to find healing, and so she carried this visualization into her life. When she took a shower she imagined it was the golden elixir that washed over her and healed her, when she breathed the air, it was a golden air that entered her body and healed her. When I was sick, and since then, I have tried to work with idea. When I eat food, I take a mental moment to be thankful “for this food which nourishes and heals me.” It is hard to do sometimes, when I think I am eating poor quality food—which is easy to think, because when I researched about the causality of cancer, so much information about our food is bad news: Pesticides on the plants, antibiotics in the meats, mercury in the fish, toxins in the water etc. So I try to choose the best quality food I can, when I can--organic, healthful, prepared well is optimal. But at the same time, it’s not always convenient or possible and I don’t want to categorize half the world as poisonous to me—even if it is. Because I do believe our thoughts can help or hinder us in a search for balance and health.

It becomes a mental tightrope to have good thoughts and yet not ignore reality completely. This is not unlike living with the likelihood of disease. What is the phrase? Live like you will die tomorrow but plan like you will live forever? If I plan to live forever, of course I should be in school now. I will have forever to reap the enjoyment of writing, and to pay off the loans. If I was to die tomorrow, then I probably should skip it. Part of the enjoyment of a project like grad school comes from the idea of a goal at the end, if I knew I’d never reach that goal, then certainly I would just spend the last day goofing off with family, maybe writing a farewell note to friends—which is the kind of stuff you should do anyway, which of course is what the saying means to begin with. You should not neglect spending time with family, you should tell people what they mean to you. And yet, if you are going to live longer, then your friends will eventually get tired of farewell notes delivered everyday, they would like to plan a camping trip next summer or dinner and a movie next week. In everyday life, we are wired fro the future.

And then, what about the in-between land that the saying conveniently ignores? None of us will live forever, and very few will die tomorrow. Especially in the life of a cancer survivor, one is more often faced with the dilemma of “How do you live like you will die in five years?” Should I set aside worldly considerations, or do I gamble that maybe in that time I might achieve some small portion of what I’d hope to achieve in my life. Many poets and musicians die young, and if they had known, and decided to chuck the whole artistic enterprise because of that, the world would be poorer for it. (Although they might have lived longer after all, because often the art itself seems to be one of the main stressors). But to embrace this ‘cram it all in” philosophy, is like living an accelerated version of what is already our modern day stressful lifestyle.

For me, I guess the pole that I hold on to for balance, as I walk my tightrope, is gratitude. It is easy to be grateful for one day, or for more. One can be equally grateful for frozen pizza covered in salicates, or an eight-dollar, all organic green drink. I can be grateful for the air, even when it’s smoggy, and grateful for my loved ones, even when they’re pissy. This does not make me unaware of the differences between things, it doesn’t remove the obligation to make decisions. It simply changes the emphasis, and in some way that is hard to explain, that changes everything.

Changes...as Evidenced by Sidebar

For the past few years, my sidebar has been populated by people I actually knew in the real world. For a while had even a 'blog circle" of sorts, which was fun. But, time has passed, for various reasons, professional and personal, these folks have either given up blogging or "privatized" their blogs. I still read them, but, sadly, you can't.

So I thought I'd recommend a few folks I have on my RSS feed.

New on my sidebar you can find "Julia Sweeney," "johnaugust.com," and 'Everyday I Write the Book." These are not friends of mine, in cyberspace or in real life. They are just folks who write about things that interest me in ways that interest me. If I could pick a commonality between them, a screenwriter in L.A., a mother of four in Utah, and an actor/writer/performer/mother/cancer experiencer now living in Chicago, it would be that they all have a kind of passionate and diligent interest in the world around them--the things they see, read, experience really engages them. They all do the life things they would be doing anyway, but they take the time to record it, to share their perspectives on it (and John August is also a great instructor and resource.)

I've also had to delete some links in the "Other Things by Me" section. This was a little sad, my little accomplishments faded into the past and disappeared. Our domain rights to Paul Eats has expired, and it seems time to face the fact that I will probably never go back to Australia and write the sequel restaurant guide, so I think we're going to let it lapse and quit paying monthly server fees too. The economy you know. Enough time has now passed the the publisher no longer lists the book, so that too is gone. The documentation of the summer I spent doing dance with disABLED kids in the desert has also disappeared. What's left is three links, and the two that actually link to my writing are things I wrote awhile ago before all this "writing school" business. I so hope that after the investment of years and dollars, that I write better than this now, though on my more insecure days I'm not at all sure this is the case.

Blog Blahs

Today I took a look at my sidebar for the first time in a while, and discovered over half my links are defunct. That's lame. Also noticed that for the year 2009, I have to date 70 posts, which is down from every year since I started this blog...

Either of these things might be telling me something about my life right now, but tonight it's too late to think about it.

Sexy Food

This morning I was reading a blog and the author was talking about food porn--

"There's all this music and close ups of cutting and fingers wiping off knives, and it's not for any real reason - it's not to show a technique or anything, it's just to get you all hyped up, if y'know what I mean..."

--And I started to think about food porn and also real porn. My impression, from the few people I know who openly talk about their porn-watching habits, is that it seems to actually result in having less "real" sex with others, significant or otherwise (granted my sample pool is limited). However, I just asked Paul, and he gave me an example of someone who has (and displays in his home) a fair amount of porn, AND has a lot of sex. Paul points out that it depends on whether the porn is just a supplement to your lifestyle, or a substitute for a lifestyle.

But what I was really getting to is that I was wondering about food porn and eating habits. I've never read or seen anyone commenting on what food shows do in terms of j our appetites. Do we eat more? or less? do we aspire to eat better food?

I continued to think about this when a friend came over for "TV night" and we watched an old episode of Iron Chef and the most recent Top Chef. I enjoy seeing and hearing about all the pretty food, but it rarely makes me want to run to McDonalds or the nearest French restaurant. But I might be a bad test subject, as, even though I like to eat, I have always had voyeuristic tendencies in the food realm. When I was in hospital in Melbourne and couldn't eat for a week, Paul used to go to restaurants and eat exotic cuisine, then come back and recite menu items and their descriptions. it was oddly comforting, and I don't recall feeling sad I couldn't actually eat the food. Granted, I had a few other things on my mind, like wanting to not die.

And, as with the porn, I just asked Paul how his food network viewing affects him, and he says it does make him want to eat. But he notes that he already had a "food-centric world view." He's definitely someone for whom anything food related would simply be a supplement to an already established lifestyle. He notes that food shows make him want, in particular, better food and different food, that the food he sees has an aspirational quality.

Whereas I look and think "interesting, avocado puree, but you know what, just this plain avocado is pretty darn good."

Does this reveal too much about my attitudes toward sex?

Disapproval Flashback

Ran into an old acquaintance today at the gym. She was the producer (I think) on a job where I was a P.A. over a decade ago. She has a kind of merry gleam to her eye that I remembered right away when I saw her, even though I didn’t recall her name. Seeing her I felt a kind of down-to-earth vibe I didn't notice when we met before. Because of this vibe, in the present, it was cool to see her, but at the same time, our chance meeting had another effect on me.

It made me recall a job that I have always felt vaguely ashamed of. I’m not sure “ashamed” is the right word, and I don’t know if I can even articulate exactly why.
I was in awe of the director, who was a “big name,” at least to me. He was the kind of guy who might say anything he was thinking about, and I was not that kind of person, at least with him. I remember myself as being mostly nervous and tongue-tied around him and the other “higher-ups” on the job. They shared this kind of relaxed, boisterous camaraderie that I couldn’t pull off, and I guess, as a P.A. didn't feel it was my place to.

The job involved a lot of driving and fetching. I had then, as I have now, a terrible sense of direction. Looking back I can’t believe I didn't cop to this immediately, but I must have really wanted the job. When I drove him places, he could immediately tell I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but he didn’t have me fired. I don’t recall any specific mistakes in setting up equipment or fetching things, but I recall feeling like I disappointed the folks who hired me, maybe because the real job was just to get along with this guy.

So the net result of all of this is, that after thirteen years, after having produced my own shows, lived in the outback, battled cancer, there is this little—maybe not even little—part of me that still wants to redeem myself for being a crappy P.A. one summer, to explain…what? That I wouldn’t be a crappy P.A. now? I think I might be worse. That I’m a different person? I’d like to believe that in some ways, I am. I'm a little braver, I throw more of myself on the table. And yet, a happenstance interaction like seeing someone at a yoga class brings home the fact maybe I haven't changed as much as I would like to think. I still wrestle with a lot of the same demons. I’m scared of being a failure, I’m scared of writing or doing or saying something and having people who seem to know more than me think that it’s bad. I’m afraid of disapproval.

And I know deep inside myself that my fear is the thing most likely to make something I write or do bad. Sometimes I think I should try to build up my tolerance to disapproval. I should go to parties and pick my nose. I should fart loudly in elevators. If you see me in a restaurant, and I’m brushing my dandruff into someone’s soup—you’ll know what I’m up to. Of course I’m telling you now in the hope that if you know why, you won’t disapprove so much, which defeats the purpose of the exercise.