The Daily B

Resolution on the Rebound

2012-02-16T11:19:00.001-08:00

February, as you may recall, is my "make active choices" month. How's it going? Meh... The parameters of the goal are pretty fuzzy, life has been in flux. I have not consistently been prioritizing that trip to the gym over other things. So I thought another form of active choice would be to throw a little bit of money at the problem, and this morning I ordered this.
It should arrive on Saturday. I now need to make a concrete and achievable goal in conjunction with it. Twenty minutes a day, unless I've made a trip to the gym? Or ten minutes at the beginning of any television show? I think I'll see what happens organically, but will make a decision within a week of its arrival.

Verdict

2012-02-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

Dear Barrington,

Thank you for sharing your work at Amazon Studios.
It was a hard decision but unfortunately CHILDREN OF OTHERS was not
chosen as the winner of the Best Script Annual Award.
We have enjoyed seeing your work and getting to know you over the past year.
Thank you for your many contributions to the community.

We look forward to bringing you more opportunities to share
your work in the future.

Kind Regards,
Amazon Studios

It's okay.  I'm okay.  I am going to eat cookies though.

Tomorrow

2012-02-06T22:10:00.000-08:00

So, sometime tomorrow I will find out whether I won a hundred-thousand dollar Amazon studios Annual Awards prize...or not. It's strange to think that right now I don't know--the outcome seems so wide open, but by tomorrow night at this time, I will know--one way or the other.

My evening tonight got a little bit Paul-jacked, and I ended up watching last week's Top Chef AND The Voice, but in a way it was good preparation to see so many people win, and so many others not make the cut. Whichever way things go for me tomorrow, I'm hardly alone in winning or losing and either way, I should be responsible for how the result impacts the course of my life. It's very difficult for me to witness, even on TV, and now in my own life, but the truth is that the profession I've chosen is like this: they like the script, or they don't, they buy a script or they don't, the film gets a greenlight or it doesn't, the box-office is good or it's not. I don't know how many rungs you'd have to climb up the ladder to escape the swings--I don't think you can.

So my plan is, either way things go tomorrow, I'm going to write tomorrow night, and either way things go, I'm going to have pie.

(P.S. I did finish reading the last two scripts that are in the finals, Animal Heads and Origin of a Species. They were both really different from mine, and from each others. Animal Heads has an indie vibe, Origin of a species was a very crisp suspense movie that read really quickly.)

February, Month of Living Not-Dangerously

2012-02-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

Since the "picking out my clothes the night before" project has worked out pretty well, I'm trying to move on in February. However, I fear this month's goal is in danger because it is less explicit. Basically it's a prep for being healthier, and the "lose ten" pounds, that may come to the fore before the end of the year. But the overarching "vibe" for February is making good active choices when it comes to matters of fitness...and I'm talking not so much about planned activities as the impromptu decisions I'm faced with each day.

After work, go to the gym or go to a restaurant: Gym
On a Friday, go dancing or stay home and watch Buffy: Go dancing.
Go to bed by 11PM or stay up til 1AM watching Top Chef. Go to bed!

Basically, it's a choice to swim upstream...or one could phrase it, swimming against Paul.

So this is the gist...it's going okay. On Friday, I made Paul take me swing-dancing for the first time in well over a year. On Saturday I went SWIMMING. I only swam for 17 minutes, but the achievement is that I actually did all the steps of something that I tend to put in the category of basically unpleasant. Today, on top of my normal yoga class, and I cooked healthy things to take to lunch this week.

I also did some other things, like laundry, book club, assembling a desk, altering curtains, grocery shopping, returning phone calls and email. These are obviously not exciting events to report, but they are kind of pathetically exciting to me as I often don't get so much done. It's amazing how much you can get done when you're not even pretending to write.

All About Me! (An Amazon Studios Post)

2012-02-03T12:05:00.000-08:00

So this week's Amazon Studios blog has been dedicated to profiles about the various finalists for the annual awards. Today's is about me. Writing answers to questionnaires can call up a fair amount second guessing...should I try to be funny? Should I play it straight? I mostly did the latter, and that is pretty much what they printed.

One of my more "humorous" answers was a ploy for Amazon studios to give finalists (or just me) a Kindle DX as a consolation prize if we don't win, which I'm still secretly hoping for even though they didn't print that part... If I DO win, I'll buy one for myself--re-investing in the company!

Back to not thinking about it now...

The Weekend

2012-01-30T13:35:00.000-08:00

Not half bad.
Friday: I made progress on my office--the hallway is full of more candidates for the garage sale.

Saturday: The afore mentioned animated gif class and lunch with friends too long neglected. Game night at our neighbors'. We played Dune, a pretty involved game, which thankfully only took three hours--it can take much longer! I don't spend as much time as Paul gaming, but when I do, I realize why games might appeal to so many writers--how playing games can make you more aware in terms of twists and turns and strategies.

I was interested to find that Dune has an element where the circular board is divided into section, and a storm moves around these sections in a not entirely randomized manner. It immediate made me think of a similar device used in The Hunger Games trilogy. Obviously, the book is about a "game" as well, but I have a feeling that more examples could be found. Strategy games are about maneuvering yourself out of bad situations and into better ones by pursuing resources and alliances and fighting battles etc. What else is about those things? Stories, of course. And also life.

Sunday, I rode the 105 bus for the first time to a friend's book signing in West Hollywood. The bus travels north and south on La Cienega, which is a fairly major street with many shops that it would be good to have access to without having to park, so that was a cool discovery.

And, over the course of the three days, I read Gideon's Law. (If you follow the link, you can download a PDF.) It's the story of a cop who gets assigned a ride-along from hell. It has elements of movie Collateral and the series 24. I found it easy to read because the writing was so fluid though some of the logistics became confusing or incredible here and there. I thought the writer did good work adding complications, ratcheting up the stakes. I was tense and engaged for much of the read.

Reading this script made me think about the costs and benefits of ramping up action quickly. There were just a couple of quick scenes at the beginning with the protagonist (Shane Gideon) and his girlfriend/partner before she is taken hostage and his whole world changes, which isn't a lot of time to establish relationships and the essence of a character. But it's good, especially for the genre, to get right into the action and the main conflict. I thought the writer did a nice job of short-handing the the Shane's "problem" of having--at least in the perception of others--screwed up on the job so that he is being ostracized by the other cops. There is an arc whereby the opinions of those people do change by the end. But I'm not sure there was a clear character arc for Shane himself. I don't necessarily believe that every main character has to change--but I think the readers/audience usually know whether that should happen. In the cases where it should, we hope or fear that the main character will change. Not always. We don't really hope for James Bond to change. We do, however, hope that Jamie Foxx's character in Collateral can change. We enjoy seeing him become less passive and more active in his own life. In order to do this he's set up at the beginning as more a dreamer than a do-er. This is where I wasn't entirely clear about Shane. Does he agree with everyone else that he messed up, and it's eating away at him? Or does he believe he made the right call somehow? And I wonder what he would have done if his life had followed its normal course. Was he hoping to to win back favor somehow? Or just ignore the animosity? Or was he considering quitting his job or requesting a transfer?

Especially in early drafts of Children of Others, I've fielded similar questions--what is it that Skylar wants? I've always wanted her to have some ambivalence about having a child--but that's a hard picture to paint without the colors getting muddy. Even now, as I prepare to go into a rewrite, I'm trying to add to the specifics of her situation and her character. Was she someone who was fun and adventurous before she got embroiled in years of infertility treatments and lost a pregnancy and became so fearful of loss? I'm also thinking about here husband, Dillon, and now--new and exciting!-- I'm thinking about the background of the "doctors" who create the hybrid baby inside her, because I think they will need to play a bigger part in the new draft.

I'm probably thinking of all of this even more right now because I'm reading a book called The Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lagos Egri, which is really excellent so far, but perhaps a subject better for another post.

Animated GIF!!

2012-01-28T12:18:00.000-08:00

Today I went to this festival at USC called "Get Your Hands Dirty with the Arts." I signed up to learn how to make an animated Gif. We were supposed to bring an object, so I brought some clay. This other woman in my group also brought clay, so we were on the same page.

The results of our efforts was this:

Kind of creepy, but I'm still pretty proud of myself. I did most of the clay work-we only had about 20 minutes. I'd originally planned to make the brown head look more like Paul--with curly monster hair, but one of the other women in group made this beautiful braid--she said she had three daughters and used to braid their hair, so we went with that. I had already made the other head look like ("look like" in the broadest sense) me, so we ended up with a doubly non-traditional relationship between our heads.

Animated Gif!

Amazon: Final Five

2012-01-27T23:39:00.000-08:00

Just a little update: I'm in the final five for the Annual Best Script award at Amazon Studios. The announcement happened earlier this week. My "don't think about it" strategy was thwarted by a few things: said announcement, papers that arrived for me to sign, and the email from a freelance writer hired to do a profile piece on each of the finalists. The email included a list of questions for me to answer like, "how old are you?" "what's your day job?" and ""what was the most difficult thing about writing your script." The profiles will be published on the Amazon blog starting on Monday. As much as I wasn't a fan of filling out my own questionnaire, I have to say I'm really interested to read about the other writers.

I also want to read everyone's script before the announcement on February 7. Yesterday and today I read the first one, I Think My Facebook Friend is Dead which was really a fun concept and read. It reminded me some of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, in ways that were mostly good. I liked the device of the Farmville farm, and the exploration of relationships as they move from the virtual world into the real world. It got a little episodic-feeling in some places--but then so did Scott Pilgrim, and probably so does my script--When I read scripts and see a flaw, I mentally go back over my own work and often see the very same problems.

Gideon's Law is next. Let you know.

Hinx Minx

2012-01-18T01:21:00.000-08:00

Not unrelated to the topic of my last post, about actions and efforts and living with outcomes we can't control: My friend Becky has been working diligently, and living with a lot of "almosts" for the last year or so. That changed this week when she won the Ohio State University Press /The Journal Poetry Prize.

This is awesome, not just for glory and the cash prize, but because it is a prize where they publish your manuscript, and in the academic job market, a published book puts you in a whole different category.

It takes fortitude send out poem after poem, to write $25 checks and send off manuscripts when the outcome is uncertain at best, but writers like Becky do it repeatedly. They do it when they are happy and hopeful, and also when they are depressed and feel like they are throwing their money and their efforts into an ever-sucking black hole.

So it is a real pleasure to see such efforts pay off. Yay, Becky!!!

Equanimity Required

2012-01-18T00:29:00.000-08:00

Update on the re-fi saga: It looks like it's back on the table. I went back to the bank, and it seems they overlooked something that threw things back in my favor. Which was awesome. When my loan rep told me, I was ecstatic.

Then, as I walked back to work--I realized that the profound, even debilitating, disappointment I'd felt the week before was due to the fact that I had let myself get ecstatic before. I'd engaged in future thinking, not just counting, but reveling, in my chickens before they hatched. This was fun, but engaging in the emotional high was what had opened the door to the emotional low.

Finding the correct amount of future thinking (my own made up term that for all I know means something else entirely) is a difficult thing. Certainly it's required for motivation. Motivational speakers and authors say that you need to visualize your future to solidify your goals and galvanize your movement toward those goals. But at the same time, over-engaging can be destructive to those same goals. While Paul seems to relishes future thinking, and it doesn't seem to raise too many demons for him creatively, I'm not the same way. I have to play a little game with myself, averting my eyes from possible futures. If I look at my hopes and dreams too directly, the intensity of hope vs fear paralyzes me. I do better work if I lay out a few steps at a time, and then walk the path with blinders that block out the pie in the sky.

In screenwriting, the thing you most want to do is ramp up the audience's hope vs fear for the protagonist. This is the primary tool for creating engagement. So it's perhaps ironic, or at least amusing to me, that in my own life, I can't stomach the emotional engagement enough to be my own protagonist. Disfunctional? Maybe, but on the other hand, when you watch movies, the protagonist is almost always yanked out of her daily life. While she might escape from aliens or mobsters, or prevent the world from blowing up, she can't, at the same time, balance her checkbook or get her daily quota of pages written.

So over-engaging in hopes and fears, is kind of counterproductive in this way, especially if you are dealing with outcomes that you can't control. I can work to set something in motion, but in the end, it's not my call whether I get approved for a loan or not--and obviously, the verdict can change overnight. While I have to continue to take every step I can to achieve a desire outcome, to over-engage in hope of the desired result, or flail in the fear of the opposite only makes me vulnerable.

So this was the conversation I had with myself as I walked back from the bank, and it turned out to be timely conversation, because late this evening (I'm delaying this post to comply with confidentiality), I checked my email, discovered I'm a semifinalist for the Amazon Studios annual prize for best script. The prize, $100,000, would be a life-changing amount at this point.

I could start itemizing how, but I won't.

Because the more I engage in the hope, the more I can already feel the sense of loss when I don't see my name on the finalist list, or whatever comes after that--and that's not a good place for me to be, when what I need to do, in the big scheme of things, is write.

I'm happy that when I checked my email tonight, I was writing. And I was working on the project that is in the competition. That felt right, as if being on that semifinalist list is an outcome in itself-- it's symbolic of the opportunities I already have with this script.

I was also glad I mid-writing session when I saw the announcement, because when I am writing, writing feels like the first thing--and everything else feels secondary. Thus the impact of the announcement was mitigated, which I prefer. That's a relationship I hope to sustain between my writing, and all the worldly things that surround it. Not because I think that's morally better, but because of my particular make-up, which doesn't have a big tolerance for excessive highs and lows.

(P.S. If you know me in real life, please don't congratulate me on my semi-finalist status yet--I'll be trying not to think of pink elephants. After I get axed, I'll let you know, and feel free to tell me how great it was to get this far--I think so too!)

Bloody Tuesday

2012-01-17T12:30:00.000-08:00

Although I am not a big fan of fruit teas, I am choosing them more since my supervisor bought me this creature cup for my birthday. It's like the creature is bleeding.

21 Days to a New Habit

2012-01-17T07:21:00.001-08:00

So, about 21 days have passed since I began my "get up, get dressed" initiative of picking out my clothes the night before (on work days), and it has been fairly successful. It hasn't made me awesome across the board in anyway. I still go to bed too late, I still roll out of bed twenty minutes before I need to be out the door, BUT, the clothes on the chair do seem save me crucial moments, and I have caught my preferred bus every day since the work resumed after the new year. So, yay...me.

My Sharing Your Place book is interest, more details soon, but I think I've found a new source of advice. I really like this post from a blog called Organized Home. I can really relate to the "fever cycle" of the declutter frenzy, and how hard--and important--it is to just keep going. Also, the part at the end about building credibility before trying to bring others on board--very resonant. I have tried it the other way around not so successfully.

Breaking out the 5-HTP and Buffy.

2012-01-16T21:34:00.000-08:00

It's been a hard couple weeks. I can't even remember why, now, or if there is a why. I just know that when Wednesday came around, it was an exception. I felt much better. I literally thought:"Wow, I feel so much happier. How odd that I had to drag myself through yesterday, and today feels really okay." Wednesday was the kind of day where strangers on the bus and retail workers respond to you more favorably because your good mood is so apparent. I went to lunchtime yoga, and when the instructor didn't show and they asked if anyone was willing to lead the class, I raised my hand! Afterward, people thanked me and said I did a really good job.

The happy feeling lasted until about 3:30 PM when the bank called to say that, even though it had seemed to be a done deal, I wasn't going to be able to re-finance my mortgage. I pay a quite high interest rate--almost 7%. Refinancing at a lower rate was going to save us a few hundred dollars a month, making it more okay that I'm going part time, and even allowing me to put some money toward some student loans.

But again, the existence of the student loans make it impossible. Even though I have never missed a payment, ever, somehow the new rules say the risk is too great. So the result is that I keep paying $300 more every month, meaning that my student loans at over 8% continue to accrue like gangbusters.

For some reason this just hit me harder than usual. I guess because I thought I saw a little light at the end of the tunnel, but it just wasn't there. Again. So, big plummet in mood, lower than it had been before Wednesday, and, like I said, that hasn't been awesome. I make it through work, because everyday at work is like a state of emergency these days, so it's pretty much all responding and very little initiating, but when I got home at the end of the day, there's nothing left. I managed to turn on the TV and turn on Buffy--Season One, Episode 1.

On Thursday I made myself pick up the phone and speak coherent sentences to one friend in order to make future plans (optimistic enough to assume I wouldn't still be depressed by the first week in February.) She said that in her life right now she was experiencing an unreal convergence where she had enough money, enough time and enough energy, all at the same time, to do the things she wanted. This seems like such a distant, foreign concept to me, that I can't even be jealous. I just turn the idea around in my mind, like the idea of living in an igloo, being a ninja, or being able to find Uzbekistan on a map.

This weekend was better, or at least I filled it with busyness. New roommate, M, moved in. Spent time out with my Mom--she's leaving next Saturday, and so it was the last opportunity since my weekdays are pretty full. Fortunately she likes to do projects, so we found and hung curtains and towel bars in several rooms of the house--which I consider forward progress on the organization front... even though it entailed the avoidance of actual organizing...but much of the thrust of the organizing thing and the cleaning thing is about living with better aesthetics, so it was in the spirit of the project.

Did I write? Yes, but didn't privilege it because of aforementioned things-- Mom's last week in town, moving roommate and accordant preparation, and the fact that I REALLY want the organization thing to work this time. I may have to live with poverty for the rest of my life, but Universe willing, I won't have to live with debilitating clutter.

I Don't Want to Go Back to Work

2012-01-09T14:28:00.000-08:00

I'm on my lunch hour, hiding in the library from work. The students returned to campus today, and the faculty remembered they teach classes and need stuff like copies and room numbers they forgot to check so we are very busy. The kind of busy that is hard to walk away from, and I'm scared that once I go back I won't leave on time, or I will leave on time but in doing so will leave things undone that will come back to bite me in the near or distant future. Whether a nip at the heals or pound of flesh from my ass, no undone deed goes unpunished.

But I have to leave because I have to pack my entire home office and move it by tomorrow night.

Which means I guess I have to go back to work now.

Notice how this entire post doesn't mention working on my script? (Although, to be fair, I worked on one scene just now.)

I'm bitter and tired and sad feeling, by the way.

Get Up, Put on Clothes

2012-01-03T21:47:00.001-08:00

So, in the first chapter of my "sharing your place" book, the author reminds us that a new habit can be established in 21 days. She also says that you should not try to change more that three habits at once, because you'll get overloaded.

Before January, I decided on my first new habit of the year--which on the surface has very little to do with space-sharing, but that I think will be good, and may have some positive fall-out in unexpected places in terms of co-habitation. And, I'm also hopeful it will be good for my writing.

My new habit is picking out my clothes the night before. For various reasons, I'm not crazy about too many of my clothes on my body right now, but that doesn't change the fact that I have to decide which ones to put on. When I wake up in the morning, I procrastinate about getting out of bed, because this very first task is a little bit stressful. Because I stall until the last minute, all the little things that happen after I put on my clothes but before I leave the house, happen in a flurry, badly, or not at all. I don't have breakfast or take lunch, and then I end up spending money and time on my lunch hour and I eat whatever food falls in my path, like cookies and donuts.

On the weekends, I also procrastinate--and it's not all bad, because I like to be like Edith Wharton and write in bed in my pajamas--but when the time comes to move out into the world, it is a hard transition. If I get a call from a friend or work person, I often still need to shower and of course, pick out my clothes.

So putting on my clothes first thing will send a message to my psyche: "You're ready to face the world." And picking my clothes out the night before makes me think about the next day, so I end up packing my lunch or finding stamps for a letter I want to mail.

This morning I arrive on campus at 8:20. Today this meant little, as my job officially starts at 8:30, but when I got part-time, it will be an hour and a half to write, right at the top of the day--and that's a good thing!

Anyway, today was Day 3--and so far so good. We'll see how it looks on January 21st.

2012, A Shared Space Odyssey

2012-01-02T09:26:00.000-08:00

Our housemate of two years moved out last night. A new housemate will arrive during the upcoming month (her stuff in January, she in February.)

Since moving back to L.A., Paul and I have been lucky with our housemates--they have been responsible and reliable and entertaining. But--and this is combined with all the "housekeeping" stuff referred to in my last post--given a new year and a new start, I'd like to try to improve my environment, and, because I don't live alone, I need to figure out how to do that in conjunction with others.

I've read that with the recent economic downturn, adult kids are moving back in with their families. I think, especially in high-rent urban centers--more people are also sharing their habitations with people who are NOT their families. More people are getting housemates (or as the Brits say, more accurately, "flatmates.") Even before the economy became dire, most of my friends shared apartments after graduation and for most of their 20s.

So it was a surprise to me, when I started looking, with I didn't find any books with advice on living with other adults with whom you aren't romantically involved. There are a few books for couples combining households, and some articles on how to be a good roommate--aimed at kids sharing dormrooms, but no "Living with Friends without Destroying Your Friendships," no "Sharing a Household for Dummies," no "Everything I Learned about Living with Others I Learned in Kindergarten."

I did finally settle on this book: Sharing Your Place Without Losing Your Space.
It is also aimed at couples, but it looked like some of the advice might apply--and of course, I am part of a couple. And to be upfront, our differing views on cleaning and clutter have, over the years, caused some of the deepest riffs in our generally good relationship, and any housemate we have has to integrate into that, which is a good reason to spend our roommate-free month trying to see how much of that we can resolve.

Does anybody out there have reading recommendations, advice or opinions based on experience about how to create a happy, companionable, shared household with one or more other persons? I'm all ears!

Change ALL The Things!

2012-01-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

One on my favorite posts from Hyperbole and a Half is this one.
In the beginning she decides to fix her whole life by acting like a responsible adult, being organized, etc.

This is my current mindset. It's been building for a few weeks. Maybe it's because:
I just had a birthday, or
it's a new year, or
my day job is about to change to less hours which will bring in less money, so I feel I need to justify the fact that I have given myself three extra hours a day, or
maybe, as my husband says, my desire to organize my environment is due to lack of organization and peace inside my head--although everything he says is suspect, as he is not above playing to my quasi-Buddhist leanings and innate feelings of inadequacy so that I'll go meditate and stop asking him to help with household chores.

Regardless of the reasons, for the last few weeks every time I look at a shelf or a drawer, I want to clean and organize. When I pass my keyboard, I want to sell it (Korg SP-100 with 88 weighted keys, natural piano sound, plus some others--let me know if you're interested and local) because I don't play it anymore. I want to move everything from the hall closet into the garage, and when I see the garage I want to blow it up.

However, I have been through this before, and I know that when you start a massive project at three in the morning, by the harsh light of the noon sun, the vision can seem a little less radiant. I'll start to feel tired, and start to get realistic, and I'll feel more like this:

And then I'll think about how much time I've spent and will need to spend on the massive project, and wonder if those hours are the exact hours when I would otherwise write the most awesome story or screenplay ever that incidentally would make me so much money that I could hire a team of magical elves to do the project and also fix everything else in my life, and I think about the Erma Bombeck quote that no one looks back at the end of their life and thinks "I wish I'd spent more time cleaning."*

But there is this--I think I might look back at the end of my life and say, "I wish I'd spent less time looking for keys or my right shoe or and driving back home for missing documents, and arguing with living companions and feeling suffocated by living with what is essentially debris." So maybe, in a way, I will wish I had spent more time cleaning--with cleaning being the stand in word for a lot of other things. "Housekeeping" at big meetings, is what they call all the little logistical details that need to be covered in order for things to run smoothly.

So 2012 may be the year of housekeeping--and all the things that implies, or that I decide it implies as the year goes on. Updates to follow (unless that starts to seem too hard).

*I have no idea if Erma Bombeck ever said that.

Happy New 2012!

2012-01-01T01:10:00.001-08:00

Very low key New Year's Eve with family, a great dinner plus games, and fifteen minutes of cringing at the Carson Daly / Ryan Seacrest filler conversations before watching the ball drop.

It's 1:10, the hubby and roommates are at a party, and I'm already in my new leopard-spot flannel pajamas in bed with my kindle at the ready.

A pretty good final day to the year--turned in a quasi-game-plan-thingy to Ed Saxon for a new draft of Children of Others (I had promised something by end of December), went to the gym, drove to San Gabriel for $15 massages with my brother, returned to said dinner and games at my sister's house.

SOOO many wishes for 2012--but tonight's not the night for lists...tomorrow-B can take care of that.

Good fate and fortune to you all in the brand shiny new New Year!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2011!

2011-12-25T20:04:00.000-08:00

Seasons Greetings to our Family and Friends,

It’s been such an eventful year for so many of us. My inbox and Facebook account are bursting with news of babies, weddings, kids growing up, as well as updates from friends who inspire by facing (and overcoming!) illnesses and changes in fortune.

I’m thankful to see old friends in all my different hometowns—Terre Haute, Chicago, Alice Springs and Tallahassee. And I’m thankful for my friends whose political activism takes them places I have never been as they put themselves in the middle of world events and share their experiences.

Here in L.A. friends have come to town and left town. We’ve continued to enjoy having family in the area. My sister and her husband graciously host a family dinner on Sunday evenings when we can catch up with them, my brother Greg, our niece and nephew Aidan and Solea, now six and eight.

We are also fortunate to belong to a community, local and extended, of people who, like us, are pursuing their artistic aspirations. It is often a time consuming, sleep-deprived, money-deprived, certainty-deprived endeavor, but the journey is made so much better by friends who are also walking the path.

Some years are big moves, and transitions, traveling or regaining good health. In those respects, 2011 has been a happily quiet year. With the exceptions of a few colds, we are both healthy, and although there was a moment when we thought we might have to change apartments—you can still find us on Hi Point St.

Thus when I started a timeline recap for Paul and myself, I realized much of this year was about career.

JAN- MARCH Paul left his job (and salary) as an assistant at Davis Entertainment, to take his first Writer-Director gig! In March they completed principal photography on his first full-length feature ROCK JOCKS! You can see the poster at http://rockjocksthemovie.com/.

Also in March, B traveled to Costa Rica to do her first screenwriting presentation for International Women’s Day. While the event itself was a bit disorganizado she enjoyed meeting artists, dancers and choreographers from all over the world.

In APRIL Paul and B celebrated their 10^th wedding anniversary. That was a short decade! We took a minute to go out to dinner and appreciate the fact that we still love each other, like each other, and have a lot of fun together, even when life’s not fun!

But there wasn’t much time to dwell, as in addition to her final projects at school, B started a new “day job” as an Administrative Assistant for the Philosophy Department at University of Southern California, and Paul began rough cuts on Rock Jocks.

In MAY, B completed her last class in the Cinema School at U.S.C to graduate with an M.F.A in screenwriting. Meanwhile, Paul set up shop in in his office/our living room to work with his editor on Rock Jocks.

SUMMER went by in a flash as B settled into her day job and spent her lunch hours and evenings writing. At night she’d take the bus home and find Paul and the Editor, and sometimes the producers all huddled around the computer monitor-- ROCK JOCKS! As September began, it was announced that one of B’s scripts, Children of Others, which won Best Script and a cash prize from Amazon Studios in August,

FALL also sped by—with lots of busy-ness (a little too much) at B’s job, and a few challenges and obstacles to overcome on Paul’s film. And did I mention a couple of bad colds?

But now DECEMBER has come! My mom is in town, there are days off of work, the happy announcement that Children of Others has a producer attached. Paul is working to put the final touches on his film—music, sound effects and visual effects.

If there is any singular frustration in life right now, it is that there doesn’t seem to be enough time to spend with friends far and near! Please know you are loved and appreciated, and thought of often here in the Seetachitt household!

HAPPY HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!! From Paul and Barrington

The Perfect Place that Eludes Me

2011-12-22T17:51:00.001-08:00

It's quite important that I write now, and I've not really written for almost two weeks. For a while I fought it, trying to use the interstitial moments, but finally I gave in, decided to read a book on the bus for a week or so, and make up for it in this coming week I have off between Christmas and New Years. I've been gearing up for it, trying to quell the anxiousness, telling myself there will be a transition into a time of focus and productivity.

I've felt the transition might happen here, in the Student Union. For the last week or so, since finals ended, I've walked through the room during work hours to deliver documents, it has been quiet and almost empty, with a fire in the fireplace, and I've thought, "oh, how I would like to sit here, for just one hour, in front of the fire, in the quiet and bring myself back to center." I've envisioned myself like someone in a Merchant Ivory film, or like Harry Potter brooding by the fire after everyone has gone to bed.

But somehow, the one day I had spare time during my lunch hour, the fire was out, and then several facilities workers came to look at the fireplace, and had a conversation for the entire length of my stay. Later that same afternoon I again delivered documents and the fire was flickering, and it was quiet--like some kind of fruit that you can never reach in some Greek myth.

Two nights this week I've tried to come over before seven, when they close, but each night I've received phone calls before leaving the office that made this impossible and although I was glad for the calls, I watched the clock approach seven with a twinge of regret.

Tonight was the last night the union will be open before the new semester begins, with all the students returned. All day I've been holding in my heart this magical hour I was going to spend in the quiet, looking at the fire, finding that place inside me that I best write from.

And now I have arrived, and the fireplace is dark, the chairs that are often in front of it have been moved, and even though there are only five other people in the room, they are all having noisy, echoing, meaningless conversations. The two you see hear in the picture are having a conversation. The Chinese guy with his laptop just out of frame is talking aloud on Skype. An older Alumnus in a Trojan red jacket talks happily with a stranger. A noisy coffee shop might even be better, since all the noise would blend to become a white noise, whereas here I can hear each conversation.

Though I know the loveliness of the place where I am doesn't leave me much right to be, I'm quite disappointed. I'm writing words, but the good words seem out of my grasp. I can write a frustrated blogpost, but I can't reach that place I need to access--

and I'm worried that the same thing might happen this week. We have a guest staying in our house, and staying in my home office, and both my roommate and husband have the week off, so there will be no stillness in the house. The libraries on campus are closed, and I've been told security will be watching our offices. The libraries in town are closed for the holidays.

I've been working hard on being less high-maintenance about things like this, I try to tell myself a writer writes even when the circumstances aren't perfect...but a writer also is protective and does what she needs to do in order to write...it's a dilemma.

How to Get Published & Recognized Pt 1 Addendum,

2011-12-16T08:56:00.000-08:00

And for those who write AND draw, I'd like to highlight this comment from Katie B, an awesome writer (if you've ever been in a writing workshop, or even if you haven't, you should check out this hilarious piece in Defenestration) as well as the art editor for The Southeast Review.

Katie writes:

The Southeast Review is a literary journal based in Tallahassee, FL. We publish in print and online.
Artists can submit work to me by sending .tiff files (300 dpi or higher) to sereviewart AT gmail.

I'm mainly looking for black and white work. (We're publishing a comic in color for the upcoming issue, but usually there just isn't enough money, so b&w is your best bet.) Pieces should be previously unpublished (not counting your blog or whatever) and can be anywhere from 1-8 pages--shorter ones have a better shot. Styles and subject matter are pretty wide open--goofy, serious, bizarre, etc. I'm looking for sequential art, not so much one-panel cartoons, but I'm not dead set against cartoons. And it should be something that appeals to a literary audience, which I realize is pretty broad. I'm willing to consider pretty much anything, as long as it's interesting.

We can't afford to pay anything, but you do get two contributor copies and a nice line on your CV. And SER gets read by smart people who will no doubt seek out your other work once they see how great you are.

Deadline Hollywood

2011-12-15T20:34:00.000-08:00

This was released today.

My inner monologue?

Don't fuck this up.

How to Get Published and Recognized as a Writer Pt.1

2011-12-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

A few posts back, I received this comment from my old friend Jeff. (By "old," I mean that we met in fifth-grade.) What I remember most about him was that he was a really good artist and that he was smart. Many years later, following his internet trail, it makes sense that this attractive website is his. I look at his CV and I think--wow, he started with something he was good at, and then stuck with it long enough for it to produce an actual income and garner a reputation in his field. And the field-- design and advertising--is one that to me still feels kind of glamorous. While I've seen enough "trading places" comedies to know better than to wish for someone else's life, there are aspects of his career that I look upon with envy.

Thus, it might fall into the "isn't it ironic?" category, that Jeff writes:

"I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before - but I write as well. I've written some shorts, poetry off and on for years, have a growing stack of story concepts and I'm well into a novel (psych-thriller) that has included an inordinate amount of research (began more than 2.5 yrs ago).

I say that - to say this...

You're obviously closing in on what any writer wants - definitely further along than I am, and I was wondering if you might have any advice regarding the path to publication and/or recognition, or at least growth. (aside from writing ability which I'm hoping I have covered)."

Wow. I think this is the first time I've been asked any question like this--and my first instinct is to feel completely unqualified to answer it, since all I've really done is get published in a couple of literary journals and win one contest...

But then, I guess I've gotten published in a couple of literary journals, and won one contest, and I felt pretty good when those things happened, so hey, welcome up to my slightly-higher-but-still-pretty-low rung of the ladder.

I think my answer will probably come in parts.

Jeff has shorts and poems, and a large portion of a novel.

The area I'm more familiar with is shorts and poems, so I'll start with that.

STEP ONE: Start to get familiar with the lay of the land...

There are big magazines that occasionally publish fiction and poetry, like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic. I don't know anyone at those places, and often can't even find their submission guidelines, thus I have never tried to jump into their slush piles as it seems a bit hopeless. But if you think your style is a good fit, it's just one more envelope and cover letter, so why not?

Closer to the ground are the many literary journals. Some you may be familiar with and see at your local bookstore (if it hasn't yet closed down). Ones that I notice are Zoetrope All-Story, Tin House and McSweeneys Quarterly Concern, but there are many others that you see less often on book racks. Often they are published by small independent presses, or presses affiliated with academic institutions. These journals almost always have websites with submission guidelines.

A GREAT place to check out the scene is Duotrope, which is a well-maintained and FREE database for people interested in submitting to journals. (They seem always on the verge of going under--so if you use them a lot and can spare a dime, please consider donating.)

I have more to say about submitting, but my bus is coming, so I'll leave it here for the moment.

Eggies--The Birthday Post

2011-12-08T15:41:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to me...

Okay, to be honest, I'm a bit in the doldrums morale-wise, still getting over a cold, slammed at work, there's the taking account of one's life's accomplishments, etc--but let's leave all that aside for a moment and talk about my birthday present!

Some of you may know that I occasionally become obsessed with certain items of the "As-Seen-on-TV" variety. (SLANKET!)

This year I've had my eye on another product, and when I woke this morning, it was on the table waiting for me. (Thanks, Paul!)
You crack the egg, and put it in an egg shaped container, and boil it. Results: A hardboiled egg you don't have to peel.

Because I am naturally lazy, but try to be frugal, I often boil five or six eggs at the beginning of the week, and throw them in my bag for work. Although I will occasionally overcook and have to spend too much time peeling--that is not why the Eggie seduces me. I actually think the peel is convenient because a naked egg would need some kind of baggie or wrapper, which is sometimes beyond me.

No, for me, the appeal of the Eggie is that I have this idea that I can make a STUFFED hardboiled egg. Hardboiled egg with a piece of avocado inside! Hardboiled egg wrapped around cheese! I just want to see if I can. And Paul had another idea, what if you put the egg in the cup pre-scrambled? Like a marbled-egg! The possibilities are endless!

Does It Work Wednesday did a review that I have to say was not all that flattering, but, really, from the beginning it was prejudiced. Complaining that you have to break the plastic parts apart? That's not part of the everyday experience of the product... so I'm going to assume that criticism of the later steps in the process could also be biased.

Perhaps I should be swayed by the 119 one-star reviews on Amazon...but I'm determined to give Eggies a chance.

My Dad, Myself, and the Art We Keep in the Attic

2011-12-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

I wrote most of this post yesterday (my Dad's birthday) as I rode the bus to work...

My dad was a professor by trade, but also, throughout his life, a practicing artist. He taught sociology at the university, and he painted in the little room in the attic of our house.

He had reasons--rational or less so--for limiting his exposure as an artist. Early in my life, he was a newly tenured professor, worried that his colleagues might not think he was giving full attention to his academic duties if they knew of his artistic endeavors.

As time when on though, and certainly by his retirement, he began to seek more recognition and appreciation for his artistic work. He entered some local contests, and did well in a couple--although I don't believe he ever took the biggest prize, which discouraged him from doing more of the same. He had greeting cards printed from some of his works and he and my mom went to at least one festival where people sell such things at tables in long tents. I wasn't living nearby, but the reports of these endeavors seemed short-lived. After his death, my mom showed me a box of correspondence with various art galleries, written in the 90s, where he had sent query letters and copies of his work.

In the latest years of his life, my dad reverted to his earliest ambition, to to be a comic book artist. He created graphic novels, and sent excerpts out in blind submissions to publishers, but rarely heard back from them.

As far as I know, he never took an art class after college, though he read books and watched videos. He never went to an artist's retreat or a comic book convention.

And yet, I can see that even though he never said it in these words, he was secretly hoping to find a champion. Finding one can make all the difference in the life of an artist. It's someone who can take the burden of the world, find the right audience for your work, advertise, find patrons/financing, filter the myriad rejections.

In his lifetime, my father never found that, and while I sympathised, I also resented his unwillingness to be that person for himself. He was like an actress who rejects the undignified rounds of cattle call auditions and continuously self-hawking because she wants the myth of being discovered at a soda fountain. In the case of the letters to the galleries, I'm certain he foisted the administrative tedium (and the emotional vulnerability) off on my mom.

And because of his refusal to seek out others with like minded pursuits, the burden of being audience and encouragers fell to his family. With my every visit home from Los Angeles (the land where--especially from far away--anything seems possible) he'd ask me "how to break in" who to talk to, what avenues to pursue. I would protest, that as an underachieved artist myself, I had no easy answers, until, under continued pressure, I would tell him what I had heard and read about joining organizations, attending events and networking, asking for informational interviews, but he never followed up these tips. Nor did I expect him to, because implicit, and sometime explicit, in his questions about what to do, was the bigger question: Will you do it for me? He'd propose that I take his graphic novels and turn them into screenplays, and take them into the world.

In truth, I could not do it for him. I didn't have the connections, the know how. I didn't yet have the training to turn his stories--which were convoluted to my eyes--into screenplays, and I didn't have the passion for his work. One other things that the books say is, you have to write what you love, because that's what you will do best, and you will be living with your work--writing and re-writing and pitching, and rewriting--for a very long time. This is why novelist rarely write the story that someone gives him at party with the words "You know what you should write a book about?" I didn't love aviation art. I couldn't talk about historical events, or model numbers of planes. I didn't grow up during World War II and have it shape my entire life and worldview the way he did. He did have a story to tell that was only his, and although as my education continued, I did make more attempts to help him shape all this into a story, I couldn't. I can say that he was hard to talk to, that he tended to dissociate from his own life, and drift into spiraling details about other people. I can say there wasn't enough time, that in the end, he was older and tired, and not ready to put effort into a new discipline. Mostly I can say that I failed because I lacked will. And though I can justify it--I still feel it.

And at the end of his life, we--mostly my mother--were faced with an attic full of paintings and drawings...a life's work in a room of a house that will someday be sold as my mom downsizes. Would it end up at the Goodwill? In a dumpster? We parceled out as many as we could to family and friends. Then, at my mom's first yard sale after my father's death, someone was captivated by some toy airplanes he had used as models. We took him up in the attic, and he loved, and eventually bought, one of the paintings, then another. We let people have them who seemed to appreciate them, who said they would give them good homes.

Another year went by, and Mom was another yard sale. Not knowing what else to do with the remaining paintings, she put some on sale. And now a different man saw my Dad's paintings.

He loved them.

He's made a website. He wonders where the other paintings are, wants to do a retrospective, has held a small exhibition and plans another. This week, an older watercolor sold for two hundred dollars.

I don't know if my dad would have been happy with that sale price or not. But certainly he would have had to be happy with the effort that is finally being put forth on behalf of his work. He has found his audience--and his champion.

I don't know if there's a single lesson to take from all of this--but it's hard to shake this final detail: The man had come to yard sales at our house before. He had met my father, without knowing he was an artist.

It's hard to feel you are constantly undervaluing your own work, to put it out there, at the equivalent of a yard sale, to be so undignified or desperate, but maybe if my dad had laid himself out there, he would have gotten to know his champion when he was still alive.

Happy Birthday Dad!

2011-12-02T23:21:00.001-08:00

My dad would have been eighty-two years old today. He lived to be just shy of eighty, and his whole life, he made art.

Gratitude Post

2011-11-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

“You thank God for the good things that come to you, but you don’t thank him for the things that seem to you bad; that is where you go wrong.” --Ramana Marharshi

This was my Facebook status for Thanksgiving Day, because that’s one of the things that has been on my mind lately, kind of flopping around in there like a fish,

along with this other flopping fish-- something Soygal Rinpoche said at a lecture I attended. He said that that after Tibetan monks were held captive and tortured by the Chinese, the monks said they were grateful to their captors, because they provided the suffering that accelerated their journeys to enlightenment.

I think both of the quote and the example are about the importance of working to make our experiences meaningful, even if things don’t happen the way they were supposed to, or the way we wanted them to happen.

So here’s a randomly ordered list of just a few things I’m grateful for—randomly ordered, that is, except for the fact that every other item is something that I have to “work” to be grateful for—maybe, for clarity, I’ll go with “good” and “bad.”

1) (GOOD) I am grateful for my job and my new, part time work hours! Starting in the new year sometime, I will work from 10-3 each day, instead of 8:30-5. I’m hoping this will be very good for my morale and my writing productivity. I’m grateful to still have a job that offers a sense of security, and benefits.

2) (BAD) I am grateful for genteel poverty. This helps me feel greater compassion for everyone who lives close to the edge everyday, and makes me want to reach out into the world and help, where and when I can. It makes me aware of the other kinds of support I have from family and friends, and it keeps us working to find success in our fields, when it might otherwise be easy to give up.

3) (GOOD) I am thankful for my family. My sister and brother-in-law open their home to my brother and Paul and myself every Sunday night, and their efforts have kept my siblings and their kids part of our lives, when life makes it so easy to let time pass and grow apart. And now my mom is visiting for two months, and I am thankful for that.

4) (BAD) I’m thankful for my cancer. I think this is a little loaded, and I can’t be thanks for anyone else's cancer, for radiation and chemo and suffering in general—but I have to be grateful to MY cancer. It taught me about myself, made me more open, strengthened my relationships with family and friends and was the conduit to other relationships. Because of cancer, I gained tools and knowledge that I think will help me for the rest of my life.

5) (GOOD) I’m grateful for Paul. Ten years into our marriage, he can still surprise me, delight me, infuriates me, and of course, make me laugh.

6) (BAD) I’m thankful for extra weight. I’ve lived my life lucky in this arena—but I think a day job at a desk and a night job at a desk have conspire with my changing metabolism, and now I have an extra ten pounds that feel extraneous—and I gotta say, the gratitude’s not exactly there yet. Perhaps I should be grateful because they helped force my decisions when I was cleaning out my closets…when things don’t fit, it is easier to let them go. Perhaps I can claim more compassion for others who have this struggle—although, in truth, I have lived my life with many people who have struggled with weight in different ways, and I have never doubted it is a difficult task. It could be that this outward manifestation of my new metabolism will encourage me, in the coming months and years, to work with the ideas of aging, to work more with the pain and rewards of self-discipline, with want versus need and struggle versus acceptance. Time will tell.

And I wonder if that is part of things too—I’m grateful because I have “reasons” to be grateful. Maybe part of it is learning to being grateful without any reasons—either through faith that reasons are forthcoming…or maybe not even that. Maybe it’s just exercising our capacity to embrace whatever experience comes to us. Maybe, like the monks say, the things we struggle with most provide us with a path to enlightenment.

The Clothes Swap

2011-11-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday I hosted a short and sweet clothes swap. This was to cap off weeks of cleaning out my closets.

I got rid of my suit comprised of a black jacket and pencil skirt that I got for my first interview at Mattel , and I culled the beautiful sage suit I bought after I got the job when my boss took me to Daffy’s in New York during Toy Fair. Even though I lived in Los Angeles, which is not a small town, that suit always felt more stylish than others—it had wide, slightly flaired pants with flat front, and the zipper hugged the curve of the small of my back. I can’t zip them up anymore. Nor can I zip up subtly sparkly skinny jeans, or rock midriff baring tops and the black stretchy salsa pants. They all went into the bag. These clothers were all from the same period, when was I young(er) and feeling financially secure for the first time in my life. At my job I was also on a learning curve and felt that my work was at one with my life trajectory—so I wasn’t split between a day job and trying to do something else with the rest of my time. This allowed me a lot of freedom with scheduling my life outside of work. I went salsa dancing with friends a lot; I went to massage school just because I felt like it; I took Spanish classes at UCLA extension.

I think there’s a small part of me that somehow feels like that life is somehow still an option, that at some point, if I decided to, I could go back to that. I could put on those clothes and be that person.

And the metaphor is really obvious here, but since I love metaphors, I'll spell it out: Those clothes, even if they are fairly classic in cut, come from a past I can’t go back to. I can’t fit into them anymore, and I have let them go. Hanging in the closet, they might seem like an option, but they aren't really.

Because they are one-size-fits all, I can still fit into the Thai-fisherman’s pants I wore in Australia, but I don’t need ten pairs.

The vintage-look Jedi warrior T-shirt I first bought upon returning from Australia and wore on my first day of teacher’s boot-camp for my writing program is plain too small for my belly.

And the maternity outfit I found on sale when we were “trying,” and have carried with me from state to state? It still has the tags on it. I hope someone shopping at Goodwill will be thrilled to find it.

A lot of what were once possible futures are no longer. I’m living in the future that has happened—and, as I’m planning to address in my next post—I feel happy with how things have happened.

And yet, the process of tossing away all the parallel universes hanging in my closet is—bittersweet is not really the word, since I don’t feel bitter, nor does it seem sweet—but emotional.

(I feel like that is the natural end to this post, but I've named it "the clothes swap" and haven't yet gotten to the clothes swap.)

The Clothes Swap (for real now)

I’m really into inanimate objects finding new homes and masters—but as friends went through my clothes, it was interesting to see where they saw value—K didn’t care about the suits, but she loved the swath of wool fabric I had cut into a cape. She liked a vintage quilted jacket but felt no emotional obligation to keep it together with the matching dress. I was sure M would love the Yoda shirt, but she said only “mmm, nah.” She only had eyes for the quiche.

The metaphor in this case, is not that my past doesn't have anything to offer the people in my present, but that I can’t control or predict what they will like and value. And that makes me think of the older people I have known in my life—how my dad might tell a story that he felt had a certain point, and how I would pick some incidental detail to ask him about. His experiences did interest me, but it was in ways different from what he expected. And now I guess I’m the older person, because when I have conversations with my sister’s kids the same things happen. And I guess with some older people I've known, that scenario felt sad, because I could sense their disappointment that certain things that that meant a lot to them, their lives and their memories, weren't something that could be shared.

And I guess, since getting older myself seems inevitable, I have to think about my take on this--and I think for the moment is that, whether I am offering clothes or memories or advice, it's perhaps better to enter into the transaction open-minded, with as few expectations as possible. Then I can simply enjoy seeing what the other person chooses to take from it--which is interesting. I learn about them, as they are now, in the present, because our relationship is in the present, and I am who I am in the present.

And that all seems good.

Cancer and Nutrition: Great Books

2011-11-21T00:25:00.000-08:00

I'm going through a period in my life where I am hearing from seemingly many friends and acquaintances who are having issues with their health, and have questions about my journey with cancer and nutrition. Here are my favorite books on the subject.

Beating Cancer with Nutrition

This book is jam-packed with information--and it looks it. The page layout is generally ugly--the margins are reduced, there's a real lack of white space that screams self-published, which it is. But don't discount this book on the basis of production value. ("Dammit Jim, the guy's a doctor, not a book-designer.") I'm sure the pages are crowded because the author wanted to give the reader as many facts and examples as he could for the buck. They also include citations at the end of many of the chapters, which I like. I may not refer to the original medical journal articles, but I like the option. You also feel like these are compassionate authors who have experience working with patients. They begin with an "Executive Summary--If You Are Too Sick to Read Much Then Read This Section." There is also an audio CD included with abridged sections of the book for the same reasons. Patrick Quillin's wife Noreen, contributes recipes that follow the nutrition guidelines discussed in the book.

How to Prevent and Treat Cancer with Natural Medicine

If I was going to recommend one book to someone who is generally more comfortable with conventional medicine, this would be it. It's endorsed by the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and there are three contributing doctors in addition to Dr. Michael Murray, who is main author. The book looks very "respectable." And it's also informative and good. A couple of the supplements that I still take, I discovered in this book. The organization is very clean. There are sections that deal with certain types of cancer, and also nutritional advice for those who are undergoing chemo and radiation. This book also has recipes, and is well referenced.

Ian Gawler - You Can Conquer Cancer

This is the book that started it all for me, in terms of simply helping me make the decisions--about food and other things--that helped put me back on the road to health. "The first thing you do after you panic, is DON'T PANIC," Ian Gawler says.

Try not to be weirded out by the cover. Gawler's early experiences with cancer resulted in his leg being cut off at hip. Instead of a single pants leg, he wears a long caftan shirt. The cover design makes it look like he is a holy man of some sort. This is not the case. The contents of the book are very practical and accessible.

Nature's Cancer Fighting Foods

I haven't returned to this book as a reference over the years as much as I have the others, but as I flip through it again, I'm reminded how accessible and easy-to-read it is, and remember that when I was first overwhelmed by my health situation, the explanations that I could absorb often came from this book. If you are looking for recipes, it probably has the most, along with a glossary of less familiar ingredients. There is a good resource guide in back as well.

Anxiety, You Are My Cat

2011-11-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

You nudge me awake early in the morning, wanting me to feed you.

My anxiety is a first world problem, born of too much opportunity.

Paul has said that when he pictures me in this mind--his image of me--my avatar I guess you could say, is a little girl, feet planted, arm straight outstretched, holding a knife to fight a dragon--with her eyes squeezed closed.

It is not too inaccurate--because I try very hard to slay my dragons--but I'm seldom a happy or fearless slayer.

This week I woke with anxiety on Monday, because it was the day I had to tell my supervisor that I want to apply for a position in the department that has half the hours I currently work. This is a lot less money for our household, though I would have almost the same benefits. Using the Amazon money I won, Paul and I can last for five months this way--we hope! Then I might have to look for something else. But the idea is that I can have more time to write--and to be more quickly responsive to writing opportunities that come my way. It seems like the right choice to make--I mean, who spends so much money on school and then picks--and keeps for too long-- a "safe" job that can never pay back the loans, and makes it impossible to effectively pursue the career all the money was spent for? That's lame right? Like buying a really expensive ticket to the dance, but balking when it comes to getting the right dress.

So, I did it--arm outstretched, knife pointed...but my stomach was in knots all day.

The knots had sharpened to knives by Wednesday, the day of my pre-Lasik eye exam. It was just a touch up to my left eye, and I was hoping for the best. For months I'd been setting the money aside, and thinking how great it would be to not have to wear my sunglasses over my glasses , and be able to see in yoga class again. But at the same time, I hear my mother asking why I always do these things--can't I just be happy with my glasses? And my boss says, "What it there's an earthquake in the middle of the procedure?" (to which I said, "Believe me, I've thought of that."

And I wonder-- Am I asking for too much? I was really lucky last time, and had a decade of great vision, Now I want more. Am I greedy? I am asking for more than others have, for more than anyone deserves--and will I be punished for that? Is there only a finite amount of luck in the world, and I'm using mine up faster than I should be taking certain risks.

Of course not--who believes any of that? That's like believing in ghosts.

Or furry kitten-balls of anxiety nuzzling your hair right next to your brain...

PS. Lasik went fine. 20/20 out of my left eye. It's awesome!

You're Invited to this Reading Thing I'm Doing.

2011-11-08T22:15:00.000-08:00

USC MASTER OF PROFESSIONAL WRITING students read from their work with special guest SYD FIELD

Start: 11/18/2011 7:30 pm

Students in the University of Southern California's Master of Professional Writing program will read from their work. The theme will be "Gluttony and Temperance." The student readers will be Josh Jackson, Breene Murphy, Bryce Glen, Barrington Smith Seetachitt, and Michael Du Plessis. USC faculty member and screenwriting guru Syd Field will also read! At SKYLIGHT BOOKS in Silverlake.

If you live in Los Angeles, you can come. It's free. Syd will read for about twenty minutes, and we students will read for five to ten I think. I will probably just be five. I was planning to read two pieces--one that is old, and one that I was going to to flesh out for the reading--but, ohh busyness and exhaustion--it is seeming more and more likely I'll just read the old one. Which is fine. Shorter is generally better.

The Days Fly By

2011-11-03T00:26:00.000-07:00

The days fly by
too fast
too fast.

I stress:
When will I get a haircut?
When will I get my teeth cleaned?
When will I finish my novel, my memoir, the amazing
script that can sell
and end all of our financial woes?

When will I see my friends, my family?
When will I record the events of my day again?
When will I find time to stop and reflect
to breathe and assimilate all the whirlwind around me
Like sivasana for my life.

Busy, Good Day...(also an Amazon Studios Post)

2011-10-28T00:52:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh....almost 1AM again. I wonder what life would be like with a regular eight to nine hours of sleep instead of five and a half. And still, there's so much I'd like to do with my day even now. I want to watch The Fugitive, I want to read this new book I got, and I would even like to clean my office and pay some bills. As well as write this blog. It can't all happen, because I am almost falling asleep as I write this--but perhaps I can work my way to the end of a post about my day...

Umm...I wrote that on Thursday night--and never made it to the end! Now it's Saturday morning--I'll try again.

Thursday morning was one of the few that I woke up and couldn't immediate fall back into a deep sleep--probably because of the extra adrenaline running through my system, born of anxiety and nerves. I had a meeting with some folks at Amazon Studios to get their notes on my script, Children of Others, that won their best script contest last month. I was nervous because I had gotten some comments in advance, and wasn't sure how prepared I should with a new "take" on the material. I was nervous because the meeting was in Sherman Oaks, and with my bad sense of direction, I can get lost in the valley, and somehow being late seemed a mortifying prospect, and I was also nervous because I'd recently found out that Ed Saxon was going to be at the meeting. He was one of the judges of the competition, so it wasn't completely out of the blue--but when you meet people who have produced films you really admired, you can't help but want to make a good impression.

But I found that once I got in the door (on time), my anxieties about things like impressions faded away. The offices (the ones in LA, not the ones in Seattle) feel like an optimistic start-up, cubes and conference rooms scattered in a large, largely empty space that they share with IMDB. Not many frills. It felt like people had more things to do than decorate. The woman who answered the door when I rang the bell didn't know who I was (I think she might have been from the IMDB side), but before I even sat on the couch next to the messy pile of magazines, my contact, Michael, emerged from a cubicle and greeted me. When they asked me if I wanted water and I said yes, someone brought it to me in a disposable cup, instead of a bottle. These are all things that made me feel comfortable and in a familiar element. Polished-looking people at polished reception desks as soon as I walk in doors always make me want to check for holes in my sweater.

We did the normal chit-chat then talked a lot about the world of the story. This was really fun. We talked about backstories of certain characters, and the universe and rules--and there were some notes about improving the flow and the build of the story, and adding in some bigger, better moments. I'm actually looking forward to sitting down, listening to the recording of the session (even though I have a tendency to listen back and think I sound crazy) and working with the material with an eye to solving specific problems. And when I say problems, I mean less like flaws--though I'm sure there are plenty, and more like an equation.

The problem--as with so many things in my life, is--when?!
As soon as I left the meeting, the craziness of life resumed. Before the Amazon meeting had been scheduled, I had already made an unchangeable advisement meeting where I would choose and get clearance to take a class next semester. There wasn't enough time to get back to school, so I had to pull off the road and do the meeting on the way-since navigating the 101 to 110 interchange while talking intelligently is not one of my skill sets. Work, of course, was about catching on the half day I had missed. After work I went to yoga class at the gym--which is on the opposite end of campus, followed by an event for the class I am currently taken--again on the opposite end of campus.

The event was a panel with various writers who are on faculty for the MPW program (this is the department where I'm taking my classes), talking memoir. One of the panelists was Bernard Cooper. He had been one of my class choices at my advisement meeting earlier in the day, but I had gone another direction. Listening to him speak however, he was so articulate and thoughtful, I went home and emailed the adviser asking if I could change my mind. She called the next day to say there was one spot left, she my class next semester is with him.

Yesterday was a full day. I have some craziness with work, so I worked til six, when Paul picked me up for dinner and another literary event, followed by a movie--and I'm about to leave to do a little "in service" time today as well. Because of writing, I generally try to avoid extending my day job into the weekends, but some aspects of the particular project I'm working on--which is not secret, just too big to explain here--have deadlines on Monday, and I can't trust that a constant flow of visitors to my "reception desk" won't make Monday fly by without my being able to achieve them. Tomorrow is already booked end to end, so I fear this afternoon is my only writing time--and that's only if, once again, I decide to avert my eyes from the state of the house!

A Very Tired Day

2011-10-20T23:49:00.000-07:00

Not feeling too well. Tired, nauseous and like I can't fully breathe.

Super busy at work...trying to make everything fit into not enough time, and feeling anxious at the same time, because maybe these are the very hours I should be taking off, to avoid a full blown sickness--my last bronchial infection lasted a good month, and I get verry worried and anxious feeling.

On top of which, the notes are starting to trickle in on the projects I've had out...and while some of them are good, universally they all have suggestions that will be time consuming and require re-envisioning, which of course can also feel like people not like the vision that I originally had and have invested so much time and energy into.

But at the end of the very long day, I stayed up too late to watch Project Runway. Because I am feeling so worn down and despondent, I was very aware of how the contestants take criticism--and that is, very well. I really admire how they aren't dishonest about how they feel, but stay composed. I wonder if the producers coach them to be like that, since we are now down to the final four contestants...it's better for the show if we are invested n each of them, and how someone deals with criticism factors in a lot to how they are perceived and if we like them.

And, on top of their grace under the gun--they often pull really cool and innovative work out of the remnants of critique--they adapt.

I strive to be more like that.

Bus Etiquette

2011-10-11T23:23:00.001-07:00

On this one particular bus, the 728 going east a little after 8am, I often have to sit sideways. I don't prefer to sit sideways, I prefer to sit facing front, but for some reason, this particular bus has a high percentage of women passengers who take the aisle seats, then put their bags and purses on the window seat, and then avoid the eyes of anyone coming up the aisle, saying, in not so many words but pretty clearly, "I don't want you to sit here." It also sounds like they are saying "I think I am better than you, and so I don't want you to sit here," which vexes me. What is this, elementary school? And, hello, you're riding the bus in L.A. I'm a big proponent of public transportation, really enthusiastic about the concept, but I have a grip on reality. If you take public transportation in Los Angeles, unless you are an eccentric millionaire masquerading as a homeless person, you are poor. At least poorer than your co-workers who pay to park their cars in a downtown parking structure. We're all kinda in the poor boat (or bus) together, so what's with the putting on airs? This kind of behavior irks me. Especially when the bus starts to fill up, and they still won't move.

But maybe I'm misinterpreting. Maybe these women are really saying something else, like, "I have an uber contagious disease, and I don't want you to catch it. I'm looking out for you."

Citibank Hate Part 1--the history

2011-10-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I haven't dedicated at least one post to how I hate Citi-bank. But I just looked (briefly) at my list of old posts, and didn't see anything about it, so I'll re-cap: I hate Citi-bank.

More specifically, I hate Citi-Mortgage. This is because a while back, I saw an advertisement on my mortgage bill about refinancing at a pretty low rate. I pay a fairly high rate, so I thought "oh, that would be awesome!" I did some calculations and stuff to figure out how much lower my payments would be, and built a whole fantasy around how I could use the savings to pay down my mountain of student loans.

I called Citi-Mortgage, and the mortgage consultant was like, "oh yeah, awesome, question, question, question, income, job, outstanding debts, rent, question." And she was all friendly, and like "Yeah--you should apply!"

And I was like, "As you may have noticed from my answers to your questions, I have a lot of debt. Like a LOT. Isn't that going to work against me? I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for an application fee and appraisal and everything if there's no chance."

And she was like "Oh, well, it's student loans, I'm not sure that counts. I'll ask my supervisor." (mumble mumble asking mumble) And then she came back to the phone and said, "Your chances are still good. It's worth applying."

And I said, "but if it's not good enough, I think I can get a co-signer. Would that help?"

She said, "Oh yeah. I'll make a note of that right here in your file...can I get your credit card number to get started?

And then for a few weeks I was really popular. I got overnight envelopes, and friendly Citimortgage people called to make sure I got the envelopes, and that I was getting the paperwork from the homeowner's association, and signing the papers, and calling the $300+ appraiser they required. "Hurry, hurry," they said. "It's good." Happy happy. $650.

Then I signed all the papers, and got copies of our tax returns and sent it all in.

Within twenty-four hours I got an envelope with our rejection.

Huh? I called our representative. She didn't answer. "Wait," I said on her voicemail, "what about our co-signer. Didn't they want to hear about that?" I called someone else. "But we pay the higher amount every month. We never miss. Doesn't it make sense that would would also pay it if it was less?"

She didn't call me back. Neither did her supervisor, or the people from the other departments. No one returned my emails. But telepathically I heard their message loud and clear. "We've got your 650 dollars. Bye bye."

And so I began to hate Citi-Mortgage with the heat of a thousand white hot suns.

I live for the day I can take the remainder of my mortgage away from them, but it will likely not be soon, because I've since learned that the minimum requirement is that your income is 40% (or is it 50%?) of your total debt. My income is like 14% of my total debt.

Amazon Studios: Um...I won.

2011-10-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

Which is awesome. I'm super grateful. I'm interested to see what happens next. I want say more profound things about that but all the profundity has been squeezed from my brain by sleepiness.
I will say that I am thinking about the money in my waking moments that aren't dominated by expense reports and filing...Should I use it to to plug up some leaky holes in our financial boat, some holes in other people's boats--or-- is it possible I can figure out how to use it to carve a few extra hours out of the day?

Friday

2011-09-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

I'm excited because tomorrow is Friday, which is the last day of the work week. And also because apparently, I am going to see black clouds with RED lightning...

Amazon Studios, An Unexpected Turn of Events

2011-09-24T10:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from Amazon Studios saying that Children of Others had reached the semifinalist round in its Best Script contest. Yesterday they announced the five finalists, and my script was among them.

A kind of fun thing about the contest is that you can actually read the work of your competitors. I woke up early this morning and read two of the other four scripts in the mix. Both were well written. One I loved and one I hated.

The one I hated is called The Hipster and The Schoolgirl. The dialogue was witty, and the characters were stylish. If you like Quentin Tarantino and other guys who fuse gory violence with humor and style, then this is the script for you. Not so much for me. While I liked Pulp Fiction, I waited eighteen years before seeing Reservoir Dogs, because the ear thing sounded like the kind of things that would give me nightmares. When I got invited to a retrospective last year, I figured, "hell, there's been a lot of episodes of 24 since 1992--I'm sure that ear thing people kept talking about probably isn't even a big deal now." I was wrong. That scene with the ear, along with almost the entire movie Seven, are pieces of cinematic entertainment I could happily have waited another eighteen years to see.

I was originally planning to read only one script this morning (I have writing to do, don't ya know) but the first script left me so agitated and disturbed that I had to read the next one just to get the taste out of my brain. I read In the Silences, and it was exactly the kind of movie I love. The real world with a sci-fi/fantasy twist, heavy on characters and relationships. Think Source Code or Adjustment Bureau. I looked up the writer, who has a blog here. Another piece he has on the Amazon site won the Best Sci-Fi/Action Script award in a previous month.

As for Children of Others, I did a rewrite back in June that I tried to enter for the July deadline, but somehow the upload didn't take, so this was first month that the new draft was considered. I was surprised, because I guess I'd started to feel that my script was just swimming in a vast ocean of other scripts--which is not untrue-- but the recognition reminds me that there are readers out there whose jobs are to man the life rafts and search for for the living, so if you can keep splashing water, there's always a chance to get rescued.

Walk, Carry, No.

2011-09-23T01:39:00.001-07:00

What do you think? Successful examples of graphic work? Or no?

I see the above sign almost everyday. I have to say that the photograph seems more effective than the actual sign, which somehow catches my eye as a I walk in such a way that I see "WALK CARRY NO" to the exclusion of almost everything else. Once I have done that, I read the rest-- something about bicycles and scooters blah blah... But I can't say that I ever intuitively read across the color barrier. I don't read "Carry skateboards" or "No electric carts." Apparently, neither to most other people, because to be walking down the mall area at any time is to be bombarded by electric carts...

Below is a sign our department received in the mail to post. Who designed this, I wonder? If we hosted a conference, who would design our poster? Probably me. If I was busy, which is not unlikely, it would fall to a student worker if he admitted to being able to open Photoshop. Could that be what has happened here? They paid for the reproduction obviously, and they paid for the shipping...did they pay someone to make this design? Maybe they should have paid more.

This Week at the Office, or "Not loving the smell of formaldehyde in the morning"

2011-09-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

At work on Monday afternoon, I spent six and a half hours single-handedly doing this:

So that on Tuesday, they could do this:

The new furniture is all match-y and stuff. When it's not still covered in boxes, I'll take a picture.

I think it looks nice, but unfortunately an entire office of new laminate furniture smells like new furniture--i.e. it smells like what is probably formaldehyde with some pine scent thrown in. I have a sensitive respiratory system, and because of my defective repair gene and all, I'm kind of paranoid about ingesting and inhaling toxins. I'm already not a fan of how close our building is to a busy roadway, or the amount of fumes that I'm now exposed to on my daily commute, which consists of standing for many minutes at high-traffic intersections before getting on buses that constantly stop and open their doors at other busy intersections. So adding to my carcinogen load has not been at the top of my list of things to do. Was I just imagining my headache and burning eyes by the end of Wednesday and Thursday or were they real? Were they due to sitting at my new desk, or just a result of sleep-deprivation and PMS?

Because I'm generally a people pleaser, I hate to be the annoying Debbie Downer who points out, everytime someone walks in the door, happily takes a big breath and says "oh, it smells so GOOD in here," that in modern times, GOOD is what POISON smells like.* But I have been making it a point to open all the doors and windows in our office to vent the good smell. Unfortunately, all the doors and windows open onto our beautiful courtyard, which is equipped with no less than eight benches with concrete ashtrays next to them. More than any other place on campus, this courtyard implies that one should sit, gaze at the pretty fountain, and smoke up a storm.

At the time of my cancer diagnosis, I was going to an applied art school in Australia and had just declared printmaking as my emphasis. My work showed potential, and I LOVED doing it. I woke up in the morning excited about going to the studio, even when I wasn't feeling well. It gave meaning to my days. After my surgery, I only went to the studio to clean up my supplies. I still have several unfinished plates that haunt me (all my unfinished creative projects haunt me.) I could use turpentine alternatives and non-toxic inks (that were never quite as good as the real thing), but almost any studio is shared. Potent cleansers are needed to clean the silk screens and resin dust is needed to coat metal plates for etching. I left because I couldn't feel safe there anymore. Because my surgery scar was still fresh and everyone was still shocked and scared by my close call, this didn't seem like a militant move, it seemed like a no brainer.

I decided my new creative outlet / career could be writing (structured differently, this blog post could be called "how I chose to become a writer"). It seemed a good answer for someone living with compromised health. I could do it from home. Writing wouldn't have fumes, like art, and it wouldn't have the high stress and long hours of my former work in event production. Working from home, I would be able to control my diet, make fresh veggie juices three times a day, and exercise.

Cue Alanis Morissette song having to do with irony here, sung by the girl who hasn't juiced in months, worked out in weeks, gone to bed before 1 am in years.

Day to day, I'm not unhappy. My life has structure, part of me thrives on busy jobs, and deadlines, but there was a time I promised that I was going to take care of myself, and I have to admit that I've compromised on that quite a lot. The addition of one more element--like bad air-- kind of throws the whole picture up on the screen, and makes me have to look at it again.

(*Know what smells good to me? The smell of lighter fluid on charcoal briquettes. This, in my childhood, was the smell of a cooked-out hamburger. It was the smell of happiness. I'm sure that's in no way related to colon cancer twenty years down the line, but just as an example of things that smell good that are not good for us.)

Farewell, More of This...

2011-09-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite blogs came to an end today. It's not listed in my sidebar, because...well actually I'm not sure why... Maybe it wasn't public? If you follow this link, does it take you anywhere? If so, that's her blog, you should check out a few entries while it's still up.

I read this article from the New York Times the other day about how the word "authentic" has become a catchphrase that doesn't mean very much anymore. My friend V, in the "about me" section of her blog, talks about "trying to live a more authentic life"--and you can tell from her writing that it does mean something when she says it. Maybe because many of her posts--just about her life--her goals, academic, professional, relationship, fashion-related--never obscured the trying.

As a writer who has spent a fair amount of time browsing job listings, I see that a lot of blogs out there want "content creators." I get it. It's a blog about fashion or technology or celebrity mishaps. Writing has to know what it is, and have focus, and, to be successful, it has to attract readers who don't care at all about the writer. But a result of that a lot of blogs out there have "content" about recipes or pop-culture, and not so many have "writing" about the human condition. This blog was about the human condition. The writer talked about the struggles of living with disability, trying to be healthier and happier, trying to construct a beautiful environment conducive to being healthier and happier. She talked about being queer, she talked about being fat, she talked about sexuality and clothes and making professional decisions...but whatever she talked about, it was thoughtful. There was often an element that went beyond reportage, slipped beneath the surface, and revealed a bit of her. It was a generous blog.

Although I seldom think to leave comments on blogs, I did leave one in response to her farewell post. In it I talked about how that C.S. Lewis adage that "we read to know we are not alone." I think it would be fair to change the words a bit and say reading helps us feel less alone. But to me, that feels almost flipped on its head today. Particularly if I am reading on the internet, I can end up feeling more alone. But reading her blog was definitely the former experience--less alone feeling, all the way.

It is on my mind today, because V is not the first of my writer friends to bring her personal blog to an end for professional reasons--both because such exposure of one's personal life can be detrimental, and because, let's face it--if you are blogging, that means you are not writing material that can be published and will contribute to your success as a professional writer, which is the goal, is it not? Eyes on the prize. I'm writing this right now--and I am NOT working on my novel, and I really need to be working on the novel. (I haven't been blogging much recently, because I HAVE been working on my novel, so, "yay me" for that.)

My friends who have left behind their journals and personal blogs are, pretty much across the board, achieving more success and publications than I am. I genuinely love seeing that, and I genuinely want that for myself. But this doesn't change the fact that the professional websites they've created, while necessary for their pursuits, are not a replacement for what I have lost-- the pleasure of hearing their voices in my head as I read these less important words on my computer screen, of having little insights into their daily lives and inner lives--insights that are somehow different from those I gain with an email or phone call, or, when we lived in the same town, even meeting in person. The stuff that one "throws out there" in a blog has a different energy to it. Maybe because when we speak to a faceless readership, there's some part of us that ends up just speaking to ourselves, and the readers are just listening in?

I keep coming back to this blog, my blog. I'm not sure all the reasons why. I think one is that I don't just read to fell less alone, but I write to feel less alone. And while I occasionally check my readership numbers, at least some of the less-aloneness comes from somewhere else...from the sense that out in the world, other people are also thinking and writing, and reveling in the feel of reflecting on their lives. I find that a comfort. I don't feel the same camaraderie when I'm writing a screenplay and I think of all the other glowing MacBooks across Los Angeles.

This has dissolved into a ramble, hasn't it? I could try to shape it--but I have to get back to that novel. But to summarize: Farewell to V's blog. And, for the moment I continue. Stop by. I'll try to be here.

Today is Friday

2011-09-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

When I looked at the weather forecast online this morning (Friday), this is what I saw. Since the current temperature was 57, and it was Friday, clearly the low for Friday is not 63. What do you think is the logic for leaving the prediction unchanged? Would it be cheating to change the low temperature from 63 degrees to 57 degrees, or just less confusing?

Tweets I Never Sent

2011-08-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

I was going to tweet this morning--not like the early bird that catches the worm, but on Twitter, but then, as I was punching my pithy yet profound thoughts into my Blackberry, the a message popped up suggesting that I upgrade to the new improved Twitter. I thought--hell, why not? What else am I doing on the bus? I have time to upgrade AND tweet, and I'll be all current with the technology and shit.

This was not true, however. Upgrading literally took half of one bus trip and all of the other, and most of the walk to work, and I'll tell ya, these days, there is no time to be tweeting at work.

So what I was about to say, before I was interrupted, was that today I saw the bus-driver-who-never-smiles...smile.

Since this is a different venue from Twitter, I think I'll elaborate, and say that the driver of the bus that arrives at my stop at 8:08 AM, which, despite my best efforts, is the bus I end up on most frequently, never smiles. She also never talks, and pretty much avoids eye contact. It's not a spaced out vibe. It's a "Honey, I know you're there, doesn't mean I have to look at you" vibe.

Each morning I get on the bus, usually out of breath from having run for a block alongside it to the stop, which I know she must see. I'm not running behind the bus, I'm racing it to the stop, since the only place it can stop is at the stop, and then there's no waiting for some pedestrian just because she's running and waving her arms. But whatever. Each morning I pay, with my TAP card--she doesn't take kindly to people who have to count their change at the pay stand. Each morning I say something like "hi" or "good morning." She never answers--just looks straight ahead. One say I said, "I like your bracelet."

She stopped wearing jewelry.

Today though, at a stop light, I looked at her face in the rearview mirror, and she was SMILING. Teeth were showing. And then she was waving, looking in a direction that was not straight ahead even. I craned my head to look out the window as we drove away. It was a toddler, waving.

The busdriver caught me catching her smiling in the mirror and she looked pissed. She looked straight ahead again.

But a few minutes later, two kids and their mom got off the bus, using the front doors. SHE SMILED AT THEM, TOO.

She likes kids, apparently. Enough to smile at them.

Not much to do with this information though.

Except maybe tweet it.

This Just Pisses Me Off

2011-08-21T21:01:00.000-07:00

This is a meme that has been circulating on Facebook recently:

May I ask a personal favor.....Only some of you will do it, and I know who you are. If you know someone who fought cancer and won, or fought cancer and died, or someone who is still fighting please add this to your status for 1 hour as a mark of respect and in remembrance. I hope I was right… about the people who will ♥

I am a "cancer survivor" who has both friends and family who have survived or no survived cancer--but this meme is not about showing them respect and remembrance so much as it is about the egotistical nature of whomever first posted this form of the meme, which is basically saying, "if you don't repost my message, you're obviously an asshole, and even though I'm your Facebook friend, I'm already judging you. And just in case you might call me out for being a jerk, I'm going to make this about cancer, so you can't."

I'm actually amazed anytime I see friends reposting this meme unedited. If you really care about cancer, great--it's as worthy a cause as any...but do you really want those first and last lines? You want to talk to your friends like that?

Those lines are add-ons, by the way-- the original post is an "if" statement. "If you know someone..." It's not inviting everyone to post, just those people who know people who've had cancer. So if you don't post, maybe you actually don't know anyone who's had cancer... that would be a good thing. But the add-on statement doesn't allow for that. The author hopes to be right "about the people who will (heart icon)." Which is saying that the author hopes that you know someone with cancer?

I equally hate the variant that goes something like this:

I know 97% of you guys won't put this on your wall... But 3% of my friends will... put this on your wall in honor of someone who died of cancer or is living with it.

What I want to say to the person who reposts this is:

This offends me. As a "friend" whom you are treating in a rude and deprecating manner, and as a cancer survivor you are using, without permission, to guilt other people into doing this random thing you want them to do. If some aspect of cancer awareness is an important issue to you, write something original that expresses that. If you have a message you need help spreading, ask me nicely. If you unthinkingly repost these exact words .5% of your friends may un-friend you altogether, and it will probably be me.

Week Gone By

2011-08-21T12:57:00.000-07:00

And not a lot to show for it.

I took the car to the shop because it intermittently won't start, but after three days, they couldn't replicate the problem, so didn't do any work on it.

At work, things are busy as classes begin next week. This past week we've had surprise land battles over office space, VISA issues for our incoming international faculty. The TAs would understandable like to see their class rosters before walking into their classrooms, but they can't have access until I go into a special system and add them as instructors--but the system won't let me until they are entered into the system as employees, but they've only recently filled out their I-9s and payroll is backed up...and so on.

Friday marked the end of week three of my respiratory infection and day two of my period, and I stumbled in to work forty minutes late with no lunch packed, a hole in my underwear so big that I feared the crotch would fall out. I stayed a little late to make up for the late start and hopefully be in a better place on Monday.

There were also some redeeming highlights to the week however. A free screening of Fright Night on Tuesday was unexpectedly good. They really controlled the tone well, I recommend the movie for a fun night out.

And I got news that my instructor from last semester in the MPW program was willing to do an independent study with me this semester. That was excellent news that solves a lot of problems for me--financially by helping me maintain my student status, and artistically, by helping figure out the next steps for my novel draft, just at a point I'm feeling a bit paralyzed by the whole endeavor.

Finally, on Saturday, I got to sleep until I woke up--no alarm. that was AWESOME. I subsequently laid in bed for the rest of the day, getting up only to eat cereal and watch Project Runway. The non-productive nature of this is something I wasn't thrilled about, but really, I was too tired to care. In the evening I saw my sister and brother for a night hike, which I did feel good about, since it was my first physical activity since I got sick.

Today I managed to go to yoga, get a load of laundry into the washer...and write this--a much lamer post than all the more interesting ones I thought of on the bus this week, but never managed to put in writing, but really the theme of this week has pretty much been about falling short of expectations, and being tired enough to be okay about it... so I think I'll hit publish, and go take a nap now!

Rock Jocks Update

2011-08-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Paul continues to work with his editor Adam to get a locked cut of the Rock Jocks--the film he wrote and directed. There are still many things to be done, like sound mixing, music, special effects etc, before the latest deadline for Sundance at the end of September. But this week he took a few days off to visit Chicago Comic Con and promote the film.

This Week

2011-08-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

From my recent posts, you might think it was social-y, with movies and such. And kind of, it was, but it was really much more about being sick. Just a cold I think--but just-a-colds for me tend to involve a long and fierce battle with bronchial congestion, and an utter exhaustion component, and this cold experience hasn't fallen short in either case.

I made it to work everyday, and the two screenings I saw both took place on campus, so it took minimal effort to drag myself a couple blocks to check them out. Even then, I would have opted out, but in each case I had a guest who would not have been able to get in without me, so that inspired me to stay upright. However, a reading, tentative tea-date and a house warming party all fell by the wayside in favor of lying in bed and coughing without feeling like I was scaring everyone in a 20-foot radius.

Yesterday I went to the accupuncturist, who always makes me feel everything's going to be all right. She gave me several baggies, each full of a dozen packets of powders which I am supposed to combine into a tea that looks like Greek coffee. It's bitter tasting, and also makes me feel that good health is just around the corner, because any sickness in its right mind would run from that tea.

And as always, being sick simultaneously makes me anxious about, but also extremely grateful for my general state of good health. The way I'm feeling now is the exception and not the rule. I'm lucky.

I'm also aware of how quickly circumstances can change. In the last couple of months a number of our friends have experienced serious health issues. Just from this blog's sidebar, a brain tumor (Miskellany) and a cancer recurrence (Someday We'll Look Back and Laugh). I've been amazed by the grace and wit and resilience I've witnessed in the face of these illnesses. I've had less grace, wit and resilience just in this week, maybe because I know Paul will put up with some whining if it's going to be temporary!

But that's an aside--point being, if you are feeling good--take a moment to appreciate it. Go do something to support it: eat a fresh, colorful vegetable, go to the gym, take deep breaths that expand everyside of your rib cage as you walk down the hall to your office. Because good health is awesome!

Cowboys and Aliens

2011-08-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

Went to a screening of Cowboys and Aliens the other night, fortunately for free. I'm sure many others are saying most of what I can think of to say. Instead I'll do you a favor and say this:

If you are thinking about going to see Cowboys and Aliens, go see Attack the Block instead.

Seriously. You'll thank me.

The Help

2011-08-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

Saw a preview screening for The Help the other night. They asked us to spread the word if we liked the film, so I will. I did like the film and it's definitely worth a watch. I'm interested to see the box office numbers for this film. If you know someone in a bookclub, then you likely know someone who has read the book of the same name.

Emma Stone is ever-beguiling, and Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer turn it excellent performances. I was extra-impressed by Bryce Dallas Howard as the uber-bitchy Hilly. Not that she's a bad actress, but I'd never seen her in a role that wasn't not sweet and fragile-seeming. I literally didn't recognize her.

I think the movie made all the moves it intended to. The tone was controlled. It stayed light, didn't drift into Lifetime movie territory, and avoided preachy history lessons... but there was a certain cost for this. I never felt super connected to or worried about the main characters--there was an element of distance. There were real, dark stakes, but the movie (like the book) skirted around them. The heart-wrenching stories the maids have to tell are told to us, not experienced by us. The "mean" white people in the film are such caricatures that it's easy to believe that, put in the same circumstances, we would have certainly been more enlightened.

Finally, although this is an ensemble cast, the main character of the movie is really Skeeter, who, if you haven't read the book, is white. I don't fault the choice, but there is a certain risk, that even with the right-minded message of the film, I'm not sure you really make a movie about a community of black people during the the beginning of the civil rights era whose lives seem only able to be changed by the white character without it feeling just a tad patronizing. I've heard a few such complaints about the book, and am sure, when it is released, there will be more about the movie.

My initial instinct, though, is to defend the movie on at least two fronts:

Sadly, one of them is business more than art. The decision to allow the audience to enter the world with the eyes of a white person will garner a bigger and more mainstream audience. Good box office for a film where every main character is a woman, and half of the main characters are black is good news for other films that want to focus on these demographics, which is awesome. It's not pure, but it's a path.

My second defense is that there are a lot of events that have happened in the world, and a lot of ways to treat them. You can look at a concentration camp and write Elie Wiesel's Night, or make Life is Beautiful--which also withstood some criticism at the time for not taking the experiences of the holocaust seriously enough. I would say, when a topic is important and resonant, there's room for many stories, and many perspectives, especially if the stories are well-crafted and have a degree of truth such that they don't become just more noise for the better-crafted stories to get lost in. There is a lot to say about our history--segregation, Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, and while this movie benefits us by bringing it up, helping us remember and assimilate our history, no one work is can say it all, nor should it feel it has to. If The Help acts as a gateway for some people to revisit their history books, inspires read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, that's great; but a creative work is not obligated serve any agenda, even a right-minded one, even if people like me will look at in Critical Studies class fashion and question it.

I might be rambling. But I think that's what I think. If you go see The Help, I'd love to hear what you think.

Crazy Stupid Love

2011-08-01T17:10:00.001-07:00

I've been looking forward to this film, because of the stellar cast, and the awesome trailer, so
went to see it last night with "the girls." And the verdict is that it was ... fun and heartwarming and a tiny bit sad. As my friend Nikki said, it wasn't as good as the trailer (what could be?), but it was better than some of the more critical reviews it has gotten.

It is probably more a dramedy than a comedy, which might be the reason it doesn't quite feel like the movie you are expecting from the trailer, but I have a feeling I might actually like it better for that.

I left the theatre with a feel-good vibe that I didn't want to disrupt by taking it apart and analyzing. I was happy (or lazy) enough to just conclude that the strengths outweighed the weaknesses.

Don't let this set your level of expectation, but do watch and marvel at the sublime pacing of the trailer. The placement of the Twilight soundtrack song is brilliant. First it takes the piss out of Twilight, which is funny, but right on top of that, it uses the innate power of the music coming to a crescendo for the big kiss, and we cant help reacting to that. There's something about the push and pull that is really skillful.

If you have already seen the movie, did you notice the snippet of a scene that was not actually in the movie?

Writing Day

2011-07-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

After hosting a friends party over Carmageddon weekend, and Comic Con last weekend (two things I have not discussed because of how infrequently I've been posting lately), I've been greatly looking forward to this weekend, where I've had literally NO PLANS for both Friday and Saturday.

Last night (Friday) I tried my first rising dough recipe and used it make a kind of huge empana/calzone thing using odds and ends of veggies. I cut it into squares, wrapped them, and put them in the freezer, so I can grab them and put them in my lunch sack over the next couple weeks. I also washed our pillows, which was really exciting (only to me, I understand) because even though I change the pillowcases, after awhile pillows get infused with the smell of dirty hair. Now they are a little lumpy, but they smell great!

I also watched TV! I saw the premiere of Project Runway, which I find consistently entertaining, despite the fact that I hated this season's billboards with the naked Heidi Klum with the scissors and "make it work" scrawled on her arm in sharpie. If it weren't an advertisement for the show, it would be some story about a serial-killing model. I also watched the second episode of Alphas. I'm going to give it a chance, and see if there's a long term serialized arc or any characters that grab me. They do seem to be setting something up in terms of both, but it's very light-handed, and right now the episodes are dominated by that "freak-of-the-week" procedural quality that makes me go "meh." But that's a bit unfair to judge after only two episodes, since the pilot has to cover so much exposition, and the second episode has the thankless task of taking tiny steps forward while essentially recapping the information from the pilot.

Now it's Saturday, and my only big plan is to WRITE. But now that the moment has come, I am a little intimidated by it all. It's a big chunk of time, but not really enough time. I remember the first time I went to Mexico to study Spanish for two weeks. I thought something really miraculous would happen and I'd come home practically fluent, but really, it was only enough time to realize that I didn't really know all the stuff I thought I knew from studying alone in the States, and to start to remedy that.

I'm pretty close to the end of the first draft of my novel, and it's tempting to think about coming to end of the draft this weekend, so that I can start to work on a languishing screenplay and some other things I have in mind--but it's really near impossible. And I am feeling insecure about control and quality. Basically everything I have to write for the next ten thousand words is tragic and sad. Somehow I hadn't realized that in the outline. I think it's because in the screenplay, we cut away to a character who provides comic relief, and so far in writing the book, I haven't cut away from my main character, since I've been using first person... It may be I'll need to do that, and that will be another whole project.

Anyway--it's time to begin!

End of an Era

2011-07-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

This was in my inbox this morning.

A Fond Farewell... Thank You for Shopping at Borders

Needed: Signage

2011-07-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

The campus where I work is connected by areas mainly intended for pedestrians. To encourage this, there are several of these automatic gates, which I think only open for campus service vehicles.

The gates are equipped with signs like this...
I have a hard time envisioning the logistics of this, because the arm only rises when a vehicle comes through. Which means, in order to be hit by the arm, you also must be walking directly into a moving vehicle, which to my mind would be at least an equally large problem.

But apparently the descending arm thing has happened, this gate has been wrapped with foam:
So maybe, I should feel superior because I've never walked into a service truck then gotten hit on the head by an electronic arm.

On the other hand, last week I was running an errand while reading a text, and I almost did this:
Can someone make me a sign for this? I'll afix it to the barrier. Think how many tripping texters we could save.

The Highwayman

2011-07-13T11:03:00.000-07:00

This song gets me every time.
Is that cheezy? Is it like the "Christmas Shoes" of Celtic music?
Is it because I first heard it at a more impressionable point in my life when I still lived in a dorm room?

I don't think so--I think it's kind of amazing, and so cinematic--the words paint images in your mind, and it's a saga.

I should also note, the lyrics are this poem, by Alfred Noyes.

Happy

2011-07-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at my desk at work, and I'm just thinking about how happy and grateful I am. I'm doing this insanely long expense report, and for days I've been entering £1.50 bus tickets and converting them to US dollars based on the conversion of the specific date, and now I'm entering a large stack of papers into a spreadsheet...

I know, it doesn't sound that happy making, but there's more. The other day I took a screwdriver and removed the drawer under my desk so I could quit banging my knees into it, and sit cross-legged if I want to, which I am doing now.

And I brought headphones to plug into my computer, and I have Pandora playing a bunch of old Sarah McLachlan and Loreena McKennit and similar that I haven't heard forever.

And the sky is still that morning gray we get in L.A. that reminds me of days in Indiana when it might rain (even though it's very unlikely it will rain here).

And it's just so peaceful, and the music is beautiful, and I'm in good health, which is such a luxury-- and when I didn't have good health I swore I would never forget that, but some days I do.

Sometimes I think, what if everything I write never finds a home, and just stays in a (metaphorical) drawer until I die, and then gets thrown away; what will my life have been about? And will people who knew me think of all those hours spent to produce nothing that they or anyone really wanted, and pity me for unfulfilled aspirations and talk about how I was "talented, but..." (which is what happened to my dad.)

But then I have moments like this, when I know with certainty that this life is a gift, and the way to truly receive a gift is to be aware of it, and grateful for it. And maybe it's a result of this job and being isolated from certain aspects of the "industry," or maybe it's something else, like reading more books and so having more periods of transition from the book world in which I become so immersed, and the "real" world, but I've been having (or noticing?) these moments more frequently as of late: Walking down the street to my bus stop when there is warm sun and a cool breeze, accepting an invitation to stay up way too late and watch a Harry Potter double feature on opening day, getting emails from friends telling me about their lives, even if their news is sad--moments that seem full somehow.

And I am grateful, and wanted to write this so I could remember this moment.

Juxtaposition

2011-07-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

I've been gluttonously, without any self discipline whatsoever, re-reading The Hunger Games. Beyond the narrative, it makes me think of how we first-worlders, like the citizens of the Capitol in the book, are capable of cocooning ourselves in our own concerns, which of course are petty in the eyes of half the world. And it makes me think of people who are hungry, who live with hunger everyday.

Simultaneously (and I mean that literally, because I'm sometimes reading even as I tape receipts to pieces of paper), I'm processing an expense reports for one of our professors who spent much of the summer abroad. I have to go through the line items on every receipt, many of which are for restaurants. Here are some things that were ordered.

Prawn Cocktails
Pesto Rissoto
Crab Lobster Org (I don't know what the "Org" stands for, it's a receipt abbreviation)
Rabbit Ragu

Lamb Slow Cooked
Classic Brg.

Steak & Frites
Meat Plank

Scampi

Beef Carpaccio
Fishcake

Duck Confit

Spcl Pork Cutlet
Shepherds Pie
Spcl Lamb Rump
Crispy Squid
Chicken Salad
Duck Breast
Prawn Chrz Pasta

Apple Galette
Brownie
Ice Cream
Creme Brulee

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

2011-06-17T16:40:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons I take the bus to work is that I have bad parking ticket karma. Of course, I live in L.A., so maybe that means I'm just asking for it. If I want to park my car in peace, I should move to a Dakota.

Today, instead of taking the bus to work, I drove my car, because I wanted to give four file-boxes of office supplies we've collected to a local elementary school to use in the classrooms.

I pulled up outside our building and we loaded up the car. I went inside the office one last time to call the school and tell them we were on the way. When I came back outside, three minutes later, I had this ticket. Fifty bucks.

City of Los Angeles tickets irk me because they are over-zealous and often unfair, but I know that, like an irresponsible teenager the City is shitty at managing its finances, and thus needs to extort money from its citizens. USC on the other hand... Didn't somebody give them another hundred and fifty million just last week?

If We Are What We Eat, I Will Be a Zuccini

2011-06-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Another project I have going at the moment, since I am having a "normal life" with a job and such, is ordering a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box every couple of weeks. Each week the South Central Farmers--an organic cooperative--delivers pre-ordered boxes to different places in the city. One of the drop-off points is here on campus.

The box is an omakase kinda deal. You get what is in season and available, with no substitutions. Overall, this is good, as that is what we should be eating anyway, and I probably wouldn't have the knowledge and discipline to research and buy these things on my own. In the grocery store I mainly just default to things like avocados and broccoli year round because they are super-accessible taste-wise, and I know how to store and cook them. This same laziness had led me to consider skipping the CSA box this week, but then I got an email from my friend in China, telling me how, because of all the bacteria on the food where she is, she is relegated to eating McDonalds, porridge and stuffed buns if she doesn't want to get sick. This made me say to myself, "Self, suck it up and order your CSA box."

This week's box consisted of lots of leafy greens that I never buy on my own: Blue Kale, Siberian Kale, Green Chard, Red Chard, as well as beets, peaches, many zucchinis, and these:
I had to write and ask what they were. (To be clear, I would not have recognized most of the greens, but they were on the packing list, while these were not). They are Ronde de Nice squash--kind of like mini zucchinis, apparently. I would link to a wikipedia page, but it seems they are so exotic that one doesn't yet exist for them.

20 Thousand Words Under the Sea

2011-06-16T00:19:00.001-07:00

In other news, I hit the 20,000 word mark on the novel I am working on. I'm not too happy with my writing progress on many fronts, but the rock bottom, bare minimum I demand of myself, is that I write 5000 words a week on it, so that I will have a a genuine bad first draft by the end of summer. Sometimes I scribble in my notebook on the bus in the morning, then type it up on my lunch hour at work-that usually gets me the first two or three hundred, and I have to do the remaining six or seven hundred in the evening. What doesn't happen during the week has to happen on the weekend.

I'm not sure the novel is really the kind of thing can ever go anywhere at all, so it is very scary to work on it instead of a screenplay. but then I think--well I've spent that long on lots of screenplays that are also languishing in virtual desk drawers on my hard drive--so what am I so scared of?

Coming back to one specific screenplay (Children of Others--still kicking, and still kicking me in the ass) that I need to revise is so difficult and depressing that I made today's goal (in addition to the 5000 words) be to simply find and open the two most recent versions. I didn't have to write, or even look, tonight. I just had to open them. Mission accomplished.

Morning K-Town

2011-06-16T00:00:00.001-07:00

One of my June projects has been to start taking the bus to work. I actually take two buses to work. The corner where I get off one bus and onto another is located in Koreatown, more affectionately known as "K-town." This is the strip mall where I wait for the second bus.

Here is the the reverse angle. There is no bench, so most people sit on this wall. If I were not taking the picture, I would also be sitting on the wall, although I like to sit on the high section of the wall, which is also closer to the actual stop. I don't know why they prefer the low wall.
Usually, about the time I arrive in K-town I am just beginning to feel hungry and I wish that I had the time to go into this restaurant and try what I assume is the breakfast special. The description is in Korean but it is $4.99 from 6am-11am. While Paul and I eat dinner at Korean restaurants fairly often, I have never eaten a Korean breakfast, so I have no idea what the food would be. I've never arrived at this stop so early that I could afford to skip a bus and hang out in the restaurant eating breakfast, but maybe someday I will.

Friday, Friday

2011-06-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

Feeling the Friday. Thought not exactly in the Rebecca Black way. Though in a metaphorical sense I guess I am always wondering "which seat should I take."

Lot's of paperwork at work. Lot's more paperwork at home.

Feeling the pain of not enough hours in the day somewhat acutely. It's easy to feel how years could swiftly pass this way.

Writing this in the ten magical minutes the advertising on the tube says it will take to cover my gray hairs. I'll let you know.

Thinking about work. My writing work--not the the other one. Though truth be told, I think about that one too-more than I like. It's all about what surrounds me--which I'm beginning to realize is pretty dangerous.

Also thinking about my friend Kelly, about to undergo brain surgery next week that may leave her sight impaired or blind.

Thinking about pro-Palestinian protesters in Isreal...the way when they mentioned their deaths on NPR no one bothers to mention any details. They don't say "violence broke out" or describe the conflict at all--just that there was a protest, and then there were dead people. Next subject.

Thinking about how the tired I feel when I go to bed at night these days is so utter and absolute.

And how my ten minutes are up now.

Oh, Baby, Baby, Carrot, Oh!

2011-06-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

My snack this week at work has been baby cut carrots with spicy hummus. I recently learned from a co-worker the origin of baby cut carrots:

Once upon a time (like back in the 80s) people could only buy "adult" carrots. They would take them home and cut them, dice them, slice them, etc, in order to put them in their stir-fries, on crudite platters, or in a carrot and pea combo side dish to go with their meatloaf.

But some of the carrots were too ugly to sell. So a guy named Mike Yurosek, came up with a system, (using a green been cutter and potato peeler) to pare the big, ugly carrots into small, cute carrots.

Armed with this new knowledge, as I sit on a bench eating my with my baby carrots and spicy hummus, I find myself wondering if the carrot I'm eating is an ex-ugly carrot. Was it shunned by the other carrots before it became lithe and cute?

I guess it tells my age, that I remember when the grown ups around me were a little bit coy about such things. There was a small amount of secretiveness about dying one's hair to touch up the gray. People asked, "do you think she's a natural blonde?" or "do you think those are real?"

It shouldn't matter of course, I hate to think that I would have the judged the carrot on it's looks to begin with. It probably says something about me that I waste a gossipy minute wondering if my baby carrots smoothness is its own, or the result of carrot-botox.

Upon return to my desk (but still during my lunch hour, of course) further research reveals that the popularity of baby carrots has exploded to such an extent that majority of baby-cut carrots we eat today were never ugly to begin with, they were just regular carrots.

But that, too, is a little sad, if you allow yourself to think too much about it (which I obviously have). The existence of these clean, cute and convenient carrots that parody actual baby carrots--i.e. carrots which are actually small because of their extreme youth-- means that normal carrots no longer seem quite good enough, they feel obligated to mill themselves down to a size and uniformity that frees us from having from having to question our choices or test the limits of our tolerance for disparity.

The Office

2011-05-31T23:07:00.000-07:00

If you've been to our current house, you know that that architecture is really pretty, but also that when you get inside, most of the furniture looks like (because it is) it's from Goodwill or a street-curb, or an office supply store. It's kind of the same with our office in Mudd Hall. Not that I mind--it's my comfort level.

This is my desk. The chair kind of blocks my jerry-rigged corner keyboard set up. The keyboard is half on the dest, and half on the file cabinet, which is two inches lower, thus propped on an old student directory. The final touch is a pad of post it notes under one corner to keep it from wobbling.

Mudd Hall

2011-05-31T22:48:00.000-07:00

As promised, the building where I work. Pretty, right?

The library kind of reminds me of Hogwarts.

Interesting story if you are from Tallahassee, and are familiar with Werkmeister Hall--the most Harry Potter-esque room at Florida State University--you might notice a similar aesthetic. This might be because, before coming to FSU, Professor Werkmeister was the chair of the USC Philosophy department for many years.

My New Job

2011-05-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

My new job is Administrative Assistant I for the Philosophy Department at the University of Southern California.

A couple days after I started, one of the doctoral students came in to make some copies and asked, "Are you the new secretary?"

I experienced a split second on disconnect--like this "secretary" was someone I hadn't met yet, and then it clicked.

"Yes," I said.

I tend to make fun of the twisty things we do with language to make ourselves feel better about stuff, but at the same time, I totally fall for it. And I'm not sure what it is that is slightly demeaning about the word secretary, except maybe that it seems feminized, while assistant is androgynous. Like stewardess and flight attendant. Like soldier and troop. No, I guess that last one is a little different.

Anyway, my new job as an administrative assistant is fine. Benign. And it has health insurance. It doesn't really pay our bills, but it will cover some of them. I don't feel knotted with anxiety on the drive in, as I have with other jobs. The people are nice and the work is within the limits of my willingness and ability. It's also in a really pretty building. I took some pictures, just for you. Coming soon.

The main drawbacks to the job are that it requires a fair amount of sitting, and a fair amount of sitting in front of a computer screen. So as a writer, I have to really wrestle with myself to embark on another shift of sitting in front of a computer screen at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it's not what myself wants to do, really. What myself seems to want to do at the end of the day is go to the gym and read YA novels on the elliptical machines, or curl up and eat bean burritos and chocolate ice-cream in bed. Tonight, myself lost a few beans, so if you come to my house and you see the brown streaks on the sheets, it's not poop stains, it's just residuals from self-comforting behaviors that don't necessarily imply depression.

The Ants of Winter

2011-05-27T20:44:00.000-07:00

The grasshopper's summer of my Spelunking School education has come to an end. There were caps and gowns and such, apparently. I didn't attend the final festivities for a variety of barely considered (until now) reasons:

1) the same reason that I didn't "walk" last year, when I also had the option, which is that even though I am fond--and I mean genuinely affectionate--toward my fellow graduates, in general large celebrations where people hug and take lots of pictures together tend to leave me feeling alienated. When I see other people celebrating together, I feel that they have somehow gotten to know and love each other more than I have with anyone in the program, and they look happier than I feel. It makes me feel inadequately happy. This also happens at parties. Usually at parties, if I can't make an excuse and go home, I make an effort to smile a lot and get my picture taken with arms entwined with other smiling people, and I think on Facebook it looks pretty convincing, but basically it makes me feel I'm a little deader inside than other people, although maybe it's just that I'm sober. Still, I am appreciative of ritual, and will often put myself through celebratory rites if it is free--by which I mean it only costs me time and self-esteem.

2) Spelunking Graduation was not free: cap and gown rental was $75 dollars. Yes, that's a rental. And no, you can't keep the cap. You can keep the keepsake tassel. I considered just wearing my high-school graduation gown, which I believe was $12 for purchase, but it was black, and the spelunking gowns were some other color. My last semester of education was really satisfactory--the kind of semester I could have really been effusive about had it occurred a little earlier in my six semester career--but sadly it was too late to dislodge the little seed of bitterness in my heart. And the $75 piece of polyester that one was supposed to respect as much, and pay as much for, as a higher quality material, was just a little too emblematic of my whole educational experience. I couldn't swallow it. I promised myself I was going to have a party later this summer, and that the $75 could buy the first several bottles of alcohol.

3) I was at work at my NEW JOB.

There Will Be Blog...

2011-05-11T07:33:00.001-07:00

Will there?

March 8, San Jose: International Day of the Woman

2011-03-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

The plan, extracted from H during the long dinner last night, is for him to come by the hotel on his way to CENAC around 11 or 12. There, I will calmly work with technology and rehearse in the space for a couple hours before the start of the workshop. I’m still translating like crazy—a process which requires internet, so not only am I not surprised when H doesn’t appear at 11 or 12, I’m not disappointed either. But I know I’ll have to get myself there by 2PM, so at 1:15 I print my notes in the hotel lobby and ask for directions to CENAC.

Once there, I realize it is the same cultural center I came to with Tattiana and Micheala the other day—I just hadn’t known the acronym. I find H racing around an open lobby, A few of Megan’s pictures have been propped along a piece of molding on the wall, and Megan and Michaela are standing near them looking perplexed.

“Ah Indy!” H says, and before I can ask any questions he pushes me to Vali and a woman I hadn’t yet met, who seems to work for the center. “You need to listen to what she says,” he tells me, and runs off in the direction of the attached theatre.

The woman then tearfully tells Vali how much she enjoyed the last night’s performance, and how much it meant to her. It is touching, rather personal, and completely awkward for me to be listening to, as it has nothing to do with me.

I sidle away and find Horacio again. “Where should I be?”

“I have a situation, he says, stressing the last word.”

He speaks to another woman, who leads me out of the lobby and up some stairs. She show me my “room”—an open air area lunch area with round cement tables and benches. No projector. No whiteboard. Either would be difficult, understandably, since there are no walls.

I explain to the woman about the DVD player and the whiteboard. She sees another woman and talks to her. The three of us wander and end up at an office called “VideoTeca.” That sound promising, but it is locked and empty. We go to another office to enquire, and are informed that the lady who works there has just returned. I don’t know how the person in the second office knows this, but we go back, and indeed the employee is in her little office.

Upon hearing what I need, she turns and pulls open a sliding door behind her, revealing a room with rows of chair, and a projector hanging from the ceiling. Perfect.

“Whiteboard?” I ask hopefully.

She thinks then points to a stack of boards in the office, one of which is a white board.

It has no mounting or stand, so I pull a table over the wall, prop it up and start playing with the AV equipment. Only one of the remote controls has batteries, so it takes some swapping, but both my DVD’s play. Things are definitely looking up.

I arrange my notes, and write the title of the lecture and my name on the board, and wait for my participants to arrive.

No one.

At 2:30, I wonder if my location has been passed back to Horacio and Amber. I’d heard H tell Amber she should announce to the incoming people where the workshops were, but the area below is rather chaotic—how will they know to approach her? Does she have a sign of some sort?

I go down to investigate and found H on stage talking to the half-shell amphitheatre about international day of the woman. He sees me and calls me to the stage. He made a big deal of introducing me, says something about workshops and then says some other things in Spanish as I stand awkwardly on the stage. Blah blah Spanish blah. Then he shoves the microphone in my face. I have no idea what would make sense to say since I’m not sure what he’s just said, but figure it can’t help to tell people where the workshop is,

“En la oficina de videoteca en Segundo piso.” I supply. I hand the microphone back. If he expects me to say anything inspirational about the spirit of the wild woman, it’s not going to happen.

He adds “En vente minutos.” Twenty minutes.

So we’re starting at three, now. That’s not bad.

I’m trying to figure out the best way to sneak off stage when he turns to me and asks in English… “Do you want to do a workshop on auto-care?”

He has mentioned this before—and I thinks he means self-care. But I’m not exactly sure what that means. He had at one point asked if if I would have coffee with two other cancer survivors while I was here, to which I of course said, yes, but I haven’t prepared in any way to give a workshop—and I haven’t translated any statements about nutrition, juicing and exercise. Plus, at this moment, I’m supposed to be giving the workshop I have been preparing for over a month. My eyes narrow. “When and where would that be?”

He shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

He resumes talking to the audience and I stalk off the stage, not caring if it’s timed with anything he’s saying. I find Amber. She’s too busy rushing around doing multiple tasks to be announcing anything to anyone. I ran into Runcel, the production designer. He is from Costa Rica, but has lived for ten years in German, and has traveled from Germany for the festival. He tells me that this morning he traveled to a distant suburb for one of his workshops only to have H call him after he had already arrived to say that there were no participants.

“Here is Costa Rica, I know the chances for anything are only fifty-fifty,” he gesture with his hands to show the uncertainty, “Still, it is disappointing… Maybe you could make some signs.” I corral poor Amber and we make a couple of signs, to put at the CENAC entrance and the door of the Videoteca office, but in my heart, I’ve already given up.

But then, at 3 o clock, a woman actually showed up! Thrilling. I chat with her and Amber—whom Horacio has sent to be my translator, more because she’s here than because she’s equipped for the job—but that’s okay. Her presence is comforting. I’m ready. My video clips are cued, my translation is passable, and now apparently, I will have a class as well.

Fifteen minutes pass. No one else arrives.

Feeling sorry for the woman who has been waiting, I get started. I ask my first question: “Why do we go to the movies?”

My one woman audience blows me away with her thoughtful answer. She talks about seeing other worlds, and other people’s lives and learning about humanity. When I launched into structure, she is super-intelligent. Amber seems interested too. After another fifteen minutes, another three women wander in, as well as a photographer who seems to be listening. I show them the first sequence of Legally Blonde, and everyone laughs and seems to be enjoying themselves. For a few, brief, shining moments, it’s like a real workshop. But after half and hour, the three women have to go—we’d given no indication how long this workshop would be. I talk until after 4:30 with my remaining two participants until the woman had to go, and then it’s over.

March 7, 2011 - San Jose

2011-03-28T09:29:00.000-07:00

Monday morning--the day of the "big gala," I wake early to make a trip to the nearest ICE office. Pronounced “ee-say,” the letters are an acronym for I’m not sure what, but they are the people who handle both telecommunications and electricity. The address I’ve found on the internet turns out to be outdated, but the new location is also within in walking distance. My research has indicated it will be fairly simple to buy a sim card with pre-paid minutes if I have an unlocked GSM phone, and this happily turns out to be true. By nine-thirty I have a local phone number and a hundred minutes, and am feeling very productive and super-satisfied with myself for having bought the phone on E-bay before I left the states.

I make my way to the theatre--which is a gorgeous old building.

I walk back past the stage, where lights are being focused, and downstairs to find the production office --a printer and a lap-top computer set up in one of the dressing rooms. I’m introduced to Silvia—who does indeed speak very good English.

“So I hear you are my translator for my workshop.”

She looks at me blankly. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow at two.”

“I thought I had to do something else then, I’ll check with Horacio.”

She runs out—she’s carrying a clipboard and seems to have a lot on her plate. Although I've been a little worried before, this is the point at which I start to suspect for real—that the whole idea of translator might fall through. That’s too heavy to think about so I turn my attention to Michaela, who H has assigned to make signs for each of the dressing rooms. He wants each one to have a little phrase that speaks to the performer, like “you ride the spirit of woman.” He waves his hands around as he says this, and people nod. I wonder if I'm just conservative or not in tune with my feminine side that these things sound rather vacant, but I nod too and say I'll help with the English speaking groups from from Norway and Nashville.

Before noon, H and I walk to my hotel, where I pick up my bag and take it to Hotel Presidente. The lobby is full of women and girls who have just arrived on the bus from the CaribbeanI see my friend Rachel, who I know from L.A. and ask if I can put my bags in their room—which is fine with her, except that the rooms aren’t ready yet.

The various groups of women who were traveling together scatter to eat and rehearse. I decide to hang out in the lobby. I have a feeling if I go back to the theatre I’ll get swept up in whatever project needed doing—which normally I’d be happy about, but I think I need to try an experiment: I take my first set of bullet points for my lecture and type full paragraphs. Then I translate the document with Google Translate and take a look.

Not too bad!

Not great though either—pronouns are wrong and “plot” is translated to parcelo. On intuition I looked the word up in my battered 20-year old dictionary. It refers to a plot of land, not a story plot.

I have my work cut out for me. But I can tell that it’s much superior to anything I’ll be able to say on my own if I walk into the lecture room and there is no one to translate. If there is a translator however, this will be a huge waste of time, and doing this will take all the time I was hoping to use to rehearse the English version. Sigh. Am I making the right decision? I never know. But my fear of debaucle is greater than aspirations for greatness. I start typing.

Another woman waits with me in the lobby. Megan is a photographer from Canada. Like me, she’s come as an individual, and since she doesn’t belong with any group and H is so busy, seems a little lost in the shuffle. I ask if she’s staying at the hotel, and she says she doesn’t know. She stayed at H’s house when she first arrive, and her clothes are there. She mentions that H had said that she wouldn’t have to pay for anything in Costa Rica—a familiar story!—and that she is already running short of funds. I say that Tattiana had said something about all the women going to her place that night, so maybe she’s with us.

I take her to a corner soda and show her the magic of the cheap and plentiful casado. Toward we walk to theatre so she can organize how to get her things at H’s house. Michaela is still struggling at the computer—she’s now been tasked formatting the programs for the evening’s show—even as the guy from the print shop waits at the door! A side skill that comes with learning to write for years on end, is some facility with Microsoft Word. I manage to quickly make two sloppy columns so that the sponsor logos will fit—which of course is the main concern, and we print it up.

For reasons I don’t understand, even though she’s been staying with Tattiana, Michaela’s clothes are also at H’s, so she and Megan are going there to change. I walk them back as far as the hotel, trying to understand the plans for the evening. I know that Michaela and a woman named Coral have to be back in town early in the next morning, and the evening will end late, and with luggage in two different places and nobody with a car—how are we all going to Tattiana’s and getting back in the morning? She laughs and says she thinks that probably no one will be at Tattiana’s that night, that she and Megan will probably stay with H again, and maybe I can too.

This all seems very hypothetical, so when I get to the hotel room, I offer to pay Rachel and her roommate Gabrielle, to share with them, and they generously agree.

As we dress for the evening, Rachel gives me a brief overview of the weekend. Apparently many of the scheduled workshops that were supposed to happen in the Caribbean never occurred. The women and their charges—fourteen teenage girls-- had waited around through multiple schedule changes instead of enjoying the beach, only to have many of the events disappear entirely. The glamorous Caribbean Feast that had been promised turned out to be more chicken and rice and beans, and the intercultural exchange between the girls and the girls of the village was attended by only the two daughters of the hotel owner, rather sullen and sulking—forced into it at the last minute. H had been supposed accompany them, but since he was busy at the last minute he had put Coral—a girl from Spain, who spoke both Spanish and English, but who had only been in the country for a few days, in charge of the expedition, which had put her in the awkward position of having to deal with money issues for the group that were supposed to have been worked out previously. Thus there was some question as to whether they wanted to return to the same place after the festival. Rachel and Gabi rush out, as their girls were performing, and I stay behind to dress more leisurely and, of course, add a few pages to my lecture for the next day.

That night the show somehow actually begins at 8:10, a reasonable start time for theatre anywhere. There are a series of little speeches by community figures and politicians of which I understand little, but the performances are all entertaining and well received by the audience. Although the all 900 seats are by no means filled, the attendance is reasonable. The performance is a success.

Afterwards there is no talk of a gala party on the stage, but H invites me to go with the performers went to a restaurant. I sit upstairs with the dancers from Norway, and get to know them a little. Tine is a red-head who splits her time between New York and Oslo. Nina is sharp-tongued and attractive, and gives me the impression that she has things she would rather be doing than hanging out with me, but I like her nonetheless. H arrives and beneficently announces that our meals were paid for, although alcoholic drinks. For the moment, after the long evening, our large table is more concerned with just having glasses of water. After 20 minutes for water, Nina says she would like to go get the water herself. This is something I often feel, but rarely am brave enough to do on my own, so I offer to help, and we go down the kitchen and demand glasses of water from the bemused workers, which we carry to the dozen people table upstairs. The restaurant seems not prepared for our party, and it takes an hour for the food to arrive. By the time it does we are exhausted, and have exhausted our conversation as well. When we’ve eaten, we don’t wait for a bill, but descend the stairs, and check in with the cashier as we exit. I hadn’t had alcohol, but thought I should offer to pay for food since the offer might just have been for the performers. The man at the register waves his arm, and says it applies to everyone. Great. I ‘m on my way to bed and sleep. But as we stand on the street, looking for a taxi at 1a.m. We see Megan and Micheala looking despondent. H has just told them they could not stay at his place after all, and they would need to get a hotel. I’m stunned. Since I’m already staying on the hospitality of others, I can’t invite them to our room myself—but I tell them to talk to Rachel and Gabi, who I’m sure will say yes. The others are waiting in the cab, so I go with them, feeling bad for the two women.

Rachel returns to our room later and says that the three women had decided to get a room, so that’s good. But she has another shocking report. After the meal, Horacio told Vali, who is in charge of Rachel’s group, that she was expected to pay for herself and the girls. “But I had heard the meals were paid for,” she’d said.

“No, you have a budget, you pay what is in your budget.”

Since Vali had already bought dinner for the girls before the show, and had only come to the restaurant because she thought it was a celebration, this put her over budget, and made everyone feel weird to boot.

March 6, 2011--San Jose

2011-03-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

“Tomorrow we make you a tour of San Jose. Amber will come by for you in the morning.”

This is what H said to me yesterday.

“What time is morning? Like ten. Or eleven?”

“Yes.”

I awake and immediately set to work on my presentation notes, worried that the day will be consumed by the tour and meetings. At 10 AM I look up and realize I’m hungry. Will the woman named Amber show up right at 10? I decide this is unlikely and it is safe to risk a short foray to find something to eat, though I leave a message with the reception desk on my way out. The hotel is located on a pedestrian mall, and I walk for several bl

ocks but find nothing but fast food. Not wanting a breakfast burrito from Subway or Burger King, I settled for a pastery from the bakery at a small supermarket. It has a flakey crust and a only a disappointing dab of chicken inside, but it will tide me over.

Back in my room, 11AM comes and goes. So does 12 PM. I decide to give up, and go out on my own. But as I pass the reception desk,the attendant holds out a note: Tattiana and Micheala are coming for me. One is wearing a red shirt. I should meet them at the Plaza Cultural at 12:30.

The Plaza Cultural is 30 seconds from my hotel, so I arrive early. I decide to try my luck at an ATM with my bank card I got from the USC credit union at USC when I signed up three years ago. I’ve been thinking of possible passwords I might have chosen—and hoping the ATM won’t eat my card if they are all wrong. But then, as I am nestled in the glass alcove, away from the traffic, looking at the glowing screen, another number pops into my mind.

I punch it in.

Yes!

I pull out some cash, and feeling flush and still hungry, I make my way to a storefront alongside the Plaza and order a churro. I’m told I have to order four, so I do, thinking I can share them with my new friends when they arrive.

12:30. After a few minutes, I approach two women , one of whom is wearing a red blouse, and I ask if they are Tattiana and Michaela. They look at me as if I am crazy. I guess they are not. A cel phone would make all of this easier, but I don’t have one yet. I ask someone to help me make a call at a bank of pay phones. Tattiana answers and tells me to wait a little longer—until 1 PM.

1:15. They arrive. Tattiana has hair dyed a magenta highlighted red, Micheala is smaller and darker with a different accent. They are starving, says Tattiana, and they need to go to the bank. I earn some points by producing the two now-cool churros and a few basic Spanish sentences.

“Oh you speak some Spanish, I had no idea what we were going to do.”

It soon becomes obvious that there is more that I can’t understand than what I can, but we manage well enough—standing in line at the bank, I find out that Michaela is from Argentina and has been staying at Tattiana’s house, which seems to be in a suburb of the city, a place she describes as “more rural, more beautiful,” than San Jose. Last night they stayed up talking late into the night like a couple of “brujas” they tell me, laughing. Tattiana has a teenage son, and I glean that he is at home, and she doesn’t like to leave him home alone. I can’t figure out when and how today’s plans of touring me around have come to include her. How did Amber at 10 AM become Tattiana at 1 PM? I have a feeling it has to do with H, and that, although friendly, Tattiana has been a bit inconvenienced by having to come into the city on the bus in the middle of her Sunday to entertain me. It is only a feeling though. My Spanish is not good enough to phrase these questions in a way that won’t elicit polite lies. She finds us a Soda—a restaurant that serves typical Costa Rican food—not fancy, and not expensive. We each order a Casado, which means “married” and is a combination of foods—in this case, beans, rice, egg, salad, cooked bananas and a drink. I’m very happy with the choice, and vow to eat at these places as often as possible during my stay. During lunch, Tattiana’s phone rings. She answers, rolls her eyes, talks fast. I intuit that the caller is H, she tells him we are having lunch, and where. I can only guess at what is happening, but I think he is worried about the place, whether it is not nice enough, and that maybe she is saying that we are where she can afford to eat.

As we leave the restaurant, Tattiana asks me how long I am to stay at the hotel, and I tell here that H has said I will be moving the next day, but I don’t know where. She says I should come and stay at her place. She wants all the girls to come to her place. It will be crowded, because the house is very small, but outside is more beautiful than here, and it would be fun to have all the girls together. I have no idea what other girls she is referring to, but I say that sounds fine, and am relieved to have plan.

After lunch we walk to a Cultural Center, where there seems to be some kind of festival happening. We listen to a man sing for awhile. The topic of his songs seems to be political. They are lost on me. After a little while Tattiana escapes to have a cigarette. I look at Michaela. “Are you happy, or bored?” I asked. She chuckled and nods her head. We leave and wander through a nearby park. Tattiana says we are meeting with H at 5:30, after which she and Michaela will head home and H and I will go to dinner with some other people. It’s only 4 PM. I wonder if they are just babysitting, until I can be handed off. If so, I’d prefer to I return to the hotel, nap, and meet H on my own later. But I don’t know how to ask any questions that contain the word “if”. This requires a conditional verb, and I don’t know any. Eventually I gather, however, that they need to talk to H as well— many plans have not been articulated yet.

At a café, w meet with H and production designer name Runcel—he is Costa Rican, but has spent the last ten years working in Germany. They talk about make-up workshops as part of the feminist objective—this talk is fast and vehement, and I don’t understand the who is on what side of the controversy. Finally, the conversation turns our the upcoming plans. H says my workshop on the 9^th at the university has not come through, but that he is still trying to put another location together for this day. I am secretly relieved, and tell him the second workshop can be just three hours, like the previous day. He says there are six reservations so far for my workshop on the 8^th which will be at a place called CENAC at 2PM. I ask, as I do every time the opportunity arises, if a projector and a whiteboard have been arranged.

Yes, yes, no worries.

And, I ask, if it’s true that someone named Coral will translate?

H thinks, Coral might have a workshop of her own. There is another girl, Silvia, perfect English—who might be better.

Tattiana tells Horacio about her idea for the women to stay at her place, which spurs more conversation that I can’t understand—about buses and taxis and transporting our luggage. H explains to me that the café we are in is attached to the Teatro Salazar, which is where everyone will be tomorrow, setting up for the big show that will be followed by a gala party on the stage afterwards. Tomorrow I will check out of my hotel, and take my bags for the day to another hotel, which is where the group who has been to the Caribbean will be staying. He says I can leave the bags with one of the rooms of girls, get dressed there in the afternoon for the gala, and later move to where I will be staying. He says he thinks maybe staying with Tattiana is not the best, because her place is small and far away, but he does not volunteer any ideas for another place. Our group breaks up, and once again, dinner seems to be forgotten. I am tired, so not sad, although I am again a little hungry. Maybe that will be my state for much of this trip. Since I don’t have to come up with additional material, I devote my last waking hours to piecing together an employment history for my job application. Before I fall asleep, I check Facebook, and am surprised to see a post from H saying that our International Meeting in the Caribbean might have to be canceled, because people can’t come. This seems sad, since I have scheduled five extra days to accommodate the trip and the meeting, and I was looking forward to it, but for the moment I am too tired to contemplate it. I know that everything can change tomorrow.

March 5, Guanacaste-San Jose.

2011-03-24T00:40:00.000-07:00

When I wake in the morning, the air is warm and close because I turned off the A.C. before I went to sleep. I breathe, feeling the lump of anxiety in my chest that has been my morning companion for the past several weeks. It’s not the same as fear, but the weight of things I must do seems to settle on me in the night and be sitting on me when I wake in the morning. Some people have cats who sit on their chests. I have anxiety.

On the way to the bus station I make chit-chat with the driver. He tells me my Spanish is good, my accent is good, that I am good looking, and do I have a husband? I say yes—but thank you for the nice compliments. I ask—Cumplido—is that the right word? He laughs, says they call it, piropo. It is like flattery. And it is apparently (from my experience, and according to the guide books) customary among Costa Rican men. These comments are not serious propositions, but little compliments. When I get to the bus station, I look up the word and it translates as “semi-precious jewels” and this seems perfect. Little verbal baubles cast in one's direction. Conversations with too many of these always feel a little undignified to me, but I tend to get through them by saying "muy amable, muy generoso," very kind, very generous, and the like. I don't really particularly think so, but then, they don't really think I am beautiful or really worth pursuing, so I figure that makes us a little bit even.

The station is an area with a roof but no walls. The landscape around us is dusty and dry. I’m happy to get a direct ticket, leaving in just a couple hours. I go to the little concession counter and order my first food, gallo pinto…a typical breakfast of eggs with rice and beans.

“Con natillo?” the woman asks.

I can’t remember what this is. “Uh, sure.”

When I see it I remembered, it is a kind of cream, and definitely makes the dry-ish beans and rice and egg more palatable.

As I sit at a little table, with my lap-top, eating my gallo pinto, I experience my first real sense of anticipation. I’m still nervous—my hands are shaking a little as I eat-- but I am beginning to feel a sense of adventure, and the freedom that comes from being on my own, which I enjoy when I travel. I always miss Paul, like Linus misses his blanket—but in some situations, a blanket can turn out to be a wet one. Paul would not like gallo pinto very much, nor the fact that it is hot here, and there is no air-conditioning in the open air station. Whether the bus will have AC will be a matter of luck.

Luck is with me, and there is AC, but so little leg room that I can’t even cross my ankles. But every seat is full, so I feel lucky to be on the bus at all. My seatmate is a man who overseas construction projects, and for a year has been making the four hour commute each week. A young woman a few seats behind us and across the aisle. Plump, dressed in a tube top and shorts, her only traveling possession seems to be a purple cel phone. She smiles at me almost the whole trip. Whenever I glance back, she is looking at me. Sometimes she says to me “God walks with you.” I don’t know if this is a blessing, or an observation. The other people around look away as if a little embarrassed. With the language barrier it is hard to tell if she might be a mentally impaired, or if she is begging, and that is what makes people stiffen.

The four hours is long, but at last I debark at the station in San Jose. I look for someone who looks like they might be looking for me, but no one appears. A Caribbean Costa Rican man who speaks English keeps me company as go out in front of the station to wait. The young woman from the bus comes and stands there too. She tells the man she needs to get to the other bus station. He points to a taxi.

“I don’t have any money.” she says.”

“Well, then you can’t pay for a taxi,” he says.

She keeps standing there.

The man lends me his phone and I call Horacio. He picks up, “Indy! Where are you?”

I’m a little miffed, since I am exactly where he told me to be. “At the bus station, in front.”

“Which bus station?”

“Pulmitan.”

“Ah, Pulmitan! I’ll be right there. Ten minutes.”

I thank the man, and report that my friend will arrive in ten minutes. I give the young woman 2000 colones—about four bucks. She takes it without comment and climbs into a cab.

Each time a cab passes, the man, still standing next to me, asks, “Is that him? Is that your friend/” even though nothing close to ten minutes has passed. I am remembering how it is in Costa Rica—I am constantly in a state of confusion, about whether any given male is protective, or predatory—or both. What will this man do if Horacio doesn’t show up? Recommend a hotel where a friend works? Ask me out?

I don’t find out, as Horacio does show up, looking much the same as I remembered—long curly black hair and a face like Sartre, and the energy of an excited six year old. He is in a cab, which we take to the hotel, where he asks me to pay the driver. As I check into the hotel, he tells me the price is $50 dollars a night, but that I might have to change hotels on Monday because that’s when the discount ends. I haven’t seen him for a long time, I don’t want to quibble over money on the first day, so I don’t question this.

He tells me there is plan for dinner, but also, before that, he wants to take me to a café to meet R, who he explains is an ex-girlfriend, but whom he is living with still. He says they are trying to decide what to do next in the relationship. He says this as if he hopes they are getting back together. When I see her, she is beautiful. And because it is my experience, from know him, that he falls in love with beautiful women who don’t fall in love with him—at least for very long—I assume this is the situation…but I could be wrong.

We end up at Spoon, which I remember from my last visit. Something about the place annoys me. I think the English name, and the prices seem a little pretentious. I wonder if he really likes it, or if he’s chosen it as the closest thing to my comfort zone as an American. H and R have food and coffees, and I have water, and though I’m hungry, I just order a small dish, since this is just coffee, and we have plans for dinner. I present my gifts, of peanut butter and chocolate. I had asked Horacio what I could bring and he had mentioned these items. I see now, they were both with R in mind. She seems happy with them.

As we walked up to the cashier, H says, “I invited you,” indicating he wants to pay. I don’t argue.

But at the register he pulls out a fifty dollar bill—American. The cashier says something I don’t catch—they can’t change such big bill perhaps, or maybe they don’t take dollars, although a large number of businesses do. H turns to me “Do you have colones?

“How bout I put it on my credit card?”

“Yes, that would be best,”

The bill comes to about $30 dollars. With the hotel, taxi, breakfast and woman on the bus, I’ve spent almost $100 in one day, and we haven’t been to dinner yet. At this rate, a ten-day trip is going to make our next credit card statement one that will make me cringe, especially since this is also our first month without Paul's paycheck.

Later, in my room, I’m rather relieved when H calls to say it would be better to stay in this evening. And although I’m not thrilled about the cost, I enjoy having my own room. I’ve started my period and, I’m still working on my presentation, so I’m grateful for the privacy, and the freedom the room allows. My friend T calls me on skype, and I carry my laptop out to the balcony to show him all the people downtown on a Saturday night. We have a nice chat, and despite the noise from the street below, I don’t have any problem falling asleep.

March 4, 2011--Guanacaste

2011-03-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

MARCH 4, 2011

Guanacaste

There are two international airports in Costa Rica. One is just outside the capital city of San Jose, and the other is in the province of Guanacaste, located in the northwest, along the Pacific coast. The terrain in Guanacaste is dryer than other parts of Costa Rica—it’s not tropical. In fact, areas of it remind one of the southwest United States, with brownish plains and tall grasses.

The airport is adjacent to the city of Liberia, an hour from the beach towns that I would love to visit, but with my travel plans, do not have time to appreciate, since I arrive late, and will be taking a bus in the morning. After my bank card fiasco, I spend my first night at Hotel Santa Ana, five minutes from the airport, and five from the Pulmitan bus station in Costa Rica. My friend, Horacio, has made the reservation, but left the bill to me. I've agreed to come and do these workshops on a volunteer basis, and to cover my own travel, but with the explicit understanding that once I arrive in the country, the festival can take care of all my expenses in terms of meals and places to sleep, and transport to the beach on the Caribbean Coast for a meeting the participants will have after the festival is over. Lately however, though he has not contradicted this statement directly, he seems to be talking about discounted rates for things, as though I will be picking up the tab. I've prepared for this to happen some, but I’m hoping it won’t be too much. I’m assuming that when I get to San Jose tomorrow, he will have arranged some kind of home stay, although any details about arrangements have been hard-won, and even then, limited. (For instance, I know "someone" will meet me at the San Jose bus station tomorrow afternoon, but I don’t know who, as Horacio is apparently on the Caribbean coast with some of the other participants, doing so pre-festival activities. I'm hoping the person will have a sign.)

So I pay the bill with my credit card, proprietress hands me a key, and a remote for the air conditioner. I settle in to my room. It has a desk, which is nice, and wi-fi, which I love. I take a small shower, then step outside my room for a few minutes to enjoy the post-heat-of-the-day balmy breezes, before retiring to my room to make a stab at the long job application. I make it to the prompt where they asked me to recount, in backwards order, every job I’ve ever held, and give the names and phone numbers of my supervisors. As a freelancer and frequent part-timer, my “supervisors” could run to the dozens, more, if you counted my time in Chicago. Many of the companies where I worked are defunct, or my supervisors left long ago. And even if my supervisors were still at those places, most large companies only allow prospective employers to speak to human resources (or the payroll company) who are only allowed to verify dates of employment and not make other comments. So overall, this listing an exercise of will—a will that I don’t quite have in me this night...

Instead I turn to my notes for my upcoming workshops. I have my two DVDs full of clips safely tucked into the backpack I plan to carry tomorrow--sometimes luggage migrates from under the bus, so these most important items will stay with me. I think I have my concepts laid out for the three-hour version of the class on Monday, but am nervous about the five-hour class I’m supposed to do the following day (I'm nervous about it all, of course, but have more nervousness about the longer class). I was initially thinking of doing writing exercises, but I’ve realized that while I can lecture with the aid of a translator, going over exercises written in another language is not the best idea! So I’m considering adding some more concepts, and showing longer clips of film for the second class. Or, in truth, plans can be slippery down here, so possibly I can just announce that the workshop will be shorter, and no one will bat an eye.

Costa Rica--Present Day

2011-03-16T09:39:00.000-07:00

I've been working on putting to paper a blow-by-blow daily account of my trip for personal use...but as I near 7000 words, I wonder if it will just be boring for readers of this blog. Still deciding.

In the meantime, just just the facts, Ma'am.

My first attempt at teaching screenplay structural elements went fine from my end--so that was a relief. I was really prepared, and even had an imperfect translated version to work from in case there was not a translator. My fancy custom-made DVDs looked good, and I had come up with pretty good transitions for my subject matter.

From the end that was not mine, the workshop--and the entire series of workshops that might was part of--was disastrous. A mountain of misinformation and non-information meant that some workshops never happened, and those that did were ill-attended (as was mine)...

So, incredibly long story short--it was pretty fucked up, but I didn't fuck it up. I spent more time, money and mental resources than I had budgeted, and the results were sub-par, but I also bonded with some talented people from all over the world who were in the same boat. So in the "everything happens for a reason" line of thinking, it remains to be seen what might come of those relationships in the long run.

Costa Rica Flashback Post #2

2011-03-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

October 11, Monday 1999
Santa Elena, Costa Rica

Santa Elena is a small town about five kilometers from Monte Verde Cloud Forest and Reserve. Our bus departed yesterday at 6:30 AM. We arrived five hours later and settled ourselves at Pension Santa Elena. For five bucks per person per night we have a room for three (myself, Moira, Stephanie) with a shared bathroom (heated water!--well, kind of). The place has kind of a nice college dorm feel about it, with a large communal kitchen for cooking, attached to a dining/lobby area with tables for eating, writing, playing cards. This room opens out onto a porch with a couple of hammocks and lounge chairs where you can sit back and enjoy the Pink Floyd emanating from within.
Today we visited a private reserve that plays host to a series of suspension bridges and cable lines known as SKY TREK. We hiked through the forest wearing climbing harnesses and carrying small metal pulleys. At intervals on the tour we would climb towers or steep paths to the cable lines, hook on with our hand pulleys, and zip through the treetops to the other side. The longest cables were about 300 meters long, and 60 meters high, and we traveled at between 25 and 30 kilometers per hour. Propelled by gravity, a heavier person travels faster and further, while a lighter person (or one not so adept and shifting one's body weight) might find oneself stalled before the end, and proceeding hand over hand for the last few feet of the trip (not that that happened to anyone we know ha ha!).
After this adventure Moira and Stephanie made for base camp, but I continued up the mountain with an English couple we had met during our tour. Terry and Alice are father and daughter--she seems about my age--and were good company. They are traveling together through Central America for six months, and each is writing their own account of the trip and their relationship. At the end they hope to compile a book. It was raining even before we began our hike up to Santa Elena reserve. The rains seemed to end as we arrived and began our trail, but this was deceptive as half an hour later we experienced monsoon-like conditions. It was fun, but I fear my boots will be drying for days to come!
In the evenings we entertain ourselves playing cards with a sweet tempered boy named Casey-- the type who would have captured my heart as he came running out of the Fiji house for a game of Ultimate back at Hanover College. In the off-season he is Pension Santa Elena's oldest (duration, not age)occupant. After a little over a week he is as completely comfortable as a stray cat that wanders into your life and simply chooses to stay. He has the face of an angel, framed by shapely sideburns, a stud through his lower lip, (there is another through his tongue)and a shell necklace. He tells us in a monotone Savannah,GA drawl about his favorite DJs and mixers who spin drum-bass, jungle and house. Unlike the cat, Casey would like to leave--his friends have already left for Montezuma, but he is a victim of the country's rather slow money wiring system, and so each day since Friday he's been "waitin' on tha bank." Because he has to conserve his money for the essentials (food, cigarettes and some kind of local moonshine) he has not visited any of the wildlife attractions--he's always right there when we come home. We depart tomorrow before the bank opens and so I won't know how the story ends. I think I will always have this sense of him being here, like an episode of "The Twilite Zone" perpetually sitting on the porch bumming smokes, every day waiting on the bank that never comes.

Costa Rica, 1999-Montezuma (My First Blog)

2011-03-13T06:47:00.000-07:00

Getting ready to leave Costa Rica. It's been an eventful nine days, which I intend to write about today on my four hour bus ride to Liberia. But being here again has caused me to reminisce about my other trips to this country. Back in the day--I wrote emails to a list of friends. I guess I have always been a blogger at heart. Amazingly, some of them are still in the my inbox (attached to replies). I thought I might post a few of them here.

In September of 1999, just after I had left my three year gig working at Mattel, and my sister Moira had recently returned from her years in Spain and India, we went to Costa Rica for a couple of months. Somehow I remember staying in San Jose for a month, and then traveling...but we must have done some traveling at the beginning as well, because this is one of the first dated emails...

Sept 1, 1999 Wednesday
Montezuma Beach

Our travel day, consisting of a taxi, a bus, a ferry, and another bus--was almost 12 hours in length. We passed the time waiting for the ferry in Puntarenas (the port town) with a Canadian guy we met on the bus named Mike. He's just back from spending 3 months on an isolated island doing a study where they tagged wild pigs and then followed them around all day. He seems a bit undershowered, but amicable.
Our room is behind an Italian restaurant named "El Luz Mono" (The Monkeylight). Off season, for a moderate price ($15) we can share a sizable room with a private bath (no hot water of course), and they say they'll bring in a table tomorrow so I can study. Moira says I am a bit of a Princessa, but I don't think she minds the more deluxe accomodations.

Sept 2, 1999 Thursday
Montezuma Beach

Regarding our planned daily schedule. I woke Moira up bright and early this morning; we were in the water by 7am. By 7:07 we were feeling little stings all over. We quickly headed for shore, to find find mosquito bite-like welts all over our bodies. With some resarch we found out that until the water reaches a certain temperature (usually around 9 or 10am) there are "Pulgas del Mar" (Sea Fleas). The welts seem to be subsiding rather quickly, but even so--we'll be swimming warmer waters in the afternoons from now on!

Sept 4, 1999 Saturday

Yesterday we took a snorkeling tour to East Tortuga Island. Due partially to the great amounts of rain, visibility isn't great, but is relatively clear near the rock formations...
...Some technical difficulties with the motor boat on the return leg of the trip. Something with the gears in the steering column. (I got a good first lesson in walkie talkie speak in Spanish). In the end they detached the steering attachment and steered manually from the rudder by wrapping the anchor line around the motor to move it. It made for a bit lengthier and choppier trip but everyone made it back...
...Glad to be back we went to look for food, but were so quickly and aggressively accosted by this guy named Swenn from San Diego who has lived for the last ten years in Japan teaching English "at the University level" (we found all of this out in his first two sentences) that we beat a hasty retreat and splurged on a meal at our home base. El Luz Mono is a fine restaurant, run by Italian expatriates, with whom Moira flirted so successfully that by the end of the meal they were plying us with alcohol filled deserts and free shots until we could take advantage of another table paying their bill to escape into the pouring rain and back to the relative safety of our room.

Sept 5, 1999 Sunday
Still Montezuma

A day trip today to "Cabo Blanco Strict Nature Reserve". The ride was short, even with the small detour to jump the driver's friend's jeep. Having always owned an automatic, I was fascinated to learned you can just tie a rope to a manual vehicle, put it in gear and pull it a short way and it starts!
The reserve is very interesting, we saw various monkeys, birds, butterflies (there are so many here) and birds. The trails were incredibly muddy, at times we were sinking to above our ankles (I am loving those Tevas you guys).
Mike joined us for the hike. We are finding him less pleasant. He kept picking up insects and then throwing them a bug's mile away from where he found them, then told us this story about the German guy who had so rudely complained when Mike threw a beer can at a dog the night before... by dinner we were avoiding Mike, Swenn, and the Italians. We picked the most remote table at the most remote restaurant (not that remote, there's only about four), but about halfway through Swenn found us and seated himself alone at the adjacent table and proceeded to stare ceaselessly. Too hungry to run,and over Moira's protests, I broke down and invited him over. He's not all bad--just really dysfunctional. We had a nice discussion about fucked up childhoods and life in Japan--but declined to go bar hopping after...It might be time to start thinking about returning to San Jose!

Let the Fun Begin

2011-03-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

Landed in the Liberia airport this evening. (Liberia, Costa Rica, for those who haven't been following.) Beautiful and balmy--the way it is in the evening after a warm day.

It's not super large airport--it's kind of like an open air Burbank airport. Customs is super easy and quick. The plane landed at 8:40PM and by 8:50 PM, I was talking to the guy at the information desk, asking about the ATM machine I had read was at the airport.

"Oh!" he said, as he pointed around the building, "It closes in ten minutes."

Uh-oh. I hadn't done any old fashioned money exchanging or travelers checks before arriving. I raced outside and around the building to get colones. There was a brightly lit room contained the glassed in closet with the ATM...I didn't see much there, but guessed it was a bank? One guy in a uniform--bank security?--saw me and asked for my passport and boarding pass. He looked at my boarding pass, confused, then called over one of the other guys--I realized they thought I was running for a flight. I explained I just needed to use the ATM. They laughed. "What time does it close?"

"A las Diez (ten)"

"No...Nine."

(To me) "Nine or ten."

One of them opened the glass door for me, furthering the impression that he was bank security, but now I think he was just a polite guy who does something else at the airport. (There are a lot of uniforms comprised of white shirts and dark pants here.)

I inserted my bank card and looked at the withdrawal options:

2000 colones,

4000 colones,

10,000 colones,

20,000 colones, and

50,000 colones.

At home I usually pick about the third highest amount, so I picked 10,000 colones. That seems like plenty to start, right?

It came out in one bill.

I worried, would the cab driver be willing to change that? Was it like a hundred dollar bill in the U.S.? Better play it safe, I thought--I'd get some smaller bills, just in case. I re-inserted my card and requested 4000 colones. It came out in two 2000 bills. That's better.

One of the guys in uniform wandered by, and I decided to ask him how much a taxi would be to my Liberia. A website had estimate fifteen bucks, so from the price, I could figure out the exchange rate.

"Diez mil colones," he said.

Wait a minute--was this guy putting me on? Then it started to come back to me--I had seen something about 500 colones being equal to a dollar. So that would be twenty bucks. Thus far I had accumulated $28 worth of colones. My hotel would be $40, and the bus the next day would be $10, and I might want to eat at some point... Twenty-eight bucks wasn't going to cut it. I returned to the machine.

At this point another woman with a back-pack came running up.

"Is it still open?"

"It's actually open 'til ten. Maybe"

"Oh good. Do you have it figured out?" She withdrew 50,000. "It looks like so much."

The guys were hovering around the glass...were they about to lock up? Men in uniforms make me nervous--I always think I'm going to get a ticket. I quickly inserted my card again and withdrew 50,000 as well, as the woman looked at her bills.

"Oh my god, all that is only only three bills!"

I looked at her money. "No, it's five--see those two?"

She flipped over two bills she hadn't noticed on the bottom of the stack, "Oh they're all the same. How much is this worth?"

"Ten thousand is worth twenty bucks, so that's a hundred."

"You're so fast with the math--oh no--your card!"

I hadn't noticed machine had ejecting my bank card. Now it beeped. I turned to take it, just as the machine swallowed it back up.

Shit.

I turned to the uniformed guy near the door and had a conversation in pidgin Spanish that basically went like this.

"Your card is gone? You have to be rapido, or it will take it!"

"Yes, well. What now?"

You have to come back when the guy is here." He pointed to a service window. "Tomorrow."

The other man interjected, "No, Monday."

Then they looked at each other. "No, maybe Tuesday."

When I return to the airport in ten days, they assure me, the guy at the window will still have my bank card.

A very typical situation for me...where I start trying to help out other people before I even know what's happening myself.

Fortunately, the hotel tonight takes credit cards, and tomorrow I'll be with friends, and I think I can probably borrow some money if I need. But I thought that was a pretty amusing tale of my first twenty minutes in Costa Rica.

Tech Withdrawal

2011-03-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

March 4, 2011

I’m pre-writing this offline At the LAX airport. The guy next to me has a Blackberry like mine and it keeps making that little “da-dum” sound that says you have a text.

I’m so jealous.

Because my phone won’t work in Costa Rica, it seemed wiser to leave it at home for the trip, but now, for these few hours at the airport, I feel really un-armed. Plus, since I remembered that I now use my phone as a pocket watch, which means that walking to my gate, I had no idea how much time I had to spare. Here at the gate, I have my laptop out, but no internet access. I keep thinking of little question I need to google, tasks that I that require online access, and emails and calls I haven’t returned.

One of the online tasks waiting for me once I am again connected will be lengthy online job application. Wednesday night a friend from FSU wrote me about an admin assistant job at USC (NOT in the film department). If her boss liked me, they would be willing to wait for me until after graduation in May! It’s as an admin assistant at USC (NOT in the film department). We had an interview yesterday, where I felt a little over-agitated, since that’s the state I live in twenty-four hours before traveling, and probably also overly honest about my doubts, etc. because life transitions—like moving from student to someone with a full time job—are difficult for me. I like lots of time to plan and think and absorb, but somehow opportunities never seem to happen like that. It was either better that I thought though, or my friend really has sway with her boss, because despite any self-sabotage on my part, at the end of the interview he still seemed amenable to hiring me if I can jump through the administrative hoops ASAP.

They’re calling our flight. Off I go.

Paul's Feature Debut

2011-02-26T08:56:00.000-08:00

Paul will be directing his first feature length film in less than a month!

This is a big announcement that doesn't feel quite as big around here because it's been in the works for awhile. Sometime last year, a friend, Sheri, who produces independent films, approached Paul. Her company (comprised of herself and her husband) had a potential deal to make a film and they were looking for the right project to pitch. They asked Paul to come up with a list of log-lines. Paul gave them a list of ideas--his own and also those of some friends he invited to submit. In the end, none of them were what the other party was looking for, but one of them, ROCK JOCKS, intrigued Sheri. She asked Paul to write it to be made for a really low budget, and she would keep an eye out for an opportunity. Paul spent the next several months working on the script, and eventually the opportunity did arise. One thing led to another, and now casting is in progress, a set is being built, and shooting is scheduled to begin on March 17th!

I am super proud and happy for him, and he is excited too--at the same time that he's nervous. No one wants to mess up a big opportunity! He's also been busy and stressed juggling his pre-production duties with his day job, which he finally and reluctantly had to leave this past week in order to devote himself to the film full time. No movie gets made without an alternating series of lucky breaks and heartbreaking setbacks, and this one is no exception--but there are some exciting possibilities being discussed in terms of cast and crew--and as soon as contracts get signed, hopefully I can talk about them here.

Update: Yesterday I got to go see the stage (warehouse) where the production office and sets are both in early stages of assembly, and took this blurry picture on my phone. The pink sign says ROCK JOCKS.

Pre-Writing for Amazon Post

2011-02-19T12:28:00.000-08:00

Wherein I simply say--I am beginning my rewrite today. I have been putting it off. I have been mulling it over. I have been contemplating big changes.

I may or may not (mostly likely not) have all these changes done by the upcoming deadline of february 28, but whatever I have done will constitute the new draft. Exciting, right?

Today I am going to take scenes out, and put different scenes in.

It will be haphazard. But it will be started. I am going to spend at least two hours on this project today, starting at 12:30... ore perhaps slightly after that, since I am writing this post.

I have this new thing I'm doing, since I never know where my days go, can never remember what it is I did all day. It's a rudimentary log where I try to track work that I'm doing on various projects. Do you want to see it? Here:

Time-Lock Post

2011-02-18T01:27:00.001-08:00

"Time Lock" is a Dramatica term. I've never fully embraced Dramatica--mostly because it's confusing to learn, and I like the mode of story analysis that they use at my spelunking school--but I like the term "time lock," which means--roughly--that a tension in the story will have to resolve at a certain point, because there is a deadline: The guy in Strangers on a Train has to get to the psycho who's trying to frame him for murder before sunset, because once it gets dark the psycho can plant his pen (was it a pen?) at the murder site. Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck in Armageddon have a limited amount of time to blow up the asteroid before it enters the earth's atmosphere. Like that.

My time lock for this post is the red bar on the computer battery. Whenever this ends, you will know the battery has run out.

Today I saw two and 3/4 movies and a play. The films were: Mirage, most of Aliens, and The Island. The first was for my thriller class, because it's a thriller, and we screened it in class; the second was for the workshop I'm going to teach, because it's in conjunction with International Day of the Woman, and I want to show a scene where a woman is a bad-ass; and the third was for research, since the new script I'm outlining involves a clone. (The play had no far-reaching motive--a friend invited me and had a free ticket.)

I've notice lately that often when I tell someone I'm writing something with clone, even before I say much about characters or plot, they say, "It sounds like The Island. " or "It sounds like Moon" or 'It sounds like Never Let Me Go."

I'm always happy to hear suggestions of movies that bear some similarity to something I'm working on, or might inform the same subject matter in some way, but I can't help but bristle when the response is too reflexive and dismissive-sounding.

If you say you have a movie whose protagonist is in jail, I will try to refrain from automatically firing a barrage of "It sounds like The Rock," "It sounds like Shawshank Redemption," "It sounds like Cool Hand Luke" at you. This is because I don't think you are a moron, therefore I will listen to two or maybe even three more sentences before jumping to the conclusion that you plan to spend the next six months of your life replicating The Green Mile, just because it was the first film to pop into my head when you said the word "jail."

Time's up... I actually cheated and plugged in just for a minute, just so I could finish that last paragraph. G'night!

UPDATE: 1) Finished Aliens yesterday: Wow, that Paul Reiser character was a TOOL. If someone tried to impregnate me with an alien for profit I would be soooo mad! 2) Working on my Second Act outline--actually, maybe my movie DOES sound like The Island. Damn.

Egypt? A Context Post.

2011-02-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

Due in great part to friends like Laura on the Left, (whose blog you see in the sidebar of this one) and others, my Facebook and Twitter accounts have kept events in Egypt present in my mind for the past few weeks. Perhaps because of this, my ears perk when they discuss it on NPR, and I click the links when my NY Times news alerts appear in my mailbox.

It's easy sometimes to forget how easy it is to completely miss events in any arena--including the world stage, if you aren't a watcher of the news, and it happens that no one in your circle of friends shines a spotlight on it.

Today, after 18 days of protests, demonstrations, and resistance to the authorities who tried to stop them, the people of Egypt have compelled President Mubarek to step down.

I was with a friend who scrolled through her Facebook posts and saw one from a friend that merely said "Egypt!"

My friend looked at, "Egypt?" she asked, confused.

Yes, Egypt.

Costa Rica, Revisions, and Stuff

2011-02-08T08:36:00.000-08:00

A big thing on my mind these days is that I'm traveling to Costa Rica in a few weeks. My friend is organizing some arts-related events for International Women's Day, and he asked me to give a workshop. I'm actually doing two workshops--a half day, and one that is a bit longer. It's the first time I've ever done this, and I am--no big surprise here--feeling quite anxious. I'll feel better once I have a lesson planned truly mapped out. I have a lot of things I want to talk about, but I need to make choices, and I need to have an order of presentation, and I need to understand that I won't be able to jam three years worth of full-time education into 3-5 hours.

My tendency toward anxiety aside, this is a really nice opportunity. I'm at the end of my university education, in the phase where I should be "putting it all together" and I've found that nothing forces me to have to organize my thoughts and metabolize my own learning like having to explain it to someone else. So that's where I'm at now.

The need to explain things often necessitates reading and reviewing of various concepts, and occasionally this leads to small epiphanies. I had one of these last night. I was reviewing the idea of antagonistic forces in a story: There are three locations of these forces that will test the attributes and character of the protagonist: 1) In a person (including anthropomorphized characters in animation!) whose own objectives are counter to that of the protagonist. 2) In an antagonistic or indifferent world--be that a natural world with earthquakes and avalanches, or a societal construct that works against the hopes of the protagonist. 3) Within the protagonist him/herself--when two aspects of a character are at war with each other.

It is this final aspect that has always fascinated me--characters who work against their own wants or needs. "Conflicted" characters... a Dr. Jekyll who wants to pursue his own life and love, and a Mr. Hyde who comes along and sabotages his progress toward that. My fascination is born, no doubt, from a deep empathy for conflicted characters, being one myself. I want to do a lot, and accomplish a lot--but I have a lot of the kind of baggage that makes these things difficult.

My small epiphany had to do with how I conceive of the conflicting desires. Each one needs to be positive unto itself. By that I mean, the phrase is not: I want to speak freely, BUT I'm afraid people won't like me if I do. It is that there are aspects: One wants to speak freely, AND the other desperately wants to be liked. Phrased this way, I can see the two "warring factions" more clearly. In any interaction, there will be a struggle between the part of me that wants to be honest and authentic regardless of the consequences, and the one who wants bask in the approbation of others.

It's possible you don't see the epiphanic aspect of this at all. It is small, and it is something that I am sure I have been told countless times, and at some level knew already--and yet, last night when I thought about it, something clicked. Like a jigsaw puzzle piece that's approximately the right area--you know where it goes--but then you really press it into place and feel it lock in between the other pieces, and how it fits perfectly. The whole experience of it just became a little more solid.

I'm in the midst of conceiving my rewrite for Children of Others, and this is helpful. I've always felt that Skylar is a conflicted character--but readers have had trouble relating to her emotionally, and I'm hoping that rethinking her warring wants can help remedy this.

Amazon Studios, Winners and Collaborators

2011-02-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

At the end of January, the first script winners were announced. Congratulations to Marty Weiss and Richard Stern, as Amazon Studios describes them, a "couple of dads." A little close reading reveals that they are also a couple of film school grads. Weiss has an MFA from NYU, and Stern is "ten years past his film studies." The latter might not actually mean film school, but my point is that it sounds like there has been some concerted study/training. A film student myself, I don't consider that a bad thing. I've put a lot of money and time down on the theory that writing is a craft that requires dedication, discipline, and is vastly helped by good training, whatever form that takes. Perhaps there are those who emerge like Athena--fully formed screenwriters, chock full of wisdom and ready for battle, but I'm sadly not one of those, so the fact that these winners have made choices similar to my own gives support to the idea my choices might have some merit.

On the other hand, part of the implied mythos of the Amazon Studios contest from the beginning was that there are people in the hinterlands with stories unlike any we have seen, and that this new development paradigm would find and open the unwieldy Hollywood gates to them--the online equivalent of finding a Lana Turner at the soda fountain... in Idaho. I'll be keeping half an interested eye out to see if that happens at some point.

The other big news is that Amazon decided to revise their collaboration rules. There was a lot of criticism of the total access for would-be collaborators that was one of the distinguishing characteristics of the original contest, so this move has met with a positive reaction such as this "slightly less terrible" post from John August.

The community itself had also constructed some unofficial collaboration rules inside Amazon-town, and woe unto those who didn't catch on to them fast enough, as in this forum discussion. In general, I think the neighborhood watch team that has emerged (comprised of community members, not Amazon) is pretty even-handed, but the response was on the harsh side for this guy, who did a proof-read and posted it with a note saying that all he’d done was a proof read, only to be accused of adding a “rewrite” as if he was being sneaky or something. The Amazon construction of the site encouraged his actions--but the community constructed code of etiquette was obviously highly discouraging, despite the fact that the Amazon rules were clear that changes had to be significant for any rewriter to garner any of the cash prize.

I currently have two collaborators listed on Children of Others. The first was a very similar situation to the one above. Somebody I didn't know offered up some light edits and attached a note saying he laid no claim to the work. My reaction: I thanked him publicly in my forum for his time and effort. It's less confusing for edit notes to appear on the script-- the whole reason for uploading crappy RTFs instead of PDF was so people could make edits. My second collaborator was somebody trying out some audio software, so again, it's my original work as sound file of some sort. He asked my permission, and I said yes. It has been stated that all versions get read, so it should be impossible for any revision, even a bad one, to torpedo anyone's chances, since an amazing and unadulterated previous version would simply out-perform any sub-par revision attempts. (Of course, it would be nice to think the reason I didn't place this round is because they only sent the sound-file version to the reader, and thus my work was overlooked... but I have to trust, for my own sanity, that there is some kind of system that works better than that.)

In general, I’m fine with the collaboration change. It gives people freedom to choose for themselves, and hey, I'm pro-freedom. Plus, for the most part it the concession was academic, since no one was doing much major rewriting anyway. Philosophically however, I'm a little sad, as I have a certain nostalgia for group murals at parties, where the charm is that you don’t know who’s going to come along and what they’re going to do. There's a certain kind of utopian vision being dismantled here.

My script still has a collaboration setting of "open." Stop by and revise, if you desire. Write something good, so we can win, and split the check!

A final note, I stumbled across this personable blog post by Chris Regan, who was the source of the above forum link (I had not seen it before), and who covers some of the territory that interests me, but that I did not discuss in this post.

Bread and Butter

2011-02-01T01:40:00.000-08:00

One night at a party, a friend and classmate, J, said, "I check your blog every so often, to see what you've been up to. Essentially I just skim through it, saying "Barrington did something on this day, she didn't get anything done on this day. She did something here, she didn't do anything here." Personal posts are the bread and butter of this blog. And it is true, a lot of what occupies my mind is what I'm getting done, versus what I should be getting done. I generally fall short, because I am possessed of very few super-powers, and those that I do have, I haven't discovered yet.

So the truth is, I know I can't do everything. I need to prioritize. But I am not very good at that either. One night Paul and I had a fight, where he said if I really want to be a writer, I should quit reading for pleasure, and writing in my blog, because these things waste my time and energy.

While I was angry with him for saying what he did--angrier than I realized at the moment, and I was pretty upset even in the moment--I also fear that he is right.My friends who have had blogs in the past and left them behind are achieving greater success with their writing, perhaps because they don't divert their energies. Their writing is truly their bread and butter, and making the choice they did might have been committing to that in a way I haven't done yet.

On the other hand, there is part of me that thinks that reading and blogging are the things that are most necessary. I get that screenplays have to be my focus for now because of my particular circumstances, but underneath my low self-esteem, I am audacious enough to think that in time, I will also write other things, articles, short stories, maybe even some longer work. And for now, reading reminds me of what I love, and blogging is the most authentic representation of my life as it passes that I am recording--since I spend little time journaling, even though I think it's important for a writer to do that, too.

Anyway, the pause in my posts has been partially in response to that. I've been feeling too guilty to blog, and yet sad not to be blogging. Blog posts I want to write come into my head, stay only a little while, and then they float out of my head and away. You get a certain amount of time to capture a thought, a feeling, a day in the life, and if you don't do it--it is gone forever.

What are my options? For the moment, what I've come up with the not-amazing solution of still writing in my blog--but writing faster, writing sloppier, and only writing when I've done a sufficient amount of other kinds of writing already in the day. I'm not generally a fan of the "do it all, just do it half-assed" school of thought, but maybe it will be good exercise for me, as speed is an issue for me, and this is a relatively low stakes arena to practice being speedier, even at the cost of a little less finesse, a little less profundity, and a few more typos. You all will forgive me, right?

Ophiuchus, really?

2011-01-21T00:44:00.000-08:00

First Pluto is no longer a planet...and now this:

Throwing much of my pre-teen book collection into irrelevancy, there is a new astrological sign: Ophiuchus. Lots of articles about it--but none of them include advice on how to pronounce it. It's "off-ee-u-kuss," with the strongest emphasis on the "u." I know because I heard Rachel Maddow say it.

Although I'd been hearing rumors and seeing references to the new, 13th astrological sign, I hadn't actually read an article until today, when friend sent it to me with the forwarding note, "your sign has changed." That got me reading. I guess I just thought that even though it was happening, it wouldn't happen to me:

Ophiuchus is my new astrological sign.

It replaces Saggitarius. It always made a lot of sense to me that I was a Saggitarius, as they are known for being honest, even to a fault. I am quite honest--yes, often to a fault--and I wonder if sometimes I felt I had to live up to that aspect of my sign.

But now, I'm a "serpent-bearer." More research needs to be done, to see what characteristics are actually assigned, but for the moment I will say, that finding out that your astrological sign is not what you thought, might, on a very small scale, be like finding out you are adopted. You have this formed identity of who you are, and you are still that person, and yet the conditions by which you were brought into the world are completely different from what you thought.

I am not the only casualty. Other astrological signs have shifted, so that, like Rachel Maddow, some folks who were Aries are now Pisces, etc. I will say, that if my sign had to change, I prefer for it to change to something completely new, about which I have no preconceived notions.

So, uh, what's your sign?