Cheering the Hell Up, Day 18: Laundry Day!

Once a week I get to pretend I'm a guest at the Four Seasons where they give you nice, clean, soft sheets freshly-laundered, every day.

Every Tuesday (or Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Monday, depending) I get to corral all of those musty towels and stinky socks and jeans that could walk themselves to the hamper and with soap and quarters and mechano-magic turn them into puffballs of clean-smelling goodness so that every Wednesday (or Thursday/Friday/Monday/Tuesday, depending) I feel better reaching for a kitchen towel I feel happier slipping on my favorite pair of underwear I feel rich surveying the multiplicity of choice that is my t-shirt drawer.

But the best thing of all about Laundry Day is Laundry Night when, after a long, hot bath or a long, hot shower (depending), I turn off the lights and turn on the ceiling fan and crawl into a bed fitted with clean, soft sheets just like you get at the Four Seasons.

Some people might think it's better at a hotel when someone else does the washing and the folding and the making of the bed.

I say it's probably better to do it yourself.

You appreciate that bed more when you're pretending to be a Four Seasons maid than a Four Seasons guest.

Most of the time, anyway...

xxx c

Photo by Sir Mildred Pierce via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 17: Home, Sweet Home

If you cultivate a true appreciation for your body, it will repay you in vitality.

If you cultivate a true appreciation for your psyche, it will repay you in peace.

If you cultivate a true appreciation for your home, it will repay you in comfort.

Here's to Chez Communicatrix: small enough to keep upkeep inexpensive; crowded enough to remind me to streamline possessions; noisy enough to remind me I'm a part of the human race.

May your home, whatever its size, bring you comfort, joy and infinite possibilities for self-exploration.

xxx c

Photo by koolscatcat via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 16: Peace & quiet is the flip side of childlessness

A former partner used to hammer me on the subject of children and the importance of family with the warning that if I chose not to have the former and spend a lot of time with the latter, I would end up alone, and, by extension, miserable.

While the game is (I hope) far from over, I'm fairly sure he was wrong. There is something to be said for blood being thicker than water, but spending a shitload of Sundays splashing around in the gene pool ain't necessarily the answer to the question of happiness; spending time and effort building relationships built upon a foundation of truth and mutual respect probably is. I live a life resplendent with love, friendship and joy thanks to the many who sign on every day with their heads and hearts, regardless of shared DNA.

Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against children and family; they're just not top priorities for me. Or, if you like, I'm not judging, "I'm just sayin'," as the kids say*.

What has always been top priority for me is seeking truth. For whatever reason, I need copious amounts of alone time to do it, so spawning and/or adopting would be irresponsible. My only regret is that it took me so long to see this and put a name to it. I caused a lot of people unnecessary pain because I was such a clueless doofus. If any of you are reading this now, I apologize.

My wish for everyone is to find the thing that truly makes you tick and run with it. Reorganize your life around it. Make no apologies for it. Make no excuses for staying away from it.

But along with it, consider cultivating an understanding and appreciation for the choices you didn't make, and some understanding for the people who did. If you have questions about how they live their lives, perhaps mull them over to yourself before shouting about it from the rooftops or your AM radio show.

Some of us really need the peace and quiet...

xxx c

*Although having seen the impact of high population on our tiny earth, I'd feel better if some people weren't reproducing with such zeal.

Photo by rbaez via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 15: Sticking a Fork in It

Things you never thought you'd be saying:

The terms of the settlement prevent me from discussing specifics of the case, but the hell is finally over.

Things you have longed to say:

The hell is finally over. Let the grieving begin...

xxx c

Photo by douglucymills via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 12: Abundant abundance

There's good stuff all around if you look for it.

There's rotten stuff all around if you look for it.

If you get enough rest, eat properly (which includes an occasional indulgence), commune a bit with nature here and there, watch your pace (which includes some occasional type-A behavior), love yourself up good and surround yourself with fine people, you have a better chance of seeing the good stuff.

If you deprive your body and soul of the things it needs, you're more likely to take a ride on the RottenCoasterâ„¢.

Right now, there is so much good around me, it's almost overwhelming. Scratch that, it is a bit overwhelming. So I'm taking a few days to pause and reflect and catch up with some of this amazingness the universe has been hurling my way lately. To play catch with the universe, I guess.

I'd better get me a big mitt on the way to the airport...

xxx c

P.S. The universe wants to play ball this weekend in a field with slightly less dependable internet connection; I'll keep you posted where I can...

Image ©2006 ::enrapture::, via Flickr

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 09: Tomato(es)!

Home-grown tomato(es) Home-grown tomato(es) Where would life be without (a) home-grown tomato(es) Only two things that money can't buy And that's true love And (a) home-grown tomato(es)

xxx c

(Sign up here and listen to Guy Clark's 'Home Grown Tomatoes' for FREE up to 25x in a row!)

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 05: Complete one incomplete task, however imperfectly

I have a series of frames in my bathroom. One holds a picture of a glass half-full, a cover from the New Yorker on my mother's birthday the year after she died. Most of the rest of the frames are empty, or hold the "For Display Only" shots of nameless brides and sunlit couples and price tags, not because I am lonely and friendless, but because I was always waiting to find the perfect item to place within them.

Similarly, I had long been in possession of a striking, horizontal frame filled with black-and-white shots of attractive people from the 1940's and 1950's. For at least six years, it has stood propped up against various walls. I almost consigned it to the Goodwill pile a few times but something stopped me: mainly the fact that I am a congenital pack rat, but also the charm of this frame, which I just knew would look perfect when it finally displayed the exact perfect black-and-white shots of my own attractive family members from the 1940's and 1950's.

Then two weeks ago, crisis struck in the form of a video shoot at my apartment. My office area, one of the "locations", was looking very dingy and cluttered and needed some set dressing triage, stat. I cleared a few postcards off of the wall and, on a whim, laid them out on the frame. Not bad, they were sweet, childlike illustrations of animals and worked together thematically. But there were two spaces left.

Over and over in my life, it seems that the right thing will fall in my lap when I least expect it, but only when I am ready for it. Sometimes my guard is down or my spirits are high (same thing, really) and I let that sucker waltz right in; sometimes I have an agenda and the thing couldn't penetrate my well-intentioned defenses with a battering ram.

On this particular day, I was preoccupied enough with my task to get out of my own way. And as my eyes swept the imperfect wall, they lit upon my beautiful calendar by Nikki McClure. I remembered that I'd saved an old one, loving her perfectly imperfect woodcuts too much to dispose of it along with the year (and, yes, being a pack rat).

Sure enough, there were two months with animal scenes which, with a little (gasp) hacking away at their structural integrity, would fit...perfectly.

I've been enjoying the feeling of flow more and more in my life, so much so that I now look both for ways that I might be stopping it and ways of letting more of it in. For me, a huge part of getting with the program is patience, and learning to live in process. But I'm realizing now that a perhaps huger part is letting go of some ideal of perfection. Because some really great things can happen when I'm not busy steering my boat towards the mist-enshrouded, golden shores of the Isle of Perfection. And when I let things just "happen", they tend to unfold in a way that I'd describe as...

Well, perfect.

xxx c

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 03: A cup of tea, a gallon of paint and thou

Some people like brunch of a Sunday. Some people like trips to the park or the beach or someone else's backyard, for a barbeque.

For me, Sunday is best started with tea, followed by a leisurely perusal of a fatty paper, some breakfast à deux, and maybe a bit of a project.

Today's project is Part 2 of painting the decades-old linen closet of My Country House (a.k.a. The BF's), but it could just as well be raking leaves or cleaning out the garage or weeding out my closet to continue participation in the you-to-Goodwill-to-me-to-Goodwill-to-you cycle.

Some rest, some work and, if we are very, very lucky, a great love to do it with...

xxx c

Photo by Corydora via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

Cheering the Hell Up, Day 02: Better Living Through Bad Laundry

When I bought this rug a couple of years ago it was barely off-white and stepping onto it was like warming your feet in the soft, soft wool of sleepy baby sheep.

When I washed it for the first time the colors from the old kitchen rugs I washed it with seeped into it, dyeing it a tea-like color that made me sad until I realized it now matched the color of my towels perfectly and still felt soft soft soft under my tired feet. (What we call a "bonus extra".)

But yesterday I washed it with my new kitchen rugs whose color seeped into it dyeing it a weird, mossy color of green which (quite frankly) looked pretty bilious, at least it did in the laundry room.

Still I dragged it upstairs for one last tromp because even if it was green it was still soft as sleepy baby sheep and you can always close your eyes... right? But to my great surprise with my faded, tea-like towels against my brightly painted toenails it looked...nice.

Really nice.

And it felt like standing in the woods only quieter and softer (and with more reliable running water). So now everytime I go to the bathroom it's like a little trip to a faraway, fairy tale garden where the colors and the textures are just a little bit softer.

Which I guess makes the moral a two-parter:

Keep your eyes open and don't worry if you suck at laundry.

xxx c

Cheering the Hell Up!

Remember when it used to be cheerful around here? Remember when there were funny posts about the Stupid Links That Brought People Here and hi-larious (if swear-filled) rants about The Evil Empire and helpful (if hi-larious) hints about how to get laid (or not) online? When things were light and saucy, even, and every post didn't read like someone shat in my non-SCD-compliant oatmeal that morning? So, okay, I had a few patchy months. That's no reason to be such a whiny Wendy! And yeah, I kinda-sorta want this site to be edumacational in nature. But who's gonna stick around to learn anything if I put them to sleep with a Presby-sermon every...well, at least I don't bore you poor people on a regular basis, just a sketchy, infrequent one.

Enough! Enough, I say!

Conventional wisdom dictates that it takes 21 days to change a habit or instill a new one. I'm committing to change right now, people: only upbeat, happy, tickle-me-Elmo posts each day, every day, for the next three weeks; that's my pledge of quality to you right now.

Imagine the superfun we'll all have together enjoying...

Serendipitous fripperies! Joyous lifehacks! Tasty, EZ-to-make treats! Hot monkey love!

And on that note, I leave you all with part deux of The BF's brilliant, kick-in-the-pantaloons idea for reinvigorating the moribund communicatrix-dot-com, the monkey half of the kitty-monkey equation, in the form of the brilliant, kick-in-the-pantaloons slam poetry gem, "Dance, Monkeys, Dance!"

xxx c

When pain is a pain in the ass

I know that patience is one of my Big Lessons, and I've accepted my Crohn's disease as one of my major teachers. What's been strange about this year, my fourth since onset, is how shockingly intolerant I've been of my sketchy health all of a sudden, after four years of putting up with its vagaries fairly well.

My beloved shrink gave me some good insight into this today. In general, she said, we humans tend to grow more and more intolerant of pain as time goes by. (I realize that this might sound absurdly "duh, hey!", but bear with me.)

You would think, or I thought, anyway, that the longer you'd lived with pain, the more inured to it you'd become. But now I wonder if most of what we get used to is the idea of the pain. With my Crohn's, for example, I long ago got down with the limitations and the grossness from an intellectual perspective: I suffer from exhaustion, weakness and gastrointestinal distress (and my loved ones suffer, too, from the contact high) more than your average, non-Crohn's-afflicted person.

But understanding something and getting down with it are two different things. Pain makes you a little crazy, I'm discovering, pain in all of its forms.

When it's pain that can be allieviated by a change in circumstances, pain can be good; a little mounting pain might finally impel you to get that physical or bolt from a bad relationship just like an accumulation of heat from a flame impels you to pull away your hand.

When it's a pain that's chronic, the process is the same, the pain becomes less and less tolerable with each recurrence, but there's no relief, no escape: just more pain.

There's no real answer to this, but there may be an upside: just knowing how chronic (repeated, unavoidable) pain works on the psyche might help me to be more tolerant and understanding of other people enmeshed in their own version of Crohn's disease. And I'm not just getting all Pollyanna in your face about this: I'll take any help I can get handling road-raged psychos and the rest of the urban-afflicted who seem to be more and more in my face every day.

Who knows? Maybe I can even extend a little of that kindness and understanding towards myself...

xxx c Photo by eddieburns55 via Flickr, used with a Creative Commons license

Wanting something into existence, wanting something else the hell out of it

PART 1: The Wanting In

If you've been following along, reading between the lines (or more specifically, reading the comments), you know that one of the fifty books I'm reading right now is a little tome entitled Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings. Yes, it's a "woo-woo" book; yes, it's a little wobbly in the writing department. And really, it doesn't say anything too earth-shaking, at least, not to someone who's been well-familiarized with the Law of Attraction and spent the last several years learning how to focus on the good instead of the...well, the other.

But reading it does give things a boost in the actualizing-one's-intentions department. It makes sense, really, since the whole magilla basically boils down to what you focus on is what you get. If you look at this from a more scientific standpoint, it's not unlike telling someone to NOT think about a large, white elephant or to point out that there sure are a lot of yellow Hummers on the road today: all that person is going to see on the way home is how many damned yellow Hummers are in the way, and she's going to be thinking about white elephants while she does it.

The extra spin, juice, if you will, that EMYLIW offers is the passionate wanting of something vs. the dry thinking of it. In other words, if you would love a new washing machine, well...LOVE UP THAT WASHING MACHINE!!! Admire it, caress it in your head, feel all the joyous feelings that washing machine will give you. An example: I've been looking for a pair of jeans that fits. (Ladies, you know what I mean: "fits" = "makes my ass look like Jessica Alba's".) This is generally an exercise in frustration, if not futility; even if one is Jessica Alba, one still has to actually try on all of the expensive jeans one's stylist hauls over to one's fabu L.A. pad. And if one is not Jessica Alba, if one is, say, over 40 and cheap as hell, it entails...well, I'll spare you the horrors.

But me? I've read EMYLIW. I'm lovin' up the jeans. I'm thinking about great-looking jeans on my ass and letting it go. I'm looking at other ladies' great-looking jeans on their great-looking asses (my sister has a killer butt) and lovin' them up, too, albeit from a respectful distance, and in my head, only. Oh, wait, I take that back; I actually told a girl at SAKS SFO that her ass looked great in those jeans. Which it did.

But I digress.

So yesterday, I'm walking from the car to a Trader Joe's in the Valley and I see an American Cancer Society Thrift Store. These are usually the worst thrift stores, and I knew this one to be generally overpriced with really uncool stuff. Still, I felt lucky, punk, so I walked in...and found the mirror I've been looking for. And then I found a denim jacket that fit perfectly. And then I found a pair of Ben Sherman jeans, nicely distressed, the perfect waltzing around jeans, for FIVE DOLLARS! I held them up; I put them down. I held them up again. (I hold things up a lot before I will put myself through the agony of trying them on.) I tried them on. They fit perfectly. Perfectly! These stupid jeans in this stupid thrift store I randomly went to because it was between my parking spot and the Trader Joe's in Toluca Lake.

Okay, so I get it. This thing works.

PART 2: The Wanting OUT

So now I am home, typing this. It's 8am. I've been up since 7am. I love the quiet. In general, I love my apartment. It's been a shaky week, health-wise, but still, I am LOVING EVERYTHING UP...ya dig?

Except that for the third day in a row, there is this Cologne Thing happening. As in, at 7:15, like clockwork only with smell, the scent of a thousand European men who have freshly doused themselves in cheap man-cologne is wafting through my window. Or that they shimmied up the drainpipe and tossed a baggie full of cheap man-cologne through the slats of my jalousie windows and it broke on my carpet and now it's like a wall-to-wall sachet of man-cologne badness right under my nose. I mean, it's gag-inducing. I can't figure out why anyone would want to smell like that, much less why someone would want to smell so MUCH like that.

It makes me hate my neighbors, with whom I have enough issues already (noise, poor parking manners, that one dish they make on Slovakian holidays that smells like fried cat shit). It makes me hate Los Angeles. It makes me hate, period, which is not good for the wanting (having bad thoughts = low vibrational energy = attracting the bad stuff).

So tell me, wise ones, what to do? How do I turn this into gold? How do I pull myself out of this low-vibrational minefield and send myself soaring back up into the land of high-vibrational voodoo that nets me great jeans, new headbands and, now that I think of it, really bitchin' parking spaces. Because try as I might, I cannot see the lesson or the gift in this daily morning stink bomb of vomit-inducing cologne.

Other than that I am really, really lovin' up that ceiling fan I had the handyman install three years ago. And that handyman...he was really nice and friendly. He helped me fix up several items around the apartment to make it more liveable. And as I recall, he kind of smelled like...

AUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

xxx c

UPDATE: This is being posted way late b/c the friendly servers at DreamHost (no, I'm not linking b/c ever since I signed up with them they've been NightmareHost, or at least, BadNightsSleepHost) keep crashing. You see? Like attracts like! Again, auuuuuugh! And I'm'a wait to link this post up until the server seems more stable.

Photo by amanky via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

The amazing head-exploding properties of CREATION

Apparently, that murky, fallow period I was bemoaning only weeks ago has passed, because I'm now neck-deep in corn, rushing madly about the fields trying to harvest the fucking stuff.

Part of it is my own doing. I put it out there*, this desire to work towards something new, and the willingness to let go of whatever was no longer serving. So what happened?

That show I was collaborating on that I never could quite get it up for? Turns out my writing partner felt the same way. Buh-bye, #1 & #2; hello, six-month coaching project (which the tax return is financing) designed to get my money-making business(es) off the ground.

I wanted to act again...sort of...I thought...maybe. On cue, THE STRIP rose from the ashes...and crashed to the earth in a fiery wreck four weeks later, just as it dawned on me that maybe it wasn't the acting that was attracting me to acting anymore. Lo and behold, not one but two performance opportunities popped up in the rubble. Ahhh, performance, not acting. Me being me, telling my story, instead of me being (character name here), telling someone else's. So that was what all that climbing up on stage was really about...

I also started putting it out there, literally. For someone who spent the last six years avoiding contact, turning phone calls around via email, holing myself up in my hut for weeks on end, I have been a veritable social butterfly: Parties. Events. Classes. Seminars. SXSW. Last week, I stood up at a college alumni networking event and boldly proclaimed my reason for being there: to help cure me of my introversion. This I did in a hip-length, kelly-green corduroy jacket, shiny high-heeled boots and a black miniskirt (Tanya's, although I let the hem down about five inches). Apparently, not only am I starting to Get It; I'm also getting comfortable with Working It. And when you work it, especially when you work it with a song in your heart, the universe practically bombards you with the things you want.

Which reminds me: those things you ask for? You really do get them. So remember to work clean, kids, and be vewy vewy careful about what you let flit through your head and heart...

xxx c

Photo by Steve Rowell of Underspring Studios, new home of Not A Cornfield and the possibly the greatest neon sign ever fashioned

*I also got my hemoglobin count back up (thank you, chopped liver) and went back on meds. Occasionally, it's about external forces as much as internal ones. Or as my Favorite Ex-Boyfriend likes to say, "Sometimes, two things can be wrong..."

Los Angeles is the world

I've cranked on Los Angeles so much lately that I feel I owe a belated apology to my ex-husband, who was the biggest crank-on-L.A. resident Angeleno I've ever met. His reasons for hating L.A. (superficial, phony, ugly) were different than mine are (traffic, overcrowding, traffic, increasingly ill-tempered drivers and traffic), but the cranking is the same.

Here's the thing: I also love Los Angeles. Love love love it. As in, it's my favorite place I've ever lived. Not just because of the weather (fantastic) and the proximity to ocean/mountains/desert (way close) but because of the sense of wide-open possibility that I imagine there used to be all over this wide, wonderful country we live in. For me, L.A. was the place I could come and be me, whatever the hell that meant, with no apologies. Maybe other people can move to Tulsa or South Beach or Hilo and feel that: for me, it was crunchy-fruity-sprawly-messy Los Angeles.

In the long, slow process of extricating my head from my ass, I'm learning about other things that make my Los Angeles experience so wonderful, namely, the people who keep it running. I don't avail myself of hired domestic services, but I audition in places that do. I eat at restaurants and shop at stores and for the most part thoughtlessly gobble up products and services that are made possible, in whole or in part, by immigrant labor.

Frankly, I can't believe I was so dense for so long. Oh, wait, yes, I can. It's hard to be awake, dammit. It's painful to start the process; it's exhausting and overwhelming and terrifying to stay the course. To be mindful about everything was easier, I think, when there was less to be mindful about, just like history was probably easier to learn when there was less of it.

Or maybe that's where and how to start being mindful: with less. Less house, less stuff, less external noise. Like my friend, Danimus, who woke up his former roommate (and my favorite ex-boyfriend) to the disgustingness of his ways by hiding all but two place settings of the flatware and glassware and dishware, when things are suddenly stripped down to the essentials, when the context is suddenly shifted, we often finally wake up to the mess we've been generating.

Giving up TV last week made me mindful of how much noise it had been generating in my house and, more shamefully, of how much I'd come to depend on it as comfort in certain stressful moments. Similarly, the profound quiet I'm hearing two blocks from what will be the center of the afternoon march on Immigrant Boycott Day speaks louder than all the shouting on either side before it.

I have many opinions on how we should treat each other as human beings and few ideas on how to legislate them. I can't blast those who fret about unfettered immigration because I see their point; I can't support them, because there are human beings involved, and on both sides. On all sides. Sides I haven't even begun to explore yet. As Stephan Faris says in a thought-provoking Salon editorial, this is a global economic issue, not a local one. If I really want to make Los Angeles a better place, I not only have to think about the labor that went into picking that strawberry I'm about to eat, but the global implications of living in a place where such a thing is possible. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, along with a thousand-million ripple actions you may not even be aware of.

The cure for overwhelm?

Tolerance. Kindness. Mindfulness.

Start at any point in the triangle...

xxx c

Photo of my great-grampa, Emil Weinrott (his grandson changed the family name), who emigrated from Russia in the late-19th century to, of all places, Moline, Illinois.

Time is a tool, in both senses of the word

I'm impatient by nature.

My Crohn's recovery, a.k.a. the five months of enforced relaxation it took to stay up eight hours straight without two hours of nap, taught me some patience, but I'm still not even qualified to be a monk, let alone a master.

Every once in awhile, though, I think the universe drops a metaphoric taste of Future You, That Fabulous Pianist at Carnegie Hall!, in between coma-inducing drills of "When the Saints Go Marchin' In", just to keep you going.

About a year ago I sinned, and badly. Inadvertently, but badly. Through my own thoughtlessness and (ahem) haste, I hit "send" on an email with an ill-advised cc recipient; let's call her "Joey". I apologized every way I knew how, and sincerely, I was wrong, wrong, wrong and STUPID, to boot, but for naught. Not only did the email in question hurt Joey's feelings, it set off a spiral of sniping and hiding and stress between Joey and a mutual friend, "Jacquie" (who was incredibly understanding, given the damage).

I'd acted too quickly, and there was nothing I could do to take it back or make it better.

At some point in the ensuing months of guilt-laden living, I was able to stop beating myself up over the deed. Joey and Jacquie had hammered out whatever peace they had between them (I tried to stay out of it) and I was willing to just step aside, since they'd had the primary relationship first. But I hated that Jacquie had to divide herself between me and Joey, and, let's be honest, I hated being hated, however benignly.

And then, a week or so ago, an opportunity presented itself in my head. Call Joey, it said, and see if you can't get her to collaborate on a birthday gift for Jacquie. We're both email types, me and Joey, but I called her, respectfully, and at a time when voice mail would pick up to give her time to process the call, but I reached out in a more intimate way as a way of extending myself I hoped she'd pick up on.

She did, thankfully. We didn't have an overly warm conversation, but it was cordial and a good start. A happy, hopeful start. We spoke of the gift and how to coordinate it, but we talked a bit of ordinary, social things, too. In a roundabout way, I guess we were speaking about hope. And when we hung up, that's just how I felt: not exuberant or triumphant, but hopeful. And grateful.

There's another, much bigger rift in my life I'm dealing with right now as well, but in this case I'm the Joey and they're the communicatrix. It's tricky, because it's a cluster of people, not just one, and they're all at varying levels of growth and understanding. Three of them are surprised that I'm hurt, and can't see their part in it; the other is struggling mightily to, with a kind of patience and grace that is touching.

What's not always easy to see when you're the aggrieved party is that you're half of the equation. This is actually a good thing: it means you have options. There are plenty of AM-talk show hosts who will tell you that right is right and wrong is wrong and the latter can go to hell in a fiery handbasket, but life is rarely that cut and dried, and, frankly, far more delightful if you open yourself to alternate possibilities. My favorite ex-boyfriend and I had to walk through some serious fire before we came out the other side. The ex, let's call him "Trevor", because that's his name and he's been hounding me mercilessly for blog coverage, had committed egregious wrongs, which he ultimately copped to. I had let him, over and over, which I finally took responsibility for. Either one of us would have been perfectly justified to live in Camp Go Fuck Yourself for eternity, but we're both woozy dreamers and somewhere down deep, each of us longed for a loving, mutually-beneficial common ground we couldn't possibly see from the craplands we were mired in. It took three years and a lot of twists and turns to find it. But earlier this week, he and The BF and I sat down to a magnificent, joyous dinner together, because we did The Work.

And because we let time do his.

(And, let's face it, because The BF is the most excellent man on the planet.)

I live more in hope now, albeit not patiently. Right now, I still can't imagine a day when this huge rift in my life will be anything but a painful thing to light upon. But I have many recent blessings to remind me of other, finer possibilities: Trevor, Joey and time.

That tool...

xxx c

Photo: "Waiting for the tide" by {platinum}, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

A smaller footprint, a bigger impact

I think it's a good thing that Earth Day falls hard on the heels of April 15th in this country. Like it or not, that paper trail left by months and months (and months and months) of spending affords one a stark look at one's true politics.

And enlightenment is rarely pleasant. I still remember culling my old, big-time-ad-gal tax returns a few years after I'd left the corporate world. I was by turns mystified and horrified at the profligate spending I managed to justify while high on the Korporate Kool-Aid. I spent how much on dinner...how many nights in a row? Or worse, I gave how little away? Clearly, I am the Asshole of the Universe.

My life is much, much simpler now, but I'm also more awake. (Old people sleep less, you know.) Of course, the more veils lifted from your eyes, the more unavoidable what still needs to be done: the blessing/curse of awareness. There's no turning back, only a weird, muddly phase of running in circles, scratching one's head, figuring out what happens next.

So here are my observations, along with some figuring (I'll spare you the annoying scratching that came in between). Nothing's written in stone: I'm sure more hindsight will point out additional follies and better/stronger/faster opportunities for growth, but it's a start, anyway...

PROBLEM #1. I use way too much gas.

My 2004 Corolla supposedly gets 35 MPG (32 city, 40 highway). Not as bad as SUV Nation, not as good as electric or hybrid. Declining auditions (boo hoo!) and increased work from home (yay!) have gotten my annual mileage down to around 7,000, but The BF drives us around a lot, so I probably still burn up at least 10K miles' worth of fossil fuel: too, too much.

Alas, L.A. is not a walking city. When I can, I run errands in nearby Larchmont (or in Silver Lake when I'm staying at My Country House). But I can't hoof the 10, 20, 50 blocks I used to clock in New York and Chicago because more often than not, my destinations are even farther than that, and public transportation is too slow since the buses (and connecting buses) are caught in the same heinous snarl.

If I were more alert and my fellow Angelenos more considerate, I'd buy a (used) bike and cycle more often. As it is, I get a little nervous just crossing the street. Too many people (especially those from SUV Nation, you know who you are, motherfuckers) blowing through too many red lights.

SOLUTION: Honestly? While co-habitation would shave 40 or so miles off of my weekly log, I think the only way to substantially improve my ecological footprint in this quadrant is to move to a smaller/more navigable burg where I can bike and/or walk and or take public transportation more readily. I'm down with that, although I still have to get The BF on board. (To be fair, if I lived in My Country House, I'd probably find L.A. more liveable, too.)

PROBLEM #2: I spend way too much on television.

This isn't as obvious a "green" issue as burning up petroleum, but there are larger ecological implications to turning over such a substantial portion of my time and entertainment dollar (over $90/month) to canned, passive entertainment. I'm not supporting my local community of artists; I am helping corporate America (and, by extension, all the thoughtless waste and consumption it promotes) to maintain its stranglehold on the world.

On the other hand, it's the best way I know to stay plugged into what mainstream America is doing and thinking. That, and The Sopranos fucking rocks.

SOLUTION: Get rid of one of my cable boxes and dump the premium channels. (After Sopranos is over, of course.) Or figure out an exact thing I could treat myself to with that money which would help me to create, rather than mindlessly consume.

PROBLEM #3: I spend way too much to be fit (especially since I'm not).

Three years ago, I got an incredible deal on my local Gold's Gym. But even at the low, low price of $120/year for my membership, it costs me 60 bucks per workout. Plus I have to drive there. Plus gyms suck major heinie.

SOLUTION: Give myself until renewal to go. If I don't, quit and use free weights at home. And walk more. (See #1.) $120 is $120. Don't flush money down the toilet! Untreated money is bad for the metropolitan water supply!

PROBLEM #4: I spend way too much on groceries.

This one is a little tougher. Since I make virtually all of my own food from scratch, and since my gut is kind of delicate, I spend more both to get quality ingredients and to find things that are appetizing. Believe me, before I got sick with Crohn's, I was dandy-fine with living a tiny-footprint life on brown rice, vegetables and tofu (with the occasional Filet-O-Fish Extra Value Meal and salt-n-vinegar potato chip binge for variety), provided, of course, there was booze, and GOOD booze, at that. (Really, what's the point of drinking shitty liquor? If you need to pass out that badly, hit yourself on the head with a hammer and be done with it.)

When I'm in a flare, I also have a hard time determining what I'll be able to eat. I was doing fine on almost-normal people food when, a few days ago, I fell off the SCD wagon and stuffed my face with three three THREE pieces of bread. Now I'm back to Baby Tummy (sucks) and with a fridge full of undigestible matter like salad, strawberries and members of the onion family.

Besides, making a smaller impact on the earth will probably entail spending a little more for products from sustainable growers. So my food expenditures will likely rise if I start taking all this peak oil stuff seriously.

SOLUTION: Spend more on what I have to, and get back in the habit of going to my local Sunday Farmer's Market.

After all, it's within walking distance...

xxx

c

Not-fat girl*

I do not know what it is like to be fat; we run to the thin side in my family, probably in part due to the subpar assimilation of our diseased digestive tracts (Crohn's is known as a wasting disease, although there are overweight Crohnies out there).

So except for the stares and whispers when I am refugee-thin, I do not know what it is like to be reviled for being a particular size. Mostly, I pass for normal. Especially with creative layering.

But in the three and a half years since I was diagnosed with Crohn's and put myself on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet to help manage it, I think I have learned something of what my brethren on the other end of the weight spectrum go through every day, surrounded by what they know they can't have.

Lately, you see, I dream of bread.

Good, chewy bread with a hearty crust and insane tooth, dragged through a mound of softened butter, garlicky olive oil, salty taramosalata from Athenian Room in Chicago, with an order of Kalamata chicken (oh! the fries!) following hard on its heels and a draft ale from Glascott's next door to wash it all down with.

I long also for sushi, for cupcakes, for a gigantic platter of buttery naan to soak up a plate of vegetable korma. I crave John's-on-Bleecker brick oven pizza, McDonald's Extra Value Meal #9 (with a supersized fountain Coke), mac-'n'-cheese, Mounds bars and marshmallow Peeps. (Especially stale ones.)

What you might not guess is that I also want tabouli and steel-cut oats and quinoa and mostly, oddly, my old-favorite lunch: brown rice with tofu and broccoli. I want all of the things I now know I may never have again, these foods teeming with forbidden sugars and starches and glutens that feed the bugs that eat away at my intestine and steal my health, crumb by crumb.

There is no cheating on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, because as Elaine Gottschall, its major evangalist, always said, in order for the diet to work at all, it must be observed with fanatical adherence. Any trace of sugar or starch translates into food for colonies of bad gut bacteria to thrive. Only after a full year symptom-free, we are supposed to try, if we are the gambling types, reintroducing small amounts of illegals to see how we do.

We do not, apparently, do so well.

I "cheated" on the SCD last year, occasionally at first, ramping up to full-throttle food slut over the holidays. While I'm 99% sure that a course of antibiotics provided the actual tipping point, I know that my own lack of self-care contributed directly to my current sorry condition, just as surely as I know all of those years of Greek omelette-and-fries lunches (preceded by corn muffin and coffee breakfasts and followed by tortilla chip and salsa dinners) contributed to the onset of the disease itself. I feel good when I eat well; I feel bad when I don't. Quod erat demonstrandum, no matter what my G.I. doctor says about food-disease causality.

If I were stronger-willed I could probably, after a long stretch of fanatical adherence to SCD, wing the occasional baddie. But I'm an addict, with an addict's binary decision tree. On or off. Yes or no. In or out.

So now I find myself feeling deprived in a way I never have before, having to figure out how to fill up the hole with something other than what I know would fill it. I realize that somewhere down deep, I always felt deprived; I just got to hide it longer. The fat girl, she knows all about this, I think. We're more alike than I knew, although having walked through the fire, she is probably kinder and less judgmental than I.

She is probably someone you would much rather have dinner with.

I guess this is some of what the Crohn's still has to teach me. First, I learned to be grateful. Now it's time to take a crack at compassion. (Patience, I fear, is an ongoing lesson that is going to take more teachers than some piffling inflammatory bowel disorder to teach me.)

I would rather take the lesson over a freshly-pulled Americano and a slice of apple pie. But I suppose that's why this particular lesson is mine to learn in the first place...

xxx c

*Post title and meditation on food after Judith Moore in her vividly told, gripping memoir, Fat Girl: A True Story. Read a sample here. Read why she wrote it here. Read a real review of it here. Get it here or here. Not pleasant, but highly recommended.

Photo by (lucky, lucky) kandyjaxx via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

On sluts, storytelling, and the dirty, dirty truth

Several things struck me as interesting about my brief turn on stage this past weekend.

First, I'd forgotten how much I love hanging out with actors, as an actor. For the past few years, I've been spending more and more time around actors in other capacities, graphic designer, bartender, butt-in-the-seat support. Most actors are fun and this particular crew is especially fun, since they run to the smart and funny without taking themselves too seriously. They're a generous bunch; while they may grapple individually with the usual neuroses that dog the profession, they are also wonderfully supportive, unlike the dig-me types that cluster at rocket-launching pads like Second City and Groundlings. (And don't get me started on the twisted awfulness that plagues stand-up comedy; five years of trailing The Chief Atheist on the circuit cured me of wanting more comics in my life.)

Second, I was reminded of how much work acting is, at least, the worthwhile kind. Like most things, one's acting generally improves in direct proportion to the amount of time one spends doing it. Sure, some start out better than others; I believe there is a gift for acting just like there is a gift for thinking mathematically or running long distances or just about any skill you can name. But even the great get greater by doing more of it. I was not one of the greats. When I was acting regularly, taking classes, doing four plays a year, I always had to work twice as hard as anyone else on stage to be half as good. It was fine; I accepted it. But after my Crohn's onset, I had to seriously rejigger my energy expenditures column. After running the numbers, it became clear that my ROI on acting couldn't touch my payoff on writing, designing, and other types of creative output.

This is not to say that this weekend's show was a failure; to the contrary, it was a rousing success and a good time was had by all, myself included. But playing an adenoidal tart in platform heels and a wig for five minutes on stage once a week is about all I'm up for anymore. That, and commercials. Both THE STRIP and the :30 spot require short bursts of focus for discrete periods of time.

Also, both are fun. Jesus, when I look back on it, so much of acting was the opposite of fun. It was just work, and difficult work, and not fun work. I hated most of my classes. I hated rehearsing. Most of all, I hate hate hated having to go to the dark, tender spots where the scary things are stored, the places great actors go to naturally. I understood why it was necessary, and wasn't willing to be the kind of actor who skipped this excavation of truth, however painful it was to unearth it. But I wasn't one of the ones who loved it or lived for it.

They do exist, you know. It's a lollapalooza, that realization. When I heard L.A. Jan talk about sitting around her apartment, doing acting exercises for fun, I had a revelation similar to one I'd had at age eight during a particular Sunday mass at Holy Name Cathedral: these other people actually believe in this!

Me? I still believe in telling the truth. I'm fairly sure that's what getting into acting was all about: a means for me to connect to my truth in a way I'd been unable to before. I've been writing since I could hold a pen, but the stories always lacked something: truth, mostly, but also ease. Some of the ease comes with that doing-more-of-it thing, but the larger part, for me, anyway, comes from being grounded in truth.

Now that I've learned what living in the truth feels like, it's getting easier to let go of some of the things that got me here. My insane drive, for example, has ebbed considerably. Ditto my need for praise, love from strangers, and a constant need to be surrounded by drama and action. While I still rail against the time I must, it seems, spend being ill, I've come to enjoy the quiet spaces at least as much as the noisy, active ones. And I recognize that a large part of tiger taming is just tiger aging: we mellow, most of us, with time, trading the gift of urgency for the gift of perspective. Sweet, sweet perspective. Take a look at your high school diary if you don't believe me.

I still love performing (sometimes, and in short bursts). Reading Jonathan Rauch's essay on introversion was a breakthrough moment for me much like that day in church or that moment with L.A. Jan: of course I like getting up in front of large groups of people and holding them in thrall with my words; it's just that I need a really long nap in a quiet place with no people afterwards.

So my future as a truth-teller will likely hold some combination of performance and writing, reflection and spouting off. But it will also, I hope, include brief stretches of me playing a cartoon whore four feet from beer-swilling patrons. THE STRIP may not be about connecting people with their higher truth, but nothing beats it for connecting them with their inner good times. And who couldn't use more fun in their lives?

I mean, hell, even earnest artists have to let their fake hair down every once in awhile...

xxx
c

It was not ever thus

Here's the thing to remember when you have been sick or sad or otherwise sporting the cosmic "kick me, hard" sign on your back for a long, long time: this is not who you are.

You are not this collection of aches and pains that consume your body now. You are not this bundle of anger and fear and despair that you feel you are now. You are not these bills, these woes, these slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. These are things that are happening to you? That's just what they are: things that are happening to you.

Your essence lies deep within, possibly being tested to the limits of its endurance, probably pissed off, but there, at the heart of you, is the heart of you.

Have I been tested? Sure. Yeah. Have the tests been as arduous or lengthy as many of my brethren? Hell, no. For as lousy as my Crohn's has made me feel, I wouldn't trade places with anyone. A-n-y-o-n-e. The devil you know, and all that.

But I forget sometimes, and maybe sometimes you do, too. And sometimes when I forget, there's no one there to remind me: it was not ever thus.

So I will remind you and perhaps, the next time I fall down the well and can't see the light, you will lower down a basket with a snack and a comforting note to remind me: this is not who you are, this wet darkness, but something you're sitting in. Maybe you will even find the right length of rope or somesuch to throw down there so I can climb out.

But mainly, I hope you will be there for me, or whomever needs you in the moment, to make sure I do not forget:

It was not ever thus.

xxx c

Photo by Megro, via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Take good care of yourself, you belong to you

An acting teacher of mine used to get very frustrated with our class from time to time. Since he'd studied under legendary sonofabitch Lee Strasberg, he was very comfortable expressing this frustration, especially in the form of yelling and screaming.

One day, having hit his limit with some slacker inanity or another, actors showing up without the props they needed for their scenes, actors not showing up at all, he launched into us about hard work and commitment. About how we didn't have any, and about how we were kidding ourselves if we thought we were going to slack our way to any kind of real acting talent or real acting career without Doing The Work. And then, lighting on my trembling face, he said: "Of course, those of you who need to hear this won't...and those of you who are already doing all this are beating yourselves up for not doing enough."

My shrink had to give me a refresher course in this yesterday. For some reason, my response to being unable to perform at my usual level of energy and competence (i.e., being sick) is to beat myself up for being unable to perform at my usual level of energy and competence. I was gently reminded that when I am not feeling my pretty best, calling myself "loser" is probably not the thing for getting me back on track. For some other, completely coincidental reason, I wound up with a stack of really depressing (but good!) books recently, and was told in no uncertain terms to put them aside for now, along with other buzzkills such as extensive surfing on peak oil, and take up cheering, coddling things.

The gang war taking place in my intestine pretty much precludes tasty treats, but happy books and magazines and video entertainment are A-OK. The boys and I spent an hour of quality time together today, and, after a soak in the tub with something medium-trashy, I've been capping off my evenings with an inspiring book called The Art of Possibility.

And then sleep. Lots and lots of sleep...perchance some dreaming. About the time when the coddling can again take the form of long trips up the coast and crazy turns on stilts.

xxx c Photo of DELICIOUS cupcake from Clementine by Caroscuro, via Flickr, used with Creative Commons license.