And I slid all the way to work.
December's 7th post
Last night I looked over at my blog archive and noticed that the month of December had a sad, little 6 in parenthesis. Six? Really? Only six, huh.
There it was...a number letting me know just how low my creative reserve actually is.
I decided to start this blog sometime in June. I didn't really get started until August. When I told my parents what I was going to do they had a fit. Dangerous...that's what they kept saying. And before I knew what was happening the fit became a fight and I postponed all plans. Why was the question they kept asking. Why not keep a journal? A diary? Why not just have it be private?
They were all valid questions.
I was an odd child. No denying it. I kissed my bears goodbye whenever I left home and asked them to be good. I held funerals for browning-leaves that fell of the plants when I was dusting (a weekly chore). I spent hours in the hall closet, under the stairs. My childhood was perfection. Bliss. I grew up down the street from my public elementary school. When I got old enough to walk there by myself I would make up stories on the way. Sometimes, I spoke them aloud. Others, I allowed to silently pulse to the push of my white Keds. I used to wake up at six in the morning to get in a good hour of reading before I had to get ready. And in the afternoons when I drove with my mom to downtown Dallas to pick up my brother, I would pass the time engrossed in the Boxcar children adventure. I used to love sick days. It meant more time to read. And if I wasn't reading. I was pretending, play-acting, living in a world of a million make-believe miracles. I tried to keep a journal, but my mind moved faster than my pen and I couldn't sit still long enough to persist--not when I had a play-date in the fort across the street.
As I got older classwork and extracurriculars eclipsed free-time. I stopped reading. Writing became a task relegated to English class. And again I tried with the journal. Not much more success. The things I wrote about seemed so petty, so mundane--so not worth writing about.
And at another point acting took over. It became the greatest of my loves. But I was always aware that my passion for theatre came from my love of literature. My senior year of high school when that passion began to wane, all it took was one reading of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation and I was back, more zealous than ever before.
What I hadn't realized, until started blogging that is, is how much I love shaping words myself. Making my own life tangible--that's what this blog is about. So that ten years from now, twenty, I'll get to show my husband and my children what I was doing in December of '08. So yes, this thing could be private, but thank god it's not, otherwise I'd only write about boys and then spend the rest of the time complaining (mental note: work on that latter thing in everyday life--New Year's Resolution perhaps?). It's the same reason plays are performed for an audience--sometimes we need that outside element--it's a challenge--a call to embrace the best version of ourselves.
So... while I may now feel the pressure to actually write well, since (ghasp) people actually read this--not too many, but just enough--and this leads to a lack of posts all together--I'll work on getting back to celebrating the mundane things (since now I'm mature enough to do this (cough, giggle, giggle))--you know, back to my roots.
And who knows I may even start to write a little bit more about boys?
a list of 10 delicious little secrets
So the lovely shill has given me an award and thus bestowed on me the arduous task of listing 10 very honest things about my oh so secretive life...and since we all know how much I love making lists forgive me if I go beyond 10. does that negate the award?
1. for many years my family had an artificial Christmas tree. what was the catalyst for this decision? well, since you asked... when I was three I was wandering around the backyard and decided to dig up a molasses cookie I had buried there for safe-keeping, weeks before. turns out those things ain't so easy to eat when they've begun the process of fossilization. i started choking, but the parents couldn't hear my cries for help since they were inside fighting over the fresh fir that was shedding all over the living room floor. not to worry, my little fists proved quite effective against the glass window. needless to say it was many years before we ventured back to fresh foliage and to this day no one knows if i was eating the fabled molasses cookie or if it was maybe just a piece of tree bark.
2. for more years than i'd like to admit I thought the response to a sneeze was gablessyou. i didn't understand that it was meant to be God bless you.
3. one time, in high school, i accidentally told a guy i loved him. i didn't mean it that way--it just came out. i just mean it in the you're so funny you make me want to pee my pants and my heart kinda flutters when i see you way. turns out it was a brilliant mistake because he turned out to be something of a jerk.
4. i had my first kiss the day before i graduated high school. we dated for a month before ever confessing to ourselves that that's what we were doing. our first date--we saw Kill Bill Volume II. he liked scooby-doo and phish, and had homie figurines in compromising positions, glued all over the inside of his jeep. he always bowled like a 260. and he had no idea what Juilliard was. he was way too cool for me. and yet he treated me with more respect than any guy i've ever known.
5. the best dream i've ever had involved me being pregnant. it was the most glorious feeling. ever.
6. the only recurring dream i've had involves me leaving my fiancee at the alter. in each dream the man is always someone i know but with whom i have no romantic involvement or feelings. yet the dreams always come when i start to like someone a little too much.
7. i've fallen in love one and a half times. getting over guy #1 is the second hardest thing i've ever had to do (someday maybe i'll admit to the first). and guy #1/2 i knew for a night. but it's the closest thing i've ever experienced to love at first sight, because after that one night i knew guy #1/2 was the actual manifestation of everything i could ever hope for. and for the first time since meeting guy #1, i knew there was someone better out there.
8. i believe in choice. we make choices--countless choices--everyday. we wake up and choose to be happy, to be healthy, honest, trustworthy, a person of integrity--the list goes on and on. i do not believe that we choose to fall in love--if only it was that easy. if we could choose to fall in love, life might be a lot easier. however, i do believe that what we do with the love, once we have it--therein lies the choice. to honor it, to nourish it, to accept it, to rebuke, to systematically stamp it out--those are the choices we make everyday. that's what i should have said when he-who-shall-not-be-named and I had this conversation. instead of sitting there silently and nodding in agreement. i pledge to someday tell him everything. absolutely everything.
9. i believe very strongly in traditions. chief among them...watching The Sound of Music while decorating the Christmas tree. however, i am curious...why do people always watch this movie during the holidays--what does it have to do with it?
10. every once in a while i watch the pbs documentary, chimpanzees: an unnatural history. and every time i see it, it makes me want to give up everything in place of a life helping out a chimps at havens all over the world. (don't know how i left that out--importance of editing)
11. tonight i don't believe in capitalization (of letters that is). not so sure about the other kind either.
I am afraid. Full stop. (Or...the post with lots of ellipses...)
Last year, when I first dared open my eyes to that beast known as the transition into the real word, I confidently said I would be in it for the long haul. I hadn't trained for a sprint, I was going full out--metaphorical marathon runner, I am!
When I say "in it" by "it" I mean the business of acting. Yes, I am an actor. I am loathe to admit this because...well, let's face it...everyone's an actor. And many "actors" are...well, you know...selfish and self-serving and delusional. Not to say that I'm not all these things, in fact, I'm quite sure I am. But I'd like to think that somehow I'm...different (delusional indeed). What I mean is... I don't want to be defined by the profession, or the business. Acting is something I do and I happen to be quite good at it, but I dunno...it's hard. Hard to reconcile the art of it with the grit of the business. And I'm not quite sure I'm ready for the grit of it.
I had coffee with my friend Stephen a few nights ago and I said...Stephen, I'm afraid that deep down I don't really want to be an actor. And do you know what he said to me? He said, No Meg, you're afraid. Full stop. End of story. Fear is fear and it will latch on to any story you're willing to feed it. Fear is in you and you're making up stories to justify it's existence.
Ohhhhhhh....huh. So that's what I've been doing. And upsy-daisy goes my world.
So I'm gonna keep truckin'. Training for that marathon. Stretching my muscles before that internal gun goes off and I leap off the edge of what's known.
So here's to racing along a route we've never before traveled.... ever been to Arches National park in Utah? One of its main draws is "the delicate arch." The path there is not easy. Long, difficult footing, monstrously hot if you travel there in the summer, and seemingly never-ending. But just when you think you'll never get there, just as you're about to give up all together, you turn a corner and there it is. And in that moment you literally swallow you're own heartbeat. I hope the path I'm embarking on is like that. Just like that.
P.S. Image stolen from www.utah.com
Once upon a time I was a waitress. I pray it never again comes to that.
The wind shifted tonight. It began blowing vigorously. It portends my coming day. Ten hours on my feet selling goods at a department store. During training the women kept knocking on the "wooden" (plastic) desk and saying how lucky we all were to have a job. Most people in the room will be earning eight dollars, without commission, and are promised only three weeks worth of work. This hardly constitutes a job. Not in New York anyway. Though one man mentioned he could only work every other day because he had to take care of his mother with cancer. This knocked me down a few pegs. In fact in knocked me off my high horse. Right on my ass. And I sat there thanking my lucky stars for the health of everyone around me.
However, the impending doom of ten hour department store days has driven me to vigorously search Craigslist for a new job. The last time I checked Craigslist, in an effort assuage boredom, I checked the personal ads. Just curious you know. Men seeking women. That's what I clicked on. Turns out most there's a whole host of married men in this city seeking pudgy women who are willing to provide a little companionship for a nice, pudgy lump of cash. I'm gonna keep looking under the job tab, but if worse comes to worse... Well, what can I say, it no longer seems like such a ludicrous option. Oh shush, stop you're guffawing, I was only kidding. Lord knows my going rate is much higher than anyone on Craigslist would be able to afford.
And in an effort to motivate me, and a show of solidarity, my father has begun a nightly "blog"...meaning he emails me every night. Long emails. And in the subject line he always puts Notes from Dad 12/9/08. Tonight's blog was particularly exciting. He sent me a list of all 28 jobs he's had over the course of his storied life. 28 jobs. With descriptions. I thought I'd share of few of my favorites...
1. Cheerful Christmas cards salesman--in 5th grade to earn enough money to buy my own desk to do homework instead of at the kitchen table
2. Window washer--for my grandfather every Easter with my brother
4. Lawnboy--Employed my Christian Brothers who probably hoped I would have a religious calling
6. Coat checker--my coat was stolen when the college kids stormed the coat check because I was too slow in dispensing the coats
14. Factory machine operator --In Westchester ghetto factory (his words, not mine)
22. Market researcher interviewer--worked for future wife (that's my mom; I didn't know this and it makes me giggle)
23. Clerk to lawyer in Queens who worked taxi cab accident claims--Only lasted three days and was not paid
And he walked 5 miles, in the snow, to school every morning (it doesn't says this, but you know it's implied)
He then ends his "blog" with the following note: I would be glad to answer any and all questions you might have about any of these income earning opportunities
Personally, I want to know more about the Westchester ghetto....
Or maybe I can first ask about bringing back my very first business venture: Gift wrapping. I used to slave away in my room as the holiday season approached. And bear in mind, I'm about as good at wrapping gifts as I am skilled in the kitchen. Maybe I've improved over the years. And the cost of paper has surely gone up...so what do you think $50 dollars a package?