MOVE ON

Stephen Sondheim from Sunday In The Park With George
*this is how I feel

Stop worrying where you're going, move on
If you can know where you're going, you've gone
Just keep moving on.

I chose, and my world was shaken--so what?
The choice may have been mistaken
but choosing was not.
You have to move on.

Look at what you want,
Not at where you are,
Not at what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me:
Opened up my eyes
Taught me how to see
Notice every tree!
Understand the light!
Concentrate on now!
I want to move on . . .
I want to explore the light.
I want to know how to get through
through to something new--
Something of my own!

Move on!
Move on!

Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision . . .
they usually do!
You keep moving on.
Look at what you want,
Not at what you are
Not at what you'll be
Look at all the things you gave to me.

See what's in my eyes, And the color of my hair,
and the way it catches light.
And the care, and the feeling
And the light, moving on!

We've always belonged together.
We will always belong together!
Just keep moving on.

Anything you do, let it come from you--
then it will be new.
Give us more to see.

War Within

I woke up this morning and recognized that I have been at war with myself lately. Let me speak on this. The world is confused. Markets crumbling. People losing their life's work. We are at war(s). It makes perfect sense that because the collective, global energy, the current that connects bigger thoughts is so far from united, loving and generous right now, that that would bleed into each of us, individually. Wall Street, Main Street...my street. My spirit is in conflict. Where to turn? What to do? The adult in me battling the inner child. The social you-should-bes tackling the what-do-i-want-to-bes. Little wars raging on inside offering me sleepless nights, dark thoughts and a bucket of fear. My own lightness fighting my own darkness. My big laugh working hard to out-sound the little voices of discord.

Two houses away from me was a fire. A fire that engulfed a home. The home of a sweet 70 something man. Just him. 70 and solo...in a house that caught flames. The house is gone. So is the last 20 years of his photography. He bikes around the neighborhood now...lost, alone, scared. I stop to talk with him. I combed my drawers and closets yesterday and have put together a wardrobe for him. I hope the clothes fit. I hope he likes them. Would be cool to see him in a Clash t-shirt (can't believe I am giving it away...but on the other hand I need to...I need to give away more and more to make room for less and less...make sense?)

I had a beautiful talk with someone yesterday. Someone I have always been enamored of. And she had read some of this blog and it reflected things she has been thinking, feeling, living as well. And we got off the phone and I wanted to write 400 new posts on Happyonthepainfulroad. That was my greedy voice talking. I thought "Ahh, this blog has peaked another person's interest...let me write millions of words so my blog seems bigger...better." Then I remembered what the person on the other end of the line had been saying to me in regards to this universal conversation we all seem to be having...she said "stay authentic. that is the golden path." UMMMM...BRILLIANT. I started this blog because I needed to. I needed to share my truth and heart. I have never written a word on this blog to show off (first time in my life really...where I have done something artistic out of true pureness) so I shant start phoning it in now.

Poem sent to me from Sharon

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-Derek Walcott

choices

I was in boston, new york city, scarsdale and boston again this week. Perhaps its the weather, the cleansing of Fall making its way, but am in a choice conundrum. I can see living in all of the places I visited this week. I am a state of super heightened senses right now. Sensory overload really. I'm drowning in possibility. I want to swim to the shore.

For the first time in 10 years I don't know what I want. I know I want my family. I want happiness. I want to be proud of what I'm doing. But I know nothing else these days.

I spent quality time with people I love...in scarsdale, in nyc, in boston. I spend quality time with people I love in los angeles. Pockets of pieces of my life. Maybe that is this sinking, excited feeling...the tapestry of my life is scattered in many beautiful places. Where to go? What to do?

I don't know. I really don't know. I'm in one long summersault right now.

basking

anyone out there want to bask? bask in the glow of things you have accomplished? not ego basking. more like take-a-beat-basking. vacation. little time off. a moment to reflect and pat yourself on the back. on the bask.

i want to. i am really needing a proper time out. someone said to me last week that they are so tired of running on the wheel. they would like to get off the wheel and figure out what the hell they want, where they want to go, who they want to be.

i like that metaphor. the wheel. i feel i have been on the wheel for so long now. too afraid to jump off it fully for fear i would lose my position. what position? is there such a thing?

there are many things i want to do now or next. so many that i need a hotel room by an ocean to ponder the options and pick one. because i have not taken a BREAK i feel consumed by my the abundant option of roads to choose from.

how do we get off the wheel? how if we need to pay the bills and keep up. when do we get to checkout for a respite?

i want to bask. in the glow of it all.

Round Tabling on Hardwood Floors

We sat on a hardwood floor. The air conditioning was perfect. I have a thing for great air conditioning. Reminds me of stone floors in Florida. When I was a kid. When the kids would all be on the floor laughing. Great, crisp, central air. Can't beat it. Well, open windows with an ocean breeze can beat it.

Hardwood floor. A group of friends. This group does not gather together very often. We are six people, navigating the waters and we meet up every so often for a game night. We play celebrity. Cut the paper up, write the names down and jump in.

Some of us went outside. sat under the night sky. Under the trees. Talked about SUCCESS. What it means? What we think it means? Why we seem to never think we have arrived. Or that we always need more. Or that we are not enough. Sounds whiny, but we think it right? Spend so much time thinking about the MORE we need, we seem hardpressed to embrace the WHAT we have, what we are.

Inside the talk was about "there are things you know, things you don't know and things you don't know you don't know." read that line a few times. let's get back to each other. it is a big one.

A simple night. A location. A potluck of snacks. A home made game. And conversation. A super genius cocktail that is.

It feels so good to be around love. You can get out of your head. Get into your heart. Community is essential.

Oh, we talked of the planet, the world. How we are all feeling these lightning bolts of energy. The Palin (all 6 of us wrote her name for celebrity...connectedness, i think so)

The times we are in are heartistically tricky. we really need more game nights. potlucking gatherings of conversation. we need to feel one with each other. now more than ever.

bob dylan

saw bob dylan at the bowl in santa barbara. he did not play Buckets Of Rain or To Ramona (my favorite songs in the world) but he was there and he was in a white hat and an army suit of sorts. Saw his motorcycle leaning on a rail by the entrance. he zips in and wheels out. drives by night to a next stop, or home. his equipment lands on some flatbed and he lands in the wind, whirring down highways and bending up oceansides. he did not really look at the audience much. he did not extend his words much. but he was there. right there. the guy i have always wanted to see. the poet i have been idolizing my whole life.

i am glad i had never seen him before. glad i saw him now. glad i have never thought of meeting him. never have wanted to meet him. just want to observe and absorb his work, like paintings in a museum...or better yet, discs in a player.

slept in santa barbara. inspired. woke at 6 am and promptly hit the 101 heading back to l.a.

it rained. buckets of rain...on the drive back. the ocean held fog. i held hope. bob dylan. hope. change the world. you can. i can. i am.

BEEN TOO LONG

My friend Desi reminded me in an email yesterday that you "shouldn't have a blog if you're not going to post." True dat, Desi, true dat.

Truth is, I did not realize how much time had passed between my last post and this one. Did not realize because I've been consumed with living my life. I remember feeling this way when I was a kid. I loved taking photographs. I had my camera with me everywhere, at all times. Then one day I tired of putting the lense in front of my moments. It distracted me from being in the moment. I was trying to capture it instead of live it. I tend to get very black and white at first. As time passes, the gray shows itself and I become it. In fact, I've become quite gray these days. Things seem to be less impactful on my heart, spirit, mind. In a good way. I am not on anti-feeling meds, although I think they are worthy for times of need. I am just sinking into my skin a bit more. Floating through it a bit more. I wake up nights and see my parents faces. I shutter at the thought of them getting older. I have pangs of scare and distance. I want to be near everyone I love all the time.

I'm happy to know that things don't have to work out. If they don't that means that you have to journey down another road. Perhaps that road will ultimately return you to your first path (as it is with roads, they tend to cross at the darndest of places.)

In the last week I saw Jessica Golden's one woman show (that I directed) A LIGHT IN THE ADDICT, shine in a small theater in Hollywood. For Jessica I was thrilled to see her art rise to a new place. To see her take a challenge and knock it out, walk through some angst and fly above it. For me, I was stoked to see that my confidence in directing is real. I want to do it, I have a vision for it, I put myself out there to go for it and it happened. Will I get better at it? God only hopes. But don't we just keep on getting better at all of it...if we do it. Talk a little less...do a little more. Being in action is the antidote for apathy. On the heels of A LIGHT IN THE ADDICT, I wrote a tiny short film. I called up my producing partner, Phil, had a meeting of the minds. Then boom..we got our great actors. Shot the short. Phil edited it until the wee hours in the morning. The next day it was posted on line. Within hours we were getting some really great responses. We made it for the need to and love of making it. The good responses are cherries. Tasty cherries that really do, all ego aside...or shit, all ego included, make the artist feel good.

Go for it. Life...all of it...go for it...Aim for the moon because if you fall at least you will be hanging amongst the stars...

Below is J.K. Rowling's commencement speech to Harvard University...speaks wizardous volumes...


FROM J.K. ROWLING

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination
JUNE 5, 2008
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of
Text as prepared follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I th ought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.
You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.
Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.
I have come up with20two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.
These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.
Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.
I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.
They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.
I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would=2 0never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the capric e of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.
However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.
Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Given a time mach ine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revel ation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.
Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.
Every day of my working week in my early 20 s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.
And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.
Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.
Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.
Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted=2 0to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.
That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it i s, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Britney Spears and my Mom

I really do not understand what has happened here. A woman is stalked everyday by hundreds of people. Chased. And no police stop it. There are no laws against it? If my sister was being stalked and chased she could call the cops and they would come to her rescue.

We have been watching this woman unravel for a year...perhaps longer. It is so heartbreaking. No more or less than anyone going through a struggle, however i can write this and share this because we all know her.

It is horrifying. She is someone's daughter. How have her parents not kidnapped her and saved her. Mine would.

And we watch. It is on CNN. It is everywhere. What are they interested in? Rent Grey Gardens to watch crazy. Of course everyone is crumbling. Artists are collapsing. We are in a tornado filled with vultures...evil vultures pecking at human beings.

Don't you want to reach into the tv and grab the girl. Punch the photographers. Bottom feeders. Seriously, I ask very seriously, how is any of this legal? To hunt people and surround them. It's gang rape. A stampede. It is so upsetting.

I am sadly glued to the CNN special about Britney Spears right now. Sadly because I am contributing to the madness. However, my heart breaks from this. I am not curious about her demise, I am pained about her moment.

My mom sent this to me today. I think it relates.

WORRY
Is there a magic cutoff period when
offspring become accountable for their own
actions? Is there a wonderful moment when
parents can become detached spectators in
the lives of their children and shrug, "It's
their life," and feel nothing?

When I was in my twenties, I stood in a hospital

corridor waiting for doctors to put a few
stitches in my daughter's head. I asked, "When do
you stop worrying?" The nurse said,
"when they get out of the accident stage." My
Dad just smiled faintly and said nothing.
When I was in my thirties, I sat on a little
chair in a classroom and heard how one of my
children talked incessantly, disrupted the class,
and was headed for a career making
license plates. As if to read my mind, a teacher
said, "Don't worry, they all go through
this stage and then you can sit back, relax and
enjoy them." My dad just smiled
faintly and said nothing.
When I was in my forties, I spent a lifetime
waiting for the phone to ring, the cars to come
home, the front door to open. A friend said,
"They're trying to find themselves. Don't worry,
in a few years, you can stop worrying. They'll be
adults." My dad just smiled faintly
and said nothing.
By the time I was 50, I was sick & tired of being
vulnerable. I was still worrying over my
children, but there was a new wrinkle. There
was nothing I could do about it. My
Dad just smiled faintly and said nothing. I
continued to anguish over their failures, be
tormented by their frustrations and absorbed in
their disappointments.

My friends said that when my kids got married I
could stop worrying and lead my own
life. I wanted to believe that, but I was
haunted by my dad's warm smile and his
occasional, "You look pale. Are you al l right?
call me the minute you get home. Are

you depressed about something?"

Can it be that parents are sentenced to a

lifetime of worry? Is concern for one another
handed down like a torch to blaze the trail of
human frailties and the fears of the
unknown? Is concern a curse or is it a virtue
that elevates us to the highest form of life?

One of my children became quite irritable

recently, saying to me, "Where were you? I've been
calling for 3 days, and no one answered I was worried."

I smiled a warm smile.
The torch has been passed.

Wrap Yourself Around...

So much is so sad. I know we are all sad about the passing of such a gifted, genuinely cool actor.

I was talking with an old friend a year ago. We were reminiscing about our history together. About the group of friends we once dined with, laughed with, took photo booth pictures with, made mix cds for, had drinks with, traveled with, stayed in hotels and houses and guest rooms with. A group that we just did everything and anything with. And the years come rolling in and life intervenes and changes things and us and it. And we mourn the change, the loss of it. We are nostalgic for it...even now. We flip through the photo albums and recall. We looked so young, so beautiful. We remember it being pure and simple and uncomplicated. It likely was not so pure, had its complexities and was undoubtedly terribly complicated but from the distance we can make it just beautiful...which is a good thing...i prefer it that way...even if it is not the full story, not the full truth...i choose, more often than not, to extract the good and hold that for the bad is too painful and in truth, not nearly as worthy of memory as the good.

Anyway, in my discussion a year ago with this old friend they said to me this:

"I wish i knew the storm that was coming. The storm that would blow us all in different directions. Had I known of it, I would have thrown my arms around us all, and held as tight as I possibly could, and never let go."

So yes, things are sad right now. And we are all upset and reflective about our own experiences, pasts, futures, goals. The questions of WHAT IS LIFE ALL ABOUT are swirling in my head. WHAT MATTERS? WHAT IS SUCCESS? If this whole journey is so very fragile (which it is) then what, what are we doing? Happy? Content? Filled? Inspired? Good things to think about over this rainy, california weekend.

go wrap your arms around someone...and hold on really, really tight.

QUOTE

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but BURN, BURN, BURN, like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars..."
-Jack Kerouac

My Sundance Files

My first Sundance experience that I want to share takes place on main street at the music cafe where I watched my friend, my brilliant friend, Quincy Coleman, sing her songs to a parka-ed, boot-ed crowd of sundancers.

She was, as always, amazing. Beautiful, pure. How is she not a superstar I wondered?! How?

She will be, that I have always believed. She should have already been, i still often say. But if you reading do not know her name, that's odd to me. She is the real deal. How does it all land out for the driven, talented folks.

My uncle, a doctor, said to me a while ago: "I went to medical school. It was hard. often wanted to leave. Was depressed sometimes, happy sometimes. But I trucked through. I became a surgeon. from that day on, graduation papers in hand, i was a surgeon. When you become "famous" or known for your art or gainfully employed you will be just that. so try, as hard as it is, to enjoy this journey. one day, you can look back on it and remember that between gigs you were bussing tables or delivering food or substitute teaching."

Check out Quincy Coleman. Google her. Buy her two cds. The first "Also Known As Mary" is a spiritual, introspective look at what we all think and feel. The second "Come Closer" is a powerful, feet on the ground journey through horns and ridiculously superb vocals.

We are artists. With dreams and drive. Trying to make it happen. We want to change the world, as cheeky as that sounds, we do. We want people to get along and things to be better. We know we have a voice and we want that voice to be heard. It is a journey. Being happy on the painful road is a task, a lesson everyday, a beautiful, fucked up journey.

Just A Thought From Denise To Jen To Me

If you want to know what your life looks like, look at your thoughts. If you don't like what you see, then change the way you think about life.

Most of us are stuck in thoughts of fear, disappointment, anger, and regret. We recycle the same stinkin' thinkin' again and again and again. It feels so suffocating after a while, doesn't it?

Today, air your mind out. Open the window and let the breeze come through. Stick your head out. See those people over there? They are potential new friends. Go talk to them. See that Help Wanted sign? That’s your new career. Walk in and submit an application.

Allow new, happy, optimistic thoughts to take over for a change.

Fulfill It Up

Many years ago, someone who makes their career guiding others in all aspects of life, told me that I had to fulfill my experience with someone in order for it not to show up for me again.

I had someone in my life who I started feeling very un-settled around. They seemed to be self serving and positiony (example: I introduced this person to everyone I loved most and within days this person was going out to dinner with "my people" without ever telling me...one of those)

Anyway, i felt very Talented Mr. Ripley-ed by this person. And then I was told that I had too fulfill that person or "kind of person" so as not to ever attract that into my life again.

The sentiment made sense but I did not put it into practice until very recently. I get it now.

You have to really view the whole experience...why you wanted them in your life, what attracted you to them, what in me needed that kind of a person. Then, when years later, i could answer those questions truthfully, I could fulfill it and no longer attract it or rather be far more discerning. And today, because I have "fulfilled" that kind of Ripley experience, I see it a mile away and steer clear. Basically, I have not had anyone steal my phone book, credit card, identity since. Know what I mean or if you are in a rush just say Jean (Jeannnn....do you know what I mean...go ahead, say it now, say Jean...it is a great meal replacement for 'Do you know what I mean)

Meditate before Mediate

I am learning. All the time. And it is exhausting.

Sometimes, I envy the ones who just glide, unaffected, apathetic. But I can't be them. I care so much. I love deeply. I feel it all. If you are upset, I want to fix it. Ofcourse, I don't want anyone to be mad at me. I don't want to hurt your feelings or make you feel left out. I often fuck up, and do both of those things. I am, however, open to repairing. Open to apologizing. Open to making it work better the next time.

I build projects from the ground up. I have an idea, I make some phone calls, assemble a great team and together we make great tv shows, plays, movies. For someone like me, who never liked being on the soccer team (I did love the oranges at half time but that was about it) making teams for artistic endeavors is so rewarding. But, in the arts, you have passionate, sensitive people. You also have ego and lots of it. And then there is the matter of Credit and allocating it properly and honoring it properly. Who gets what and why? Who did what?

The lines get blurry, often. And when you are the one building the team, you often take on the role of Head Counselor, Principal, Executive Producer. I am getting better at that job, but it is still difficult for me. I DON'T WANT ANYONE TO BE UPSET OR HURT. I WANT EVERYONE TO BE HAPPY.

But that has come at a price. And I am at fault. Sure the old cliches "can't make everyone happy all the time"...(what are other ones?)

Because I have this instinct to quickly fix, or fixly quick if you will, I have often made the little problem bigger. I listen to everyone, and I hear everyone, and I can relate to everyone's point of view. That is all well and good, however, I tend to stop listening to myself, hearing my point of view. I don't like that. It feels sort of spineless or fair weather or which-ever-way-the-wind-blows-ish.

I know today that I need to meditate before I mediate. Meditate on the whole picture, everyone's complaints, and then finally my position. I need to get very quiet around WHAT I THINK AND BELIEVE, throw everything else out and then play Head Counselor, principal, executive producer.

Friendships get compromised, dissension ensues. And then it is all very "there will be blood." You don't want to work together, you find everyone's weakness and exploit it even if just in your own mind. You make this one wrong and that one incompetent. And it is un-fair and petulant.

So, meditate before speaking. Mediate after thinking.

INTO THE WOODS LYRICS

I think these words written by Stephen Sondheim echo my sentiment.


To be happy, and forever,
You must see your wish come true.
Don't be careful, don't be clever.
When you see your wish, pursue.
It's a dangerous endeavor,
But the only thing to do-

Though it's fearful,
Though it's deep, though it's dark,
And though you may lose your path,
Though you may encounter wolves,
You mustn't stop,
You mustn't swerve,
You mustn't ponder,
You have to act!
When you know your wish,
If you want your wish,
You can have your wish,-
No, to get your wish

You go into the woods,
Where nothing's clear,
Where witches, ghosts
And wolves appear.
Into the woods
And through the fear,
You have to take the journey.

Into the woods
And down the dell,
In vain, perhaps,
But who can tell?
Into the woods to lift the spell,
Into the woods to lose the longing,
Into the woods to have the child,
To wed the Prince,
To get the money,
to save the house,
To kill the Wolf,
To find the father,
To conquer the kingdom,
To have, to wed,
To get, to save,
To kill, to keep,
To go to the festival!

Into the woods,
Into the woods,
Into the woods,
Then out of the woods
And happy ever after!

Back From Thinking

I spent these last 6 weeks thinking. Not thinking whilst eating pizzas on couches in front of televisions. I was mobile. Traveling. Driving. Hiking. Gone.

I went away so that I could come back. I realize more and more that I need to go away to get myself back. I live in Los Angeles, so that is vital. The leaving. I often say that my favorite part of L.A. is the leaving it. But there is more to it than that. I must leave this neck of the woods because it is, quite truly, just that...a neck of the woods. And the WOODS are a full bodied thing. The Woods are big, massive, multi-faceted thing to be seen and educated by. So to stay in the neck and the neck alone, makes you or me rather...dumber and less interesting and less..lesser and even yes, lesser.

So for six weeks (those 6 that I did not post anything new here) I went into the woods and found my arms, my legs, my chest and my heart...found them again and came back to Los Angeles and connected all of those parts to the neck...And now, for now atleast, I feel full again, strong, able.

So I look forward to sharing, once again, and hope that you too, are replenished enough to open up to opening up...again.