Graduation

Graduation looms like a full paper white moon in the sky. So pregnant with promise! How tinged with transmutation!
And so, I'm driven towards this medium once again. Encouraged by my moon sister. Moved by the tides.
My maternal grandma (affectionately Mawmaw) interjects "and so" parenthetically in her speech so often, she'll even throw it in when you're talking. I remember Vonnegut touching some similar, weird deep human acquiescence with his "so it goes," and Slaughterhouse-five subsequently climbing the ranks in my favorite books list. I also remember my French language teacher at the Sorbonne often used "so" as an interjection, and "donc..." remains a favorite go-to when my much-forgotten French runs out.
Ça va.
I took a trip down memory lane reading some old blog entries, and it reminded me of how much I've grown, and how much I've gained and it made me nostalgic and sad and grateful and angry and hopeless and self-conscious and confident and dreamy and damnit...maybe it's the moon.
Perhaps it's the asshats in Washington bringing me down? Nah. But they don't help. They're this ugly, glaring reminder of my own shadows...a recurring ineptitude to invoke deep change and personal responsibility and righteous action and self care.
It's also this inevitable great life change approaching that's got me feelin all the feels. Folks keep asking where I'm going after graduation, and I simultaneously know and have no idea.
I know that I've been made an honest woman by the most honest of men. An inspiring, balancing, loving craftsman is starting a business in my old hometown of Louisville, KY, and I will follow him to the ends of the Earth. Luckily, he's open to vacationing in the ends, but his heart is with our family, and they just made a considerable commitment to 279 acres outside Daniel Boone National Forest in the foothills of Appalachia near Red River Gorge.
My brother and sister and mother-in-law have an inspiring goal of creating an eco-friendly climbing hostel similar to one they've visited in Ecuador. I hope to continue to work as an actress/writer anywhere, but I'd also like to start to plant deep roots on this family land. It's tough to want two nearly completely different things equally, but I'm imagining a cake that I can eat, too. I'll share it witcha! I imagine a retreat center for actors/artists/yogis/climbers/bikers/healers/hopers and a learning permaculture/organic farm homestead.
For grad school, we've been advised to make actor websites for promotion. And I've had mixed feelings about acting being my sole offering into the ether...I mean, it's my main thang and all, but I can't stop writing and after pulling up a photo from my time in Paris (to be a place-holder until I can get some new headshots), I realized that my aesthetic as a story-teller has grown out of this dichotomy of urban pedestrian and rural dweller, and I settled on the label flâneuse. There was also this great tribute post from The Guardian last year that you should read here: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jul/29/female-flaneur-women-reclaim-streets.
Donc, perhaps the website I had to make (ahem, or the illustrious Brian Gligor so graciously made for me) will just keep growing, and I can add tabs without having to take any away. Because I enjoy working as an actress and pray I can keep doing it for a long, long time. I hope work will have me walking around many cities and kickin' lighter in KY with my boo, too.
I want to tell the stories, be it around a fire or on a stage or page. So gather 'round, y'all. I can't promise happy endings, but I can start once upon a time. And so...it goes.