UNCLE!

My husband is the best at uncling. He's a professional. He's been doing it a lot longer than I've been aunting. I know I drive him crazy sometimes. As the oldest of 4, I can be a bit...directive. Luckily he's the youngest of 3 and is patient and accepting.
Most of the time.
I know I can be a...lot. Energetically. I also know I'm a real lucky lady.
He's been helping me balance some intense excitement and insecurities lately.
They pushed back the notification date for the episodic lab at The Orchard Project, where my pilot is being considered. And I feel a bit like I'm being tortured. It would be such an incredible experience, and I've got nothing definite on the horizon to look forward to.
It's exciting and terrifying to be back in pursuit of work again. This field is fickle and fierce and the work fleeting. I remember the relentless rejection and my reasons for the hiatus pre-grad school, but I feel very hopeful and motivated to work and confident in the opportunities to come.
In one way or another.
I've been babysitting again. And still on the fence about makin my own.
Jake (the husband) is the best at practicing non-attachment.
I am...learning.
The only thing I want or can think about is getting this writing opportunity. It is so close, I can taste it. I may just enter another competition if this one doesn't come through. I actually had an acquaintance win the Comedy Series screenwriting competition for the ITVFest. A friend on the Facebooks who seems like just the kindred spirit I'll need to reach out to when I get the news either way. Inspired to enter this contest if I'm an Orchard reject, anyway, so it was a comforting consolation to come across her blog today.
That's what we do.
Relentless action against rejection.
Feels Sisyphean. Like the battle to be waste free in the presence of those who are not concerned. Or eat well in the presence of those who make different decisions.
But Sisyphus was happy, no?
That's how it ends.
You live and then ya die. You try until ya don't.
So I guess a Masters of Fine Art has made me a professional waiter. No, not like a restaurant server. (Though you never know what kind of side gig I'll get.) Like one who waits. Professionally. Perpetually. It's hard for folks to accept this as a profession. My grandma and sisters and parents ask after every audition, "So, when will you hear?"
That is a great question.
The answer is always maybe soon and probably never so hopefully they'll outgrow the constant inquiry.
Luckily, my husband is not one of those folks. He believes in me, but remains unattached to any ideal life or high hope I have in mind. I've been to yoga nearly everyday for 2 weeks, mindfully breathing deep and moving my body, and practicing contentment, but he just has it. He strives to do his best, and he's cool with just that.
But I want to do better.
I know it can be exhausting. I can be exhausting. But if I want to sleep at night, I have to do the very best I can. Which is a moving target.
Because I believe it should be.
But knowing when to let go? To just be instead of do? I have trouble. I get that it's important. It's why I need to practice yoga. It's far less about the action than it is about the inaction of the practice.
Walking with our 2 year-old niece today in the park was so sweet. I found contentment easy then, but now as she naps and we TCB online, the ol' ache is back.
The fantasizing. The chase. The hunt. The waiting.
UNCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Free fallin or the luck o the Irish or Happy Belated Mother's Day

My mom has a song for any occasion. I, too, think in lyrics sometimes. Or worse, misheard lyrics. We're both pretty bad about that. Like they say, I am my mother's daughter. And by they, I mean my mom.
She's a dreamy one, Ag. My sisters and I are fond of calling her by this truncated first name familiar because she's the cool mom. She was the one who bought you the real makeup kit you wanted when you were 4 or took you to get your belly button pierced your 8th grade summer. She was young and fun. Most friends coming over growing up genuinely liked her and thought she was a hoot. Even if she wasn't always the most...responsible?
No.
Reliable?
No.
Organized.
Yeah, I can easily say she was never the most organized (yet again, another trait I get honestly). She's as scattered as her daughter's blogs. We attempt to reign her in from her farflung theories or pontifications or hypotheses, but she sometimes makes a hell of a good point. She's rarely on time, but knows how to have a good time when she finally arrives, and she's always good for a laugh.
Well, maybe not always. The sharp shards of grandma's heart made for some sensitive edges in her daughters. Rough edges that don't attempt to be anything but.
Because my grandma lost her mom so early, the adult mother-daughter relationship is uncharted territory for her, and often a little strained because of this mapless maternal line. My mom, in turn, slips up sometimes and behaves badly towards my siblings and me. Not that we don't turn around and do it right back to her, but it's a cycle we're working on breaking.
And we had a breakthrough on Mother's Day. I was doubly grateful this year. Not only did my mom give me life. She showed me this weekend she's willing to put in the work to break a negative, self-fulfilling cycle of anger, even when provoked by yours truly at my worst. I know it's corny, but she inspired me.
There are things at work in each of us. Patterns. Cellular memories and proliferation so complex and ancient we can't even begin to understand. Momentum of our ancestors that we either get swept up in like a snowball rolling down hill or that we harness and rechannel like an irrigation system. To cultivate our own goodness. Or at least better.
Come on guys, like the FLOTUS so eloquently encourages: BE BEST.
But we get this beautiful opportunity of choice every single day we wake up.
Or do we?
I woke up absolutely shaken this morning by the nightmare I had last night. It was so bad that in my dream I actually thought "I don't want to go to sleep because I'm probably going to have nightmares about this." I wish I were evolved enough to lucid dream, but I'm a deep dreamer. All up in layers that leave me with a morning contemplation that's like deciphering another language.
I like trying to dig in, though. They're great teachers, dreams.
This is quite possibly the worst dream I've ever had. And I'm going to share it here so I guess I really am an exhibitionist.
Kind of a dirty word.
But essentially what I think the dream was about so it's fitting.
I was at some big festival somewhere, though I feel like there were Russian undertones or accents or names, I don't know exactly what kind of festival it was. Sort of like the air of a music festival without the music? Not important. I had an intimate moment with this man (which was not something I felt immediately able to confess to my husband or mother-in-law this morning for obvious reasons in my first confession of this bizarre subconscious emission) and I was immediately ashamed and broken hearted about the breach of my marriage. The mystery man was then murdered in my presence (which was almost a relief because of my shame and fear of Jake discovering this horrible infidelity). but then I was an unwittingaccomplice so in order to cover my tracks, I had to chop up (with a large meat clever) and eat the body.
I know.
I must be really effed up, y'all.
Or my subconscious has as dramatic a flare as my conscious self?
Whatever. I'm a freak, clearly.
It was terrible. I was choking it down. And it had a distinct flavor of those cheese filled hotdogs.
The. Worst. Nightmare. Ever.
I think it was about Acting.
You know, the craft I just spent 3 years studying and "mastering."
Basically the guy represents my egoic exhibitionism with which I've been so intimately acquainted these last few years (and maybe my hubs represented my equally true selfless, seeking, righteous self), and now the chancy career path that is theatrical acting is being "murdered" by my search for a day job that won't suck my soul or impede my progress, and I'm having to eat my shit (so to speak) and accept a low-hourly-wage gig or submit myself to the misery of serving tables in my late 30's. Or teach.
Or...
My mom keeps saying I'm free falling. And yes, she then sings Tom Petty.
And I am a bit.
Don't know where the next paycheck'll come from.
Enrolled for Union health/dental insurance today...completely uncertain if I'll book another Equity acting gig in time to keep the coverage past 6 months, but damn grateful to get it for a short spell.
But last Thursday I found 3 four-leaf clovers, and I looked at my phone at 11:11 last night, this morning and tonight, so clearly I'm gonna be fine.
The luck of the Irish.
On the Media this week had a powerful take (which, as it turns out was a rerun broadcast of the series BUSTED) on the myth of social mobility in America. It talks about the same wheels we spin in generational karma and just how big a role luck has to play in our class or social standing. (SPOILER ALERT: it's a bigger role than hard work). In other words it's random, but is given rough shape by our collective history and implicit biases. Clearly, it's the biggest culprit for the issues and inequities around race in our country.
I know it's a trite and ridiculous thing to bring up, but I only just learned about the Irish being enslaved during the early trans-Atlantic slave trade while writing a paper in grad school. I admit for a moment it felt...I don't know...redeeming to be a descendant of oppressed people. Seemed about right. I've never had 2 pennies to rub together, but I feel like I've been working nonstop since I turned 16. Often more than one job at a time. The myth of meritocracy, as it's called, erodes our faith in free will. But also takes some of the pressure off.
Anyway, since I learned about it, I've also learned how inappropriate and misguided any comparison being descended of Irish slaves to the African American experience is. White privilege is luck. Inheritance. My mom works in one of the poorest and poorest performing schools in Louisville, and tonight she lamented, "I just don't understand how the black communities are so disenfranchised." Not 20 minutes later, she was discussing how the possible sale of her inherited land might enable her to buy a new car (which she does definitely need).
Don't worry, I pointed out the overlooked but obvious comparison. And she gets it. She also reads my blog...so Happy Belated Mother's Day! You're the best mom I've ever had!!! We're in this together.
I find out by the end of the week if I get to work on my pilot in an episodic writing lab with mentors that could easily shift the course of my life. It might even just increase my social mobility and allow me to make more than poverty-level income for the first time in my adult life. Sometimes I catch myself holding my breath thinking about it. I've worked hard on it, and it's work I'm proud of no matter what happens. I feel pretty privileged to even be considered in the finalist round of candidates. Probably shouldn't have my hopes up as high as they are.
But I feel lucky.

Magnetic Human

I love a good theme.

Perhaps it was an early love of Sesame Street? Tho I don't remember actually watching the show much when I was a kid, 3 of my favorite books involved the characters--of course there's the classic Grover masterpiece, There's a Monster at the End of This Book, and his other perhaps lesser known gem Grover's New Kitten. The latter made me aware of the name Ginger, which I'm still forgiving my mom for not naming my first little sister. The third is a vague memory of a large hardcover that had an actual recipe for cookies with Cookie Monster. I guess it was my first recipe book?

Perhaps this love of theme explains my passion for cooking, too? You know, recipes, regions, ingredients, cravings...there tends to be a rudder (often guiding an undercurrent from behind, since I rarely actually follow a recipe--I let it follow me) that keeps a certain order or container to the endeavor. 

I crave order on the outside because it's often an elusive quality on the inside.

But not too much order.

When I used to teach yoga, I would attempt to craft my classes around a theme. Usually one of the eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga (even though I'd studied the style of Iyengar more…which for those unfamiliar is essentially of different branch of the yoga tree even tho the creators had the same teacher). It was an easy way to weave in storytelling or what teachers of the Buddhist tradition call Dharma into my classes, and it kept me on task. Mostly.

Clearly I've never felt strictly beholden to theme. It's hard for a central idea to lord over a mind quite as unruly as my own. But I like a good one, nonetheless.

In 2012, I began to follow a derivative of the Mayan spiritual calendar.

Done rolling your eyes?

Yeah, I know. I get it. 

Before you get up-in-arms about cultural appropriation, it was created by a half-Hispanic New Age peace-lovin, EarthDay-creating hippie in the early 80's as a calendar that is PAN-cultural but incorporates a wisdom of the Maya…and he had the blessing of the surviving modern-day Mayan elders to proliferate this notion to the world. The brass tax is essentially this:  everything we see is light waves, everything we hear is sound waves, how we interpret these sensory perceptions is through brain waves, and we're held here on the planet by gravitational waves, so why not honor time as a wave? Time is measure and movement. The Maya took the numerology of our bodies: 20 (measure represented by our digits) and 13 (movement represented by our main moveable joints) and multiplied them to create a 260 day cycle (roughly our gestation and seed to stalk for corn, their and arguably our main sustenance), that they then imbued with oh-so-familiar archetypes. 

Archetypes that woulda made ol' appropriator Jung proud.

Some people are incredibly averse to this notion. Well, not my close-close people. But definitely some of my used-to-be-close people. And no, it's not because of this calendar we've fallen out of touch. Time and distance, unmeasured and impossible to track, did that.

The idea the creator, José Argüelles, had was that perhaps this unnatural, arrhythmic Gregorian count we're all blindly following is part of what's broken us out of the circle, or cycle, of nature and perpetually sets us up as a warring faction against nature and consequently ourselves. Maybe if we could just wrap our head around a new way of interpreting time, we could convince our bodies to do better things whilst we move through it??

I think it's noble, idealistic and inspiring, but...

But nothing.

I follow it. And it helps me process things. All the archetypes hold incredible value and simultaneously cast dark shadows. The shadows are embraced as fact, not sugar-coated or brushed under the rug. Just accepted.

The whole thing is a veritable rabbit hole of fun and fancy. And acceptance and forgiveness, the Mount Everests of human aspirations. 

I've struggled this week with acceptance and forgiveness on numerous levels.

First of all, I got a terrible haircut. I'm working on a film that relied on the continuity of my haircut from October, so I brought footage of the film to the salon (which I had researched and found from Google's suggestion of "best salon in Knoxville"), and the stylist went to work. Then referencing the video 5 minutes into the cut says "You know, I cut the sides too short…it is a little longer here."

I think I responded with something like "well, don't say that!" As if that could somehow bring back the hair she'd mistakenly chopped off.

I left angry, and I kind of get angry every time I look in the mirror. 

I still tipped her.

And so I get angry about that in retrospect.

Guys. I've been meditating twice a day for 20 min each for 3 solid weeks, and I still get angry about a quasi-bad haircut and my tipping the stylist last week. How ridiculous am I?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the music video that broke the internet this week haunts me. I can't accept the world we live in. I can't forgive my ancestors or myself for the ignorance and inequity that plagues us. Because the past nips at the heels of the present. Each time we humans rise up in wisdom and knowledge, there's a roller coaster plunge into darkness and confusion. There is the rhetoric that keeps us divided, but there is also denial intrinsic in the suggestion we're all the same. A denial afforded solely to the majority. Privilege does not inherently promote responsibility; that's something we have to teach our children. Teach ourselves. Where am I called to help? To speak truth to power? Where am I called to just listen and observe without comment? How do we accept and forgive one another? How do we accept and forgive ourselves?

On a personal level, I have had trouble accepting and forgiving a cohort. This particular cohort blew up the sanctity of our ensemble in a dramatic, self-serving display of deceit and manipulation last year, and somehow (self-preservation is real, folks) has created a reality for themselves in which they are the victim. (Using the genderless pronoun here to attempt anonymity...tho part of the egregious offenses of said cohort would hold up in court as libel and slander against another so they barely afforded themselves the courtesy.) Luckily there are eight of us, and the solidarity of the seven who were pawns in this cohort's mind games has kept us all sane and relatively happy working together. But this particular cohort garners a lot of positive attention from the University and department, and of course strangers ignorant of their volatile potential. And a witless partner of whom they spoke poorly and will likely hurt.

I hate even bringing it up on this public forum because to even do such a thing says more about my deficiencies than h...theirs. But my point is about my own ineptitudes so I hope that point is not lost. I cannot accept that they'll glide through life manipulating and lying and hurting people and still be viewed as the charismatic lovable character they portray to the world. I didn't think I could forgive.

I thought I had at times, but the forced proximity and professionalism have made catharsis and forgiveness a long, slow windy road.

Speaking of roads, yesterday a lovely young lady I know shared this meme on Facebook:

Of course, I hastily commented about drivers' ignorance and cyclists' rights and how I thought this jackrabbit's joke was in poor taste having woken up in an ambulance after being hit by a motorist from behind, and I prefaced with "I know you're young..." 

I realize now that maybe in the context that could've been patronizing, but as a 36 year-old woman, it's hard to think of young as anything but a compliment. I meant it more as an acquiescence.

>>I feel it necessary to interject here that the woman who hit me 4 years ago was on her phone and veered off the road to hit me on a wide shoulder of a busy road. I also have forgiven said woman because she was out of town, it was her 59th birthday, she was on her GPS and I'm sure she felt awful--though she never told me so herself.<<

The friend and I had a really productive and forgiving conversation after we both got over being butthurt, and I think we both felt good afterwards. It was a tiny little micro-victory in acceptance and forgiveness yesterday.

So I guess there's hope.

Afterall, to err is human; to forgive, Divine. -Alexander Pope

The theme of the next 13 days (appropriately called a wavespell) on my weird, wild calendar is imbued with the archetype of "Yellow Human." 

Yeah, I know this means little to you, but I'll share some of the propaganda that brings so much solace and purpose into my life. About the Human archetype (or "tribe" as it's called in the calendar):

We influence each other by modeling our values. All we think,

say, do, create, choose and feel impacts those around us, and

contributes to the Collective Human Consciousness, which we

are in turn affected by subtly and overtly. All that we consider

acceptable or normal merely reflects the precedents we have set

for each other. The behaviors and attitudes we've inherited from

our families and friends are for us to either perpetuate, or to 

change and evolve. By design, we humans have a shared 

vulnerability, yet we evoke invincibility when we connect with

each other and tho the Spirit which animates our humanity.

As we see the many faces of the One Humanity, may we

humbly honor diversity. 

-Eden Sky

Tomorrow (as every 2nd day or Lunar day in a wavespell) is the challenge to Yellow Human. Challenge to strengthen. It also happens to be the signature of the day I was born, making me a Red Lunar Skywalker. 

Now it makes all the sense, right?

Nah? I know. It's like a different language. 

It's what's called my Galactic Birthday. It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to.

Probably won't tho. And if I did, it'd be from happiness. I'm working on a film that I actually get to act in and have a fun evening planned with friends and authentic Haitian food.

Skywalker for the Maya represented the cornstalk or the maize goddess. Argüelles thought this represented a prophet or connection between heaven and earth. So listen up!! 

Or don't.

Trying to avoid plastic was making me crazy so I cooled my jets at the grocery store. From saline solution to bags of apples and potatoes or loaves of bread, I've moved it to the unavoidable column for now. I even used a plastic fork at lunch on set yesterday. In my defense it was not a plastic fork from catering, but one I've used and carried in my back-pack for about a month. I threw it away when I was finished because I was mindlessly chatting and following suit. But I did challenge 20 people to give up straws for a month. Not sure if anyone's truly taken up the challenge. And I even forgot to say no straw at a restaurant the other day (though now I'm happy to report I remember more often than not). It is certainly a losing battle to fight alone. 

Who really knows the best way to challenge folks? I watched the film Whiplash last night, which left me reeling, pondering that exact question. I don't think I want to end up abusive and an asshole about ecology and sustainability, but the film explores how effective a tough-love pedagogy has the potential to be. Of course, this efficacy comes at a cost. It's not really my style to demoralize and berate folks, but we'll see how I feel in a decade if we're still spinning our wheels.

Apparently the last show done at the Clarence Brown during my time here, Urinetown, did not do well at the box office. One reason might have been because even though actors had gone on television to promote it, they were not able to say the title because it was vulgar. 

Urine is vulgar, but plastic is a non-issue.

Humans. We may have inherited some ass-backward priorities, but I'm ready to change and evolve. Who's comin with me?

I leave you with some entertainment...our fight song, if you will: