From the Archives: Personal History

I wrote this for my Theatre and Community class my first semester in grad school: September of 2008. I just reread it for the first time in probably 7 years and was struck by so many things. I work with kids like this every day now.

I wonder where Tyshawn is today. He'll be 17 in July.

***

          I graduated from UC Berkeley in June of 2005 and moved to New York City that same month with the dream to start a theater company. By the end of that summer, not only had I not started a theater company but I didn’t even have a job. I spent four painful, ego-shattering months pounding the pavement and being confounded by the fact that a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best universities in the country didn’t guarantee me gainful employment. Needless to say, New York City was not the city of bright lights and theater dreams come true that I expected it to be.

            After nailing down a job at a non-profit sexual health organization and falling into two production management gigs, I suffered from serious theater burn-out and subsequently took a year off, wondering if I really wanted to pursue a career in the arts.  By the spring of 2007, I had been at my dead-end day job for a bit more than a year, making little money, and dealing with a creative and moral depression that crippled me. On a suggestion, I decided to pursue volunteering and discovered a music project for children, ages 6-14, at a shelter on the Lower East Side. I had never worked with or overseen children and was panicked that I’d feel steamrolled by them.  However, I figured that volunteering twice a month wasn’t a very big time commitment, and I found encouragement in the subject matter, music being another serious passion of mine. It seemed a potentially ideal project, fulfilling a creative hunger I hadn’t been able to satisfy since graduating.

            My first day as a volunteer, I met a nine-year-old boy named Tyshawn. I sat down next to him and asked him his name, feeling slightly self-conscious and not really knowing what to expect. He was enthusiastic and hilarious and we spent the day working together. We went around the circle and told everyone our names and what our favorite kind of music was, pairing it with a gesture and sound that indicated that music style. When the project leader asked if anyone could recite each person’s name and repeat each person’s gesture, Tyshawn didn’t volunteer. However, when we took a break, he did it perfectly on his own.

The leader of the project had been a musical theater student and injected each class with opportunities for the children to be the centers of attention, to tap into their creativity in a very accessible and non-threatening way. This became an essential part of the project every week we gathered, and I continued to enforce it when I became a co-leader of the project in June. We set a high standard for participation in the class, asking our volunteers to work closely with the children to create songs, dances, or poems that they rehearsed and presented to the rest of the group.

            Tyshawn and I spent three weeks working as a duo. I learned that he liked writing. That he had a baby sister and an older brother. That he was turning 10 in July. I learned that I had a natural gift with kids. That they gravitated toward me, seemed to respect me, responded to me in a way that felt really special. I had fun with them; I learned from them; I was moved by them. It was an epiphany.

Summer holidays interrupted our bi-monthly meetings and I hadn’t seen Tyshawn for a couple weeks when I arrived at the shelter one week and discovered that the project had been cancelled that day. As I turned up the street to head back to the subway, Tyshawn was crossing. He saw me and bolted across, throwing his arms around me and yelling my name. I nearly burst into tears, realizing that I really had connected with him over the previous weeks. He dragged me back across the street and insisted I meet his mother, who wasn’t much older than I was and who was preoccupied with a baby in a stroller and having just lost her contact lens. She also didn’t seem to have any idea who I was, but Tyshawn introduced me as his “favorite teacher” anyway. The shelter was a transitional living situation for female victims of domestic abuse. Soon after this meeting on the street, Tyshawn stopped coming to class, and I can only hope that means he and his family found a more permanent living situation somewhere else.

 I co-led this project for almost six months before moving back to California where I prepared to enter grad school. Over the months, we introduced the kids to blues and rock n’roll; we sang Christmas carols with them; we tried to teach them about rhythm and rhyme. Every week, we led an introduction game, made a craft, broke up into groups and had them create pieces to perform at the end of the night. Every week, it was evident how important these gatherings were. I didn’t know anything about what these children’s lives were like outside our meetings, but I could tell their recreation time was important and special for them. They were being creative in ways I knew were different from what they were used to. They were working together in ways I knew were different from what they were used to, and they were being led by caring and patient adults in ways that I knew were different from what they were used to. Even more powerfully, they were working with young men who paid close attention to them, listened to them, and were gentle with them.

 Working with these children was educational to me in ways that I’m not sure I’ll be able to fully articulate until I have some more experience under my belt. They being the first children I ever worked with combined with the vulnerability and potency of their situations made the work such a heady and emotional experience. It planted the seed for my ultimate goal as a theatre teacher and artist: to establish an organization that will allow populations of children a creative outlet that they don’t have in any other capacity. Theatre, with its tenets of collaboration and expression, seems an essential medium for urban children, arguably our most vulnerable community. I want to foster the enthusiasm I saw in Tyshawn with kids just like him, and I hope he is somewhere continuing to express himself as he was able to do with us.

My 20s in Sentence Fragments

This post was inspired by this.

I turn 30 four weeks from today.

***

Drag queens. London. Busted lip and tits out. Acting in a garden. Grateful. Berkeley. Apartment 8. Making out all night. Walk of shame. Fiona Apple and scraping paint. Flappers to Rappers. Call the cops. Climb up my balcony. Shots shots shots shotsshotsshots. Cacophony. Splattered walls. Best friends. Going to class hungover. He told me he was sad and I was the only person who would understand. Falling in love with the wrong person. Writing songs. Running away. Smoking weed and listening to Jeff Buckley. Food poisoning stoned. I need him. Breaking down over the sink because I felt ugly. Hooking up with a freshman. Making art and graduating. 

New York City. Is this still home? Sublet in Brooklyn. Unemployment saga #1. Soliciting for the North Shore Animal League for two weeks. Iced coffee with half and half and sugar. 12 hour days on my feet outside in August. Quitting. 23 interviews in 4 months. Chinese food for lunch and dinner. Living on Luna bars. Dripping sweat under a skylight. Watching Starting Over with Iyanla Vanzant and Garden State. Bleeding out money. Storms, dripping ceiling, fly infestation. Soho loft. Commuting on the F train. East 66^th Street and York Avenue. Filing for hours and ordering pizza for office lunches. Reading blogs. Mom leaving 2^nd  husband. Sobbing on a train platform. Frequenting Off the Wagon near NYU specifically to make out with boys in corners. None called. Smoking cigarettes on lunch breaks and my commute. Convinced I needed to go to a mental institution. First and only black out on New Year's Eve. 

Apartment in Park Slope. Bar up the street. Within walking distance of childhood home but feeling a world away. Starting a blog. Heavy heart. Self-hate. Feeling lost and alone. Writing to soothe. Crying on the train home from a bar. Deciding to leave New York. There is nothing for me here. Grad school? Revelation of future. Volunteering with kids, and I can breathe. Quitting my job. Moving across the country. Again.

San Luis Obispo. No money. Living with mom. White wine and American Idol. Three productions in eight months. Fast and furious connections. Becoming a gym rat. Feeling hot. Grad school! Boston! Is this home? Apartment down the street from my cousin. Who are your people? Why are you here? What is your work? Joining Facebook. Breakdowns in class; I don't know if I can do this. Debilitating anxiety. Talks about race and age and sex. Letting go. Teaching at camp, which fulfills a decade-long dream. Teachers drink. Student teachers drink more. Writing a play. Revealing a wish to be myself. Crying in despair and grief over chicken nuggets. Champagne and cookies to console me. Graduation and tattoos. Another summer at camp. The room changes when I am in it.

Unemployment saga #2. Hours-long interviews. Commiserating at McDonald’s. Chin hairs and lactose intolerance. Elle is born. Defending my work experience. Feeling proud but frustrated. Writing a novel. Fighting for a dream job and getting it. Online dating. Falling for an alcoholic. Redhead. Gaining confidence in my work. Getting a smartphone. Heartbreak and heart full of kids. Discovering and gaining pride in my body.  Hooking up with a cheater. And then another one. Living with an alcoholic. Kicking both alcoholics out of my life. Brunette. Trampolining. Yoga. Excelling in my work. Finding my voice. Always learning. Feet on the ground and head up. Moving forward steadily. 

It was just another Tuesday.

It was the beginning of my first semester as a freshman at UC Berkeley.

I had an 8 AM class, so I got up early, got ready, ate breakfast, and walked the four or five blocks to campus.

I did notice it was eerily quiet out but chalked that up to it being early.

I passed a young woman talking on her cell phone, saying something like, “I can’t believe they flew into the buildings!” And I thought, “Wow, that sounds serious.”

My class that morning was in a relatively large lecture hall, and everyone was chattering, though I don’t think it was a full class.

I stayed fairly blissfully ignorant, getting my books and notes out, until my professor, an older Japanese man, came into the hall.

He told us that planes had hit the World Trade Center and that he had been unable to reach anyone in New York City. In fact, he said there weren’t even busy signals on the other end when he called.

I thought I was going to pass out, picturing a large gaping hole where the city that had been the only home I knew used to be.

At that point, my father, stepmother, and two cousins all lived there.

As far as I knew, the city had gone down in an explosion and my family had gone with it.

I quickly exited the classroom and returned to my dorm room, determined to find out what had happened to my family members in New York.

I reached my cousins first, who were living in Brooklyn and could not see across the street for all the ash that was floating from across the water.

I found my dad online. He had decided in the early morning that day not to go do to a meeting downtown.

My aunt in Oakland called me, reminding me that her husband, my dad’s brother, was in New York for a gig with his band. Staying at the WTC Marriott.

She couldn’t reach him, he had left her a message saying that something had happened to the hotel and she’d “probably hear about it on the news.” She told me that she was OK but that if she was too freaked out, she would come and get me to be with her.

I got off the phone and sobbed so hard people could hear me downstairs.

I stayed on the internet with my dad most of the day, checking in, hearing updates about the city, wondering where my uncle was.

Feeling like this place that had been my home for most of my life was a place I didn’t know anymore. Was a place I might never know again.

I missed it.

I felt more like a New Yorker and less like a New Yorker than I had ever felt.

Late in the afternoon, I got a message from my dad that my uncle had just walked in to his apartment.

He had evacuated the hotel and spent the day walking all the way from downtown to West 82nd and Central Park.

I cannot tell my uncle’s story of that, of course, though I have asked him many things and he has told me many things that I find unfathomable.

I called my aunt immediately and was the one who told her her husband was OK.

***
I lived in New York City again several years later, and I gained an adult perspective of the city, late in its healing phase.

The train creaking past and never stopping at Cortlandt Street station, the barricades around Ground Zero, the phantom lights that went up every year, in tribute.

Of my twenty-eight years, I have spent seventeen of them as a New Yorker.

It is absolutely my hometown, a part of my identity I cannot deny, a part I cherish, even.

I love it and I hate it.

But I do miss it.

And I will never forget how far away and how intensely close I felt to it on September 11, 2001.

Tales from the Job Search

I just spent some time looking for jobs. Mostly, I am procrastinating. But also, why not get a headstart on what's out there?

It's taking me back to the Season of Unemployment in 2005 when I spent hours and hours per day sending out resumes and cover letters to companies via email.

Eventually, I contacted Dialogue Direct, which is an on-the-street solicitation service for organizations like North Shore Animal League and Children International.

I kicked ass at the interview and blew the others at orientation out of the water.

I got hired in August.

I spent eight hours a day trying to get people to sign up to sponsor animals at North Shore. The amount of money I made was dependent on how many people I chatted up enough to get them to sign up. This twisted into my mind that I was personally a terrible person if I didn't get anyone to sign up. I went home crying every day.

It's the only job I've ever quit.

I spent most of that time in great debt to my mother and S. S and I had just moved across the country and were living in a small sublet in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

I'd spend my days sitting on the couch, directly under a skylight, in the dead of summer. I'd buy Chinese food downstairs for lunch and save half of it for dinner. I'd run between the TV and our back room, where our computers were set up. I sent my information to anyone who was hiring any kind of administrative assistant at all, wasting most of my time on craigslist. I visited temp agencies that told me that I didn't score high enough to get placed with them.

I bought a three-piece suit and went on twenty-three interviews. Yes. Twenty-three.

I finally discovered Idealist.org and eventually interviewed at Population Council, a sexual health non-profit organization on the campus of Rockefeller University--it was interview #22. Pop Council was the first place I had interviewed where all of my directing and managing experience as a theatre major counted for something, even though it wasn't paid.

A few days after the interview, I got an email that said I had not gotten the job. Then, I had a dream that the manager called me and told me that email was incorrect and that I had been hired.

I DID get hired--and told the manager about my email and my dream--as an office assistant and worked there for over two years. It wasn't the perfect job and I didn't get paid enough and I didn't use a lot of the skills I'd honed my whole life, but it was a paycheck.

These days, it's wildly satisfying to be looking for jobs with higher degree requirements. I'm still scouring Idealist.org for the perfect fit and just sent out a few resumes for Program Director positions in Boston.

I also decided to check out craiglist and found a post for a teaching position at a day care center in my neighborhood.

Then, out of curiosity, I Googled the center and the only hit I came across was about how the custodian was beaten to death in 2005.

So, um, maybe I won't follow up with them.

Word of the Day, vol. XIII

Word of the Day: DANCING

So, you know how having a “most embarrassing moment” somehow makes you a better conversationalist? I distinctly remember taking some time to figure out mine, so that this story would be at the ready if anyone ever happened to ask me what it was.

When I was 13, I had been dancing at the local Dance Studio on and off for maybe six years. At this point, I took my schoolwork and my dancing pretty seriously. I was in advanced ballet and beginning tap the last year I lived in New York and was dancing about three times a week.

Of course, at 13, our bodies start to change and suddenly, I found myself squeezing into leotards and tights and feeling…lumpy. Obviously, I was never going to be a ballerina, but it gave me something besides school and home to concentrate on and I truly loved it.

Every year, in the dead of June, there was a recital at BAM. I was performing in two classes’ final pieces, so I had two costumes. My costume for ballet was just a bright purple leotard with a small ruffled skirt, my white tights, and pointe shoes. My costume for tap, though, was a black one piece with culottes(!) and a gold shrug, a small gold cap and black gloves.

No, I am not kidding. There is a picture on my wall to prove it.

Needless to say, the tap costume was much more complicated to put on, and so, I figured, the tap dance was first, so that my quick change would be an easy one.

I showed up to the hall and discovered ballet was first and that I’d have approximately 35 seconds to change into my four-piece costume.

The ballet dance was a huge hit—I still remember some of the steps and also how we totally freestyled at one point in the dance. Thanks, Jennifer D.! (That was my teacher. She was so awesome.)

I scooted into the wings after the dance and quickly changed my clothes, with the help of a classmate. The black one-piece was held up by just a single string and of course, in the mix, it busted, so we had to pin it to keep it up.

The music began and I entered.

Flap, step, flap, step, flap, step, flap, ball, change. Annnnd….snap.

Mid-way through the dance, I realized the string had busted again. Which meant that suddenly I was doing the time-step in front of a huge crowd and my whole family with my 13 year old boobs in a sad black bra showing.

I kept dancing though, grinning sheepishly the whole time!

And then, I got offstage and cried. Nobody in my class had seemed to notice that I was giving the audience a wee peep show. (Or not so wee—have you SEEN my boobs?)

(To be fair, this embarrassing story falls into the “topless in front of a crowd” category. I have a really great “sticking my foot in my mouth” story as well, that I will save for another time. This is enough mortification for one Sunday morning.)

Word of the Day, vol. VI

Word of the Day: PUBERTY
Before leaving for my summer gig, I pulled out the word “puberty” from my word bag. (Thanks again to UL for the inspiration for this exercise.) Then, I spent seven weeks running after newly-post-pubescent people and realized that a) I wouldn’t have time to craft a thoughtful post about puberty and b) I was grateful that I am no longer a teenager.

The year I turned 14, I moved across the country. From the only house and city I’d ever known, a place where I had been that kid on the Brooklyn streets, the one that played on the street in the summer until after the sun went down, the one that walked to and from the corner store that she actually believed was called Corner Store to buy Sunkist soda and Sour Powers, the one that navigated the subway alone at a ridiculously early age. I loved growing up in Brooklyn, despite the tumult of my family life at the time. And in 1997, we moved to Cambria, California, a rural tourist town of a little over 6000 people. I entered a high school of under 200 students.

There is no way for me to process my puberty without noting that this move caused a huge shock to my system. In fact, I’m beginning to believe that this huge change is part of the reason that, despite the fact that I am 26, I often feel about 13.

Evidence that I am 13:
a)My mother still pays for my cell phone;
b)My wardrobe consists mostly of solid colored T-shirts and jeans;
c)I wear Converse sneakers or flip flops almost every day. In fact,
d)I don’t own one pair of proper high heels;
e)I have a teddy bear;
f)I’ve never lived alone;
g)I rarely wear makeup. In fact,
h)I only learned how to do my own eye makeup last year, and I’m still not very good at it;
i)A home-cooked meal is heating up a can of soup or making a sandwich.

Some of these points (and others) are reasons why meeting the worldly, mature, beautiful young women I was in charge of this summer totally paralyzed me. These girls terrified me. I felt outnumbered and overwhelmed, certain that they’d all had more experience and knew more things at their age than I did at mine.

It took me a couple weeks to pull myself out of that thinking and realize that they were 16- and 17-year-olds and that that actually meant I had 10 years of life on them. And that I’d been through a lot. Had a lot to offer them, even.

Evidence that I am not, in fact, 13:
a)I have not lived in my parents’ house in 8 years (barring the 8 months I was in CA last year);
b)I have a college degree and am working on a Master’s degree;
c)My work resume has experience on it from my first jobs in college, which I had 7 years ago;
d)Aside from not paying my phone bill, I have been financially independent for four years;
e)I do my own taxes every year;
f)I held down a full-time job for almost three years;
g)All the furniture in my room was not only purchased but was also put together by me.

The trials and tribulations of the teens I was in charge of seemed like things I’d never experienced. Or things I had experienced lifetimes ago. While they were lamenting the fact that they didn’t get on the weekend trip they wanted or obsessing about which teen boy would notice them at the dance, I had to worry about paying my rent and making sure I would have a roommate to sign my lease when I got back to Boston.

I’ve been very zen since getting back. My mantra lately is “no drama,” and I think that’s because I was finally able to experience the kind of teen angst that I was shocked out of experiencing for myself. I have this new sense that things will work out. That worrying over them and perpetuating drama and over-talking and over-thinking things won’t do any good.

It’s all making me finally feel my age.

Summer Job, vol. XIII: the July 4th Weekend edition

Goodness, it seems like years since I've posted. It was a packed weekend. Saturday, I had my first entire day off. I was so proud of myself for sleeping over 8 hours! Had brunch with some peeps, then took a nap, then a group of us headed to a fairly lame amusement park by a lake, where we proceeded to loll about in the grass for about 7 hours. We sat and drank and ate and played games and snuggled under blankets when it started getting cold. By 10, we were all pretty antsy, but the upside was the 4th of July fireworks seemed like they were RIGHT ABOVE us.

The kids here spend the weekends on trips, so Sunday, I was part of a team that took a bunch to see South Pacific in NYC. We left campus around 9:30, with the hope of parking it in Central Park for lunch before heading to the theater for the 3:00 show. Everything really went off without a hitch, except for the fact that the bus driver seemed to not understand the city at all, and I ended up navigating us from Soho to 65th and Central Park West. I was actually pretty impressed with myself.

S dropped by for part of the afternoon in the park, and I was reminded of my real life for a brief moment, which was great.

The show was...ok. The lighting and scenery were wonderful; the music and singing were obviously lovely, but the acting left a lot to be desired. I was slightly underwhelmed by the entire day, and it's a hard show to see when exhausted, which we all were.

I have no plans tonight, another night off, beyond catching up on some work and getting prepared for the week. This session is nearly half over!

Summer Job, vol. I: the Packing is a Challenge edition

So. I'm officially packing for my seven weeks in Connecticut. And I'm officially traveling this weekend to celebrate our 26th birthdays with S. Because if I didn't, I'd be sitting on my bed waiting for something to happen all weekend and resenting it, and it would be the first time in six years that she and I were not celebrating together.

I have approximately three lists of things I need to pack, one which was provided for us and two which I've made. Because I am a crazy. I have two large open suitcases in various parts of my house and laundry going in the basement. My brain is slightly fried. And my room is an utter mess.

Hopefully, this is the hardest part of the summer. But I doubt it will be.

Word of the Day, vol. III

Word of the Day: WRITING
Sometimes I forget how important writing has been to me for most of my life. I remember sitting at my mom’s computer at as young as six years old and typing out sentences and the beginnings of stories.

The middle school I attended was called Mark Twain Intermediate School for the Gifted and Talented (HA!) and we had to test and audition to get in, even though it was a public school. It’s funny but I didn’t even think of auditioning for the drama program. Instead, I tried out for dance and creative writing. I was dancing three times a week at that point, if any of you can believe it, but they ended up placing me in the creative writing “major.” And I spent three years writing everything from a sitcom script to a horror story, from a newspaper article to a historical fiction text. It was actually pretty great training, even though our teacher was a nightmare and seriously scary-looking. Ms. Friedman. We were all sure she was actually a man. I wonder whatever happened to him/her.

Anyway, I started keeping a journal pretty consistently the winter before I moved to California. Here is my first entry:

1/2/97
Wow! 1997! It’s not really unbelievable though. I just finished my HW. I had a huge-ass load of math. She always gives us so much! I have the second half of a Science test tomorrow, but I’m not worried about it because the 1st ½ wasn’t that bad. AVERAGE. That’s all I am. Average. BORING is another word for that. I am and always will be an AVERAGE girl. What does “average” mean anyway? How can someone be AVERAGE? Isn’t everyone supposed to be different? No one is the same as anyone else and that’s what “average” means.
God, you know what, SCHOOL SUCKS! It really does! It takes up too much time and it’s not fun enough. School should be one constant educational game.

Don’t you just want to hug her and tell her everything is going to be OK? I reread that today and think…did I really think I was average? I’m not sure how long that lasted, but it seems a little bit like I was feeling sorry for myself for the sake of feeling sorry for myself.

I’ve filled five journals, spanning from January 1997 to May 2005, right before I graduated from college. I used to reread them pretty regularly. Now, I’m not sure why. Self-torture? Revisiting them tonight, I was very uncomfortable. I was going to type out some entries:
My last summer at the camp I attended for seven years (after weeks of complaining about feeling left out, I ended up writing it had been the best of all seven years);
My first day of high school (I feared everyone would be a snob);
When I got my driver’s license on my 16th birthday (I passed by four points…shhhh);
The love letters I passed back and forth to the boys I liked in high school;
The night I got news that my mother’s father had died;
The last night I spent in my house before moving to Berkeley.

I couldn’t bring myself to actually retype them and post them on the web. Even though I’m sure that that writing kept me sane through the move to California, got me through high school, always seemed a safe haven during the heartbreak and joys of college.

I began to journal less often when I moved into Apartment 8. Because then I began writing poems and songs. I spent the entire summer of 2004 as a songwriter, with S’s brother my co-writer and musician. This is the song I started writing on a walk and had to run home so I could get it down on paper:

Far-Sighted

We turn away from what we know is real,
Disregarding all we truly feel.
We throw our instincts clear out the window,
Calling those closest to us our foes.

Truths leave us frightened or maybe it’s alone.
We avoid that to which we know we’re prone.
Our vocabulary shrinks every day
Because there are no words to say.

Chorus:
Stagnantly stumbling in circles,
We forget exactly what was said.
We can’t even see each other.
We look around instead of ahead.

Our eyes met once but we closed them fast.
Now we prefer to keep them downcast.
We put ourselves in the apparent dark to grope
For what we think will someday be called hope.

Breathing side by side but separate,
We know the future cannot be this desolate.
But still we stay a safe distance apart—
Never fully listening to our hearts.

Chorus

Linger here a little bit too long.
Something inside us thinks this would be wrong.
Simply afraid to just jump right in,
Afraid the veil between us too thin.

Careful not to tip the scales too much,
But doing so we never really touch.
Confront each other with a velvet glove,
Hate is not the opposite of love.

Chorus

I was pretty proud of myself at the time, but even it seems like it was written by someone who was very young.

In contrast, I realized I was a woman when I wrote this poem after I ran away to Reno for a night with S and our other friend:

Thoughts Mid-Flight

I need a distraction from this destruction.
Gotta take a van and just fucking drive.
Leave the rubble behind to lie under a tree,
Hum a song in the grass and chase the sun.

I ran away from you and sought solace with a drink,
Cleared my mind and tried to gamble us away.
All I needed was to dance in a storm,
But all I did was smoke a cigarette at noon.

We’re good at pretending nothing’s wrong.
It takes 400 miles for me to get angry.
Had to wail along with Janis to breathe again.
Laughed with a weight on my shoulders.

We drive and I’m not sure I know you anymore.
So I sing at the top of my lungs and dance on a hill.
Stars above and I am home again.
Who knows how long I’ve loved you?

I started writing essays and reviews in New York. Most of them are posted on this blog. In fact, I started this blog because I was writing all these essays and my friend M suggested I put them online. This is the first one I wrote, and I posted it here with my brother’s blessing. I carried a small notebook at all times, so I could mark down interesting things I’d hear or weird scenes I’d see on the subway. The blog enhanced my awareness, forced my senses to be even more receptive. It was a creative outlet for me in a time that felt very stagnant.

I’ve always had big plans for my writing. I want to write my memoirs, a novel about a boy whose name just happens to be Jesus, a play about a family like mine, short stories about the people I see on the street…

My friend SL once gave me a gigantic book of blank pages. I asked him to inscribe it and he wrote, “If there is anyone I know who can and will fill up this entire book, it is you. Every page will be you and every page will be part of the whole. On page 564, I expect an entry of collaboration between you and me. Maybe pg. 90 or 120 or 1028. Today is May 18, 2005.

This book is now full of artistic pleasures. That day is _____ __, ____.”

It’s June 10, 2009. I’m on page 369…

Word of the Day, vol. II

Word of the Day: INSPIRATION
Apartment 8. The words are nearly legendary to a group of 20-somethings who graduated from UC Berkeley between the years of 2003 and 2007. It was a strange apartment. With two entrances separated by a hallway, a rat maze of a bathroom, large French doors between the living and dining rooms through which even I saw ghosts, a fridge in the dining room, a balcony that peeped right into the dorms across the street.

I moved in the summer before my junior year of college. And my three roommates and I spent three straight days painting it and cleaning it and building it up over Labor Day weekend. I wasn’t sure I could live with them. They all seemed so…optimistic. So creative. Like dreamers. I mean, S’s dad built us a BAR in the dining room. We repainted the kitchen a cozy yellow, the dining room a sexy red, and the anteroom a beautiful turquoise. It was the kind of TLC I’d never given to any living space. A kind I didn’t really think was necessary.

We hosted a housewarming party. It was only the first of many, many ridiculous, themed parties that we’d host over the next two years. At the Halloween party we had that year, I dressed up like a callgirl, complete with a calling card stuck in my black push-up bra that said 555-SEXX. I wore bright red lipstick and called a boy back to the party, after he had left, so we could make out in my dining room. S found a dress that had the design of a fox made out in sequins on it. She wore her hair out to here and carried around a plastic mic, as a drunken 80’s lounge singer. At the First Annual Holiday party, we dressed up, drank from martini glasses, sang carols, and put mistletoe in every archway. We hosted an 80’s Fiesta, which I only remember because I left it to have a heart-to-heart with a new friend and wore a crazy outfit, complete with bright red poncho (which I still have). Our Flappers to Rappers party was the only one that had to be broken up by the police, after the drummer from the pit of my production of She Loves Me got alcohol poisoning and had to be carted away on a stretcher. Our last party in that house was a prom, complete with formal attire, a photo backdrop and tiaras for all four of us. People talked about these parties and showed up to them from all over Berkeley.

It was a magical place. And I remember realizing very early in that first year that I was living with people who would become my best friends. I remember physically feeling myself, my life, change while living in that house.

I became the kind of girl who scribbled poems on napkins. I thought of song lyrics on walks home and would have to run back to the house to write them down.

One of my roommates was studying composition; S was doing a ton of singing, and I was juggling acting, directing, and writing. I will never forget one night when a few of us were sitting in our living room, and M was pounding out notes in her room. S started singing, to compete and compliment the music, and then I started booming out the Shakespearean monologue I was working on.

It was inspired cacophony. It was chaotic, creative joy. We had a karaoke machine, for God’s sake.

I discovered Suzan-Lori Parks during the time we lived in that house and found a quote of hers that literally became the stamp of our lives there. A poster superimposing the text of the quote and two pictures of my roommates and me hung in our dining room for almost a year and is still hanging in the apartment I moved out of in Brooklyn two winters ago.

After we all moved out of that house in Berkeley, there was a burglary in it and, separately, a shooting right in front of it. The ghosts must not have liked that we left. At some point, S and I returned to the apartment to pick up some mail that had been delivered there and we saw that the girls who had moved in had painted over all our vibrant colors. The dining room was now a boring and cold light blue. The anteroom a strange teal, and the balcony door barred by a lofted bed. We felt betrayed and grief-stricken.

S and I moved to New York, and I seemed to lose myself and all my inspiration on the flight east. I remember having a fight with her in Prospect Park once about whether or not I could ever stage a production of Into the Woods site-specifically there. I was convinced it was an impossible and illogical idea. S couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t just pull my resources together and do it.

It only occurs to me now, as I write this and anticipate the site-specific production I plan to helm in the fall, that maybe I’ve finally become a dreamer. It all started with those three days of painting, which turned into two of the hardest and best years of my life.

Laughter isn’t a way of escaping. It’s a way of arriving on the scene. Think about what happens to your body when you laugh. It’s almost the same thing that happens to you when you throw up.—“Elements of Style” by S-L P.

Word of the Day, vol. I

Facebook is a strange phenomenon. I wasn’t in a circle of people who were active on Facebook until entering graduate school, and even then, I held out for a few weeks before finally signing up. I only did it after having a few glasses of wine. So, it’s still a new element in my life. One I’m sure I don’t need but can admit to enjoying nonetheless.

One fun thing about Facebook is that it’s put me back in touch with people I literally have not seen in 15 years or more. It’s making the world seem really small. Take this situation, for instance. There was a girl in my brother’s class in elementary school who hung out in his local crowd. I actually ran into her a few years ago at a family friend’s birthday party when I was still living in New York City. They had gone to college together. (Small world.) Now we’re all friends on Facebook. And she has a blog. Which I read. Because she’s sassy. Like, for real.

Anyway, I’m shamelessly ripping off one of ways she has shared things on her blog. Because after being in Berkeley a few weeks ago and being around my ridiculously intelligent college classmates and going to the Poetry Slam, I’ve decided I want to start writing again. Not theatre education writing. Or pop culture writing. But relaying-from-my-past writing. Putting-something-together-creatively writing.

So when UL is beginning a project, she pulls a word out of a bag and writes for ten minutes about whatever comes to mind about that word. Except UL uses this convention to warm-up for writing at her real job…I’m just doing it to kill time in the weeks before I go to Connecticut.

I spent a few minutes recently ripping up little pieces of paper and writing what I thought were really evocative words on them, and then I asked S for her suggestions. I laughed outloud when she said “Bread,” and, of course, weeks later, once I was actually ready to write, it was the first scrap I pulled out of my bag. So, here we are:

Word of the Day: BREAD
When S and I made the decision to move to New York, after graduating college, we talked about the ways in which we’d be willing to save money. And the ways in which we’d spend it. It’s hard not to dream big when you’re about to move across the country to what felt like the biggest and most exciting city in the country. I wanted to see a Broadway show every month. I wanted to start my own theatre company. I wanted to live in a bright, cool apartment, and I always pictured an immaculately white comforter, piles of pillows, throw rugs, a small dog and a hot boyfriend, when I imagined my grown-up life.

I’ve written on this blog many times about the ways in which my reality in New York was crushingly different than what I’d dreamed about. And how it’s only in the last few weeks, even, after not living there for more than a year and a half, that I can enjoy visiting. Those days were dark, depressing, disheartening, unexpectedly so.

There was the ridiculously hot summer that I spent on the couch in our Carroll Gardens apartment, directly under the skylight, sweltering in the sun and checking my emails every half hour for more job postings. The wet early fall when the seam in our ceiling began to crack and it leaked all through the apartment. The fly infestation. The first and only job I’ve ever quit: soliciting for money for the North Shore Animal League on the street…in the ridiculously hot summer. (I lasted two weeks.) The move to the spacious and beautiful but dark loft in SoHo, where you couldn’t get away from the crowds of shoppers and tourists on Broadway or the sounds of wood being whittled first thing in the morning. The flood that happened right before we moved back to my old neighborhood in Brooklyn, where rent was expensive and I still didn’t feel at home. The fairly dead-end and uncreative job I finally clinched; the hour and a half commute. The no money. The no friends. The burnout.

I relied on S in a way that was unfair. In a way that nearly ended our friendship. I was floundering in a way that totally shocked me, and she was succeeding, blossoming even. I felt like I was shrinking in constant comparison. I couldn’t compete, and I didn’t even know when I had signed up for the competition.

By the time I moved out of New York, at the beginning of 2008, I had learned how incredibly difficult it is to live with best friends (once they are, in fact, best friends). I was also finally able to look back on how much S and I had gone through: almost five years of cohabitation, a Broadway show almost every month, countless amazing meals, a lot of alcohol, quotes we still relay, vacations together, spontaneous singing and dance parties, fierce support through various family crises, being each other’s wing women at clubs, dressing up, debriefing in our pajamas after our long nights out.

It’s always been hard for me to fight and disagree with people because I’m always sure it means we’re no longer friends. S and I had about two years of disagreements. And I don’t think they fazed her at all because she has always been sure that’s what family does.

So, the first thing that comes to mind when I think of bread is S. Because when we were first dreaming about our lives in New York, in those cloudy and frenzied days after graduating from college, we dreamed that all we’d eat would be baguettes, feta, cucumbers, and tomatoes. I’d drink water, but she said she’d want vodka.

The amazing thing, the thing that still surprises me, is that, six years after meeting at a callback for Pippin, almost four years since the move to New York, and a year and a half after moving apart, she and I are still dreaming together.

Back in the OG

As my train entered New York City yesterday afternoon, I anticipated being overwhelmed with nostalgia, returning to my hometown, leaving Boston for the first time all semester. Viewing the New York City skyline left me feeling decidedly nothing. Struggling through Herald Square with my luggage in the cold left me frustrated. Walking down my old street, I was glad I wasn't emotional. My old apartment even looks different, which I think is helpful in keeping me emotionally distant. (Although my muscle memory keeps making me want to walk into the bedroom that used to be mine.)

It took me seeing the neon green spatula that's still in the cluttered drawer for me to feel anything.

thought of the moment, 23: secret single behavior

Watching Sex and the City alone at 2 in the morning is about the only activity that makes me miss New York.

thought of the moment, 19: poor East Coast girl

S: oh
70s
is that warm? i forget.

thought of the day, 27: leaving New York

Last night, I prayed for the first time in probably six years.

another last thing, vol. III

Time is weird. I have all these plans, dates I'm anticipating, things on my to-do list, and I keep just buzzing through them and crossing them off. It's sort of making my head spin. Last night was my office going-away party; tonight is the university party; tomorrow, S and I have plans all day long and into the night, and my weekend is shot because of a co-worker's holiday party. Then K comes for a week, and suddenly, it'll be 2008 and less than a week before I leave New York.

This is really it. My last day at the job I've been at for 777 days today. (I promise I just did the addition--I didn't even make that number up!!)

Maybe today will be a lucky day.

UPDATE: I gotta say, it feels a little weird. I'm home at a regular time, but I'll NEVER make that commute again (and I don't think I'll miss it). What strange things, all these endings are. Today was not so much lucky as...anticlimactic.

on the F train, vol. II

I was sitting near a young woman on the train today that I only noticed because she was right in front of me. I was busy with my iPod; she seemed just like every other person on the train. I noticed a chain of dark red beads, hanging out of her bag, that I thought was just a pretty necklace, until I realized she was running her fingers over the beads slowly, gripping, white-knuckled.

She was praying, eyes squeezed shut. The pretty beads were a rosary.

another last thing, vol. II

I got really sad on my way home today, after spending 3 1/2 hours with my favorite coworker, after our Monday. She's only in the city for a couple days, and I'm busy the rest of the time she's here. It's the last time we'll spend time together while I'm living in New York.

Also, I don't understand this. Please to explain.

thought of the moment, 15: when did this happen?

This year has gone so fast that I'm completely disoriented it snowed last night. Does this mean winter is really upon us? I didn't notice.

thought of the day, 23: sometimes things just have a way of working out

The stagehands' strike is over, which means we will get to see the show I've had tickets to for months!

Don't tell her--it's a surprise!