Back to School: What I Want This Year (other than a pair of cool new shoes!)

I've been staring at this white page for days...weeks...over a month. Trying to come up with something worth writing about. Something that will interest not only me, but at least a few people who happen to come across my blog. Something pithy, witty, not too dark. Humorous, a little touching, moving enough to inspire a few tears, but not so deep that the reader is wrecked for hours afterward. That is actually a lot to expect. I have great respect for writers who are able, on a regular basis, to put out blog entries and columns and books. I am distracted by the truck idling outside my window, the dust blowing across the floor, the voices in my head telling me that there is nothing I could write that would have any meaning at all anyway. My time would be more efficiently used by sweeping up the dust. Yet, one voice in that mix, one tiny voice says, hey, write about what is most important right now, who cares if anyone else is interested! So...here goes.

I've not been a student, at least not an official one for ....well...a long time. However, every year "Back to School", even more than New Year's Day, signifies a new start. Whatever ever happened last year; the B instead of an A in some math subject, the disappointment of not getting a lead in the school musical, the lack of any dates whatsoever...again...all of those disappointments are in the past. This year I'm going to get all As (book a bunch of jobs), star in the musical (book a big theater instead of a tiny one)...go on a date (um....go on a date). This year is it! This year I'll be popular, the fashion go to girl, super successful. All of my hope is renewed as the days start to shorten. So, instead of back to school shopping, I decided ( in the wake of an aborted vacation due to Hurricane Irene) to spend the last weekend of summer in a Grinberg Method Intensive. I've been twisted every which way and am still sorting through everything that came up.

Part of the intensive, which included a lot of breathing, and talking and feeling, and, on the last day, tears and shouts, was to write a list of what I really want. I thought I would share (most of) it with you.

I WANT:
*to sleep better
*to teach less and make more
*to book at least two commercials by the end of the year
*to book at least two co-star spots by the end of the year
*to feed my dance soul with concert work, more choreography and more classes with my favorite teachers
*to book a big musical or play in a big house
To believe and accept that I deserve any of this.
*to go to Paris, via New York
*to get through a day without saying any of the following to myself:
-you are fat
-you are ugly
-you are gross
-you suck
*to remember
*to cry
*to let go
*to be at ease with people and in the world
*to trust when there is nothing to fear
*to update my media: reels, vocal demo, some new pics...
To not judge this list as greedy, self-centered, superficial, un-attainable, stupid or pathetic
*to speak when I've something to say
*to be open to love and care
*an amazing gown and a reason to wear it

Memorial Day, 2011

My father died on Memorial Day ten years ago. Ten entire years. It feels like yesterday and a lifetime and everything in between. He died after a Quixotic fight with pancreatic cancer; a fight that everyone but he knew he would lose. I will never forget the look on one of the many doctors' faces when he said that if he could just get through x or y procedure and put some weight back on, he'd be back in the game. He weighed about 90 pounds at the time and the expression on the doctor's face was a mixture of disbelief and pity. My proud father never told his clients he was sick. He didn't allow anyone to talk about what would happen next or how he felt about his life being cut short. We saw occasional glimpses of his anger or sadness, when he would lash out at one of us, usually my mother, followed by remorse. We could see that if he opened up enough to let us in, there was so much emotion buried there, so much he could have shared with us and unburdened himself of, but mostly what we saw and felt was a wall of denial. If there is one thing that I want to take from his death, it's that denying the truth is not the answer. Facing it and dealing with it, in all of it's bloody imperfection and pain, is infinitely better.

People, in their well meaning efforts to be comforting, say that my dad would be proud of me. That he would see this bright, artistic, well-intentioned life that I am carving out for myself and be proud. I am absolutely certain this is not the case. I don't say this with a "woe is me" attitude at all. It's simply the truth, without denial. My dad would not be proud of my life. He would be and was extremely disappointed by it. That is not to say that he didn't love me. I'm relatively certain that he did. But pride is a different thing. He looked at my artistry as a pastime that I would grow out of. He felt that I was fiscally irresponsible (which is odd, considering that my financial challenges actually began after his death.) He disagreed with me politically. He abhorred my lack of religion. My failed marriage was more than sad, it signified my failure to be a moral human being. He absolutely believed deep in his soul that I was or will actually be descending into hell and told me so point blank. So, what I then ask, is whether or not his pride in me is what matters. If it is, I can find moments where my work transcended his disappointment and he saw me as a professional worthy of respect; his reaction to my singing at my sister's wedding, catching him bragging about a certain Phantom performance, an impromptu recital in his hospital room. There were these isolated moments and I do treasure them, but they are not the reality of our relationship. That exists somewhere else.

My dad was funny. He was smart and biting and incredibly entertaining. He looked like Fred Astaire. He loved opera and politics (well, Republican politics) and meeting new people. He loved to run (something that we do share) and ski and travel. Above all, he loved to fly. I think he felt immortal or closer to God or something when he was piloting a plane. His greatest joy would have been to see me as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. Seriously. My friends who never saw his anger adored him. My friends who did, well, they never came back to the house.

He was demanding and unforgiving and self righteous. He was a fundamentalist Christian in a Jewish family who ended up with two Atheist children. He loved animals and sadly never met his granddaughter, whom I am absolutely certain he would have been utterly in love with. He believed that the gun in his bedside table was safe and that the world was not. He loved garlic. A lot.

I have a lot of unresolved issues around my relationship with my father. I wish more than anything that he was alive so that we could work them out together. I believe, maybe irrationally, that we could have gotten to a place of understanding and mutual respect. He did with his own father. He was eventually able to tell his father, after 40 years of deceit, that he had converted to Christianity. If he was capable of that, I have to believe that we could have gotten to a point of truth in our relationship. We could have, if he had been open to it, gotten there when he was ill, but he wasn't, so we ran out of time. On Memorial Day, and on this one in particular, that is what I mourn; the lost opportunity to know each other as adults.

All of this being said, I did love my dad. I will never forget the overwhelming feeling, as I watched the towers burning on Sept. 11, 2001 that if only my dad were still here, this unbelievable event would not be happening and everything would still be ok. When the world was falling apart, I wanted my dad and in that moment I knew that our bond was still there and always would be, even if he thought we would spend eternity in different places. I can't wait to prove him wrong.

Home, yet not....published on April 25....started earlier.

I've been in San Francisco for a couple of weeks now. I'm in rehearsal for a show, selling jewelry and singing with my old mentors and friends. I'm walking everywhere, dancing a lot, running both in the park and up and down hills with the dog that I am taking care of. I'm going to my old gym haunts (there are so many Crunch gym locations in SF!), and listening to KFOG. I should feel completely at home yet instead I feel just slightly off. There is a vague floaty aspect to my days. I feel the tug of old emotional traps, threatening to pull me down the rabbit hole. I do not want to heed them. I want to enjoy the rehearsal process, the challenging classes, the gorgeous music everywhere. I need to feed my inspiration and enjoy the break from teaching. I certainly don't need to have some emotional breakdown while here. I am a stronger person than I was when I left this beautiful city four years ago. I have worked hard to be stable and present. I have deeper information, about myself and about the past. More importantly I think, I have more tools. I am learning to stop mid fall. Yet...I can feel in various moments a loosening of focus, a catch in my chest or the sensation of my throat closing. When I feel that, I start to doubt the solidity of my growth. To control the fall, I stop, take a deep breath and try to figure out what it is that I am actually afraid of. My first instinct is to dismiss the feelings by saying that none of them are current; that I'm allowing outmoded fears and limitations back into my psyche. That I'm just crazy. While that could very well be true, I don't think it is the full story.

My San Francisco life was a quite turbulent period of time, one that on the whole was painful and full of loss; my marriage, my father, my money, and, it seemed, my mind. But, there was also so much beauty and art and growth. I made wonderful friends (and lost some along the way), danced, sang, performed and created. I eventually built up the strength and found the desire to move to LA. As I now log my endless miles running up and down these familiar hills, I'm starting to wonder if I am experiencing not old triggers, but a growing realization that I have yet to find what I left San Francisco for. When I left, I expected on some level to rise to the occasion, to "make it" in the industry, to soar. While I have done a lot of wonderful things in LA and have had many incredible experiences, my life there does not resemble the dream that I arrived with. This is hardly a revelation, but I am discovering that the "coming home" aspect of working here in San Francisco is putting a spotlight on some things that perhaps remain hidden or unaddressed in the rush of my regular day to day. Perhaps the regular conversations that I am having here are adding to the questions: "You look great, what are you up to? Anything I can see you in?" Well, no, there is nothing that you can see me in....yet. I've shot a few commercials, none of which are currently running. But (and the little kid inside jumps up and down to be heard), I've been busy in theater, I'm teaching, I've choreographed some wonderful shows. I'm extremely proud of the work that I have been doing. I've grown exponentially not only as a dancer, singer, and actor but as a choreographer and teacher. I've studied with amazing people and have worked on many wonderful productions and have discovered that I love teaching. Is it enough though? If I don't break though in film and television, have I achieved what I left San Francisco to do? Do I have the life that I want? Can I answer, with genuine pride, rather than with the patina of PR glitz that I have acquired, even cultivated, those questions about what I've been doing? What about a personal life? I'm house sitting at the moment. There are two sweet dogs sitting under the table as I write, full of unconditional love. My life is so different from this. It's extremely solitary. There is no one asking for my care or company. This is a choice for sure, but should it be a permanent one? I don't know. The hills of San Francisco are asking me to face these questions head on.

Sunday melancholy

Caroline Knapp is one of my favorite writers. She is who I wish I was (or maybe who I want to be) as a writer. I read her essays and memoirs and feel a sense of recognition that is so acute I can barely stand it. I want to call or email her. I want her as a friend. Sadly, she died a few years ago at the age of 42 from lung cancer. I remember reading about it in disbelief. I had never let her know how much her writing, on anorexia and female desire and dogs and drinking, meant to me. I am not an alcoholic and have not had a dog since I was a child, yet I was and am able to connect to these essays in ways that surprise me. When she writes about her long battle with anorexia, about solitude and loneliness and perfectionism and failure, I feel as if she has distilled my own thoughts, clarified the nonsense in my head and written down the important parts with skill and a healthy dose of self reflection and humor.

Today I have the day off. It's the first in several weeks and sorely needed. I've had a rough start to the year in many ways. I've been sick, which has been mostly just annoying, but got serious enough last week to scare me into some self care. I am frustrated professionally. I am lonely to my core, despite many dear friends. I am trying once again to hang onto my sanity and trying to do so without the therapist who has been my guide post over the last several years. I've been struggling to find a balance in my teaching between demand and reward. Struggling to find and discover who I am in all of this and more importantly, what I want. I don't have an answer for that.

So I woke up this morning, not sick for the second day in a row and felt, instead of relief at the freedom the day promised, a combination of almost paralyzing anxiety and sadness. This is a familiar feeling that I run from daily. Literally. Today it was extreme. I had prepared for the day with a visit to the library on Friday. Six books sat on the side table beckoning me. Three by Caroline Knapp. I flipped through a few of them and decided to tackle the book of essays, a collection published after her death. I like essays and short stories. You can read one or two, put the book down, do something else and then read another as a reward. So, I've been doing that all day. Running errands, then reading an essay, filling out evaluations, reading an essay, finally going for a 2 hour hike. After the hike, I came upon an essay on how Caroline faced one lonely Sunday.

"A Sunday morning....time stretches before me, an unstructured obligation-free day. For lots of people this is joy.....For me it is a terrifying thing. I wake on such days full of disquiet, aware of a vague longing, a nameless anxiety that scratches on some internal door, a sense of ache."

What she discovered over the course of the day is that although there are so many questions and desires linked to her loneliness, the feeling itself need not lead to unremitting despair. That is the fear; that a lonely day will evolve into a(nother) deep depression that will be impossible to emerge from. She had the tools to combat that. She made a set of curtains. She allowed herself the simple pleasure of creating something and let the questions just sit there unanswered.

I am learning to do the same. I try to breathe into the fear instead of holding on or running away. To say that it is hard is the biggest understatement I can think of. I am terrified of myself. I am terrified of what I hold myself back from feeling. I am infamous (among the very few people who have tried to work with me) for disassociating whenever I get anywhere close to feeling something real. But today I let myself cry and feel and read and breathe. I listened to my new healer, heard her words in my head, ignored the weight and took a deep breath. I started the day barely able to get a breath into my body; my throat and chest were locked and weighted down. It's different now. I am still lonely and know that seeing people won't change that. I don't have any better of idea of how to fix all of the parts of my life that are empty but, and this is a big but, I can breathe just a little better than I did this morning. I learned that I too have the ability to combat a terrifying day and that is a step forward.

Books by Caroline Knapp:
Alice K's Guide To Life: One Woman's Quest for Survival, Sanity, and the Perfect New Shoes
Drinking: A Love Story
Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs
Appetites: Why Women Want
The Merry Recluse: A Life in Essays

Good Actor Week!

Sometimes the stars and planets align here in LA and you get to enjoy an awesome actor week. I had such a week this month. Not only did I get to shoot a short film, I went to the Ovation Awards where I walked the red carpet and was surprised to discover that I am actually a part of a really great theater community. There was a good deal of unexpected recognition of my work (and of myself) that, I am almost loathe to admit, REALLY felt validating.

It can be embarrassing to admit that you need outside validation. We should be able to find within ourselves whatever it is that makes us continue. That said, there is nothing like the rush of a stranger coming up to you and saying "I saw you in xyz and you were amazing!" It's kind of awesome, especially when said person is a bigwig in an industry in which you still feel like an outsider.

photo credit: Ryan Miller

Big Breakin' , produced by Twistville, shot Jan.14-17. It was a BLAST. What happens when a community center dance class is given the opportunity to audition for a big music video? Chaos of the best kind. Throw in a teacher with ties to Paula Abdul, a rival group of dancers and a bunch of "semi-pros" trying to get in on the teacher's connections and you have a situation rife with conflict. Mattio Martinez was our fantastic director and Mike Esperanza our wonderful choreographer. I look forward to working with both of them again!


Finally, I had a breakthrough in my constant struggle to understand my family dynamic, and I was able to achieve that through acting as well. While working through a scene in class, my wonderful coach (Richard Seyd) complimented me on my ability to stay strong and not back down in the face of what were pretty strong views coming at me. I did a good job with it and felt as if I had held my ground. On the drive home I suddenly realized that this standing of my ground was why my family found me so "bitchy" and hard to deal with on this last trip to the compound. I've spent my entire life swallowing my opinions and feelings around them, so when I actually spoke up this time around, I was being a bitch and selfish. The challenge now lies in how to deal with that. I do not want a repeat of this last visit. It was no fun for anyone, yet I do want to hold onto my sense of self. I need to find a way to do so without getting in the face of people who don't want to change. It will be a challenge for sure, but one that I think, going in with knowledge and self-awareness, I can meet.

New Year

I started a post while visiting my family entitled patience, about trying to hold onto my sense of self and soul while with my family under stressful circumstances. I abandoned the post much like I abandoned myself while there. I had a pretty horrid trip to my family compound (yes, my sister's house is like a compound) over the holidays and am still trying to recover, both emotionally and even more importantly, spiritually. I feel a little broken, and incredibly sad, as my own inability to handle things made the trip much worse than it needed to be. This new year is not starting out with the bang that I would have liked. I'm beginning in a place of digging out, of trying to gain some equilibrium. I wanted to send out a newsletter listing a new TV role and maybe a movie. Instead I am reading other actors' newsletters and Facebook updates, feeling jealous and small. Not attractive. I am working on patience, on tolerance and on a various host of other attributes which should help me become a better person and move me beyond the paralyzing inertia that all of this self hatred engenders.

So, in that vein, I've been looking at the various ways that people re-invent in the new year, which to be real, is just another date on the calender. "100 Days of Excellence" is one that I liked, but what happens after the 100 days? Do all of the resolutions and re-arranging of one's life really elicit change? I have such rituals to start each year; a new dream board, a new journal, a quiet evening deciding what I want to accomplish. I should have listed the accomplishments of 2010, as there were many of which I am proud. I should have set the stage for even more this year. However, I skipped all of the familiar routines this year, spending New Year's Eve watching "The Good Wife", then going to sleep early. Maybe I should have stuck to the ritual, but it seems as if there must be some other thing that will set this year apart, make it really fly. Or, maybe there isn't. January 1 is simply a date on the calender. Nothing more and it is all a game, this yearly reinvention that just leads up back to ourselves, flaws and all.....

I don't really have a close for this post...which might be good. Inspiration is in an unfinished sentence, story or song....I'm leaving room open for inspiration.

Fear

I didn't know how to title this post, but the emotion that keeps catching me unawares is fear. Fear of the future, of the unknown, but even more than that, of the known. Fear of returning to the awful time that my dad was dying of pancreatic cancer. The repeating chorus in my head just keeps saying, "I can't."

My mom is currently in the hospital. She broke her leg. I should say, more accurately, that her leg broke. She did nothing traumatic to it, her femur simply snapped in half. The femur. The strongest bone in the body. That is not supposed to happen. So, when something completely inexplicable happens, where does your mind go? Mine, perhaps after lots of doomsday practice, goes to the darkest place possible. The tests, so far, indicate otherwise. A CT scan of suspicious spots came back negative, the surgeon said that the bone looks, aside from the fact of it being in two pieces rather than one, healthy. A biopsy was taken and we don't yet know the results, but all indications are that it will come back clean as well.

That said, my body is tense with dread. I am terrified that we are already at that place where all of these horrid decisions are going to have to be made. And the less mature and less generous parts of me are jealous. Jealous that my sister is there and will get the saint award for helping her through this horrid time. ( I seem to forget that I received no such award when I was there for my parents when my dad was dying. And really, who would want it? That time was awful.) I also feel sad, and left out and frustrated. I don't want my information second hand. I need to be in on the meetings and the decisions and the day to day of it all. My controlling type AAA personality can't handle the distance and the fact that she is in charge of everything. My younger sister is making the decisions that neither of us want, but that I should be making.

There is also the fact that my mom is in a lot of pain. A lot. Breaking your femur, then having it put back together with rods and screws, is incredibly painful. Even under normal circumstances, my mom does not handle pain well. She doesn't know how to communicate with doctors, saying that it is all off the chart rather than setting a base and moving from there. This eventually makes even the most patient of them ignore her. It makes us ignore her. And I think it contributed to the misdiagnosis of this injury. She went the doctor a few days prior to the critical break and he sent her home. There are few things more heartbreaking than seeing someone in unbearable pain. Especially someone that you love. My relationship with my mother is complicated and messed up, but I would never wish upon her or anyone else the type of pain that she has been tortured with over the last several days. The doctors seem to have it under control now, but it has been difficult. And talk about the guilt.

Speaking of guilt, a few days prior to our world rearranging, my sister and niece were out shopping. Mention was make of Chanukah dinner and my niece asked if there would be "a lot of presents and gilt (meaning gelt)." The response was "I don't know about presents, but yes, guilt will be there in abundance." If we only knew.....