A few things

1. I deleted my facebook.

2. I got in to grad school.

3. I miss this puppy:

photos by Alex

Even though he's just across the street now, it's just not the same. I want to be a puppysitter for life.

I love him I love him I love dancing with him I love him.
Which brings me to:

4. I want/ need a dog.

5. Can I really be here for two more years? Can I really do that?

I am at such an incredibly transient point in my life. It's nice in a way (probably in the same way that leaning over a gaping precipice is nice), but it's also, well, a b*%$#.  This kind of freedom is more horrifying than liberating. I have a few more weeks of college, an extremely single self, an acting gig that expires on June first, a housing contract that expires on June first, and... oh yeah, that's it.

Come June first I am either a new woman/ lone, adventure-seeking shewolf/ freelance writer ninja.... or just. Me. Alone. With nothing to do.

ummmm cool.

...What should I do? 

I just want people to be real

whatever that means.

This stupid post-modern education of mine has doomed me to be unable to think in absolutes.

 Reality. pff. There is none. 

So, really, my struggle for authenticity is so futile because I'm trying to be authentic. Which is the opposite of authenticity. But anyway.

My point is, more and more when people are talking to me lately I just want to scratch off all their insecurities and puttings-on and somehow let them know that they can just be with me. What if we all were to just be? Would we end up being anything or would we just... evaporate somehow? I don't know what I'm saying.

But every day when we choose how we're going to be that day... could we at least choose to pretend to be real? Or something like that?

Choose to pretend to act like we're being the idea of "authentic" that we conjure up in our own heads which is merely a self-created reality that probably has very little to do with real reality?

Ugh. Come on, people. Just stop acting like you're too cool. We all matter.

Schelling said, "Most people turn away from what is concealed within themselves just as they turn away from the depths of the great life." 
I'm annoyed because what I want most is to dive right into those great, dark depths, but I'm afraid of being lonely once I get there.

good things.

1. good things still happen.

Brookie.

"With rushing winds and gloomy skies

The dark and stubborn Winter dies:

Far off, unseen, Spring faintly cries,

Bidding her earliest child arise;

March!"

Bayard Taylor, "March"

  

  

(We would like to go outside, please.)

2. Good things still happen.

Just when I'd consigned myself to be a shriveled up loser forever, the theatre gods magnanimously cast me in The Secret Garden.

And just when I'd decided to go to bed until graduation (or, more likely, much later) because my brain doesn't work and I'm tired and I've (for lack of a gentler term) screwed up my college education (and everything else), the research paper gods told me I won second place in a prestigious essay contest.

AND DESPITE THAT I still decided that I'm never going to be a writer and no one wants me to be a writer and my life is, for all intents and purposes, over. But then the publication gods said that a Women's Studies journal wants my Mormon feminist rant paper that I wove together with my soul.

I am humbled and so happy about these good things. 

Just a few days ago a dear friend told me that I was "about to turn a beautiful, beautiful corner." I so wanted to believe her. I should have.

And now it's time to turn back and tell everyone I love the same thing-- to help them find their corners. I have been way too sad lately to be anything but selfish, selfish, selfish. 

But there's time to change. Because good things still happen.

Love, light, and singing the most beautiful songs every night at rehearsal/ starting to write words again because I AM a writer, dagnabbit,

Banana

Time flies with strings attached.

Just discovered Duy Huynh

It's just sweeping me away and I'm not sure if I have much control over where I'm going.

Where am I going?

as the saying goes...

"A leap year is never a good sheep year".

I'm afraid this may be indicative of my year as a whole. Which is sad because it's only the 29th of February and I have quite a bit of year left.

Though I have had good sheep years in the past:

Can you have a good sheep year, sans the sheep, when you don't live in Jerusalem?

Is this post merely an excuse to post pictures of myself with animals? Perhaps. 

The point is, I'm depressed.

No. The POINT IS I have a new baby nephew. Welcome, Andrew Daniel Fortner, you perfect little human! I can't wait to meet you. And I love love love being an auntie again.

Now someone give me a baby and a sheep and I'll be happy.

Okay? 



my favorite video of all time

10 cool things about being a secretary

Almost as cool as Maggie [via Detour Magazine]

1. If you purposefully put an extra large selection of paper into the three-hole puncher, you have to use both hands and thus get a good deltoid workout.

2. Important people get so used to your unimportant presence that they will say any important thing in your unimportant presence. So you end up knowing a lot of important things (I am being vague on purpose in order to emphasize the important mystery of my importance).

3. It's so easy to stay hydrated.

4. It's so easy to eat candy (It's really really easy to eat candy).

5. You learn to beat the copier into submission even though you know nothing about technology, but everyone asks you to "fix" the copier and you say well yes, certainly, and since you always do end up "fixing" the copier, everyone sees you as some sort of wizard. Which you're okay with.

6.Pinterest.

oh... that's about it, actually.

love, electric staplers, and spinning around and around and around and around when no one's watching,
Banana

it gets cold then warm

then cold again.

brookie and I spent the long weekend with her lovely old camera.

  


I've always figured February had something against me. Something about the word "doldrums" that seems to epitomize the very generally grey feeling that wraps its tentacles around the month and anyone living in it and refuses to let go. Can't you feel it? It told me to come home and go back to bed today, so I obeyed. And then to take a bath and then to go back to bed again. Oh February, you naughty, restless thing.
 And this mostly snowless winter has suddenly become a snowy one. And then springy and warm. And then snowy again.

I wrote a poem about it [or about the evasive something inside me that just wanted to be written about] a couple Sundays ago. Enjoy.

snow falls
deathly quiet--
doesn't anyone else want to scream?

the window protects us
from the chaotic wash of white,
and inside we talk of God.

I am so alone in here.
I am so cold in here.
But I see Him out there--
tickling the trees til the branches break.

Those who listen do so on
hand palms,
heads loll in lethargic worship
and God blows past in silence.

Where does He live in Winter?
We see Him risen so effortlessly in Spring--
in Daffodils and Blades of Grass,
in the resurrected sun that cradles
our newborn love.

Can we find Him in the
hard sky, solid ground, blank dawn?
Where does He live when all life
is gone?

Does He sleep in the silent snow?

We wait to awaken.
We listen with dull ears and
frosty hearts;
We shut the door til Spring.

back.

I'm getting feisty in my old age.

 I am very quickly irked, it seems, by everything. Racism, sexism, general rudeness, road rage, people who scam elderly people, genocide, my own intellectual limitations, everything... zero tolerance. And it gets to the point where it makes it very hard to be happy about anything because pretending to be Little Susie Sunshine when everyone else seems to be hurting feels insensitive and fake. I vowed to never use my acting skills to be someone I'm not. There are just so many things to care  about everywhere. So many injustices.

Sooo...what right have I to go on a lovely little bike ride in the sun and read some poems and just feel all lovely and tickled and ignore all the disgusting pride and arrogance and cruelty out there????

Well. It also seems like a disservice on my part to be Little Susie Raincloud all the time, you know? I'm not contributing anything by just caring and getting pissed and being rude to everyone because I think they are just preserving their comfort by ignoring important human rights violations. Oh dear. Listen to me! 

I decommissioned this blog for a while because I was disgusted with myself. I do NOT want to be another post-pictures-of-myself-every-day-so-I-maintain-a-carefully-constructed-illusion-of-what-my-life-is-like-and-everyone-can-envy-me-and-validate-me-with-their-comments-and-giveaway-entries blogger. And since I began to sort of lean that way I pulled the plug. Straight up.

BUT. Here's the point of all this ranting. No matter how much I care, I can't solve the world's problems. No sirree. And by  acting all put-out all the time about things that really are awful, I'll just become a negative person and you just can't keep friends that way, not even the ones that really love you.

What to do then? Well, I've decided to keep caring. Stay human. But a big part of being human, I've decided, is also loving despite things. Not just loving the underdog, but loving everyone. Loving women who PREFER to be controlled and don't want to think about the alternative. Loving grandparents who were raised in the 30's and 40's and really didn't have much of a chance to not be racist. Just loving.
Because, as I discovered, being intolerant of intolerant people is still intolerance. And probably worse since I consider myself so "enlightened." Being narrow-minded about narrow-mindedness is the ultimate hypocrisy, I think. I am going to change.

I am going to keep blogging because words and pictures and pretty things are my life force, and that's okay. If I can make the world a teensy bit prettier by dwelling on the beautiful things I discover, there's no shame in that, is there? Sharing is caring. Or so my childhood taught me.

So. The point is... I'm back. Come back with me?

banana

The month of birthdays.

Today

I'm just thinking about how special this little boy is.

When I first met him as a teeny, flat-headed 2-month old fluffy blue bundle, I never realized he would become my brother, my dear friend, and one of the greatest joys of my life.

Happy 10 years, Ethan!

I love you, crazymonkeybuttonnose.

p.s. there are so many birthdays this month. I am excited about them. Except, I can also hear the death-toll of 22 growing ever-louder...

A few thoughts for today:

He either fears his fate too much,

Or his desserts are small,

That dares not put it to the touch
to gain or lose it all. 
-James Grahame (1612-1650)

"Daring, n. One of the most conspicuous qualities of a man in security."

-Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) 

"Be bolde, be bolde, and everywhere, be bolde."

-Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) 

I'm sensing a pattern.

And then she was gone, part two

Sometimes your lovely little bestie is in England.

And it's not fun! (for you)

But it's okay because you cover her favorite song and hunt down everyone who loves her.

You are so loved, Brookie J.

Happy birthday!

Nan

I had fun this weekend.

At:

Goth Prom

 

and

Octoberfest.

 (The "band" was called "The Bratwursts" for the evening)

I love it when Halloween time lasts forever.

Love, llamas, and oops-- no homework,

Banana

type cast?

Why is it exactly that I always play the ill-fated sex symbol?
For example:

 

 Susannah in Joyful Noise back in Hawaii...

 Sibyl Vane in The Picture of Dorian Gray this spring...

And, a week or so ago, I finished being Constance in The Three Musketeers.

Just to name a few.
Well. 

I'd understand if it was just a few times. But I'm all set to play Susannah again this Christmas at the Covey Center (hopefully as a brunette this time). I am honored, of course, but it still makes me wonder...

do directors know something about me that I don't?

You know, Marilyn Monroe said: "Being a sex symbol is a heavy load to carry, especially when one is tired, hurt and bewildered."

Not that I'm really any of those things. But in all these plays I'm always the one loved, left, bruised, abused, used, and, frequently, killed. But at least it's because they think I'm pretty...

um.

Hopefully I'm just a good actor? 

Unfortunately, I know that I'm not, really. 

And that I am a little self-destructive in my love habits. And just sort of generally unlucky. And I keep gravitating towards these things that hurt me so bad and then, well, basically kill me.

And sometimes all it takes is a small tidbit of new information. 
And I'm dead.

Oh well. At least I'm pretty.

Pff,

Banana

the sunset tree

this lovely indian summer we've been having 

has found the pillar house bunnies 

basking in the late summer sunlight on the lawn under the trees.

AllySnack warbles.

Kato reads us interesting facts on her iphone.

And I daydream about pumpkin pie and new running shoes.

But even though the weather has been amazing and good things keep hopping right into my life, the real magic of it all is that, 

well,

for fear of sounding overly sentimental (actually, I don't really care. Watch me), is these little angel people I have here. 

Seriously.

I am so so so lucky to have the friends I have. Friends that make me brush my teeth and share their closets, beds, and other-worldly cheering-up powers and speak with me in an accidentally-developed dialect incorporating baby talk, bunny speak, and overall incomprehensibly incorrect grammar. And they write songs with me and sing them and generally just make my life a happy thing to live.

I guess it can only be summed up thus?

"Oh wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there 

here!

How beauteous mankind is! o brave new

world

That has such people in't!"

-The Tempest,  Willie Shakespeare

Now how 'bout them fall leaves?

eh?

love love love,

Nan.

As loud as a lover's words.

He said, "Could you watch the world burn with me?"

And I figured I'd have to think about that.

But it sure was nice. 

And then Iron & Wine said, "Oh, how the rain sounds as loud

as a lover's words.

Now and again she's afraid when

the sun returns."

And so I thought about it. 

Have a beautiful weekend.