SAVE THE DATE

12.21.12

The last day of the world?

Or the best wedding ever?

you pick.

Guess What?

 

When you get offered a role in a movie and you accept in but then you turn it down because you realize you just feel so icky about anyone you know potentially seeing that movie.

That's what I did today. I would have been able to join SAG and get paid some seriously needed money, but I feel so much weight lifted after telling them I can't do it. Decisions like this suck but I'm glad they have to be made or life would just... suck.

So, I lose my SAG card, but I preserve my self-respect.

phew.
what did you do today?

And then Jacob's knee exploded because he ran a half marathon with me.

 
One of the dangers of dating a really quality human is that he might sacrifice his body to spend quality time with you.

Like: hardly train for a rather extended run, then decide to do it with you.

Then get really hurt on mile 11 or so.

Three cheers for finishing, Jacoboo!

 

I might add... we received "cutest couple award" from a water station officiator.

I mean... look at us.

 

 

Love, lavender, and IT bands,
Banana

To my mama

It's your birthday today, and I'm so glad you're my mama.

some thanks are in order. 

 

Thank you for reading to me from the womb.

Thank you for encouraging my "strong-willed"ness, but not my selfishness.

Thank you for loving God and your husband and your babies.
Thank you for being so beautiful, in lots of ways.

Thank you for marrying my daddy (with the tommy gun).

Thank you for making music and for making it a part of our lives.

Thank you for loving beautiful things and for teaching me that they're important.

Thank you for being at my plays and class parties and ballet recitals and parades and soccer games and girl scout meetings and pageants and concerts and letting (and sometimes making) me do all those things, but most of all, thank you for being on the edge of my bed when I crashed and cried and thought I couldn't do anything. You have always believed in me more than anyone has.  

And no one can soothe like you.

I'm sorry I'm not blonde (like you've always wanted me to be), but I know you love me anyway.

 

Thank you for being my

friend

confidant

cheerleader

role model

psychiatrist

life giver.

Thank you for being my mama.

Happy Birthday.

 

 

love, bosey

I just thought you should know...

...that I am in love.

in love, I say!

goo goo, gaga, lovey dovey love bird, jaw-dropping, cartoon heart eyes popping in love.

And it's so cool.

A belated tribute

No... not to the 75th annual Hunger Games.




But to the same kind of man who taught Katniss to be awesome so she could WIN the 75th annual Hunger Games;



that is, to my father.

A tribute to the man who taught me to read at stoplights.

Who threw me an unsurpassed 12th birthday party, wherein my house was transformed into Hogwarts (This is before  HP movie paraphernalia, people. We MADE chocolate frogs and Bertie Bott's EFBs and used chopsticks for wands).

A tribute to the most consistent mustache-wearer and 3x5 card carrier.

A tribute to always having "a back up" and wheezing like the penguin from Toy Story when being tickled.

A tribute to the smartest human being I've ever met.

To the most thoughtful, loving and generous human being I've ever met.

 To the man who has kept my skinny, cold-blooded lizard body warm and alive for over twenty years.

 And to the man who still tucks me in and sings cowboy songs  every time I'm home.And who probably always will.
 
I love you, Daddy.
"Now, what was your name?"

-Banana Lassie

Poor banana

Today I went on a great run and got an amazing facial and made lunch for my darling girlfriends and went to the temple (and it was nice and very holy) and performed in a beautiful play. Then I came home and cried my false eyelashes right off. Literally...they slipped off my lids and down my lashes due to my powerful, seemingly bionic, glue-eating tears.

Why, you ask? Is your uterus bleeding? Are you a victim of a sublime, destructive unrequited love? Are you just bored and tired and inferior and lonely?

yes yes yes.
 But I'm also a beneficiary of a very nice life.
So why is it such a poor, sad, desperate little banana?

HMMM?

The thought occurred to me while I was dish washing today, this very nice little day, that I need to start writing.
I need to start writing.
I NEED TO START WRITING.

What should the poor banana start writing about? She's awfully tired of her weepy little self. 

Hi

I'm eating my cereal with a fork, but that's fine because I HATE soy milk and want to taste the least amount of it as I possibly can.

In other news...
I graduated from college (big wup).
I jumped out of an airplane (bo-rring).
I received an awful lot of rejection letters (cool).
I had a few existential crises here and there (what's new?) and took this picture of the lovely, consistent spring weather:

I took some more Holgas in Moab:

Ally Snack and me

Every time someone said "there's cairn" I said, "who's Karen?" 

...And I meant it.

Everyone seemed to know her.

so.
I'm trying to decide what to do now.
It's cool because I can technically do anything (nothing tying me down, dontcha know), and yet the rejection letters and bank account seem to say that I can't. I wish I was some sort of economical genius and could create a large, glittery loophole that created a huge demand for my skill set. You know, like, watching clouds and taking long showers and stuff.

uh.

clocks and things

I'm either happy or productive.

Today I'm happy

(Which sucks).

I need to be productive.

"If some great Power would agree to

make me always think what is true and

do what is right, on condition of being

turned into a sort of clock and wound up

every morning before I got out of bed, I

should instantly close with the offer."

-Thomas Henry Huxley

I would so much rather be happy and a little selfish and happy and a wee bit oblivious than to always be doing something I'm supposed to be doing. All the time! Yerrghghgh. 

Today I want to eat Gardettos and ice cream and shave my legs and get started on my reading list in the sun. I want to write a song and a few letters and play with a baby or two and go on a hike and perform on stage tonight.

I suppose today I want to be a housewife.

yerghghghhhhhh.

Come to My Garden

When I was very little, I watched this movie over and over, and sometimes it made me weep:

When I as a teensy, tiny bit less little, I loved this book to death:

I spent most of my childhood looking for this door:

 When I was in France this summer I thought I found it. In the sprawling English garden of Fontainebleau Castle, I found a dilapidated door covered in ivy, opening to a magical little garden filled with bits of medieval pillars and things. I was in the middle of having a conniption of the long-forgotten secret that was MINE! ALL MINE! when the gardener came in to look at me strangely, mumble "bonjour" and move the sprinkler.

So, the point is, you should come see this play because the modern world is conspiring against us all and it's impossible to find a real secret garden (trust me, I've scoured Europe), BUT for two hours you can forget all that and watch one of the most beautiful, magical live theatre performances you'll ever see and hear some soul-shaking voices sing some pretty legit/ bad a#$/ glorious music.

Anyway. Monday, Wednesday, Friday through the end of May. You're welcome.

 

is it okay

to go to bed for the rest of my life?

well... IS IT??

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