Happy Fourth of July...

...now here's a dog staging his own personal reenactment for our viewing pleasure.



Nothing says independence like an explosive wielding dachshund.

Paradox

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."
- Mother Teresa

That is where I am trying to be. In a place where I focus on how much I love the people I have lost. I want that to be my driving emotion. More than one person I care for died in the shooting. I am focusing on the loss of Allan, but that is because it is so large to me. I feel I need to find a way to understand that one loss so I can process all the deaths that took place that day.

I have every one of their phone numbers in my cell phone and I cannot figure out what to do with that. I started to text Allan one day. I was somehow disoriented enough to start typing a message I can never send.

Sometimes something hurts so much that it feels like it has a physical presence. It feels large and looming. The loss is enormous and surrounds me and makes me feel as if I am seeing everything through a haze. As if it has swallowed me whole.

I realize that the loss is so tremendous because of how much love I have for the people who died in front of me so suddenly, all in one day. So I am trying to find a way to focus on that love. If I must be swallowed by a whale, let it be made of something good. Let me be overwhelmed by how much I love them. Let me take that love and use it in how I interact with the world.

I'm not angry. Perhaps I should be, but I don't have room for anger. The man who shot my loved ones is dead. He took his own life. He is irrelevant and was, to me, from the moment they died - although we did not learn of his death until weeks later.

I have lost so much in the last year and a half. My last tenuous shreds of illusion about safety. My plans and even my desire to marry. Family members have died. And friends. Friends who were some of the most remarkable people I have ever known. This is not a disingenuous and distorted memory of the dead. I tend to be appalled at the rosy cheeked perfection with which people remember their dead. No, each of the friends I have lost were truly unusual and remarkable. Death came and took the best from among us. I do not want to be made up of loss.

So here I am, loving. Loving until it pains me in ways I could never have imagined. Loving like something in my chest cavity is straining to cry out and make itself heard in the ether. I am going to accept it and try to find a way to take joy in my capacity to love them. I am not going to let it close me down or prevent me from loving other people. I am not going to let myself swim in this suffering.

I will love so much that there will be no more room in me for hurt. Only love.

Healing

I've been away for a long, long time.

I've just redesigned this blog and the coming months may see some additional changes. I'm fine tuning at this point. We'll see where it takes me.

I am going to blog again about film and random topics of interest for my fellow females and/or people who like to read a female perspective. I am. But I think that, if I'm going to start writing again, I'm going to have to embrace the fact that this is going to get personal. When my personal life was simple and mundane and smooth sailing, it was easy to focus on pop culture. But in the last year that just became impossible. So I stopped writing. And I MISS writing. I miss capturing little moments of life and fleeting ideas about the grander scheme of things in the happily haphazard format of the interweb essayist. I miss the freedom of saying things I need to say.

I'm in the trenches right now. Anyone who actually checks this blog (Yes! All three of you!) will remember the loss that took place in my life last year. I am sorry to report that I suffered another sudden and violent loss just a couple of months ago... made more bewildering by the fact that this time when I lost a friend I was actually standing next to him. A close friend of mine was shot and killed in front of me. Right now I have no idea how to interact with the world without acknowledging this loss. I'm not even certain I will come out the other side of this remotely the same person. I mean, my wicked wit and self-deprecating sense of humor are intact - have no fear. But I'm not certain about the rest of me.

For the first time I can remember, I understand what it is to be lonely. I've always liked as much time to myself as possible. Incongruous in a woman who is, essentially, a world-class social butterfly. But true nonetheless. I like my own company and I have never really understood loneliness. But it's hard to connect with other people now, and I sense that a lot of people who know what is happening in my world may be uncomfortable with me. There is a chasm between me and everyone who has not experienced this loss. There is a strangeness between me and anyone who is uncomfortable with death. As if death hangs about me and they don't want to stand too close to it. I am taking a sharp look at just how short life really is, and how suddenly and unexpectedly it can end. I am realizing that I don't actually want to spend my life alone, and it shocks me to have to face that. And of course, more than any other factor creating this gaping lonliness - one of the closest people in the world to me is gone.

Now, not everyone has someone in their life like my friend, who I'm going to call Allan here for obscure personal reasons other than it actually being his name (because it isn't), but if you do - then this will make sense. There are some things in life that we go through that are almost impossible to understand or accept about ourselves without seeing ourselves as a victim. I have had far more than my share of tragedy and, other than discussing a limited number of those topics relatively anonymously on here, I don't tell people in my everyday life just how many horrible statistics apply to me. I work hard to make certain that people who know me in my daily life are given the impression that I sprang into existence fully formed and happy as a clam. My history exists for them in broad and vague strokes. Allan was one of those rare people that I just let SEE me. He KNEW. He knew all the awful, ugly and terrible things that I don't tell people. Allan was wonderful and wise and knew I didn't want his pity. I just wanted him to know me. And he accepted that. He let me be wholly self and unguarded in his presence.

When we met, years ago, we were both going through horrible, painful breakups. The kind that are massive ordeals and change your life and involve discussions with accountants and creditors and burning things in the backyard and resisting the urge to throw your telephone or run anyone over. We spent many nights sitting on the back of my car, rehashing horrible conversations with our exes and congratulating each other on managing to breathe and wake up in the morning and not say mean things to strangers just for spite. We worked on creative projects together and met for emergency I-Need-To-See-Someone-I-Actually-Like lunches. We told each other all manner of Things No One Else Knows. Over time we developed such a shorthand that we would design a set or discuss a project seamlessly in stream-of-consciousness juggling matches in which we finished each other's sentences and solved each other's conundrums. He was one of those rare friends who become a safe place. Someone who you can hand a piece of yourself to and trust to hold onto it and guard it and treasure it and not laugh at the parts of it that are weird or silly or funny looking.

He was gentler than I have ever known how to be. He was the most intelligent person I have ever been close to personally and he absolutely refused to see that about himself. He had a biting, wildly off-kilter wit that my world seems drab and hollow without. He took a piece of me with him. I am traveling through the world a little more alone than I have ever felt before. I'm not sure how to live in a world that doesn't have him in it. I'm a little bit lost.

So I think I'm just going to have to accept that, if I am to write at all, this is going to become increasingly personal. I mean, I will dig up favorite quotes and photographs again. And I will share my rants about the horrors of dating (Yes. I've been dating. I don't know why. Because self-flagellation would leave marks, I suppose.) and the terrible films that get made these days and all that nonsense. But I'm healing. And it's probably going to be obvious every little step of this journey. But maybe I need someone to talk to. That can be you.

All three or four of you.

Being American

I never understood it.

I'm first generation American. I grew up with my grandmother talking about "those Americans" and trying to understand why my mother's ideas about manners and grammar were so different from those of my friend's parents. The only presidential elections I was old enough to participate in were both sore disappointments for me personally, but also difficult and frustrating experiences for the entire nation. I have traveled to other countries and started conversations with, "I didn't vote for him." I have groused about my irritation that my parents chose to move here before having me, robbing me of what I felt would have been a more interesting life in another country. I have complained about feeling that my government did not represent me, had nothing in common with me. I have often worried that my fellow Americans were apathetic and didn't know how to think globally.

And now I get it.

Sitting in my mom's living room and crying at the joy of listening to a leader who I am proud to hear speak, a leader who - like me - has a foreign born parent. A leader who is so quintessentially American in that he genuinely represents a huge cross section of our population and has a more wide and global "melting pot" perspective than I could have ever hoped for in a U.S. President.

Driving home and looking up at the stars in an unusually clear sky and feeling faith in the people I am surrounded by. That they care. That, no matter who they voted for, they VOTED. So many people were motivated to participate in this election. Instead of the immobile masses I had imagined, I felt hope that I live in a country where people may really care what happens - and can actually make a difference and enact change in their world by participating.

For the first time in my life I understand why people have a fervent passion for this country. I understood the ideas before. What being a United States Citizen was supposed to mean and what this country represents. But tonight I FELT it for the first time. Tonight, watching Barack Obama speak to the nation, I felt I was a part of it for the first time.

If my grandmother were still alive, I'd tell her that from now on, she would have to say "you Americans" instead of "those Americans," because I finally understand why my parents wanted to be here.

Tonight I am so glad that I am.

I Just Voted Because of the Issues

...but they ARE moving words and the action he is able to inspire gives me greater faith in people and their capacity for hope.



You know, I never saw this? I didn't even know about this video until will.i.am was interviewed on CNN amidst the election coverage.

I am so happy tonight.

I Believe

I believe in a higher power. I believe a social conscience is more than just bleeding-heart crap, it's a way of life and a better manner of existing. I believe that animals have emotions. I believe that books have some sort of life of their own because stories are absolutely magic to me. I believe that something about our planet will always be damaged and hell bent for destruction until the people of every nation learn to think globally. I still believe in my heart of hearts that my father is 10 feet tall and can do anything. I believe that my sister will love me no matter what I do. I believe that love is a holy state of being. I believe that the ordinary can be transcendent and alive with possibility. I believe in saying please and thank you. I believe that men who hold the door for you are just better to be around. I believe that we miss too much when we sleep. I believe in being honest but never cruel.

I believe so very very many things.

But today I have decided that I absolutely believe in Internet Karma.

I get in these moods. These manic dear-god-does-anyone-love-me freak out moods where I check email every ten minutes. I don't do it all the time. It's not a constant compulsion. I do this maybe once a month, but when I get like this it's frantic and obsessive and I cannot seem to stop myself and it ALWAYS happens on a day when no one happens to be emailing me so I become convinced that no one is speaking to me. It's mad. It never lasts for more than a few hours but it's completely irrational and I think it's an unhealthy reaction to the constant influx of information that we simply aren't equipped for because technology is evolving faster than we are.

But there it is. I do this. Every now and then. And I was talking to my baby sister about this and she pointed out to me that she had just emailed me the day before - and I had not responded. And she's right. Most of the time I just don't care that much about email and I read what people send me quickly and then I move on with my day - often being too rude and self-focused to respond, to let them know I got their message.

And then I stop getting emails from OTHER UNRELATED PEOPLE. Not even the same people. Not people who know each other. It's like the universe decides to teach me a lesson. But I don't always notice at first.

Then I have one of my days. And it hits me that no one has emailed me in like 24 hours so clearly EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE has stopped speaking to me and I become distraught. Despondent. Limp and unmanageable.

Then I think about the people I have made feel this way. And sure enough - perusing my in box reveals several ignored missives! So I reply to all of them and - I am not kidding - within ten minutes I start to hear from the other people I was waiting to hear from. It's completely bizarre. But it happened to me today. I sent off email responses to my baby sister, an old friend from high school and my aunt. Minutes later I had heard from a theater friend who had not been getting back to me for weeks, a friend I know from Florida and another person I had lost track of ages ago. Unrelated people. Who could not possibly have ever met, much less be calling each other to say, "Oh, you can email her now. She's finally responded to my question from last week. She's learned her lesson."

Proof. Interweb Karma. I know I've written about it before but today was just WEIRD. Not something to build a faith on or anything but further proof of how strange life is and how long-existing concepts can be reprocessed and re-imagined through the miracle of technology.

I totally believe.

Embracing Age

Sometimes I feel like my youth is lost. My best times are behind me and I am just going to go downhill from here. Then I see something like this thing on Yahoo and am reminded of how so many women - as they find themselves, as they grow as individuals, as they learn to love themselves - improve with age. I mean, these are movie stars... but most of them look BETTER as older women. I realize I'm not a guy and all that... but not only would I rather have a conversation with the mature version of these women, I think their mature selves are more physically attractive.

I've always thought that age and experience make people more interesting. Other people. It's harder to apply this to one's self. But my face was soft and without character when I was younger and now, very very slowly, it is developing more character, my bone structure is becoming more pronounced, my countenance is less child-like. I may actually be improving.

Admittedly, I didn't look like Diane Lane when I was 20. So I won't look like her when I'm 40. But I still think these photos bode well for all of us.

Late Night Thinking

Life is strange. Obvious, right? I probably spend far too much time thinking about it. I find the paths our lives take fascinating, although I believe very strongly in the control we have over those paths. I don't think things are meant to happen or in destiny in the way many people do. I think you make the life you want while working with the circumstances you are given. When you make a choice, you open new doors and you close other ones. And you'll never know which life you might have lived, what you've given up or what you might have missed if you hadn't chosen this door. I also believe that disasters and forced change are like the universe's sometimes horrific way of creating. Not everything that comes of a disaster or a personal tragedy is bad. There are usually strange places that difficult times take you that add to your life or change who you are in important ways.

I can say this. I have survived plenty. I have lived through all manner of personal horrors. I have learned to embrace change. It's the only thing you can count on. Whether life is wonderful or terrible, it's all temporary. It will all change and eventually we will all be dead so there's nothing to do but accept it and make it work for you.

Sometimes I feel like I live within the eye of a storm. A whirlwind of change. Change that happens to me and change that I create. Chaos and reason in constant cycles and struggles.

I'm working on the particulars for a wedding. A very important wedding. It was less than two months ago that I called off my own nuptials and right now I am sitting in my living room staring at a little statue of a bride and groom. I am making the cake topper for my best friend's wedding which is only a month away. Sometimes I feel like I am living a very strange stream-of-consciousness film. It would take a tremendous editor to try to explain the point to all this. The ups and downs. The people that come and go and come back again...

And how I ended up here, painting tiny roses on the side of a little wedding gown.

Life is so very, very strange.

10 Items or Less

I love Brad Silberling. He wrote and directed Moonlight Mile and 10 Items or Less. Moonlight Mile wrecks me. Using a similarly senseless and sudden loss in his own life as his inspiration, Siberling weaves this tapestry of grief and the human condition. His characters are all experiencing and expressing and coping with grief in ways that are almost difficult to watch because it is all so real. The illogical things you do. The way you get lost and don't remember why you walked into that room. The strangeness you feel when you learn you can still laugh or when you laugh at all the wrong times. The anger, the absurdity, the oddity of acknowledging the horrific thing that has happened right there in the midst of your world. And most shattering of all, the way life keeps moving on and stores keep opening and the mail gets delivered and new people come into your life and this horrible thing happened... yet nothing stops. And somehow in the midst of all of this - the film is hopeful.

It's clever, warm and strikingly spot on.

It's not at all what I wanted to write about tonight.

10 Items or Less I saw more recently. Morgan Freeman plays a sucessful older actor who hasn't worked in a few years. He's considering a role in a small independent film as the manager of a grocery store - so he gets dropped off at an out of the way supermarket to do research. Watch the locals. Get into the mindset of the store manager (this leads to a brilliant scene in which Morgan Freeman follows the diminutive, older Indian character actor Kumar Pallana around the store, mimicking his every move - HILARIOUS AND AWESOME). At the register Freeman (listed in the film's credits only as "Him") meets Paz Vega's character, Scarlett. She runs the ten items or less line. A frustrating, thankless job. She's too smart to be stuck doing this work but is struggling to find the self-confidence to get out.

Basically, they both have problems. Like we all do. And some of those problems are the ones it's just hard to see clearly on your own. So when they get stuck spending the day together (Freeman gets stranded at the shop and Vega begrudgingly offers him a ride) they both need some outside perspective. They spend one day together. Doing the most mundane things you can think of. The set up is so gloriously ordinary. The veteran actor raving about how amazing Target is. Gorgeous Paz Vega pulling a sandwich from a rumpled paper Arby's bag. And it's wonderful and strange. In the midst of it they are talking and learning about each other and helping each other do things. And eventually you are left feeling that just MAYBE they have changed each others lives.

In the midst of their day running around fixing problems and talking about everything, there is this one conversation in particular that they have that I just loved. Vega says that everyone wants more than ten items. No one is happy with ten. No one wants to give anything up. They talk about what they would get rid of if they could remove ten things from their lives. Then, more telling, they talk about the ten best things in their lives. What they would keep if they could only keep ten things. It's a wonderful scene. The "things" aren't just things. They are parts of life, moments, things you do, parts of their worlds. The ten best things. The things that, if everything else was gone, would be enough.

I loved that.

Ten things to rid yourself of is easy. But only keeping ten. Ten things. A simple life made up of it's ten best parts. What would you choose? What would that life be?

It's an intimate list and it's difficult to be honest and I think it's probably one of those conversations it would be easier to have with a stranger. Someone not invested in your world. Someone you could just TELL - give that truth to and then walk away and not have to admit to the rest of the world what really matters to you. Deep down. When it comes right down to it.

I have been working on my list in my head. Things. Places. The way certain things feel. People I couldn't live without. Ten items. Or less.

Overheard

I live in a college town. And it's that time of year again.

So today I heard the following conversation near campus:

guy: "So, yeah. I started drinking at like 7pm Friday and didn't stop until 3am Monday."

girl: "Do you feel okay?"

guy: "oh, yeah. I'm fine... but by Sunday I was physically incapable of getting drunk."

girl: (without a trace of irony) "...But you tried, right???"

________

Fall just wouldn't be the same without the annual influx of brilliant teenagers.