it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world...

... and I don't want to make it madder. I don't want to piss it off any more than I have to. I can hear it and feel it now... rumbling subtly under my feet, waiting to be pissed off. 

lately I feel like something has to happen. something big. I have the sinking feeling that all I'm doing on Facebook is preaching to the converted. what I really want to do is this: I want to reach out to the world, or at most, the world that isn't on my friends list. I mean, let's face it, we meet different types of people all day long, right? people who, if pressed to make a decision about, we wouldn't add them to our friends list or even make a cup of coffee for. but the other folks... those are the people I want to talk to. they are the ones who don't know anything about me except for the way I treat them.

so, I am herewith going to make it my personal mission to do what I can to make nice to the world. make nice to the planet. make nice to the people and things in it. avoid that the subtle rumble becomes a destructive tsunami or earthquake.

I am going to, from this moment on, be really kind to everyone. and that means everyone... not just the people I love, like a lot or even like a little. that means 

e v e r y o n e . 

and I don't mean just smiling pleasantly and being naive. I shall cultivate my wisdom and listen to my gut and be a lighthouse.

so, like Bodhisattva Never Disparaging... sticks and stones may break my bones but 

e v e r y o n e 

is worthy of my respect. just because someone is disrespectful toward me out of a lack of wisdom on their part, doesn't mean that I have to believe it.

my motto for the day: if I don't believe it - I certainly can't grieve it.

http://www.sokaspirit.org/resource/living-buddhism/learning-from-bodhisattva-never-disparaging

I think the task I have taken on is pretty daunting. this means, no random judging, no speaking before I think, no hating (hating is a big fat no-no) and sternly putting my pride in the bung hole at the crucial moment.

there are no exceptions, I'm afraid. 

except if someone flips me off while I'm driving down the freeway. that kind of shit is way too much for one person to take.

maybe I shouldn't get a car then...

perchance to dream

you might not know this about me, but I actually performed Shakespeare, as an actor, in German. for two nights I stood in for a sick actress to play Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet. not only that, but I brought life to the role of Mrs Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor in a german dialect called plattdeutsch. I did it phonetically and didn't understand much of what I was saying but I memorized every dang line. we traveled around with it. people laughed, not because of my lack of conveyance, but because we were genuinely funny. and every night before I went out on stage I asked myself this question:


"what in the fuck are you doing?"


there are times, however, when you just do shit. like someone asks you to be in a play and you haven't been in one in ages so you say yes cause you're desperate to act, then you get the script and you find out that the play is in a language you don't speak or understand.


but you just do shit. because it's a challenge. and then you do it and it was fun and a great experience and you don't regret a thing.


that's kind of how I feel right now. I get asked to write a script, I haven't written one in a long time, so I say yes because I am desperate to write, then I get the book from which I am to write said script and find out it's in a language I don't speak and one I don't understand.


I didn't finish high school. which I am now reminded of on a daily basis since being back here because people are constantly asking me when I graduated and I keep having to tell them, "if I HAD graduated, then it would have been in '79." but the truth, is I didn't go to school regularly after the 9th grade and, to be honest, I didn't think I would amount to much in the academic world, nor did I try.


ok, granted the name if the book is called This Ain't Harvard, it's still on an intellectual level someplace far beyond my experience. yet I am attempting to write a script that will move the hearts of its readers/viewers as well as strike enough of a dose of awe in them so that they actually want to make it into a movie. 


rule #1 in writing: write what you know. I am breaking that rule. I don't like breaking rules because I don't like getting yelled at or scolded. so this is a challenge.


I am doing it, though. I am doing it instinctually rather than phonetically and I am having fun. it is, so far, a great experience, and I am confident that I won't regret a thing. 


or at the very least, be nominated for an Academy Award.

I think I'm missing something

in fact, I am sure I'm missing something. I keep getting these funny signs. like the alarm clock at the next door neighbor's house that won't stop peeping. or the unconditional love I feel from the people around me. or the more direct kind where someone tells me they love me and "why can't you see that I'm the best thing for you since a Picasso in your living room?"


but I don't know. I just don't KNOW and this is why I think I'm missing something. I wonder if my brain is getting in the way of the truth. why can't I just feel what I think I should feel and why do then those feelings get confused with the signals I'm getting? wake up, my next door neighbor is saying. wake up. but I've smelled the coffee, I'm even drinking it right now thanks so much, so what am I missing?


maybe because I am a rigid thinker, even though I sometimes look like I'm not thinking at all. maybe I think that it should be a certain way but it doesn't have to be that way at all and if I could just scootch over for a second, I might see that the way I thought of a thing wasn't how I should be thinking about a thing at all... this is definitely a ponderable topic, which I will do at some point in the near future.


but... it is undeniable that I can love a film that someone else hates. or dig a song that someone else can't hear. or like a person that no one else can abide. I don't understand how these things can happen, but they do. and they do a lot. 


so yeah, maybe I think too much. maybe I just think and think and think and get in my way a lot of the time. maybe I am too self-reflective and need to just BE for a while. maybe maybe maybe. maybe champagne will help. not bloody likely, as my friend Ian might say (the one who supposedly broke up my last relationship even though I never even met the guy in the flesh).


am I being too negative? should I just laugh and take it all in stride? why, and this is the big question, why do I doubt the good things that happen to me and accept with silent knowing all the negative ones (which, I have to admit, are difficult to count on one hand). maybe I lack appreciation. 


yes. 


that's it. I think I will cultivate my appreciation for all things today and see where that gets me. it might even get me one week's paid holiday in Tahiti!

clean, white cotton sheets

no idea why I like them. the smell... the feel... the fantasyland they conjure up...

a sturdy oak four poster bed in a castle in middle-ages England... a soft summer breeze blowing through the window... 100 pillows all in white cotton tossed onto a thickly blanketed, white-cottoned bedspread. a man and a woman.... she (probably me) in a nightdress with  an empire neckline revealing an ample bosom, he having just rode in on a white horse tied up outside and looking like Gabriel Byrne... no... wait... it is Gabriel Byrne...  he seduces her... they get lost under the clean, white cotton sheets...

or because the illusion of what they represent is the thing that keeps me making the same mistakes.

hm. no.

more likely? it's because I believe what my friend Steve says about women and sheets: "one should never berate a woman with new sheets". and though I seem to be berated a lot these days by the same two people I hasten to add, I still believe. and I guess I hurt them pretty badly or else they wouldn't be so berating. 

but don't they know I'm a woman with clean, white cotton sheets? maybe the reason I'm getting berated is because they aren't new. maybe that's why. they were expecting new, pristine, crisp clean white sheets. but they're getting cleaned but frayed... coffee stains on the top right corner... 


or maybe it's got nothing to do with sheets, cotton or otherwise, and I don't understand that I can't just go and hurt someone and get away with it.

but what's to 'get away with'? a thing that ends badly because no one can agree on who was in the right and who was in the wrong... and then there's the discrepancy in the illusion that there is always one person in the right and one person in the wrong... and the only real wrong thing is that the feelings aren't there... any more, never were, went away, or wished them to be so badly that they appeared, however briefly, only to sail away again, as quickly as they arrived?

I would love to crawl under the clean whites and disappear for a while, let it all soak in, and marvel at how quickly things can unfold, unravel, and bewilder. and not be talked into thinking that just because it's a 'big deal' means I need to drop everything else. no. big deal or no, I still need time to feel the sheets. 

who can relate to this line in eat pray love: "since I was 15 I have either been together with a guy or breaking up with a guy." except for maybe you straight guys out there, a few... well, I can, and no matter how beautiful the feelings and how glorious the beauty of the sensual is, I need to go to the slums of my head for a while and just see things for what they are, not for what I think they are, but for the reality of my life:

staying snug under my clean, white cotton sheets - my ipod playing Breaking us in Two over and over again - and accepting human relationships and all their complexities for what they really, actually and authentically are: threads of the fabric that make up those clean, white cotton sheets that smell so nice and feel so damn good.

day one of a virgin blogger

my dad used to write in capital letters. so did one of my ex-husbands. which is why I am going write this blog in small letters, except when: referring to a person or a place, because I believe people and places should be given the respect they deserve, or when I want to give you the impression that I am shouting (which I don't do often but sometimes you just have to). this is my little way of acting out - of being rebellious - of doing the opposite of what I think I ought to be doing.

so why am I writing this blog? I have had a real problem with starting it... this is because I don't want people to think I am an egomaniac. on one hand I don't really care, but on the other I do. the one hand has won out, however, and I am writing this blog and may even tell people the address.

the real reason I have started it is because I don't want to go to a shrink or to sex and love addicts anonymous or bother my friends with details they may or may not know. this way, they can choose what they want to hear and disregard the rest, as Simon and Garfunkel say...  and I can ramble to my heart's content until I feel I've gotten it all out and I can move on.

I also know people don't have time these days and they like their blogs and other things short. so I will attempt at keeping it relatively short.

I left Europe after 22 years 2 and a half months ago because I had to. not because I wanted to. and now I am back in the town I grew up in. (at the suggestion of my ex-husband, I might add... not the one with the capital letters but the beautiful one with the handsome hands). the town I never finished high school in. the place i drank too much alcohol and took too many drugs in, starting at a very young age. thankfully I quit all that at a very young age, too, or else I probably wouldn't be here now. no. I am sure I wouldn't be here now.

magic has happened since I returned. shit has hit the fan but it's being cleaned up nicely, I might add. chanting is what keeps it all together. I am together. even though I feel like I am falling apart.

maybe that's what menopause does. but this is not a blog about menopause. other people do that better. amy ferris, for example.

so while my life is falling apart and I feel slightly like I am back to square one, I have collected a whopping amount of poker chips along the way so I don't feel as naked and raw as I otherwise might.

I am writing a screenplay and battling with challenging human beings. i am attempting to be good with money but failing miserably. i am giving everyone the benefit of the doubt while not losing myself, which I find extremely difficult. and I am still plugging away as an actress even though deep down I feel my time has come and gone and I am just chasing a pink ribbon in a gale.

but I chant, therefore I am. and now I am going shopping.