1.26.02 - will be taking a break from posting for a few days

that is all.

1.24.02 - the seekers of truth

wow. everyone feels compelled to response to my last post. it was self help day, guys. the question of "what is independence" was a rhetorical one, not an essay question assigned to the whole class. okay, so i realize that working out my own neuroses in a public forum is weird and exhibitionist, but hey, its my blog. i'm in my twenties. figuring out what constitutes The Good Life is supposed to be a hobby. didn't you see reality bites? oh god, i've referenced that movie twice in the past week. i'm so lame. i do, however, appreciate the concern, and i love getting fan mail provided that it's not too psycho (comments about my physical appearance not necessary). I wonder if everyone responded to yesterday's post because i struck a common chord of some sort. nick writes, "...I think the pursuit of happiness as a life goal is a trap of disappointment." i might just be toying with semantics here, but he has a point - if you spend your whole life pursuing happiness, it means that you never found it. i just finished reading The Tao of Pooh, which was a very cute introduction to the basics of Taoist philosophy based on the Winnie-the-Pooh books. one of the lessons the book offered was that there's a difference between pursuing happiness and learning to find it in the life you already lead.

there was nothing in the book on taoism to tell me how to be happy about the fact that i have the flu, however. i hurt all over and last night i kept waking up in fever sweats, so i didn't really get up until i had to leave for work at 3. unfortunately, in my industry, that cheesy cliche about "the show must go on" isn't just a cliche. there are no sick days, only Dayquil. i feel particularly cheated because i even got a flu shot this fall and it evidently didn't work. i want my 10 dollars back.

ps - weird, MS Word's spellchecker has the word Dayquil in it. what sort of crazy cross-marketing deal is that?

1.22.02 - it's Self Help Day at the slithy tove

yesterday when i went to blockbuster to rent a movie i knew that they were going to slap me with a big old late charge for when i returned It's A Wonderful Life about five days late because of the blizzard. the girl told me i owed an extra 8 dollars and i made a pretty good case for not having to pay it since the snow was deeper than the clearance on my car, but she said she couldn't let me out of it because blockbuster had stayed open during the blizzard and gee, i could have walked here. usually when this sort of thing happens i cave and pay the late fee just to avoid conflict but i'm very proud of myself of holding my ground and getting her to bring the manager into the debate. he gave me half off the late fee which was enough to make me feel like i'd won. go me.

have been thinking a lot lately about geography, and myself, and my career. i'm longing to be back in the west again, whether it be in california with my friends or idaho with my family. i've always been a really independent person, and in the world i grew up in, independence is valued above all else. only recently have i realized that i've confused independence with geographical and emotional isolation. being independent translated to being far away from my friends and family, and somehow that's how i ended up working way out here in new york, far away from everything i love. it'd be one thing if it were a really exciting and fulfilling job, but gee, i can be exploited like this anywhere. and it occurred to me that i am blessed to have a family that i not only am on good terms with, but whom i actually really enjoy spending time with, and friends who are wonderfully special people. so why am i so far away? out of some sort of weird sense of duty that tells me i'm not grown up unless i stretch my wings and go far away from everything that is familiar. something's not right here.

for most of my life, i resented the fact that it seemed like i had to do everything important on my own. from grade school on, it always seemed like i was the one joining sports teams, clubs, classes, jobs, etc, on my own, when everyone else seemed to have a friend with the same interests and goals. then, a couple of years ago, i was in kyoto, contemplating the zen rock garden at Ryoanji temple and i had this epiphany: my path is alone. it's not that i'm doing something wrong that leaves me on my own, it's that my path through life is meant to be a solitary one. this also made sense at the time because i was in a long term relationship that was drifting apart, so that the more time he & i spent together, the more isolated i felt from him. so i accepted (reluctantly) that i was meant to go through life on my own. i didn't think it would keep me from ever having meaningful relationships or friendships, but i felt convinced that there was no soul-mate, no The One waiting out there for me - i had to go it alone. the realization was mind-blowing, frightening but ultimately was a relief to finally understand something in my nature that i'd always been chaffing against.

these days, as i've been thinking about issues of independence and isolation, i wonder if i was correct in thinking that my path was predestined to be a solitary one, or if maybe i only got halfway through the epiphany that day: my path is a solitary one, but it's solitary because i make it that way. maybe this isolation is something that i've always created, like an energy field i set up around myself so that co-dependence is impossible and the goal of independence is guaranteed.

when i was at stanford, i used to refer to a social phenomenon i called the cult of success - nearly everyone i knew felt compelled to prostrate themselves to ambition, relentless self-improvement, and success (whether that be financial success, research results, books published, discoveries discovered, etc). paul once told me that i'm the most proactive person he's ever met. he's probably right about that. i have always let the cult of success guide me through decisions about my life, relationships and career. it's a way of covering up for a lack of self-worth. i've written about this before, so i won't go all over it again - somehow accomplishments translate to a feeling of self-worth, and so it becomes a drug. type-A's like me think they can't be happy unless they are constantly stretching toward some new goal.

so maybe the idea is that i need to learn how to generate a feeling of self-worth on my own, instead of depending on accomplishments and new goals to make me feel like a good person, and maybe then i move to a place where i don't unconsciously isolate myself from the important people in my life.

the question is: if independence isn't geographical and emotional isolation, what is it?

i'll have to ruminate on all of this some more before it really makes any sense, but hannah needs the phone line now, and i need to sleep.

1.22.02 - california dreaming

the good: jackie from the costume shop gave us her old papisan chairs. they are huge and squishy and it means that we finally have living room furniture, even tho the living room is also my bedroom. we made her brownies.

the bad: my car needs new brakes that will cost me like $200 that i don't have.

the ugly: i opened a container of chevre that had were new life forms growing inside it. i had to walk up to The Slowest Grocery Store In The World to get goat cheese before i could finish making my stuffed zucchini, which was interesting, but ultimately not very satisfying. i'm still perfecting the recipe.

on our newfound Quest To Make Buffalo Fun, hannah and i went window shopping at all the trendy little boutiques in Elmwood street, cooked a yummy dinner, ate by candlelight and then watched a movie on my computer (still no tv). while i was making the brownies for jackie, something happened and the mixing bowl and pan suddenly flew out of my hands and splattered brownie goo all down the cupboards and onto the floor, and hannah heard my shrieks and came out and said that it looked like our silverware drawer was pooing all over the floor, and that us laugh until i fell over and was ultimately more Fun than the rest of the Quest was today. it's good to have a roommate who makes me laugh at myself. i think we're both still longing to be elsewhere, but we're making an effort to like it here. next week on our day off we're going to toronto (assuming i can get my brakes fixed), which should be an adventure.

i had lots more pithy things to say today, but the stupid spellcheck cut and replace macro just ate half my post and it's after 2am and it was just this morning that i was resolving (again) to go to bed earlier. plus, seal is on the radio and i hate him so much i must go turn it off now.

1.19.02 - vodka and bacon, anyone?

met the guy that sarah wants to set me up with this evening. there will definitely NOT be any setting up happening with this guy because 1) he may be 22, but he looks 16, 2) he turned to his friend and initiated a conversation with "remember that time that i barfed that cappuccino?" and 3) over french toast at the towne (greek version of denny's), he told us a story about feeding weird things to his roommate's cat to see if they could make it vomit. two barf conversations in less than 10 minutes? 'nuf said.

hannah talked me into doing shots at this bar called The Pink tonight. hannah and sarah were shooting stuff like "sicilian nipples" and "cowboy cock-suckers." i stuck to vodka, myself. had enough to drink that it made sense to go across the street and eat french toast and bacon at like 3 in the morning. i know i'll feel guilty about the bacon for like three days when i wake up tomorrow, seeing as how i don't eat pig. the trouble is, hannah & i share the same vegetarian weakness (bacon), so once one of us caves on the issue, there's no going back.

1.18.02 - ghost in the machine

there's mysterious music that plays very softly out of my computer speakers. i only notice it when the house is otherwise silent. if i hold my ear up to the speaker, i can identify the song; it's usually some sort of boy-band-pop-radio-station-mush - definitely not any of the mp3s that i have saved on my drive. so the question is, where is the music coming from? i don't have a radio card or anything, so what part of my computer had decided to act like a radio receiver? right now there's an advert for Quality Grocery stores playing, and now the speakers are trying to sell me a car alarm system. i wonder if i can tune it to a better station?

1.17.02 - NYC or bust

found out today that the theatre is sending me to NYC for sure later this winter to rehearse a play there. happy me! 3 weeks of work in NYC means 3 less weeks of work in buffalo. and it seems that everyone and their dog is convening in and around new york these days, so I will have a considerably more interesting social life than i have here. also found out that the theatre will probably ask me to stay on for an additional 3 weeks in april to run a show. hmm. was wanting to get the hell out of here as soon as possible, but i know me, and i know it will be hard to turn down work if it is offered.

went out for drinks after work with justice (actor), dave and sarah (wardobe) and dave's boyfriend ben. sarah thinks justice wants her bod, which is a distinct possibility. after a drink at this irish pub, the guys all wanted to go to Vinny's to look at the beautiful boys and girls. Vinny's is a dive bar near the theater that is famous for not carding. thursdays are "frat night" and everyone in the place is about 18. sarah and i were bored and sketched out, so we left the guys behind and she drove me home. sarah has threatened to set me up with her friend roland, who is "a vegetarian, sweet poet-boy who works at the olive garden." he's still in college, tho. probably too young, in that case. but i do like the olive garden...and poets...

am home now, eating eggs and tomato soup for dinner. must sleep soon, hannah is going to drag my ass out of bed to go to the gym at like 9 am, and then i have to go grocery shopping for food for the show; twice a week i have to buy a cart full of stuff like microwave fried chicken, frozen apple pies, canned fruit, cornbread and cake mixes that i then cook and serve on stage for the big dinner scene. it's my own personal nightmare: standing in the checkout line to purchase a stack of apple pies, cakes and fried chicken, convinced that everyone is looking at me and thinking, "you eat that crap?" you can grow up and get smarter and healthier, but it's hard to leave the neuroses of the teenage years behind completely.

1.16.02

i am getting verrr-rrryyyy sleepy. got called into work at 11, which doesn't sound so cruel except that i didn't get off until after 11 tonight. hey, someone just pointed out to me that the acronym for Seasonal Affective Disorder is SAD. ha ha. i suppose psychologists have to retain a brainy sense of humor, working with depressed people day in and day out. must sleep now.

1.15.02 - fan mail for me!

To: slithy@slithy-tove.net
Subject: random warm fuzzy

hey Jen -

okay, so this is going to sound a little weird,
but i can't think of any other way to say it:
if i were wired to be attracted to women, damn
i'd have such a crush on you. :)

now if only i could get everyone in my life to think that way...

1.14.02

two interesting things i learned this weekend:

- i have the same birthday as buddha - april 8.

- the universe, when viewed from far away, is my favorite color - green.

i just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig). it's a book that my father says he reads once every five years just to remind himself of what it has to say. it's not a bad idea. i'm going to loan my copy out to a few people i think might like it, and then put it on the shelf and save it for year 28. at the gym i'm reading The Tao of Pooh, which is very sweet and has large print (good for the gym), but is vehemently anti-intellectual, which always makes me squirm a bit, because, of course, i don't like to be told that my intellectualism is closing doors for me as fast as it is opening them. so far i'm a bit dubious, as the author has spent the first couple of chapters explaining how he won't be able to define taoism because by it's nature it is indefinable, yet he's written a whole book about it, so there must be a definition lurking somewhere in there. Zen and the Art had sort of the same challenge, actually - writing about a philosophical paradigm that defies description - but Pirsig and the main character were aware of that catch-22.

1.13.02 - it's a cold rain / it's a hard rain / like the kind you find in songs

it was precipitating heavily on my way home from work this evening; i can't tell exactly what is falling, rain or snow. it hits the pavement with a wet *splat* like rain, but in pool of the street lamp it has form and substance like snow. i wouldn't mind some more snow - the seven feet of snow we had over christmas is almost gone, and the buffalo that is emerging is an ugly grey january buffalo that i could do without.

seasonal affective disorder has arrived: i can feel the winter doldrums settling around me, nestling in for a long winter's nap. demons, begone!

1.12.02 - my, you look fetching tonight

hannah comes back on monday, yay. although i am enjoying the freedom to walk around the house naked whenever i please and never do the dishes, it'll be nice to have my roommate back. i'm a social creature. i crave companionship far more than i do personal space. besides, at 55 degrees, walking around the house naked really isn't that much fun, and in the end, i have to wash the dishes in order to eat off of them again.

zeke has acquired the cutest habit - at night i get into bed with a book and zeke brings me a toy mouse. i throw it across the room, he flies through the air like a whiskas commercial, captures the mouse, and brings it back to me. repeat until i get sleepy or he loses the mouse. on his way back to my bed he has to pass a mirror, and on about half of his trips, he pauses in front of the mirror with the mouse in his teeth, turns this way and that, lowers his head, poses, and generally checks himself out before heading back to me with the mouse. i know cats spend a lot of time grooming, but i didn' t know they could get vain enough to use a mirror.

1.11.02

okay, i'm being a sourpus. opening night was fun after all, lots of people bought me opening night gifts (altho, curiously enough, all of the gifts were in the incense-candles-potpourri category of sweet-smelling stuff, which makes me wonder if the cast was trying to tell me something), and there was the usual excitement backstage and the foo-foo party afterwards. the party was kinda dull - lots of people i don't know and the yummy food was all gone by the time i got there - but mike, the stage hand who crews the show with me bought me drinks and told me stories about his ex-wife and his psycho ex-girlfriend, and it was fun to see all the shop guys dressed up in ties instead of their usual paint-splattered jeans. the carpenters all treat hannah and i like kid sisters - they tease us and make up nicknames for us and mike beats up on me, but that's okay b/c i hit him back, hard enough to make him say "you sure don't hit like a girl." i warned him i had brothers.

but when all is said and done, i come home and the house is empty but for zeke. i'm lonely out here. how does that phrase go? i made my bed, now i have to lay in it? i asked for this independence, i know. but i'm trying to learn the difference between things that actually make me happy and things that i think should make me happy. it's a fine line. i don't know where the answers lie. if my post-college 20's have to be as unsatisfying as they were for wynona ryder in "Reality Bites," at the very least i wish i could have her hair.

1.10.02 - tonight, tonight

yay! opening tonight. i wish i could say that i'm excited about the play opening, but really i'm just hoping that getting into the run of the show will get my manager off my back for a bit. i have 71 days left on my contract in buffalo. i'm thinking of making a paper chain. i'm at the point that whenever she walks into the same room as me i can feel the negative energy radiating out toward me. the really frusterating thing is that most people in the company think that she's just fabu, and that's b/c she only berates and humiliates her ASM and crew, as near as i can tell. if i had a thick skin, i'd just shrug this off, but the bottom line is, i'm an empath and i don't know how to block out bad energy when it's coming my way. i think theatre protocol dictates that i have to get her an opening night gift. i wonder if a bouquet of dead flowers would be over the top? yeah, probably.

1.9.01 - drink me

after the first preview on sunday i went out to Vinny's for a drink with some of the tech guys. i was drinking a white russian and commented to someone that white russians remind me of college cast parties. then i started thinking about what i associate with various drinks. i came up with the following: white russians taste like college cast parties, vodka shots make me think of valerie, gin and tonics belong to david ball, gin and sprite belong to lauren and fall afternoons in our dorm junior year. gin and juice reminds me of paul and terra, amaretto sours taste like last summer in boise, although if they have tangerine juice in them then i think of grant. diet sprite and strawberry wine make me think of slumber parties in lauren's apartment on green street, strongbow cider reminds me of oxford pubs, peach cider makes me think of being a freshman again, cheap red wine of drinking in the stanford house at oxford. white wine is summer dinners with my parents. hot buttered rum is christmas time when i was a kid, newcastle makes me think of lauren, and also jeff. jack & cokes remind me of parties at my brother's frat at MIT when i was in high school. margaritas make me think of hannah goldie and the "i'm blue aboo-dee-aboo-di" song and fountain hopping and scrabble.

1.8.01 - there's nothing noble about poverty

i worked 112 hours in the past 8 days. at my current "stipend" salary, that means i earned, uh..about $3.27/hour. i got a stanford education for this? geeze, i could make more if i'd gone to the university of mcdonalds. yeah yeah yeah, all that crap about not being in the arts for the money or glory is still true, but there are time when i jut get really tired of being poor. i mean, the parking tickets i racked up on wednesday afternoon alone will end up costing me an entire day's salary. i'd just like to have enough money to buy groceries, heat my house, feed the cat, and pay for health insurance. oh, and it'd be nice if i didn't have to sleep in the living room, too. it's easier when i love what i'm doing, of course, but the stage manager i'm working for right now just sucks all the fun out of life. she's really starting to make me hate my job, hate buffalo, and hate winter, although i concede that that last point is perhaps not her fault. as paul's writing teacher pointed out, "the myth persists that there is something ennobling about [poverty]... all it does is limit your experience. And a claustrophobia creeps in—minor problems become major problems, because you can't afford to call the plumber or get your car fixed... fuck poverty."

1.4.01 - what about bob?

i'm in the middle of tech, so posts will be scarce until the show opens on the 10th. on tuesday, while showing me around the theatre, hannah unlocked the room where we store props and said, "that's bob," and pointed to an ashtray, the kind that stands about three feet high. no, the ashtray isn't named bob, the ashtray contains bob. apparently, bob (former studio employee) died of lung cancer, and his dying wish was that his cremated remains go into an ashtray and that they would live on in the theatre's prop storage room. bob gets to go onstage, ashtray and all, for the final performance of each show. i'm not making this up. there's a dead guy in my props storage room. it's weird at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly. i find myself saying things like,"oh, can you store the shotgun behind bob?" or "bob's in the way, can you move him over to that corner?"

1.1.02 - new years resolutions

start putting away money for a retirement fund. stop finishing people's sentences. be healthy. do things that make me happy, rather than just pleased with myself. drink more water. be bold. actually do volunteer work, instead of just thinking good thoughts about it. spend less money on lattes. spend more time reading newspapers. spend time with the people that i love. read library books instead of buying paperbacks. take more pictures. learn how to deflect negative energy, and channel my own positive energy.