End of February - What Have You Learned?

Month 1's almost done.

And you're hungry.  You're impatient.  You've learned quite a bit, and still feel so ignorant, so bewildered.

What you've learned:

1) You have no real clue how to start the acting career you want -  Where are the places for non-union people to work in this city?  How does today's actor become union?   Everyone says one needs to hustle; but with whom and where? 

2)New Yorkers must love drinking sodas with straws -  because every place offers them to you when you eat.  And you don't like the sensation.  The carbonation hugs the thin membrane of the plastic straw and all you taste is the heat of your breath and this treacly outpouring of syrup.  Cavities be damned, you're not using the straws.

3)You have not been dealing with grief and isolation well - Humans are magnificently stupid beasts.  If you're required to focus on sacrifice and working long, arduous hours in order to raise cash to uproot your life, you can shelve how wretched you feel about losing so much over the past year and a half.  How lonely you've become. 
        You saw this happen before when you first moved back to LA.  Racking up thousands of dollars in debt with no job and a cockroach-laden studio apartment with gnarled, thick, brown shag carpeting.  Misery pressing your throat.  Sleeping erratic, desperate hours in an effort to hide from yourself.  Your unwanted self. 

And here, in a month's time, you've witnessed those old habits creeping up.  The sleeping sickness.  The frantic checking and rechecking of Ok Cupid.  Crying over fucking Air Supply songs, for godsakes.  It's pathetic and the only remedy for it to pass is time. 

Thanks to Winnie, to Michael, to Carole for making this first month filled with adventures! 

Who the Hell are You?

What changes you?

Your education?  Your life experience?  Your own home-grown sadness?

And still, all that can be dashed away when you realize just how humble you are..

Spent Saturday in the East Village with some old friends from college, from old theatre companies.  Enjoying the vegan scene, catching up on their minor successes.  They're passionate and awkward and wonderful - just like you. 

And then you head over to the Bryant Park Hotel for a friend's birthday party.    As you're waiting, you grow increasingly aware how little you belong in this space.  Everyone looks so complete, so polished and fashionable and confident and sexually apt.

And then there's you.

Wearing a cardboard belt that's falling apart and a t-shirt hidden inside a cheap sport coat and trench.  Hair matted and slovenly.  Stocky and sporting jeans you've rolled up two inches on each leg because they decidedly don't make fat pants with a waist that starts at the crotch.

And it's times like this where you're not the glorious creative spirit. You're just a fat, poor, brown kid from Modesto, watching the rich people live.

So you leave.  Call to apologize.  And your excuse seems so flimsy,  But it's a raw , ineffable trigger. 

You have arrived ( Serial Killer Interior Decoration Tips)

Here you are.

2789 miles east.  Boxes unpacked.  Laundry washed.  And you know you're finally home because you cooked your first meal.  Haven't cooked in ages.

Sure, it's Kraft macaroni and hamburger, but that simple act of tossing food onto a hot surface and letting the scent waft over the kitchen opens a kindness within you, makes you smile for the first time in a long while.

You have arrived.  And you've got a lot of work to do.

Your brother took one look at your furnishings and remarked, " It looks like a serial killer lives here".  He has a point.

REASONS WHY YOUR APARTMENT MIGHT BE THE RESIDENCE OF A SERIAL KILLER

1)Cardboard littered on the floor (why? to cover up blood, of course)

2) Heaps of items on the floor (books, clothes, etc)

3) The attractive sight of garbage bags instead of curtains duct-taped to the windows.

 4) The ineffable sounds of banging (and possibly wailing?) coming from the heating vent.

5)The fact that the police knocked on your door this week to ask you questions (sure , it was about the previous tenant, but then, one doesn't know how the previous tenant "vanished")

6) One impossibly modern and sterile section of the room which sticks out like the Amish at a skin head rally:

7) Cardboard used as furniture (see above photo)

So, you need to take step to strip away this impromptu serial killer interior decoration. Curtains need to be purchased, bookshelves and sock drawers too.  There are pictures to hang up and essential oils to burn and a tv stand to purchase.  If anyone feels generous and wants to donate some scratch to this poor miserable sod, the paypal link's on the main page.

Again, lots of work to do....