time

I've been working a lot and running around and I really am longing for some time just for me. So now I think I'll take that. I know I need to get out and do the culture stuff and work, which is endless, right now, but I just want to watch a movie with a glass of wine and my cats. I'm so sick of the craziness, people who are flaky or have an agenda or an oversized ego ect ect I've been dealing with these types all week. I am not speaking to my mother who tries to force me to live her ideal way of life which isn't mine. I've been going out every night and it's fun but very tiring. Right now I just need to focus on Laura and she needs rest, or else she will be a naughty girl. I will veg out with another French film, or Kill Bill, which I recently watched (I SO love that film).....or....I don't know. After dealing with Dept. of Homeland Security handling my.....extremely personal items.... a couple days ago, I need some peace and quiet. And there's precious little in these circles.

I'm reading Kathy Acker now also, so maybe I'll just do that. She's not completely my style, although I understand a lot of where she's coming from.

in another life

I'm listening to the music I listened to just before taking off to live in London. This was my last year in school with my then boyfriend. You don't know what you have til you don't have it!

That was a rough period, tumultuous, but hot still. I was crazy then; I still am.

insane week

I've been so bad about updating this blog and I want it to be interesting.....but it will be. I've been running around all day and I want to get some dinner but even that is an ordeal. I desperately want to get down to Miami for a music conference but ....well, I don't know. I'm just working around the clock right now and trying to stay together.

creep alert

At these cyber places I go to there are always these jerky guys preying on young attractive women. Uh, please go away. Why are people like them allowed to exist?

heightened sensitivity

Certain noises really grate on me, like gum chewing, whispering (in the library) and this guy next to me tapping the mouse at the computer. My ears in particular are very sensitive. Please, gum chewing should be outlawed. Also, heavy breathing. Ooohhhh ......please stop.......

love, lust or obsession?

According to what I'm reading, all feel the same in the beginning, I think. You don't know if it's "meant to be" until the end. But actually you can know, by following the signs. Problem is, people have bad judgement at times, even intelligent people with good intentions.

It's not often you get such a deep connection with someone; it's very few people. Someone I met a few months ago told me last night that he's thought of me every day, every other day since. I don't think this thing with him is going anywhere, though. It's very sad, but what can I do?

my comment on that thread, which didn't go through

I have really mixed feelings about this. It may be true that someone becomes a "good victim" by making themselves weak (drunk) in a shady setting. Still, SoHo is considered a "safe" neighborhood and people there pay high rents for exactly that reason. I am really fascinated by this topic because I live in NYC and am in the same neighborhoods all the time. I can add, however, that I have walked around MANY times late at night, including in "bad" neighborhoods, and I'm a female, more or less attractive" and I haven't been attacked. It really pisses me off to hear people saying, "don't go out by yourself" because it's not like there's always a choice. I've been taking care of myself and walking home by myself since I was seven years old. I'm independent and tough and I have what's called "street smarts" and while there's no guarantee, by fighting back in my own way I've avoided bad situations. And the reason I have been able to is because my friends and I had sex education as well as being taught the dangers out there: ie what to look for and what are the signs and what to avoid and to trust your gut. This sends an unfair message that NYC is dangerous, and that women can't go out or must stay indoors, ect. And I have a problem with that, myself. If you watch films like "Nadja" that can give an example how all women who go out at night are not all victims!

ok I'm getting pissed at this thread

http://nvfc.us/blog/?p=180#comments

I don't think it's admirable for women to be out drunk at 4am. But I've been out alone in NYC in the am at all hours and, look at me, I'm great, I'm still alive. Thing is, even if the cops catch whoever did this, there'll always be another. I believe, to my bones, the answer to what happened to Imette St Guillen is not for women to walk down another street, wear a different shirt, not stay out past a certain time, not go out alone, ect. It's something else. I've been out, I've gone to strangers houses, and....what is it st Barnes said in Platoon? Out here you keep your shit wired tight at all times. I think the element is street smarts and .....let there be no "perfect victim" for these guys. Teach women self defense, and to stand up for each other. Well, this is where it getx complicated. I think the thing is toughness, staying alert. But I really resent being told I'm acting inappropriately. What am I supposed to do, become a nun? I understand what people mean when they say women put themselves in danger, and I can't explain it, and they shouldn't live carelessly. But I don't see that they're safer indoors, as a friend of mine was attacked when someone broke into her apartment. You're under pressure to dress up when going out. But....I understand, the world is what it is and a woman is not in her best way being drunk off her ass and in vulnerable situations with strange men who are much stronger than them. I know. But the reason my friends and I avoided dangerous situations is because we were educated about what's out there, and we knew ahead of time what to avoid, when it's a good time to leave. Like I said, it's "street smarts." If someone gives you a bad feeling, stay away. But.....still there's no guarantee. Now, there's "abstinence only" sex ed, and telling girls that rapists exist is encouraging them to think about sex and become tramps, according to our leaders, so now girls don't know. They are not even told about condoms.

This excerpt from Denmark's The Torch:
As an alternative to the advice of the Chief of Police who called upon women to stay indoors, Vagina Dentata sent out the afore-mentioned declaration of action by occupying Politikens Hus in Copenhagen. In the declaration is says: »Don't put up with being told to stay at home because men commit rape.« And to the men: »We call upon all men to – as a gesture of solidarity – stay home at night, or only go out accompanied by a woman after eight o'clock in the evening, until all women can move freely.«
Female gangs and violent self-defence The women of Vagina Dentata have found inspiration in many different places, but primarily among women who have dared to fight. »All women who fight are an inspiration,«

and....

According to Vagina Dentata, the solution is to free oneself from the traditional female role with all its expectations and prohibitions women are brought up to accept. »It is part of our society, our upbringing, which means the whole system we live in. In contrast to men, women are brought up not to be aggressive, and instead turn the problem against themselves: »I have probably done ...« and »I shouldn't have said ...« but when you get the feeling of revenge, or want to take revenge, it is to get it out of your system and aim it at the one who caused it. If a women is attacked, there is always a tendency to try to justify it by her behaviour, her lack of ability to say no or the way she dresses. But we want to make it perfectly clear, that no one is entitled to commit an attack!«


and....

Therefore, the group has advocated new solutions which in the eyes of many are quite radical: »We have some possible solutions. There are alternatives to wearing something else, walk another way home, or to even stay home, which are the current alternatives available to women in our society.« Their declaration speaks of a militant confrontation. »We are only saying: Also women can get angry and aggressive. We have been brought up to avoid fights, and therefore we haven't learnt it. But it is possible for all women to dare to defend themselves, one way or the other.« Of course there are situations in which the woman is not strong enough to act, but their opinion is that she can call to other women for help.
Experience shows, that their sanctions work. Vagina Dentata can see that they have already had an effect on other women. They have received positive feed-back from many individuals, both unofficially as well as from people who step forward and grant their support.

I will say it again: I've been out in NYC at 4am (not drunk) and I came back alive. This sends this really negative message that women are in danger and can't go out, and if they do they're enticing rapists. Yes, they exist and by being in their way you become a target: but ultimately this sends a message to women to live in fear, to hide from the world. Well....maybe it's that I"m influenced by movies like Nadja, Kill Bill, Lady Snowblood.....all from a feminist perspective. All women that go out and have sex are not victims. The solution is not for women to stay indoors, but for all the world to take responsibility and change.

so....

I shouldn't have posted what I last wrote. I was going to delete it. I sound really arrogant in it. I think I was feeling blue because I had just come from Chelsea and seeing all these professionals, whatever you want to call it, which is what I"m supposed to be but am not, and how I really hate crowds and can't stand to have people walking into me, elbowing me, I live in my own head, which I suppose is immature, and so on. Not that I don't work, I do, and hard, but I can't live a 9 to 5 existence, I don't think. I can fake it for a while, but that's it. And there will be people saying, grow up! It's not that I don't want to work, I always do: but I see how these women live and it's death. I hate thinking about it. So much of the work is not fulfilling, but necessary for survival, but leaves no mark, invents nothing new, doesn't better the world ....or? well, that isn't really intelligent. It's not like writing The Second Sex or War and Peace or giving a brilliant performance.....and I keep wondering how it would be possible to accomplish that while spending all day, every day, in work that is basically menial, for all that it's glorified, I mean like secretarial work, and then coming home to do more menial work.....and....many people will disagree with me, but I've come to the conclusion: fuck the 9 to 5 world. I spent 15 years working dull jobs and didn't realize my own value. You're only young, attractive once and it's then that you can travel, live, create, accomplish. I'm not saying the option won't be there again, but it'll be......well, I don't know, but for me, I feel like I wasted many valuable years in one job after another that wasn't going to lead anywhere, wasn't going to....oh how do I put it? make any substantial contribution to the world. I am not being cynical; the opposite: I'm waking up to this. The world is what it is: I didn't make it that way. Still, if no one worked these jobs, I suppose everything would just fall apart. I mean, someone has to do this work, right? It's true: I wish I never had to wash the bathtub but I do. I've seen a lot of people who haven't had to work hard for anything, and they're really lazy, to be honest. That's not the way to be, either. I just want to spend my energy in a productive way, in one that's moving, somehow. I feel like to do that, I have to walk away from certain situations. And that generates resentment, somehow. I'm just saying truthfully how it is.

feeling .......

Anyway I edited this somewhat cause I think it may be too much to post here. I get very affected by what I read. I do have a lot to say on this subject, though. I wish I knew exactly what it is, but I feel that ......beyond my immediate problems, which are obviously overwhelming, somehow everything is "wrong." I suppose I'm the reason, or am I?



I'm frustrated about any number of things right now; though there's good and bad I suppose. I'm reading Sartre and I think that's adding to it. But that's wrong, I know. I read somewhere about psychic vampires, how some people just suck the life out of you, and I've encountered some people like that. I guess I'm just down about my housing situation and not finding anything good, so far. .........I guess I really don't know where to go from here.

a trip?

I haven't gone anywhere in ages except to the Midwest, and Southern Jersey, and I feel like that time is coming again. It's hard to believe there's something to life other than NYC. My passport is fucked up and needs to be replaced, and.......I'm really really really sick of being cold! So I think I will go to Florida and, later, LA. It's about time. Of course everything has to be "right" but so be it. Today has sucked the suckiness, but I know it'll get better. It has to. It will start with getting sunnier.

back to high school

The other day I heard Led Zep, can't remember where. Yes, I was a hippy, sort of, well not sort of I was. I was really bad, cut school, smoked weed in the park. That was us. That period came to an end when I realized where some of my friends were headed and, besides, I was smart. It's also because I'm naturally a night person. But anyway, it was like for a second I was back there again. Little did I know, I had really everything in the world; but that's just it, I didn't know. You never do, until later.

movies

I just saw "Alexander" at Moma. One of the lines is, "You don't like your shadow." Why?

Shame on you, Boston

http://news.bostonherald.com/localRegional/view.bg?articleid=128539


This may come across as strident, but so be it, it's how I feel. I am not mincing words this time.


I'm truly horrified by the persecution and harassment suffered by young female sex workers, or prostitutes, by police. What they're doing to these women is truly criminal, inhuman and unforgivable. They call these women who sell sex and buy it from them, then arrest them. I just can't believe that this kind of brutality exists and comes from those who have power and can get away with it. In a misogynist world, a woman who has to sell herself is criminalized, punished, treated as a bad person, when it's the state of the world that led her there to begin with. Shame on you, police, shame on you, Boston!!!! I will not apologize, either. Prostitution must be decriminalized, legalized, and sex is not a crime! Because of the illegality of it, hookers have no defense against rape or other kinds of violence. This is inexcusable. And in a country where I have no control over my reproductive functions (possibly) or where "abstinence only" is the sex education, I can't live, I won't. I want out of this horrid place, away from these insane, anti-woman authorities. I am not normally this straightforward, but I mean it this time. I need to move to a place where women, people in general have rights. This is brutal, and truly scary. Well, anyhow, I used to read all these stories of sex slaves and....I've never seen it, never lived it, but it's obviously unacceptable and needs to be stopped. What I'm saying is that hookers, most, do what they do because they have to, often.....and they're not hurting anyone. If you're not soliciting where there are children, families, whatever, if you're not doing it publicly at all, where's the crime? Lewd behavior? This is truly scary. I used to think differently, and I hate any kind of art or imagery of any kind that degrades women, but women who sell their bodies should not be treated as criminals. What are the other options?

today

My period started, I am possibly moving (again), it's Ash Wednesday, and I'm absolutely haunted by this article aboiut Imette St. Guillen, the 24 year old student who was horribly raped and murdered. She hung out in the same area as I do and....24 years old! I keep thinking, that could have been me. And how it happened is a mystery: probably she went off with someone who later did this, probably to a hotel. And she was studying criminal justice? It's not like she didn't know the dangers out there. But it's such a random thing, and that's what scares me really. Her family will never recover. Now my own family will worry about me and my sister and that puts a big limit on my freedom and peace of mind, in a number of ways. This is a good argument for self defense, and always keeping your wits about you but, really, it's the world that has to change as well. How is it that in places like Berlin.....or even Cairo.....does this happen there? How many homicides like this have taken place? These cities ........this kind of violence doesn't happen that I know of. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but from the people I've talked to there it doesn't. Maybe the girl was drunk and naive, but someone studying ....forensic psychology whatever that is, but she must have known the kinds of things out there.....but that doesn't excuse this.

need a place to live girls?

This guy on craig's list has posted that he'll let a female stay with him if they do it twice a week, with him. Well, if I get desperate......sorry G, just really need a place.

a parsifal

I just went and saw this play......really bizarre. The audience was all these European jet setters. Afterward, we were all invited to a party with Sapporo and sushi, and I really hate beer and fish both. G took me and his roommates out a few times for sushi and beer and they all tried and tried to get me to eat fish and I kept saying, I am NOT putting that in my mouth...... So....instead I went and got Thai food and cappuccino. My phone broke when I spilled coffee on it today so I guess that's why I'm in a sour mood right now. Oh! I try and try and can't even turn it on. So now I have to find another. This is just so tiring and....

But anyhow, it was a glamourous night, and it's a good thing I did dress nicely even though I could have gone in jeans, because there were all these fabulous-looking people there. The play was sold out as well. The author was Susan Sontag.

Privacy

This girl in a Thai restaurant today was saying, loud enough for everyone to hear her, how she couldn't stand some other girl who wouldn't tell her her age, for that reason, and how she "can always find out. And she said, find out if you want but I'm not going to tell you." I mean, why is it so important for her to know this girl, someone who is a stranger,'s age? I think it's rude to ask age to a woman, or that's what I was taught. If someone wants to keep something private, a person should respect those wishes. Why does she want to be a voyeur into this person's life? People like that really do scare me......

very worn out

That's all I can say for now. Today was a mixed bag, of success and failure. I don't miss the office, but I had thought life would get simpler since leaving Thomson but....well, there are improvements. But I still have to always make that extra effort even though all I want to do is sleep, and for the past two days I've been struggling with that. During the day, like afternoons, I feel like I'm going to faint, and I can't be in the street, or around anyone. Maybe it's....well, I've always been a night person. Maybe I'm overly sensitive to sun. That must be another reason I'm not a nine to five person and can't ever be. Like on a film set, I can get there at 5am and leave at midnight, no problem, I'm not saying I won't work. But a film set is different from a dull office job that isn't leading anywhere, isn't fulfilling, ect. Plus, standing on crowded subways and buses and being constantly brushed up against, people in my face, stares, not even friendly but just in a way; ok, maybe they're trying to be friendly, I appreciate that, but at certain times I want to be alone cause that's how I am. I work best alone and not interrupted, or that was what I was taught as a writer anyhow. You need that time by yourself; or with acting, you can rehearse and perform with others but you still need to rehearse, or I need to rehearse alone as well to really get into what I'm doing. Whatever others want, I can't tell you. But I know I need that. Still, the other side of that is that you dredge up all kinds of things that can be hurtful, painful. It spills over into life. So I need to escape at the end of the day somehow; that's my drug, since I don't watch TV, smoke or do drugs anymore. ???????

V day

I was going to make cookies for the occasion but my God the day goes by and I didn't. Still, G took me out and got me a little present and I'm so undeserving, I didn't...totally forgot to get anyone anything. I did, however, contribute a bottle of Beaujolais. So we went to what my friends and I nicknamed "the Vagina" Indian restaurant on 1st ave and 6th street, with Xmas lights and literally nowhere to move. I like this place cause it's warm looking, with all the red wallpaper and red lights and their food is amazing. I had come here years ago with an ex who freaked out in this place, but anyhow, it was nice. G wanted to have sushi but we had that last year and it's cold out and I wasn't comforted by the idea of sitting at a hard table with fish, cause I hate fish, you know? It's just not warm-feeling, to me.

back into regular life, and walking in snow

I don't know why but today I've been feeling faint. I want so much to just go home and sleep but I have to be somewhere now and then probably later tonight. It's really endless.....I love being out, but then I want to go to bed. I've been stepping around puddles all day and would have worn my snow boots but someone stole them at the place where I take yoga lessons, seriously.

snowed in

It's very white out here, but beautiful, truly. I would take pictures but I can't find my digital camera and G says his are filled up, so.....


This is very annoying. But I'll describe it. The park across from G's house is Fort Greene Park and it's all white, now, with kids sledding. His roommate was talking about how two years ago there were kids making sleds out of garbage lids and now there are kids with $200 sleds, one of which they found outside someone's apartment. It's called gentrification, right? I said to G, you have a snowboard which isn't cheap either, plus $1000 bikes. But anyhow, this neighborhood is filling up with young, gorgeous and rich people everywhere. I ran out in sweats and a thermal top and by the time I got to G's my hair was covered in snow and I was a dripping mess, far from being one of the upscale residents here. Just going to the usual Yummy Yummy Chinese food place was a major ordeal, but anyhow, here I am, restless, wanting to do something but not even able to take a picture.

bootsnall meetup

last night I was out til nearly 4 AM with the people from this travel web site I met. They're all really cool and it was great, but I was nearly stranded at 3:30 am when snow came pummeling on NYC and cabs were charging $40 to $85 to go to brooklyn, and those are the ones that were on duty. I was standing out there in heels and literally frozen trying to get from the east village back to brooklyn, and by sheer fortune a cab driver agreed to take me, God bless him. I gave him a very big tip and the car barely made it down Myrtle Ave. That was sheer luck, because I live a long walk from any train station and I would have been sitting there for an hour and walking for an hour, in high heels, otherwise.

Nonetheless it was a great night. I drank a little too much and ended up nearly falling asleep on the couch while someone played with my hair. I'm sobered up now. We're supposed to have a champagne and snowball party today. Meanwhile, it's white out there.

Radical Conference

Today we did this grassroots media thing, the NYC Radical Cheerleaders. It was so so great, such intense and good energy. Also with us were the Missle Dick Chicks and the ? Clowns that ticket cars parked in bike lanes. It was so positive, really, and had the feeling of when I was a teenager going to shows or with my friends, on the best days, when we all dressed in ways to, really, make a statement or get attention; some kind of ? I don't know, but it came together really well. Now, though, I'm exhausted. I went afterward to this Thai place in the East Village as I'm now obsessed with Thai food. But anyway, I felt so great at this thing and the crowd was super enthusiastic and there was this real, maybe it sounds corny, but a really close bond between everyone, I think. I love to perform, and "art" and this, truly, is life and living: creating something for people with meaning, that will change the world. Saying something, something daring. This is what I live for.


I sounded like a real bitch in that last post. Honestly, I don't mean it as some kind of ego thing. That wasn't written right. It's not that I am some kind of shallow opportuninist.....if only! It's just that I think I'm just not an easygoing person by nature, I can't .....? I'm just not a peppy person. I am bothered by so much around me. I shouldn't be that way. I can definitely be pissy, withdrawn, ect. Whether or not that's right is up for debate. But I can't really.....lounge around and just soak up life. I'm a naturally critical person.....of everything. Maybe I'm wrong. Should I or can I change? I don't have an answer....yet. But I hope I never become self-centered....I never meant to be that way, though I have been accused of that, by G among others.


Anyhow, yesterday I had a horrid stomach cramp and almost threw up several times, but ultimately didn't. I didn't eat anything until 10 at night. Finally G told me it's emotional, which makes sense. At long last, around 3 AM, it went away. Then my friend R texted me but, alas, I had to go to this media thing, so I stayed in my room, and now I'm going back to my room, to try to read and figure out, what? A schedule.

Finally, I realize I've been posting all these pics of myself and it probably seems like I'm this total narcissist, but in fact, I can't find my digi camera so all the pix I have are my recent headshots. I want to post some pix of gorgeous Clinton Hill where I live but I have to borrow G's camera cause I fucking can't find mine. However, I find these landscape photos to be dull, myself, like calendar pictures. So I'll try to personalize these ones.

That's it for now, ra ra ra!

what I am not

I was sitting in a cafe recently doing some work on the internet, and I overheard this girl's conversation on her cell phone. First, some old guy was hitting on her, and she was telling him about "family problems," but didn't want to go into it. Then, later, on the phone she was talking about how she and her friend were going to move to California and "lay back there. Everything in New York is so hurried." I realize....I suppose cultures are different, like people I met from Australia were nothing like, in attitude, most of the people from NYC.Anyhow, I realize I can't and don't have the same approach to life as certain ones I've met from elsewhere. I can't.....well, I don't know what motivates them so maybe I'm not in a position to make a statement. But when I was twenty two, even then, I didn't want to just go and "lay back" somewhere: I am caught up in a need, I feel something nagging at me, or maybe it's the way I was raised, with strict parents who wouldn't tolerate idleness or failure. Cause that's how they were. I have them in me, I have guilt, I am critical, I can't shut out the world and all its problems and just live in my own little bubble. I can't really just.....I don't see life or the world that way, like it doesn't matter. I'm a critical person, ....? oh what am I saying? I have, imperfect though the whole thing is, goals, desires, a need for a kind of discipline or order, some of that, though God knows everything is far from smooth and orderly most of the time.


I'm not like the people, the women I see around me here, either. So many women in New York have this edginess, hardness to them, like cynicism. I noticed there are people here, on the trains, who make eye contact and people who don't, deliberately. I come from a place where people are more reserved and formal, less likely to talk to strangers or make friends with you up front. A generalization, but that's how they are. Most of the people here to are friendly or make eye contact are not from here, but either way, it really bothers me. There's a real reason why someone will or won't talk to you, and.....it's for reasons like how you look or they're making a statement that they don't want to be you

Gone with the Wind

I'm obsessed with this film. Did I say that before? The book, too.

Temptress

temptress

According to the tabloids, that's what I am. One of legion. A serpent. A cliche. The Homewrecker. Adulteress. Stone her!!!

dreams

I had a dream the other night, as my period started, that I was in this suburban neighborhood, walking around the houses there, with lawns in front. It was sort of a middle, lower middle class area. There was a big outdoor pool, and a woman was jogging near me, in red sneakers, a blond woman. SOmeone, I don't know from where, was saying the pool is haunted by a little girl, also blond. I woke up from that panicking.

pms

Today has been really rough with cramps. Earlier I was lying in bed crying. My cash supply is scarily low and today there were a bunch of botched meetings and other things. I know it'll get better, it always does.

I was re-reading the Second Sex which is a fascinating book, but at times convoluted. I think so much that is in there still holds true today. What is really scary is the backlash against women's rights, human rights that is happening here. It makes me really panic, like, I have to get the hell out! Yet a year later, here I am. I don't know, but It is just not happening. I know it eventually will, but this is so painful. I hate waiting. In the section titled,"The Woman in Love" de Beauvoir writes, "The woman in love is one who waits." I can relate to that.

A year and a half ago I wanted to travel and I did, and still will, but it's not enough. Whatever will be? That's just it. I don't think I want to work and save then take three or four months to travel, only to come back and start all over again. I did that already and I had fun for a while, and I am not sorry I went, but I was repeatedly hit badly coming back. I went through absolute hell and I don't think it'll ...... But I survived, barely. Still, moving beyond that, the future is uncertain and I need certainty, stability. But when have I ever had that? There has to be a solution somewhere, which I'll find, but how? WIth these evil conservatives running everything, my only hope in life will be to marry someone rich. It's not like European countries where the government takes care of it's people. We have no social wage, and as much as I wish it'd happen, I don't think it will. All things considered, it's like I'll have to marry whether I want to or not. A Mrs. That's depressing, too. I don't want to be that.

stressed about $

I decided to pay more rent in advance but as a result I'm broke now. I can survive, but the supply is dwindling. I need to work, big time. I tried to make myself presentable cause I hate walking around raggy looking, but now I look like a streetwalker in this grey fluffy coat and heeled boots. I know it'll all work out in the end, but it's annoying.

Anyway, I should stop whining. Really, I'm OK, but still feel like I'm waiting for something great, something amazing. Like it's almost there, but not yet.

But, OK, something weird did happen last night when I was walking home. I got my ipod hooked up and it took about six hours but it was finally working. It was about 1AM and I was walking home from G's. This song came on, like a voice, woman's voice, a trance song, and I was alone on a dark street walking toward a church. The voice was saying "follow me." Maybe it sounds hokey, but it was as I was alone walking toward this giant Masonic temple and church in my neighborhood, and I don't get spooked that easily, but that did.

the pic I want to use

I just realize has my boobs showing through my shirt. Not good, right? So I have to get this touched up a little.

more trouble

I don't want to turn this into a "woe is me" rant, and maybe some of you will tell me to snap out of it and stop the self pity, but I just came from the bank. Apparently, a check I wrote for $2.40 to Hunter bounced and now I'm being charged over $200 and they, HSBC, are more or less going to force me to pay this amount. Every explanation, argument I could make made no difference. I went to Hunter and explained the situation and they told me there's nothing on my record; I don't owe them anything. So maybe it's my cell phone company, Sprint, that's charging me though I said repeatedly I don't want automatic debit, and all my other bills I pay in person. There's no point in having a checking account; I might as well take the money and throw it in the street. That would be better spent. Motherfuckers. I hope I can straighten this out, but no matter, what it comes down to is I'm going to have to work far more than I have. I need a pool of money on reserve in case of another crisis. I was really stupid and naive about so many things and I've learned the hard way, and for once I feel ashamed, in a way. Not just this present problem, but about how I acted and felt in the past. I was so wrong, so ignorant about a lot of things. I really fucked up, but I also just didn't know. The thing is, though, it's not for lack of effort. I guess it's because I work hard, at times, that I'm not in the gutter, which I could have been. I know this is sounding whiny, so I should stop. But today so many things have just snowballed on me and I see now my own faults, clearer than ever. But why should my hard earned money go to unworthy people? Seriously. It's not the money. It's the principal of it. Really, some people have manipulated and .....it's just wrong. But it's likely nothing will be done about it, either. Not for now anyway.

more pix

I was hit with this "what am I going to do" crisis. I know, I've always known I want to perform. But it's the day to day stuff that's so horrid, that I want to avoid. Then, my bank has been charging me for overdraft even though I haven't written any checks and specifically told my cell phone company and everyone else I don't want automatic debit. So tomorrow I have to deal with this.



Then there's work, auditioning, parties to go to, acting classes, on and on. When it comes down to it, there's no time.

Plus, I want to cook, bake.

So I'm trying to plan now and I am always coming up against this, conflict.

more pix

There's a line in Choses Secretes, it's something like, take my advice, don't fall in love, just pretend. Something like that.

Simone de Beauvoir was.....not very upbeat on the subject. That chapter, the Woman in Love, was my favorite in the book, but I keep thinking it's me she's writing about. Or most women I know?

headshots

So I finally got new pix taken and they're pretty decent, but it's hard looking at photos of yourself. If I figure out how I'll send some to the blog.

Everything is so weird right now and I really do want to have a normal life, in a way. I envy people with good relationships going.

OK I figured it out. so here they are. this chick, crazy as she was, took some good photos. Actually, she's kind of interesting, but she needs advice on cleaning her cat's litter box. Anyhow, the pix are good. here're a few:

today was a day of missed connections

I put an ad on craigs list for a headshot photog and got already about 15 responses. I prefer students, preferably pratt students cause I live near there. Other than that, work has been sucky. Fortunately I worked yesterday and made some cash but not today. Now I can't wait to have a glass of wine and go to bed, or read, undisturbed.

When you work for yourself there's no set schedule which is good and bad. I am someone who needs structure and I hate spending time unproductively. But I can't say I didn't make progress today, I did my part. Sometimes the reaps of your efforts don't come instantly.

showbiz

I choose this profession where gorgeous girls are a dime a dozen and there'll always be someone else who's fabulous. Just seeing the tabloids is depressing indeed. I can't help noticing them, they're everywhere. I'm trying to do "real" acting but it's so hard to find. Maybe producing my own stuff is the way to go.

what happens at the end?

Does Scarlett O'Hara pull herself together and surmount another obstacle, go running into the mist, "crazed with the torture her gifts had put her to," and finally cave in, this last loss being finally too much? What happens after you win the world and lose your soul? Does she ever get Rhett back? Does she eventually turn into Blanche DuBois, the other tragic Southern Belle? Why couldn't she and Rhett live happily ever after? Vivien Leigh went through a similar relationship with Olivier, it, too, didn't last. Why? Two people who are meant to be should be finally happy, no? What went wrong?

strange message

I can't go into here what I've been through in the past six months. I've been all over the place, but anyhow, I met someone a couple months ago who just emailed me. Strange how someone's in your thoughts then they contact you. that's been happening to me a lot recently. But even better, someone who has been gone for a while, several months now, is coming back! I have mixed feelings about it. I am happy they're back in my life, but a little nervous too. I mean, it's nice to have some freedom. But I still missed them, you know?

spending spree

Today was hardly productive and it's easy to be that way. I mean, I have a job and I don't. I'm trying to live like a decent citizen, but it's hard. I just can't get out of bed in the morning. Today I woke up scarily late. I went into Manhattan in torn jeans and a skanky thermal top and it hit me: I'm a mess, I need new clothes. So I spent about $70 on a skirt, top and wallet. So now I'm getting compliments on my skirt and I'm freaked out now cause I have hardly any $ left and need to work and I've been so damn lazy today. I even forgot my novel. I'm trying to be "professional." I thought the new outfit would help. But even then it's never enough.

Some pix !!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's me and the cats and some other stuff.........

Films

Go and see Choses Secretes (Secret Things, in English). It's an amazing film. Also, Sorority Boys. I LOVE am obsessed with this film. I love Barry Watson and Adam Rosenbaum. It's so accurate, too.

I had this dream that I was on a train ride, on the way to marry someone I'm in love with, but on this train.....I've had this dream before, it's elevated, we're in some boro outside Manhattan, like Chicago almost. And the train keeps stopping in these prison places, where people are being handcuffed. I end up in a room where that's happening, and these people are on their way to jail. Then I get back on the train.

I'm still reading Pride and Prejudice.

mission to pluto

so they're going to send a rocket to Pluto, a journey that will take nine years. Pretty staggering, huh? It'll be powered by Plutonium fuel, which is being protested. Apparently someone said a teaspoonful of Plutonium can kill millions, how true this is I don't know. Stuff like this does frighten me for a variety of reasons.

On another note, Pluto's moon is named Charon. Is that the same as Chiron? Cool name, anyhow.

a little better now

I was in a real funk a couple days ago. Just stress from work and ....oh just bullshit. So, my hood is kind of growing on me; it's kind of cool in a way. It's "arty" getting to be like Williamsburg, sort of, but more low key or something. These are mostly rich kids I think you have to be to go to Pratt. There's graffitti on the building across the street, but it's graffitti art. Thing is, it's further away from the train than even my old place and the streets are dark and empty at night, and I don't like that, and it was miserably fucking brick cold last night when I was walking home. The wind was like icicles or knives cutting my ears and hitting my cheeks, and being so big open and remote I felt like I was back in Chicago.

A week or so ago I had this really disturbing dream that I was in jail for shooting a girl and it was decided she had a right to shoot me without killing me. That's what the judge decided. So I'm sitting in my cell thinking, maybe should I just end it now so I don't suffer? Then I'm thinking, I didn't shoot her and hopefully this is a dream, then I woke up thank heaven, free.

a little better

I took care of some of my immediate problems but I feel kind of sad, and guilty. And afraid. I worry about where my life is headed, and the future of this country as well. What will happen to women here, women's rights, with Bush and his pals running things?

the blues

The first draft I wrote of this was pretty scathing. I'm just really stressed out and upset, now. The place I moved into is .....the closest stop is Clinton Washington, and that's sketchy, and then it's a 15 minute walk, through dark streets with men lurking around. Oh. Ugh! In cities like Berlin and Cairo even it's safe 24 hours. And people there aren't rich. This neighborhood DOES have rich residents and it's still not safe. This is NYC, you know? But the building outside my window has graffitti all over it and there are these home boys hanging out there, and I heard this woman's voice saying, "you motherfucking cokeheads, I'm gonna smash this bottle on you. You think you high up living in a Jewish building!" I want to cry and scream, both. I was happy by Columbia. And the rent is THE SAME. One good thing, ok, there are a few. The bathroom is huge and there are two. I can take a nice bath and chill out with a movie and lots of wine, as soon as I make some money.


I had a particularly disturbing encounter with some guy wanting to fuck me in the ass. My opinion of these kinds of men, who want to fuck women in the ass, is very low. It's degrading, disgusting, and I don't want to get within 10 feet of them much less touch them. I really hate these men. It's degrading, unsafe and painful. NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's not far from rape, really. PLEASE men like that stay away from me!!!!!!!!!!!


Also, I complained how some people seem to get everything handed to them while I have to work my ass off for crumbs, and yeah, I'm pissed. I could have it worse, I know. Maybe I'm having a self pity party, but it's true. It's so hard to live here without money or connections. And people can be such bitches, too, so arrogant, like my former co-workers. These are little, like my former supervisor, brats whose parents bought their Ivy League education who have the nerve to condescend to me because I was a copy editor when they don't know grammar and CAN'T SPELL. It's like, if you're gonna go to Harvard or Brown, you should at least have above second grade reading and writing skills, especially if you work for a corporate newspaper, so shut up, you know? And besides, they had no right to pass judgment on me when they knew nothing about me, uh, yeah, I am speaking about my former supervisor, a guy, but some of the girls, too.

leaving manhattan, where I was happy, basically

ugh! I lived up in Morningside Heights and LOVED it up there, but am now back in Brooklyn. It's fucked. It could be worse, yes, but there's no quick and easy way to get from where I am to Manhattan. It's near the G train, the C, but the stop is sucky and not safe at night. My neighborhood, near Pratt, is safe, that isn't the point. I place a high stake in being able to come home late at night and not feel threatened. Now that I was in Manhattan it's giving me back the old snobbery, and and I can feel annoyed that I'm no longer there. I did grow up in Manhattan, downtown, so I had that advantage. I'm awful, really. Even my mother thinks I'm going to get murdered living in Brooklyn. G even has his biases, like he won't live in Queens or New Jersey. No one in the world are worse social snobs than New Yorkers. So now I'm officially moving down in the world.

I'm trying to stay upbeat. I mean, commuting's a pain in the ass, but once on the train it's a 10 minute ride into the city, and it's safe and pretty and "cool." And, I'm on my own, for now anyway, and free for the first time in months.

Cheerleaders in TONY

We're in Time Out, and a pretty decent photo, except I look kind of schizo in my smile. It is because I was in pain, really, from holding her up. But otherwise, it's good. I'm just a little annoyed because the guy was supposed to interview me, and called, but at a bad time, then I never heard from him again. Maybe I should have called him or something, but anyhow, the others sort of spoke for me. But why always this emphasis on football games, like can't cheerleading exist apart from that?

reading

today I fell asleep for about four hours, midday. Just....plunk! I was out. Now it's almost 10pm and I'm coming awake. I'm naturally a night person.


So lately I've been reading a bunch of women writers: Simone de Beauvoir, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf a little.......


I really want to read Bridget Jones' Diary, too. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice now which reads so much like my own life, and my mother a little (ironically, cause she's the one who gave it to me, but I hope she isn't reading this)....anyhow. So who is Darcy, my Darcy? Really, Austen is a genius, and this is an amazing book. Next ....there are so many so many books I want to read. Here's a partial list:

Sartre's No Exit
Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, The Hours
Flaubert Madame Bovary
Margaret Atwood Alias Grace
Capote In Cold Blood (Mother gave that to me for Christmas, but it just looks so depressing)
Kierkegaard??
Briget Jones' Diary

And write a 20th Century remake of Gone With the Wind, set in NYC in the 1970s

I tried to read Thus Spoke Zurathustra and actually finished it, but I don't remember any of it.

I need a laptop and where's my digi camera?

I just watched sorority boys and now mean girls. Last night I watched Anatomy of Hell. Everyone in the world should see that movie. In mean girls I'm watching the halloween slut party.......and the rumor that the girl saved a guy's kleenex to do voodoo on .......



why didn't I think of that? Used kleenex and slut outfits. Does it work? ????????





I have a lot more to do now as I have to start working soon, very soon, as I'm down to my last five bucks after paying the rent.

new year

It's true I wrote some drafts which I've hid, now. I was .......it's true I get very moody. Sometimes I just can't be around people. I can't stand to have anyone come near me. But it passes. Some of the things I wrote were extremely angry and they'll have their day. My thoughts about my former co-workers, whom (not all but some) I saw as ungrateful bitches and bastards, but ok, I want to stay positive here. But life is not all positive. I myself was not nice at times. Some people did get on my nerves and I did snap at them a few times. But that's nothing compared to what I got from others. The worst ones are the "professionals" on the lower level, mostly female, some male (well, one). There was a woman in the art department who was......I'm finally coming out with this story.....let's just say she made Leona Helmsley look like Mother Theresa. She was the boss of my friend and co-worker. She was truly a nightmare, as was my own male immediate supervisor. Sometimes certain people come into your life who are just purely dangerous and malevolent and there's no hope of changing them, you know? But it was also the office. It was the daily monotony of being stuck in that cubicle day after day doing work that wasn't satisfying, really, on any deeper level, and just.......it brought out people's worst. That's part of it. What can you do? You have to earn a living somehow. G makes money without working in an office 9 to 5 but it's still work, it's still hard. Somehow, for now, I managed to escape the office. But I'll have to make a name for myself soon enough, and I need a career, a life that I can be proud of. I need to be proud of myself. Everything I've accomplished has been though my own blood and sweat. I really don't regret anything at this point.....except the things I didn't know or do.

So that whole experience, only one among a few, left me hurt, angry and, really, vengeful. But being that way......I realized I'm not solving anything by being negative, creating more ugliness. I'm trying to be graceful and forgiving. Maybe that sounds cheesy but anyway.....


So I'm thinking of all the things I need to do that I'm flaking off about......so much, every day. Even today I ran around from morning to night doing chores: photos for passport, then a job, then looking up stuff and answering emails, then the laundry, pay the cell phone, lug a bag of clothes to brooklyn and more blankets and clothes up the stairs, clean the cat box, take the dog out, bake the other pie, and then it's 11PM. Today, though, I ran in the rain. At first it was hard but I got to a place that wasn't crowded and after a while it was bizarre, but peaceful. I love fog anyway.

I'm staying in Morningside Heights and it's so gorgeous there. I love it! It's like Paris. Right now I'm at G's though cause I had too many things to do here.


So.....I wrote earlier that I don't want to diet and was defiant "riot don't diet." Well I guess I have to stuff my big mouth.....my passport photos are scary. I'm chubby. I'm a giant. So it's back to skim milk and lowfat everything. Plus, lots of walking.


New Years, what I want to accomplish:

better organization

schedule everyday: stretching, chores, write, email and contacts, headshots, rehearsal space, rehearse, see more plays and poetry readings, travel of course, meet the people I obsess over, give money to animal shelters....Joe Strummer said something about your money being your vote.....so my money will go to the most run-down, endangered shelter in the city......and to the alley cats, the vets. And perform! Go back to Europe. Go to LA. 2005 is cold in the ground and let it remain there.

another recurring dream

I get this a lot....that I'm running but can't run fast enough.....and end up in kind of slow motion. This time it was my friend and I except she got caught and put in a cage. Then I was in a wheel cart for crippled people even though I'm not crippled. I was running through the park, running from something, trying to pass myself off as a jogger even though I am wearing a white skirt, and a woman sees me....I'm trying to look "normal" to her, but can't run fast enough.

xmas

At last is over and I got some nice gifts. I was lucky I got lots of presents..... I got some nice shirts and, sure enough, mother got me white long johns and a Gap shirt. The holiday managed to go by without any family arguments, too.


My uncle Pat came to visit from Michigan and then we went to my mother's husband (Sonny)'s sister's place in New Jersey. Overall it was a good atmosphere and I got some chocolate, which I was craving, but then it disappeared, typically. In my mother's apartment that happens, because my driver's license is gone, too. I had to spend $50 yesterday getting a replacement. Ironic, I never drive. Anyway, so we returned to Manhattan, and went back to Newark the next day to drop Pat off at the airport. I spent yesterday sitting in the back seat of a car while Mother and Sonny gave my sister a driving lesson that wouldn't end. We were in this .......how do I describe this town? It was like out of horror movie. First of all, I hadn't eaten, and all we could find was a gas station with a guy selling stale bagels, no cream cheese, and the healthiest thing he had was some kind of fruit bar. This place had to be a cover for something because the food was about two years old. So we're driving around this town and it......consisted of these shingle houses with ......giant christmas decorations in front...mostly blow up Santas and snowmen. It was like a contest to see who had the biggest snowman on their lawn. Some of them were deflated. This one house had a blow up doll of ....about sixteen feet tall, or more.....Santa coming out of the chimney, like rising out of it then going back down, over and over again. Others had giant blow up snowmen in front of their houses, with these scary smiles. Others.....you always see this in these small towns....had plastic swans on their lawns, or reindeer. So Sam practiced driving forwhat seemed like an eternity with Mother and Sonny barking at her, til finally it was time to go back. Then we sat in traffic for three hours waiting to get in the Lincoln Tunnel. I said we might as well get out and walk to Manhattan and we'll get there faster. But anyway, it was eventful, yes. Our tree was beautiful with a million presents and I love the look of xmas, with the trees, lights and snow is nice, too. We also went to Midnight Mass at Trinity Church, and Episcopal services are grueling, with endless standing, sitting, standing, kneeling. But it was truly gorgeous, with incense and a choir......and communion.
I can't wait to settle into a new place and celebrate my new freedom!

biking through nyc during a transit strike

I have mixed (I'm trying different colors) about this strike. During the summer I biked everywhere and walked everywhere, so this kind of stuff won't completely throw me off. But today was rough. I was pissed, for a while. I rode all the way into manhattan from Brooklyn, then uptown, all the way to 86th st, turned around, rode alone on the west side highway by the river and it's very, very lonely there. Then on down the 28th street, and I thought I'd NEVER get there because I was shot by the time I got to this Indian restaurant I go to there (Curry in a Hurry), treated myself to dinner which I could hardly eat, had coffee, then rode to Williamsburg. These people who INSISTED I see them tonight and said I could stay there tonight (I had money to give them as well) changed their tune when I got there and said they were waiting for their roommate to talk to me who apparently had to approve of me. By then I got so pissed cause I had SAID earlier, on the phone, why don't I see you guys tomorrow because it's late.......and instead I wasted my time coming here. It was about almost 1AM by then. Well, uh, sorry.....was his response. I left there and rode uphill to Fort Greene in what seemed like an eternal ride. I try and try these places in Williamsburg and, look it's not a personal judgment call, but I just keep having bad experiences with people in that neighborhood. I guess it's cool and I'm not which just annoys me more, but hey, I tried and tried but I've just encountered one flake after another. And I'm pissed, yeah. Eventually I kind of forgave these people but, for God's sake, did it not occur to them that I had to ride a bike everywhere and this was a strain on me? And I SAID why don't I see you tomorrow. They could have been straight with me....if they had something against me or whatever. If what they told me was a lie or not.....is it me or what? I guess not.....this girl apparently waited and waited for me so it's a misunderstanding.......but this is just treacherous. The one good thing is I made some money. At least I got that. And I saved some, like $120 I would have spent there. A guy .....I think he was trying to pick me up while I was walking my bike over the bburg bridge.....then I told him I was staying with "my boyfriend" and well, goodbye charlie......but he was nice enough to guide me to these people's house. So.....I had been longing the whole time to be at G's with my computer, wine and kitties, and I finally got my wish at 2 AM. G also drank all my Chianti but I have his roommate's wine, which I'm enjoying now.

As for the strike, I believe they deserve decent wages and maybe they have a right to strike, I don't know. But I was also thinking, I am not the one who is doing this to them, so why should I suffer, you know? It's very very hard work biking through the city and VERY dangerous. I don't think people realize. But I almost got hit by about 100 cabs, SUVs and garbage trucks. I feel lucky to have survived. And G told me everyone he knows, almost, who rides in the city has been in an accident. So I'm in my helmet and glasses and G's North Face jacket looking very unsexy, but....ta da! I get hit on anyway.....

childhood, (it's not boring)!

I read an interview with someone about how she would listen to lawnmowers in this small town in Minnesota where she lived and long to get out of there, to the point where it was painful, it made "her heart ache." I had something similar, in Evanston, looking out at the lake, gorgeous though it was, past the cemetary and highway that led into Chicago......maybe it's all the bands I listened to who were British, but just looking at that vast body of water which stood between me and these other places like New York, LA, London, places that were in the news every day, it was painful. At the time, there just didn't seem to be much where we were. I couldn't live there. All I thought about was other places, and people who lived there. What was around me? Chicago is......nice, but it's big and flat and bland, or it seemed to be. But it could have been worse. My mother would take me up to Michigan all the time to visit her family. I mean, we would spend hours, days, with no company except each other and.....trees. And occasional billboards, hideous. The majority of people in these towns are overweight by the time they're 30, and my mother would constantly remark about "all the fat people." My family lived in Battle Creek which they called Battle Hick. As a kid I would repeat this, not knowing what it meant, and they told me never to say that in public....but I didn't understand why, but that it must be bad.

a few modifications

I have a couple prospects: one in williamsburg, one in the east village, with a gay hairdresser. I was at the point where I'd have to stay in a slum pit, if I were to stay anywhere.

At some point I have to go to mother's and find my driver's license which she lost. I love mother, really.

strike and ids

Right now I'm in the process of trying to get a new passport and let me tell you, this is a fucking hassle. I have to either get a birth certificate from Ohio or find a post office in brooklyn, there's a transit strike which is making everything difficult. I'm lucky I have a mountain bike but riding around NYC is exhausting but why should I complain? I guess it's healthier. Except today I have to be EVERYWHERE and that means biking everywhere. This is so fucking complicated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! On top of all this, I am looking for a new place and it's one problem after another. All this falls on my shoulders at once. I can't deal with it, but I have to.

another dream

This I can't completely put together or recall, but some things:

I'm in a hotel, a fairly nice one. It's room 415? Can't remember exactly. I see a picture of the door with the number on it. My mother's there, for a while, and I'm in and out of this room.

Then I'm getting milk for coffee but the milk is sour.

Freudian analysts would but sexual meanings to this. There was more but I can't totally remember.

I woke up this morning, though, and the milk was good.

I was reading about existentialism last night which is .....it could be a life long study. I don't know. But that's what eventually led de Beauvoir to write the Second Sex. Years of research and reading. But I wonder why it took so much to recognize the obvious: that women are second class and that leads to what? Mediocrity? That doesn't mean women have been nothing, or that there haven't been great female personalities in history. It's very contradictory.

I woke up again with a sore throat....and had to take throat spray, salt water and painkillers. My whole body was achy and if I am exposed to the smallest draft I get sick.

http://www.stargods.org/Born_Evil.html


http://www.stargods.org/EvilPeople.htm

This writer needs a copy editor, because it's full of spelling errors. So....someone has to do this job, right? It just won't be me, that's for sure.

The above is an interesting article....maybe this author is a little cracked in other ways, but he has a point with this one. I think I've met people who are just bad, in my life, and, studying astrology, I really think that two people in the exact same circumstances will react to them completely differently. You can say, someone had a bad childhood or something like that and that's why they're doing horrible things, to others, but there are others who had the same circumstances and are not that way. I'm serious. So some people aren't going to be educated out of their ways, nor are they going to change. And they won't stop doing what they do. Think about it......

so


dream factors:


hotel rooms
tsunamis
escape
beaches
4 something room number
picture of door
mirrors?


I am ambivalent about psychotherapy. I think women need leisure, privacy, education, and ......some kind of a good community, one that is......? Well, the right kind.

sleep

after not sleeping enough for the past couple nights plus wearing myself pretty thin I fell asleep around 7 PM and woke up at 2:30 AM. I wanted to see felix da housecat but ended up staying in as I just felt decrepit. I woke with a horrid sore throat and swallowing was excruciating. I'm still reading the Second Sex and I'm wondering if it's that book, plus how I'm living, that's affecting me so physiologically. It's disturbing, but true, the stuff everyone knows but no one admits.

So I dreamt of kind of a tsunami. I was on the beach, maybe the hamptons? And a guy was with me, though we were both dressed and I wasn't really attracted to him. Kind of like a surfer type. Suddenly, I think he called me or something, but I turned around and a huge wave had come up and half the beach was flooded. I freaked and was screaming, we have to get out of here! I managed to pull myself up a cliff of sand, and I think I helped the guy up. But in front of us, the other direction, was another lake.

I'm constantly dreaming about beaches and water. I don't understand why cause I'm not near it that often.

decorating the tree

My mother, sister and mother's husband and I all went out last night and got an xmas tree. Then we pulled out the decorations and tinsel (one at a time, I did) and next thing, beauty in the house! Already I have presents, although I told my mother I'd rather pick out what I want and have her buy it.

I love christmas and presents, the whole element of surprise, but in the end it turns into a bunch of junk. I honestly don't know what I've done with any of my presents and Mother always gets me clothes that are completely not my style, like big boxy Gap stuff.

I hopefully will be working tomorrow cause my cash is scarily low. I'm getting annoyed and edgy about it. Today was super cold and I was running around town for hours in it, then got back to Garrett's and fell asleep, before he decided he wanted to go to this new restaurant, and was pushing his roommate and I to go there like his life depended on eating there tonight. But....it was nice, a sort of Thai place and the food and drinks were pretty cool: I had ginger and lemon juice, squash soup with sour cream (awesome) and curry tofu (mediocre). Then a bunch of Entemanns chocolate chip.........I do have a sugar tooth, and finally instant coffee (I prefer that to the cheap deli coffee).


All this helped take my mind off the stress and ........ difficulties of today. Talked, also, to my ex, who's now an entrepreneur. I guess there's a job for everyone.

ok it's true

maybe it's my period or past illness ( I think I had toxic shock syndrome) or something......


but I was pissy as hydrochloric acid the past couple days. I'm a little better


I am wondering if I should delete my last post, in case anyone read it. Maybe I was acting like my family, speaking of whom, I was with Mother last night and it took a whole day to recover. But I'm ok, sort of.


So what else is going on? I'm preparing to get a new passport, ID, just picked up my coat and sweater from the cleaners, picked up laundry, hauled all that fucking shit up two flights of stairs twice, cleaned up after the cats, went grocery and cat shopping with Garrett, bought some chianti and jelly, left The Second Sex at the gym, bought some jeans and a sweater, am seriously thinking of starting a screenplay, just got Backstage, am reading a bio of Margeret Mitchell, authoress of Gone with the Wind, and am going to ask my family to just buy two things for xmas: a plane ticket to London and headshots. Everything else I can get myself! Actually those I can get myself as well......

Reading list:

Virginia Woolf's the Waves
Bridget Jones' Diary
Pride and Prejudice (for the second time)
????

maybe Willa Cather, don't know

somewhat better

I'm recovering but still queasy. I'm really getting fed up with people's well meaning but ........I just don't want anyone to analyze me or tell me what I'm doing wrong, or at least I'm really pissed at people talking down to me, or treating me like some sad little flower who needs pity and adult supervision (hello, I am an adult, making rational decisions) or "lecturing" me. I mean, no fucking kidding, my personal problems are obviously palpable and serious, and it's not like I'm not aware of them. I'm well aware of the gravity or the situation.......like, oh, actually I just thought I'd try living this way cause I thought it'd be fun. Is it a crime if I don't want to go back to another degrading, stressful, underpaid work situation? Yes, I have to work, I'm well aware of that. It's not my fault that the choices suck, or are less than glamorous. I believe that, as myself, I have a little more insight into my own psyche than anyone else and I'm aware of what advice is good for me and what is just someone playing God with me, actually, or really, so much of the time people's altruism and desire to save another person, if we want to put psychology into this, is a desire for power on their part. In part. I really have.......people aren't generic, they can't be molded like clay, and I don't believe we're all born alike or can be all made alike. I believe there are components in people you can't change, and be weary of judging others because you don't know anything about them, you don't know what motivates them. And that's true. Too many women, really, are always very judgmental of me and other females and have little forgiveness of faults or.......I'm just very angry about this, right now. I see it happen over and over again. I thought it would help me to be open and honest but it's backfired on me, big time. I have to keep living a lie and telling people what they want to hear rather than the truth, you know? But the truth is not.......so I go on pretending. Maybe, some day, somewhere out there, someone will read this and relate or something, I don't know.

god shut up laura

some of the stuff I write.....looking back....


I've been really sick with a stomach flu and was bedridden most of last night, for about 15 hours. This really blows, I can't wait for it to end. I've barely eaten: just bread and jelly. I'm a little better. I think maybe I get severe pms; often I get nausea before but not this bad. Could be the stress of everything, who knows?

I just watched another French film, Romance. Not very cheerful.

obsession

I'm watching a bunch of french films. Just watched Intimate Strangers, a bizarre one. Now, Romance.

I have obsessions. With people, books. I'm obsessed with Gone with the Wind. What else? Well, I always got obseesed with guys. Eventually I got over it, but I'm extreme that way. I don't stalk them, no, but I obsess over them, think about them all the time. I had a shrink who analyzed this but it can't be rationalized; it is what it is. I want something, you want something, and that's it. But they say, watch out for what you wish for, too. Hmm.......what do you do in these situations?

fort greene is beautiful at christmas

This time of year especially. It's lit up with christmas decorations and so on, plus the park feels like the country. So I'm spending a night here and enjoying what's closest to nature in NYC. It would be nice if I could be in the country with horses and able to let my cats out and fresh apples......some day. When this current crisis has ended, and it's not ending fast enough. I take two steps forward then a step back. I haven't worked in four days now and I made decent money at my last gig, but I want to KEEP it. I've been staying at the Y in Greenpoint but this neighborhood really is so elegant. I remember last year coming back from Egypt and I was SO homesick, as much as I love traveling, I really was burnt by the end, and SO happy to see my neighborhood again. But then soon enough I wanted to leave again. I still will, eventually. But it's been an uphill battle and hard work. I study astrology and am learning some periods are good and some aren't, and the planets influence so much.....well, that's business. But to really succeed means being on top of it 24/7 and looking in all directions at once like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. My driving instructor said that to me, about driving, but it's true for what I'm doing as well. That means being always ready, cause time is money.

But right now I'm lazing off. I haven't sent out headshots and am fucking around, watching movies. I watched Choses Secretes again. This film is AMAZING!!!! Now I'll watch a Venezualen film.

other women

ok, let me modify this.......cause I don't hate other women. but they get on my nerves sometimes, some of them. Some women are great, of course, I don't want to lump them all together. Some women friends are great. I just don't LOVE them in general, and I guess this is my conflict when I was at bluestockings today. Occasionally I am attracted to a female, but I don't identify as lesbian. I'm just not. I am obsessive about men. I always have been. I turn men, absent men, into God. They are. That won't change.


I'm trying really hard to know more about them, because I know so little. I see so many women on the street every day and every where but I know nothing about them, and it's such a lonely feeling. The problem is, it's hard getting close to them, and so much of the time I'm turned off before I get to know them. I guess maybe it's the way I was raised, as an only child with a working mom, who read and let myself in the house: I just wasn't raised to be a little well behaved girl. I was taught manners, far more than most of the people I encounter here, and there were women all around me, but it was never a comfortable or nurturing atmosphere. It was like if we weren't "feminine" enough we were being made to feel punished for not being that way or having to defend ourselves or something. And out in public there's no privacy and I had a fair amount of that, like coming home to an empty apartment. I miss that sometimes. Plus, my mother was certainly not easygoing. I just never had a good relationship with other women and I've almost never had even a friendship with another female that wasn't turned into a desperate war on her part for some kind of power, superiority. I'm just being realistic, here. In a way, men's company was a relief because they were at least up front about everything. With women, if they acknowledged me at all, I never knew if I could believe them because I'd later catch them talking nastily about me behind my back. So now, when women approach me, like at the gym, and jump in my face and smile, when I'm stretching, or whatever, or "admiring" me, I just feel uncomfortable and annoyed, then I'm made to feel bad that I'm not nicer. But after a lifetime of other women not returning glances or smiles or them acting like I'm not in the room, then saying nasty things about me or plotting bad things against me when I'm out of the room, to expect me to just have my door wide open for every stranger is a little strange. I'm not exaggerating when I say these things. Sometimes I just hate other women, and I know that is wrong and I'm not supposed to feel that way. I have to struggle against these feelings. I know, I've read, that they're doing what they have to to survive in a sexist world and ultimately men are the enemy, but the problem is, if I'm supposed to feel solidarity I just don't know if that's possible at this point. I feel like all women are out to get me. i know, I'm paranoid. blah blah......

greenpoint

I love this neighborhood! It's really homey and there's lots of European chocolate, which I miss. This is a little Polish neighborhood with all these little Polish diners and 99 cent stores. The chocolate you get in NYC sucks big time: it's cheap and makes me sick, but this is the good stuff. When I was traveling through Germany and Switzerland I got hooked on theirs, and the Swiss airlines load you up with Swiss chocolates and really good cream and coffee. If I move anywhere I hope it'll be to this neighborhood, though I still love fort greene.

I slept for about sixteen hours after hardly sleeping at all for three days. I missed some work opportunities but at one point I just couldn't keep my head up. Garrett is sick with some kind of poison ivy and it's awful being with someone who is suffering but won't accept any help. So what can I do?

books and films........French and Latin film

I love French and Latin cinema so far. Maria Full of Grace I've watched three times now. Watch it, it is so well done and brilliantly acted by everyone. The character and vibe of NYC is so real, too.


A French film: Choses Secretes. Raunchy and haunting, this is a psychological thriller, and the French are geniuses at this less is more style. It's not just gratuitous tits and ass it, like so many other French films, goes heavier into the inner life of the characters.

Books: Requiem for a Dream, and the movie, too. I'm reading the book now, something I shouldn't be reading now.

to make it in NYC, you don't sleep

And I'm so tired. Like I sit down and start to nod off. I've slept maybe four hours in twenty four hours and have been running around non stop, and the night's not nearly over.

romance

There were thousands of bands in the world, but only one mattered. They were right about one thing. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was special. I couldn't pin it down, but he was different, apart from these others, all who had this sort of......blurred, almost deadened expression on their faces. He had something else in his face, eyes. And he was the one, the only one.

But that was twenty five years ago, and he's .......dead now. The circumstances are still a mystery.

And, he left, he's gone, on the other side of the Atlantic.....why???????????????

Why did he leave me?

She filled the tub with hot water, and grabbed everything she needed: red wine, cigarettes, a joint (heck it doesn't matter anyway, now), tea, gel, an ashtray, scented candle......and the steak knife. She sat in the tub, drank the wine, lit the joint. Music? Oh well, forgot. A few minutes went by. The wine and mj were making her head spin.......I'll end it now.....but where will I go? What will happen to me after? What will I face? What if I'm sinning? Forgive me, forgive me, whoever's there. Her face screwed up, almost pouting. She started crying again. I can't......how many girls killed themselves over him? She held the knife to her wrists, and for the first time in her life she saw her own mortality and realized she, too, could end her life. But I don't want to become another statistic, another body in the morgue. I can't, not yet, I still have to.......my mission here isn't finished. When will it be? I can't not yet.

I tried to slit my wrists over you, she told him. A gun's easier, he said. If you're going to end it, why not do it quickly? Why give yourself so much pain? Because a gun isn't a ladylike way to do it, she said.

In Gone With the Wind, the catty girls said, men may flirt with girls like that but they don't marry them. Melanie alone defended her, the girl who tried to take her husband. She was the Friday night girl, a "Chia." She was the one hidden from their wives and girlfriends, snuck in during odd hours when they were away or in clandestine meetings in hotel rooms, or at her place when they were on the way home from work, sometimes at their jobs. There wasn't one case of a married man who wasn't having problems with his wife.

Joan of Arc, child of Satan, so dark even Jesus can't save you, born under unlucky, cursed, fixed stars. Joan of Arc shall be France's saint. Child of hell. All these lines are from Lady Snowblood. It's a fascination, a "cursed" child who becomes an instrument of revenge, and a saint.

I feel just like Cindrella! In my beautiful dress on my beautiful wedding day. I go outside for a breath of air, so thankful to be alone even for a minute. I take a breath, just for myself. It's so quiet. If I still smoked I'd be smoking. And then.......there he is. I am not going to faint or have a heart attack. He's not a ghost. My lover, my "dead" lover, the one whose death I avenged on the whole fucking village, is not really dead, but standing right in front of me. You faked your death! I cry. I want you, now, more than ever, he says. You've never looked more beautiful than now, in your wedding dress. I want you, I want you now. It'll have to be fast, I say. So........we sneak into the church basement, into.......a dressing room? A pretty nice one. It happens so fast......marriage must be borne with fortitude, said Ellen O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. He's all over me......then......it's all over me. Meanwhile upstairs is my husband, looking for me, asking, where's my wife? I run upstairs to clean myself off. You can smell it, him, his fluids, on me. My husband will smell it. I find a sink, pour soap on me, am washing myself, and my husband approaches. There you are! he says. Yeah, I say. I just.....spilled something on myself, I'm such a clutz. And off the two of us go, the fairy tale lovers. I later in my designer clothes a hetaira....but married.

dream

I dreamt last night I was.....I dream this so often.......getting into a motor boat, and my sister also. I had to navigate somewhat with my arms. It was lake Michigan, maybe a NYC river, don't really know, but the water was dirty. I was skweaking a little. Then, we were on the beach, on the sand. It was cloudy, and the sand and water started rising, gathering, and we could see it was a storm, a major one. I was on the beach and others with me but???? my sister? Then water rose from the other side where before there was only sand. Then I'm back at an old friend from Chicago's house.

ok i

I was just.......a little freaked about everything, and still am. I am having a fucking freaky experience right now which........oh today has been so crazy. what has gone right? For one thing, I took an HIV test today which was negative thank Heaven, but boy did it give me a fright. Those tests are so scary it's like Judgement Day. I use condoms and don't take those kinds of risks but.....well, I had a thing with someone a year ago who was not exactly wholesome. So for two hours I'm freaking out in the clinic thinking, this is it, this is fucking IT I'm done what will I do if I test posititve oh God I just know I have it oh God, then I went outside and was crying, thinking how did I get myself into this mess? I was so naive. What will I do? What will I tell my mother? So finally, after what seemed like eternity, my letter was called (the longest forty five minute wait of my life) and the woman had this somber look on her face. I'm thinking, oh my God, I have it I have it. So I get called into the office, she shuts the door. Why did she shut the door? I'm shaking by now. Agonizingly slowly, she is asking me, what is your DOB, and I'm panting what's the result? Are you nervous? she asks. Uh, yeah. Then she says, you're making me nervous. Sorry. So......she's looking....and I'm thinking, this is it, my life is over, this is really it, now, the final sentence. So she says, it came back negative. That was when I breathed a sigh of relief. Negative? Definitely? Yes......so I ran out of there panting .......and very high ........very tired, my arm hurting from where they drew blood. Nowadays they scrape your gums and you get the result in forty five minutes, which helps, but that forty five minutes really blows. I don't want to go through this again! I want to stay negative. So........with that said, the question is where do I go from here?

I know I have to get back to my family story.......I can only write a little, but here's my dad's side. I hope this is interesting.


Carl Christian was my great grandfather, born in Germany raised in the US, whom I never met. His wife, my great grandma Alta, lived to be about 100 years old, but I don't recall meeting her. Both of them were gorgeous when they were young. I saw their wedding picture at my aunt's house and am really intrigued by it, can't stop looking at it. There's just something about both of them that fascinates me, their faces. I even look like her. So.......they had four kids and lived in what was basically a mansion in Illinois, on farmland. One of the kids was my grandmother, who grew up to marry someone of the "wrong" religion, Methodist, and this was enough for my great grandmother to oppose the marriage (they were EUB) which started a feud that lasted........sixty years. My other aunt Julie apparently hasn't forgiven my great gm for this........as she was close to my grandfather. Sadly, I never met either of my grandparents, they both passed away before I was born. But they were world apart from my mother's family except for one thing: an interest in writing and journalism.

i wrote

I have to spend a weekend in Indy and not looking forward to it, but the comforting thought is that it will come to an end in TWO DAYS. Just two days with them.

No, I love my family. But we're so different. I read this article in an astrology magazine about Courtney Love's family legacy of .......fucked up situations or something. I have so much to write on mine, but an abbreviated version is this:


About four centuries ago, the Ellsworths left rural England for Massachusetts, USA. Like all the millions of immigrants to the US, they may or may not have known that they were forever giving up their culture and identity to become Americans, although they could at least keep their language. Slowly they moved inland toward Michigan and settled in Alma, a tiny factory town. This is several generations down the road. The Ellsworths, Zieglers from Germany, Beardsleys (who settled part of Michigan, though how is uncertain) and Conklins made up the towns of Ithica and Alma, two lower middle class dots on the map, if they're even on there. From Liberty Tanner Beardsley came John, who was sent to live with the Gerbers for a time, but left to strike out on his own, meeting and impregnating Alfreda Ellsworth. John married and subsequently divorced Alfreda leaving her with a small daughter, Donna, to raise, in the Depression era in the farmland where there was really not much of anything. John later met and married the love of his life, and the two of them made something of a life together and managed to escape to Europe from time to time. Meanwhile, Alfreda found another man, Dan, who raised Donna as his own, more or less. Dan worked in an oil refinery and.......it was not an easy life. There was very little money and Alfreda made most of the clothes, but also cooked and made jam, quilts, collected China and various trinkets, and kept Dan as best she could out of bars. That is, she did her best, but a big part of Midwestern life is drinking.


OK, to be continued, but this is the beginning........don't worry there'll be more

well well I'm just so busy

Running around all day today like a hen with no head. What else? Once in a while you fall in love and can't help it. It's not something you can help. I have so so much to write and there's a hell of a lot going on with me now but too hard to put in a blog. I had a crazy time of it last night.



I have to take a trip to Indianapolis and I'm dreading it, arggghhhhhhhh!!!!!! Visiting my family, who right now I am pissed at and don't want to see at all. It's kind of like I love them but don't like them. Sometimes I hate them. And that's not good. Why can't we be like a sitcom family.....but even they're not functional, really. Interesting how you can share the genes with someone, and be biologically related, and have nothing in common with them and you may as well be from opposite sides of the earth. Someone was talking about six degrees of separation, or less, and I'm seeing it now. But really, I love my family but we're strangers in so many ways. Same thing with people who come from the same ethnic background as me. I've found that I'm not anything like them. Reading the Second Sex, she divides women into categories in history, but I don't really fit any of these. I'm the Other that you mark with an x and fill in the blank. My kind is rare indeed, honestly. Women who change the world are one in a thousand. I really think that. Most women don't become great thinkers. They don't have the leisure or privacy necessary. It does happen, however.

vagina dentata

http://www.faklen.dk/en/the_torch/vd.shtml


if I dare post this here GASP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! what is she doing? Is she dangerous?


but they have such good points, man. Why should I not go out at night? I'm a night person (tho last night I stayed in like a wallflower). Mistress Hekate, if I were a dominatrix. Goddess (would like to think I am but I guess I'm not) of the night. Able to walk around, go into a coffee shop, go to a guy's house, take the subway, walk around the Hudson river, go to school, go to bed..........

sexual harassment and dominance

Go out it's late need time haggard angry depressed a mixture of things I shouldn't be I'm a mess not what I should be........


everything happened so slowly and so quickly what will I do how could they have done it how could they get away with it is there a God/Goddess or anything right well sure but where are they if they're here how can they let them get away with this?


Eyes on me bodies too close I know they're looking I go into a coffee shop just need to rest somewhere and he's behind the counter I know he's watching me I try to give off signals that I'm not interested but even that takes so much extra energy all I want is food...............................why are you in such a hurry? Where do you have to be? Where do I go to get away from it? What do I do? Sit in my room forever? Why can't I go out at night, anywhere?

reading second sex

and it's bringing up all these not so nice feelings in me. I'm really pissed at how corrupt human beings are toward one another. I can give examples, plenty. Problem is, men oppress women, but women oppress other women. I've found that the fact that someone comes from a disadvantaged background and has been beaten, or whatever bad experiences they had, doesn't necessarily make them a saint, or even moderately decent, quite frankly. No, it doesn't mean racism, sexism is right. But the problem is, bluntly, sexism exists in the "ghetto" as much as on Wall Street. It's what people don't want to admit, because any sign of weakness in blacks, women, or any other oppressed group turns people against them, but it's true, sadly: evil incarnates all life forms. I've been at the end, along with some women I know (other women) of extreme aggression and hostility from other women. I mean there are women out there who are vile creatures. They can be brutal toward others. Well, it's hardly news. And for how long can we keep excusing what' s not excusable regardless of race, religion, gender, ect? I've had bad experiences with blacks, male and female, quite frankly. Does that mean all women, all blacks are evil? No, I'm not saying that, though others would see it that way......but that's not what I mean. Margeret Atwood started this in part when she raised the idea that if women are to be truly equal then they should have as much potential for badness. THat, however, doesn't mean women should all be fired from their jobs. But these are the things going through my mind all the time.......and sometimes anger just wells up in me and I wish I knew what to do with it. It's really a struggle to use it right.....even if it is justified. So cats toture their prey, but it doesn't justify animal cruelty. But people need to reconcile these things, somehow. There are weeds in the otherwise perfect lawn.......

I miss college

Can't believe it was so many frikking years ago I was living, fancy free almost, in the Hunter dorm. I never should have left!!!!!!!!! What was the purpose of graduating? Just so I could go out into this too-expensive city and work cruddy jobs, barely scrape by, with no security or benefits? Then spend four years doing the same repetitive work I'd have been doing for eternity, and never getting anywhere? Equal opportunity employer? Possibility for promotion? More like, menial, unsatisfying, tiring work that you have to get up at the crack of dawn every day for, lose your looks due to lack of sleep for, and for a salary you can't live on, oh, and no free time and if you're lucky two weeks vacation. Right now I'm not comforted by hearing about the perks in Europe. Well, I'm not there, I'm here. So what are the other options? I know what they are.

I don't mean to sound negative. The last thing I want is to turn cynical. But I'm thinking college was great.....yeah, it was flawed, but I was FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I miss that. I just wasted time obsessing over this silly guy who wasn't worth it ultimately (but I didn't know that then) but other than that I did get so much accomplished. I was acting in movies and I had easy access to all of nyc, no curfew, no one telling me what to do......I miss it. And I'm ready to go back. I'll be the oldest co-ed in the world, but I'm ready. I'll be a student forever.

sitting in the hunter library

but I can't down load due to security problems and in order to save anything I have to get a floppy disk don't know where to get one......

I had an interview today which went pretty well! The job isn't too exciting-sounding but if I get it I'll be getting a good salary and it's temp, which means the benefits come out of my pocket and I pay my own health care. So it'll be hard work for a few months but I'm thinking I can save up and go to Berlin for a few months, maybe back to Egypt. From Berlin all these other places are accessable. England is an hour flight, Egypt maybe four hours, Thailand 8 hours. I'm thinking I can live in Alexandria for a few months. I loved that city.
And I miss London, don't know why......it's ugly and the people aren't too pleasant plus it's expensive and dangerous. So......why am I obsessed with going back? Well, I know the reason. Sort of.

But ......that's also not permanent. I know that at some point I'll have to work again no matter where I am and......I have a million emails and job possibilities. Just today I can send 100 resumes. But the question is, at what?

sitting in the laundromat

and on the web figured I'd change my cheezy ass url title and .......so now it's this. SO what's new....spent too much money on clothes but am obsessed with buying boots. I need to make some money I'm freaking out a little. Let the dinero come my way................the waterfall flowing toward me ...................

been a while

since I've written......


but I've been so super swamped

little things, must be mercury retrograde or something like it. got a new phone, but it's not working, neither is my old one. had to go to a sprint store to get it fixed and now I'm waiting in a cyber cafe in the east village. I'm sending out, or pretending to, my resume, and marketing (uhum, should I say, whoring?) myself. But I am in need of some dinero now so I need to do this.

Halloween was crazy nyc as usual. Maybe elsewhere in the world there are awesome halloweens but here they are anyway. I lived on 4th street and 6th ave when I was a teenager, and the parade was right outside my window. that was back in the punk days ....... hmmm...... I think the thing with punk is that we (or they) came from all different backgrounds, but really ......were they middle class? MTV plays at my gym. I didn't watch MTV; we didn't. We went to shows and hung out in the park and......that was our entertainment. I don't watch TV nor did I nor will my kids, and I don't see what we're missing. Madonna is right at least about that.

RIght now I'm mad at my landlord and I'm obsessed with the theme of revenge, want to incorporate that in my art. What it comes down to is "the right to revenge" that Vagina Dentata wrote about. I watched Lady Snowblood again, and there was a line in it about.....something like, the seeds of karma are so strong they affect even the unborn sometimes. I think in my case that's so damn true.....if karma exists, which I'm back and forth about. But .....the civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s and the punk movement had a lot to do with determining my life, and neither of my parents were much involved in either. My mother had zero interest in punk, but that was the 70s when she was my age. But I was reading all this redstokckings material that was written around the time I was born. I guess that's what got me wondering; that plus looking at old Clash photos.