Celebrate Good Times

Well, at least I'm really good at waiting.

It's official. I applied for school. The notion that came to me in a dream as I slept in an island bungalow in Honduras now sits in an envelope on the desk of an admissions counselor at The New School--a mass of GPAs, demographic information, essay responses and course plans. Me, in matte, flat black and white, hoping to leap off the page into appealing relief. Truth be told, I'm so deep into this "living the life you wanna have" kick that I'm not even allowing for a plan b. It took me too damn long to figure out plan a. It's gotta work. I have no idea how long it'll be until I hear something. At least I've got Facebook to keep me company.

My mom told me once that if I can't learn to celebrate small victories, I'll never learn to celebrate the really huge ones. I can't believe how many things she's right about. This particular one, though, is so dead on. The morning that I walked into that school, transcripts in hand, and stepped onto the elevator with the leggings- and-scarves set was so...anticlimactic. I'd imagined the moment of handing my paperwork to the young woman behind the desk in Admissions and racing out to throw my hat in the air millions of times. 'I'll buy myself a fancy five dollar latte immediately after', I thought. 'I'll mark the milestone with that cement-colored nail polish I've wanted since May.' 'The treasured bottle of Moet I've been saving will finally be uncorked and I'll drink it straight outta the bottle.'

What I actually did was spend twenty minutes on the MTA and grab a shitty cup of Maxwell House at the office. God forbid I really have something to celebrate. I might just get excited enough to make a bowl of tuna salad and watch a rerun of Matlock.

So with this little lesson in mind and thinking ahead now, I'm gonna have two mini celebrations this week. That way when there's something really big to leap for joy over (i.e., getting IN) I won't have to ask how high. I'm gonna do two things I've always wanted to do that I hope will be like the milestone submitting my application was. One, I'm finally gonna get acupuncture. The list of reasons is too long to list here and anyway, who really wants to talk about indigestion and difficulty sleeping? I'm hoping it'll be a centering experience and that I'll get hooked and wanna go back. Two, I'm gonna get a professional bra fitting. Oh yes I did say that in this blog. I've always wanted to do it--actually see what they look like molded and sculpted by professionals into two shining orbs of glory. So, I've made an appointment at a little Upper East Side boutique to surrender my rack to a woman with a measuring tape and a handful of possibilities.

Bring on the celebrating, big, small, poked and perky.

Start Living the Life You Want To Have

Most of you know I'm completely at the feet of the impeccable
Mad Men. Every week I take away some juicy bit of writing to gnaw on and savor as I while away the day at an office that shares an address with its fictional counterpart but only dreams of its edgy, smoky productivity.

And then there are the gals. Oh, those are my kinda broads. Kept, some of them, burdened by gender politics, all of them, but each desperate to define herself and fighting like hell with perfect, red oval fingernails to scratch through the surface of Brill Cream, bourbon and boy's clubs.

A couple of episodes ago, one of my Mad babes, Bobbi Barrett, wife of an obnoxious, of-the-time comedian who'd been carrying on with with the leading man (Creative Director at the ad agency where her husband was under contract), had a scene that will stay with me forever. She'd been in a drunken car accident with aforementioned lead and was in pretty bad shape. She couldn't go home with a black eye and explain how it'd happened, so to her rescue came Peggy, the homely young copywriter from the office. Peggy put Bobbi up in her modest Brooklyn apartment for a few days while she healed. Naturally, as storylines like this go, the women had a few things to learn from each other. Peggy's discretion was foreign to Bobbi, who lounged for days and smoked cigarettes on her couch in a lacy black slip. But to Peggy, Bobbi was what she seemed to me: sultry, fragile, calculating and absolutely magnetic. At the end of her stay, as Bobbi patched up her face so she could go home and slide comfortably back into her role as domestic femme fatale, she told Peggy that you decide who you're going to be and that to get where you want to end up you just simply "start living the life you want to have".

I don't know why, but that line got inside me. And it was still banging around in my mind days later when I had a martini with a friend (going for style points) and we talked about how much has changed in the last year. I've moved, decided that I'm applying to school, finished the pilot. But I still can't cut myself loose from this job. It's my last anchor to the life I'm so ready to move on from.

So, what would happen if I just started living the life I wanted to have? My friend suggested that I urge things along by cleaning out my desk at the office. Hey, okay. Since I'll be leaving soon anyway, right? Why not start packing up? See what happens. I actually gave my email address to our IT guy the other day and said "hey, don't think I'll be around long. Here's this for when I'm gone. We'll grab a drink." I'm living the life I want to have. I plan to submit my application to The New School this weekend. I have no idea how I'll pay for school, or how I could continue working this job and be in classes. Oh well, I can't worry about all that now. I'm busy living the life I want to have. Right?

I'm gonna try on Bobbi Barrett's lace slip for awhile and see how it suits me. I've already tried the other method--living the life I don't want to have--and that hasn't worked for years. So, let's just see how this goes. I'm taking my desk plant home tonight.

Running WOman

Before I left for the desert, I had a formal running shoe fitting. I'd never done anything like that before, preferring instead to fit myself in a corner at DSW, hidden behind the bargain shoe rack and the fall boots display. I'd always be wearing my coat, sweating, carrying a purse or a Stop & Shop sack, walking no more than five or ten steps in the prospective pair to test them and then heading to the counter to drop some ungodly sum and get the hell outta there.

Now, I have to admit I've been off the sweat sauce for some time. My daily runs slowed at the beginning of the summer when we moved and slagged off completely when life became a daily grind of unpacking boxes, editing the show, crawling to the dreadful office and finally burying myself in all manner of frozen alcoholic concoctions to dull the noise. And through it all, I was desperate for an outlet, a hiding place, the old familiar knowing that comes from pushing myself really hard and getting past it. But as has been my pattern since conception, instead of balling up my anxiety and letting it explode somewhere outside of my body, I sent it further inward where it could get good and filthy and wash over me like a swollen, dirty river. That was the summer: me as still life. Necessary, yes, in order for other things to be in motion. But the pavement's been calling me back and besides that, my my jeans don't fucking fit right.

I felt totally sheepish going into a formal sporting goods store to buy running shoes. I've never seen running as a sport. For me, it's more primitive than that. It's like I'm tapping into some inner Clan of the Cave Bear tribeswoman, as evidenced by my threadbare leggings and cotton t-shirt running costume. Maybe I don't see myself as an athlete when I'm out there. But I think that's starting to change. It's not just about surviving a run. I can be faster, more efficient, work harder if I give myself the right tools.

I walked around for fifteen minutes, trying to avoid the "sign up sheet". See, the deal was, you couldn't buy shoes at this store unless you were professionally fitted. No standing in a corner, juggling a Sephora bag on one arm and a mini backpack on another. It's serious shit. You go in, they put you on a treadmill, they film your stride and they fit you. And every one of them is a version of the super hot cross country running captain you kinda dug in high school--lithe, willowy, lean. It takes major nuts to get your Hefewizen-ridden ass on a treadmill and let some clipboard-abbed, natural beauty analyze your stride imperfections. It takes absolute cojones of titanium to let a similar lovely help you find the right sportsbra after wearing the same uni-tit ace bandage of a bra through every run for a year. But I did both. And I ended up with a steel trap for my rack and the most gorgeous pair of silver and chartreuse Sauconys I've ever seen in my life.

I put them on for the first time this morning. They were gleaming new, awaiting a name. Gogol Bordello blaring, I got my ass outta bed at 5:00 a.m., laced 'em up and started running. It was everything I remembered: too hard to think of anything else and exhilirating as hell. I've set a few small goals to start. No marathons, just some consistency. I sorta see myself as running toward the close of the first installment of the Chrysalis Year. I've got some serious miles to put in before I get there.

I'm kinda feeling "Flash" and "Gordon" for my shoes. I think it fits.

These are the Only Words That Have Ever Made Sense To Me On September 11th

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky

By Anne Sexton (1975)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.

As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.

These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.

Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small pants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something-
some useful door-
somewhere-
up there.

Away Message

Greetings Chrysalis Crowd,
Here I sit, awaiting my beloved Hillary Clinton and her vote-for-him speech. It's late, I'm bleary-eyed, I've got backpacks and trekking poles in the corner, ready to get dusty in the desert on my back. I'm watching the "Sound on the Floor" meter on CNN's overburdened DNC coverage screen slide up and down with the rise and fall of the voices of this or that speaker. I'm gonna take Hillary and the pundits with me in my heart as I leave. Perhaps I'll finally be able to meditate on all that's at stake.

I'm headed to Eugene tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn, where I'll celebrate the wedding of a dear old friend to a lovely woman. After the festivities, I'm on my way to the desert to hike the Grand Canyon, North Rim to South Rim, with a group of my favorite people in the world.

The canyon is my sanctuary. It's a cleansing place--a place of tremendous desolation and hope, humility, silence and grace. I go there to be quieted and beat down. The effort is a battle with absolute nothingness and total abundance all at once. Mostly, the silence of the space between the canyon walls is bigger than the sound of New York and it's bigger than me.

We finished the Off the Radar rough cut this week. Over five months watching every detail of that one astounding adventure flash across my view in HD has me full up. I need to empty my mental hard drive, compress some emotional files, make more space. The night we wrapped, I drove home feeling a tidal wave of despair approaching, ridiculously in tears over Pink Floyd's Breathe. It's taken days to figure out that creating this show has been a beautiful and necessary distraction for me and that without it, my devil's mind gets busy conspiring against my reasonable self. Me in Honduras--me anywhere else, for that matter, is me, boundless. Editing the show has been like having dinner with another self three nights a week. Talk about inferiority complex.

So, with that, I'm gonna go dive into the red dust and merge all my selves into one. I'm gonna get filthy, get blistered and burned and get right again.

Onward and upward,
Onekate

This Chrysalis Week

This is going to be a frivolous blog post but this was a frivolous, shit week. Frivolous. Shit. Well, except for getting within one paragraph and a single sequence of the end of the Off the Radar script and rough cut, which is a milestone that puts other milestones to shame. But besides that, did I say frivolous shit?

In honor of a week that actually had me in a pathetic, cliche pile of 9 to 5-style tears at my keyboard on Thursday night, I hereby relenquish the following dribble:

1.) I want Kim Kardashian's ass. On mine. Like, as an ass-transplant kind of scenario. Where hers goes over mine and I no longer have mine.

2.) "I'm ready for my bikini but at the same time I don't really focus on those things." Thank you, Emmy Rossum. Only people who are ready for their bikinis have the fuckin' nerve to say that they don't really focus on those things.

3.) I've officially been a Facebook member for a week now. I'll admit that I joined to look up my high school best friend, whose typed letter to me on my 17th birthday telling me she could no longer be my friend because I'd gotten too "funky" wrecked my world for at least a year. Naturally, she wasn't listed because she's now a fancy corporate lawyer in London (information courtesy of Google) and doesn't bother with things like Facebook, I'm sure. But in just a short week I've started feeling like I'm a lowly Facebook "add"--a number in certain people's social tickers, helping them achieve some abstract total that indicates they've got a network as wide as the Sargasso Sea. I'm a hole in a social belt-notch, a face with a button attached. Never mind that I've got a profile listing all my little interests, that I'm a fan of dogs, I like travel and really love old art-rock. That navy blue "add" button next to my name is all they're after--like little social Pac Men and Women, eating up add buttons for breakfast. It's all about the "add", isn't it? It's just another type of consumption. It's fine. I'm glad I joined just to hear about the lives of two great women I used to know. But someone told me it's a slippery slope. She couldn't have been more right. I'm currently skiing down a few too many of those, so I'm gonna go easy.

4.) I dreamed that I was fired by Hunter S. Thompson, who screamed at me for not sorting things into the correct types of piles. "You know I don't use computers!", he seethed. I remember thinking in the dream that with the firing and all, the upkeep on these dramatic blonde highlights was gonna become a problem. Hunter S. Thompson. Firings. Translation: work. It all comes down to that. It's where I go during the day and apparently at night as well. Even in dreams.

If it weren't for the dream of seeing Off the Radar run straight through on a television screen and the idea of leaning over the edge of the railing at the North Rim lodge in the Grand Canyon in two weeks, I'd still be toiling away in that Hunter S. Thompson fantasy, dreaming of a gonzo boss' bullshit idiosyncrasies.

I can tell I'm prepping to go off the grid. I'm sorting through my mental wasteland and it's pretty much just fluff: a filthy marsh of asses, history, margaritas, and office space, all jumbled up together, accomplishing nothing. Time to go away and clean house.

Don't Call Us...

Alright, an update is long overdue.

I went in to be seen for the beauty job. They didn't go for me. And while it was exactly the type of brand I want (I think) to work for: upscale, modern, fresh -- it was also kind of high-intensity. It appeared to be staffed largely by a gaggle of fluttering under-25s and there was a distinct Hills-y vibe to the environment: everyone in high-end flip flops and those ubiquitous shirtdresses that I'm starting to loathe. Every time I'm in a scenario like that I just feel so...dated. Yes, I was wearing my standard-issue wrap dress but it was far more Van Heusen than Von Furstenburg and I knew it. My husband always tells me if I'm apologizing for myself on the inside, I'm apologizing on the outside. So, I basically walked in wearing a nametag that said "Hello, My Name is Sorry".

I think I presented well on paper but it was one of the most intrusive applications I've ever filled out. They wanted to know my monthly rent, the make, model and year of my car, whether I was in debt and if I had ever indulged in alcohol on the job (clearly they see the two as related). I was absolutely quaking when they sat me down next to the other funky flower applying for the job on a worn, artsy-looking velvet couch. Prior to going in, I'd carefully placed a single precious, pristine white Xanax in the coin purse of my wallet in case of a panic emergency. This is something I sometimes do to stem the anxiety tide as a sort of insurance plan. I pretty rarely actually take them because they're long-acting and that's a big 12 hour committment to feeling soft around the edges. But knowing it's nestled in there alongside my dimes and quarters is sometimes enough to get me through an episode of tight chest and racing thoughts.

As I filled in the date at the top of the application my hands started shaking. It occured to me that I hadn't filled out a job application in ten years. And it was down the slippery slope from there. I lost my grip on the pen, feeling unable to correctly spell the word "July". I was certain the girl next to me in the gold Roman sandals was way ahead on her essay question about her accomplishments and disappointments and that I'd be left behind, stuck in the mire of reasons for leaving past jobs and professional strengths and weaknesses. Then I remembered the perfect white disk in my wallet. Somehow, in the ferocity of the moment, it occured to me to take it. Right there on the burgundy velvet couch. Next to Roman sandals girl.

And then I came down for a landing. 'You can't take fucking drugs right here, in front of a prospective employer who just demanded on their job application that you list the prescription drugs you're taking!' 'You can't take drugs when you go in to be seen for a job, period, even if they don't ask you what drugs you're taking!', I silently screamed at myself.

Wow, the whole process got me in a tizzy. I spent a day wondering whether they didn't call me back because I don't have a bachelors degree from FIT or they didn't like my answer to the "do you think everyone is basically honest?" question (yes). And then I talked to my mom, who reminded me that I'm interviewing them just as much as they're interviewing me. Yeah! With that in mind, maybe I didn't like the absence of low-end sandals in their office so much.

.

Seriously, I'm 32. I'm not applying for a part-time summer job at Sam Goody. I'm looking for the right thing. And I'm getting this internal message that that "thing" is probably much different from what I think I can do and where I think I belong. The entire point of this year has been that everything I've thought was one way is badly in need of a monumental shift. It's time to be open to possibility. I'm so feeling that. Whatever direction this bird is flying, I'm hitching a ride.

I wanna know what's out there.