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 Saturday, February 18, 2012 Im about to eat bbq, but I feel so guilty! Okay, 2nd interview for the teaching gig on Wednesday! Discoveries this morning that have made me happy: 1. I can only control my actions and thoughts, no one else's. 2. I'm through seeking affirmation from meaningless sources, someone will either like and appreciate me or they won't. I won't let that outcome change me anymore. 3. My job is to show up and do my best, that much I can control. 4. Beating myself up is stupid, and unproductive. Thank you, Lord.  When I was at home for Christmas I made my mom read the poem 'Israfel' to me, by Poe. It sounds silly I know but the I love that poem, and for some reason I really wanted to hear it w/my mother's voice. She thought it was silly, but I agreed. I love my mom. In Heaven a spirit doth dwell "Whose heart-strings are a lute"; None sing so wildly well As the angel Israfel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell), Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of his voice, all mute. Tottering above In her highest noon, The enamored moon Blushes with love, While, to listen, the red levin (With the rapid Pleiads, even, Which were seven,) Pauses in Heaven. And they say (the starry choir And the other listening things) That Israfeli's fire Is owing to that lyre By which he sits and sings- The trembling living wire Of those unusual strings. But the skies that angel trod, Where deep thoughts are a duty- Where Love's a grown-up God- Where the Houri glances are Imbued with all the beauty Which we worship in a star. Therefore thou art not wrong, Israfeli, who despisest An unimpassioned song; To thee the laurels belong, Best bard, because the wisest! Merrily live, and long! The ecstasies above With thy burning measures suit- Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love, With the fervor of thy lute- Well may the stars be mute! Yes, Heaven is thine; but this Is a world of sweets and sours; Our flowers are merely–flowers, And the shadow of thy perfect bliss Is the sunshine of ours. If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. THE END Yesterday I did some really stupid and insensitive things to an amazing friend. I guess I've just been so wrapped up in my own problems I've forgotten that other people have feelings too :-/ Last Saturday Tania and I watched an Indian movie called 'Fire'. Its not new, made in 1996, but it sparked a lot of controversy in India when it was made. Basic plot: Indian couple, an arranged marriage, where the wife is infertile. The husband is of a particular sect of Hinduism that thinks sex should only be for procreation. His swami (priest) suggests that he embrace celibacy to bring him closer to god(s). This also entails the practice of surrounding himself by things he finds tempting and then resisting to touch them. The husband puts this to practice with his wife so anytime he feels horny he has her lay down next to him and he refuses to touch her. This goes on for 13 years. Husband younger brother is in love with a Chinese girl living in India. She's modern and carefree, only wanting a sexual and emotional relationship with the young man but turning down his marriage proposal. He is in love w/her so he continues seeing her and despite all this goes through with an arranged marriage with an Indian girl named Seta. Seta is brought into the unhappy household with a husband who openly doesn't like her and who has sex with her quickly and roughly (her virginity is taken in the most cold, un-affectionate way possible) while admitting to her that he loves another. She would have given the relationship a go. Longstory short the two sister-in-laws fall in love with each other and drama ensues. One of the themes the older, barren woman talks about is how she is so unused to having desire, its alien for her. Her husband and his swami believe that it elevates someone spiritually to forego desire, but she believes that it is desire that makes us live and makes life worth living. That got me thinking about desire and the role it plays in my life. I wouldn't know what its like to be in her situation, I could only imagine. My life has been full of desire, still is I suppose. What would it be without it? I don't think I agree with the swami, or the Buddhist idea, that the abandonment of desire brings about the ultimate human experience, i.e. the absence of experience (?). Wouldn't I just be dead, or comatose If I never had any desires? Or would I be completely satiated and need of nothing? But if I don't need anything then what about beautiful things like love, company, and laughter? Would life be worth living? As a Christian we gain our lives by loosing them, meaning the total surrender of a life to God is what brings the true life, which is the true prize where the old life is a sort of fool's gold I suppose. And how do you live without desire? Never wanting or being wanted. Interesting...maybe it would be liberating, but perhaps also very lonely. Labels: Desire Okay its beyond my bedtime. I don't know why but the Prophet Elijah has been on my mind a lot, particularly this morning. He was a renown prophet of God in the Old Testament. One day he went up to a mountain and experienced all these trippy things, a violent wind, an earthquake, then a great fire but God wasn't in any of those, he found God in a whisper. It says eventually God took him up to heaven in a whirlwind, right in front of his successor, the prophet Elisha (S not J, I always get the two prophets confused. Its easy to remember when you think of it like this: J comes before S so Elijah comes before Elisha). I wonder what did it feel like to be taken up into heaven, and what kind of man was Elijah really? Like I know he did all these amazing things, but I wonder what he felt about them. Was he ever in love? Did he have any friends? It says a lot of them were killed, his friends that is. Then I wonder what it feels like to be so spiritual that you're just taken, transcending the physical world. Was it the best experience a human could have or did he forsake the physical for the spiritual and obtained something amazing, but different. i.e. he walked with the Lord in a closer relationship than most people will ever have, but did he ever know what it was like to love a woman? Or was it like Jesus says that someone who forsakes his life ends up finding it? Then I wonder if Elijah was lonely. Eugene O'Neil is a playwright who wrote 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'. In it one of the characters, an alcoholic dying of consumption, muses that 'it was a great mistake my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish, as it stands I will always be stranger, one who does want, and is not really wanted." I think that's how it goes, I performed it for class and have it memorized, but it was awhile ago and it may not be word per word. But I wonder if that's how Elijah felt- alone, above, and apart. Was Elijah never really a part of humanity? How does that feel and what was life like for him once he went into heaven? Therapy was really helpful last week after my holiday weirdness. I'll try to streamline and itemize the things we talked about and how the conclusions helped me. My issues (for that day, lol) 1. The feelings of shame and worthlessness I get from comparing myself to other attorneys (and working actors) 2. The same feelings that surface when I'm unemployed, i.e. I'm not earning well so my ancestors (grandparents and those who passed before me) as well as my current relatives are ashamed of me. 3. The idea that I'm the same as my older brother who is a drug addict and destitute or that people, my family, view me as such. 4. and the strain/fam conflict that was around during the holidays coupled w/my mother's yearly holiday madness. Essentially he helped pick through the reality of the situation vs. the way I'm feeling about a particular situation. 1. My life journey is different than that of my peers, particularly other attorneys. I made the choice, a long time ago, not to pursue a legal career, at all basically and thus my life is not going to look like someone who hopped into a big law firm out of school. Then we talked a lot about definitions of success, and how I automatically assumed that equates money. For instance, I forsook an attorney's life, basically, and the $$ that could have come with it didn't appeal to me because the life I thought was so unappealing. And there are plenty of people struggling. Its weird for me because I didn't grow up struggling, and was earning pretty good $$ doing contract work for a few years right out of law school. Basically I'm learning not to associate my self worth with how much money I have at the moment. If that's my focus I would need to change my life, not focus on acting, and focus on a legal which I don't want to do. Also anytime I get weird about my progress in acting he always tells me his Tori Spelling story. It goes like this: he had a client, stunningly beautiful and a great actress as he'd seen her perform before. She couldn't make it in Hollywood, it was too trying for her emotionally so she gave up and went back home. Then there's Tori Spelling, who, by many accounts, is not a good, or even mediocre, actress or really that attractive, and she's made tons of movies. Why's it like that? That's just the bizarro way our industry works, if someone isn't doing well in it, it's not their talent, looks, or worth as a performer that is necessarily the problem. That being said I'm in it to win it out here, but that analogy is comforting, in a strange way. 2. My past relatives/ancestors who I perceive would be ashamed of me. He asked me where they came from, the short answer is various parts of Europe. Then he said, "well it stands to reason they brought all their vast fortunes over here with them". I responded, of course they didn't, they were dirt poor immigrant farmers, then I had the epiphany. This whole time I've been worried that bunch of dirt poor farmers would look down on me for being poor. It was like a weight lifted off me. I don't know why I beat myself up so bad over those kind of things, but I have to stop. 3. For thinking that I'm just like my brother we dissected it like this. He's the way he is as a result of 100s of choices he's made over the 25 years. It didn't just happen. The concept that I'd be just like him sporadically is ludicrous. Also we talked about how when we see things like that, people in distress, extreme poverty, etc it is going to affect us in emotionally stirring ways, particularly when its your own family. However the line is when I start constructing illogical worries that spring out of that. 4. Then we talked about how the strain of the holidays is just there, and expecting there to be no strain can actually cause strain. Its okay to feel distressed over it, but don't think its going to be perfect. Also, I need to let my mom just be my mom. She wants a big to-do at her house, but hates preparing for it. That's just who she is , and as crazy as it makes me I just need to accept it. She has fun once the party starts, and I just need to take her for who she is and let her be stressed if she's stressed. Labels: Wednesday's session Hello Blog, I've been meaning to talk about this for awhile but have not because I was afraid of looking to sullen or being a downer all the time. That being said its time to come clean, I struggle with depression. I've been aware of it for roughly 6 months although those closest to me say its been more like 1 year and a half. This doesn't mean I'm down all the time, but my emotions have been really fluctuating from normal (with all expected highs and lows) to going way down when something bad happens. So there it is. I've been seeing a therapist about it and things have been really improving, but the holidays were particularly difficult for me. Thankfully my depression is categorized as minor so there is no medication involved, only therapy and generally talking about my feelings and problems. A lot of my depression stems from my general feelings of worthlessness when I'm off work. I do these contract attorney gigs (temp work) to finance the pursuit of my dream (Acting). When I first got out to LA these projects were, for the most part, plentiful. I never went that long without work and I landed some pretty sweet gigs that lasted for a long time. I got used to earning a higher income in a fairly cushy environment. And then it all just, fell apart. The recession happened, a lot of doc review dried up, and now I can wait about a month or two between projects. When that happens I feel ashamed, and shunned like I've let my family and society down. When I was at home for Christmas the first night, I couldn't sleep so I went in the living room at night and looked through all the old photos of my grandparents and old relatives long gone. I couldn't shake the feeling that they would all be ashamed of me, and wish I wasn't there descendant because of the way my life is. It was my job to go pick up my eldest brother and his son for Christmas eve. Both of them are basically destitute and when I saw them I got this overwhelming dread that I too would end up like that and that all my family thought I was of the same caliber. It put in a funk for the rest of the evening that I didn't bounce back from until much later in the night. My shrink has really helped me when I deal with those kind of emotions and jump to those crazy conclusions. It stems from examining the reality vs. the emotions of what I'm feeling and then responding in certain ways. I.E. there's no evidence whatsoever that my family looks on me w/disdain, quite the opposite in fact, so I'm supposed to take that information and use it to quell the irrational feelings. I was doing so well with my daily life, but the holidays just got me in such a funk. I think because I wasn't prepared to deal with a lot of the family dynamics. For instance holiday planning drives my mother, well bonkers. She almost teeters on the edge of reason when it comes to preparing holiday festivities for the whole family. The irony of the situation is she insists on having it at her house. Also there was some tension as to other family members not wanting to spend Christmas with my eldest brother who is a drug addict. So stepping into that got me down and pulling back up was difficult. That being said there were lots of great times at home this year, fun parties, had a great day with my sis and nephew on Monday, Christmas eve was great once I got my head on straight. So I'm still struggling. I thought I was out of the woods but I guess I have a way to go. Labels: Handling Depression I still don't know why everyone loves Boba Fett. Watching 'The Empire Strikes Back' with a friend. Man, I love that movie. Well my nephew's account that he set up like a million years ago expired (lol) so my pis went down, BUT I found copies of them in the recesses of my hard drive (the logo, etc) and will repost them soon. That being said, Happy New Year! I've been avoiding this for awhile, but its time to ::sigh:: fold clothes. Why's all this stationary in my bookbag? Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.1 Super busy day today: I found myself an audition for this spanish commerical where they wanted dudes who could toss pizza dough really well. I tried tossing the dough last night to practice (first time) but couldn't do it anywhere near competently (I you-tubed guys who could do it well, its nuts!) so that part of my schedule cleared I had an independant film shoot this morning which was...werid RANDOMLY a kid from my acting workshop was in it too. He claims to be assexual but simultaneously addicted to porn, I don't know how that works out. He played a serial killer who strangled me in the park. He wore super tight express for men clothes and handled me bizarrely gently. After that I went to my coca-cola print audition, the casting directors seemed to like me and there dog was there which they let me pet and we chatted about him a lot. He was used as pitt bull bait as a puppy (doggy they put in w/pitts to make them fight, bad stuff) but they rescued him. His name was Jake and he was super cool now I'm at the homeless shelter volunteering for a few hours, and the nuns feed me! woohooo!!! 630 is rehearsal and then 730 is acting class, after which my ex-roommate's ex-girlfriend has invited me to go hear her friend play a set in Hollywood. Ok- new attitude re: auditions. From now on every audition is a performance and when I'm finished with it I will consider the curtain to have gone down and will move on. On Oct 18th, I dont know why Im just writing about this now, I got an under-5 [under 5 line part] on a Soap Opera. It was a lot of fun. My role was a thief and I got a special outfit and my own dressing room! Believe it or not most of the day was spent just chilling out in my dressing room. I forgot to bring something to do, I always forget- last commercial I had a role on I just sat around for hours. One of the little boys in the shoot came up and told me all about his favorite Mario games which was really funny. OH, so I also forgot to bring a book or my laptop to the Soap Set. My room had a comfy couch and I napped for a bit and then channel surfed for the 1st time in ages (I don't have a tv). Shooting my actual part only took about 30 minutes, one of the main characters in the show chased me through an alleyway, lol. But it was a fun day and I'm looking forward to more of it! Labels: My 1st Soap Opera gig So today's thoughts: I had my audition last Friday morning at 11am before I flew out for a quick weekend trip to Oklahoma for my sister's 50th birthday party. The casting director described my 1st take as perfect and then gave me two other takes with some re-directions to switch things up a bit. As I finished she told me that they were 3 great takes and I went on my way. However btw take 2 and 3 I noticed that I inadvertently dropped a line on the last page. AHHH! I never, NEVER drop lines. Oye vey. I wanted the performance to be perfect. Her line before mine (can't say exactly what it was, copyright) made me think she had skipped that part, when in actuality she didn't. Luckily the line I gave made sense (it was a simple question, i.e. why was that, etc) and it ran smoothly but still. Ryan and Jo think I should take the compliment that a major casting office described a performance of mine as 'perfect' but its hard to, because, well, it wasn't perfect. And casting directors say things all the time. Granted if they don't like you they just say thanks and let you go, but I just can't shake the feeling that I'm this colossal screw up sometimes. I got a lot of anxiety about it on the plane ride to Oklahoma, like I let everyone down and I was embarrassed about it. But as hard as it is for me I'm trying to take the positive from it. Next time I need to KNOW all my partner's lines also in case they're ambiguous, and just get back to work. Working actors work like dogs, and I'm not cut out to be an attorney. That part of me, the lawyer part however much it was, died a while ago and I'm glad. I don't like working with lawyers, they're mean. So to work. |
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