kerouac says

i just tried to work up a new audition piece for an EPA for manhattan theatre club, and was so put off by my own badness that i had to stop and pick something else. i worked on the second choice for a while, still feeling like a hack, and then decided to watch some mindless teevee. and turned on the commercial i auditioned for two months ago. everyone in it was beautiful enough to be a mannequin.

times like this make me want to be all, at least i can write. except, apparently, i can't. i keep trying, but nothing comes out except for a little bit of stink. it's not really writer's block. it's either a profound lack of discipline or a dire dearth of talent. or, frighteningly, both. i like words so much. i wish i could make something out of them.

here's the thing. there are sundays when we get up at a decent, but still luxurious hour, and we go shopping at the irish market for bread and cheese, and we get high in the park with the rest of new york and fall asleep in the sun and watch the other couples canoodling and kissing and the mess of humanity swelching all over the sheep's meadow and then actually finish the grocery shopping at the good food emporium under the bridge (see? we're adults. we shop. sometimes, we get it done) and we go home and watch an episode of the sopranos, and jesus christ. jesus. i've never loved anyone before. not like this.

my kids think it's funny to tell me how i can be "ghetto" and/or "gangster." i'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of me every pretending to the same experiences they've grown up with, but i can't seem to stop them from planning my harlem makeover. you need a pair of jordans, one of them told me yesterday. and some tight jeans, one of the girls chimed in--and let me do your hair (she brings a comb to school every day now, so that she can come upstairs to my office and play with my hair while i eat lunch. is this professional? i confess i do not care). this is the same little girl who proudly proclaimed last month that i was not white; i was "caucasian." she said it kind of like my mom used to say, "your feet aren't big! your feet are long and graceful!" it's been a tough road into this girl's good graces, so i'm choosing to accept the compliment.

it's a CD from mister lucky! which was mailed april 8. the postal lady apologized; apparently it was lost in the sunnyside mailroom "for a few days."

the weekend's shows are over, and i'm wiped. all i want to do is watch something brainless. and possibly eat candy, but i'm trying to treat my sickness with expectorant and lots of fluids instead. this show burns me at both ends, and that's the truth. i'm realizing i need another part time job to make ends meet, but given that my weekends sort of have to be reserved for recovery, i'm not sure where i'll plug that in. sigh.

but today he made me breakfast (scones! fresh melon! espresso!), and we whispered into each other's hairlines, and he loves me. i may not be doing well on every count, but i got something.

worried about money, worried about money. why is it so easy for other people to creep into debt, and six months of scraping by plus two dipping into savings is enough to render me sleepless? i cannot stand the idea of clinging to the cliff-face every month, never going on vacation, and wearing that goddamned pair of jeans two more weeks. let it be known, i am not a priss. after getting my first ten dollar manicure on a whim, i ceased and desisted because i couldn't conscience the petty cash. i have talked myself out of buying the expensive ketchup. when i eat out, it's a dollar-fifty sicillian slice on the corner.

it's just: i don't see a way out. the only way to make ends meet in a responsible fashion here is to work full time, and what i recall is that makes me a crazy bitch with no time to rehearse, audition or send out fruitless mailings. if only doing the show paid a little more. in chicago, the folks who do the show get a few hundred bucks a month. here: not enough to cover cabfare. oh, sigh.

i guess it means i should give full time another shot when my counseling job runs out. at this point, anything sounds like a good idea. i'm warning myself now, though. chances are, i'm going to hate the grind as much as i hate the poverty. and it won't even really get me out of the poverty zone.

i'm pretty sure that the universe was listening to me gently, wisely, adultly tell the monkey that he did not need to go to the doctor to have the remnants of his cold treated. but in my defense, the monkey is sometimes sort of a pussy about physical discomfort. and who the hell ever heard of a cold that didn't get better after two weeks? i got the same cold and got better after two weeks, even with a little lingering phlegm.

the universe listened with its best cranky baby face on, and i went to take a nap. i woke up feeling like someone had digested me and left me in the alley. i told the monkey, i feel like butt. this is awful. let's call the doctor.

he very sweetly did not throw it in my face too many times, and when i called him from the train station at eleven pee em after rehearsal, he started running my bath before i even got to the door. we have matching appointments at the free clinic tomorrow.

Best Boyfriend Ever.

the monkey is not yet recovered from the illness he brought home, and neither am i. i'm sure the sub-standard dry air being pumped out by our extremely loud air conditioner is leaving our throats parched and less able to heal, but still. someone switched seats on the train this morning to get away from my hacking.

the principal at the school got some sort of memo yesterday about it being her duty to set up "monitoring" for my position to ensure that i do, indeed, come into the school three days a week and work with the kids. what she doesn't seem to understand is that we've already worked out a monitoring system, and i am a good person who would never skip out on the kids. she said something when she got the memo about how she never sees me in the building. could this be because she never leaves her office while i am running around trying to find my charges? possibly. i'm not pretending i could do her job, but today she's really on my shitlist.

on the plus side, the monkey and i had delightful dinner company last night, and a half hour make out session that left me feeling like a teenager in a sundress. i spose it all evens out.

i'm realizing i've been sort of on edge for a few weeks, and not really admitting it. to everyone around me: i now admit it, and i'm sorry if i bit you, and i'm making it better.

when the shuttle from times square to grand central isn't running, there is an inordinate number of white people wearing expensive shoes on the 7 train. they are the kind of people who refuse to step into the center of the car, even if you're crammed matchstick-style into the doorway while they stand facing three or four feet of empty space (note: three or four feet may not seem like a lot of vacant space, but it is on the 7 train--especially if your ribcage is the only thing separating two teenage lovers in the middle of a heated spat). they are the kind of people who, when you tap them on their cashmere arm and ask them could they please step in, check the label on your jacket before laughing openly at your meager request for courtesy.

"where are you from, montana?"

you know, i don't think it would matter where i was from. i would still want to shove this copy of _the importance of being earnest_ so far down your capped-teeth smile that you shit bons mot for the rest of the week. you are lucky that i'm tired, fuck you, because i have a secret robot arm that could have reached inside your body and plucked your spinal chord like a harpsichord string.

i'm smarter than you, too, and that jacket came from a flea market in fucking paris.

sometimes it's the times when i try the hardest to be my actual self that i end up most disappointed by what i've done.

we had a hard conversation tonight, and i think it was made the harder by my trying to say honestly and at least sort of gently what was worrying me. i always think that's a good idea, in theory, but in practice i end up feeling like i've thrown a flounder into what could have been an otherwise happy evening.

the things that bug me really bug me, and i want to talk about them. it's just that when it's time to talk about them, i feel like crap. worse: i feel responsible, like i'm the one who rocked the boat and that the monkey must think of me as some sort of television housewife he needs hard drink to get away from. some days, i swear to god, i just am incapable of handling *anything* with an iota of aplomb.

we went to a seminar about home ownership at the credit union last night.

good lord, am i scared.

i love the monkey more than just about anything you can name. you'd think this would temper my fear about the future--and i suppose it does, a little, but not a lot. now that i have one precious thing in my hands, i worry a lot about something bad happening to it. this following your bliss bullshit was a lot easier when it was just me. now that it's me and someone i might want to have babies with, i'm suddenly incredibly worried about when and for how long we will manage to get health insurance, where said potential babies will be born, live and go to school, and what it will be like if the acting never pays the bills.

because chances are, it won't. and that's not my fear talking, just math. and the monkey is adamant about not wanting to do anything else. in fact, i bet he's willing to give up more parts of life than i am in order to ride the idea about being an actor as far into the sunset as he can. i've always assumed my makeup includes a sort of line in the sand, beyond which i will not remain poor/unfulfilled/unhappy/unbabied in order to pursue a career that won't love me back. i don't think he's got a line.

i wish my pants off that i could be a little easier going about this. we're still young, right? still.

i guess we'll find our way. and i'll be the one seeing snakes in every shadow until we get there.

i'm joining the actor's union today. if you don't know that that's a big deal to me, rest assured: it's a big deal to me. lots of actors will tell you correctly that joining Equity isn't necessarily a sign of arriving into any higher echelon; plenty of college kids get their union cards through theatres attached to their schools or through other ways that don't particularly connote professionalism. in fact, i could not be joining the union under a stupider premise myself--but i've been trying to do this for a long time, and i think i'm ready. i only wish the contract that was opening the door was something a little more splendid, or dignified--say, Vivie in Mrs. Warren's Profession, or some other role one can picture a young judi dench in.

i'm a roving character improvisor at a theme restaurant.

i'm not shitting you. but i am also not shitting you that i am going to the Equity office in an hour, giving them many hundreds of dollars, and walking out with a union card, and subsequently getting access to all the Equity principal auditions held in new york. i will soon tire of these, especially of getting up at the ass crack of dawn to stand in line for them, but i've been yammering at the gate for a long time, watching my boyfriend trot off to auditions weekly for theatres that made me pine. popular recieved wisdom is that those required auditions never yield any regular people any work, but a) not really true, and b) i still want to go. auditioning is what you're supposed to be doing here.

anyway. most important right now is that it feels like a huge step forward and actually opens a few doors. and it's not everyday you achieve something you worked for--at least not as an actor. moments of recognition are few and far between and often not linked to any specifically sterling effort of your own.

it also means, i'm realizing, that i'm really truly not coming back to seattle in the short term. i mean, i knew that, but . . . turning Equity is a reasonable choice here in new york where it honestly doesn't rule you out of much work. almost anything worth doing, here, either uses union actors or has a way to accomodate them if cast (including the show i'm doing right now). in seattle, it's a far more isolating choice. it means if i were to go back tomorrow, i wouldn't necessarily get to work with some of the people i love.

but that's good, too, because here is where i am now, and this is a good decision for here. better than good. the right thing.

my grandmother's sick. i knew this, but apparently she's more urgently ill than ever before. the day after my mom flew back home, she sent an email saying that my grandmother, with her kids' knowledge and support, was going to start declining her blood pressure medication, which would probably cause a "cardiac event" within a week.

it's one thing to know someone's pretty much done with living, and quite another to know there's a plan in place to bring on their death. my grandmother and i aren't even that close, but i was just swamped with tears. i wondered what it was like for my dad to know there was a plan to put an end to his mother, however old and tired she is. i wondered just how you manage the visiting when a family member is dying far away. if you can only afford one set of plane tickets, do you go when she's healthy? when she's very sick, hoping you can catch the last days and the funeral in one go? after the death, to help with the clean up? is your answer different if you're not going to say goodbye so much as to comfort the rest of your family? this stuff is really distasteful.

just as i was descending into it wholesale, though, a call came from the parents. apparently all plans are off while she rethinks in concert with her doctor. i guess i have a reprieve.

in other news, i was bereft to find my wallet stolen on friday, at the school where i work. i had left my bag unattended for three minutes or so while i confabbed with the normally stony and unavailable principal about a mental health referral for one of my particular favorite students. i discovered lack of wallet, and students were patted down, contact info was taken, garbage was pawed through. i was pretty invested in my sadness over all this, so imagine my surprise when i walked into the USA Gourmet Foods #3 Deli to get my coffee this morning, and the owner guy held up my driver's license and said, twinkling, "you know this girl?"

i have no idea how this happened, except that i now owe the student body of the two schools in my building a huge apology. poor kids. everyone thinks they steal things all the time, even when it's just a dumb white lady apparently leaving her wallet at the deli case*.


*that's where they found it, except i wasn't even near the deli case. i can't figure it.

i guess i shouldn't be surprised, but i find that i am.