kerouac says

if you haven't seen people are wrong yet, you've got another chance: it's been extended. i had a great time. i don't know from rock operas, really, but whatever this music show was, i really dug it. if you're tempted to think it's too precious and comedy-rockish, don't worry. i was chair dancing the whole time, and the chorus can really sing. the knob-headed lady was my favorite.

i won't pretend i don't feel better. (the best part was when the monkey looked me in the eye and said shyly, "it's nice to have you back.") brain chemistry is ever only one segment of the trouble-orange, though. the fact remains:

no work.

what is up, new york? i have gone to your open calls, i have woken up at ungodly hours. i mix and mingle as best i can. i know a few people. i have made friends with some artistic directors and casting directors and had at least one really great interview with an agent. i have taken class and worked background and . . . and no, the current show doesn't really count. it's good to be on stage talking, but it is not a play. the whole esthetic involved centers around there not being any acting going on.

i am almost at wit's end. it's been fourteen months. i don't know what to try. i feel more like a failure every day. i know, pity pity. but the fact remains:

no work.

i never thought it would be this long. i'm not ever sure how to refer to myself after over a year with no work. i'm an actor? i guess? i guess?

most of my knowledge of how people become doctors has been gleaned from ten years of watching ER. maybe not the most realistic picture. that said, if you are an ASSHOLE, maybe psychiatry is not your field. i saw this doctor fuckworth this morning, and he made me feel ten times worse than i did when i went in (at which point i already had no mascara on because of a surprise bout of train tears. eye makeup is such folly). his office was done in this very eighties sort of black and grey, and he radiated a smug tough-love like an offensive body odour. things he said to me include:

how are you feeling?

so what kind of actor are you?
well, that's the first positive thing i've heard out of you.
do you have an agent?
you should get one.
so who are you so mad at?

and his very most therapeutic offering:

"you need to your career in gear."

to which i said: pardon?

and he said: you really need to get an agent. and let me tell you, it's all about networking. you gotta have your antennae up all the time. you have to meet a lot of people. you really have to get it togther.

and i paused, and said: i'll . . . try to do that. more. than i already am.

which, frankly, is a lot. and worse than any one thing he said was this self-satisfied air about him, and how he'd ask me questions and then cut me off when i answered them as if he were delighted in catching me in a lie or an evasion or a self-delusion, when i was honestly trying to be really honest--which, and ask anyone, is something i'm not that bad at, even when telling the bare truth makes me look bad.

and then the pharmacy couldn't fill my prescription because they need seventeen kinds of preauthorization (the doctor has to call them and tell them it's "medically necessary"--as opposed to the psychotropic drugs psychiatrists hand out FOR FUN) and i don't think it's going to work anyway because i was on these pills before and they didn't do much of jack, and i waited and waited at the duane reed and then called the monkey, who slept two more hours than i did and didn't get talked down to by an assface physician and still got an slot for an audition i had really wanted to do this morning but couldn't because i had to get lectured by the show business doctor in his fucking silver cheetah black leather chair office.

maybe my envy of the monkey is problematic and worth examining, but that doesn't mean doctor fuckworth isn't a total jerkface.

i had forgotten something good, something that did a good job of making me happy this morning: getting up earlier than i have to in order to do something pleasant and unpurposeful. there's been a lot of getting up early to do job crap, lately, and a lot of sleeping in, but not very much wake-up-in-order-to-do-something-nice. note taken.

i had coffee with a long-lost pal, someone i always thought was super cool and i just found out she liked me, too, all along. sitting in a stupid starbucks with her, i was able to thow up my arms, grinning, and say MAYBE SOMETHING GREAT WILL HAPPEN TO ME THIS WEEK! and not add a sarcastic smirk to show i know it won't come true.

which means maybe it will.

it was the best one's birthday last night. i still don't think i drank that much, but no one has had to pour me home like that since . . . since the best one's going away party at the union garage in seattle.

i should have known that the mojitos were not a good foundation for a night of serious cocktail work.

the monkey held my hair and doled out the water (my favorite part was when he told me i couldn't have any more filtered water until after i puked, only tap water, because he didn't want to "waste the good stuff") and ibuprofen. i felt okay this morning, actually, although i have noticed that i am very, very stupid this morning.


nothing is very different. i'm trying everything i can think of to be happy, or at the very least, glad of small things.

it's funny; my days are largely consumed with apartment hunting and wrestling and offers and math, and sometimes all i want in the world is to go home.

it's raining. and i managed to articulate something last night that made me terribly sad: i have hardly ever in my life spent less time doing what i love than i do right now.

i know i moved here because i thought, if the trying is categorically frustrating, better to push one's nose against a larger, more worthwhile wall. but a year and change in, i find myself hungrier than i would have believed for the sort of unpaid, schedule-breaking work with good people that i managed to score once in a while my last couple years in seattle. i'd give my eye-teeth for that.

so i'm making a resolve to be active, to scout some worthwhile scrappy companies, to eat cookies once in a while and remember that lots of people have it worse. but on days like today, i just want to be home--where, even if no one wanted to pay me for my talents, they at least wanted to make shit up and play dressup with me and drink some jack daniel's afterwards. where there were trees around, too, and i could drive home to my folks' house on the weekends and take long baths. and where my friends are currently having babies whom i have never met.

it's fine. i'm not pouting (very much). and i will not be friendly if you throw this in my face later, and i still want us to buy a nice apartment here. but since someone was just saying that you should definitely tell the universe what you want because sometimes the universe comes through big: i want to shake my thing again. i want it bad.

all i know is i'm about to start using fourteen kinds of birth control, because roe v. wade is probably on this administration's ten most wanted list.

the monkey was so sad this morning that i think he cried on the train. my boss is talking about moving the business to amsterdam. i think we're all going out to lunch later.

i'm sort of amazed that so many of the things i feel most sure are right are the very things other people feel surest are wrong. like, we don't just disagree about chicken or fish, or what name to call god by, but about the really deep, deepest shit. and i know i ought to feel that it's elitist for me to say so, but i am really sure that i am right. so, there's that.

no park slope. no deck.


we perservere.

onward!

i work in an office (more like a loft, but with a desk and a lamp and a computer) and listen to WNYC, one of the local public radio affiliates, all day. they give a lot of tickets away. at one point, i realized that if i just called in every time i heard the trumpet theme that means it's ticket-giving time, i was sure to win something eventually. i wrote the hotline number on a sticky note next to my phone.

the upshot of all this is that i now have tickets to an evening of traditional ashkenazi wedding music at the 92nd street Y next week.


yes.

in case you're wondering what kind of halloween kids i saw yesterday:

6 ninjas
1 spiderella
1 phantom of the opera
1 mime, smoking a non-mimed cigarette
1 dog wearing wings
1 spongebob squarepants
1 j.lo*


*the winner. the best parts were the wraparound opalescent sunglasses and the canary diamond engagement ring.

best and final offer went on the apartment today. i hope we'll know soon.