Damn cute shit

Pocket Monkeys! Do I need to say any more?

I think he just finished Thanksgiving dinner...

Shh!... I is an egg with spikes!

My story in other pictures

Nothing lasts forever, so that means that my heaven and my torture will end. What we find so wonderful will inevitably cease, but that comes with the knowledge that what pain there is in the world is not constant. My discomfort and my stress will end, and this small cage that I feel trapped in will eventually relinquish its hold on me, and I will be allowed to walk freely for another day. What seems so awful now will pass... I'll just keep telling myself that.

Sometime next week, maybe I'll have the time. Or maybe I'll pass it off for the week after that. I keep passing up opportunities to live and to have a little spontaneity. I wonder what it's like for those people playing frisbee in the park. They look like they're having so much fun, but I'm to busy to worry much about them. I guess I'll find out what it's like some other time.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs in the world to find your prince. At least, my mother likes to tell me that's how it works. I don't think my ex boyfriends would like being referred to as amphibians- metaphorically or otherwise- regardless of how close to the truth it may fall in some cases. But I do feel ridiculous in general when I discover that I'm not with the right person, so I guess all in all it shouldn't go any further than kissing the darn frog as it is.

Yes, give me liberty. Death is messy, and a bit to tragic and emo for my liking. I don't think going out with a melodramatic bang is the right way to do it these days. Accidental deaths are much more satisfactory- the kind of things that make the people who hear about it sputter in awe and say "shit" like you're a god. You might even make someone laugh, and that seems to be the best medicine these days. So yes, give me all the liberty you've got, and I'll find some poor sod who likes to run with scissors so we can point him towards a jogging path with a really powerful magnet nearby.

What is art? Who said we needed to cure it? What happened to AIDS and the starving children in Africa? Although Duchamp was smoking something when he decided his fountain was a good idea.

Can I think them through? I just want to make it as a stage manager, I don't know if that's too much to ask, but I'd really just like to get a job in the real world. How much thinking it thorough do I need? Does someone have a manual?

Well fuck.

Remember Sammy Jenkins

We don't need a map, because the world is filled with mirrors. Everyone is a small mirror for someone else, and we piece together the wholeness of ourselves through the combined images that we sort through each day.

We will remember what we choose to remember because we are a conditioned store of memories that we choose to use to define ourselves with. It is our actions that will define us, when we open our eyes, and can see everything in the mirror.

Just One Question-

What happens when you say "I love you"?

I'll Be Your Friend

lists seem to be in my head... so i'll try to go chronologically today

1. men can be unrefined pigs. -just because i'm wearing short shorts and have boobs does not mean i appreciate hearing "hey sexy" called out of a passing car while i am walking to work.

2. its hard to be classy when it's 80 degrees outside and humid, but i still try

3. hard work can be fun when accompanied by loud music and ice water

4. hearing about friend's hangovers is somehow bittersweet

5. when you get everything you wanted to get done in a day you should pat yourself on the back

6. when you get more than you planned done you owe yourself a treat

7. my treat happened to be a shower, dressing up in my favorite summer dress and taking myself to Biaggi's

8. i love attractive polite male waiters and busboys

9. i love men who make me feel attractive by smiling at me and asking how i am

10. my faith in mankind has been restored, and my spirits have been lifted

11. when a lightning bug hits your windshield at 70mph it stays lit

12. i love lightning bugs. they remind me of shooting stars

13. i love my pajamas and occasionally i love the peace of an apartment with just me in it

Experiments in Tranquility Maps

I was drawn to a cemetery this afternoon. I sat on a bench on the edge of it all and read part of a book. There was a lovely shade tree to protect me from the worst of the heat, as long as I was willing to share my bench with the little ants climbing on it. I wasn't lonely while I was there, and I wasn't sad. I was just at peace. It would be a good place to walk, probably a safe place too. Maybe it's my safe place now. I'm glad I found it because I'm going to need it in the future, particularly this fall.

I looked at churches today. It's funny how I'm trying to back to some replication of the routine that my mother tried to instill in me when I was little. Maybe our parents have more influence on us than I originally thought. Somehow I managed to turn into a habitual housewife like my mother, extremely private and concealing with my life and my emotions just like both my parents, bull headed just like both of them, and just as outspoken as both of them as well... not to mention as blunt and cocky as my father.

I realized awhile ago that somehow I ended up with parents who did a great job, and the more I learn about myself and how to live alone like this the more I realize they are so rare a thing to have, I hope I never take them for granted because somehow they managed to give me exactly what I needed to leave them and become myself. I wish they could tell me when they did that, when that moment of me being theirs to me being myself happened. I want to know how they knew, but I'm afraid that they got lucky with that map and I want to be able to do the same with my own children. But luck can't be placed on a map, at least not like a place can be.

there's only one way to mend a broken heart

"Beautiful Dawn"

Take me to the breaking of a beautiful dawn
Take me to the place where we come from
Take me to the end so I can see the start
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

Take me to the place where I don't feel so small
Take me where I don't need to stand so tall
Take me to the edge so I can fall apart
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

Take me where love isn't up for sale
Take me where our hearts are not so frail
Take me where the fire still owns its spark
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

Teach me how to see when I close my eyes
Teach me to forgive and to apologize
Show me how to love in the darkest dark
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

Take me where the angels are close at hand
Take me where the ocean meets the sky and the land
Show me to the wisdom of the evening star
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

Take me to the place where I feel no shame
Take me where the courage doesn't need a name
Learning how to cry is the hardest part
There's only one way to mend a broken heart

The Only Joy In The World is to Begin

I am strong enough to make it through... this is my sign. 

I hope you find yours.

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted?

Somehow I got off track. It happens to all of us. We call it different things. Some of us require a diagnosis- a fancy name to validate our feelings- or our lack of them. 

Seasonal affective disorder. Acute stress disorder.  Panic disorder. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Major depressive disorder. Adjustment disorder. 

Perhaps its the disorder that we should be paying more attention to. Not the disorder that doctors and trained professionals diagnose, but the dis-order. The lack of control that sometimes takes hold in our lives and tears us apart. We all fall down. And we all forget how to get back up sometimes. Neediness is not a character fault when we need help. The challenge is asking for help. Being able to ask for it, and then finding out how to ask for help. 

We are fragile, and we break. Those that would help us gather up the pieces and begin the attempt to rebuild are the true angels in the world. Our saviors do not always know that they have helped us. Sometimes it's merely a smile from a stranger in the local coffee shop, 0r a song on the radio, a play that touches our hearts. Sometimes its the physical presence of a friend curling up in bed with you and holding you while you cry out all the injustices in your soul, the comforting touch of the kind hand pushing a curl of hair behind your ear, the wet tear marks on their shoulder. 

Our destroyers are everywhere. We must face them every day- in the looks, the whispers, the absences. The failures. The lies. The truths. The rumors. They do nothing but seek us out with the intent of making us break- becoming the drop of rain that breaks the dam. There is nothing we can do but guard against the catastrophic disaster that waits for us around every corner. 

We must walk tall. We must walk through the fire. For although there are those who line the halls of this hell waiting for us to fall, to laugh at our mistakes and failures. There are also those who are waiting to catch us, our guardian angels, who do not know their capacities or their strengths, because they are walking through hell with us, they are on the same journey. So we keep our chins up and we do not look left or right, because the only thing that matters is where we are going, and all the beautiful things we are capable of. 

I have missed many of the days I should have taken my pictures, but this is not a failure, this is just a gap in my life that is not recorded. That didn't need to be recorded with pictures, because words and tears and late night phone calls are enough. This failure, this catastrophic break, this path of dis-order is etched on my heart and my soul, and it needs no more record than that. 

Time will soften the edges of the wound, and it will become a soft scar with a story, someday. Tonight it still hurts, and it still bleeds when I'm least expecting it, when I am barely brushed by insensitivity. But I know that there is nothing wrong with the blood, or the failure. There really is no failure, only a place where the path of live was obscured and I couldn't find a safe place to put my feet. I tripped and fell, and stayed on the ground- laying on my back and looking up at the sky and everyone living above me. The world is a sad place when you only watch from below it. I stood up somehow. I'm getting back on track somehow. 

I'm getting back on track with the power of red, with light, with sunshine. Soft guitars and vocal harmonies. Chamomile tea and soft pajamas. Disney movies, action movies, musicals. Smiles. Kisses. 60s music. Getting up each morning and turning up the radio and singing along with the country music because maybe I am always singing with the sad cowboy who is singing about the one that got away, but there's always the one that makes everything perfect in the distance, there's always happiness in the melodies and the reprise. 

Happiness. Beauty. Smiles. Tears. They are all there, and they are all a part of my history. 

I will never again change who I am because of other people. I never want to mold myself to fit some idea of what I need to be to be accepted by anyone. I am who I am. I can become better; stronger; more resilient. The glass walls around my soul can shatter when they have been replaced by soft India rubber. The dis-order that abounds will someday merely bounce off of me and not break me. 

I have walls, and I will keep them. For now. I know of no other way to live. I do not know how to face the world naked, without control. I will remain on my own terms. But I will try to be better. I want to be better. I can't go back. I won't. I will smile with the new day. I want to learn how to open up to people. I want to learn how to do this so I can handle it when it matters most. Someday it will matter, but it won't, because the right people fit well enough that there is no pain when the walls come down. 

To anyone who will change my life. I love you. I may hurt you with my jagged edges. I will hurt myself with them. But I can smile and I can laugh even when I cry, and I can love you with all my heart even when I hate you. 

Day 38- 

Addie's show changed my life. I had forgotten why I loved theatre, 

why I was devoting my life to it. But now I can remember. 

I can again be proud of all this work I am putting into a future that I can't predict.

 Thank you Addie. 

Day 37- 

The bomb from Matt's show.

The Chernobyl girl's dolly.  

Cyrano's mask. 

Day 36- 

John has become a comforting amusement in my life, and I am so happy that he and Taylor make each other happy.

Day 35-

Looking at the lighting I designed for the 'Belfast bomber scene'

Lighting design for Cyrano. 

A wider shot of Cyrano. 

Goodness, more Cyrano. 

'War in heaven' lighting- 

"I died the day I was born... on that day... became and angel... I am here by mistake."

Day 34- 

One of the first of many Arcadia rehearsals. 

Day 33- 

A quiet moment on the steps of Marquis after rehearsal, just watching the campus and enjoying the warmer weather. 

Day 32- 

Something that I had to draw for Design for the Stage. Maybe someday I will really enjoy this class, right now it's too tedious to fully enjoy. 

Day 31- 

I didn't seem to have a reason to smile. 

The dirty mirror just seems poetic now. 

Documenting one of the few days with blue sky. 

Stairs...

I looked down and saw a picture 

I walk through this door everyday. 

Day 30- 

Hookah in Colorado at Pita bar. 

The Air Force Academy BX- how original of me.

Day 29- 

On my way into Peterson to go work in the WC.

More of the same...

Day 28- 

The Writing Center seems to have become a habit of mine. 

Day 27- 

A picturesque tree on a gloomy day. 

Day 26-   

More working in the Writing Center. 

Day 25- 

Model of the Arcadia set.

Day 24-

Working with the Cedar Rapids Symphony Orchestra, and the beginning of my breaking.