Chips Ahoy!

We eat so much at home and we hate our plates. They're ugly. They're heavy and have loud fruit patterns on the edges. They make every meal look off-kilter, manic. They were appreciated when we moved into our Chicago apartment with nothing. They were free, leftover from my grandmother. They served their purpose. The other morning, I went on Craigslist to find a new set. I found this ADORABLE little collection of creepy plates. Dessert plates with teeth and rats on them. I sent it to Puhg. He agreed they were cute but way too small. I mean, they are. And my grandmother's dessert plates are a different story. We love those. He said, "You could fit, like, ONE Chips Ahoy on there." His distain made me laugh. I laughed and laughed. Why was that so funny? Specific I guess. We don't even eat Chips Ahoy. We're a dough tub household with Girl Scout cookies rising.

I closed my phone. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water before my run. Puhg went onto the balcony to lift weights. Then he started knocking on the glass. He motioned "Come. Look!" I went outside to see right in front of our building a GIANT Chips Ahoy truck. Isn't that weird, he asked. I nodded. Then I laughed again. Like what even is all this. We had never seen such a truck before, will likely never see it again.

Happier Post

I’m not sure how to pretend everything is normal? I keep having these meetings at very cool studios and then waking up in the middle of the night reading articles about climate change. It’s incredible to be in the middle of a problem that’s never existed before. For so many complications of my one life I walked through knowing it’s all been done. But this hasn’t actually been done. They didn’t do this in the 16 or 1900s--plan vacations partially for relaxation and partially because perhaps in fifteen years it will be gone, or we will all be poor, so live it up but at the same time feel guilty I’m not using that vacation fund to protest in Flint?

I worked on a non-political TV show for 8 months. At first it felt ignorant but then it felt like an important respite. And I do believe the solutions aren’t all from (are rarely from) addressing the dearth of problems head-on and often answers come inside out from healing the sadness inside of people. (But also healing the sadness hasn't been cutting it for polar bears?)

The solution/resolution cannot be that we simply exist. We weren’t always here and we won’t always be. Everyone knew that too. The heat death of the universe was never a secret. We just thought we wouldn’t see it. The more I question what it is all for the less motivation I have, but somehow the more clear the present becomes. A horrifying stoop for a progress-oriented person. I come home and go to the balcony, the moon is bright as a theatre spot. Puhg points at it. “Moontime,” he says.

Despite these previous three paragraphs, I’m looking fancy on the outside and feeling special on the inside. I bought brand new white Vans only to be worn in meetings. I drive around LA like I own the stupid place and believe in myself. I am unsure of what flower to nurture, but I am certain there is a prized petunia in there. In practicality I don’t know anything, but, well, I can’t describe it, I know something.

Trying to Be Positive about Chucking my Time and Energy into What May as well Be a Black Hole

Applying for things sucks. I have somehow chosen a life full of rejection not on one-side, folks, but somewhere around 3-4 sides.

I apply for jobs all the time, and you so infrequently even hear back, it's hard not to get discouraged. Will someone even see this? This cover letter I just spent two hours writing? Plus I write, like, outside of cover letters, which is like, synonymous with rejection. It's hard to spend all that energy revising a play when you know you're going to have to send it to like ninety festivals to get one little reading...and even then, that's not guaranteed. I am reentering a life with auditions, and just when you find the perfect apartment, someone snatches is up from under your nose.

I already feel my skin thickening from this new year in this new city.

Yet, there is a different perspective. One that could be a lie, but one that is necessary if I want to survive. That perspective is It Adds Up. Maybe this cover letter no one even opened, but I still wrote it. I still got better at writing it. There will be plays that never see the light of day, but they were exercises. Exercises I didn't know were exercises. But you just have to accept that.

Shell and I love our move in the making. Our goal date is June 1st, 2015. Even if we make it, then we have to make it, and those odds are just ridiculous. Yet, we will write anyway. Because it's part of the whole (again, at least I say to myself). For some reason this is harder for artists to accept than most humans? A mathematician doesn't think her entire education to become what she is was useless because it didn't get published. But for us goobers at the laptops it's like, "Yeah I wrote that poem. It was bad. Nothing ever came of it." No, you dingo, the thing you're doing now came of it.

Mine and Yours

Woke up Sunday morning, stomach raging. I had planned to run but could only walk.  I took my time in Dizz's neighborhood. It's a nice place. That afternoon, after the schmancy brunch, after couchin', after chocolate almond bubble tea, we walked again. Dizz and I led the way, the boys trailed behind. I imagined Jamin asking Bisque "What are your intensions?" but actually they were probably yammering about Grand Theft Auto while Dizz explained how once at a wedding she led a miniature horse down the aisle. (Our lives are so different! Friendship!) I said she lived in a pretty place, and she said, "You have to take the good with the bad. The sidewalk...is cracked. But the palm trees? They are beautiful."

LA can be very bright. But also, sometimes you are going to a wedding in an hour and very angry at a gas station because there was serious miscommunication about whether or not you need to pre-pay and there are people everywhere and it is also dirty and honking is a thing. But then you, like, do get to the wedding and there was plenty of time and you look fine and you dance your booty off with your date.

This looks like a glob, but in all actuality it is one of the best desserts I've ever eaten. A chocolate peanut salted caramel bar, like, give me one for the rest of my life. There was literally a part of the night everyone was on the dance floor yelling at me and Bisque to get up and shake it, but we kept using our forks to point to the dessert the guy next to us didn't eat which we were consuming. We shrugged and mimed kind of: "Sorry? Dessert and stuff!"

As usual, it is hard not to think about love at these things. I know the couple but not that well. This is the first time I've been a weddin' date, and I have to say, it's interesting. I came to support something I'm not sure if I agree with at all. Who is to say these two are together foreva? But actually, being there made me believe it. It was just a buncha words--often simple, at times generic...but sincere. And now when I see the newlyweds around I will think that. I will think, "Yes, I believe in you and I hope it's going well."

On Sunday night we made our way to the ocean as we believe good lil travelers should do. It's just a buncha stupid water, but, my, do I love it.

Meanwhile, I shared a bathroom with my college bestie all weekend. Forever! I say.

Take That Towel Off Your Head

There was a Muslim girl on my high school Speech team. She was quirky and her favorite game was asking people, "What if a dead body fell through the ceiling right now, what would you do?" She only wore long sleeves and always wrapped her hair. I asked her if she had ever been swimming, and yes, she had, at a Muslim summer camp.

Our team of 20ish kids gathered for our yearbook picture in brisk south suburbs February. We were all goobers, and the photographer had to shush us a few times. Right before he snapped the photo he said, sure as cement, "Will you take that towel off your head?" Silence. Our teammate tightened her jaw and just said, "No." We took the picture, shuffled back into our coach's classroom, and DIED LAUGHING. One coach wrote it on the blackboard, "Take that towel off your head." Another suggested we put it on the back of our sweatshirts. The girl's face was in a permanent "I cannot believe that just happened. What a GD idiot/lunatic." I thought the whole thing was hilarious too! Some dude who called what was clearly a religious garment a towel! See, I had never heard the term "towelhead" before, so I thought it was legitimate ignorance instead of prejudice ignorance.

Tonight I attended a lecture about humor in religion. It was interesting enough. The speaker--a professor from a prestigious school--basically tackled two concepts. The first--religion and comedy have a giant commonality: they were created to help people get through tough things. The second--a brief look at how humor plays a part in Judaism, Christianities, and Hindu/Buddhism. I repeat: it was interesting enough.

I was there because my thesis play (a comedy) explores religious themes. It also explores judgement (in conjunction with religious themes). Judgement and analysis from within a faith and judgement and analysis from outside a faith are two very different things. So I asked why is it we love to make fun of religion so much? I offended the speaker by saying, "For my demographic, religion and humor are basically synonymous." The dude stopped me and shook his head and gave a kinda PC answer, but was sure to end it with, "Those two are definitely not synonymous." But for me, it feels they are. Even religious people I know make fun of themselves--and DEFINITELY of others. If you must have faith, the least you can do for yourself as a 20something is not take it seriously.

Does my teammate still think about photo day? I hope so--because that means it was an anomoly. I truly do hope it's one goofy anecdote, and not a drop in the bucket. Did we make it all better when we joined in on razzing that moron? Or did we sweep her pain under the rug? No one else believed what she believed. Did she step forward from that day with more conviction? Less?

I left the talk repentant for speaking out of turn. Like, who am I to say what to an expert? Perhaps I THINK I look outside my own self, but not farther than others who are essentially just like me. And then this tall chick with the sides of her head shaved said, "I really appreciated your comment" as we left the hall. More.