shall we dance?

It's no coincidence that Christoph Waltz shares a name with a graceful, gliding dance that can be done while conducting affairs of state, acquiring a hostage, cracking a joke, sexing a bitch, and killing a man.

dinner and a

Gainful-ish employment is on the horizon for your fair heroine, and the specter of financial relief rises with the sun. And though I am, in fact, the most indebted person you will ever meet in this life and the next, all I can think about are all the movies I am finally going to get to see.

Harry Potter, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Jennifer's Body, Taking Woodstock, It Might Get Loud, I Sell The Dead...and you know what, I am so movie-theatre-movie-starved I'd even take a matinee of Bandslam at this point.

Going to the movies is one of my favorite things to do, and I haven't done it in months. I know this epic list of flicks is not going to get seen overnight, or perhaps even in the coming months. Still, the fata morgana is enough to get me through the next stretch of desert.

Man, real life problems right?

there's a little flier that says this at the school where I'm about to teach

Watch your thoughts, they
become words.
Watch your words, they
become actions.
Watch your actions, they
become habits.
Watch your habits, they
become character.
Watch your character, for it
becomes...
your destiny.

"Be kinder than necessary,
for everyone you meet
is fighting some kind of
battle."


The flier hangs in a line of baseball cards, under a display case of dreamcatchers.

For this reason and many, I am really looking forward to teaching at this school.

dodging bullets: a fun thing to do/say when your life doesn't consist of dodging real bullets.

If I can package the events and realizations going on in my life into an idiom or generally old-timey sounding saying, I'm going to do it. For better or worse, this is how it is. And boy have I been dodging bullets today. All week, even. Because you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Catch my drift?

I will break it down into non-nonsense terms. This has been a heavy-hitting bad news kind of week. No one is dead and no one is very ill, but the tides are turning kinda suckily for some of the people I love most, and like...me, a little bit. Laying-off of loved ones has taken place. Rejections have been doled out. Boner moves have been made by many, including me and the folks at GoogleMaps and the CTA Trip Planner.

I usually hate using the quaint phrase "everything happens for a reason." I'm all for finding a quarter in your jeans or happening upon a Whole Foods grand opening, but so much random shit is just bad. I don't want it holding high influence over the rest of my day, let alone life. I don't like letting things be, I don't like chalking one up to chance or "how it is." I need to know things. I need to make rain, and I would like the universe's aid in that enterprise.

Long story short, the random bad shit that is just happening...maybe there's reason to be yanked from it, forced free and trotted out like a show pony before being ridden into the Forests of Growth And Change. Losing out could provide an opportunity to not lose out again, or win something greater: understanding, a better job, organic produce...

Maybe sometimes all it takes is a pretty sucky run of it to recharge the waters before dumping them all over your opponents...In this case, the unseen forces that guide bad things towards good people, loss to those who deserve to keep what they have earned, and computer problems to those who need to print lesson plans to finally win gainful employment over.

I don't think everything happens for a reason. But there's a reason the saying doesn't go "when life gives you lemons, just look at the lemons for a while in disgust."

camp half-blood.

The Percy Jackson books were all the Art Camp kids could talk about. That and their respective kooky Spanish teachers. Still, kids in each age level of camp were gaga for this adventure series by Rick Riordan, featuring a pack of ADHD misfit pre-teens and the greek gods that sired them with mortals...illegally.

I began reading these to know what the heck The Kids were talking about, and because one of my favorite campers lent me his copy the last week of camp. When I returned it to him after reading only the first thirty pages, he kindly informed me about these places? Libraries? You can go and borrow a book there and there are lots of books, and they have this one, probably?

I could further describe the plot and characters of the books to you here, but do yourself a favor and have a ten-year old you know do it. It will be far more entertaining, and set up the conceit of these books much better than maybe even the author does. Book One is shaky going, Book Two hits a few scenes right out of the pre-YA Fantasy/Adventure/Coming-of-Age Series park, and Book Three - well, I just started Book Three.

I mostly read them because the kids from camp worked their way into the fabric of the story. The heroes, the villains, the characters inbetween are all played by campers in my mind. It doesn't hurt that much of the action is set at a summer camp for demigods.

It doesn't hurt one bit.

"whatever. your name's brittany."

Some ladyfriends and I were trading tales recently, and somehow we got on the topic of crazy things crazy people say to you at parties. The title line of this entry was uttered to one said ladyfriend when she accidentally got in someone's way in a keg line. Maybe some other reason brought on the damning- she got caught peeping someone else's boyfriend? Stepped on a toe? Ate the last of the Cheeze Curlz? Whatever it was, what a ridiculous response.

Yesterday, my next door neighbor blasted daddy/daughter dance-style Country Music for three hours straight. I shut the window and turned up the volume on the TV show behind-the-scenes Youtube Video I was watching. Then I laughed at the silliness of one dork trying to tune out another.

I usually walk the line of being an eye-for-an-eye sassbomb and the kind of goody-two shoes that could make Ned Flanders tremble with pride. Still, for all my inherent prickliness/righteousness, I can't get behind people who "hate" subsets of people for ridiculous reasons. And I hereby announce the subset of people I come close to hating.

The People Who Hate People...
named Brittany
who like "bad" music
who say "like" too much
who read books
who watch TV
who use emoticons
who don't know when to use "who" or "whom"
who are gay---oh wait. Too serious!

There are a million better reasons to hate people than the ones listed above! Apathy, self-loathing, superiority complexes masking inferiority complexes: there's a smorgasbord of stupefying traits to despise and crucify each other for. But why even do that? Misanthropy is so cheap. And nobody likes cheapskates!

converg'd.

Let me start by being real: I've never read anything by Flannery O'Connor in my life. Well, aside from the first few chapters of Wiseblood, which I kept way too long and have yet to pay overdue fines on. I do hope to one day finish it. Crazy preachers and the stories that unfurl around them always interest me - but that's beside the point.

The point is that I learned of the title "Everything that Rises Must Converge" the same way everyone else who's never read anything by Flannery O'Connor did: from an episode of LOST. I'm not sure what the title means in the context of the book. Perhaps it's something bleak or sinister, but what it seemed to mean in reference to that LOST episode and for me, now, is that Shit is Connected Hardcore. And you don't always see how shit's connected, and even if it isn't explicity connected it's almost always thematically connected, and because theme is another name for meaning and observation there is some meaning to find and meaningful observation to be made about pretty much Everything we go through individually or as one big honking cast of sprawlingly-storylined-characters. AKA people.

I've been having an everything rising & converging kind of a time lately. Concepts I've been dwelling on alone, events I've been following in the news, TV shows I've been watching, books I've been reading, realizations I've come to about myself, life, others, life, myself are expressing what seems to be a badass synergy through events personal and global. I know many people criticize the ol' People See Meaning In Meaningless Events In Order To Deal With What They Can't Understand argument for a lot of reasons, but I pretty much like the whole finding-meaning-in-things-and-learning-from-things response. Though it can and has blown up in some faces, I think it's one of the greatest things about being alive and sentient. There's a world we live in. There's stuff we and others do. Sometimes it's pointless and harmful, sometimes it's great; there are realizations waiting to be won and made to make individual and group life better, stronger, fuller - and more willingly connected.

One of the smaller, art-related things that done rised & converged for me recently was discovering the work of Felicia Day, a young writer/actress/filmmaker/webmistress who made a web series called The Guild and was the love interest in Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Maybe you were expecting me to launch into my feelings on health care reform or at least something headier than web tv, and I'll just say: trust that those feelings are there and deal with my expressing powerful beliefs through appreciation of pop culture & its makers.

Felicia Day is a badass, and it isn't because she's a really cute redhead with a sense of humor and wickedly funny friends. It's because she was/is a trembling ball of neuroses that gave herself the benefit of the doubt, worked hard to make something great, and tries to share her thoughts on getting out of neuroses-balls with others. Neuroses-balls. Gross. You get what I'm saying.

Below is an excerpt from Felicia Day's blog about what got her writing. It really rings my bell: way up in the sky with all the other bells, you know?



A lot of people ask me about writing The Guild, but I realize I don’t often say WHY I wrote it. The reason: Because I was tired of doing nothing.

It takes a very brave person to express themselves creatively. I know the paralyzing fear of being bad very well; it’s one of my greatest weaknesses. For years I had a voice inside me telling I “should” do this and I “should” do that, but I couldn’t overcome the possibility of being horrible to actually risk doing something about it. So I did nothing. And I loathed myself for my weakness.

Finally I had a strange realization that time passes whether you’re doing something with it or not. It would be easy to let every day go by easily with no risk and then, at the end of the day (my life), I would look back and realize that fear ruled me: At that point there would be nothing I could do about it. So, I got off my butt! It wasn’t easy and I had a lot of lapses (I still do) but the experience of being ruthless with myself was an amazing lesson to learn.

I don’t want this to be a self-help entry (although it already kinda is, LOL), but I wanted to share a few of the resources that I used to overcome my fear and be willing to suck and start DOING stuff.

-The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron: This is a 12-week program that helps you “discover your creativity.” It is seriously self-help-y and has a large spiritual element to it (an aspect I skimmed over personally), but it does force a lot of introspection, exploring what you enjoy doing, what drives you etc. It also makes you to write every day for the 12-weeks, which was one of the most invaluable aspects.

-If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland: This book was written in 1938, which I find amazing as this authors voice is as fresh as if it were written yesterday. If The Artist’s Way is touchy feely, this book is nothing but pragmatic. The greatest thing I took away from this is the spirit that you can’t care what other people think, you have to create for yourself and no one else. It brings out the fighter in you. It’s geared towards writing but the lessons apply to anything really. This book is a kick in the pants and big warm hug all at once.

-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. This is the best writing book I’ve ever read. The overwhelming idea of sitting down and “writing the whole thing” sets up expectations that are WAY too high! So much pressure This book makes it manageable, and is an enjoyable and frank look at writing by a wonderful author. Actually, I need to reread this as I’m experiencing this right now, LOL.

-Daily 5 Minute Writing Exercises by CM Mayo. After I finished “The Artists Way” I did these writing exercises every day for a year. I love having my notebooks full of these exercises to look back on! Creating the pattern of behavior of writing in the morning really helped me uncensor myself. I’ve lapsed a lot last year, but just started again and it’s amazing, doing the same exercises, how different my entries are.

- Lifehacker.com, zenhabits.net, 43 Folders and lifehack.org helped me get organized and prioritize. I am no saint but subscribing to these sites reminds me to get my act together when I go on a videogame or mystery novel bender.

-Sharing goals with friends. This entry doesn’t have a link, but it could, because your friends can be offline or online. It’s invaluable to share your goals with others so you can see that we all struggle together to make things happen. I had a weekly group I went to that helped me kick my WOW addiction and re-prioritize. I wouldn’t be here without that group of lovely people. We all share the same human weaknesses, but working in a vaccuum makes you lose that perspective. Having people in your life to use as a touchstone is important to get you through the hard days.

If you have any tips or links to resources that get you going, organized and creating, feel free to share!


You can watch The Guild at http://www.watchtheguild.com !