BadMormon

All Of It

Ok Deep breath. IN through the nose, OUT through the mouth.

Marathon few days.

Have had so much going around in my brain for so many things. Stuff. Goings on. Emotions.

GOD! I want to spill about a year and a halfs worth of typing and chatter and tell you everything that is going on but IT’S SO MUCH WORK! I used to blog pretty anonymously. It left it in that private journal state of mind and the audience gets to see the inside of a human being, hopefully in an entertaining and interesting way. Usually just self-indulgently I’m sure. It takes time to learn to write for an audience. Still not sure if I know how or not but this blog is a part of the writing and growth process. Keeps me sharp about the words that are picked, gives me more than 7 mins on stage to delve into the thoughts that interest me and see if they translate to other human beings.

But due the point in my life where I’m ready to come out with what I do, and while this blog still isn’t a HUGE publicity thing for me: some stumble across it, a few know me, many stop by due to hilarious search string and are gone again, I am accutely aware that I am opening myself to personal criticism and loss of friends who don’t like how I write about them and who don’t like the ugliness I have on the inside. Or whatever.

You can’t always tell what someone is going to be sensitive about, in person or on the internet. You don’t always know what will slip out of your mouth, what you can and can’t apologize for, etc.

As a writer who has juicy sentences and internal turmoil boiling her brains ALL DAY LONG (even if you never see it.) the answer that I want to yell back is WHY IS IT MY PROBLEM!

And this is not even what I wanted to write about. I don’t even know what I wanted to write about as I sat down here to type today. SO MANY THINGS going on. Sentences I’m a little embarrassed about, “I need to get fucked like they mean it.” (It’s been a while, yes THAT long.) and wanting to put it up there because I want to share it as a phrase, it makes me laugh, but then well, will people who know me think there is manipulative purpose behind it? I can see how it could affect this, that, or the other if they are reading it. What about my new need to publicize my shows and art and have people feel pleasant towards me?

What about the fact that there is this new resurgence in the celibacy issue in the group around me lately? Non-christian, sex-approving celibacy – a kick back against the over identification with debauchery and a concentration of taking care of ourselves first, not needing sexin up to gain approval or esteem. AND I LIKE THIS TREND! I see people making really positive choices.

However, have you ever seen the Seinfeld episode where Elaine and George don’t have sex, The Abstinence, and George gets smarter but Elaine just becomes stupid? That’s how I feel. Like I can’t even think anymore. And it’s not that thoughts of sex are pushing thinking out of my mind, actually, not at all. I’m trying to think about work, think about the boy, think about what I should be doing and no go. Like the sides are mushy. I am a little worried that this last couple years of drinking more has hurt more than I thought. I’ve cut back to normal levels lately. Times when I have slept, eaten, taken care of myself and wake up again and still this space where the calculations used to go seems empty.

I’ve had a couple of aborted drunk come-ons (me on them usually) but it hasn’t worked out. Which is good I think. I like to think my trying for some action is for the right reasons, and I’ve had enough practice at the pick up game to be fine with how things work out. Their refusals were for the right reasons too. I mean, I probably wouldn’t have hit on them if I wasn’t drunk, due to the raw feeling of “how do I even get naked with a human being again, how can I ever be that vulnerable” that pervades those thoughts. Trust issues. But the drunk part of me remembers the way you can get lost in ecstasy, the shear relaxation, the sweetness of skin, and how fun that vulnerability can be. that MAYBE I CAN PAY ATTENTION TO SOMETHING AGAIN! Hell just the endorphins alone! THE ENORMOUS STRESS RELIEF!!!! I’m old, ahem I mean experienced. I don’t think I’m ugly if you turn me down. I don’t think we’re in love because I have the biggest orgasm ever. I am wired to feel it. I’m relaxing on purpose for it. That is something I’ve heard over the years, I got a little extra voltage in my reactions. I believe they were telling the truth. I’ve learned to control it, use it. Orgasms and sex become toys to me to play and relax and tease and… See why I start with my eyes and the texts when I’ve whiskyed myself up enough to forget I hate everyone?

Life’s a toss up.

This is what playing opposites on stage means. I want it, I don’t want it. Neither is the right answer, both cause issues apparently.

So you’re in this room and there are two doors and you are told that behind one door is a fairly annoying road into your future but it’s cold and the other door is also a pretty annoying path and it’s hot, which do you choose?

Annoyed or cold? Annoyed or hot? Both of course sucking to the same degree.

and obviously you have to take a path no matter what.

Default cold and annoying. Look, you can jump right over the dividing line! annoying and hot!

Maybe I’m stupid cause my brain IS all about sex. I simply don’t notice until I start writing about it. I’m tired of hearing it. My sex drive always seems to be used against me anyway, push it down, shove it away, why want it? It only makes you a prize of some sort, a slut of another.

cold and alone, hot and with others

obviously I’m not going to be living the rest of my life without romantical interactions of some sort. Hot Pants McGee, aka BadMormon, doesn’t have a problem with men turning up. Someone always comes along in the long run, years are fast now and with my libido on overdrive due to ageitis I know if I decided it has to be dealt with I can make a call, walk into a bar, get drunk in another part of town and be fine.

I know I’m looking good, starting to get the extra donuts again. Yes being me means donut guys around the city spontaneously throw in extra when the boss isn’t looking. Yes it’s only donuts. No I don’t know why it happens unless I get sexy, pouty, come hither face as I ask for the boston creme and the glazed.

So I got donuts and a play to do. That will distract me until the next naked friend comes along.

I am a martyr

I don’t want to be but damn it I’ve taken on the world and I have to bitch on my blog to get it done.

Below gaze upon all the things that make me a saint! I will do them all I promise!

First, simple promotional inserts for FRIGID FESTIVAL programs. We are cross promoting with a friend so if you see one show you get a couple bucks off the other show.

A website that ties in with the show for the hosting theater group, will do big reveal later.

Newsletter that I had to get promo shots for my own show done and need to add a couple little things and mail that out tonight – via la email thank god. Have to make sure I only do so many a night or I end up getting cut off by my hosting company. Oh and still have to add emails, remove emails and tidy up etc before sending.

MY SHOW!!! I AM STILL TRYING TO WRITE MY SHOW!!!!!!!!!!!

have I mentioned regular work? I book, support, research several clients a day right now. Almost enough money to live on and something I end up doing at random times all day long.

Stage Manage No Traveler – please note glorious image in the news column. I did the photoshop on that:) LOOK AT THAT AMAZING SHADOW!!! but while we’re at the part where the show is very together, already had preview adn now doing the stay in the game tidy it up rehearsals before the big run of it. OF course there is always several small things that come up after every rehearsal that requires dealing.

need to write form letter for press follow up as well as personalize for the folks we really admire and want to come. (Some of this is going to be in marathon session on monday.)

what else?

Parenting? after a friday afternoon of playing find that child and boy did mom’s hair get even grayer? i now get the fun of a weekend with him. Which is great but there are long bouts of “do your homework” and others of cuddle and telling me of his heartaches (father and the attention that doesn’t exist there) adn then food, cleaning etc.

Have I mentioned his mid-winter break coming up? The entire week before the show opens? How about the bartending til 4am on sunday nights job I took to make ends meet, sorta, or at least pay for food. (Odessa Bar, Ave A, need $100 bucks in til every sunday to not get fired apparently. HAHAHHAaa in feb, on a sunday, in a bar that has no reputation for being a cool hangout. At least not for the people with money. Just doing it until it goes the way of all crappy service jobs and I get to scream, “I’m not fired! I QUIT!” and flounce out.)

In this midwinter break is also an open call audition for a “major feature film” my son is going to go on so that will be fun. He’s gonna be hyped for a month and my friend is going to give him a quick coaching for it. I’m sure nothing will come of it but how fun to be a teenager in new york and be able to try on these sort of things.

OH damn it! Why do I feel like i’m forgetting something? did I mention learning rudimentary hacktastic php for the website? I bet someone knows what I mean…

so why the added pressure of BLOGGIN ABOUt IT?!!!

cause I think I just made my to-do list. Or cleared out the bitching so I can get work done. Or procrastinated one more day. Or…
who the fuck cares? It’s a blog.

Embarrassing Emotions

I’ve gotten thrown. I think it’s part an overwhelming amount of details and projects right this moment. None horribly difficult but all with a lot to track as well as I’m on deadline for finishing off my script. OR past deadline really. Been having to concentrate really hard on getting the most important stuff done.

I don’t like being blue, depressed and trying to figure out how to reprogram the risk taking hope moments so they take a hike and you can learn to simply work for yourself. It’s always been you, that’s the part that sticks, the thing that saves you, the part that makes you ok in the night, me, myself and I.

I can’t believe how raw 5 seconds of whispered nothing has made me.

Sometimes, especially in the mid-life crisis area, a moment will spin you. The most bitter thoughts on myself and life and surviving were triggered. And I don’t want to put them away.

Part of this is now holding it close to my chest, keep it in as much as you can, put it into the script, the act, the defensive walls. Part of it is keeping more and more vigilant as you struggle to find the way to keep yourself no matter what.

Time to start the brainwashing. Scrub the folds of the medulla oblongata into concrete opinions that will not sway you into dangerous territory again. Solidfy yourself as you’ve seen the old do and realize it was an active choice for them as well. These are the lessons life learned. This is the character built. Human, compassionate and all putting everything into my life and truly understand what boundaries are.

Starting on the next step

I’m a flincher. Some of smallest things make me cringe into my spine automatically and I constantly have to force myself into an action.

The item I’m flinching from today is the next writing on the script for the show that I have to do and etc. I’m afraid of my own work. I’m afraid of opening it and seeing it sucks. that I can’t think of anythign else to say. that it will be cheesey and over the top. that i’m writing something i can’t pull off. that it’s all a big mistake. that I will fail.

makes it so hard to open the text document and do the work

grrrrrrr

trying to write again

starting to take sundays home on the couch working on catching up on all the things I didn’t get finished or started the week before.

the boy and I had a lovely weekend where we talked a lot. So much. Good good talking but for a mother a bit heart breaking. I listened and supported the feelings, talked about the fact that the only person he can change is himself and etc. We have a plan. We’ll see how it works.

and i’m trying to write my show. I had a crybaby can’t cope with anything that is happening in my life at all sorta day (hiding it from the boy of course- not his problem) and once he was on the train heading to other home I walked home in the freezing rain, stopping for a bottle of Jack, and perched myself on the couch.

I had determined to have a drunken cryfest with friends coming over to support but I can’t really do it. I’ve cried and sorrowed in fits but there is too much to do. I thought I would write my script in this state. It seems perfect. I put on the itunes country, honk tonk and blues playlist on and sit, have half a shot, wait, write snippets of things that may happen but the show doesn’t come to my mind, the character runs.

My brain remembers the email I have to send. Wonders if it should read a pdf of terms and agreements that concerns the collective’s 503 status. have to compose email to guidence counselor, better set alarm for early, shouldn’t do it this late.

and with the jack in me, bad Idea.

not hammered, loose, thinking of things about this woman I’m making up, trying to fix her as a person in my head. she’s been so alive before and now it’s gone what about the website for him or him I haven’t even started, better see what I can do tomorrow Oh and I need pictures of the theater. Crap have to send email between director and sound person for what is needed on my friend’s show, did the boy get home ok? he hasn’t called, i will dial the phone.

So my show. Hm… you’re in a roadhouse. You’re getting trashed. It’s all about you. what about you, what do you babble at the patrons off this bar… OH I need to send out a christmas letter for the business. Where is that one we had done I thought i had it right here damnit! no. where did It go and why does the bottom of my foot suddenly prick hurt itch?

OH writing. Need full first draft Jan 1st to keep a decent scheduel so I don’t make a fool of myself. oph god I’m gonna make a fool of myself, what am i thinking? do I like this? ok wait, no it’s ok you’re just crazy tonight.

it’s probably the jack. Or the personal resistance to putting myself into a certain head space at this time. the alcohol acts to pull my attention away from seeing her. To only me, only myself, only the things that won’t go away even when I neglect them.

oh what have I forgotten!

have started a to-do list. have a really hard time to remember to look at it. Everything has been in my head for so long. unless it’s a project. daily to-dos – no problem. now…sigh.

i’m not really complaining but trying to figure out how to cope. That word again. I’ve used it about 20 times today. Cope.

i think it’s the issue.

ok ok, some more explanations

I don’t find sharing my internal temperatures to be a weakness. In fact I think it has a lot to do with that weird quality my friends seem to admire in me. It’s why strangers tell me their life story. It’s amazing how little of what I’m willing to be open about is actually pursued in conversations. Most people tend to feel comfortable knowing I’ll tell them and so start talking all about themselves. Not a problem but I think it can be hard to judge how much of myself its really on the table.

I, like others in the blog worlds, use this platform of instant web publishing as an open journal, a way to sort life out but handed to an audience if they wish to peek. I speak about the mess inside but I wonder if people take that and see it as a liability. That they get this image of me crawling around, a blob of tears and snot, looking for that person who will save me.

I forget to say that I know it is MY mess. One I ran into last year in November, a boil that has been opened and drained some but I’m still working on it. I’ve saved myself a hundred times. I’ve family and friends who’ve saved me the other hundred and ten. It’s a mess thrown up in relief on my internal screens for me to work through how I see fit but it’s not a desperation. It’s not despair. It’s oh what got locked in there when I wasn’t looking?

The part that ticks me off was it’s a mess I was trying to talk to someone it affected – or who affected me – about and he chalked me up to needy desperate woman, the paradigm I see applied over and over again to the girls around me, which I may have been, but not in a way to trap him, but to talk it out, to find a release. Trying to talk to him to find the sentences, the idea, the understanding that unravels my internal conniptions, the process that has helped me heal for years, trying to find a way to mutually salve the pain, and being turned away. Trying to talk to the man I thought he was.

And even as we made up, and struggled with friendship, he told me he wanted to know what was inside my mind. He posed two questions about things I would not share, things about him, directly related to him, and why he wasn’t something something…

He didn’t ask, “so what about that time, you asked to talk, you bring it up still, I saw you open the wound on stage, we couldn’t talk then but now, now we are trying to find whatever we are to each other, now what was in your head, your heart?”

And I could never find a safe space with him to offer it.

I do open my life on stage. I write my show and I bleed onto my blog and as I wait for the community reactions to my next post I am open and tidying up. Because ultimately I am having the conversation with myself.

Of course being human it will only go so far. There is always another layer from what I’ve seen and I’ve had a complicated life, though I think i’ve a simple soul. Hold my hand, kiss my cheek, be fun and talk to me a lot and i’ll make the rest of my life work.

Not sure what to write

It’s one of those days where I feel a bit crazy. Where the stress is up in my shoulders, around my ears, slouching me as well. I’ve done a whole lot of justified procrastination while coughing still, a cold that never ends lodged in my lungs.

I’m not feeling horribly sick, just low and tired and coughing phlegm. kinda needy for conversation and attention. Those on the internet with me today can attest to that.

I have succeeded in a beginning place for my show. A rough draft, sketch even, of the ideas I’ve had for this thing. I did it, wrote it beginning, middle and end.

i have no idea how to think of it. The ideas were so real as I typed but who knows if the writing brought it through at all. There is definitely going to be much addition of monologue and I’m, as with most first drafts, not happy with the ending. I sorta saw it but sorta just picked it so I could end the damn thing. I wrote myself into one of those corners.

See it’s a one woman show but the character is interacting with a bar full off people in the story and there reaches a point where if it was a multiple-acted play the other characters would be speaking. But it’s only SexyBack talking. I’m not jumping between characters, it’s her talking and reacting in a way that is spose to let you see the other side of the conversation. You know, insert clever acting here! So the ending is a smoosh job. Just smoosh it in there so you can say DONE! and work with it later.

Yeah, as it stands I’m pretty sure that I’ve written an ending I can’t even pull off.

OH and the director wants to do a read through now – OUT LOUD! She want’s me to say all those words I slammed onto the computer in a hurry to simply have something to start with OUT LOUD! Terrifying. Absolutely Terrifying.

And it’s been one of those days where I find all my friends are concerned with my becoming reliant and close to someone new in my life, include the new person, and it’s like really? you can’t hear the frigid sound of the long hallway of closed doors that is my center? Really? The things people say they see in me that are “heroic” and the parts that they see as vulnerable seem to be quite the paradox of a person, as I place the equation on the keyboard in front of me.

Funny they don’t see the way I’ve drawn my boundaries regularly excluding an including people as I like, trust, realize I’ve misunderstood who someone is… Funny they don’t see this as the natural process of selection in a community. Of course I will be open. How can I see what you will take if I don’t give? How will I see what you give if I don’t open to your attention? When you fuck up we’ll see what it’s like and adjust and it can hurt but what the hell else is there? When I fuck up it will be the same for you? No one is perfect, and from 39 years on this planet with a variety of assholes and bitches in my life I have to say I like my method of sorting them out in my personal space.

Am I low and depressed now? OF course! I have spent the last year trying to figure out how to get my heart what it needs and found out I can’t. It’s life. It’s death. It’s taxes. And it’s the reed bending in the wind, spider silk strong, adjustable and always ok with herself because she’s already done her long run.

I have this one telling me how I deserve someone to nest with, make a life with and I sit here and look at my dirty apartment that has 100 items I look at and remember what they mean to me, who gave it, where I was, why it matters and go what? I made my life. I’ve nested. My random fantasies of couplehood are of someone helping me clean my life and running my office while I work and annoy my child:) It’s not of a girl waiting for a wedding. It’s not of buying furniture and combining a home. It’s 12 years of living for me and the kid and being pretty set in my ways.

Ok, sometimes I fantasize of someone helping to pay the rent. But I think that is simply everybody’s fantasy these days.

I’m all up in the internet today.

I’m understanding now, as I’ve written this blog while talking life situations out with two other friends on ichat, because I keep getting these snippets of conversations and sentences and judgments and rumors of people’s attitudes but no one is sitting down and just talking to me about it that it was driving me crazy.

And no one seems to want to trust me with the idea that maybe I can negotiate another friend in my life just fine thank you very much, even as I negotiated them. None of them saw the weeks of this person talking with me to get in or remember the warmth I’ve given to them in the same way when my “open affection” switch is thrown.

I think it’s my face. Just a bit too sweet for the shrewd, conniving, bitchy ass, evaluating mind inside of it.

The Pre-Thanksgiving Couch Sitting Meandering and Cleaning Up of Loose Ends

Which means that I have to also write a blog post because I know that I haven’t yet for a day or two or etc.

Oh I am the best procrastinator in the world. though I think that I do it in a way that lets me procrastinate one thing getting done by getting another thing done.

Oh it’s been a nice peaceful day of tidying up the business before everyone runs off to the holidays. One of the enjoyable things in my professional life is that I’ve got a circle of clients that we all work, we take the time off, every one knows the rules and whys and wherefores of just moving business from one end of this city to the next.

So today has been phone calls and check ins and arrangements for after the holiday, everyone prepping to go eat and relax by 3pm this afternoon.

It’s nice now, this buzz of business I have in my life. We talk computers and money, children and weather.

Many are women, drawn to me by my feminist icon branding graphic, me always having been and always will be and first and foremost a feminist.

Did I mention meandering?

So peaceful for this moment at home on Couch. The Boy is with me for T-Day and we have these old friends and a woodsy back yard and a dog named Pickle and a train to catch at 8pm.

Sicky si sick

I’m at what looks like the beginning of a very annoying chest thing. Spent the last two days with the dusty feeling in head and chest and throat and today I woke up and the cough was “productive.” Produced a lot of gross yellow ickyness. But at least I CAN cough. Those dry ones that feel like you have to and then it’s just a congested bark and nothing clears and nothing happens… hate those. Prefer loogies.

Also sitting here thinking of all the things I can and should get done. WRITING being the main point. SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW.

Do you know how hard it is to write enough words to get on stage and talk by yourself for about 45 mins?

OH yeah, and I keep forgetting. A friend told us on tues that he has brain cancer. It’s a poor prognosis. I keep letting it slide right out of my consciousness. I’m not good with these things. It strikes me, as it did now, out of the blue as I am going over minutiae of a day, of feeling poorly, of things not going my way, or just a day of living.

Suddenly, “Oh yeah, and he’s dying.”

I’m really in a state of depressed numbness right now. It’s not the bottom or the worst but it’s not great.

The boy is worrying the crap out of me now. It’s not just about his grades. Screw the grades, drop out and we’ll home school, whatever. But as he gets older and more able to speak about the internal world the stuff that is escaping his having shoved it down for years shows up. Briefly. I’ve seen enough I worry.

So now I sit, sick and worried on a couch. Trying to figure out how and when to expend my energy. Coffee first, store next? shower? Have to go out briefly later so rest LOTS now or try to rev up a bit? Back to sleep?

And how do I make it safe for my kid to open his bundle of ugly and let it out?

Themes and meanings

One of the annoying things at Penny’s Open Mic is the themes. They are the idea for the night, if you want to use them, something to lean on if your words or music fail you. Something to play with if you’re used to what you do up there. Something.

Annoying in that they can be great but they can really stump you and they add an extra stretch your stage muscle hurdle to the night.

Last week it was RISK and everyone joined in. A wild night ensued with people doing things on stage they had never done before, sheer fear the facial mask of consummate performers.

This week, as a follow-up was the theme “letting go.” MUCH more difficult a theme than I had imagined. I had a scattered smattering of words, some clownish softshoe, a tail-end poetry moment that didn’t mean anything really inside but emoted well. Or it did but not connected, free floating meaning attaching itself to a microphone moment.

oy

Mostly I want to let go the tension in my shoulders.

Friends are going through it too, changes and struggles. I have to let go of some bad habits and start working harder on the new stuff I’m taking on.

sigh.

let go.