V for Vendetta

Very important and beautiful film... check it out.

WHY?!?!?

I love people. Don't get me wrong. I think we are capable of amazing things, strengths, intelligence, artistic feats, brilliance, MIRACLES. I TRULY do. But why is it that we so rarely TRULY value the things we have, the people we love, until we are faced with the possibility, let alone the reality of losing them?!?!? What is wrong with us!??!

"Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost..."

“May had a twin. Our sister April. The two of them were like one soul sharing two bodies. I never saw anything like it. Those two had no separation between them. . .April got deflated about life, I suppose you’d say. It opened her eyes to things she might not have noticed, being so young. She started having stretches when she didn’t want to go to school or do anything. . .she was having terrible depressions, and of course the whole time, whatever she was feeling, May was feeling. And then. . .[April] killed herself. . .something in May died, too. She never was normal after that. It seemed like the world itself became May’s twin sister.”

I never had a real twin sister, but I had a friend that came pretty damn close. People talk about love at first sight all the time, but they never really talk about friends at first sight. Not like causal acquaintances, I mean like BEST FRIENDS. The kind of friends when, after knowing them for a day you feel like you’ve known them your whole life, like you knew them in a past life... Ever had a friend like that? Where you were so close, you felt like you shared a soul? A mind? A heart? I had a friend like that, and I lost her, so once again, reading The Secret Life of Bees, I related to May and my heart broke.

Losing my friend was one of hardest things that ever happened to me. It changed me. It broke me- my heart, and for a few days, my mind too. Thankfully I was able to heal… although scars remain. But it is truly impossible to have a friendship like that and not be altered by it permanently. And though I lost her, and still ache to this day at the thought of her, I would rather have that pain than never have known the joy of her friendship. It is just a testament to how close we were that it hurt so much when she left…

“Love in our life is just too valuable

Oh, to feel for even a second without it

But life without death is just impossible

Oh, to realize something is ending within us

Feeling yourself disintegrate”

-The Flaming Lips

Real vs. Ideal

Reality isn’t always as we’d like it to be... especially in a city like New York. Ideally, we’d like to believe that we are safe. In reality we’re usually not. I’m not saying that we should be afraid to leave our homes, but we should be afraid to be out alone at 3am after drinking if we are women… at least if we are women under 6’ tall and 350 pounds. What happened to Imette St. Guillen is a tragedy. And although my friends may say I’m overprotective or that my maternal instinct is in overdrive (always has been), I would never leave them alone at a bar, late at night, after having been drinking, in this city or any other.

Ideally, women would be safe alone, safe dressing ultra-provocatively, safe getting drunk while with friends. But in reality, this is just not the case. I worry about the young girls I see on the subway, even in broad daylight, wearing short skirts and tops that cling to their breasts or expose their mid-drifts. They could all be very chaste girls for all I know. And they should be judged for their character, not their appearance (see “My Short Skirt” from THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES). However there are too many sexual predators in this world who see girls in revealing clothing as targets.

I have no idea how Ms. St. Guillen was dressed the night she was killed or how she was acting. She didn’t deserve to be attacked. But I hope that other women will be more careful out of respect for her memory…

May

I highly recommend this book. It has been breaking my heart since page 8. I know, I know, I say things break my heart a lot. Well that’s because they do. And one of the reasons I love this book so much is because of the character May; I relate to her a lot. Not to say that I’m sensitive to quite the extreme she is… but, well, here:

“ “She sure does get upset easy,” I said.
“That’s because May takes in things differently than the rest of us do. . .when you and I hear about some misery out there, it might make us feel bad for a while, but it doesn’t wreck our whole world. It’s like we have a built-in protection around our hearts that keeps the pain from overwhelming us. But May—she doesn’t have that. Everything just comes into her—all the suffering out there—and she feels as if it’s happening to her. She can’t tell the difference.”
Rosaleen’s voice drifted from the kitchen window, followed by May’s laughter. May sounded so normal and happy right then, I couldn’t imagine how she’d gotten the way she was—one minute laughing and the next overrun with everybody’s misery.”

My dad has always talked about how from a very young age I would jump from the heights of joy to the depths of despair. I feel like May a lot, like I can’t separate the sorrows I see others endure from my own. How many times have I watched the news or a film and cried for hours? How many times have I seen a woman abusing her child on the subway, yelled at her to stop, and looked around, my eyes blurry with tears, searching for anyone else who might share my outrage? How many times have I had to have a loved one rock me, wracked with sobs, until I calmed down? It can be quite exhausting, but I guess it’s better than being numb.

When I’m acting, this quality comes in handy. People ask, when I have to get sad or angry during a scene, if I think of things in my own life that have caused these feelings in me. Usually I don’t have to though… just imagining what the character is going through, I feel as if it’s happening to me too… I can’t tell the difference. Just the other day in rehearsal, I cried during a scene and it took me 10 minutes to get out of it, to get even into a daze where I realized it wasn’t really my pain I was feeling, it was the role I’m playing.

I guess I’m just trying to say I am grateful to this author for creating this character. Thank you May. Thank you for making me realize I’m not the only crazy person out there… or the craziest…

"One"

Another blog sparked a discussion between a friend and I about Actung Baby- a terrific album that still gives me chills and makes me close my eyes and sway even after 15 years. “One” in particular is a song I’ll never get over. And one night, years ago, I put it on and it looked, sounded, and felt like a duet. I can still see how...



She: Is it getting better
Or do you feel the same

He: Will it make it easier on you
Now you got someone to blame

She:You say one love, one life
When it's one need in the night

He: It's one love
We get to share it

She: It leaves you baby
If you don't care for it

He: Did I disappoint you
Or leave a bad taste in your mouth

She: You act like you never had love

He: And you want me to go without

She: Well it's too late tonight
To drag the past out into the light

She: We're one but we're not the same

He: We get to carry each other, carry each other

She: One

She: Have you come here for forgiveness
Have you come to raise the dead
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head

He: Did I ask too much

She: More than a lot

He: You gave me nothing

She: Now it's all I got

He: We're one

She:but we're not the same

He: We hurt each other

She: then we do it again

He: You say love is a temple

She: Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love the higher law
You ask me to enter

He: but then you make me crawl

She: And I can't be holding on to what you got
When-

He: All you got is hurt
One love, one blood, one life

She: You got to do what you should

He: One life with each other
She: Sisters, brothers

He: One life

She: but we're not the same

He: We get to carry each other

She: carry each other

He: One

She: One