7.05.2009

My first week back in a few words...

comings, goings, love, life, despair, hope.

I'll translate.
I left Texas a bit sad yet that eased the closer I got to my new home and, so excited, I drove my rented Uhaul fast as the wind, but got in late and came home to an empty house yet I soon had a visitor and I soon picked up my happy dog, and then began unpacking and unloading and getting situated and reconnecting and then my housemate got home and we caught up over pancakes and today my beau and I hiked up mount Garfield even though it was probably too hot for it, yet it was so very worth it because of all we saw and how beautiful the world looks from way up there and how fun it is to climb over rocks and when we came back down I was covered with dust and while brushing myself off, noticed a prairie dog hole covered over with a big spider web upon which struggled a very much alive grasshopper and a just about to pounce black widow spider, so I said, "I can't stand to see that" and he took a tiny rock and freed the grasshopper from the web and pulled the frays of web from his little grasshopper legs and we watched the little guy hop away...then we got in the car and drove home.
And the postsecrets are up...

6.28.2009

Uhaulin


Didn't leave Austin until noon in my pretty 10 foot Uhaul. I loaded it solo, mostly, needed it that way so I could sort and cull some more as I went. My judgment isn't usually so great when I'm sorting and culling, now I'm more "western."
I cull easily, but still find myself keeping things I perhaps, will never ever use.

I drove to Fort Worth, for a Mexican Inn Pralines hand off, then on to Granbury, to unload something, load other things and hand out with my parents for a bit. It's always a bit hard to leave. That doesn' mean I'm not happy in my new location and life, it's just hard to leave. I won't miss Austin traffic, the prices, the busyness, the parking, the condos, the condos, the condos and the other condos. I will miss folks, though.

The week was a blur of film camp and dinners and drinks with friends. A good blur, a sweaty, hot blur. I loved swimming in Barton Springs with Dacia after my run in the heat. I loved visiting with Nisha and Kavi and Laura and Lori and family. I loved hanging with my buddy Dennis, who has been a friend since the day we moved in next door to each other. We bought our houses within a week of each other. I loved seeing my other neighbors the ones who now have two cats that used to be mine. So many good people I've known and will continue to know.

In Junciton, there is a busy week ahead. Work, unpacking and celebrating the birthday of someone I'm pretty keen on. It's good to have things to look forward to. I love my work and I love unpacking, even though I'm a "slow nester" and I love that my good friend has a birthday and I get to help him celebrate.

I arrived in Anarillo. Was determined to get here tonight and I sort of made it: 1:30 a.m. The hotels were booking up due to a freak rainstorm that left the city partially flooded and closed a few highways for a bit. I arrived after that, which is a very good thing and which makes leaving late seem somehow planned.
'
So far this trip, that I'm calling the "almost have it all in one place" trip has been all about rolling with the flow, slowing down enough to see people even when it isn't convenient, making a suspenseful horror film with some talented young filmmakers, driving a brand new (practically) Uhaul, getting to Amarillo late than planned but at a pretty darn good time.

6.25.2009

Austin = Hot

In Austin for four days and temps are climbing steadily. 105 yesterday, a record. 105 and it's not even July.

Film camp has been bun and exhausting. I guess it's the girl energy, all over the map, all over the place, unfocused and a bit crazy like teen hormones. It's tiring, I'm telling you. Still, I leave with a smile on my face and a keen awareness that I don't like being "the producer." You know, the one how gets everyone on the same damn page and has to say, "let's get to work." I want someone else to do that. I can do it, and do it quite well, that's for sure. Don't like it though. It's not for this girl.

I'm a creator who produces. Feels right.

So, last night I went for my first Texas run in ages. It was almost 8 p.m. and it was 100 degress. Seriously. I ran for about 2.5 miles, coiuld have gone further, even though the shallow breathing due to the warm, steamy air made it challenging. I wanted to get back though, for my night swim at Barton Springs.

My cousin's wife, who I call my cousin, Dacia picked me up and we headed to the springs around 8:30. The springs are free after 9 and it's an Austin tradition, once the temps climb to swim there at night for an hour.

The water is cold. 68 degrees, and it's a long, slow, walk for me to get into that frigid water. Once I'm in, it's terrific, amazing, cooling, fabulous. Healing? Maybe?
It was pretty darn nice.

Did somethign else I don't usually do...stopped at P.Terry's and got a burger and fries with Dacia. Slept like a baby.

Could I live in Austin again? Nope. Don't want to. It's too full of traffic and people and condos. Not for me.
Visits are perfect.

My house, next door is empty, mostly, and people are looking at it almost daily. It will sell soon.

off to Film Camp Day 4 - We have some more shooting to do!

6.20.2009

What would you do for a free plane ticket?

I have a layover in Denver on the way to Austin. I arrived in Denver at 11. I leave at 7. That's a long time, 8 hours from landing to take off.

The ticket was free. Frequent Flyer. Wish they had awards for longest waiter. I would get a lot of points!

Last time I went to Austin, I drove for two days straight and I arrived feeling like I'd been on a big adventure (which I had). This time, I think I will just be weary.

But I'm NOT complaining.

I'm observing my fellow humans at the airport.

There is the newly minted married couple sitting a seat apart from each other. She scarfs down McDonald french fries and a coke while he looks ahead, stoic. She puts on her headphones and plays with her IPod while he looks ahead stoic. How do I know they are recently married? I can just tell.

There's the mean lady who yells at her kid and another who eats her kid's sandwich. I'm not kidding.

There's the cute family with three young ones and happy parents, rare and wonderful to see them.

I did find the very very best place to hang out here. It's a restaurant with good food and very reasonable prices and drinks if you want them. And wifi and tables near power outlets. I stayed there for let's see....4 hours and they were very nice to me the entire time. I left because I wanted to leave, they didn't give me any funny looks or anything.

Right now, I'm at my terminal. I'm longing for a good walk around, but I'm carrying my XL1 and bag (15lbs) on one shoulder and my other bag with computer and camera and stuff on the other shoulder (10 pounds). It's a lot after a while.

Luckily yesterday I ran hard and strong on my favorite tabeguache trail. I was hot and I was sweaty. (It's rare to sweat here, you have to run fast or you dry as you sweat and miss the benefit of a good sweat, sorry if that sounds gross, it's just true.)

I'll get to Austin tonight. Dennis will pick me up. Tomorrow we'll hang out. Maybe we'll go swim and bike and run and stuff. I want to shop, too and talk and hangout. And, it's possible, it looks good that I might, maybe, possibly have an offer on my house. (hopeful grin)

I'll correspond later when I'm back in Texas, where my story continues to unfold.

6.16.2009

This is the truth

Every week I receive Harper's Weekly index of news. Much of the news is new to me, it includes breif tidbits of stories that may not be on the front page. Since I don't read the paper every day or watch much television, I read it eagerly and every week there are one or two bits of information that make me sit down and stare into the distance and ponder life, the universe and magical thinking.

Here a few news items that did this to me this week:

Johanna Ganthaler, a woman who missed the May 31 Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean and killed all aboard, died in a car accident.

Nurses in the Czech Republic were receiving free breast implants and liposuction as signing bonuses. "It helps to improve the morale," explained a
clinic manager, "of both our employees and our patients."

A 16-year-old boy in California was running for city council, and a 14-year-old boy in Germany was hit by a meteorite.

California scientists studying guppies found that evolution can take place in as little as eight years.
-- compiled by Genevieve Smith

6.15.2009

peeking in windows

I'm verklempt (not really, I just love that word), I've been dilly dallying, going to the farmer's market, wandering around town looking in windows, cutting roses from the rose bushes that fill the back and side yards of my new place. I will post photos soon and I mean it this time.

I've been doing horrible stacks of paperwork, unpacking, chasing after a puppy, and yesterday for the first time in ages, I took myself and Cowgirl on a grueling, fabulous 6 mile trail run. The trail is rocky, mostly uphill, and it was hot and the wind was fierce and strong. My sandy shoes and salty skin and red face got me a clear mind, open heart, and big grin. Can't help but feeling like I'm 10 years old on the trail. It's my secret fountain of youthful joy.

I'm off to Texas again on Saturday for a week of film camp and final packing. The following Saturday I'll head back to Colorado, this time in a Uhaul truck, the small one, thank goodness. I've been looking for books I can listen to on tape during the drive and today, thanks to the Writer's Almanac, I discovered someone whose work I cannot wait to read.

Today is the 74th birthday of advertising exec-turned-writer, Ilene Beckerman. She began her writing career at the age of 60, and became a published author almost by accident. She had written and illustrated a book for her five children. She said: "My purpose was to say things to my children one doesn't have the time to say. I wanted them to know I wasn't always their mother. I was a girl, I had best friends, we did stupid things together. I was on a bus with my friend once eating dog bones so people would look at us. I wanted them to know."

She took her finished book to the ad agency she owned and used the machines to make a dozen photocopies. She put them in big red binders, with illustrations she'd sketched in plastic sheet protectors, and handed them out to her children and a few close friends. Then, the cousin of a friend sent one of the binders to Algonquin Books. The publisher called her about publishing it and Beckerman said that they offered her "an advance that had a comma in it. I think I fainted."

From the Writer's Almanac:

The book was Love, Loss, and What I Wore, published in 1995. It's the story of her life growing up in Manhattan in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, and it's accompanied by drawings of the clothes that she was wearing during that time. She insists that clothing plays an integral part in many women's memories, that they can recall important events or distinct spans of their lives by what they were wearing at the time. When the book came out, bookstores were not sure whether to market it as memoir or fashion. It has now sold more than 100,000 copies.

Beckerman insists that clothes are the least important part of her book, which she considers a memoir. The book contains advice and aphorisms from her grandmother, who raised her, such as, "If you have to stand on your head to make somebody happy, all you can expect is a big headache." And, "It's better to be alone than with someone who makes you feel lonely." And, "You never know what goes on behind closed doors, even Miss America can have hemorrhoids." And, "If beauty brought happiness, Elizabeth Taylor wouldn't have needed so many husbands."

Her other books include: What We Do for Love (1997), Makeovers at the Beauty Counter of Happiness (2005) — containing unsent letters to Marilyn Monroe, Mother Teresa, Audrey Hepburn, Sarah Jessica Parker, and her own 11-year-old granddaughter — and Mother of the Bride (2000). She said, "Childbirth was a lot easier than being the mother of the bride."

I'm off to Amazon to look for some of these on tape.

Happy Monday!

6.10.2009

mid week...

Feel good in my skin these days, I'm rested and ready for the next few weeks which will involve interviews, unpacking, a trip back to Texas to teach at Femme Film camp, and then I'll drive a moving truck back to Grand Junction and arrive in time to teach a week of film camp here in Grand Junction.

Femme Film Girl's Filmmaking Camp is in it's second year. The creation of Michelle Voss who started the program last year, bringing to life something she'd been dreaming of for more than a few years. I taught last year as well and look forward to working with the girls again. Whether mentoring at UTFI or teaching the advanced filmmaking classes or spring break camps, or girls camps, I love working the kids and finding my style in helping them bring their stories out. It's not really teaching, it's really just being the bigger kid in a group of kids.

I've been interviewing for field internships for my graduate program. I've talked to Hospice and one of the hospitals and next week I'll meet with the local women's shelter. My curiosity is stirred by all of the newness and on the emphasis on working with people who are in big transitions, possibly some of the biggest of their lives.

In other news, life is sailing right along. The puppy is growing, the house is showing signs of looking like a real home, the kid is back in Nashville, it's all flowing along downstream. I'm enjoying this time immensely. Even when I try to make things hard they just aren't hard, so instead I'm just rolling along.

Just a Wednesday morning, sitting here at my little thrift store desk, looking out the window, mind full of things I can do and make and be in the world.