Things that are happening now:

This morning I lost my keys and tore around the house for too many precious minute slooking for them before I borrowed my roommates keys so I could leave for work. Late.

On the late train into the city I was reading the the book our production is using for research about the 2006 Nickel Mines Amish school house shooting, and started to cry. A lot.

My vision is currently obscured by an aura. This is the first stage of a migraine. Half of everything I see is filtered through rotating, twistsing pulses of geometric light.
Pretty soon, I'll lose a tiny bit of my verbal speech capacity. Just a tiny tiny bit, but enought to be alarming.

My dreams have consisted of the following, lately:

On a pool deck with someone who was not my mother. A nurse arrives with a bunch medical equipment and some orderlies and a hypodermic needle and tells me that its time to get prepped for surgery. What surgery? I ask. Your massive reconstructive facial surgery, she says. I look at the hypodermic needle. Oh. Is that a local? I ask. I look away. I look back. The needle just got much, much bigger. We're still on the pool deck.

Outside there are zombies. We can't see any of them yet, but we all know they're there. My assorted group of people and I move from room to room trying to find a safe place to wait out the zombie rash. Every room we go into is windowless, and has a big sturdy door. The problem is that none of the locks work. Every time we try to fix a lock or barricade a door, it just falls over. We keep moving from room to room. When we finally find a place to stop, its already filled with lots of other angry and anxious people, and even though the door locks, there's a giant window with broken pains, and now we can see out and they can see in.

I'm sleeping and someone is sprinkling something orange and powdery over my face, like crushed cheetos. Why are they doing that?

I am seeing an old boy friend, I don't know if he's real or not, for the first time in many years, I think. We are spending allotted amounts of time together, and then we are in an old ski condo in one of the old ski towns. Most of the old ski condos have tiny basement down steep stairs, so does this one. The old boyfriend and I making out. Then he says he has to go downstairs and attend to something. I wait upstairs for a long time. When I go down to check, the basement has turned into a dark expanse full of giant -screened computers. He is working intently. I ask him something and he doesn't respond. Then I say, "I have lost you, haven't I?" He turns back and says yes. I get angry and run upstairs. I'm sitting in the bathtub in this narrow condo and there's a knock at the door and I go to open it so I can yell at him, but its not him. Its some other random guy with curly red hair and green boxers asking if I'm done. I scream and wake myself up.










Ummm....I broke it off with Jeff tonight. This isn't a dream recap. So, I'm not feeling so great about that. When I decided to do it, I had a this huge list of reasons, topped off with the fact that I had a this gut reaction telling me to break it off. But now that I've done it, all of a sudden he has become the perfect man. In hindsight. That's normal, isn't it?

I was invited to a tea party today. Instead I'm at my desk.
I just realized I referred to it as "my desk" instead of "the desk." I don't want it to be my desk.
I am loathe to pass up invitations to tea parties. Especially when those tea parties are being thrown by former marines recently stationed in Iraq...because how often will they throw a tea party you might be invited to? I love the incongruous relationship of "former Marine" and "tea party."
Anyway.
While I was on the train this morning, I realized that I have been priveledged to learn about and practice some really incredible physical disciplines: Yoga, Horsemanship, martial arts, dance to a far less, (and in my case far less graceful) extent. I was thinking about how happy I am practicing these forms of movement...and I realized that I have a dream.
Now I haven't had a dream, or a vision, or anything like that in a long time--no concrete vision of some thing I would like to give birth to in my lifetime, and I guess it seems appropriate that when that thing did finally come to fruition it would be a really weird, half-baked, logistically near impossible kind of endeavor.


Does anyone out there want to attend my imaginary integrated horseback riding/yoga/martial arts/meditation school?

I'll give you 10% off the first month's tutition of you say yes.

I feel like I have nothing to offer in terms of artistic contributions. As an artist I don't know what kind of stories I want to tell. I think I need to go live some more life and rack up some more stories to tell
I have nothing to rebel against. I find myself not present, not fully committed to the present moment. My brain and my body aren't working together right now, and its detrimental, and I think me and my body have to go look for my brain. Because I have a feeling that stubborn bitch isn't going to come back.
Since I decided to leave new york, and even set an exit date, I find myself all of a sudden missing the scene that has up until now not been entirely fulfilling.

Maybe...maybe I won't leave New York unless I'm going abroad for sure...
Maybe I'll stay and get some new crazy job and just try new things for a while.
Maybe I will leave New York no matter what.
Maybe I'll agonize over these decisions and not actually do anything until I'm really down to the wire, and instead I'll read Evenlyn Waugh books and watch re-runs of Weeds. That seems pretty likely.

I got locked inside my apartment today. Yes, inside.I was on my way out the door just after 11:00 on my way to a yoga class, and I turned the knob...and I turned the knob...it spun in my hand and eventually just fell off. I could not get the door open.
OK. So. I call my roommate to get the landlord and super's number, neither of whom answer. I get out the tool kit and start screwdrivering and pliering like my life depends on it to no avail. I make another round of calls to the landlord and the super. I watch the minutes tick by. I burst into tears and throw up my hands. I attack the knob again with my tools. I give up. I make more calls, and texts.
I'm thinking, "OK. I'm done now. I have tried everything I want to try. I'm ready for this to be someone else's problem. In short, I am ready to be rescued now please. Someone please come save me."
More calls, no answers.
So. Finally accepting that no one in fact, is going to come rescue me, I pack a bag with my toiletries and an extra change of clothes, just in case this does not get fixed for a while, and I prepare to set off down the fire escape. The thing about the fire escape, is that once the bottom ladder is down, it stay all the way down, giving anyone off the street access to all of the buildings unlocked windows. In Brooklyn, that is grounds for public stoning. I don't want to do that--but what choice do I have if I'm going to knock on doors and try to find the super myself? My second, and the option I'm hoping for is to go down to the third floor and crawl through the window of the guys (about 10 really nice illegals who blast mariachi music at surprisingly, really opportune times--seriously) who live below me and get out the building that way.
I am one leg out the window when my phone rings.
The landlord gives me the super's real, actual, working number (a secret?) and I call him. The landlord tries to walk me through ways of fixing the knob myself, until I'm knocking my head against the wall explaining, "I tried that, I tried that, I tried that" like a mantra.
Eventually, the very nice, and very quick and awesome super arrives at my door, and within 15 minutes has it working better than ever.
I reapply my cried off eye makeup, and head to work, arriving 30 minutes late.
So. Some one kinda rescued me. This does not qualify as rescuing myself. That's like, what? My one for the year? No more getting rescued for a while, I'll bet.

So...Last Wednesday I cried in GapBody, and I wasn't even in the dressing room.

A saleslady was rude to me and I broke down. I yelled at her and then cried on the corner of Broadway and 8th., Partially because I hand't eaten all day, partially because I was missing a lot of sleep, partially because its is near impossible to find a good bra anywhere in the ridiculously unavailable size of 36D. I just wanted to buy a bra so badly.

I feel constantly on the verge of tears lately. I should probably get over that.

Cocktail Napkin Guy and I are still seeing each other, very casually, and not to worry, he is not a source of any of this wallowing angst.

Current Mood: cranky

March 1? That's the last time I posted? Really? OK...

I have started this update several times, and each time I got bogged down in an oh-where-to-start kind if mire, and I just could not go through with it. Although, I figure if I list little fragments of things out of chronological order and just hope you all still love me anyway I should be fine.

-Met a guy in a bar and kissed him and gave him my number on Saturday night. WHAT? Who am I? Who does that? Not me. Not hardly ever. I wrote my number on a bar napkin (I know, I know!) and he asked me to draw a picutre of myself so he would remember me better. I said, "How could you forget?" and drew a picutre of a lily underneath my name.


Great. When I write it down it just sounds derivitive.




-Saturday was filled with Kung Fu. We had a big Kung Fu field trip. First of course, class, then practice hour, then dinner at an amazing Sichuan restraunt (my eyes still water at the thought of the spicy tofu), then we all headed over to 34th St. to see Jackie Chan fight Jet Li for seven minutes or so amidst an otherise generally hilaroius movie. Then those of us who are truly hardcore went to St. Marks for Thai iced tea, I finally I set off to meet other people at a bar in Alphabet city. This bar was tiny and made me laugh since they were selling five dollar tall boys and the entire place was decorated like an old lady's living room. The DJ played a ton of Shout Out Louds and TV on the Radio. That's where I met cocktail napkin guy.
**Interesting side note: Cocktail napkin guy seemed to have a lot of freinds that he only sort of knew, and most of them were running aorund making ridiculous coversation with the other people there. I asked him what kind of group this was: Some sort of meetup? A random facebook group? Are you part of happening? He never really ansered me directly. Later I found out that, in fact, it was kind of like a "class" designed for shy and introverted people that teahces them how to go out and talk and introduce themselves to people, and generally how to be social. Awesome!?

-It remains to be seen, though, if he will actually call.

-The Av's are losing to Redwings and it makes my heart ache. I also have no one to commiserate with. I am shocked at how disappointmed I am to be alone in this. Obviously everyone here is rooting for the Rangers. Who knew it meant so much to me? And on top of that the Rangers are losing to the Penguins. But I perservere. I am not just a fair weather fan.



-What's going to happen to me later this year? No Idea. I need to be more proactive about planning. I also need to actively pursue my carreer. I have been lucky in that tons of opportunities have just sort of wandered my way and I was able to fall into them easily. But I have a feeling that stretch will end soon. It's made me lazy.

-My foot fell asleep.

-Yesterday I went to Hilary's apartment and we made a birthday cake for Ulysses S. Grant, since April 27 was his birthday. We also made something special for Samuel Morse. You can see the fruition of that adventure here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hilabean

If you look at no other link today, look at this one.

Then as I was walking home I called Liz, on that off-chance she was at home. She was. I went up to her place and gave her a slice or out Grant's Tomb Cake, and she gave me two burned copies of Tapes n' Tapes. I can think of no better trade.

-Then it was rainy and cold so I did not go running. I am not hardcore.

-Write to me.

I'm breaking myself down into one line status messages a la gmail and facebook (because lord knows I don't do it enough anyway, but it is somehow effective for communicating what I feel like displaying):

Lillian Vince is reading everyone's travel blogs and experiencing a serious case of wanderlust. Like this one: http://meg-in-china.blogspot.com/

Lillian Vince appreciates so many other cities all over the world now, especially since none of them are New York.

LV needs to get to the laundromat ASAP to was her Kung Fu uniform before class. It's Rank.

LV wishes Leslie would let her know what's going on with that letter of reccomendation!

LV is skinnier than she has been in a long, long time (cough cough all of college! ahem).

LV is, after a period of adjestment, a happy vegan (see above).

LV is eating warm oat bran cereal with flax seed.

These last ouple weeks, I have constructed something highly unusual for me: A plan. An actual set of goals associated with a timeline that, in theory will carry me into Fall 2009. It goes something like this:
Audition, and get miraculously accepted into the Public Theater's Summer Shakespeare Training Intensive. That will be followed by quitting my job and taking on a whole new series of nauseau inducing loans to pay for said Intensive.

Apply for Naropa Univeristy's Contemporary Performance MFA program, Plus three other programs I need to choose to apply for, none of whick will be quite as amazingly awesome as the program at Naropa. But we must not have all the eggs in one basket.

http://www.naropa.edu/academics/graduate/maperformarts/index.cfm

Spend the some time that fall/winter/spring-ish time in Thailand doing yoga teacher training.

Move home, get a job, ideally teaching yoga (not neccesarily that hard in the Denver/Boulder area) or doing anything that helps to pay the nausea inducing loans. If all went according to plan (hahaha...I know, I know), stay living at home (agh.) and commute to Boulder for classes at Naropa (itsworthit).

Easy, Right? The only part of that I can truly control is gtting my yoga teacher training certification. Which I will do, no matter what, later this year. The rest of it is under no circumstances garaunteed. But at least I have something.

In other news, I am in my second week of Kung Fu classes. I am amazed and addicted and in awe and terrified. I had to spar for the first time on Wednesday. That was my fourth class. My first sparring partmer was a nine-year-old, or something like that, and had we not been sparring I would have been dead. This kid didn' cut me any slack. My other sparring partners after that were considerably ore willing to help me learn how to spar, so in the end, it was great. Still terrifying, but great.
I go to class three times a week, and I truly lucked out with an amazing school. I was talking with another guy in class one day: He had studied several other martial arts before Kung Fu, and had also researched our school ver carefully. He went on and on about our teacher's high standing in the National Kung Fu order, and about how highly the school had come reccomended from a variety of other sources.
When he was done, I said, "Huh. It's also the first one that pops up on google."
I'm lucky that way.

Anyway, I do need to go and wash my Gi. Also, New York is about to be invaded by Coe-eds! Hurray for Liz and Sorah's visit.

Bye.

Current Mood: productive

Its a quiet day at work and a rainy day in the city. My parents got here bright and early this morning, but I won't actually see them until i get off work later this afternoon. We have dinner resrvations tomorrow night at a fancy restaurant in Tribeca, and I have yet to secure brunch reservations for Christmas day. Oh dear...
If worst comes to worst we will have dim sum in China town...and really that would be pretty cool.

We don't have very much planned. When its comes to trvaleing my family isn't really the planning type.

I realized for the first time last night that I'm going to have to mail my brother his Christmas present. I don't know why that took so long to kick in, but it finally clicked that he won't be here, and I won't be there, and since the 'rents won't be go back until after London, Paris, and Nice, it doesn't make sense to just send it back with them.

Baby's first Christmas in the real world.
Mentally getting ready to leave New York.
Exit target Date: Spring 2008
Where to?
Current addiction: Haruki Murakami novels. Thank god that man is prolific.

This is affecting me so much more deeply than I want it to. I choose not to care. I have chosen not to care. I have a lot of control over thse things. So why am I still so bitter, naseous, and angry?

Current Mood: predatory

I'm an extra in a movie.

This little company is shooting right outside the studio where I work,and they need bodies. I have a body!

I'll keep you posted.

So this is my birthday. Cool.
I've been listening to a lot of music. I bought a lot of music off iTunes. Kate's coming into town tonight for dinner, and then people should be gathering at a bar in Park Slope. for my birthday. I dunno if anyone will show up, and I am worried about it being small and awkward and I'm worried the people I really want there won't show or call. I'm not good at attracting people to gatherings. And...I really miss my close friends. I mean, the people here are awesome...but I've known most of them for a few months max, and.
They're not you.

But I look pretty damn cute.

Birthday vanity.

So begins 23.

Current Mood: grateful

I just reserved two tickets for the Daily Show on December 11th. I don't have cable, so I decided to go see it in person.

Today Harvey Keitel walked into my work thinking it was a bakery.

I lost my wallet.

I think it might be somewhere simple, but I can't find it. I canceled everything, in fact, the bank made me open an entirely new bank account, since my checks were lost and they include all that account info. Ugh.

I have this morning off from work,and I'll be in rehearsal later this afternoon. I'm starting to wonder what I'll do after this show.

Hm.

There's still alot more to put up on the blog, which is coming soon, including Bobby's quiz and answers. Yay.

Here in a few minutes, I'm leaving to go watch my first Kendo class.I am oddly nervous and intimidated.

I spent all day yesterday covered in baby snot,tears, and drool. 9 hours with a very cranky, very fussy almost two year old. itsworthititsworthititsworthititsworthit.

Hilary and I are taking off tomorrow for Boston! All hail the newest installment of 24 Hour Adventure! 24houradventure.com

I am sending out a few more audition requests this week. My last round of requests with head shots and resumes attached returned nothing. Its hard to know how to feel...obviously I wasn't turned down because of my work...they haven't seen that...so the reasons were superficial...look, resume content? quality? I don't know which is worse.

Today, I really want to go to grad school. This sentiment is probably encouraged by the fact that all the NYU kids are back, and the LES has this too-hip-to-care-we-are-in-college vibe that I can no longer be a part of. I miss being a student.

Going to the doctor later today.
First concern: After dropping $100 for this uninsured appintment, Dr. Mao (yes, Dr. Mao) tells me he (or she) really can't do anything and to go see a dermatologist. I can't even fathom what an uninsured trip to the dermatologist would cost...

Second Concern: I have some sort of horrible untreatable infection that will continue to eat my entire hand and leave me covered in open soars and force me live like a huddled mass all covered in bandages with an acute fear of light and I'll be cast out inot the mean streets of New York like a leper, which I kind of will be, and I'll move from borough to borough under the cover of darkness pleading with drugstore owners to give me expired tubes of skin creams and ointments.

Let's all hope for a simple in office procedure and a not terribly expensive persrciption from Dr. Mao.

First, the old hair:




The New Hair!




An while I'm at it, my bedroom for the hell of. Pretty sparse right now...

Current Mood: geeky

First off, I got my haircut last thursday at Astor Place Hair, the infamously cheap and toujours weird haircuttery near the NYU campus. For those of you who are dorky enough to remember, its the place where Felicity cut off all her hair, thereby killing the show "Felicity". I cut off all my hair too, but my show is still on the air. When I walked into the sprawling basement barber shop, I was confronted with two slightly grumpy Italian men and a floor full of men cutting men's hair. No copies of InStyle and Vogue, no Enya playing, no gentle lighting, no sparkling water or frappuccinos, just a bunch of guys in a basement with scissors. The less grumpy of the two Italian men pointed toward the back of the room, where a gray haired Morroccan man named Ali was waving exuberantly. In my head I say, "gbfhelfhjwerqut HAIR! MY HAIR! fjqw;rhtuirqehagvlsd ..."
Ali sat me down and the two of us went over what was going to happen to my hair in some broken english, a lot of pointing and gestures, and a lot of smiling and nodding on my part. Then he said to me with a huge grin, "Now we cut your style. I no cut hair, every barber in the world can cut hair, but only a few can really cut a Style!" I beamed back, having absolutely no idea what he meant.
He washed my hair and then sat me down and got to work. Ali had me look through all the pictures of his other clients on his digital camera. There were a lot of highly sculpted mohawks. And about a bajillion pictures of him and that one chick from America's Next Top Model. Then a series of him and an actress from Law and Order. Eventually, he handed me a huge pile of the head shots and resumes autographed by his celebrity clients. Oooh.
Anyway, the real point of the story is that my hair look fan freakin' tastic. Picutres to come. I have a hairstylist! He cuts hair in a basement in the Village! Pictures shortly.

I never imagined how painfully difficult it would be to accumulate furniture in this city. Living kind of in the styx, coupled with the fact that I have no car and can't rent a car makes the simple act of trying to buy a desk nerve racking. Let alone a real bed. The good news is that my mom wants to come out to New York sometime in Mid-september, maybe early october and rent a car for a trip to Ikea. That rocks, but I want a place to sleep now.
I also haven't seen my roommates in about 4 days. Kim is in London, so that makes sense...but Jesse is just not...there. Concerned?

Also, thursday. SIT, my ol' study abroad alma mater held a dinner at a Senegalese restaurant in Harlem for SITers in the NYC area. I saw one other girl who had been on my term with me, although she and I were never great friends, just friendly at best. But, I did get to meet Sarah Ford. She had done the term a couple years before me, and had basically laid the groundwork for the project i wrote on my term. It was lovely to talk to her and discuss interview subjects we had in common. She was also a fellow Fringer, and invited me to the last performance of her show on saturday. And it was brilliant. yay.
On saturday my Fringe show ended too. Now I have more free time. And that's about it.
Saturday was busy: after "Boy" got loaded out, the Playwright's family took a few of us out for Lunch at BBQ. Huge quantities of Southern cooking. A gigantic parade of Amish people carrying signs with messages such as "Repent or burn in hell fornicators and adulterers" also came into BBQ. Shortly after, several women dressed as dominatrixs (sp?) passed by.
After BBQ it was time to start heading up toward 42nd st. to see the Charles Mee and Tina Landau production of Iphegenia 2.0. I will need to do another post about this play on its own, since my enthusiamsm for this play is keeping me in a state of awe and I want to organize my thoughts. It was beautiful, and included some of the most incredible physical work I have ever seen.

After the show I headed back to Brooklyn to stop by a co-worker's birthday party. 'Twas lovely. Met and talked with some fun people and sipped on Pino, and got to spend time in one of the most beautiful apartments I have ever seen. It made me long to get my place in to a more livable condition, and also put me in a state of shock: this place was breathtaking and seemed like it was put together by someone with real focus and a real grown up life. My co-worker is one year older than me, It made me feel underdeveloped and more temporary as a human being.
Good Heif is out of rehearsal until September 11. Until then, let the great Martial arts experimentation begin. This week I plan to spend one day at a HapkiDo studio, and one day observing classes at a Kendo club.
I'm broke. Hehe.

This was a long post.
The End.

Dear Lillian Vince

Thank you very much for interested in the New York City Kendo Club
You're more than welcome to come by and watch practices to see how the
classes are like. You do not have an appointment to watch the classes.
Saturday is the best time to come since iaido, basic kendo, and adv
class
are held. You do not have any martial art experience.
The monthly dues are $100/month + sales tax which allows you to
attend as
many classes as you like. There is no initiation Fee.
You can buy a Shinai from the club. It costs $25.00.

Tuesday:
6:30pm - 7:45pm Kendo Basic Class for Beginners
7:45pm - 9:00pm Kendo Advance Class

Thursday:
6:30pm - 7:45pm Kendo Basic Class for Beginners
7:45pm - 9:00pm Kendo Advance Class

Saturday:
2:00pm - 3:00pm Iaido,
3:00pm - 4:15pm Kendo Basic Class for Beginners
4:15pm - 5:30pm Advance Kendo

Because of the investment involved with purchasing your uniform, and
subsequently your armor, initially you can practice in a t-shirt and
sweats.
Once you are sure that kendo is for you, then you can order your
hakama and
keikogi and bogu ( equipment ).

Noboru Kataoka
http://www.hatsuon.com
http://www.nyckendo.com
http://www.kenkensei.com