clarity

i have been waiting for clarity to find me. but all the while, i have been holding it in my hands.

at last

you know that thing that is the scariest thing you can imagine asking yourself to do {emotionally speaking, of course}? that thing that defies all the defenses you've built up for yourself, that thing that would break down the illusion of control and safety in this wide wide world of ours?

well i'm going to go do it. give it up. bust it open. and i'm writing it here so i hold myself to it.

i can do this.
i can.
i will.
i am.

truth vs. honesty

i am in pursuit of truth. i always have been. and by truth i mean the capital T kind of Truth. the kind that resonates. the kind that you can feel spilling across the horizon, clean like the morning sun.

yes, Truth illuminates, usually catching me in the darkest moments, so often telling me things i'd rather not hear but somehow already know. i'm not sure how, but i have a knack for feeling it out there even before it begins its journey toward the curve of the earth, past the horizon and across the three miles of space and time to become a thought, an idea, or someone else's words that touch me. change me.

Truth always changes.

but even in the worst moments, the light of the revelation, no matter how harsh it falls, no matter how hard a reality it reveals, the light is comforting. it softens any blow like the welcome gaze of an old friend. but even if that weren't so, i have long known that Truth is much preferred to the alternative of darkness, confusion, and deception.

yes, i'm done with the rest. bring Truth on. bring it on.

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on the same topic, but said differently, this is a quote from the tobolowsky files. it follows a story about how stephen was bet by a friend that he couldn't hit his friend even if they were both standing on a piece of newspaper laid out on the floor, one on each side of the paper. stephen refused to take the bet and sure enough, the friend laid the newspaper out in a doorway, shut the door, and then proceeded to prove that stephen would not have been able to touch him and would have lost the bet.

then he said to stephen:

it's a lesson for you...in the difference between honesty and truth. most people live their lives and they think it's the same thing, but they're not. people can use honesty to tell lies...but honesty never tells the whole story. it only tells part of the story, the part you want to be heard, the part where you're right, but the truth...not only changes the way you see the situation you're in, but it changes the way you see the world from that point on. you can use honesty to bludgeon...to hit people over the head, but you can never go back from truth.

thank you, stephen. i am done with the rest. bring Truth on. bring it on.

clock winder

clock winder is on repeat tonight–a beautifully wrought piece embracing the uneven nature of time: the staggered rhythms, the dissonant chords. the poignancy. the beauty. the uneven descent into silence.


this song is on repeat tonight as i stay up long past my bedtime, to pass the time, kill it, and now, finally, to mark it.

time.

yep, time.

what's to be said about this thing we understand so little about? we think we've caught it all, scooped it up and held on to it possesively, assigned a set of sequential numbers to it, occasionally a second and a minute hand, and viola, it's ours. we think we know it, that we get to control it, and we are comfortable in that illusion we blindly clutch to our chests as we carry on through time. yet all the little symbols we bring along with us, trapped inside cell phones and adorning our wrists, they are just that: a symbol. nothing more. and yet, nothing less.



i am so ready to be in my 30s. so ready to feel the passage of time mark itself on my age. because this is not just another hash mark in a row, this is the start of a new row. and while age doesn't mean everything, i feel like i've earned my stripes this past year pulling myself hand over hand, dragging myself through the mud a lot, just to cross this line.

......................................................................thirty......................................................................

i feel clean at the moment.
baptized from so many tears fighting even more fears.
but they, too, are the markers of progress. milestones of terrors i can now turn my back on as i continue forward boldly into the fog of uncertainty and confusion and growth.

and that is something else i have learned {and by learned i mean my body is feeling the truth of what my mind has known for years}: this thing i've been fighting to get to the other side of, it never ends. the other side doesn't exist. the imbalance of change, of growth, of being challenged: it never, ever gets comfortable. yes, i have my days like everyone else, where i can navigate my limitations gracefully, where i can articulate my frustrations clearly and with kindness to myself and others, but similarly there will also be the days when it all breaks apart and things spiral out of control into a temporary and usually overwhelming chaos.

but now i know.
i know.
i know.
this is just part of the process. part of time passing through me, unerringly delivering a new part of myself to understand, breaking open a new space i never knew was there.

so with that, here is a toast to another year, another decade, and to the realization that i never will arrive anywhere but here and now, the only place time has no effect on.

bayou la batre {in photos}

here is the collection of production and location photos from sieve this past week. two days of driving. four days of shooting. six days of living a dream together with someone who believes in it as well.

it hurt going through the photos on the plane, feeling like i had left behind this new way of life that is exhausting yet so fulfilling, feeling like i had misplaced something important {where is the dodge journey? where is andrew? where is all the film gear?}...but none of that is true. this is just the beginning. everything is laying out in front of me faster than i can imagine. my only job is to put one foot in front of the other, keep grounded, stay centered & trust in myself and my worth no matter what.



p.s. all these photos are mine except the one where you can see my hands {that would be a neat trick}. that one is andrew newton's, my dp extraordinaire {pictured}.

in production

i have no words to spare at the moment, so i give you images.

here

i am here, less than five miles from my childhood home: that small, beaten house that was the first place i lived in this world. my life began there. my memories. my first words. i was given my first book there wrapped up under the christmas tree; saw the moon through my grandfather's telescope there out in the front yard with all the weeds.

and now there is here again and the three of us, myself, my memories, and my home, meet again to compare notes on what exactly we each have experienced in the eighteen years since we were all in one place together.

i have the hardest job of the three. the other two just have to show up and show themselves off. me, i have to work, to write, to perform and construct. assemble the piece converging into a story worth telling. a story with meaning. a story with beauty and truth.

and as much as i fear there is no possible way i can create a net of words and images big enough to contain what will happen here, i know in fact, my job is actually the same as theirs: all i have to do is show up. the words and ideas are already here, standing at attention, waiting patiently for me to look back at them as i sift and sieve through this world i am navigating. and so far, my memories are generous in return, loaning out freely from the vaults of my childhood so i can admire the patina added from the tender care of my later selves, polishing my young understanding of the world during the past two decades.

already i am filled.

driving through mobile tonight was surreal. the darkness of 9pm obscuring things i might otherwise remember, but even so, familiarity curled around details. moffett road. bel air mall {which i knew was coming long before the sign announced itself}. winn dixie. padgett switch road. half mile road. two mile road. mostellar medical center {where my blood was drawn on my birthday only a few weeks shy of exactly 24 years ago}.

the most haunting of all was a mysterious building with two white silo-like towers. the writing on them didn't make sense to my sleep deprived and road-tired brain and as i peered at them trying to place what they were for and whether or not i recognized them, i felt the curious gaze of a child step into my body as a sense memory returned. i feel the boredom of being in a car, unable to make sense of this building and strange letters all belonging to a foreign adult world. and as i drove onward tonight, wondering if the memory was real or imagined, i realized it didn't matter if i actually ever stared at that particular building. the truth of the moment, the truth that came surging back to me while passing this one building, that wash of curiosity and loneliness and awareness of the adult world around me, that was real. that was an undeniable marker of my childhood. and, here, tonight it was given back to me in full color and surround sound. and for now, that is enough.

tomorrow, the first thing we film is my home at 33 adams street.

i can hardly believe it: i am here.