On Long Pauses

So, I haven't been blogging much these days. And, I'm sorry. Only, I'm not really.

I've been writing and creating like crazy and I feel amazing. I just haven't felt the need to write blog entries yet. Part of me feels like I'm still "catching up", but at some point I'll have to accept that this rapid fire pace is my life here.

A friend and I recorded a song the other day and I hope to shoot the music video soon. Also, I plan to have my website up and running by the end of next month. Times, they are a changing. So, you have all that to look forward to.

Until I feel the pull, much love to you all. :)

It's all in the timing

I got a tattoo yesterday. The moment was right. The final line of this Mary Oliver poem curves over my left hip.

A Meeting

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.

On belief

I used to believe in myself.

I mean, really believe in myself. I honestly thought that I'd be a successful writer one day. I really didn't have any doubts. Unlike the last couple of years, when I've couched everything in a disclaimer. "I want to be a writer." "I'll find out if I can do this."

Some of that is humility, and I honor that. But some of that is just plain doubt. When I was a kid, I didn't doubt because I knew there was one thing I had to--was compelled to--do: write.

And since that time, I've allowed people--some out of love--to stifle me. I've allowed the have-a-back-up-plan-advice-givers, the it's-hard-to-be-a-writer-and-make-a-living-mentors, the you're-not-good-enough-for-our-student-publication-classmates to creep into my inner space. They drowned out all of you who told me to dream, encouraged me to reach, and believed in me. More importantly, they drowned out my own still, small voice, or rather I stopped listening. And that's what this year has meant to me: listening to myself again.

And now I've decided to become again what I never was. Like my seven year old self, I'm going to jot down all my ideas and write bad poetry. Like my fifteen year old self, I'm going to believe I can make it. As my new twenty five year old self, I'm going for it.

And as Sara Bareilles just said in concert, "This is a song about people who should mind their own damn business." Well, this is a life about the same.

Turn and Face the Change

Time to embrace a new year with a new look for the blog. Enjoy!

Back in Boston (well, the American Cambridge)

On this lovely Sunday evening, sitting under a fan in my new room where I have finally (thanks mostly to my two studly roommates) moved in, I am happy. A little warmer than I'd like to be, but happy.

It seems that really, I just need some time away to appreciate being here a little more. I mean, how lucky am I? I have the best dog ever (who sat rather wonderfully at my feet while I had brunch at a restaurant near my house for 2+ hours this morning), I get to study amazing things (including screenwriting since I was accepted to the course I applied to!!!!), and I have really good friends (both here and around the world). And, since I know this is a moment in time rather than a prison sentence, I can honestly do whatever I want and deem worthy of my time for the next nine months of my Harvard/Cambridge/East Coast life.

This, my friends, is freedom. And, I think my favorite patriot, Paul Revere, would be proud of how I'm using mine.

Ace at Brunch