sunday morning.

i wake to the fits and spurts of a heater coming to life for the first time this season. it must be cold out, brisk at best. but my room is warm and safe.

i wander into the living room. pull up the blinds. oh how that blue of the sky undoes me. the trees across the way there...heaven. something about that golden glow of an october morning.

into the kitchen, the cold tiles kissing my bare feet. i put on a pot of coffee. there is the smell of fresh paint in there. i wonder who was painting, what was done.

i find my way back into my room. following the grid of wood grain. turning corners. a symphony of creaks. the room smells of sleep. i crack the window. gather my laundry.

down the elevator to the basement. the painted gray cement and slow grumble of the machines.

there's something about sunday mornings. the quiet. the pliable nature of time on this one day. it is restorative. holy. a time trap in which a million possibilities are made manifest. the great gift of the week that simultaneously ends and begins another set of seven days.

i suppose i could write about...

how i've never worked so hard at so many different things as i did this last week.

and how i then proceeded to sleep through the weekend.

or how a new job as me wearing heels for the first time in three, four years, maybe? (my feet are aching).

how my parents brought me a twelve day supply (exactly one case) of pellegrino yesterday.

and how after exactly one brunch in my tiny little corner of northern manhattan with my mother, father, grandfather and a plate of huevos rancheros i am left me feeling unbelievably homesick.

how my living room is now filled with my grandmother's furniture. dark wood. pieces that look just like the stuff i grew up with. a living history in a new location.

or how i slept on a friend's couch last night so i could make it to the early physique class at spring street.

how i've been thinking a lot about love lately. or like. or attraction. and i keep coming back to the wise words of paulo coelho: one is loved because one is loved. no reason is needed for loving. because isn't it funny how what makes one person attractive is simultaneously a turn-off on someone else? thank god love can't ever really be defined. if it could, it probably wouldn't be worth it.

so i could write about all these things.

but i haven't the time.

life's moving so quickly. and i must stick my mahi burger in the oven and answer some emails and put on some heels because i surely don't wanna be late to work.

who i am at 25.

i've been thinking a lot about what i would--what i should--write for this.

and the thing is, well, i haven't come up with much.

other than...

i'm okay.

here i am. 25. and i'm okay.

thrilling, right?

well, for me, it is. okay is nothing short of utterly and completely thrilling.

because for so long i was not. okay.

and then i was not quite.

i have moments. all the time. moments where i feel like i should have done more. been more. said more. moments where i feel so far behind. hell, i'm 25 already. this is it? this is all i've accomplished? but then i quietly remind myself that we all have different paths. different life trajectories. our stories vary. and my accomplishments, my multitudinous (yup, i just used that word) victories are mostly private. things that others might never understand. but for me those victories are the difference between not okay. not quite. and just fine.

and just fine, okay, whatever-you-want-to-call-it is the beginning. the beginning of everything. the part of my story where my successes become (i hope) a bit more public.

so who am i at 25?

i'm someone who believes that unsolicited smiles by strangers are one of the most profound acts of kindness possible.

i still use the crabtree and evelyn room spray that my mother gifted me for my 19th birthday. it immediately brings me back to a time of naivete and endless possibility.

i find the music of florence + the machine to solicit more sock-to-wood-floor dancing than is proper or appropriate or even becoming of a lady of my pedigree (and now) age.

the quote that makes the most sense to me right now--right at this very moment: "sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives i'm not living" (jonathan safran foer {of course}).

if i could go anywhere tomorrow i'd hop on a boat and sail up the dalmatian coast. or i'd return to rome. and sit in church after church after church. saturating myself in beauty and history. satiating myself with prayer (and a lot, a lot of gelato).

i don't know where life goes from here. but i'm so excited to go boldly into the unknown. to try. and to fail a little, as inevitably i will. but also to start gathering successes. collecting them one by one in the cradle of my arms so i can lay them on the alter of this life as my humble (and multitudinous) thanks.

i am so thankful to be 25. to be 25 and just fine.

see last year's who i am at 24.

image via.

December's 7th post

Last night I looked over at my blog archive and noticed that the month of December had a sad, little 6 in parenthesis. Six? Really? Only six, huh.

There it was...a number letting me know just how low my creative reserve actually is.

I decided to start this blog sometime in June. I didn't really get started until August. When I told my parents what I was going to do they had a fit. Dangerous...that's what they kept saying. And before I knew what was happening the fit became a fight and I postponed all plans. Why was the question they kept asking. Why not keep a journal? A diary? Why not just have it be private?

They were all valid questions.

I was an odd child. No denying it. I kissed my bears goodbye whenever I left home and asked them to be good. I held funerals for browning-leaves that fell of the plants when I was dusting (a weekly chore). I spent hours in the hall closet, under the stairs. My childhood was perfection. Bliss. I grew up down the street from my public elementary school. When I got old enough to walk there by myself I would make up stories on the way. Sometimes, I spoke them aloud. Others, I allowed to silently pulse to the push of my white Keds. I used to wake up at six in the morning to get in a good hour of reading before I had to get ready. And in the afternoons when I drove with my mom to downtown Dallas to pick up my brother, I would pass the time engrossed in the Boxcar children adventure. I used to love sick days. It meant more time to read. And if I wasn't reading. I was pretending, play-acting, living in a world of a million make-believe miracles. I tried to keep a journal, but my mind moved faster than my pen and I couldn't sit still long enough to persist--not when I had a play-date in the fort across the street.

As I got older classwork and extracurriculars eclipsed free-time. I stopped reading. Writing became a task relegated to English class. And again I tried with the journal. Not much more success. The things I wrote about seemed so petty, so mundane--so not worth writing about.

And at another point acting took over. It became the greatest of my loves. But I was always aware that my passion for theatre came from my love of literature. My senior year of high school when that passion began to wane, all it took was one reading of John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation and I was back, more zealous than ever before.

What I hadn't realized, until  started blogging that is, is how much I love shaping words myself. Making my own life tangible--that's what this blog is about. So that ten years from now, twenty, I'll get to show my husband and my children what I was doing in December of '08. So yes, this thing could be private, but thank god it's not, otherwise I'd only write about boys and then spend the rest of the time complaining (mental note: work on that latter thing in everyday life--New Year's Resolution perhaps?). It's the same reason plays are performed for an audience--sometimes we need that outside element--it's a challenge--a call to embrace the best version of ourselves.

So... while I may now feel the pressure to actually write well, since (ghasp) people actually read this--not too many, but just enough--and this leads to a lack of posts all together--I'll work on getting back to celebrating the mundane things (since now I'm mature enough to do this (cough, giggle, giggle))--you know, back to my roots.

And who knows I may even start to write a little bit more about boys?

I am afraid. Full stop. (Or...the post with lots of ellipses...)

Last year, when I first dared open my eyes to that beast known as the transition into the real word, I confidently said I would be in it for the long haul. I hadn't trained for a sprint, I was going full out--metaphorical marathon runner, I am!

When I say "in it" by "it" I mean the business of acting. Yes, I am an actor. I am loathe to admit this because...well, let's face it...everyone's an actor. And many "actors" are...well, you know...selfish and self-serving and delusional. Not to say that I'm not all these things, in fact, I'm quite sure I am. But I'd like to think that somehow I'm...different (delusional indeed). What I mean is... I don't want to be defined by the profession, or the business. Acting is something I do and I happen to be quite good at it, but I dunno...it's hard. Hard to reconcile the art of it with the grit of the business. And I'm not quite sure I'm ready for the grit of it.

I had coffee with my friend Stephen a few nights ago and I said...Stephen, I'm afraid that deep down I don't really want to be an actor. And do you know what he said to me? He said, No Meg, you're afraid. Full stop. End of story. Fear is fear and it will latch on to any story you're willing to feed it. Fear is in you and you're making up stories to justify it's existence. 

 

Ohhhhhhh....huh. So that's what I've been doing. And upsy-daisy goes my world.

So I'm gonna keep truckin'. Training for that marathon. Stretching my muscles before that internal gun goes off and I leap off the edge of what's known.

So here's to racing along a route we've never before traveled.... ever been to Arches National park in Utah? One of its main draws is "the delicate arch." The path there is not easy. Long, difficult footing, monstrously hot if you travel there in the summer, and seemingly never-ending. But just when you think you'll never get there, just as you're about to give up all together, you turn a corner and there it is. And in that moment you literally swallow you're own heartbeat. I hope the path I'm embarking on is like that. Just like that.

P.S. Image stolen from www.utah.com