Squeezed into a Diamond. Dreams. A Day in the Life.

This morning I woke up and it was so peaceful and quiet in my apartment, and that meant, in my neighborhood as well, it was eerie. I live smack dab in the middle of a very busy neighborhood of Los Angeles where there is always something going on at every and any hour of the day.

3 am? *Somebody* (Saudi princes, I have heard) likes to race down W 3rd Street, which is fifty steps from my apartment door. Lamborghinis unencumbered by those pesky pedestrians.

7 am? Construction, delivery trucks.

1 pm? Everyone in the universe wants to have a freakin' green juice or a smoothie across the street.

7 pm? Dinner time! Cocktails.

11 pm? The hot nightclub across the street plays house music except on... is it Thursdays when they play some awful 80s pop? I mean fun 80s. Ahem. Right. Okay.

Anyway so this morning it was so quiet and it reminded me of something from childhood. But what? I could think of only moments: being awake before anyone else, a quiet house, just a large old clock ticking in the living room, me sitting in front of it, listening to the inner ring of silence, waiting, waiting...

And then I was awake. And it was time to get going. And look at Facebook and see that my childhood friend had a huge birthday party in a hall somewhere in our small hometown, probably the VFW, with a huge sheet cake and a band and I couldn't help but feel like, out here in Los Angeles, this city of angels, a new person, a satellite who has left Mission Control forever and loves the space, loves the stars, never wants to go back.... was somehow missing something, some parallel reality, some other life in which I would have been at the party... maybe two or three little ones of my own grabbing away at my pant legs, runny noses and ruddy cheeks, "mama, mama," these make believe peanuts at once life-sucking vampire brats and yet the most beautiful angels in all the world... and I kept thinking to myself, what is this life? What is this life? What is this? Life? What? Is this life?

Yes. Yes it is. Indeed, yesterday was a great day in terms of what I personally love in life. I got up, I had a meeting with a showrunner about one of my projects, I walked a little dog I love, I went to an audition to sing and nailed it- the singing, I mean, whether or not I nailed the audition is up to the people holding the auditions- I talked with a producer friend about making my web series in Chicago, I had a Skype date with a best friend, I got an email about another audition and studied Kentucky dialects for the dialogue. I had posted about my script with Carlo getting I think its 7th or 8th placement on Facebook and added a picture of me at 7, braids and huge glasses, and said something like, "If this girl doesn't give up on her dreams, neither should you." And a lot of my childhood friends are like, well into their lives, and said sweet things. And this asshole friend of Carlo's commented I was an ugly kid. It was weird. But I never liked that guy anyway. Carlo wouldn't let me unfriend him and I thought, well, I posted that picture on purpose.

And then I thought,

why do we make everything so hard in life?

I mean, yesterday was an awesome day, but I let one comment by one guy I don't even like have meaning? Why? Not why like, oh dear God the humanity, but like, why as in what is the point?

Why do humans always force obstacles whether or not they need to?

And then I thought of nature, and how nature pushes up against itself (and therefore so do we, for we are nature, we are part of nature, and we have our own collective nature, like it or not, definable or not), and I thought of this Rumi poem about the tanning acid of a leather worker, and how the soul is like the hide that is turned into a beautiful leather with the bitter tanning acid, and how life will work against that soul to make it beautiful. I thought of the Elisabeth Kubler Ross quote about the wind against the mountains. I thought, you know who is famous? Mountains. Like we know a few names from antiquity, sure- Jesus, Plato, etc. We know the villains [sic]. Harrod, Judas. Nero. But you know who is MORE famous? Mountains. Mountains are so famous that everyone outside of humanity knows them, too. Maybe Mount Everest doesn't know the Himalayas. Maybe they do. I don't know. I don't speak mountain. But in my dreams, I do. In a vision once at Prophecy Rock, a story for another time, a story I shared here before, I do.

And Mountain, the language, it isn't like, say, English, or Italian, or even Russian. It's so quiet that it becomes loud, and to speak it, you must surrender your mind of meaning and allow your body to open up to the mountain to receive it, and in the open receiving of that cool rock against your mind, you understand things that you can barely put into words...things that words are too small to express.

I woke up thinking other things, too. A friend of mine and I have been texting back and forth about "The Secret." I think the ideas presented in "The Secret" are alright, but people seem to have run with them and forgot they they were fully human, having fully human experiences. As if we are only supposed to be happy happy happy positive positive positive all the time. If that were true, we would have been made THAT way. It's like saying that if you want to be rich, tip more to prove you're abundant. But that only works if you are ALSO abundant in the secret thoughts beneath the consciousness... and by the way, I have plenty of clients in my day job who are among the wealthiest people on the planet who have never tipped me. So you tell me. But yes, it's better to choose that life is worth living, and full of love, I suppose, rather than to be a negative Nelly curmudgeon all the time, I mean, probably. So it's great to choose a positive mood, point of view, etc. But life is full of everything. No one escapes until the final escape. And I woke up wanting to write to my friend, "But why WOULDN'T you want all that life has to offer?" And then I sit here now, writing, angry, cranky, crabby, sad. Feeling blue for no reason, or maybe for reasons I'm not ready to face. And I think about sorrow and loss and the appeal of becoming a nun. Loneliness seems somehow easier to bear than heartbreak.

But my life is a beautiful necklace full of precious jewels. And I love them for more than the sparkle, but for their profundity. They were born deep in the earth, born of darkness and quiet and minor miracles involving just the right amounts of oxygen and certain other minerals and elements, and then wait to be discovered during the tumult of the tectonic shifting of the planet and the sifting and sifting and sifting of generations of dirt, while far above them, a thousand babies were born, cried, and passed unto that which we know not before yet these precious gems saw the light of day.