A Bohemian Girl

The Lightening Storm and the Hurricane

2008-07-12T14:45:00.001-07:00

Lights in the Hollywood Hills
“Live each day like it is your last."
This particular saying both inspires and discourages me. Several months after my best friend, Amanda, died after a long struggle with Diabetes and Addison’s Disease, I can look back on her life and see how different she was from everyone I have ever known.

I always knew she was unique. Cut from a different cloth. But she differed greatly from the rest of the World. While Amanda sought to fulfill her life’s meaning – to be a writer – most people seem to be directionless, although their careers might be on steady, forward-moving paths. While she calmly sought out life’s beauty through her poetry and photography, most people I know do not truly see the World around them. They walk by, day-by-day, and do not see what surrounds them. They do not see the little things in life that inspired her to start a new poem or to pick up her camera.

Jen

My Apartment Building
My friend, Eric and I were talking on the phone and we started discussing the subject of mortality and finding meaning in life. Perhaps the thing that differs greatly between Amanda and the rest of the Human Population is that she had a purpose, no matter how short she knew her time was on this Earth, and she did everything in her power to bring herself closer to her purpose, which was to write books of poetry and short stories, continue with her photography and start a literary journal (with Kristen and me,) as well a myriad of other things she did that enriched that life purpose.

Perhaps most souls do not truly grasp what their meaning on Earth is about. Perhaps they see only their own expiration dates – like Amanda did – but they do not have the strength or ability or power to focus. Instead, there are so many people that are like a hurricanes with no quiet center. No moment of peace.

The Daily Planet
On the positive side, I agree that each day should not be wasted. Each day should hold something unique and powerful in its arms, making it a “worthwhile” day, making it a day to remember; a day that can be looked back on with having a sense of meaning. Each day should be lived to its fullest. Each person should make each second, moment, minute, hour and day a priority.

Our lives are filled with memories. Good and bad ones. However, life is not solely about knowing exactly who we are or what you want when you are ten and then spending our lives trying to accomplish those particular things. How boring would that be? I want to be a writer. So all my life is spent focused solely on that, without any freedom to discover new things that will probably enrich my life and my craft? If I limited myself to being solely a filmmaker, then I would never have enriched my life as an artist or a photographer.

From the moment we take our first breathe and scream at the tops of our tiny infantile lungs, we are learning, changing, growing and developing as human beings. From 8 lbs to 130 lbs, we are constantly evolving. We are also dying.

However, we constantly discover - on a day to day, minute to minute, basis - what we truly want and need to enrich our lives. From the moment we take our first breathe and our umbilical cord is cut, we are on man’s search for meaning.

Stephen
My search for meaning has truly evolved over the last twenty-nine years as I learn to try to not to be held down by memories that I don’t think I can top or compete with. My childhood (overseas and in America) was pretty impressively vivid. There was a point in my life (which occasionally rears it’s doubting head) where my memories have made me feel like I will never do anything that would remotely compare to the splendor that was the past; however, I have found in learning from my past that I allow myself to live life to the fullest every day, because I concentrate on the present as I try to do things that enrich my future.

Draza
I cannot compare my adult life in Los Angeles to a childhood that sounds more like a novel than reality. If I did, I would be depressed and then I would never look forward into the future with hope and desire. So, I am doing everything in my power to JUST DO IT!

And on Tuesday, I JUST DID IT! I did something for myself that both enriches my life and my work as a filmmaker. I finally got myself the Nikon D300… and so far, I have spent a portion of every day taking photographs, which can now be seen throughout this post.

Lowlight
Our lives feel like Lightening Storms. Especially in Los Angeles. Especially when you are genuinely sick. We have electricity surging down from the sky, cracking through the air and scorching the ground. Like a Hurricane, the winds are taking up our skirts and our hair and making it hard to not only walk, run or move, but makes it nearly impossible to SEE. But even in midst of the Storm, we have to keep our mind on what direction we really want to go.

Intrigued and Illuminated

2008-06-24T19:13:00.000-07:00

My friend, Jen, took me to see Liam Finn play at the Largo at the Coronet on La Cienega Blvd in West Hollywood last Wednesday. We laughed a great deal as he played for a large crowd sitting in a beautiful theatre, but when he (and his partner, Eliza Jane) played “Gather to the Chapel” and “Wide Awake On The Voyage Home,” we both began to cry. Great floods of tears. For different reasons, we cried. Even when I met him, I started to cry, because the music was just that moving. And my imagination was running wild. A new story was of course working its way around my brain.

After watching Mr. Finn and Ms. Eliza Jane play on Wednesday night, it is like life started to remind me that surprises will always be found around the corner from where you are. And when you open yourself up to those surprises, life truly comes into sharper focus. And my eyes have been opened in so many different ways since that night. A variety of things have happened to me in the last few months that have truly made me grow as an individual. Some have been harsh, horrible moments, while some have been enlightening, as well as freeing.

Yesterday, someone important in my life – no I am not going to tell you who – told me that I have been going through a “growth spurt.” Pardon? A growth spurt? Like the sort of thing you have when you are a gangly, graceless teenager and you grow an entire foot in the summer? Or you grow into your long legs? Or you grow into your considerably large mouth, filled with what seems to be a million straight perfect teeth, which begins to no longer look awkwardly enormous?

I wondered, to myself, does it have anything to do with… nearing thirty? I don’t think I have the dreaded turning thirty issues (yet,) but I do see that I am doing a lot right now with my life. There have been a lot of changes in the last few months that have moved me forward in my quest to be a filmmaker, a businesswoman, a lover, an environmentalist, a daughter, an individual and a woman. A complete human being.

Which brings to me to a thought that has been running through my mind while I am working on a new film: the ‘traditional’ woman versus the feminist. It is something that has always intrigued me – a place where a woman can have a career, a family, a marriage and her individuality.

A place where a woman can be a creative soul - a filmmaker, an author, an artist - who follows and seeks her own bliss without making apologies, but is also a committed lover to the man (or woman) she has chosen to love and call her own. A place where a woman can be a Co-founder/President of a green (environmentally friendly) Company while raising a child. A place where a devoted daughter can still have a solid relationship with her mother, but also let her own, independent soul speak loudly and clearly for itself.

In the UK Times Online (www.timesonline.co.uk,) there is an article titled “The good wife is an old fashioned realist,” which states:

How to be a perfect wife is not, you might have thought, a very contemporary question. Decades of feminism have been much more concerned with how to be a perfect career woman, exotic lover, fully fledged fashionista, alpha female and, latterly, yummy mummy; being a wife has been somewhat incidental, even for those who get married or stay married. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/
columnists/minette_marrin/article1654871.ece).

First of all, why would we (women) be thinking that this particular question is… Contemporary!? Why wouldn’t we think that the women who have “Come up the Ranks” before us wouldn’t be troubled with the same questions that we are faced with today? I think of Virginia Woolf and her essay “A Room of One’s Own,” which points out the importance and necessity of women to be financially independent in order to be able to create. I think of Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Ella Fitzgerald, Frida Kahlo, Margaret Mead, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Bourke-White, to name a few fascinating, strong and driven women. And I realize that I will always be an evolving, every changing work-in-progress.

"Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis."

2008-06-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Emerson Alums, Current Students and Other People who did not attend, either because you didn’t think Emerson was GOOD ENOUGH or you were too poor to attend and said you were too good for the likes of Boston’s Little Punk-Ass Film School:

I get a lot of SHIT for not having gone to film school at USC, UCLA, NYU Tisch, AFI, Columbia University, the University of Texas in Austin or some other prestigious film school... (And I know those of you that either went to Community College or some small Liberal Arts College in Michigan or didn’t wind up attending Undergrad, get it worse...) Everyone has heard of Emerson College in Boston, but it doesn't ever feel like the person you are talking to actually respects you once they hear that you went to THAT film school.

This is a conversation that I have actually had with some wannabe directors (I can say that) while sitting outside my local coffee shop with one of my friends. This time it was my Best Friend, a PhD Academic:

EXT. COFFEE SHOP – LATE AFTERNOON

With his new Cubs hat on his greasy unwashed head, SNOTTY LITTLE B-MOVIE SET P.A./PRESTIGIOUS FILM SCHOOL GRADUATE, 25, sits reading “Directing Actors” by SOMEBODY IMPORTANT and underlining EVERY sentence in the book, which looks like a child drew all over it with a dull pencil.

SNOT occasionally throws out nonsense to his friend, a GEEKY ASSISTANT TO A B-MOVIE PRODUCER/PRESTIGIOUS FILM SCHOOL GRADUATE, 25 and who has a very “naturally whimsical” haircut that probably cost him $200 and thick black glasses that he doesn’t actually have prescriptions for, about being on Anna Nicole's last movie as an Additional Set Production Assistant. He got 4 days towards his book.

Snot: “Yeah, Anna and I got really close. I used to personally make her her favorite drink, a BLAH-BLAH- BLAH (Insert Bullshit Annoying Coffee Blended Drink that takes way to much of anyone’s time making and, in turn, makes your ADs pissed off that your time is being wasted making talent a frothy drink that her assistant should be making just bloody right). We were getting really tight and then….” Fake Sniff and Long Exhale of Pain and Mourning.

Geek: “Man. When did you work with your AD last?”

Snot: “Oh, I haven’t heard from my B-Movie 2nd 2nd AD since we wrapped 2 months ago. I mean, we’re really close. (Knots fingers.) I think he’s just taking some time off. He’s been working so hard and, y’know, there are sometimes so many breaks between movies… Thank goodness.”

I cast my half-closed eyes over to Snot and Geek when I hear the words “Breaks between Movies.” (Really? There are breaks? Not a good sign for Snot and Geek.) I sit sipping my 5th Iced Tea and try to get myself positioned perfectly in the way of the Hollywood sunbeams. (And I mean, actual beams from the SUN.)

Snot (looking at me): “What do you do?”

I look at him. Great. No, What’s your name? Do you live in the neighborhood? Do you have a boyfriend? Do you like the Iced Tea here? I see you’ve had several. Do you smoke? Do you have a lighter? Do you know if Le Brea is West or East? Do you like the food next door? What’s your sign? Do you eat Wheat?

Me (with trepidation): “I’m… in the Industry.”

Snot (Feigns Boredom): “What do you DO in the Industry?”

Me: “Eat Crafty a lot. Walk around set trying not to get hit by a grip, who always screams “HOT POINTS” just in the nick of time. I sit sometimes. Or stand. Or like to wear hats with the Boston Red Sox Logo On it.”

My Best Friend, “Academic PhD Extraordinarie,” chimes in: “She’s a filmmaker.”

Geek: “Reeeeallllllyyy?”

I look at her and smile “Thanks.”

Academic Extraordinaire: “You are what you do.”

Crap.

I look at Snot and Geek: “I’m a writer/director.”

Snot: “What have you DONE?”

Wow, please we haven’t even told each other our names yet and Snot’s trying to “Industry Screw” me. Right here on the sidewalk. In this uncomfortable, broken metal chair that the Manager of the Coffee Shop SHOULD replace…

Me: “I just finished shooting a short film.”

Academic Extraordinaire: “And she’s submitting it to all the big festivals.”

Academic Extraordinaire smiles at me. Ah, thank goodness I have solid, supportive friends… who like to talk. Especially when they see I am thinking about how to not answer the question with a bit of flare and jest.

Geek: “Wow,” which causes Snot to give Geek a “Don’t-Look-Too-Intrigued-or-Impressed-Just-Yet-Look.”

Snot: “We did SEVERAL short films when we went to USC, didn’t we Geek? Where did YOU go to school?”

Me: “Emerson in Boston.” I point to Boston Red Sox Hat.

Snot: "Oh, why didn't you go to USC? Or UCLA?"

Me: "I didn't apply."

Snot (feigned shock, with the look like he’s about to cough violently): "You didn't... APPLY? Didn't you want the best education you could... get?"

Me: "Yes. And I did get a great education… I just didn't want to live in CALIFORNIA at the time..."

Geek: "Then why not NYU?"

Me: "Wasn’t too interested. Only applied to Emerson.”

Geek; “You applied to ONE school?”

Me: “Well, I went to Denison University for 2 years and then transferred out.”

Blank Stare.

Then comes (what they imagine is…) the ultimate insult, which men always have to bring up – either as a way to flirt OR regain a feeling of superiority – because they expect me to answer their question with a simple blank stare back at them.

Snot: “Are you are REAL Boston fan?”

Me: “What would make someone a “REAL” fan?”

Snot: “Where are you from?”

Me: “Newport, Rhode Island. Spent 3 years in Beacon Hill, Boston.”

Geek: “She’s definitely a Native.”

Snot: “A Native does not necessarily mean… a True Blue BOSTON Fan.”

Geek: “Do you like ALL the teams?”

Me: “Yes. I like ALL of them.”

And then Snot asks the question that I have heard many, many times…

Snot: “Name three players.”

Me: “Do you want the batting line-up or their Field Positions?”

Blank Stares.

And then I tell them who is where on the field: Varitek is Catcher, Youkilis at 1st, Pedroia at 2nd, Lowell at 3rd (and how Casey fills in for Youkilis when he is out or when he replaces Lowell) and then Lugo is at Short Stop, Manny Left Field, Ellsbury (or Crisp) Center Field and Drew (or Ellsbury, depending) at Right Field…

Blank Stares.

I top the story off by telling them about sitting at Dodgers Stadium with my friend, Crotty, close enough – I timed in my head – to sprint to the field and tackle Ellsbury (who was in for Drew) before anyone could catch me and drag me away.

For a really, really LONG time, they blankly stare at me...

Me (I get up, smile at Geek and Snot and then say quietly): “Nice Cubs hat” and then walk away.

People (like Snot and Geek) always cock their head to the side when I say Emerson. I sometimes wonder if they are silently asking me (and themselves) if I take my life, my craft, my "talent," my education SERIOUSLY. How could I go to a FILM SCHOOL that wasn't lauded as the ONLY place (amongst 10 other reputable Giants) to learn what 3-point lighting is; how to tell the F-Stop by eye; how to load a mag; to play with a 16mm Bolex; to act in some other poor fools shitty black-and-white silent 4-minute short about cyborgs; or learn everything thing there is to know about the supreme brilliance behind Pulp Fiction, Terminator and Fight Club?

I must have been turned away by the great MALE Academic Owls that guarded the doors at USC, NYU, Yale…

No, I didn't apply. I just decided to apply to ONE school in the whole of the United States of America after I took a hiatus off from my two years at Denison University. (Which is NOT a bad school either!) And I have always found it amazing that you can google "Top Film Schools" and Emerson NEVER shows up... until I read 2008 The Princeton Review.

Not only did WE ALL make the list of schools with the "Top Film & Media Programs," but I am also proud to say that The Princeton Review has listed the "2008 Best 366 Colleges Rankings" and some of those schools that people always say "Why did you go to so-and-so University" didn't even make the list! Ah ha! But Emerson College did, you freaking film school Elitists! In regards to SCHOOLS as INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING, we made the grade!

So to all those people that say, "Oh, Emerson. Pfft. Really?"

SUCK IT! The Little Guy just got the chance to take all his and her clothing off and streak in JUNE around The Commons and up and down Boylston and cry out "EMERSON ROCKS!"

And for some fun insight into my little alma mater, here is some of what The
Princeton Review wrote in the Rankings & Lists portion about "Emerson College":

* Gay Community Accepted
* Students Ignore God on a Regular Basis
* Best in the Northeast

And, The Princetone Review, also wrote:

"Founded in 1880, Emerson is one of the premier colleges
in the United States for the study of communication and the arts."

So we aren't USC or UCLA or NYU Tisch or any of those
other glossy schools... but we aren't sheep shit!!!

A Lover and A Lie

2008-02-12T08:18:00.000-08:00

I am a rather forgiving soul. You can hurt me and I will probably forgive you. If you do it again, I may forgive you again. Some have repeatedly hurt me and I have bared the pain, because I thought the person meant something to me. But there always comes the day when I turn my back on you. Something in my brain suddenly snaps. I have had enough.

This act is done completely. Whole-heartedly. There is no half-guessing my decision when I get to that point. Yes, sometimes it takes awhile for me to get there. Sometimes my thick skull makes it so I go down a long path before I make the decision to change, and in this case, cut someone of my life.

But maybe that is why I give them so much leeway, because I know that when this corner is turned, there is rarely any going back. Maybe that’s why sometimes I have to be hit over the head repeatedly in order to realize what’s going on. Sometimes I have to get a concussion before I change what isn’t working in my life; however, when I do, it’s like a light has been turned on.

It took me four months to get here. But moments after those words fell from his lips, there was something about him that changed. In moments. There was a sharp, sudden difference in life when this change happened. Everything before me changed and all five senses reacted. I saw the World around him differently. My eyes actually perceived him differently.

He changed right in front of me. Although he may have once been handsome to me, utterly beautiful, he was no longer good looking. He may have had the most perfect, chiseled body, but it didn't matter. He may have had the deepest, beautiful brown eyes, but it didn't matter. He might have had the most delicate lips, but that didn't matter. He may have had the ability to send light through my body when he touched me, but that too faded away.

I don’t ever want to touch him and I don’t want him to ever touch me again. Not even in a public setting. Not even as a courteous gesture. My body is off-limits to him now. I don’t want him to touch some place he’s already been. Even if it’s my knee, my hand, my face, my cheek, my hair. There is no reason for him to anymore.

Here, I realize my perception has altered. His weaknesses appear on his skin. Thirty-three years of bad decisions appear on his face. Four years of hell appear at the corners of his mouth. In dark swirls in his brown eyes. His faults and imperfections radiate off him. His smell doesn’t lift me anymore. And, finally, I no longer taste him. Anything that may have lingered has evaporated.

And I never judged him for his past. Or his part in his past. I never judged him for doing what he did. Even when, of all people in the world, I had a reason to. I put aside my own past. I accepted him for who and what he was. And he threw lies in my face. Knowing full well that they were lies. Maybe that is part of the reason this turned out the way it did.

Why is it that you have to sometimes go through hell in order to see the truth? Why is it that you have to hear a complete utter lie come from a man’s lips in order to realize that it isn’t you, but that his self-worth is nearly inexistent? Why does it have to come to you hurting so much in order to take a different road in life?

So this is one way that I react.

Another way is that I completely alter my lifestyle. I woke up at 6:30 this morning – after leaving him standing on the sidewalk at 2 AM – and sat down at my computer. At 11 AM, I will start a daily routine of working out with my friends, John, David and Steve. After today, John and I will start working out at 8 AM. I am ready to get back into shape. I am ready to get back to being healthy.

Another way is that I write about it, as I am doing now. As I have been. I have two projects that I am working on right now and it is like having two roads before me. Both projects are extraordinarily different from each other. While one is more experimental, the other one is based on aspects of this fling. (Word of advice, playboys: Don’t ever screw a writer, she will write about you.)

So, as I sit here, I ask myself: “Which one to take? What story to work on?” Both are worthwhile projects and, somehow, I want to write both. Only thing is that I have to have something ready to show in two or three months time.

So, maybe his lie is a blessing in disguise: Now I have the desire to truly finish what I started.

Let life begin.

2008-01-21T12:36:00.000-08:00

We shed old personalities like a snake sheds skin. There are moments in your life where you realize that you are not the same anymore. That the world has altered. That someone is missing. I see that the color of blue has been taken off my painter’s palette. And blue is my favorite color.

A part of my life has been shut off, as if a light bulb in a room has burned out, and the room has gone black. Minutes may pass before you walk into the room to change the bulb, where you are enveloped immediately by the darkness, but you do bring light back into that part of your life.

And it may take you years to even look at the door, let alone walk into the room.

This brings to mind an installation art piece that I wanted to do in college. Within that room, you are surrounded not only by the darkness, but also every possible emotion. And when the light is replaced, you see the bareness of the room’s interior. The white walls. The lack of paintings, furniture, objects, possessions, life. The starkness of the room seems to neutralize every emotion you had been experiencing moments before. Bright and bare, the room holds nothing.

On the ground is a thinly painted red line that makes a circle. A place that you intuitively know is the safest place to stand in the room. In the house. On the wall to your left are twenty-eight locks that seal a door that does not exist, although there is an eyehole through which you can see people, made of a gray-blue papier-mâché, holding frozen positions outside the walls of the room. On the opposite wall is a doorway that leads into another bleak, dark space. A place you know holds more emotion. A place where you cannot change a light bulb in order to bring light to the space. It is a place without light. It is depression. It is mourning. It is emptiness.

Standing inside these walls, you know you will be able to step out into the World again and live. Maybe not today, but you will. And this room brings up the realization that you cannot go back to the way you were living. Even if it was only yesterday. Life changes without you. Life changes with you. And you must surrender to the change.

Strength to change can burn through you as you do it. It can send razor hot lines of pain through your body as you make the decision to not continue living your life this particular way. You can love the color black - the dark, rich, sensual texture of the color - but decide that this particular black is not something you want. It's not something you can afford to have. And you take it off your painter's palette. And the act is not without pain or love. For you can experience undeniable passion with someone who is not interested in the same thing as you are; however, you get up the strength to tell them that you will not continue this, no matter how good they make you feel, because it is only a momentary, limited act of expression. That, in the end, really means nothing.

And how can you fill your life up with nothing? How can you accept only what is stripped down to the bone? How can you feel completed by someone who gives nothing of himself except his physical self?

People have told me to be careful of what I ask for. But I don’t worry about him changing. It would be foolish – it would be insanity – to think he would. And maybe, knowing this, I can move forward. Knowing he won’t move forward with me.

"Silent under the pressure of the sea” - Amanda L. Wilding

2008-01-18T19:38:00.000-08:00

In a small row boat, in the midst of a vast ocean with no sight of land or other vessels around me, I let the waves rock me back and forth. And I stare at the surrounding blue. Where the light sky meets the darkness of the water. And it is not a graceful meeting between sky and water, but a severe contrast. As severe as emotions can be. Divided, intersected, broken by the crisp line of the horizon. By the suddenness of a passing second that can never be repeated or changed.

Art breathes existence and precious meaning into life. It keeps you rowing. Pushing through pain, disappointment, uncertainty and doubt. Ignoring the fear of tipping over. Into the unknown temperature of the blue water. Where numerous creatures live beneath the rippling surface.

And I jump. And, from one boat to another, I swim. Again and again and again. Sometimes twice in one intense day. Sometimes after the passing of several quiet months. Regardless of how tired I am, I jump. I always do. It is the only way to achieve change in our lives.

Change requires this sort of a jump. Change requires courage and faith. And you do not know how long you may tread water without the reassurance of a life jacket. And you do not know what swims around you. And you do not know when a slightly larger boat may come your way.

But a boat does float past and you lift yourself out of the water with a newfound, unknown strength and climb into the safety of your new vessel. And you wait until it is time to jump out of it again. Because that time will come.

Since I was a young girl, maybe thirteen or so, I have used this metaphor to explain the way I look at my life. And last year has been filled with a series of jumps and tiring days of treading rough water.

These waters have been filled with love affairs, friendships, excesses. The sea ebbs and flows with these moments. The waves rock us back and forth. Causing us to sleep. Or be sick. Last year, my strength to hold on did not stay constant. My pulse raced and slowed. My blood boiled. My tears came in steady, uncontrollable streams. I sobbed last year. I cursed everything I knew. I wished the most terrible things.

Several boats have been filled up with experiences that have forced me to grow. As an individual. A person. A filmmaker. A writer. A woman. A lover. An intellectual. A human being. A soul.

I aged another year. I cut my hair. I went Raw and changed my lifestyle. I started to run. I took up pilates. I broke people’s hearts and shattered their dreams. I gave other people opportunities. I started a company. I have been cheated on. I made love. I have been the player. I have hurt a man. Or two. I have gotten under the skin and buried myself beneath his veins. I have caused him to feel like he is bleeding to death from within. I have not wanted to let him leave. And he hasn’t and he has.

But these are the two most important and significant moments in 2007, as well as in my life: I experienced the beauty of finding ones artistic voice when I made “The Weight of It.” And I experienced the excruciating pain of loosing my best friend, Amanda, on December 10th, 2007.

Above all things, Amanda’s love, friendship, loyalty and the memories I have of our eight years of friendship has opened my eyes to what is important about why I am here. On Earth. In Los Angeles. In the film industry. About why I chose to move 3,000 miles away from my parents, my best friend and my other friends. About why I felt this sort of sacrifice was worth this sort of separation.

And Amanda knew where she wanted to go. We were both going to be successful writers. A few months ago, she reminded me of the time we met and I introduced myself to her: “Hi, I’m Elena. I’m a writer.” And she said she was impressed by my confidence. And I was thoroughly impressed by hers. I was always inspired by her. Of her knowledge about what boat to swim to. Of what direction to go in.

Sometimes our boats would float side by side. We would spend long hours, days, talking about the fears we had about jumping into our work. About our worth. About our abilities. About our talent. About our strength. We were exceptionally alike, her and I, although we took different paths in our lives in regards to our writing careers.

And we both have our enormous insecurities, especially in regards to our work; however, we were growing as artists. As writers. And, like myself, she knew exactly what she was about. And she never apologized for it. She never backed down. She was first and foremost a writer. She is one of the most amazing poets I have ever read.

Next to my parents, Amanda was my biggest fan. And I hers. We read each other’s work constantly. We critiqued and edited each other’s work. Since college, we had the dream of forming a modern day “Bloomsbury Group” and I still can’t imagine her absence in my personal, literary and filmmaking life. We had a mutual admiration society. We were starting a Literary and Arts Magazine together. We were going to make a place for ourselves in the Literary, Art and Film World together.

We were going to do so much more together.

The Raw Food Lifestyle

2007-12-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day doing the Raw Food Lifestyle. So far, there have been a series of hits and misses in regards to food, but I do not feel unhappy about my choice in changing what I eat and drink.

I have spent a great deal of time looking up Living Raw online and have been pleasantly surprised by the number of positive thoughts that surround this way of life. Everyone seems to say, “Do it!”

A few years ago I did a three-week vegetable/juice/protein shake detox that made me feel fabulous and, after it was over, I began a very restricted way of eating that involved eating mainly nuts, seeds, fruit, vegetables, brown rice, and meat. I was walking six miles a day and had a wonderful schedule that involved waking up at 6 A.M. and journaling for a couple hours before I began my work. (I am a writer.) I was writing for about ten hours a day, with two days off a week, which I tried to keep open for strictly fun stuff.

Soon after this lifestyle began – and I call it a lifestyle, not a diet – I was then diagnosed with Celiac Disease, which restricted my diet enormously, and Candida. I went on a stricter diet that involved limiting my fruits, as well as my vegetables…

Well, that lifestyle lasted for quite some time, but I soon got derailed with personal problems and started eating badly this summer… But now I have decided to reclaim my old eating lifestyle, with some major changes to the old regiment. I am going to adopt a 100% Raw Lifestyle that will include eating seeds, nuts, fruits, veggies, and a number of other things, like superfoods. I adore sushi and I do realize that some 100% Raw people eat raw fish, but, with the oceans being as polluted as they are, I question the health benefits of one of my favorite foods.

It’s amazing how important it is to have a streamlined lifestyle in order to be a successful, happy, healthy individual. And I don’t want to use the word “restricted,” because then I am setting myself up for failure. I have so many things that I want to do with my life and I know making sure that I am healthy will help, aid, propel me forward in my work. Our bodies are our vessels, our machines, our temples, and if we don’t take care of it, we will not work the best possible way we can. If you don’t put the good gasoline in your car, it won’t work as well as if you had.

When I was shooting my film in October, I stopped doing Pilates 3 times a week and now I am going to go back to that schedule, as well as start running with Tara T, who is also going (back) on the Raw Food Lifestyle. We will support one another through our journey. We will do it at full speed and not half-assed.

I put the photograph on the top up in order to show me at the beginning of this lifestyle… Stay tuned to see how this decision affects me – physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically – and I will keep you posted on how this decision of mine is working out for me…

Right of Passage

2007-11-14T17:27:00.001-08:00

Experiences involving intensity, creativity, passion, growth... change you. You can blossom, like a Gladiolus, in the sun. And, of course, you can shrivel like an Autumn leaf as winter descends.

Since returning from the North (after I shot my short film) people have commented on how I have changed, especially in my confidence. Even though I have gained more weight than I care to acknowledge, I am happier than I was before we made the film. I am more secure in myself. I believe in my own talent now without any doubt in my abilities. One of the greatest things I heard since in Auburn, California, was my friend, Steve, saying that when he saw me directing, he knew that I couldn’t do anything else with my life. I belonged there. I was a natural. I had an eye. I was in my element.

When I left Los Angeles for that week, I was embarrassed whenever someone learned that I was a “director;” however, upon my return, I feel no shame in calling myself a “Director.” I believe it myself. I know I am supposed to do this. I am not lying to myself about my place in this World. I am not lying to anyone else.

I feel like I have gone out into the wild and slayed the dragon.

It's just the beginning

2007-11-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

Deletion of Old Film Blog

2007-10-11T21:35:00.000-07:00

As some of you might see, I just deleted the blog I had for “The Weight of It,” the short film that I am directing at the end of the month. This doesn’t mean that I am not doing the film, but rather that I wanted to start afresh.

Life lately has been about starting afresh, which sometimes comes when we end things in our lives. Lately, I have been very sidetracked by a variety of things in my life – namely a man – and it has taken my complete and total attention off my short film. And now I say to myself, and to the World, “No more.”

I have to have a list of priorities in my life and my film is number 1 (although family would quickly debunk that statement if there was an emergency.) There is so much going on with this film that I have been forced in the last week to truly focus on it. My life is starting to be controlled by it. My time is spent in front of the computer, with my ear to my phone or sitting at the kitchen table drawing storyboards.

But this is why I moved to Los Angeles. To be in the thick of it.

A Review...

2007-10-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

Since we were in college, I have had the desire to create a literary & arts journal with Amanda and now – with the addition of a couple of our good friends – we have made the first step toward bringing our dream to life with the creation of Black Willow Review.

We have a lot of steps in front of us before launching the Online Literary & Arts Journal next year – we aren’t sure if we are going to shoot for a January 2008 or a Spring 2008 launch – which involves the creation of a website and the submission of “high-quality, broken-out-of-the-mold and burned-the-box work that is accessible, fire-starting, and initiates & documents a new movement in the world of literary and visual arts. We are not interested in one aspect of art, but are drawn to a variety of fields. By bringing together writing, visual art, criticism, interviews and reviews, Black Willow Review strives to put forth a quarterly sampling of literature and art along side a critical and technical view of these crafts. The journal is for the lover and the creator. The artist immersed in this world. And for the person who appreciates their work.”

I know that we have bitten off a great deal, but I think that it’s a mountain that we will be able to climb, because we have each other and we are driven by the project. I am excited by the prospect of finding and bringing together high-quality work! I am excited by being part – as a publisher, an editor, a writer and an artist – of a literary and artistic world filled with people I respect and look up to.

I grew up in an amazing World filled with lecturers and scholars, who would sit around dinner tables and in living rooms discussing art, politics, and religion, amongst other things. And I have always been fascinated by the groups that are formed by the writers, artists, politicians, scholars, and diplomats. People who shaped our World through their words, their art, their knowledge and their actions.

By creating this particular Journal, which we would like to be physical in 2010, I feel that we are doing our part in bringing together art and literature and articles and reviews that might not have found a way together. And in doing this, we are making each other aware of what else is out there.

“Let the line of thought dip deep into the stream…”

2007-09-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

“All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said… and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo… or from the violet-sellers and the match-sellers and the old crones stationed under doorways… Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.”(Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own.”)

I wonder what Virginia Woolf – who is one of my favorite writers – would think of blogs today. I believe that she would be very excited about the availability of this form of expression for women writers everywhere. She had the belief that women needed five hundred pounds a year (in 1929) and a room of one’s own in order to have the freedom to pick up our pens and write.

I am lucky, finally, to have the ability to write full-time. I realize that I am in a wonderful position and am thankful, although it did not come easily. I feel, also, that having two blogs have given me a platform on which I can express myself. Blogs create a constant exercise in writing and thinking and putting your thoughts together. It is so important to write (if you are a writer) or to take photographs (if you are a photographer.) Whatever your dream, your focus, your end all be all, it is important to have the time to devote to it. Too many people do not have the time or money to concentrate on their dream.

Last month I wrote about my love of writing on the silky pages of a good journal. I even took a photograph of some of my lovely bound books. My two blogs – “A Bohemian Girl” and “The Weight of It” – both serve a purpose. One is a scattering of thoughts (which I hope are not ignorant ramblings) and the other one is a chronicle of something that is very important to me.

To Woolf, it didn’t matter if we were poets, fiction writers, or travel writers. She supported the woman’s desire to be a writer. It didn’t matter to her what sort of book you wrote. She even wrote, “Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”(Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”.)

“Let the line of thought dip deep into the stream…” What a fantastic line. What an inspiring thought. I want to inspire, because I want to be inspired in return. I want to be inspired by what happens in another person's presence. By the simplicity of a situation. By a perfect moment. Moments that could have happened yesterday or twenty years ago, but will remain forever fresh in your mind.

I want to record these moments. Things like a conversation between strangers. The colors of Malaysia when it rains. A bird flying through an old barn's rafters that has rays of light slicing through the air that are filled with dust. Sleeping on the top bunk as you take the night train to Saint Petersburg. Sitting on a Vermont mountain side amongst scultpures and tall grass as you take in all the nature around you. The Charles Bridge in Prague at midnight as the rain comes down softly while you walk past police officers and a couple in love with the castle on your right in the distance. Or an attractive man getting up to give you his seat. I could go on forever....

But inspiration should come naturally. There should be no pressure or design. It's in the person's make-up. In their own personal design. In their interest in the World around them. And because of this, they make you want to be the best person you can possibly be. Isnt it wonderful when you turn around and are surprised by inspiration? By a spark? By life? By something you have done! Or seen. Been lucky to have witnessed. Isn't it lovely when you don't have to say a word and the energy flows through you simply because you are sitting beside this person? And they can be a friend, a relative, a lover... Ah, inspiration is addictive... I love to be fueled, inspired, supported by my friends. By my loved ones. By my family. We should charge those around us. Inspire each other to do our best work and be the best people we can be.

Blogs are a form of expression. We are given anonymous free range to express to others who we are, what our thoughts on matters are, what our experiences have been like, what our memories are filled with. It’s a way of connecting to readers, friends, loved ones, strangers… I write in order to inspire. I write in order to keep my mind working. To keep it oiled, if you will. I write, because I have to and there is nothing else I could do. Or, rather, be happy doing.

The Hollywood Forever Cemetery

2007-09-13T15:24:00.000-07:00

These photographs were taken last summer at a Hollywood Forever Cemetery for a screening of Woody Allen's "Manhattan." Every Saturday night, during the summer, a movie is projected upon a mausoleum and hundreds of people sit in the cemetery and watch the movie while they dine on wine, beer and food.

Seven us went that night, including my friend, Mike, who is an amazing musician and composer. He is the base player/producer of Cowboy Robot. He also has his own solo project, Yakuza Zoo.

I usually don't like having my photograph taken, but Tara seems to have snapped some good ones of me, if I say so myself...

Phoenix From The Flame

2007-09-12T00:35:00.001-07:00

I have the desire to make sure my life is secure. That I’m doing things right. That I’m living my life the way I should. I love that feeling of security. Centeredness. Assurance. The knowledge that the path you chose in life is the right one.

Sometimes you get sidetracked and go off on tangents, but how wonderful it is to get back on track. Sometimes you need the time spent smelling the roses on the side of the path. Sometimes you need to slow down your pace or just stop walking/running/sprinting all together. Sometimes you need a distraction.

Lately I’ve been balancing work, my health and my social life pretty well. I don’t feel off track, although I do realize that I am burning the candle at both ends. And I have the burns to prove it. Sometimes you have to burn your candle at both ends. You burn brighter. You burn brightly. And sometimes it is necessary to live this way. It’s like the phoenix rising from the ash. It has to combust in order to move forward.

Inspired By Photographs

2007-09-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

So, I was driving down Melrose Boulevard today on my way home after doing my tenth Pilates session (cause for celebration!) and I looked to my left and saw a sign with a photograph of a woman's legs on it and the words “WESTON at the Getty” beside it. I almost forgot to focus on the road. Edward Weston’s photography is at the Getty!

In 2004, I had a similar reaction driving west down Wilshire Boulevard when passing LACMA. I saw a sign for Diane Arbus’ photography. Again, I almost forgot to focus on the road as I looked up at the photograph and the words "DIANE ARBUS." I think it was a few days later when my friend Leigh called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the exhibit with her and her friend, Kate. I jumped at the chance and we went to LACMA where we spent three hours walking through the different rooms filled with nearly 200 of her most significant work.

I couldn’t believe that I was seeing her work in person. Up close and personal. Not only were there rooms of her photographs, but there was a room (or two) that displayed some of her belongings, like contact sheets, cameras, letters, notebooks, and other writings. I’ve always found artist’s personal objects to be fascinating. A window into their world. A momentary glimpse at their tools, which might tell you a secret if you stand there long enough. Why did she photograph the people she did? Why did she write these words? Why, oh why, did she kill herself in 1971?

For the past six years, I have been working on a story (off and on) about a woman who is a photojournalist and so I started getting very interested in photographers and their lives. I stumbled on a couple very interesting things when I was researching my story.

First off, there is a fantastic War photographer named Lee Miller, who was the assistant and lover of Man Ray. She is one of those fierce women that makes you wonder if you could ever be truly that brave with your own life. There are so many things that I want to do with my life and I think I’m a pretty brave person, but people like Lee Miller make me feel like I am playing it safe… which in many ways I am and in many ways I’m not.

Another photographer and woman that I admire is Deborah Copaken Kogan. She wrote a book called Shutterbabe, which I was absolutely sucked into. I've read her book numerous times and am constantly amazed by the life this woman led. It was poetic, cinematic, raw and filled with color and life and sex and danger.

Reading about these women makes me want to pick up a camera and travel halfway across the World. Reading about these women inspires me to make sure I experience life to the fullest. And maybe I write in order to live out the types of lives these women actually had. Lives that they woke up every day to. Experiences they felt intensely.

But writing allows me to experience many lives, not just one. Writing allows me to be anyone I want to be - woman, man, child - and I don't think I remain at my computer because I'm afraid of what could happen. I think it's more about what I found myself in love with… and what found me… which happens to be a rather safer way to live your life...

Or is it?

New Macbook Photobooth Fun

2007-09-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

So, what do you do?

2007-08-31T16:01:00.000-07:00

It’s been rather hot in Los Angeles the last couple days. On Wednesday – or was is Tuesday? – I decided to join my friend, Steve, at the local coffee shop, although I had the air conditioner on in my apartment. We sat outside drinking iced coffees as he did his crossword puzzle and I sat staring at the Scientology Building. Regardless of the heat, it was a beautiful, sunny day.

To our right, a guy named Michael sat down next to us. First off, I have met this man before and do not like him. He rubs me the wrong way and, within a matter of minutes, he had turned to us and asked, “So what do you do?”

I’m getting tired of this question, because it’s usually means someone is trying to gauge your worth. They may preface the question with “What is your name?” or “I see you here a lot. Do you live in the neighborhood?” But usually by the third or fourth question they are asking “What do you do?”

People love to know what you are about in this city. What car you drive. What part of town you live in. What your apartment looks like. How you make your living. What you’re doing in order to make that living. They like to know where you fit in the grand scheme of Hollywood and what you can possibly do for them.

Steve told him he was an actor, but that he was also in production. And then Michael looked to me, through his sunglasses, and asked me what I do. I wanted to slide through my seat and down to the ground, which would hopefully then swallow me up. I wanted to use my backup answer, “I’m getting my Masters at UCLA in the Geopolitical Strategies of the Former USSR in relation to the US and the UK,” but I didn’t. (That usually shuts them up.)

But I mustered up enough courage to say, “I’m a writer” and Steve quickly added “A very good one.” AH! Shhhh! Not in this town! Why didn’t you say you washed dogs for a living!? But it was too late! Michael asked me what type of films I wrote and when it came out that I wrote “Independent Films,” or one might say “European Art House Films,” he sat back in his chair and with a troubled deep breathe, as if the weight of the World had just sunk on his shoulders, exclaimed, “Yeah, I can’t do that.”

Wait a minute! What? Huh? Hold the phone! Did you actually think that over a cup of coffee that somehow we would create a working relationship? HA! Did he actually think I was sitting there with my fingers crossed hoping that he would make all my troubles go away, pick me up and help me carry my little film towards the light of success?

Another lamprey moment happened to me the night after this. I went into Birds to watch the Boston-Yankees game – such pain! I’m a Boston fan – and this guy sat down next to me and, after much prodding and annoying questions by him, I told him that I was a writer and that I was doing a short film. And by the end of the night, the Idiot had asked me to be his writing partner and gave me free reign to steal his ideas. Pardonnez-moi? Простите мне? Excuse me? What!?

You might have realized here that I'm very private about what I do... And perhaps I also have a wee problem with being secure in what it is I do… I know I’m a good writer, but it’s not something I want to shout from the tippy tops of buildings or on street corners or in restaurants so some producer will take note of me… I’m not like that. I want to do this on my own. I want to be left alone. I want to be independent of what Hollywood symbolizes. I want to sail out on my little ship, with my handpicked crew of fabulous, trustworthy “sailors” and do it my way…

Oh, God help me.

living in Moscow...

2007-08-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

I had a magnificent view of Moscow from my kitchen window. In the mornings, before I headed off to school, I would eat breakfast at our tiny kitchen table and look out over the city. In the distance stood one of “Stalin’s Seven Ugly Sisters,” the Moscow State University, which was surrounded by thousands of old Russian apartment buildings.

The city was always awake and you felt like you were always struggling to move around it. You were always pushing your way through the millions of people that called the city their home. You were always fighting your way onto buses or into packed trains, through crowds of people when you were on foot or through the endless heavy traffic that took up entire boulevards.

It was scorching hot in the summer and freezing in the winter, but nothing changed about the city’s people as dirt – not sand – was put on the roads to melt the snow. People kept moving forward with their lives. When you walked down the sidewalk, you keep your eyes focused in front of you. People rarely smiled and, when you smiled at them, a look of confusion usually spread across their face. It was not the friendliest city. The people were just as hard as their buildings. Walls built up around them as high as the University. But you don't have to wonder why. You understand their apprehension.

There are places that I have been that I desire to return to, but Moscow is not high on that list. I am sure that I will go back one day, but the memories of living there are of painfully cold winter days, dirty city streets and attempting to master a difficult language. There was a darkness to the city. A depression that blanketed everything and everyone. Some mornings you went to school or work before the sun rose and you left after it had set. Other times Russia’s “White Nights” forced you to use your black out curtains in order to sleep, but as you laid in bed as the clock ticked by, you would push the curtain aside and see a brightly lit sky at 2 in the morning.

But there were moments in Moscow that were magical. Near my apartment, at 83 Leninsky Prospect, there was a bakery that I would regularly walk to in order to buy a loaf of Russian black bread and two loaves of white and, by the time I returned to the apartment, one loaf of white would already be half-consumed.

The open air markets of Moscow - Рынок (pronounced renok) - were filled with fruits, vegetables, flowers and other foods. I would go with either my Mother or my nanny - Katherine or Maureen - to the market to get fresh produce and along the way were tables filled with flowers. Young girls that were my age spent weekends selling flowers and other goods along with their fathers, mothers or grandmothers sitting beside them.

There is magic in most places you go. For me, it’s found in the little moments. In my memories. The last day I was in Moscow I spent with my friend, Carrie, and we traveled all over the city. After going to the Kremlin – so I could see St. Basil’s before I left – we went to the Arbat, which was one of Moscow's most famous streets. It is also a place where gypsy children hang out and try to steal your wallets and bags. As you walk down the Arbat, the children come up to you in a group and you spend your time watching your bag, handing out kopeks and trying to get away.

In 1991, Communism fell with the August coup d'etat. After three days, the Soviet Union no longer existed and three men had died on the streets of Moscow. From inside the American Embassy Compound’s walls, I sat looking out at the Government of Russia Building and took photographs of the people walking the streets.

Government of Russia Building taken from the Embassy

American Embassy Compound

Streets of Moscow

People don't realize how close these two buildings were – they were across the street from one another – and you can see from these photographs that the protests over the three nights were very close to the Embassy. People had to be moved from the Government building side of the Embassy and into the gym, because of stray bullets and fighting on the street.

After the coup ended, the people of Moscow took the streets and paid their respects to these three young men by putting flowers at the places they died, as well as in the buses that had been set on fire. Here are some photographs from the day my Mother and I walked the streets…

a long time ago...

2007-08-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

i have a scanner now.....

2007-08-20T12:01:00.001-07:00

So Steve set up my scanner for me and I’ve been going crazy scanning since yesterday. All these fun photographs…

More photographs to come!

the color of life

2007-08-19T22:24:00.000-07:00

My memories of living in Malaysia and Russia are filled with dreamlike recollections. The colors of Malaysia stand out in my mind – the greens, the reds – and my scrapbooks are filled with photographs of me walking down the streets of Singapore, standing amongst statues in Bali, carefully exploring the jungles in Frazier’s Hill and watching monkeys climb trees in the backyard.

I remember my Mother taking these photographs. They are memories that are filled with little treasures, like what it was like to speak with a slight British accent or to always be wary of King Kobras sneaking around in the tall grass.

Everyone has memories that carry with them strong visceral reactions when you close your eyes and think back to specific hours, days, weeks, years... You can have love affairs with cities, with countries, with architecture, with the streets, with people, with moments, with passing conversations.

Lately, I have felt like a caged bird. Confined. Knowing that this trip with Heather is in the near future makes me feel like I am finally let out of my cage and allowed to soar and by no means am I going back in. It gives me a taste of what life could be like if I moved to London or Paris. It gives me hope that life will take on some of the aspects that I miss from my past. It also gives me the fuel to complete my film and to move forward.

What is important is that I must remember not to be tied down by old memories, but instead find things to make into new ones. My youth gave me a taste of what adventure and life is all about. It's my responsibility now to make something of this life.

a shift in plans

2007-08-19T15:49:00.000-07:00

Already things are changing. My friend, Sal, is going to be in Europe at the same time that Heather and I will be there and we plan on meeting up with him in Italy and in Paris.

We’re thinking of staying one more day in London (which would make it four) before heading to Italy (on the 20th.) We had planned on flying into Florence, but we might end up going to Naples and taking a train south to the Amalfi Coast where Sal has found a villa. We would stay there for four days before taking the train up north to Florence or Venice or Trieste for Christmas.

We would really like to spend two or three days in Florence before heading to the south of France. In Paris, Sal, Heather and I are talking about finding an apartment that we can split between the three of us while we see the New Year in!

As for writing during the trip, I am going to get myself a small journal. Moleskin has these great little journals that are made especially for individual cities, which I wish I had had when I was in Prague. They are small and easy to carry; however, I don’t know if I want to carry around three separate books – no matter how small – although it might be a lot of fun to have individual books to bring with me when I return to London or Paris or Florence…

Each city and country is so different from each other that separating journal entries into separate books might be ideal. And each book will allow me to just ramble on in thoughts as we roam through Bloomsbury, walk along the Thames, visit the Tate, and fly into London; as we see the Duomo, view the art in the Galleria Dell’ Accademia, and cross the Arno; as we sit in an Italian villa on the coast; as we ride the trains past the Italian countryside and French towns; as we have coffee in bistros and cafés and dine in restaurants; and sit in parks, walk the cities, drink wine, and mingle with the locals…

And of course, I will have my trusty little camera to document everything I see! (The above photographs were taken in 1996 (Paris and Florence) and 1999 (London.))

trains, planes and backpacking through europe

2007-08-18T18:43:00.000-07:00

Heather and I bought our plane tickets to London today! We are going to London on December 15th and are traveling through Europe until January 5th! The ball has been put in motion. There is no turning back. We went to Borders and bought Lonely Planet guidebooks to London, Florence and Paris! Our rough itinerary is as follows:

Dec 15th – 19th: London
19th – 26th: Italy: Florence, Venice and Trieste
26th – Jan 4th: France: Toulon and Paris
4th: London
5th Fly to Los Angeles

I can’t wait to ride the trains through Italy and France. We plan on flying to Florence from London to save time, but riding the rails through Italy and France will surely be enough train travel to please me! I love riding trains. Always have.

When I was eleven, my parents took me to Switzerland to go skiing while we lived in Moscow. Our train winded around the side of the mountain slowly, giving us time to take in the scene outside our window. Having stopped writing in my notebook, I looked out at fresh, white snow covering everything outside. The tree branches hung low, weighed down by the snow, and the train plowed its way around every corner. I thought to myself that this was one of the most perfect moments in my young life. Right there, I said to my Mother, that I had to return to Switzerland, perhaps live there one day, and ride the train as a respected and established writer.

Soon after the Switzerland trip, I went to St. Petersburg with my parents. As the train sped along, I sat next to the window and wrote in my notebook. I would periodically look out my window at the passing night and would occasionally see the lights of a small town train station go by. We always took the night train whenever we went to St. Petersburg or to Finland. When we went to bed, I was rocked to sleep in the top bunk while my parents slept in the lower two bunks. In the morning, we would be greeted with glasses of hot tea (chai) and again I would find myself seated next to the window and looking out at the passing countryside, now visible in the early morning light. I can only imagine the train trip we will find ourselves on this winter.

Nobel Son

2007-08-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

an ideal day

2007-08-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

I have been skimming the pages of several of my old journals and they’ve been rather inspiring and eye-opening. It’s amazing how you ebb and flow as a human being; how sometimes you’re on top of it and other times you are not; how you can be extremely healthy at some point in your life and anorexic at another; completely nuts at one point and level-headed now.

In my journals, I put down my thoughts, organize my day’s work and research or look over notes. It's an amazing way to get my thoughts out onto the page in order to use them. I love to write in a journal when I am reading a book or in the midst of writing. Many of my character notes on my last film are found throughout the pages. Discussions on religion/spirituality, art, death, suicide, alcoholism, friendship… all themes in the film.

In my 2006 journal, I wrote a lot when I was reading, researching and writing the script. I had a rather wonderful lifestyle, which I am trying to get back into… It's definitely a writer's life. When in the morning, after waking, I’d get up, make myself some tea or coffee and spend some time on the porch writing and reading as the sun just situated itself in the sky. Sometimes I would wake just as the sun was rising and everything is so quiet outside as the World comes alive and it is an amazing moment to work.

I think what is so important is the balance between introspective/introvert work days and extroverted/outgoing days off. A perfect day would be one that has that balance. That if it’s work, it feel genuine and that I’ve given myself space to be free, so I can be serious when necessary.

I am now on a mission for centeredness – in my mind, body and soul – and there are things I have to start doing or going back to - yoga, pilates, meditation, journal writing, hiking up into Bronson Park... But how does one find peace within one self? Do they move to a place they feel they’d be happier? I asked this same question at nineteen and I asked myself if it was through “Taoism? Meditation? Simplicity?” All these things I know have helped me and I have not kept up with for a long time.

Today I went to my Pilates session, where my friend Karina is my instructor, and I feel like practicing Pilates is going to not only work me out and not only help how I carry myself physically, but I think it will support me as I move forward with my life psychologically and emotionally. Everything in life - that you have control over - should support you, motivate you, push you forward and inspire you in some way... It takes a lot to keep the negative out.

There are a string of things that I would like to start doing again, like:

- making yoga an every day part of my life again
- re-learn Russian and French
- take photography classes
- continue going to the gym and start swimming.
- start meditating again.
- hiking up that damn Bronson Park HILL again.

And to start on another foot, I'm gonna get out of the neighborhood for a little while tonight and watch a rather beautiful man perform at the Hotel Café...

Paris Peut-être?

2007-08-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

This December and January, I am venturing back out into the wide European World yet again on another trip. Without knowing who my traveling companion will be – Heather, my Mother or just myself – I do not know exactly what my itinerary will be….

But if I was to go alone, if it was just going to be me, and my decision alone, I would do one of two things: I would either fly into London and spend a week or two there before going to France, OR I would skip London all together and go directly to Paris and spend two to three weeks there and then take a week or so traveling through the South of France. I seem to lean in the direction of the all-France travel plan.

I want to become immersed in Paris. I want to get a taste of the culture, the language, the city, the lifestyle, the experience of being there day after day… I would like to see if I would want to live there, which I have the distinct feeling I would.

But, wait!, you said – just a few posts ago – that you were going to go to London?

Yes, I did, but have you seen the dollar lately and how the pound kills it? I will go broke in London, but Paris is comparable to Los Angeles, I believe.

But, I think, the real question is “What am I looking for?”

Steve had a very interesting point when we were at lunch yesterday. I am a writer. First and foremost, that is what I DO. Everyday. I am doing my short film and am working towards other endeavors and dreams, but what I do best is write. And I am good at it. And I can write from anywhere in the World.

I don’t know if moving away is going to set me back. It might, professionally, but really, honestly, where is it going to set me back to? If I was still working to be an AD, then yes, moving to Europe would hurt my job prospects.

But strangely enough, this is not something that worries me. Maybe it should. But it doesn’t, because I have other things that I want to do with my life besides be mixed up in Hollywood’s grind. There are other ways of doing this, which I have recently witnessed when I was in Prague. Rian was a great inspiration.

I understand people’s belief that you must be in Los Angeles to make something of yourself, but I don’t want to become what Los Angeles creates. I don’t want to do blockbusters. I don’t want to be surrounded by the superficiality of starfuckers and wannabes. I don’t want to be befriended, because someone thinks one of my friends can get them a job.

I want to wake up in the morning, look out my window at my beautiful city, smile to myself and go “I live HERE!” as I turn my computer on and sit down to write.

Again, I’m a romantic. I’ve said it before. And don’t get me wrong. Romanticism doesn’t have to be about lovers, sex and passionate affairs. It can be about the simplicity of a thing, which is expressed so beautifully in Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Great Lover”:

These I have loved:
White plates and cups, clean-gleaming,
Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust;
Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust
Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food…
Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon
Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss
Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is
Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen
Unpassioned beauty of a great machine;
The benison of hot water; furs to touch;
The good smell of old clothes; and other such—
The comfortable smell of friendly fingers,
Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers
About dead leaves and last year's ferns....

And in a couple years, after living somewhere I love, that inspires me, I might have written a couple amazing scripts and I will have something more to move forward with… Life is about moving forward and, although I am moving forward in Los Angeles, I feel, for some reason, motionless, as if it is hard for me to propel myself forward anymore. And I know it is not about my love for the written word – for I love to write – or my desire to see it up on the screen, but a restlessness that comes from the city. From what I feel the city does not give me. I feel like it is an empty calorie. And I only want good food.

I need a place that inspires. I need a place that I love. I need a place that shocks my system. And maybe that is London. And maybe that is Paris. I don't know where I'll be in Septemeber of 2008 right now.

the power of euphoria

2007-08-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

Imagine a room with a closed window that is suddenly thrown open and bright light, clean air, and cool wind come pouring in through it. That is how I feel today. Like a window has been opened.

Although it’s safe to say that I did not get everything I wanted today, I got what I definitely needed and that was support of some amazing friends. What’s important is to keep this momentum up. This movement forward in life towards creation. And I'm addicted to this momentum. This movement. This motion.

People are addicted to a wide variety of things: cigarettes, booze, drugs, shopping, eating, sex, stealing, driving too fast, adrenaline, gambling, work, exercise, caffeine… I personally have my own little obsessions, my own little quirks and my own little addictions. I have six hundred books mind you. We all do things to keep us “high,” in a state of euphoria.

There are a few things in my life, I am learning, that truly get me to that state of pure ecstasy. Literature, film, music, travel and men do that for me. They always have. They always will. And when they all come together it is all the better.

To Draw or Not To Draw...

2007-08-11T15:27:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like the craftsmanship of a firm, leather bound journal. You crack open the pages and you hear the crinkle as they become unstuck. Putting pen to page, you think about what you want to write. To write in such a beautiful journal – like Hemmingway and Greene – you cannot be wasteful with your words. It’s an art form in many ways. You don’t just rip out a page and start afresh. They are expensive books. They are heavy books.

Sketchbooks, journals, and notebooks. These are some of my favorite things.

When I wasn’t writing, I used to also carry a sketchbook around with me and would draw almost daily, filling the books with sketches of my classmates, of my school buildings, copying photographs and pictures in magazines. Kids used to say they didn’t understand me: “You’re in 3 varsity sports, you’re the school artist and we find you reading Shakespeare in a tree!” So, I was the weird kid.

When I was seventeen (when the sketch of the woman was done) I went to Rhode Island School of Design for the Pre-College Summer Program and found myself in paradise. Eight-hour studio classes drawing nude models all day and being surrounded finally by like-mined teenagers was bliss. I never wanted to go back home or to my stuffy prep school. NEVER!

But those days of drawing every day in my sketchbook did end, although I have thought about taking that back up over and over again. It’s therapeutic and I think if you have a natural talent for something, you shouldn’t let it go to waste.

But I guess when you really focus on one thing, like anything, other things get left at the wayside. Things get left behind and you have to figure out how to incorporate those things you love back into your life before you loose them forever. They’re like friends that you don’t want to loose touch with. I guess that’s one reason why art always finds a way into my stories. I have to have it around me. It’s all over my walls. I see it everyday. I read about it. I make sure it surrounds me in my life. It’s in me. I might as well make sure it comes out of me again.

I'm really sick of lemons

2007-08-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

Over the last week, I have glanced occasionally at “A Bohemian Girl” and thought “Is there anything I want to say today?”

No.

OK then.

But today I had something to say… imagine that… which were bits and pieces of thoughts that were being strung together on pieces of paper throughout the week… as well as paragraphs saved in word documents on my computer… since the last time I typed a single word online.

So here it goes…

The Master Cleanse is something you either love or hate, trust or suspect, agree with or oppose vehemently; regardless, people all over the World try the Master Cleanse each year. On Monday, I started the Cleanse in order to cleanse my body of a food allergy, but by the fourth day, I had to stop, because of leg cramps that started on the third day due to Mineral and Vitamin Deficiency. Not fun. I’m proud of myself for going four days, but the way it ended is a real… downer. No other way to put it. And I think the next Cleanse I do will be the old faithful vegetable and fruit smoothie/juice one… Yum!

Anyway, enough of that.

Of course I’ve been thinking about my moving to London, because that’s what’s been keeping this little boat afloat lately in this city of mine. I’m out of steam. I’ve sprung a leak and I have no crew and I’m a one-man army trying to clog this vessel. (That is one reason why I went on the Master Cleanse - to recharge my engine. I do that when I feel it’s been bogged down with too much “Hollywood” and “Life” guck.)

I’ll do it, don’t get me wrong… I always do it. I always find out a way of succeeding and I will get my film done, although a little later than I thought it would be.

So, as I do this on my own, I have been daydreaming about London. I don’t know where I would like to live, although I have looked at apartments (flats) online and have found some places that I could afford, especially if I moved there with my friend, Heather.

However, if she does go, Heather may find herself in Oxford and that would put me in the position to either go to Oxford for a couple years or live in London and visit her on a regular basis. Either way, we could still take vacations with each other and that is where the fun begins.

I think this means I need a vacation and Heather and I have been talking about going to France in the next six months. Maybe. Schedules permitting.

But if I lived in London, the World would be open to me and so would my godparents, who live in: France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, to name a few. I have over 30 godparents who live in 30 countries and they always ask me to come visit them and I have never taken them up on their offers. But now that I would be in their neck of the woods, it would be stupid not to… (It was stupid not to before, I know. But I have visited most of them, so don’t shoot me!)

Onto something that has been bothering me…

Most of my friends have been very supportive about my decision to move to London. My Mother is actually very excited about it and said, “It’s a wonderful goal to have, my dear.”

However, one of my closest friends is rather unenthusiastic about my decision. I mean, what’s the purpose of saying, “Sure, you’re moving to London… It’s a stupid idea”… What? Excuse me?

Why do people feel the need to rain on my parade?

Saturday night, as we sat at La Poubelle, she immediately started criticizing me: “You’ve had this plan before. Weren’t you going to move there last October? You didn’t.”

No, I didn’t. I chose to stay in LA and follow my dream, but NOW, as it gets realized, I’ve decided there’s no reason to wait. I gave myself the “by 30” deadline and I’ll be hitting it in 1 1/2 years.

“You’re throwing everything away! You have connections here. You have a film that people love and want to make! You’re just quitting! And moving to London is not going to make things better. It’s not going to fix anything. You’re running away from what you want to do.”

I want to live in a place that gets me excited. I want to step out my front door and think “WOW. I live HERE.”

“It’s not going to stay that way. You’ll become jaded there. It’s not always going to be Wow. Life isn’t like that.”

Jaime is wow’d by Prague every day!?

“No place is going to wow you every day.”

When I lived in Malaysia, I was wow’d everyday.

“Uh! I can’t talk to you!”

Life is too short to not be in a place that you love. And every day I am here, I realize that more and more.

There are moments that make you appreciate Los Angeles. As I drove Heather home last night, she was so happy to be back in LA. She said: “Hello, my lovely city. I know people say you’re a whore… And maybe you are… But I love you.”

I will miss these moments, but it’s not enough to keep me here. And that’s what counts.

April 12th to April 18th Prague Journal Entries

2007-08-02T20:55:00.000-07:00

So, I've decided to go back in time. Just a little jump back to April of 2007 when I went to the Czech Republic for eleven days. For a brief moment, I tried to keep a journal while I was in Prague; however, I found myself enjoying my time there far too much to write. (Note: This is a two part journal entry and my April 10th Entry is posted before this one, so you might want to read that one first.)

April 12th, 2007

So, life is on hold for I am in the Czech Republic, which is quite far away from Los Angeles. I have left so much behind me. I don’t want to go back. Not yet. Not now. Not today.

I feel that life is also beginning anew. That a chapter has been finished and life is starting a fresh, like spring. Oh life, what do you have in store for me? Will I be ready to go back to Los Angeles on the 18th? What is it that makes me want to return? I have a short film that I want to do… Part of me feels like eleven days is not enough. I wish I could rent a flat here and stay for a month or even longer. I like that idea: going somewhere and renting a place for a couple months while I explore, write… And part of me likes the idea of living here in the future.

Prague is so beautiful. It is a magical wonderland. I’ve written to Mother and some friends. I love it here. I’m a bit nervous to be on my own in Prague (as I am now) but I like the city’s vibe very, very much. I think I’m going to get a phone while I am here. To be in contact with Tara and Jaime.

Here are some photographs from that day:

April 13th, 2007

I was walking down an archway and realized that there was a couple behind me. Quickly I stepped to my right and let them pass while taking my camera out and snapped a photograph of them.

April 14th, 2007

Reading the entries before this, I know that it was a good idea to come to Prague, because I feel re-energized.

Jaime, Jack and I walked up to Petrin Hill to met everyone. We had seen Tara the night before with her boyfriend, Steve, and their friend, Rian, who are here to shoot Rian’s movie, “Brother’s Bloom.” I was excited to see Miss. Tara, who is the instigator of this trip; the author; the reason why I ever flew across the Altantic on a whim. “I’ll be there. Why don’t we meet up?”

And boy was it a whim. I remember sitting in the Pig as we looked at plane tickets online for her. We started talking about how much fun it would be if I met up with her. I thought, “Oh, I don’t know. Would everyone be weirded out if I showed up? I only know Jaime…’

But it was fun just talking about it, but then she said, “Well, are you going to buy a ticket? You should fly British Airways. I am.” I thought about it for a couple days. Should I jump on a plane and go to Prague? I thought about going for a week, while Tara was there, but then I decided if I was to go that I’d extend my stay to eleven. I hoped Jaime would be alright with it, which she was when I asked. I have a place to stay. I have the money for the ticket. What was stopping me?

Fear.

But I picked up my cell, called up my Mother’s travel agent and got a good deal on a flight. Bam! I had my ticket in a matter of minutes. I was going to Prague. Holy cow! (However, I might just purchase the ticket myself next time, unless I do a combination of flights.)

Jaime, Jack and I met up with Tara and the crew up on top of Petrin Hill. We all took out our cameras and started taking photographs of the hillside - beautiful white flowered trees peppering the hill with a devastatingly beautiful view of Prague and the Castle. One of the most beautiful views I’ve seen in a long time.

The View From On Top of Petrin Hill

When the film changed locations, Tara and I left Petrin Hill. We took the “trolley” – it’s not really a Trolley, but some space like ride – down the hill and walked past a statue that Jaime had pointed out to me the other day. Not knowing its name, I dubbed it the “Freedom from Communism” statue. (I seem to remember that Jaime said it was called something like that.)

It’s beautiful and affects me differently than most tourists, who have never lived in a Communist Country. If you have any experience with Communism, you’ll be affected. What affected me so much about the statues was that it shows a man walking OUT of Communism. As he moves forward, he becomes more and more of a whole human being. The last man is half a man, while the man upfront is whole. Stunning!

"Freedom From Communism"

Close up of Man

Thursday we spent all day at the Charles Bridge while they shot and Tara and I snuck into the Old Town Square on several occasions. We found a health food store in one of the alleys and would periodically return to it for food. That night a group of us went to a fabulous restaurant called Pravda. It was a wonderful night out. There was a table of maybe ten of us and we sat around laughing and talking and were just in a jolly good mood.

Old Town Square

Yesterday, Tara and I hung around Wenceslas Square (Vaclavski Namesti) and Old Town Square. On my way to meet her, I took the tram from Jaime and Jack's flat to the metro. I had to change from, I think, the yellow to the green line in order to get off at "Museum" stop. Unsure of exactly where I was going, I saw an older woman standing by what I thought was the train going to "Museum." So I decided to approach her and ask her directions... This is how it went, sort of...

- "Dobrý den." I said and I could tell immediately that she knew I was a foreigner. Although my Russian accent is quite good, it did not help me in Praha.

- "Dobrý den." She said with a smile.

- I pointed to the train, or rather in the direction of where the train would be pulling up to let passengers on, and said "Museum, yo?"

- "Yo." She nodded. Great I was at the right spot!

- "Děkuji." I said and nervously walked a couple feet away in order to wait for the train.

Although that conversation was made up of six little words, I did it all in CZECH! Ha!

So, as I floated on my "I spoke six words of Czech and asked for directions" cloud, Tara and I roamed around the Vaclavski Namesti and found our way to Kafka's house, which is in Old Town Square. Not much to see in there sadly.

Looking at Jaime and Jack’s Prague Travel book, I’ve covered the majority of the bases. Maybe I should walk around and take pictures.

April 18th, 2007

I spent yesterday walking through Josofov with Jaron, the 2nd Unit Director of Photography. Great guy! We saw the Spanish Synagogue – where I started to cry, because it was just that beautiful. I was in Josfov ten years ago, when I traveled to Europe with my parents – and remember it quite well. It is, by far, my favorite part of Praha.

Josofov Street

Met up with Kevin and Jessica. We made our way back into the Old Town Square where we went to the Mucha and Dali exhibits. The arwork was placed in different rooms of what could have been someone's large apartment. I wish I had a photograph of the view from one of the rooms overlooking the square as the sun came down over the darker of the two churches.

Afterwards, Wade, Jaron and I had drinks in Vysherad as the sun set over Prague and then he had Thai with a group of people from the film…

Sunset from Vysherad

A photograph I had to take. It was like he was begging me to take it.

I do love Prague. While they were shooting at the Hotel Praha yesterday, I had a talk with Kevin, who said something very inspiring: Watching Rian do his film inspired Kevin to follow his filmmaking dream. As I thought about what Kevin had said, a strong feeling came over me. I am not truly happy in Los Angeles. I want to be somewhere that makes me as happy as Prague makes Jaime. I want to wake up excited about where I live.

But something else Kevin said made an impact as well. Rian was following his dream. We were witnessing his dream come true, after all his hard work. Rian inspired me through example. And so, standing on the back patio of the Hotel Praha, I picked up my phone and called my Mother and told her that I had made the big decision to move to New York or London in 1 to 2 years. When I told Jaron, he said to do it in 1 1/2 years and to make a date… which would be September 1, 2008.

You have to believe in yourself. I have to stop questioning and wondering and worrying and just know that it will be beautiful and good.

April 10th Prague Journal Entry

2007-08-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

April 10, 2007

I have successfully removed myself from my life in Los Angeles. I am in Prague. Can you hear the sigh of relief? Exhale.

Vysherad is beautiful. Jaime and I parted ways an hour ago – she had to go teach one of her classes – and I am sitting in Vysherad Fortress, having just gone into the gothic church and through a famous cemetery that has only artists buried in it. I loved walking through the cemetary, looking at all the writers, composers, artists. I saw Dvorak's grave.

Picture of a sculpture in the Vysherad park

I always have the distinct feeling that I am going to get lost – very lost – but that also happens in my own backyard, which is part of the excitement of traveling. You may, and probably will, get lost. Very lost. But I love it when you realize that you are actually getting to know the city. As you walk down the same twists and turns of some back street over and over again, in whatever city you’re in, you are hit by the realization that YOU know your way around. You remember how to get to your destination. You’re getting to know the city!

I was walking to the Bohemian Bagel in the Old Town Square – great ex-pat restaurant with Internet – and a girl walked up to me and asked me if I knew where the Bohemian Bagel was. First off, I’m a quarter Bohemian – hence the blog title – which means my family is from Bohemia, which used to be a country that was made up of a part of the Czech Republic and part of Austria. My Father was also Russian, so I do look really Slovak. Like I might even belong here?

Anyway, the girl came up to me and asked if I knew where the restaurant was. I smiled and said, “I’m on my way there. I’ll take you.”

She was flabbergasted and we introduced ourselves. “My name’s Elena,” I said, holding out my right hand.

She smiled and, shaking my hand, said: “Me, too.”

Imagine that! Two American girls. In Prague. On their way to check their e-mail at the Bohemian Bagel. And we’re both named Elena.

Side note: I’m not the type of American that makes a beeline for the American Restaurant in a foreign country. I’m actually quite the opposite, but my computer was not hooking up to the Internet and I needed to check my e-mail. And I had already tried to check my e-mail at three different cafés before this encounter...

We walked to the restaurant and checked our e-mails. Well, she was actually signing up for classes at Boston University. Again! BU. I told her I had lived in Beacon Hill for three years while I finished up my degree at Emerson College. I had gone to Denison University for the first two years, but nearly went insane in the conservative Ohio town of Granville. I quickly moved back home to Newport, Rhode Island, for 6 months and then started back at College in January.

[Break from writing… cue Elevator music.]

So, I have left Vysherad and I am sitting in another Internet café, waiting for Jaime to finish her second class of the day. I just smiled at the waiter and said “Dobre Den. ” (Hello in Czech and strangely enough nearly the same in Russian. But that doesn't help, since the two languages are rather different and no one likes Russians here. Again, thank goodness I am a quarter Bohemian.)

Anyway, I just ordered my latte (with regular milk, oh my) and here I am writing again. Right now, I am doing fabulously… I am loving Prague. It is of course sooo very beautiful. There are parts of the city that I do remember from my trip here ten years ago, but most of the time it is like I've never been here. Jamie, Jack and I spent yesterday walking around the city taking pictures. We went to the Charles Bridge and parts of Old Town and had coffee in a couple different cafes and wound up going to see the movie "300" in a cinema here. I can’t believe I saw “300” in PRAGUE!

Picture of a picturesque street in gorgeous Prague

Jaime and Jack are in such a beautiful flat here and I have a lovely little bed to sleep on... I was very, very tired after walking around the city from about 11 am to 6 pm yesterday. I am sleeping on two lovely little comfy mattresses that are piled on top of each other. And I have a nice comforter and a pillow. I am very, very comfortable at night. They live in a loft. With hardwood floors. And a beautiful view of the tops of buildings and a big hill – Petrin Hill – that I guess is part of a park that we've walked past a couple times.

It's good to see my friend Jamie. I guess you could safely say that she is an ex-pat. I have an ex-pat friend... How very, very interesting... Also, story wise... Being here makes me think of a film I wanted to write and shoot in London (when I’m a little older than I am now) that I've been throwing around in my head for almost twelve years. This city makes me think and dream.

Think and dream. What a wonderful feeling. To be somewhere that makes me inspired. I wonder how I can keep that feeling going… It’s like I need a constant change of environment to ignite this feeling. It’s like needing a fix. I could move to London and I’d have a great jump off place to travel from and if (or when) I want to settle down for a period of time, take a break if you will, I can just go back to London… How do I do THAT?

Jaime is in love with Prague, so I am happy that she found some place that she is in love with and happy everyday to be in... She is thrilled here and has been here two years, but it's like each day is her first... "Isn't this a beautiful place to live?" every morning... She walks out the door and says "Oh shut up, stupid Prague" as the puffy white clouds quickly move through the clearest blue sky... and she beams. She beams with happiness here.

I want to beam with happiness.

The Life Worth Living: Deadline for London – September, 2008

2007-07-31T13:53:00.000-07:00

My friend, Steve, is driving to Colorado from Texas right now. He’s on the road at this very moment and I’ve spoken to him several times already on the phone today – he’s bored and I’m hyper – but as we talk he’s occasionally exclaims: “Wow, that’s beautiful.”

Life makes unexpected twists and turns when you least expect it. It’s like driving down a highway – a 100 mile straight shot – and all of a sudden you find yourself winding through a forest in the mountains. Or you see something you have to stop and take pictures of – a dilapidated red barn, a lake that stretches on for miles… What was once a boring, repetitive drive through a barren monotone wasteland becomes a trip where it’s hard to keep your eyes on the road.

I have been driving in this one direction for several years – almost six in Los Angeles – trying to make something of myself. And I am fine with this fight to become a filmmaker. I am not tired of that, but what I am tired of is not being invigorated by my surroundings.

Jaime is in love with Prague. She adores her adopted city. Every day she says things like, “Look at this place! God, it’s ugly, isn’t it? I hate Prague. Hate it.” And she adorably stands there, smiling ear to ear, surrounded by beautiful architecture that she sees every day when she walks out her front door. She’s completely IN LOVE with her city and everything it entails.

Life is too short to not love the place you’re in. I want my life to be filled with the urge to take your eyes off of the road ahead of you. I’m going to be thirty soon and my tolerance for the unimportant, the uninteresting, and the unremarkable – in things, places and especially people (although I do have wonderful friends here) – is beginning to weaken. My patience is wearing thin.

What re-kindled that spark in me that almost made me move to London last October? I had written an e-mail to Gary, who is now back in his home in France, and I wrote this:

“So I'm terribly jealous of you right now, because I know you are probably sitting in some wonderful French villa in your beautiful town enjoying a glorious day. And if it's raining, it's still perfect compared to LA.”

What I got in return inspired me greatly: “Yeah, life is good here right now. Makes me wonder why someone like you hasn't ever found her way to London? Seems like it would be more your style, and there’s a film business there as well.”

Well, it is definitely more my style... Do I really have an excuse – besides the shitty American dollar, no working visa, no way to make a living and my battle for a film career – for not moving there?

I can’t help, but think of that annoying voice that has been repeating the same old tired record in my head since college:

“Hey. You want to live in London. You have since you were ten. What if you die tomorrow? Could you live with yourself? Would you feel that life had disappointed you? Did YOU disappoint yourself? You think about your amazing childhood all the time. You compare your present life with the memories of being overseas all the time. It eats away at you. You want the Life Worth Living. You ache to experience life to the fullest! But, dear girl, you won’t be able to do it while you are in Los Angeles, let alone America. Instead, you’ve stayed in a city that made you jaded, discontented and bored. Good job, kid.”

When I was in London last, in 1999, I would walk around the city by myself, visiting the theatres, museums, restaurants and pubs, and the biggest complement I received was “Excuse me. I’m lost. How do I get to…” I was the most comfortable I have ever been in London.

So, today, I spoke to my friend, Heather, about how I want to move to London and she said she was toying with applying to a PhD program there. And that was it. She said she’ll apply and, if she got in, we would move there together. Next fall…

Regardless of whether or not she makes it to London, I am going to go. I will be almost thirty – the age I said I would finally move, regardless of what I’m doing, to London – and it will be the perfect time to make the leap.

JUMP!

Literacy and Longing in LA

2007-07-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

The other day I went to Amoeba with Maggie and got not only The Double Life of Veronique, BUT ALSO The Decalogue and the box set of Kieslowski’s other films, which include The Scar, Blind Chance, No End, Camera Buff, A Short Film about Love and A Short Film about Killing. I’m actually tickled pink that I now have all Kieslowski’s films. This man is easily my favorite director, while Zhang Yimou isn't too far behind him! Raise the Red Lantern anyone?

Kieslowski’s Trois Couleurs Trilogy – Blue, White and Red – are my favorite films of all-time. Red is my favorite of the three, but Blue comes in close second. I know that most people say that Blue is their favorite and why wouldn’t they. The talented, beautiful Juliette Binoche and Kieslowski’s use of color, cinematography and music – the surges of music with the intense use of the color blue throughout the film rips you apart –make it a masterpiece!

However, there is something romantic about Red that made me love it the most. The way in which one character symbolizes another, the near misses and the way in which characters dance around one another completely draws me into the film time and time again. Over the last ten years, it has never gotten old. None of them have. Each time I sit down to watch these films is like the first time.

I love introducing people to these films. I think I am going to have a Blue, White and Red marathon in the next couple weeks and invite a small group of friends over to watch them on my rather tiny television. (I have a TV, but it is only there for DVDs. I do not have it hooked up to any channels. I do not have Cable.)

Instead, I have surrounded myself with books. I grew up with a library in my house and one in my Father's den. My parents pushed reading and there were a number of sleepless night spent reading until the sun came up. My Mother would then allow me to skip school, because I hadn't gotten any rest. My best friend in Boston, Amanda, and I are both buyers of books. We are obsessed. I am reading a book right now called “Literacy and Longing in LA” – some unusual light reading for me – that states this perfectly: “Women do different things when they’re depressed. Some smoke, others drink, some call their therapists, some eat… I do what I have always done – go off on a book bender.”

What I love about “Literacy and Longing in LA” (a novel by Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack) are the literary references to not only books I personally love – in one paragraph she mentions Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The End of the Affair, Wuthering Heights, and A Farewell to Arms – but books that I am now making a list of to read. I’m always looking for something amazing to discover.

At twenty-eight-years-old, Amanda and I both have pretty extensive libraries in our apartments. Our friendship was founded on our long talks about our favorite novels or non-fiction indulgences. We sometimes read the same book together, like when we tackled Anna Karenina when we were at Emerson College. When we met, Amanda and I immediately liked each other. We realized we had found someone else who shared not only an obsession with books and the written word, but who was also striving to become a writer. We are each other’s biggest fan. She is an amazing poet and short story writer. Her poetry sends you back against the wall.

Last time I counted I have more than SIX HUNDRED books in my office. Some of which (nearly two hundred of them) came from my Father’s den library back in our house in Newport, Rhode Island. After he died in 2005, we sold the house and Mother moved to Florida. I went into his library, which had a wall of books – thousands of them – and I picked out the books that I wanted to keep before the Naval War College came in and took the rest of the books away.

My Father had been many things in his life. A 4-tour of duty Vietnam Veteran, a UN Peace Keeper in Jerusalem, one of the Consultants to the Shaw in Iran in ‘78, and a diplomat in Malaysia and Russia, as well as a student and a teacher at the Naval War College. He never got his PhD, but he did have three Masters degrees. One was in International Relations, I think. Over the years, he had created a magnificent library of military and historical books from which he taught his classes or from which he got inspiration for his lectures. He had actually lectured a few years before he died at Oxford University in England.

Although I am far from being depressed like Dora in “Literacy and Longing in LA,” I do find reading, like watching films, to be a wonderful get away. Especially during this time in my life when all I really want to do is sublet my apartment, postpone my film, fly to France and “get to know” Paris and the countryside in a two to three month courtship. I want to court Paris. Date her. Have a love affair with the city.

I want to do that one country at a time. Maybe after France, I will go to Italy or Germany or Ireland. I have a story that I want to write that partially takes place in Malaysia and, for the last three years, I have wanted (intended) to go back to my childhood city and get to know the country again. While there I would also travel to Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Bali, Borneo, and maybe even travel up to China and Japan. Spend a couple months traveling throughout the area.

Before I take this trip, I will start learning French again - Berlitz course? - and inhale books about France, about Paris, about particular historical and artistic figures and books that are written by French writers, as well as “visitors of the area,” ex-pats, etc. On my trip to Prague, I stayed with my friend, Jamie, and her boyfriend, Jack, who are both ex-pats (from America and England, respectively) living in the Czech Republic teaching English. This was the ideal set-up (for me at least.) I got to stay at a friend’s apartment, have that base, and explore the city on my own. I would love to do that again and again all over the World. But I guess once you set-up a “basecamp,” rent an apartment or a room, you might feel more comfortable about your stability, although the instability of travel is also enticing.

When I do travel next, I will create my own travel book of odd, obscure information that only I would appreciate and “follow” a somewhat loosely planned agenda, but be excited about the unknown of traveling in a country, possibly alone… I like the idea of going to France by myself, but then again, I might change my mind as the date approaches. It is also a dream of mine to travel the World with someone special. It brings a whole other element to the trip when you can share it with someone else.

New chapter in my book of life…

2007-07-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I walked into the open-aired courtyard of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and was immediately seduced by the site before me. Several hundred people of all ages – but mainly in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties – milled about with wine and beer in hand while music – rock and electronic – played, sending the music up into the night sky. An open walkway was a floor above me where people stood sipping their beverages and talking with each other while waiting for the free rock concert to start. (We were there to hear Sea Wolf and Midnight Movies, now easily one of my new favorite bands!)

This sight brought back childhood memories of my backyard of my house in Kuala Lumpor, Malaysia, when my parents had cocktail parties. Strangely enough, we had a guesthouse that was not connected to the main house, but was up on four “stilts,” and from the second floor of the house to the guesthouse was a bridge connecting the two buildings.

And I remember – at five years old – standing barefoot in the damp grass with torches ablaze around me and frogs jumping over my bare feet. My two best friends, British sisters named Samantha and Emma, and I had tried to catch the frogs with our hands while we wore pretty silk and satin party dresses. Dozens of party guests walked around me as I looked up and saw a man talking with a woman on the bridge. I stared up at the bridge. They were in silhouette, but it was one of the most romantic moments of my childhood, if not my life.

My life is filled with those moments. They have been both rather simple situations, as well as the most hair-raising periods of my life. I remember standing in a bell tower in an old barn that had been built by one of the Vanderbilts in Vermont with my ex-boyfriend and silently watching tiny birds flying amongst the beams while light filtered in through windows, highlighting the dust particles in the air.

And I remember – when I was twelve – my apartment building in Moscow, Russia, shaking while I walked to the balcony with my Father to find what seemed like an endless line of tanks rolling down our street towards the center of the city in August of 1991.

I AM A ROMANTIC. There I said it. I love moments in your life when you have to stop and look around you and the only thing you can muster is a quiet, under your breathe, “WOW.” I love the moments you feel like something magical is happening. I felt that way a couple months ago when I flew to Prague to visit my friend Jamie while our friends were shooting a film. It was the first time I traveled overseas, on a whim, ALONE. It was the first time I took hold of a city and discovered it alone. It was the first time I felt free in a long time and when I came back to Los Angeles, I had a carefree attitude. I could do anything. Accomplish anything. And I was unbelievably happy.

With Maggie beside me, I stood smiling at the sight before me last night. Although it is a rather simple, ordinary event in LA, it made me think about my past and, in turn, my future. I could say that it feels like life has slowed down in comparison to my childhood and so my life’s ambition – renewed by a meeting two men two weeks ago – is to fill my life now with special moments, experiences, people.

I met two men, who are friends named Scott and Gary, in the last two weeks who both fueled my desire to enrich my life. Scott's obsession with travel re-ignited my own obsession that had been born in me when I was a child. Gary, who has recently moved to the south of France, is a symbol of what I need to do. I need to live overseas. And soon! I almost moved to London in October 2006 and had a trip planned in March 2006 to look for an apartment (or flat) to rent, but the plummeting American dollar made me change my mind and I remain in Los Angeles…

After visiting Prague in mid-May, I itch even more to hop on a plane, forget the film I’m directing and fly overseas. For the last two years, I have been fixating on the idea of going to France. I want to go to Paris and visit family friends and get to know the city over a number of weeks. Then I would either rent a car or take a train to the south of France where I would visit my godfather, Gerard, in Toulon.

When I left Prague after my two-week stay, I was nearly in tears as I got in the cab at five in the morning to get to the airport. That night, at midnight, I had left a restaurant called Pravda that was near Josefov – my favorite part of Prague – and walked alone through the Old Town Square in order to get back to my friends’ apartment. As I left the restaurant, I said “adieu” to my newfound friends, and it began to drizzle. I walked by myself through the city and over the Charles Bridge as the rain started to come down heavier. I was getting soaked, but I did not care. I had a smile stretching from ear to ear as I walked the bridge with the Castle lit up in the distance. Czech police officers and lovers walked past me.

Prague. One of the most beautiful cities in the World. (See photographs from the trip on my Flickr.)

I need to fill my life with my favorite things – film, literature, music, and travel – and I must find those things here. I know what I want to do with my life and so I must start to live it now, in LA, with the intention of moving to Europe in the near future.

New chapter in my book of life…