NEW PROJECT

Check it out! I’m starting a new blog:

foodrulesforreals.blogspot.com


Earlier in the year, I mentioned that at the end of January, this blog would go into retirement – or at least hibernation – while I started working on a brand-new project.

Well, I meant to start talking about my super-exciting plans about two weeks ago, and meant to start the new project last week. So, it’s about time I talk.

Basically: I’m going to follow the food rules outlined in Michael Pollan’s titular book TO THE LETTER for the next forty days.

Why forty days? Why now? As many of you may have connected the dots: last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, and we’re now in the season of Lent.

Let me say first that, despite taking place over Lent, this is NOT a religious project and this blog will NOT be about God. This will probably be the last time I mention God, except maybe in some vague or abstract musings about the nature of the world or the human condition. I’ve never really been able to quit that. But as far as my own spirituality goes, I am a faithful person. My relationship to the idea of God is a strange, aching, personal path. “Personal,” being a key word. I don’t like to talk about my faith and I certainly don’t like to shove it in anybody’s face.

But, that being said, no matter where I seem to end up on my road to God, Lent – a religious staple of my childhood – has always been a beloved and spiritually enlivening time of the year. I am a big believer in the spirituality of sacrifice, no matter what your faith, and the awareness gratitude, and mindful restraint in cultivates. I always get excited about Lent. I think of it as a time for growth, reflection, and big ideas.

This year, I have a really big idea. For a long time, I’ve been toying with the idea of pulling off a somewhat ambitious Lenten sacrifice: to give up all processed food. I love this idea in theory, but in practice it gets a little muddy. What exactly constitutes “processed food”? The Cheetos in the pantry definitely fall under the category and the apple in my crisper definitely does not. But what about my hummus from the grocery store? Is THAT processed? And if so, what sort of floodgate does that open up? Is my yogurt processed? That loaf of wheat bread?

If I were to do this, I realized, I would need to sit down and write down the rules. I’d need a whole list of comprehensive and carefully considered rules. It was an overwhelming task.

Then what should fall into my lap but a book by Michael Pollan called “Food Rules.” 83 lovingly developed, well thought-out rules about how to eat a balanced diet and escape processed food in the modern Western world. Exactly the guide I needed.

It all started to come together. Observe all 83 rules for 40 days, and focus on (roughly) two specific rules a day. It was perfect. And, what’s more, it would be a fantastic adventure to write about and share.

The scope of Pollan’s rules make this a pretty terrifying undertaking, and I’m pretty sure I’m clinically insane for doing it, but at least it’ll be fun to share the insanity. I’m looking forward to writing about all my discoveries and inevitable disasters.

The new address is:


foodrulesforreals.blogspot.com

I hope you follow me. I’m a little scared. But excited. But scared.

Making the World a Little Bit Better (Or: Leigh Is a Huge Sucker)

I'm about to do something that I usually don't do on this blog: I'm going to make a personal plea.

Here's the deal. Because I just don't think it's enough to be working at Farm and Table and volunteering for BikeABQ and freelancing as a writer, I ALSO have a day job making phone calls for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. It's great, because even though it's exhausting and sometimes frustrating to make phone calls all day, at the end of it I can go home feeling good about myself and satisfied with how I've spent my time.

Except that... I don't.

Every day I talk to literally hundreds of people about all these kids who are suffering from neuromuscular diseases. Everyday I tell these people how important it is that we fund medical research and help pay for costly medical equipment and send these kids to summer camp so that they can have the experience of getting out and playing like normal kid. Everyday I tell them how much we need them to fundraise with us and help raise money for this wonderful cause.

Well, ironically, after spending my days convincing precious few how important their support is, I've managed to accidentally convince myself.

I'm an artist. I've asked for money for a lot of projects and given money to many more because I honestly believe that the work I'm supporting is, in its own way, making the world a better place.

This is making the world a better place, too. It's two sides of the same vital coin.

My feathers are also a little ruffled because everyday I listen to CEO's, business owners, lawyers - people in, let's just say, a much better position than anyone I know down here in the trenches tell me they don't have enough time, they don't know enough people, $1600 is a lot of money to raise.

It is a lot of money to raise, I want to tell them, but I've seen it done time and time again. If it's IMPORTANT, you will FIND the money. You will FIND the time. I know, because, guys, we always find the money.

These kids need so much, and it takes so little of us to give it. I'm pretty sure only maybe five people follow this blog, but if all five of you give just $6, we've gotten one kid their flu shot. And if all of you can give $15, well, we can fund fifteen minutes of research.

If you click right here, you can get to a Kickstarter-type page where you can donate right online. It's so easy, and any little bit is appreciated.

It's not a project, but it's the reason why we do our projects in the first place. And I would appreciate your help.

And here's the link again, in case you missed in the first time.

Thanks, guys.

Further On Food: My New Job

Until recently, I've been sort of at a loss as to what to do with my love of food and my investment in making and eating food more mindfully. I love to cook, but don't want to go to culinary school, I like the idea of gardening but I don't know how - in large part because I have the world's blackest thumb. Seriously. Once my friend Monica, permaculturalist extraordinaire, brought me some plants for my apartment. "Don't worry," she said. "These are my hardiest plants. It's impossible to kill them." Guess what? Uh-huh. I've also been reading about different peoples' adventures in urban farming, which has been a lot of fun but when it comes to personal application, well, let's just wait until I have a backyard and can grow a tomato before we start thinking about chickens.

Enter a project that somehow combines all these wonderful things and more that I believe are the most important things in the world: local food, sustainable growth, and a focus on art, culture, and community. Farm & Table restaurant, opening March 1st.

I happened to see Farm & Table's ad the Tricklock Revolutions program while I was enjoying the festival last month. I needed a job and - as we all know - I have the experience, so I decided to call them up and see if they still needed waitstaff. They did, and Cherie, the owner, asked me to come down and talk to her about the restaurant and the possibility of working there.

I have to admit, when I traveled out to the North Valley to meet with Cherie for the first time, I was on the fence about the possibility of working there. On one hand, I had been unemployed for a while and this seemed like a business that was in line with my interests. On the other, I didn't want to wait tables. I left New York with the hope that I would never have to wait tables again - that I would finally have the chance to do something that I could see a future in.

I wasn't sure what I would say to Cherie, but after she finished talking about what Farm & Table was about, how it had originated, and where she saw the business going, all I had to say was, "Yes! YES YES YES. I am IN."

Farm and Table sits on a 10-acre piece of land with a farm from which as much of the restaurant's food as possible will come. Everything that doesn't come from the farm itself will come from sources so local, you'll know exactly how it got to your plate. Greens from the South Valley. Grass-fed beef from Las Cruces. And there's an atmosphere of education: the staff will know exactly where everything on the menu is from and so will the guests.

And what excites me most: a huge focus on community art and culture. There are already community events in the works for March and the restaurant is hung with works by a local painter. There are plans for arts outreach and on-site workshops for things like cheese-making or composting. If I were to create or become involved in a business that brought together all the things that I feel most passionately about, I have to admit it would look a lot like this. I'm looking forward to immersing myself in it, observing and learning as much as possible. I want to work in the garden, in the kitchen, on the floor, everywhere.

I'm especially interested in being involved with the community-outreach arm of this spectacular project. I hope to get involved with creating and coordinating events for the restaurant, and assist with the drive to reach out and connect with other individuals and organizations in Albuquerque devoted to arts and culture. And, as usual, I'm especially interested in using digital media to connect with the community in innovative ways. The website already has a blog and a Facebook page - hopefully at some point I'll have a chance to grow and evolve our online network. Ultimately, I want to help make Farm & Table the mainstay for the community and culture that I think it wants to and will be. I'm not sure what my role here is meant to be, but I'm excited to discover it and be a part of it in whatever way I can be.

Things That I Love III: Social Media (After Susan G. Komen)

On January 31st, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it would halt grants to Planned Parenthood.

I know this because on the 31st my Facebook page was saturated with the news. In the next three days links to news, criticism, petitions, clever photos, and other calls to action poured in. It seemed every day dozens more friends had signed on to register their disapproval.

By February 3rd, Komen had caved, issuing an apology and a new statement that Planned Parenthood would be eligible for grants from the foundation.

I love Planned Parenthood. Those who know me know that I feel like Planned Parenthood helped me at a time when I was having a lot of health issues and was too poor to pay for any of it. I was frustrated, scared, and didn't know what to do. I feel like I owe Planned Parenthood a lot. I feel like they sort of saved me.

But that's not what I want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about the various political agendas that motivated Komen's decision and then its reversal. You have mine now, if you're curious, but that's not the point.

The point is that after just three days after the initial announcement, Susan G. Komen backed off after a "deluge of outrage online."

It is amazing and inspiring that so many people were able to organize so quickly and affect real change in the world.

Stories like these remind me why I am so passionate and curious about social media - why I keep reading about it and think about it and talking about it and experimenting with it. I imagine without social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, this is how the whole Komen thing would have went down:

-On January 31st, Susan G. Komen announces its decision. Maybe I read about it in the New York Times, but let's face it: probably not. I really only skim everything that's not the theater section.

-Later that week, somebody says to me, "Hey, did you hear Susan G. Komen pulled its funding from Parenthood?" I say, "WHAT?!? That's BS. I'm not buying any more of that pink crap."

-October, breast cancer awareness month, comes around eight months later and I buy some pink crap.

Instead:

-Someone posted the news and I shared it.
-Someone commented in protest and I liked it.
-Someone gave a link to a petition and I signed it.

And three days later, the decision was reversed.

Since the moment of its inception, it has struck me what a wildly powerful tool social media is; it has the potential to connect and organize massive groups of people on a scale that has never, ever been possible before.

Actually, it wasn't at the inception of social media that I got so excited. I actually remember the moment. It was that group - do you remember it? - that upstart kid who started a group on Facebook about seven years ago called, "For Every Member of This Group I Will Donate A Dollar To Darfur." This was before you could post a link, way before you could share somebody else's status - it might have even been before the newsfeed. But somehow, this kid's page went viral and, if he was true to his word, relief in Darfur got a ton of money.

And it occurred to me: my god, look at all these people, all these 250,000 members (yes, that was viral back in the day) who have come together so easily to do real good for the people of Darfur just because it was as simple as clicking a button.

How many other millions of people, in how many other ways, can technology like this unite? The potential was - and still is - limitless and unprecedented.

Of course, as anyone who's been on social media for more than five minutes knows, it's really not as simple as a click of a button. I know from experience that it's about as difficult to make something go viral as it is easy. This Planned Parenthood scandal raced across the internet - as did the protests agains the controversial SOPA and PIPA bills earlier in the month, and both campaigns were met with incredible success. But for every SOPA, how many other dozens of good and necessary causes, organizations and people that deserve our attention fall through the cracks?

The first thing I did after realizing social media's potential was to form a group that would be dedicated to seeing plays that were written, directed or produced by women on a regular basis to support female artists with our pocketbooks as well as just with advocacy. Six people joined. It never really got off the ground.

Meanwhile, seven years later, Works by Women is a group that is using another social tool, Meetup.com, to do exactly what I had attempted with much greater success.

It takes a strange mix of expertise, charisma, dedication and luck to use social media well. I want to discover what that mix is and make it work for me. That's why I love social media.

The Volunteering Blues

On Tuesday of this week, I showed up to BikeABQ's first meeting of 2012, with no idea what to expect.

Volunteering for the advocacy group has been slow-going so far. Soon after volunteering my services, I was teased with the vague prospect of an event at a new coffee shop that I could "help organize." But it seems that the event will be much smaller than initially anticipated, and, in any case, very far in the indeterminate future.

Beyond that, it's been pretty minimal. A board member enlisted my help writing the invitation to the meeting, and I offered to show up a little early beforehand to help her set up. I got there about half an hour before the meeting's "refreshment hour" was supposed to begin, to discover that most of the set-up had already been finished. I poured some Chex Mix into a bowl, and then stood around awkwardly, unsure of what to do next.

After a while, I was joined by a woman who looked very nice and extremely cool as she rocked a vibrant orange sweater and some fabulous heeled boots. We discussed enthusiastically a beautiful, vintage-looking turquoise bike in the corner, and then fell silent. I shifted from foot to foot, unsure of what to say or what exactly my place there was. Did we really need two people to watch over a pretty self-explanatory refreshment table? I grasped for suitable conversation topics; in my desperation I talked way too much about how much my bike needed a tune-up.

At the meeting itself, I didn't fare much better. Besides the young woman in the orange sweater, I met one other person who seemed close enough to my age to relate to; most of the members were older men. Well, that's okay. I didn't exactly join the group to make friends... although I had kind of hoped. More frustrating, though, was how little I felt I was able to contribute to the meeting. I stayed almost entirely silent while the members around me discussed strategy and logistics for upcoming events.

It may sound odd to feel discouraged for not practically running a meeting for a group I hardly know anything about yet, but it highlights a particularly frustrating trait I see in myself. When I'm given very specific instructions, I work hard. When initiate a project, or am otherwise ostensibly In Charge, I have no problem assuming responsibility. But it's that grey area in between, that area where, to assume responsibility you simply have to find it and take it, that I become mousy and fade into the background. I second-guess myself. I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. I wonder if I'm stepping on other peoples' toes.

But I don't WANT to fade into the background with this group. I joined this group to try something new. To really help. I worry that I'll end up going to monthly meetings, sitting quietly in the back, and leaving equally quietly.

I volunteered enthusiastically for the next big fundraiser, a mysterious event called a Bike Swap, which I'm sure I'll be learning more about in the weeks and months to come. In the meantime, I wish I could do more. To be perfectly honest, a big part of my intention when it comes to volunteering is to cultivate skills and experience while doing something that I care about. That's not going to happen if I'm in the back folding sweaters because I can't think of how else to help.

I want to be somebody capable of grabbing that responsibility and holding on tight; I want to be a leader. I think the best thing I can do is to use this experience as an Opportunity for Growth, and to discover new ways to step outside of my comfort zone. The trouble is, I'm still hazy on how, specifically, to take that step.

What about you? Have you ever had trouble taking on greater responsibility? What did you do?

Things I Love, Part II: Food

One night, not long before I moved to Albuquerque, I cooked a sort of goodbye feast for me and my ex-boyfriend. The meal was made from the spoils of a day up on Arthur Ave, and contained unnecessarily excessive riches in the form of cheesy breadsticks, pasta, sausage and heavy cream. By the end, we were both stuffed, but I still wanted the chocolate I had bought for dessert.

"Not me," said Andrew. "I'm too full."

"Well, I'm going to have some," I said. "Sometimes I think I'd really excel as a competitive eater."

"Yeah," Andrew agreed.

"HEY!" I said, "You're not supposed to agree with me! That is NOT a good boyfriend response!"

"What?" he asked. "I love you, but do you want me to lie to you? Do you want me to tell you that the other night you didn't eat an order of cheese fries, a bacon-wrapped chili-cheese dog, three sliders, and another order of fries?"

My response? "In my defense, it was only two sliders."

Okay, yeah, I really love food.

I love eating food, I love cooking food, I love watching food on TV, I love talking about food. I loved waiting tables for a surprisingly long time, partly because I like talking to people but partly, I suspect, because I love food.

A number of people have suggested that I become a chef, or at least go to culinary school. I cannot state emphatically enough that I DO. NOT. WANT. THAT. I love cooking; it makes me very, very happy, and I don't want to turn it into something that doesn't. Cooking is an art, and if there's one thing I've learned about making art on a serious or competitive level, it's that you have to cultivate a willingness to hate yourself a lot. Pursuing something that requires such a high level of passion and self-expression is always going to be a love-hate relationship. And right now, my relationship to cooking is love-love.

Besides, I don't just love food, I'm interested in it.

Here's what I mean. When I was thirteen, I became a vegetarian. Back then, I wore my little thirteen-year-old heart on my thirteen-year-old sleeve, and I couldn't bear to think of all the living beings that were dying just so I could enjoy my Chickent McNuggets. Fast-forward seven years later: I'm twenty, I'm overweight, I'm lethargic, and I want a change. I've tried changing my diet and eating healthier before, but with little success. I have a sinking feeling I know what I have to do. I start eating meat again on a trial basis. And I immediately feel better, more alert, and more energetic. So, dilemma: do I sacrifice my morals or my health?

Over the years, as I grew and evolved, so did, obviously, my relationship to vegetarianism. Although I still cared - and care - about the well-being of all living creatures, the choice had become less about poor Wilbur and more about the spiritual and environmental consequences of eating meat without thought. We as a society just consume - just destroy and consume, and we don't really understand or appreciate how much we consume and destroy, because we've created system where we don't have to be aware of it and we don't have to give anything back in return for what we take. We just take, and we don't give back. It throws the whole system out of balance and that imbalance must certainly be destructive both to the world around us and to our own spirits. So far, my response to a system that I had observed to be broken had been to remove myself from it as entirely as possible. But didn't it make as much or better sense to try to bring balance back to the system by being a part of it? By being appreciative and aware within it, and attempting to give back as much as I took?

Okay, I thought. I'll eat meat again, but only if I do so respectfully and mindfully, and only if I accept the sacrifice that's been made for me, by sacrificing of my own time or money or whatever else I can to give back.

Friends, let me tell you: easier said than done. In the entire time that I lived in NYC I almost never found myself with sufficient time or funds to consume as mindfully as I wanted. I soothed myself by saying I was making up for it by having no car and living (through little choice of my own) incredibly austerely. But it's never felt like enough, and perhaps it never will feel like enough, and so I continue every day to strive toward honoring that promise.

That promise, coupled with my deep love of food, has made me increasingly obsessed with things like small farming, local and seasonal food, sustainable, organic practices and basically anything else that moves us away from the huge, corporate monoculture that is stripping our country's resources bare. It's something that I believe is vitally important, mentally, physically, spiritually, and environmentally. And, while I hope I've always been a conscious consumer, I've never had the time and money to give the cause the attention I know it needs to have.

And now... well, at least I have the time, and that's somewhere to start.

An Impromptu Jam Session Is Worth A Thousand Tweets.

(Or: Lessons That Should Have Been Fairly Obvious, But Somehow Weren't.)

The lesson? Get off your ass and go out and talk to people.

I've been spending a lot of quality time with a cup of coffee since I got back to here. That is, I spend most of my days plunked in front of my computer screen with my beloved caffeinated beverage, searching for jobs, writing query letters, and cruising the internet for people, places, and things to do in Albuquerque that might appeal to me - might get me closer to my goal of following my passion.

But Googling "Cool stuff in Albuquerque," and all the permutations thereof is not going to get me the answer I'm looking for.

Getting out is gonna do that. Talking to people. Getting to know this city.

This seems to be a fairly obvious truth, and yet I cling to my keyboard with bony little white knuckles. Why? I think a part of it is due to the success I had extending my community through Twitter and blogging last year in New York. But the key word there is extending. Not building from scratch, which is what I'm doing here. I already knew the New York theatre community when I jumped in online; I already had a good idea of the people I wanted to talk to, the things I wanted to do and see.

But you can't become a part of a place by reading about it. You can't understand a community by asking Google. Obviously.

This facepalm-truth hit me with its full force this past Tuesday night, when I crawled away from the bright, calming light of my computer screen long enough to attend the kick-off party for Tricklock Company's Revolutions Theater Festival - an international theater festival that, while I WAS excited about it before Tuesday, I don't know why I wasn't jumping up and down and gnawing at my knuckles to stifle high-pitched squeals about it. Well anyway, I am now. It looks awesome.

The very moment I got to the party, I opened the festival's event calendar and learned something all of my furious searches across the internet had kept from me. A new restaurant is opening next month - a kind of business that looks right up my alley. I made a point to call the owner the next day and learned more about it: it really is exactly everything that I'm passionate about. Organic food sourced completely locally, much of it from the very farm it sits on. A focus on community and culture, complete with events and workshops on site. Collaboration and support of local artists and musicians. Oh lord. It's actually overwhelming how awesome this place seems. But more on that later.

I also ran into my very first mentor, the person who first got me hopelessly, irrevocably addicted to theater when he cast my 12-year-old self as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was a thrill to see him again, an even bigger one to see the look on his face at seeing me and an incredible ego-boost to hear him immediately say, "I want you to audition for me!" Why, little old me? Act? Oh, you flatter me, sir.

Even better: I told him I'd love to audition for him, but I'd love even more to assistant director. How delightful would it be to AD for my first and most beloved mentor?

But this isn't about networking, or making connections, or even about theater at all. It's about actually taking action to be a part of something. Being at the party, hearing about the shows in the festivals from so many of the people involved, got me excited about theater in a way I haven't felt since moving here. It made me excited in a way I haven't felt since moving here, period, really.

The night was tough. I won't lie. I felt stiff and awkward for most of the evening, knowing very little of the people in the room, and even less what to say. But there were some introductions, and a few fleeting moments of real, genuine, lovely conversation, and I feel happy knowing that now, next time I see those people, maybe I WILL know what to say.

The night ended with a house party and a little impromptu jam session. Me, despite 8 years of piano lessons, I don't have a musical bone in my body. But I sat and watched, and don't think I enjoyed the evening less for it. And even if only for a fleeting second, even if only on the periphery, it made me feel like a part of a community.

New Year's Evaluation: Where Is This Going, Anyway?

It's a new year and a new slate, and I'm starting it out the traditional way - with a look back at this blog over the past year, and some subsequent thoughts about the future.

The year started out strong for Scenes in the City; the blog really hit its stride around the spring of this year. But, as my own future became unclear, so did my blog.

As I'm sure it's plain to see, managing my poor little Scenes in the City has been rough going over the past few months. Understandable, I suppose, since - as I mentioned before - neither the "Scenes" nor the "City" part necessarily applies anymore. And, with whatever vague structure this blog once had ripped from underneath it, it's been difficult to stay focused. I can't decide why I'm blogging at all, let alone what I'm blogging about.

The purpose of continuing to write here was to track my transition from city girl to hometown soul, as I worked toward discovering new projects and passions and, hopefully, eventually, finding a new project with its own focus and structure.

It sounded good in theory, but in practice I can't really figure out how to not feel like I'm just saying, "I don't know what I'm doooooooing!!!" over and over again. Which is 1) boring and redundant, and 2) whiny and obnoxious.

Conclusion: I need to tighten it up and wrap it up.

So here's the plan for the new year:

1. Happily, I think I actually DO idea for a new project that I think will lend itself perfectly to a blog. It's going to be a big switch from this here clunker because the project is going to be very focused and very finite. And also, I think, very fun. I'm really excited about it. I'll talk more about it as it gets closer.

2. HOWEVER, all that doesn't start until March, and in the meantime, I want to make the most out of this time and this space. I'm still very much exploring my passions and persuasions, and seeing where that takes me. So, until the end of February, you're going to see more of that. A real honest and focused exploration of what it means to approach life with a blank slate and an open heart.

Oh my dear, lovely blog, my little-blog-that-could, I love you so. You've given me so much since we started up, but I'm afraid our time together is quickly drawing to a close. Don't cry, though, dear. It's for the best. We've grown together, learned together, and, when we finally part ways, we'll have a true and hard-fought understanding of where to go from here.

Well, at least I will. You probably won't, because, you know. You're a blog.

Things That I Love: Biking

Biking?

Of all things, biking is a new and altogether unexpected discovery. When I decided, upon returning to Albuquerque, to ride my bike everywhere in an effort to save 1) money, 2) the environment, and 3) myself from my terrible driving skills, I didn't expect to hate it, but I certainly didn't expect to love it so completely.

Space is expansive on a bike; there is so much more space than you would ever think possible in a car or crowded subway. And it's so quiet. No radio, no voices, no incessant chatter of your own thoughts. On a bike, you only think of two things: where you are, and where you are going. There's a peace, a simplicity, a communion with oneself. On a bike I feel wholly myself and wholly my own.

But it's not just a communion with oneself, it's also a communion with place. I'm grateful for all the moments I've spent on my bike for how intimately it's allowed me to reacquaint myself with my hometown. I don't just get around the city, I see it. I see every dip in the road, every blade of grass poking out from the asphalt. I see every house, every storefront, every park I pass. I see the other bikers, the people on the sidewalks and those in their cars. I feel a part of this city, not just something moving through it. The first time I stepped on stage, I felt at once utterly alone in the universe and completely connected to everything in it. This is sort of like that.

A little over a year ago, a boy I used to work with was hit by a car and killed. I've dealt with death before; maybe it was that he was so young like me, or living so far away from home like me, but ever since I saw that boy lying in his coffin, I've felt the knowledge of death bearing down behind me. I go about my business - nothing has changed, really - but I always feel it, it's always there. On my bike, though, I'm not afraid of death anymore. I would be okay, somehow, if these were my last moments. Strong and active and proud of my commitment to myself and my world.

It also occurs to me how many problems would be solved if we all just biked everywhere. The obesity epidemic, for one, oil dependency, climate change, and, based on my own experiences, maybe even depression.

Is it just me? Or is this really important? It feels important.

So I've contacted BikeABQ the local advocacy and education outreach group. No, there's no paying job in it and it's not where I intuitively feel comfortable spending my time while unemployed. But that's the point.

I offered to volunteer in any capacity needed, but especially event-planning and marketing and communication because of my theater experience. The organization emailed me back immediately and said they could definitely use my expertise as an event planner. It's the first time someone has said they have use for my particular experience and skill-set in a long, long time.

And it felt so good.

Why Breaking Dawn Is the Worst Movie Ever

I'm taking an immediate break from my new task to find what I love to do in order to tell you why Breaking Dawn was the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life.

That is not a hyperbole.

Watching it, I kept thinking, I can say with absolute confidence that this is THE worst movie I have ever seen. And I've seen all the other Twilight movies. No, seriously, there is nothing right about this movie.

And let's just talk about the problems with the movie. Let's not go into my problems with the source material. Let's not re-hash the fact that Bella is basically THE WORST ROLE MODEL EVER for adolescent girls because not only does she seem to have no interests, ideas or identity beyond her sparkly boyfriend, but she actually ceases to be able to function when he's not around and repeatedly puts herself IN MORTAL PERIL just to hear his voice. Or how annoyed I get that she acts so superior to her classmates and all their silly, childish thoughts and interests when, in fact, they are the ones who seem to be living healthy, active, grounded lives. Or how impossibly frustrated I become when I think about the fact that this book is lauded as having a positive message for teenage girls just because it promotes abstinence until marriage, completely overlooking all the other poor decisions it glorifies, like getting married at 18; obsessive, co-dependent relationships; and, oh, I don't know, WILLING TO DIE FOR A BOY. I mean, SERIOUSLY people, she wants to sacrifice her identity, her life and her SOUL to be with Edward. And this is a good thing? We're supposed to LIKE this girl?

Oh, whoops. I guess I did end up talking about it. Sometimes I start ranting about Twilight and I just can't stop.

Anyway, back to the movie, which could have been four short, expository scenes:

SCENE 1
Bella and Edward get married.

SCENE 2
Bella and Edward go on their honeymoon. They have hot, if slightly kinky, sexy-time.

SCENE 3
Bella finds out she is pregnant, possibly with a scary demon baby. Everybody worries.

SCENE 4
Bella gives birth to aforementioned scary demon baby, and subsequently becomes a vampire.

Done and done. If you're wondering how they stretched these scenes out into an excruciatingly long two hours, save your money, cause I'm about to tell you.

Let's start with scene one.

Bella and Edward Get Married.
She walks down the aisle, they look lovingly at each other, they say I do. THE END. This is EXPOSITION, folks. This is SET-UP. THIS IS NOT PLOT. And yet, it takes up maybe the first third of the movie.

Because we have to have a detailed reaction to the wedding invitation from every single person that Bella or Edward has ever met ever. (Relatedly: if you happened to be betting on how long it takes Taylor Lautner to shed his shirt, if you guessed longer than two seconds, you totally lost.) And we get a weird wedding nightmare where Bella finds herself atop a pile of her bloody, mutilated friends and family. Why? Don't know. The idea that Bella's loved ones are in danger never ever factors into the movie again. Not even vaguely. Though it does explain the otherwise completely inexplicable look of panic/indigestion that Kristen Stewart sports throughout her walk down the aisle and basically the entire rest of the movie.

Everyone else, go about your business for a sec. Grab a snack. Check your email. I need a quick word just with K-Stew. Kristen. Listen. You are ALLOWED to have more than one expression. In fact, I would say it's ADVISABLE. It's not good acting if you always looked distressed. Especially if you're supposed to be ecstatically happy. Shhh. Trust me.

Okay, everyone, you can return. Back to the wedding: we also get (most unbearably of all) an impossibly long, overwrought walk down the aisle, punctuated by long, overwrought stares at each other - which mean that they're in love - underscored by an overwrought, emo/hipster soundtrack. All of which culminates in a kiss where (originally) everyone watching disappears, and is SO long (and tongue-y) it made me feel awkward not only for myself, but for every fictional person in attendance at that fictional wedding.

This is pretty much the entire movie

The long, overwrought, entirely unnecessary pauses between every line of dialogue and deep, meaningful looks that I can only assume are supposed to communicate the deep emotion that Bella and Edward feel continues as...

Bella and Edward Go On Their Honeymoon
First of all, I have NEVER seen anybody look so pissed off to unexpectedly be on vacation in Rio. Seriously, Kristen. It's not bad acting to smile once in a while.

Second of all, I can almost forgive unbelievably drawn out staring and sighing and plaintive music here because at least it's kind of sexy. Except before we get to anything even remotely resembling sexy-time, we get what feels like LIFETIMES of them staring at each other, and then staring at the house, and then staring at each other some more, and then staring at the bed, and then staring at each other some more. And this is AFTER the taxi ride during which they stare at each other, and then stare pensively out the window, and then stare at each other some more, until they get to the boat in which they...

You get the point.

Additionally, after a night of enjoyable, if rough, passion, Edward decides that he will never touch Bella again, even though she's literally begging for sex. "Last night was the most amazing night of my life," Bella says at one point. "Why don't you believe that?" Hmm, I don't know, Bella, maybe it's because you only have ONE EXPRESSION and you currently look like you're about to puke.

But Edward is having none of it; he can't risk hurting her as she is SUCH delicate flower, unable to make decisions or assess risks on her own. I'd be annoyed at the chauvinism here, except, Edward, I can't say I blame you - Bella hasn't exactly asserted herself as a strong or independent woman.

So, anyway, you say a drawn-out, overwrought chess-playing montage can't be done? I say nay! Because it happens here, and we don't even get the sexy to make it palatable.

(Oh, and PS, maybe it's just the Sarah Lawrence feminist coming out of me, but I find the entire idea of sex and sexuality in this movie to be almost offensively patriarchal. "Last night was the most amazing night of my life"? Please. Why is (first-time!) sex by its strictest heterosexual definition so A) important and B) earth-shatteringly, life-changingly ah-maz-ing? I'm pretty sure they could have reached some sort of compromise, if-ya-know-what-I-mean, that in reality Bella would have probably found more satisfying. And also? I find it hypocritical and gross that despite (or perhaps because of) its message of abstinence, sex is treated as this be-all, end-all of relationships, the holy grail of two people being together. It's such a disgusting exemplification of the simultaneously overly-puritanical and over-sexed society we live in.)

... Sorry.

Anyway, eventually...

Bella Finds Out She's Pregnant, Possibly with a Demon Baby. Everybody Worries.
This scene comprises the bulk of the movie, and can basically be boiled down to the following: everyone in the world gathers around Bella because she is So Special, and commence stroking her face and looking concerned about her.

That's it.

Okay, Jacob and his band of werewolves briefly pop up. And, to be fair, Jacob occasionally surfaced in the previous two scenes as well, largely to repeat the some variation of the line: "I'm worried about Bella's safety and wish I could kill Edward." In scene three, he accidentally sics his werewolves on Bella (oops!), but then he goes over to warn everybody, and they invite him into their circle of face-stroking and concerned looks.

Again: that's it.

Bella Gives Birth to Aforementioned Scary Demon Baby, and Subsequently Becomes a Vampire.
You'd think this part would be exciting, because the demon baby (which is not actually a demon baby at all, snooze) breaks her back and then Edward eats it out of her stomach.

You'd think.

But no, this part of the story is shot from Bella's point of view who, in true Twilight fashion, blacks out during the most interesting part.

The werewolves come to kill Bella too, which you'd also think would get interesting, but right as the fight starts to heat up, Jacob comes out and tells them they all have to leave and they just do.

Seriously?? Has anybody involved with this project ever even read a story? Do you not know how this works?

So anyway, that's that. The movies pretty much over at this point, except for the part where it's really not at all. Bella is basically dead and Edward has... injected vampire venom into her heart? Um, sure, okay. The point is, WE ALL KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING. DOES ANYBODY NOT SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING?

And yet, before Bella can turn into a vampire and the movie can end, we need at least ten minutes of Edward looking sad, and Jacob looking angry, and back to Edward trying to save her again, and back to Jacob looking sad. And then a weird CSI-inspired sequence of the vampire venom inside Bella's body, and then more of Edward looking sad, and Jacob looking angry, and Edward trying to save her, and Jacob looking sad and oh my sweet lord we all know that Bella is going to turn into a vampire please for the love of god just make it happen. Look, I'm not a playwright, but I'm pretty sure it's not suspense if everybody knows what's going to happen.

And then, when you think you just can't handle it any longer, then and only then do Bella's eyes open all red and vampire-like and the worst movie in the entire world is finally over.

What Next?

Something I read while meandering the interwebs struck me recently. I thought it was from this poster, but I guess I'm reading/latching on to way more inspirational garble than I realized. Anyway, the sentiment that struck me was something along the lines of, "Do what you love and the money will follow."

I suppose it makes since that a thought like that would stand out to me, as I've been back in New Mexico for about a month and a half, and did not expect to be jobless and adrift for so long. (Being jobless and adrift is why I left New York, people!) So you could say I am currently deeply ingrained in the process of figuring out how to make the money follow and, if we're being totally honest, what exactly I love in the first place.

Upon reflection, here's what I think: if I had read this in New York, I would have been angry, because doing what I want to do without working about the money was a luxury I simply didn't have. I wished I had it a million times over, every time I saw an internship I couldn't apply for, a volunteer opportunity I couldn't make time for, a class I couldn't take. And now I do have that luxury. Having that luxury is a big part of why, at almost 30, I moved back in with my parents.

So why am I worrying so much about getting a job?

With that in mind, I've been thinking about things that I could do, would do, if I weren't worried about making money. It's time to change my attitude. Full speed ahead.

Rose in Harlem

Look up and just a little to the left. Unless you’re reading this from an RSS feed (in which case, hey, thanks for adding me) you’re going to see a little picture of a yellow rose winding out of a city window. This icon is my avatar for both my blog and my Twitter feed. I love this icon. Until a few weeks ago, I didn’t think I would ever want to change it.

The picture itself was snapped by me back in 2006. My roommate (one of four of us, squeezed into a little apartment up on 145th) had brought the plant back from work one day, a heavy, green, sickly thing. She told us it was a rose “bush,” although from the wilted sight of it, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. She was determined to nurse the tiny plant back to health; I predicted it would finish dying by the end of the week. But my roommate was gentle and attentive: she pruned back its dying leaves, repotted it, gave it food and water and what little light our alley-facing kitchen could afford. Within a few months it became a sturdy stalk, waxy, thorny and altogether definitely resembling the plant from which roses grow. Still, despite its metamorphosis, I could not have been more surprised the day I saw a little yellow bud appear on the stalk, a bud which proceeded to bloom, expand, and wind itself across our window.

The image of a little yellow rose bud blooming against all odds has been a powerful symbol for the life I persevered toward in New York. It is to me, a sign of hope – the possibility of life, of beauty, even through the smog and sulfur of that impossible city. The visible proof of what enough care and dedication can do.

When I started thinking about my move back to Albuquerque, I thought briefly about retiring the icon, wondering if the “rose in Harlem,” image really made sense anymore. But its depiction of hope and my wish to find and nurture beauty even in unlikely places still held true. So, so far, it’s stayed.

There’s another reason, though, that I chose to let a picture of a rose represent me online. I’ve always liked the idea that my face is more or less invisible to the general virtual public. When I first started working as a director in New York City, I found that my biggest handicap when it came to finding work was my youth. Not my inexperience, my youth. People didn’t even want to talk to me. They didn’t want to get to know me long enough to find out how inexperienced I was. My face told them all they needed to know. I went through a phase where I made a deliberate effort to “dress like a 30-year-old,” (whatever that meant) under the wisdom that one should dress for the job she wants, not the job she has. People ten years older than me were getting the jobs I wanted, I thought logically, so I should dress ten years older than I am.

That was a long time ago; I was barely past 20 then, now I’m nearing 30 for real. But I still have a very young face, and a very soft, girlish look. When I started talking to other artists online, I sort of relished the idea that I would be judged solely for my ideas and not for the way I look. Nobody would be able to say to me, “You’re too young, too cutesy, too blonde to contribute to this conversation.”

But I’m not in New York anymore, nor desperately seeking theater work. I’m looking for new kinds of work now. I want to find the community; I want to find and nurture the beautiful local arts, business, and culture we have here. And I’d like to write, really. I’d like to turn this blogging, which I’ve enjoyed so much, into something more.

And I’m new here. Maybe it’s a good idea to put a face to a name. That way, I might see somebody on the street or at a party and they’ll say, “Hey, I know you. You’ve got that amazing blog I’ve been reading. Here, have a job.”

…

It will happen exactly like that.

In any case, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a help or a hindrance to have my face a tiny bit obscured. And I’m wondering if it’s worth it to part with my beloved rose.

What do you think? Are you ever judged, correctly or incorrectly, on the way that you look? Have you ever hidden your face (or put it everywhere) as a strategic move?

It Is What It Is.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter whether New York was a toxic prison or spiritual haven or both.  It's New York.  It simply is.

One of my favorite books is the Time Traveler's Wife (trust me, it's nothing like the Nicholas Sparks knock-off the movie makes it out to be).  In it, the two lovers, Clare and Henry are madly and passionately devoted to one another.  But I remember thinking that despite their purity of their love, the two seemed incapable of doing anything but making the other inadvertently miserable.  You can't help but wonder, as you read the book, if perhaps they both wouldn't have been better off if they had just never gotten involved with one another.  But then you have to ask yourself, when would they have made that choice?  Because of the circularity of his time travel, when Henry meets Clare for the first time, she's already in love with him.  And when she meets him as a child, he's already married to her.  There really was no beginning to their love.  They love each other because they've always loved each other. 

Likewise, there's no qualifying my love of New York City.  It simply is.  I asked myself for a long time, "Why do I love this place so much?  Why do I stay here?"  It's dirty and it's loud, it's expensive and it's hard.  And though there are a lot of answers you can give to that question - the theater, the museums, the food, the people - none of them were strong enough reasons to explain why I was there.  And then I realized: I love New York because I've always loved New York. 

For a long time, I thought fell in love with the after a vacation with my family when I was 12.  It was only a 2-day trip, but it seemed like every day I lived in the interim, from age 12 to age 18, was spent with a yearning and determination to get back to New York City.

So when I finally came to New York for college, I was already in love.  I loved the city because I could remember being knocked breathless by it as an adolescent, so many years ago.  But I think, when I fell so hard the first time I visited, it was because I could already see myself there.  I could imagine my life in New York City, working and struggling and making and seeing amazing art because I was compelled - because there was nothing greater. 

I love New York now because I can remember myself then, at 12, loving it so much.  But I loved it at 12 because I could see myself now, at 27 still loving the city, still bound to it.  There is no beginning and no end to my love of New York.  It's always existed.  It simply is.  

Closing Doors

On Saturday, September 25th, I shut the door and switched off the lights for the very last time in the place I've called my home for the past four and a half years.

After we left, Andrew and I stood on my roof quietly for a moment, watching the lights of Harlem twinkle in through the dark patches created from the neighborhood's newly-constructed high-rise condos. 

My roof.  I had my 25th birthday party up here.  I brought up milk crates, and we sat on them in the glow of a string of twinkle lights and some cheap tap-lights from the 99-cent store.  I brought my sisters up here to watch the fireworks on the 4th of July that they visited.  I drank beers here on a blanket with my best friends.  I did yoga up here.  We kissed up here once, on a grey day after we saw St. John's Cathedral.  In the dark I could still see its massive silhouette on the hill, stacked on top of us. 

"I've never left something so permanently before," I told him.  "Really?" Andrew said.  I kissed him again, like I did on that grey day, and we went back downstairs.

Since leaving, I've experienced a curious mixture of grief and elation.  Sometimes I'm struck so intensely by the strangeness and the sadness of the fact that I'll never again enter that room, with its bare window, cheap Ikea daybed and the TV tray doubling as a nightstand.  Other times, I think about the fact that I'm utterly unattached, unbeholden to that space, to its particular dust and clutter, its mice and its rent - and the thought makes me giddy. 

I always meant to buy curtains, replace the TV tray with a real nightstand, but somehow never got around to it.  It wasn't a priority.  During my tenure in NY, I encouraged in myself a sort of monk-like asceticism; I had neither the money nor the space for a lot of stuff.  But as I shut the door on on my room for the last time, a thought came to me, spontaneously and unbidden: never again.

Never again do I want to live so impermanently, in the empty expanse of a space I always meant to make my own.  Never again do I want to live the the shadow of promises I've made to myself. 

It's funny.  Through my self-imposed asceticism, I thought I was cultivating an appropriately monastic spirituality.  New York, I thought to myself, was teaching me how to detach from materialism.  I thought about the spiritual lessons New York was teaching me a lot.  Patience.  The value of hard work. 

In hindsight, though, I wonder if these things that I thought were teaching were actually tearing down: all those moments waiting for a subway or walking behind someone slow were wearing down my patience to a tiny, raw, nub.  All the times I had to work so much harder for what I wanted than I would have anywhere else... maybe it just made me tired.  And I wonder if my bare personal space actually set me adrift in some way.  I wonder if we need things in the same way we need stories - to tie us down, to tell us who we are.

I go back and forth like this, wondering if New York strengthened me or unmoored me - or maybe both.  I guess I'm about to find out.

The Benefits of Twitter, Part 2

Slowly but surely, I'm coming out of my fog and getting back into my old groove. The first loose end I want to tie up here: finishing my little manifesto on Twitter.  A little over a month ago, I started talking about why Twitter is awesome, and I found had so much to say that I couldn't finish.  But so much that has been so illuminating should not go unsaid.  So, to say that Twitter changed my perspective would not be saying enough.  Without question, it changed my understanding of what the word networking meant, and my intention in seeking an artistic community.  But, let's face it, words in digital space can only go so far, and if my Twitter experience had remained confined there, I think I would have eventually gotten frustrated.  But what was really uplifting about my Twitter experience was how it broadened my actual, physical theater community, too.

It started simply enough.  I was connecting with artists virtually and learning about new companies and projects all over New York City.  All of the networking and connecting and conversing was making me hungry to get out there and start seeing and supporting all the great stuff I was hearing about.  One particular person whom I was followed was the artistic director of a theater company that looked pretty cool.  The company had an intriguing show coming up, so I decided to go. 

The show was great, and after it was over, I spoke to the artistic director.  "Hi,"  I said, "I just wanted to introduce myself.  My name is Leigh Hile, I've been following you and your company on Twitter."

"Oh yeah," he said.  "Leigh.  I've been reading your blog, it's good."

I have to admit, that was a pretty sweet moment for me.  At this point, I had been living and working in New York for about four and a half years.  I had seen a lot of cool theater and introduced myself to a lot of artists I hoped to work with, many of whom I'm pretty sure forgot my name as soon as I spoke it.  This was the first time I had ever introduced myself to one such cool artist to find that he already knew my name. 

It may not seem like much, but for me, it was the beginning of a whole new way of making connections, finding a community, and becoming a part of new and exciting projects.

The artist I had been following was August Schulenburg and his theater company was Flux Theatre Ensemble.  I quickly came to find that Flux had a kind of artistic integrity that was deeply refreshing.  In addition to being incredibly talented and dedicated, the Flux community turned out to be some of the nicest, most inclusive and supportive group of theater-makers I met in New York.  Working with them brought back a sense of community and a love and excitement for creating theater that I had started to lose. 

After that, things just snowballed.  Gus first invited me to participate in Flux Sundays, and later, to direct a short scene for Flux's have another series.  There I met James Comtois, an awesome playwright and co-artistic director of Nosedive Productions, who in turn, asked me to direct a play for his theater company that summer.  Well, there must be a reason why James was hanging out with Flux, because the warmth and creative energy that I felt working with Flux just continued with my work with Nosedive.

I had more fun, and felt more of a pure purpose in my last five months in New York than I did in the five years previous; it pained me a little that I had planned to leave just when things were getting so good. 

And it didn't end there either.  I started following Kathryn Velvel Jones whom I had met through 50/50 in 2020, and watching her use social media to connect and innovate broadened my understanding of what social media and new technology can do for the arts.  Seeing her show, Better Left Unsaid, got me thinking about a whole new spectrum of theatrical possibilities.

I went to a 2amt "tweet-up" and met a huge number of artists face-to-face that until then I had only known as username, and a whole other group whom I had never heard of and, in turn, went home to follow and support.  I met new friends, new collaborators, and new theater-going buddies. 

I went to dozens of amazing shows that I never would have known about otherwise.   One such show was TerraNOVA Collective's Feeder: A Love Story by James Carter, who after meeting him in-real-life after the show, became yet another friend and collaborator; when later tweeted that I needed help figuring out how to self-produce on a larger level, James got in touch with me right away and offered his advice over coffee. 

I continued to attend Flux Sundays and other Flux readings and events, where I kept growing my circle of friends and collaborators.  I even met folks that I will be able to continue to collaborate with in New Mexico - like Charles Lucas who, as it turns out, works in New Mexico somewhat regularly.  Or like Larry Kunofsky, a great playwright who has actually written a play he's hoping to tour in New Mexico, a possibility I find incredibly exciting.

And, through James' connection to the company, I even got to see a scene from the play I directed for Nosedive in a Vampire Cowboys Saloon - a form of wish fulfillment on the geekiest level.

In seems sort of incredible.  Really?? Twitter made things so good?  But that's my story.

But You Can See The Whole Sky

Well, I did it.

I came back.  I don't think I really believed I would do it until I stepped of the plane in Albuquerque.  Maybe I still don't believe it.  I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea that there is no apartment, no bed waiting for me somewhere in NYC.  

So here I am in my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Gertrude Stein once said, "America is my country, but Paris is my hometown," an affirmation I wanted so badly to be true about myself and New York, I even put it in a poem.  But it turns out, it's actually the other way around: New York is and always will be my city, but Albuquerque is ostensibly, immutably, my hometown.  

It's hard.  It's really hard.  I've spent the past week and a half careening wildly between missing the city so much it blurs my vision, and being really, genuinely glad that I made this choice.  Say whatever else you will, it really is beautiful here, with those crisp fall mornings and sunny afternoons and cloudless skies that stretch from horizon to horizon.

And I swear to God, if you don't know what roasting chiles smell like, then you don't really know what fall is.  

But since I am here, and since I'm also taking a small, self-imposed break from theater (making, not seeing) to figure out the kind of work I really want to do, neither the "scenes" or the "city" part of the title of this blog really makes sense anymore.  Ultimately, that's all right - after I first started this blog, I showed it to my then-boyfriend (a casualty of my move, I'm afraid) who said, "It's a good project, but the title is kind of dumb." 

"What!?" I responded, "No it's not!  It's awesome."  And then, a mere matter of weeks later, decided it was indeed kind of dumb.  Of course, by then it was too late to change it.  

So, eventually, I'll have a new blog with a new title that has to do with... um.... whatever it is I end up doing here in New Mexico.  But in the meantime, I'm not a full-blooded Burqueña quite yet and so, as I stumble awkwardly through this transition, I'll do so PUBLICLY and hold on to this blog.  I've got loose ends to wrap up, anyway, ideas that have been rattling around in my head that I never got to express.  

Here I go.  Hasta mañana, friends.

The Benefits of Twitter, Part 1

Last night, after seeing his wonderful show in the Philly Fringe, I went out for a drink with my friend Ben along with the rest of the cast and crew.

 "What's going on?" he asked me.  "I feel like most of our conversations these days are through Twitter."

"Most of my conversations in general are through Twitter," I joked. 

He laughed.  "I think that might say something about you you don't want to be said." 

"Twitter completely opened up my theater world," I said to him without hesitation, embarrassment, or hyperbole.  My friend Sarah, who was sitting with us, thought about it for a second.  "It's true," she said.  "It kind of did."

Ben is not the only person to have given me a hard time about using Twitter.  It seems like the (first) world is divided pretty squarely into people who are really into Twitter and people who are really not into Twitter.  "Ugh," my sisters scoffed when I went home for Christmas last December after I signed on to check my feed.  "I CANNOT BELIEVE you are on TWITTER." 

"It's for networking purposes ONLY!" I defended.

Although I've gotten increasingly more social in tone over the past year, my Twitter account was and remains specifically a tool to broaden and deepen my community as a theater artist.  It's worked surprisingly, spectacularly well.  Go ahead, challenge me on it.  I will sing my love of Twitter to the rafters every. damn. time.

It's a bit reductive to say, "it's not what you know, it's who you know" about making theater in New York, but you learn pretty quickly that it's damn near impossible to do without a strong and supportive network of people whom you can draw on for resources. Finding actors, designers and technicians, getting connected to rehearsal and performance space, borrowing props and costumes,  securing financial support, simply seeking experience and advice, finding a person or company to produce your project, or evening finding the project ITSELF - none of this can get done without a group of people who like you or your work and are invested in your success.

Five years ago, as a cripplingly shy girl who found it difficult just to tell a stranger I enjoyed their show without my heart sort of leaping into my throat, building such a community was difficult.  I sucked it up, bit the bullet, pressed on and eventually got a lot more adept at socializing with strangers, but networking has never been my strong suit.  I've always been looking for new ways to make connections, get involved, and my foray into the theatrical interwebs started as just that - another idea. 

"I've been thinking about starting a blog," I said to a friend off-handedly.  "I think it might, you know, widen my community.  I'm thinking it would be a good way to talk to people I wouldn't normally meet.  And I write a lot better than I speak.  I'm way more articulate."  Plus, I had been moderately aware of the community since the marketing director at Women's Project had asked during me my internship to compile a list of New York theater bloggers for a "grassroots campaign."  I knew for a fact that there were a lot of interesting playwrights and producers writing worth reading and talking to.  As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized it was a really, really good idea.

So I did it.  Right away, I started feeling the benefits.  I found I really loved learning about arts, culture, politics and current events through the lenses of people who worked and thought and created like me.  I found dozens of exciting and engaging blogs like Parabasis, CultureFuture, On Theater and Politics, Jamespeak, and of course, 2AM Theatre.  I also found that it kept me thoughtful and engaged and gave me a sense of creative purpose to write on a regular basis.

Except nobody was really reading my blog, except my dad, who to this day I believe remains its biggest fan.  I emailed a friend of mine who had a very successful blog and asked her how to get people to read it.  She emailed me a pretty awesome list of things to do (which, with her permission, maybe I'll post if anybody's interested?) the most salient of which seemed to be Join Twitter.

I resisted.  I did not DO Twitter, I did not UNDERSTAND Twitter, I did not LIKE Twitter.  But saw her reasoning and opened an account.  It took me a long, long time to figure it out.  I remember messaging a friend of mine who was already an avid Twitter-user in extreme frustration, "Can you PLEASE explain to me how a hashtag works???"

I remember I agonized about my first tweet.  What the hell was I supposed to say?  What did I have to say that was important enough or interesting enough to "tweet" it? 

I later realized that the answer to that question is nothing, which is at once the beauty and the terror of the 140-character limit.  Every once in a while, something really profound or worthwhile can emerge, but generally speaking, there is very little one can say in 140 characters that is of any substance whatsoever, or that makes any sense on its own, as an isolated piece of information.  The result, on the negative side, is that Twitter becomes a dumping ground for all manner of inanity that would best remain unsaid.

The cool part of it, though, is that it creates this culture, this environment of not having to think too hard about what you have to say, and all of these random ideas, responses, jokes, and revelations all get released into this big communal cloud of stream-of-consciousness. The worth lies not in the singular but in the collective.  It's not about any one specific person, or one specific tweet, it's about easy, dynamic exchange of thoughts as they appear and are shared publicly.  It becomes about the conversation.

I became immediately obsessed and in love with that conversation.  I followed my favorite blog, 2amt, to the concurrent dialogue on Twitter, even though I had absolutely no clue what a hashtag conversation meant.  The idea of an engaging and supportive community conducted digitally across time and space has never been so fully realized as it has been by 2amt.  I was welcomed with open virtual arms for the simple and undiscriminating reason that I was smart enough to learn to type the characters #2amt before I pressed the button that said "Tweet." 

Through 2amt I met more and more people, and my virtual community began to both expand and deepen.  The experience made me realize that there was a whole facet of this whole "networking" thing that I hadn't understood and had been sorely missing these five years that I've spent in New York: a network that is not just a source of knowledge and support, but a source inspiration.  A group of people whose ideas excite you, and whose questions challenge you.  A group that gets you constantly thinking about the work that you really want to do, because you're constantly seeing and hearing about the kind of work that you really want to do.  It's not enough, I realized, to have a support base of people who want you to do your work, you need to have a support base who make you want to do your work.  These people, these challenging, engaging, inspiring people, I found on Twitter, of all places.

Harlem Grey Gardens

Our downstairs neighbors are gone. Evicted -- I saw the notice go up on their door at the beginning of August, and now, at the beginning of September, they have long disappeared.

I've been meaning to write about their departure since I saw the eviction notice go up, but every time I try to piece together the significance of their going, how sad and strange it is that they should go now of all times, I come up a bit short.

To understand how much their presence marked the time Sarah and I spent in this little apartment, I have to go all the way back to the beginning, to when we first moved in. We become aware of the two women, a mother and a daughter, who lived directly below us almost immediately; they didn't make themselves easy to miss. They babbled and muttered to themselves on the stairs. They averted eye contact when we saw them, or sometimes simply had that bleary look of someone whose vision is not in this plane of space and time. They dressed in dirty, disheveled clothing, the mother's immense dinnerplate glasses permanently skewed across her face. They cursed at us under their breath as we passed them.

In our first few months in the place, we were plagued by a number of pestilences. Mice, bugs, and, most troubling to me, a weird, unpleasant smell that drifted through the pipes. The super blamed them all on the women downstairs. "Their apartment is filthy," he told me. "And they won't let nobody in to clean it." More gossip floated in over the next few months: They lived in complete squalor; the apartment hadn't been cleaned or renovated in years; they had four big dogs that they didn't walk enough and the apartment was covered in newspaper and shit. When people knocked on the door, they never answered.

It's hard to separate the truth from the myth, but I will say that once their door was left open long enough to get a peek inside.  I didn't look squalorous, it looked abandoned.  Wrecked.  It looked like the gutted out remains of a crumbling building before it's completely rebuilt.

Sometimes Sarah and I speculated on the two ladies who were the apparent source of all our apartment problems. Sometimes we swapped unbelievable stories. Once, I ran into one of them rounding a corner and she took a swing in surprise. Once, Sarah let her pass on stairs, ushering her through with a friendly, "go ahead," to which the woman responded, "Don't f*cking tell me what to do, f*ck you."

They were frustrating and tiresome, but mostly just a joke or a crazy anecdote. We called them "Harlem Grey Gardens," a name that fit even more aptly when a neighbor told me the daughter once sang at the Apollo and had been booed offstage. Then in the fall of that year, Sarah again ran into the same woman, the daughter, on the stairs, only this time she not only swung, but made contact, hitting Sarah a couple of times in the head before Sarah could get away. Then they became scary.

We called the company that at the time managed the building, and thus began a several-year-long oddessey of us asking them what they intended to do about the violently disturbed neighbors downstairs and them doing the management company equivalent of shrugging and sighing and avoiding our questions. They told us to file a police report, which we did - now what? They told us to file a police report if we had another altercation with them, which we did - now what? They eventually handed us off to a lawyer who would periodically email us about upcoming hearings that went nowhere and accomplished nothing, guardians supposedly assigned by the state who changed nothing, and would occasionally ask us to be available to "testify" in some hearing or another, but would never follow through.

I went through a very fearful period, as I know Sarah did as well. The daughter, whose name was Denise (we learned a lot about the women in this time - the daughter was Denise, the mother was June and while both seemed deeply unstable, only the daughter appeared to be violent) never hit either or us again, but she did try to attack Sarah once or twice more but both times Sarah screamed at her so loudly she retreated. And she chased me down the stairs a number of times, issuing curses and threats the entire time. It was during this time that I held my breath every time I walked past her door, avoided unnecessary trips up and down the stairs, was afraid to do laundry because of the noise I made dragging my laundry bag.

Eventually, things died down. The daughter stopped accosting Sarah in the hall. Although she would occasionally open the door and hiss as I walked by, she stopped chasing me down the stairs. Sarah speculated that she had been "off her meds" when she had attacked her - it would explain the relative peace after that brief, violent period.

We stopped contacting the lawyer. We both got tired. And I, for my part, decided that I didn't want to have a hand in their eviction. I saw a legal document once that stated their rent, which was $125 per month, all of which paid, no doubt, with some kind of government aid as they clearly had neither jobs nor anybody taking care of them. If they lost this apartment, I doubted their ability to find a new place to live. This is how homeless people are made, I thought to myself.

Things eventually assumed a state of normalcy, although their presence was never really forgotten. The ownership of the apartment building changed hands, but the new management company seemed as impotent as the last on this issue. The women would still occasionally issue threats as I passed their door, I'd ignore them. Sometimes they'd bang on their ceiling - our floor - when they felt we were being too noisy, but sometimes they'd bang on their ceiling when I was sitting quietly on the couch so I ignored that too. I never really stopped holding my breath as I passed their door, never stopped feeling my heart beat in my throat when I heard steps approaching me on the stairs, thinking, is it her? Never stopped idly wondering if someday she'd snap and lunge at me from her door with a kitchen knife or a frying pan.

It's kind of hard to wrap my head around the fact that I know the answer now. No. No, no she'll never snap and come at me with a frying pan because she's gone. I still hold my breath walking past her door and then remind myself I don't have to. And I even start a little when I hear someone on the stairs of a different building.

And it's bizarre, almost confusing, that these women - these women who have so defined my time in this apartment and thus my time in New York City are leaving now, now of all times. When Sarah and I are both vacating the apartment, and my time in New York is coming to a permanent close. It makes things feel frighteningly final, like it's not just me leaving, a whole world is shutting off.

The good news is, I hear they're moving somewhere in the Bronx, not to the street. Sarah ran into our new landlord in the hall, and he told her the story. But it's still a little sad, I think. Sarah also learned from the landlord that both the mother and the daughter are in fact diagnosed with schizophrenia, so I hope this means someone actually is looking out for them, that they'll be taken care of the way the need to be. I hope they do okay in the Bronx, or wherever they land.

Sobbing My Guts Out (Or: Observations in Storytelling and Catharsis)

Here's a thing that happened to me during the Lab, that I meant to write about but didn't, because, you know, my life had been swallowed.

On the evening second day off, after nearly 13 days straight of Lab insanity, I made a curious and altogether uncharacteristic choice: I watched Boys Don't Cry. It's a movie I'd been meaning to watch for ages - essentially since the movie came out - because I felt it was an important movie. But it didn't seem like a fun movie; it certainly wasn't a movie I wanted to watch.

Boys Don't Cry is a pretty extreme film by anyone's standards, but for me? Let's just say I have exceedingly low-brow taste when it comes to movies. I don't like sad movies, or intellectual movies, or movies that are too deep or two slow. Oh, and I don't really like any of that mushy romantic stuff either. I used to, and I still make the occasional except for a supreme piece of cornball [crap], like the remake of Sabrina or Love Actually, but basically when it comes to movies, I like to watch people make jokes and blow stuff up.

So why, why on earth would I, in the middle of this blisteringly intense creative experience, want to drain myself even further by watching, OF ALL MOVIES, Boys Don't Cry?

Well, I can't quite explain it, but even so, I think from an artistic perspective it's worth noticing, and remembering:

During that time, I was so tightly wound up, so tense, so stressed from the Lab experience, that I needed a release. I needed, basically, to sob my guts out, and either couldn't or wasn't ready to do it in response to my own inner life.

That's fine; that need for catharsis is understandable and, as an artist, familiar territory. But what interests me is that, while I almost never go for a movie like Boys Don't Cry, I do crave release when I watch my low-brow stuff-blowing-up usual fare. But it's a different kind of release, in response to a different kind of emotional life: I want to get swept away in the adventure and the excitement of an experience that bears no resemblance whatsoever to my everyday life. In July, in the Lab, for some reason I craved the opposite - it's like I needed a sort of adrenaline drain.

So why is it that in one particular situation I craved a certain kind of catharsis, and in another I feel I need a different kind? I don't ask because I'm interested in parsing out the tangled layers of my psyche. I ask because, as a storyteller, I think it's interesting to take note of the different kinds of catharsis that a story can offer. And I wonder: If I can maybe understand better the kind of emotional release that is sparked by a Boys Don't Cry story, as opposed to a, say, a Die Hard story, if I could know more intimately why and when and how people crave release, maybe I could serve them better; maybe I could be a better artist.

Leaving on the Midnight Train. Or More Probably, an Early Morning Flight

This afternoon, I told my sister news which I've known to be true for almost a year, and still the telling of it made me want to double over and breathe into a paper bag.

Yes, I'm leaving New York.

That I am leaving New York has been common knowledge since I stepped foot on its concrete terrain; the idea of living indefinitely so far away from my family - especially my sisters, one of whom the self-same of the above conversation - was too difficult to even consider. I made never made any pretense about making New York my permanent home; I always knew eventually I would have to go back to the southwest, to them.

And that I am leaving soon - like SOON soon - is common knowledge among most of those close to me. Including - not that it mattered - my family:

And so, somehow, more than knowing the lease on my apartment is going to be up at the end of September, more than figuring out what to do with my cat, more than creating and systematically checking experiences off of a "New York bucket list," more talking frequently with friends and colleagues about what will happen "when I go back," this - giving my family if not an exact date then a fairly narrow range of when I'll return - makes it real.

Because, the thing is, everything else I can back out of. I can tell my friends here in New York that I changed my mind! I can find a new apartment on Craigslist! But I cannot, cannot tell my family I'm coming home and then not come home.

I've been avoiding talking about the move on this blog (and with many of my theater colleagues) for similar reasons. I want to pretend that all those shows that are coming up in the winter? I'll get to see them. And all those amazingly cool theater people I've met online and in real life? I'll get to work with them all.

But I won't. (At least not soon - there's nothing to say I won't ever come back for a project.)

I'm leaving the first week of October. It's time to make it real.

I'm excited to move to a smaller community and start putting into action some of the ideas about local theater than I've been reading about and ruminating on for the past year or so. But I'm also devastated (and maybe terrified?) to be leaving a place where the mind-blowing theatrical experiences and brilliant theater-makers and collaborators are infinitely at hand.

I'm feeling an immense pressure to make the most, artistically speaking, of the time I have left here. Which is somewhat difficult and paradoxical, given that I don't actually have a show that I'm working on. But I am still trying to make the most of it.

What am I doing? Well, first (and foremost, I suppose) I'm trying to organize a sort of weekly space for experimentation where directors can bring scenes they've been working on or ideas they've been hatching for work, or observation, or commentary from the group. The idea is in structure a bit like Flux Sundays but geared more for directors than playwrights. The motivation for creating this group is almost entirely selfish: I'm itching to explore some of the ideas and techniques I learned in the Directors' Lab for one, and for another, I still have this hatchling of an idea for a production of Taming of the Shrew that I want to play around with and see where it goes without actually committing to a production. And I want to do both these things with collaboration and advice of some of the people I've met in New York - those amazing and insightful artists I was talking about earlier.

Secondly, but not unrelated to the first, I, along with some other Lab alumni, have been noodling around with the idea of creating some sort of collective, a little along the lines of 13P to basically confront the problem that the only way emerging directors have to do work in the city is to self-produce, and to find an efficient way of offering producing support to one another. This is obviously less selfishly motivated, as I won't be around to see the fruits of my labors, but for some reason I can't quite explain, even to myself, it's really important to me to do this. To feel I had some hand in creating a more sustainable way for young artists like me to do their work - to think that I might have had this support if I stayed.

And then, of course, just seeing LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of theater. I'm determined to be so diligent that I will consider any week that I didn't see at LEAST one show, preferably two or three, a wasted week. This past week I saw Purple Rep's Ampersand at the NYC Fringe and the Drilling Company's Hamlet at Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.

So there it is. Guess it's real now.