Animal Crack

I
When I was in sixth grade we got a cat.  Or rather, a cat got us.  In human terms, it was as if a slutty teenage girl had been kicked out of her house, taken a liking to my mom, and flattered her mothering characteristics until there was no other choice but to take the wayward girl home and care for her.  We girls loved that delinquent to pieces!  Sure, she got into fights in the neighborhood a lot, and yes, of course, she inevitably came home pregnant (we still don't know who fathered those four kittens), but we loved her all the same.  Though Mom insisted that we share the duties of cat food and litter box, ...

rural, urban, city, burb

Left the city.
Back in the 'burg.
I'd spent my week-off at home in Queens, but yesterday I returned "home" to Ohio to resume work and take up residence with my parents in central Ohio.  Reynoldsburg, Ohio is a suburb east of Columbus proper (the capital city with a fine downtown), pushing its way into farmland, but not quite there yet.
There is a ten hour drive sandwiched between these two dwellings.  My adult life has taken shape in a small but tidy 3rd floor walk-up with two bedrooms, one bath, and zero driveway in Astoria, Queens, NY.  My parents' home, which is not the house I grew up in but inhabits all the same things as that which I did, is spacious, well-decorated, and can accommodate two cars in its garage and three more in the driveway.
Home vs. home.
A little bird woke me this morning.  A little bird, perched on a branch on the blossoming tree just outside the window of the second floor of the house where M & D live, in which I am allowed to stay when I work in downtown Columbus.  I might have liked that little bird, that quaint touch of country-like living, had it not come to sing before six A.M.
(Daylight savings means nothing to the Robin Redbreast; he's like "heeeyyy all you paartay people!  Let's get ready to Roooooock!  It's Friiiiiiiiiiiiidaaaaaay!")
This is a non-occurrence in New York. . .

Break a Leg

I am one of those actors, one of those people, in fact, who abides by certain traditions, rituals, okay... superstitions.  But particularly in the theatre.  You've had heard it before:  "good luck is bad luck in the theatre," which is why we don't tell one another 'good luck" before a performance.  We say the words "break a leg," or in the dance world "merde," which for the non French speaking, is the fancy-dance-pants way of saying "shit."  Or, numerous other opposites of well-wishing.  My friend Jarvis used to say "go pee."  Basically, it's always Backwards Day backstage.  (Except for my husband, who likes to turn a joke around three or four times and then tell it three or four hundred times.  He learned this fun trick from an older seasoned actor and has repeated its utterance to many a younger actor in his own career.  He waits until "places" is called.  The nervous young actor awaits his/her entrance.  The lights dim, and then the older seasoned actor whispers low, but articulately:  "don't fuck up," and walks onto stage, leaving the fledgling actor sweating and peeing himself in the wings just seconds before he is to enter.)
There are other things, too. . .

Dwell & Tell IX, "Vino and The Jane"

Family is important to me.  It's the understatement of the universe when most of us say it, and seems so now as I type it.  I left Chicago in 1998 to move to Louisville, Kentucky for a year.  The story starts like this...

One of my proudest moments to date was the day my father and uncle Don came to pick me up from Chicago in a U-haul van and move me and my stuff to their sister, my aunt Mary Jane's house in Louisville.  They were unable to park the U-haul on the crowded residential street we lived on and figured we'd just have to double-park until we were packed up.  (I do not travel light.  Never have.  I can cut back on outfits, sure, but oh, the shoes!)  
Well!  After spending a year in Chicago swiveling my little Geo Prism into spaces the exact length of my car, the 23-year old me climbed up into the cab of the U-haul and slid that fucker right in.  No bumps or dents.  The Hoben brothers pulled down their mouths and simultaneously raised their eyebrows in a signature Hoben expression that means, "Huh.  Nice work, Kiddo."
I beamed.
I was not a kid anymore.
I had grown up.
What could be left to learn?

Coincidence: (Dwell & Tell VIII)

Coincidence: noun [koh-in-si-duhns] 1.  a striking occurrence of two or more events at one time apparently by mere chance.  The post below was written last week.  In the week-end that followed (two days ago) I experienced a remarkable coincidence which left me dizzy with wonderment and baffled by the order of disorder.  For 24 hours I have been wrestling with the meaning of this odd coincidence.  Today I have decided that I simply don't know its meaning.  Maybe someday (as illustrated in the tale below) I'll believe I figured out the meaning.  It might be in ten years.  It might be after death.  Or never.  

Lucia was the name of the landlady at mine and Matt's apartment in Chicago up around Kimble and Kedzie.  There was a big family that lived in her apartment which was directly below ours.  She was about 200 years old, and she had a bilingual fit one time when I refused to pay rent until she did something about the cockroaches.  She would occasionally come up --with this sprayer device that looked a lot like a silver fire-extinguisher which appeared to be heavier than her being-- and spray the edges of the room.  The device could have been making cotton candy for all I know and was about as effective.  But don't be misled, we loved that apartment.

Stauf's on Grandview Avenue in Grandview, OH

I spent my time in Chicago acting in children's theatre productions, and making necessary additional money at Starbucks and a World Gym where I was first a receptionist and then taught my first Step aerobics class. That was 1997.  It was the rage!  (Oh, how I miss a good old-fashioned "basic-right, basic-left, turn-step, over-the-top...")  It was a tough year, in retrospect, but I didn't know it at the time.  After graduating college in '96, I spent a year at home in Columbus to pick up the shattered pieces after my big sister's death in '95.

Slick Rick and the Swedish Giant (Dwell & Tell VII)

Slick Rick was an erotic dancer by night, and a highly-demanded personal trainer at the gym where I worked by day.  Not tall, but adorned with beautifully sculpted muscles and maybe the prettiest skin I'd ever seen on a man.  On any given day, you could catch Rick swiveling his hips a little if the right song came over the gym speakers, even at 8:00 A.M.  He was somehow always in the club scene, no matter where he was.  Rick was a firecracker and a little bit of a know-it-all who enjoyed some unheard-of sublet deal on 81st between 2nd and 3rd, so close to the gym that he could walk there in seven minutes and go home if he had an hour to spare between clients.

The head of the trainers was Jake, a dangerously good-looking and arrogant guy who knew someone who knew someone who handled this apartment.  Rick and Jake approached me one day at the gym and explained that the place was becoming available.

I.Heart.NY/Virginia.Is.For.Lovers: (Dwell & Tell VI)

Virginia is for (coffee) Lovers.   The coffee shops featured in this blog are the coffee shops of downtown Staunton, VA.  Though I failed to blog during the month of December while I was there, I made sure to take a few pictures of some of the best spots.  The two that are not represented in the photos are Blue Mountain Coffee (a gem, down by the Wharf and the railroad tracks) and Cranberries (really, really, good organic coffee in the cafe of this tiny Natural Foods Market.)  The photos on the blog home page show Mugshots, Newtown Bakery, and Coffee on the Corner.   While the story below starts in NYC, its happy ending takes place in VA.  Virginia is for Lovers.

Coffee on the Corner, Staunton, VA

The apartment that I stayed in before subletting to Todd's room was a not a rental but a gift.  My friend Darron offered me his apartment -rent free- while he was out of town for work.  I don't remember how I even got the keys, but I drove there, up to 188th Street in Washington Heights with a couple of auditions scheduled and a couple hundred dollars to last until I got a day job, unless, of course, one of the auditions panned out.  Darron's apartment was a fucking dream.  A rent-free apartment anywhere on the island of Manhattan -probably- is a dream.  He apologized for the lack of decoration, lack of TV, that lots of things were still packed away in cardboard boxes, but I don't care about any of that.  Darron's one bedroom place was tidy, sunlit, and he left me the use of his Egyptian cotton sheets and his well-stocked cd collection.  (His cd collection was massive.  He is one of the country's -maybe the world's- finest sound designers.)  Darron's place was only available for a month.