Wednesday, June 01, 2005

A Little Bit Of Zen

So Tuesday was an odd day. It turned out to be more emotionally draining than it should have been. I had some things I’d been avoiding doing and finally just had to confront the demons and get them done. A friend of mine said to me that "karma is a bitch" and I think she's right. I have a lot of things to atone for these days. It's going to be a long, painful process but I'm finally to the point where I need to at least start that journey. Not fun, but definitely necessary. I've been truly horrible to just about everyone in my life for most of this year. I don't have any excuses. I was in a bad place and I took it out on the people around me. I lashed out at whoever was the closest target and unfortunately that was usually the people I most didn't want to hurt. I don't know that I can fix everything that I broke in the last few months, but I need to at least try. Fuck. I don't know how things got so screwed up. I'm just an idiot. It's truly a wonder I have any friends at all and at this rate I won't have them long. Fuck. Fuck Fuck.... Ok. Enough. I have got to be productive today. I can't get stressed out about things I can't fix right now... So, on a less heavy note, Tuesday was pretty unproductive. All-in-all everyone just seemed to be catching up from the holiday. As a result, there weren’t any new jobs posted which kinda sucked, but I went ahead and picked up applications from a couple of coffee houses and a couple of book stores. I’ll fill them out and turn them in and maybe do one of those things for awhile. Not really what I want to be doing out here, but it’ll pay the bills until I can find something more permanent. I don’t know that me working in a coffee shop, wired on caffeine all day, is the best idea in the world, but it might be fun to see what happens... So yesterday morning I fucked around in town for awhile. I went to Kinko’s and checked email, searched job sites, posted to my blog, the usual. Then I went to Target and the bank and the pet store. I spent like $30 on a dog that isn’t even mine. It’s sad really. I got dog snacks and a dog brush and dog shampoo. Casper went on the hike with us on Monday and he swam through some seriously questionable ponds and ran through what I’m sure was poison oak and so he desperately needed a bath. I don’t know why I bothered. He’s an outdoor dog. He’s just going to get dirty again almost immediately. Still, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a dog to play with so I did it anyway... After Casper’s little spa day I got out my paint pens and basically tattooed my new walking staff. It looks really slick. It has symbols and tribal designs and metallic flames and I’m just really pleased with how it turned out. I need to pick up some polyurethane now so I can waterproof it. I’m such a dork. It was a perfectly functional walking stick as it was, but still I spent like 3 hours decorating it and now just watch, I’ll fall off some ledge or something and snap it in two the first time I go out hiking with it. Oh well. It was still fun to do. I should have spent the afternoon storyboarding the title sequence of my screenplay, but I wasn’t motivated to do that so I drew on my staff instead. I’ll do storyboards this afternoon… So Monday night we screened this great Japanese film. It was called “Take Down” and it was really very well done. It’s about how people prepare for death while at the same time still living what time they have left. Very Zen Buddhist kinda stuff. Amazing cinematography and really top notch acting. It will definitely get shown at Moab next April and I’m sure it will contend for one of the jury prizes there... I also met some really nice people yesterday. One is a pretty well-respected 1st AD around here. He’s been in this business for 20+ years and had a lot of great stories and a lot of good advice. He’s directed some low-budget stuff in the past and might be someone I’d consider working with on my script if I ended up not pitching it to a studio and just trying to get it produced myself. That seems the most likely option. We can shoot it cheap and just the people that were here yesterday could have formed the core of a very solid production team. We had a director, a producer, an editor, and an amazing lighting guy who has also done some work as a DP. For an indie kinda film that’s really all you need to get rolling. Well, you need a cast and makeup and wardrobe and stuff like that, but let’s not get too caught up in the details here :) I at least made some potential contacts that could really help me out down the road. These guys know the ropes. They get movies made. They could prove to be very helpful. Everyone cross your fingers and toes. All I need to do is get one of my scripts put on film and that’ll give me a calling card that will open a lot of doors around here… So the girl that’s currently living in my apartment swears she’ll be out by the end of the day. I hope so. My stuff isn’t here yet, but I at least want to start living in my space. I feel like I’ve been living out of a suitcase forever. I just want to be able to hang my clothes in my closet, ya know? Mostly what I want though is a phone. I hate being this out of touch. I have people that I really need to talk to. Some to clear the air. Some just to hear the sound of their voice. I love it here, but there are some people that I really fucking miss, and I know everything would be much better if I could just pick up a phone and call them.

"Actually, I'm not interested in Zen that much as a philosophy, nor in joining any movements. I don't pretend to understand it. I just find it comforting. And very similar to jazz. Like jazz, you can't explain it to anyone without losing the experience. It's got to be experienced, because it's feeling, not words." -- Bill Evans

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