La Reisytal

Job Application (1)

I understand where he’s coming from, my dad. His job has been to provide for me and train me in the ways of self-preservation. Not cheap psychological coping mechanisms, but the preservation of my body, soul, and spirit by the earning of money and applying of money to material needs. Seeing his brilliant, confusing liberal arts daughter (he’s an engineer), move back into his generous home after earning a degree at a top university must have been a bit of a shock.

Don’t get me wrong: he likes having me home. I order Chinese for everyone on Friday nights. But apart from the pleasure of my company, I’m sure he’s a little nervous to see me coming and going through his back door still. He’s taken to asking: “What jobs have you applied for lately?”

We won’t mention that I currently hold two “part-time” jobs that require full-time hours (i.e. I’m in management in both).

But today I applied for a job, one that I hope I will get and be glad to have gotten. I’d like to be an editor one day (I tell myself in my moments of grandeur). A connection I wisely cultivated sent me the call for applications she’d received from her lofty position as a paid filmmaker. I have this habit of signing onto my email account five minutes after she sends these types of emails, leaving me wondering if the great Cosmos and His sidekick have made a delicious pass at my faith. I submitted my new resume before the next (fateful) five minutes had passed.

how my heart hangs in the balance

The climax of this rising action remains to be seen, but be assured, dear reader, you shall know all in due time.

2011: 03/12
CATEGORY: declarations
film
news
ponders
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Being Ill in the Western World

I have a terrible cold.

I tell you that not to complain or call undue attention to my personal life but rather as the exigence of my dilemma: to take off or not to take off.

Workers get paid for their labor; the old aristocratic wealth of the world got paid for their existence (commissions, honors, shares, etc). I wonder if both mechanisms are wrong. What happens if your value cannot be assessed based on products and revenue? (Which, I assert, is all of us.) What if you think and speak and give love and benefit to those around you, but you can’t run a manufacturing mechanism? Better yet, what if you can run said mechanism and then you get sick one day? And then the one day becomes many?

Beyond all these aggravating questions that delve into the abysses of sociology, economics, philosophy, and more, how do you decide whether or not to call in sick? You could push yourself to the breaking point and go in…but it’d result in another week of prolonged illness as your body wearily drags itself back up on top. You want to be faithful to your responsibilities—and, let’s face it, shit doesn’t happen unless you make it happen—but can your responsibilities ever be faithful to you?

I am beginning to feel they are unfaithful lovers: exacting and demanding but quick to find another warm bed when yours goes cold.

2011: 03/10
CATEGORY: ponders
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Rainy Day Yellows

People say they get the blues when it rains. I get the yellows.

Rain mellows me.
Comforts me.
Inspires me.
Generally, encourages me.

The Yellow Brick Road (photo by John Manno)

Yes, of course, I’d rather stay in bed and read or stumble around my room in my dressing gown writing poetry. But ultimately, rain brings the promise of something new, a moment of intersection between the world that is (air) and the world that will be (water). It’s like a brief rubbing of shoulders between now and eternity. It enlivens things that are dead and dispenses justice evenly to all.

I’m definitely hyperbolizing and analogizing considerably here.
But what else are rainy days for?

2011: 03/09
CATEGORY: ponders
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I Dreamed a…Mansion

Had a lovely dream last night—in a mansion filled with many rooms.

warm and delicate

I love the geography of my dreams. Many times, I will revisit places I have been before. And I remember the way, the layout, the smells, the feel of the fabrics. This one mansion is particular is very luxurious—in a French Louis XV villa sort of way. It is full of trunks and bronze statues and antique books and mahogany clocks and ash wood floors and chintz divans and gold…lots of intricate, almost Rococo gold detail.

perhaps time does tell

One of the most curious happenings in my dream was my explanation to friends in the dream that we were, in fact, in a dream. how did I know that? Has Inception boggled my mind? Or do we really experience interactions with other people—with the part of themselves that is ours, embedded in our relationship?

When we get to the Hereafter, how many things will we discover we did in other people’s dreams? Do those actions cling to us in the daylight hours?

2011: 03/08
CATEGORY: ponders
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Work as You Are

Unicorn (photo by Sarah Scotland)

This week I made drastic cuts in my schedule. I stripped away things that long held together the center of my world. I am trying to embrace my Self–the Self that needs at least 9 hours of sleep, 1 hour of reading, 2 hours of talking with family, and 30 minutes of caring for my pets.

I don’t want to feel guilty about work any more. Guilty about the way that I avoid it, sleep in, cut it short, or ignore it because I’m tired, uninspired, and lazy.

This isn’t who I am.

I love to work—and work hard. I am inspired. And I rarely let things simply fall to the ground. So I’m doing a new thing—working as I am.

2011: 03/08
CATEGORY: declarations
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2011: The Year of Aquaria

Well, my lovely readers—I flatter myself that you noticed my absence during the lovely holiday months…and the busyness of the “new year” season, which seems to extend from mid-November to mid-March, when it finishes just in time for “finals” and the hurry into summer mid-May.

With sorrow I announce that Psycho and his best mate Sophie are no more. They succumbed to a terribly frightful disease, the loathsome parasite ich. After an appropriate period of mourning (and practically boiling the water in my tank to purge it of the parasitic pests), I found myself once again meandering down the glorious wall of aquariums at PetsMart.

So, now, I give you:

—-well, now isn’t this frustrating? I went to upload a video of my new pets, and behold! ’tis impossible without the almighty Video Upgrade! (which costs, apparently, a mere $59 per year per blog). Hmm…well, I blog on WordPress because it’s free.

While I sort this out within myself and between WordPress and my wallet, I’ll simply give you their lovely names:

Madge

Watson

Josephine

Algernon

Ophelia

Markle

Monsieur Hulot

Emma

You’ll have to dream of them until such time as I may enlighten your eyes…

2011: 03/07
CATEGORY: news
tidbits
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Keeping a Break

dessert

This past week has been lots of fun. I have started re-reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, seen Tangled and Skyline (possibly best and worst movie of the year respectively, haha), played eukre and Scrabble and Taboo with friends and family, eaten countless slices of delicious pumpkin bread, enjoyed being on four sets at IHOP, beaten several songs on Guitar Hero, and slept almost 12 hours of any given day. It is a wonderful life—and I am indeed hoping for a white Christmas.

Tomorrow I start working again, and suddenly the hours of the day will shorten into minutes. I will be sleep deprived and intensely driven, full of ideas, and never quiet. But I hope that somehow the little bit of “quiet” I have enjoyed in my soul the last four days will last me until Christmas break.

Amen.

turkey

all done

2010: 11/29
CATEGORY: news
ponders
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When to Say “When”

When to say "when"?

I am afraid that looking at life as a glass half full makes it harder to say “when.” There is such savor in the filling that it keeps pouring in and suddenly its overflowing and your table and jeans and Blackberry are soaked.

My life seems that way right now—full and overflowing. Which is wonderful, no question. Intimidating, absolutely.

Oh that I would be strengthened with might. That curious kind of might that happens when you think you’ve reach your edge and suddenly, there’s more. More to you than you thought.

Diving into a glass of water...

2010: 10/31
CATEGORY: news
ponders
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Discernment in Creation

Creation is one of the most absurd situations in which we human beings find ourselves. Embodying a form, an idea, a concept in material reality is difficult. And not always because of limitation, but rather of possibilities.

Some friends and I are making a few short films together for a local drama class. It is thrilling to apply our skills to storytelling—and overwhelming to interact with our limitations. I am becoming more and more glad for them each day, however, because these limitations spur our ingenuity onwards and upwards. But I feel like I am lost in a Chutes and Ladders game: multiple routes and unpredictable dislocations. Chutes and Ladders is the bomb dot com, but when you’re living it for real, it is quite a different experience altogether.

Should we rent equipment? Ask the parents to pay for costumes? Borrow cameras? Rehearse indoors or out? Re-write the screenplays to fit the children’s capacity for memorization? or push through to the final product unswerving?

The list could go on.

But the point of it all is to actually make a work of art. A work of art that requires input and energy from everyone involved—even and especially the audience. So in the end, we keep moving forward and forward, and one day if we reach the edge of a cliff, maybe the forward motion of our art will suddenly teach us to fly.

Can the artistic impulse teach us to fly?

2010: 10/27
CATEGORY: ponders
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The Epic in Us

the longing to be epic: we are on the stage already

Oh there is something in us that longs to be epic. You can see it in the way we live and move and have our being. Even driving down the road feels epic to us with the right movie soundtrack playing from the iPod deck. we long for what we do to be important, to take energy and give energy, to have a pulse.

I want to be epic. I want to be epic but I long for my bed and I ache for my home. Faithfulness is epic, but when the little things come I want to pass them by and distract my pain while I wait for something bigger.

But my life here and now is the something bigger. There isn’t anything else coming because there doesn’t need to be anything else coming. I am in the movie. I am the script. I live the plot and I love the moments. My new hypothesis is that everyone’s life is a movie but some haven’t been distributed yet.

2010: 10/19
CATEGORY: declarations
ponders
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life is more than a dress rehearsal