Italians

Today, I went to the Beverly Hills Cheese Shop with my quasi-employer, who made me try too many cheeses as she fussed over what kind of cheese plate to make for her friend/quasi-employer's birthday. After complaining of dairy tongue, snacking on Dead Sea Salt crackers, and finally prosciutto, she spotted the Toblerone. If you aren't Italian, you probably won't care about Toblerone. It's a white nougat, cut into squares, soft and doughy, springy, filled with pistachios.

I haven't eaten Toblerone in a long time. (I use the brand as a generalized name, but it's not, btw.) My grandpa gives a box to my sister every year at Christmas. It's a funny gift that we all know is coming, and which he dutifully passes to her with a mischievous laugh, like they share an ancient Italian secret. We all cheer.

We're half Italian, did I mention that? My sister, Erin, is the least so of all of us. With blonde hair and blue eyes, and a heavily Irish name, she is the oldest of the cousins. She gets special gifts because she is.

I tried some of the Toblerone in my car today, after dropping aforementioned faux-boss off. It's made of sugar, honey, vanilla, but I could taste something else. Lemons? It tastes like warmth, of home. I called my sister. I told her why I was thinking of her. She laughed, and cooed over the connection. She told me our grandmother loved Toblerone, she was the one who always had it in the house, and the winter after she died, when Erin was 17, my grandfather presented it to her on Christmas morning. He wanted her to have it, because he wanted to keep doing what my grandmother always had done: give her first grandchild a soft sweet to make her feel loved, to remind her where her blood came from.

I didn't remember that about my grandmother. I remember she had soft and perfect skin, evenly powdered with layers of gentle smells and rose colors. I'm named after her, did I tell you that too? Theresa Saltarelli. She didn't want that, she thought I'd be teased, but my mother promised she'd drop the "h", and I was named Teresa.

It wasn't until I was 17 myself, the first time I went to the beach overnight without my parents, the first time I went to Senior Week, when I learned something else about my heritage. All my best friends had just graduated, a year ahead of me, so I went to Maryland to celebrate with them. A handful of us went to the beach, late at night, and didn't leave til morning. We counted stars, and did flips in the sand, and talked. I curled up with a boy, who later would become a boyfriend, and felt like I was so incredibly awake. He'd been drinking, not beer, I guess it was liquor, and all I could think of was my grandfather. I know, it's very strange, disconcerting to me, being wrapped up with a teenage boy, while all my thoughts were wrapped around my grandpa.

It was because that smell of liquor, of whiskey, was his smell. My grandfather drank, not til he was drunk, but enough so that I knew alcohol was his mark. I associated that breathy heat with him, with being cradled in his arms in a warm, orange kitchen, with Christmas trees, with cookies. My sister had nougat, and I had bourbon.

I wish I could write my grandpa's story. He's writing it himself. A whole memoir, his whole life. I wouldn't know what to say about him anyway.

Maybe, "He loved a woman who loved candy, and he gave little pieces of himself away every Christmas in soft, doughy squares, and he held me tight in his arms, and no boy will ever not be sort of like him." I think he'd hate it.

Just Be Yourself, Stupid

Does it ever occur that you talk to yourself in a way you'd never let anyone else talk to you? I fancy myself to be a generally kind and genuinely caring person, but not in reference to myself. Take for example, this class I've been taking. I think I'm the dumbest person in there. I make the stupidest mistakes. I flub up. I fluster. Meanwhile, the teacher is literally shouting, "JUST BE YOURSELF." And I keep thinking, "Yes, but how can I make myself more interesting?" And then I think of how much I'm spending on aforementioned class and whip myself into more of a frenzy. "JESUS CHRIST BE MORE INTERESTING, LOOSE-POCKETS MCBORING!"

Which is why I love my car. She's my buddy. I spend more time with her than anyone else. If I have nothing else in this town, I have Tawanda Jane. I try to take care of her, but I know I'm not great at it. I feel safe with her. She doesn't judge me. She doesn't think I'm interesting or care. She's a car. So far I haven't damaged her too much, although I worry she'll rebel against me one day and I'll have to call Car Talk, the Click and Clack Brothers, and get their opinion on my feisty and broken Toyota Matrix. And they'll laugh at me, and make fun of my name.

Minus One Point LP McBoring.

Plus One Tawanda J.

Warmup for a New Year

I'm about to work on some writing assignments, and I quickly want to stretch my fingers in the 40 minutes before Whole Foods closes. (I bought a minimum amount to be able to steal a booth guilt free. It's just me and a bag of dried organic cranberries sitting here.)

So it's 2009. It's bound to be an anxious year, fringed with angsty bill payments and group worrying over future security, with a sprig of terror decorating our global landscape as the days warm and the bees keel over. After an intense 2008 in which I flushed everything normal down the toilet and restarted my life in California, I'm hoping 2009 will be nothing but good. I have to believe in a universe that cares, and so I have to believe the energy I put out will one day reciprocate. I'm not asking for the lottery, I just want a guest spot.

Or a paycheck. Or some respect. Or some fulfillment. Or hope.

I guess I already have hope. I couldn't have moved if I didn't. I realized, as I literally tore myself away from my warm childhood home in Pennsylvania in the early morning after Christmas, loneliness is crowding my head right now. Even when I'm with friends, I feel so lonely. I don't know what will change that, other than work that has the potential to fill me up. (Fill, for non-artists, as a verb to describe the feeling that you are using your whole body, mind, and voice, to do something wonderful, useful.) Lonely or not, I, for the first time in a long time, believe happiness is possible. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing as I stumble through blindingly sunny days here, but some part of me has to know that good things exist. It's an epiphany really. I guess I always assumed that wasn't really true.

I have to believe in 2009 I'm not alone. I have to keep putting out the good, and keep hoping it'll come back. It already has, really (hey, Obama won, right?), but it's easy to look down on myself, like Jack and the Giant roaring down the beanstalk, and think, "I'm so insignificant. I'm so small. I'm so easy to crush." I have to remember, Jack wins.

Don't Fuck With Muffins

I really hate how muffins have become the new cupcake. I like muffins. Scratch that, I LOVE muffins. But a muffin is no cupcake. Not a cupcake, I say! A muffin should be a delightful bread substitute, often with a delicious swirl of carrots or zucchini, perhaps banana. None of this chocolate chip, frosted fudge whirl. That's dessert shit!

I hate other things. I hate waiting for my free online episodes of Mad Men to buffer. I hate buffering! I hate hangovers. I hate fake girls. I hate salmon. I hate how bad Heroes has gotten.

But I really, really hate the muffin thing! When did this happen? Have they always been a sugary, cuppy cake? At Thanksgiving, I wanted to make carroty wonderful muffins, and my friend said, surprised at my choice for her dinner table, "Muffins? Really?" Yes. Really! REALLY!

You may think I'm ridiculous, but I'm sad at the state this world is in. Muffins are small, muffins are tasty, muffins are without a liner, and muffins are nutritious, depending what you put in them. MUFFINS!

On Coming Home for Christmas

I lapse into old habits.

I eat frozen cookies out of the basement freezer while watching old movies late at night. I snap at my mother. I often leave the discussion at the dining room table to sit alone in my room, silent.

My mother hugs me too much, and tells me adamantly she won't share me with anyone. She doesn't want me to go to New York. She wants to snuggle me until I fuse to her breastplate.

My grandfather laughs at my bad jokes about Franz Ferdinand, and then shakes his head when I talk about books he doesn't like or movies he didn't understand.

The rain sleets across the green lawns like hissing spit. It's almost frozen, but not quite. Once, when I was seven, I sat in front of the tv on a Sunday night, and asked my father what it took for snow to fall. He told me that it had to be 32 degrees, and the clouds must be full of precipitation. I was disappointed. I had wanted him to tell me that he could make the snow fall, if I wanted. I did.

Another time the sky was purple, it was nighttime, and we went outside and made mazes in the frosty street without speaking, and my sister wore her boyfriend's oversized green coat, and my brother was quiet, and I was utterly fulfilled with my life.

The house is warm, because there's a new heater. And a new tv. And a new boat is coming too. Santa is no longer a person, he's actually the internet.

We eat too much, and drink wine at every meal. My grandfather drinks margaritas afterwards, and it knocks him out until 2 am, when I hear him sighing in his sleep, and waking up to pace his room.

Christmas is about these five people. But I'm strung between worlds. I have Pennsylvania health insurance and Pennsylvania plates, but I live far away now. I ran away from them, I think. I didn't mean to. They picked the wrong place to live, twenty-one years ago. It's not my fault.

My brother-in-law hugs me and says, "You really haven't been away that long, you know." So why does it seem like years? I've changed. Can't you see it? No one comments. Maybe I haven't changed that much, or not at all.

It's Christmas, and every year since I was twelve I lit one particular candle on Christmas Eve so I could talk to God on the holiest of holy days: the Present Day. (I didn't mean it that way.) I wanted to believe in Jesus Christ, and one time I even wrote him a note on the computer so Santa could give it to him, and my parents wrote me a note back. My parents the Agnostics played Jesus for me. If that's not the spirit of Christmas, I don't know what is.

This year, I don't have much to give. Sure, it's because I'm poor, but also because I feel empty. I feel like I gave so much away this year, I tried to give myself away too, but I stuck.

Once, my brother and sister and I walked to the church down the street because it was snowing, and we threw some snowballs, and then we lay down in the road, and listened to the snow falling on our faces. It sounded like sugar sifting, or hair freshly cut sweeping past your ears. My sister whispered, "Listen. Isn't that beautiful?"

I must have changed. I think I did.

Persimmon

When I first moved to New York, I trained with a girl from Manhattan Beach, California. Like the island itself, and like the girl who came from there, Manhattan Beach seemed highly exotic to me. I knew, from what she had told me, it was near Los Angeles (Land of Beautiful People) and that is was, indeed, a beach. I daydreamed of white sands and houses filled with overflowing ferns and sundresses year round. I liked the idea of being this girl. She was someone I knew, but not well, and so, of course, it seemed like her life could only ever have been perfect. She was kind, and beautiful. She had long, golden-brown hair, and she wore white boots with mint green tights and a matching coat. She laughed, and men turned. And she ate persimmons.

I'd never seen a persimmon before I watched her eat one. Was it a tomato? Was it a sort of apple? Where do they come from?

I asked her what it tasted like. "Brown sugar," she said.

Years have turned since then. I've moved away from Manhattan, to Los Angeles, closer to the beach, though not into a house right up on the waves. I do wear sundresses year round, even though it is December. I talk to my friend once in a long while. And, today, I bought a persimmon. I think it must be fitting. I want my life to be brown sugar, packed, dense, sweet on my tongue.

I put the persimmon in the refrigerator. It seems very cold. It's a perfect orange-red, with four flat leaves greening its peak. Its the color of tomato soup, when you mix it with cheese, or creme.

Wow. The first bite tastes like nothing. What a letdown.

I won't be stopped. I close my eyes. Still, the second bite tastes like nothing. It's a very mushy fruit inside.

The third bite. Ah, there's a little sweetness. Not much. I am biting more quickly now. Maybe it's a quantity thing? There's a little gravel taste, mixed in with the softness. The stiff leaves are thick, and they're getting in the way. How do you eat this thing?

It's almost gelatinous on the inside. I can taste more of the sweetness, but its not much. This is no peach, no plum at all. This persimmon is an odd duck indeed, not entirely tasteless, but not flaunting itself either. This persimmon holds secrets.

The inside is not one solid color, its a portrait of flushing reds. There are caverns of deep juiciness, and smooth strings of vertical orange. Still, it's no mango. The juice spreads across my mouth. This is no pear, either. No, this is a persimmon, and I couldn't cut it into slices if I wanted to, I couldn't divide it like a clementine easily parts with its sections, I couldn't do anything with this persimmon it didn't want to do.

Hm. I guess that's the end. A little bit of a disappointment. But. I don't feel hungry. I can taste the heavy creme of sweet in my mouth. The leaved core sits a little slumped, used.

I am a Manhattan Beach girl now, I guess. I live in sunshine, I wear dresses that swing, and I eat persimmons. I don't do anything I don't want to do. I laugh, and I don't care who turns. I am exotic.

A Little Homesick, A Little Regular Sick

My cold is still hanging on like a persistant itchy booger, and it's making me even less of a productive unemployed actor than ever before. Not that I'm not being productive, because I actually am, but...I just wish I was getting paid for my productivity.

One of the weirdest things about LA is, of course, the weather. It's beautiful. All the time. The reason it's so weird is that because every day is sort of the same, and it hasn't really gotten that much colder since I've gotten here, there is a strange sort of time lapse. What month is it? What day is it? Who am I? It's the WALL-E effect: if every day is the same, you are apt to lapse into a sort of coma in paradise. You eat, you doze, you can't quite look at yourself objectively. You watch a lot of tv. (Although, to be fair, ALL of my tv watching is done on Hulu, so at least I've gotten myself hooked on internet rather than cable.)

I'm trying to find more blogging jobs, because it makes me royally happy. Could you imagine that? A job that pays you AND you love it? I can't do what I've done, and wake up every day to spend 9 hours in Hell, blackmail my soul for a paycheck. I have a varied skill set, but it can be a curse: sure, you want me to what? Okaaaay. Fuck that shit! I don't want to be unhappy anymore. I want to look for joy in everything I can, and I need a job, and I need a job that makes me happy. It's out there somewhere...

The only problem with blogging is that you can't be completely open. What you write will love on in cyberspace, festering in 1's and 0's, and do you really want everything you think to be open for all the world to read forever and ever? Which is why I need the acting. It can be terrifying to do, but sometimes, you get to play a character where you can open up all your dirty little sweaty pores to the world and unleash yourself. I need so much.

I went to this networking event at AFTRA last night with an actor/coach named Scott Mosenson, and he quoted "Franny and Zooey." Franny's boyfriend says, after she says maybe she'll be an actress, "Acting is the business of wanting." It is. I think about that a lot. Sure, it's wanting, wanting, wanting parts, money, agents, casting directors, but it's also about characters' wants and objectives, stories full of wanting passions and hidden needs. It's all a want. How can I turn that into a positive thing? How can I, as Scott says, reframe for the positive?

I miss you guys. I know that there are probably only three people reading this, and it might not be til January til you do, but I miss you. (Brian also might be reading this. What up, Bri.) I wish my heart wasn't always so torn up across wide spaces, but it is, and probably will be for the rest of my life. Reframe: I love you. How lucky to be me.