First page of the monumental task archive.

guts and stardust

Posted by jessica on Dec 10, 2009 with 4 Comments
in I Lift My Eyes Up, Thoughts and Feelings
as , , , , , , , , , ,

Sometimes I see words strung together in such a way to make me stop.

And think better things.

Just today I read this on a small card:

Friend, you are a divine mingle-mangle of guts and stardust. -Frank Capra

And I read it again and thought about guts and what that meant. I thought about how it even sounds ugly. Guts. That it infers something messy; because that is how life gets and sure, you can stop there, overwhelmed. You can look around and just sit down in the mess, close your eyes to it or wish it away.

That’s what I used to do when I was little. I’d start the monumental task of cleaning my room, pull out all of my clothes from my closet, get distracted by putting together new outfits out of the clothes that I hadn’t seen for at least a few months, and suddenly get overwhelmed by the even greater mess I now had around me.

And I’d close my door to the mess. I’d walk away until I had the strength to come back and face it.

And sometimes that’s okay.

But it takes guts to face the mess, to clean it up as best you can and then go about fully living in your space.

And then there’s the stardust. There’s a fantastic mingle-mangle, which makes me think of all kinds of whimsy. Of the hope that your dreams start as something quiet, a whisper that you dare to speak to the world, and then just maybe you find yourself singing songs to people who listen. Or you’re the fantastic mom that your baby needs. Or your friends are calling you because they’re watching the movie that you wrote.

And stardust makes me think of something else I just read that made me stop:

“…He kissed me…and every single thing in my body–my skin, my collarbone, the hollow backs of my knees, everything inside of me filled up with light.”        –The Help, Kathryn Stockett

That feels like the stuff of stardust to me. It’s beautiful, it leaves you glistening, and it’s innocent.

Yes, it takes guts to get yourself good and dirty as you face the mess, but there’s stardust too. And it leaves a sheen on you that won’t fade anytime soon, I think.

I hope, anyway.

boxes!

Posted by jessica on Nov 13, 2009 with 6 Comments
in Performance, Thoughts and Feelings, photography
as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Boxes. Parcels. Packages.

Do those words incite the same kind of excitement in you as they do me?
And no, I am not talking Christmas here. Not yet, anyway.
But it’s on parr with that, I’d say–the greatest of holidays.
It’s time to go home.
To box up my stuff, tape it up tight, and mark it with my name and address.
To send it back to where it belongs and more importantly, where I belong.
And just looking at all this stuff makes me so happy.
Actually, I was rushing to finish boxing up my trunk during the Paul and Cassie scenes tonight. So there I was in my leotard and fishnets, knee deep in packaging supplies. And after getting all my stuff into five boxes, I was faced with the monumental task of carrying them to the company manager office, all the way on the other side of the theater. And then there was the added hassle of my rib and how I am not really supposed to be lifting much.
But that’s when I got creative.
And found a dolly.
Perfect.
And so I rolled my boxes from one side of the theater to the next, making more than a few people laugh at me along the way.
I just love it when a plan comes together.
And if you know who said that, you get 5 points to be used at your discretion.
5 whole probably useless points, people. Now THINK.