I am not ready in so many ways.

If you’re lucid, I bet this is what you say on your deathbed.

But that is presumptuous from a whippersnapper like me.

OK, I have had a long day.

The film I am producing is really hard to produce and I am stretched beyond my capacities right now. I am not sure that I can pull this off…thank goodness I have my birthday reserved for getting nothing more that my $3,000 crowns that I need to put on my already bloating credit card, and trying to have a party at the gallery my little exhibition is at tomorrow afternoon and evening. I can use the rest of the day to take care of pre production and try to get things as leveled as possible before our first shoot on Saturday.

Funny, I just got this rush of understanding my circumstances by writing my worry down and I felt better than I have all day.

But I am also feeling relived, as are many people, that this is the last FIIF entry. Ron erupted and said  “Whoo Whooed “last night. Ingrid said it was my gift to all my readers, and Cynthia, oh I mean, Pinthia, is relieved that this bad PR aberration is now done.

Any one else relived? Oddly, as one of my dearest friends predicted this morning in a VM, (yes MC I was up, but intensely working on rehearsal logistics and did not pick up the phone, but heard your message later, and while I forget that interaction with Judith, I was amazed at how you and I handled it — can I interview you for the doc I am working on about the legacy of many generations of fucked up woman in my family???), he suggested that I might likely, and perhaps compulsively, write again. I am feeling like I am leaving you and me in the lurch. Here I am on the brink of change once again, (oh please will the woman move on already), and a few major projects about to go into the world. And I suck at FB and I what the fuck about Twitter? And why did I feel compelled to even capitalize the first letter of twitter?

I don’t have the tools to evaluate this ending point/post.

As I think about it, isn’t that life? We move forward, we evaluate and hopefully learn and grow. We become a little bit wiser as we move ahead in our lives, these odd constructions of forward movement in time and space.

As we know it we can only learn as we age, and move forward in time from that. But I truly feel, as I have said before, that there are another dimensions of our being alive, that are congruent, that exist around us, and we are part of in a passive way, but that we don’t understand because our brains are too small, and if we knew it , it would take the beauty and urgency out of this experience.

Good passages Bernie, and new everything Virginia.

Thank you Anh, I couldn’t have done this with out you and Happy Birthday, Birthday brother…

OK, this is it.

This is good bye… it is like breaking up with a lover. I am not ready, but I need to go.

This may be it, but I may still write, or  try to do right.

Oh my, gotta go,

xl

BTW-I just got hacked, while I  had a hard time posting because of some weird outside blocking thing, otherwise known as a hacker, this outside force must know that I am a bigger hack than they are.


Argh! I am yawning as I write, I am achy and tired, and the short SiFi, sexy, futuristic, over the top film I am producing is invading my life like a hoard of demanding demon babies.

And I am the chief, and sort of only, baby wrangler.

But this project, and this blog will go away.

Very, very, soon.

And I have my good-bye blog, hello 51 birthday party on Wednesday at 323 Gallery and if you are reading this you are now obliged to come…you know what I was obsessing about today was saying thank you to everyone who has bothered to read, and especially those who have bothered to respond, this year. One of the main points of making this public is I couldn’t shirk it if I promised others I would do it, and I did well. Maybe I’ll have the totals tomorrow, and maybe not, but I have only truly fucked up a few times, maybe 10-15 in a whole year, made up of 365 days.

And by fucking up I mean not writing. Help us all, I wrote a lot.

Pretty good. And I am sad and scared to stop. And I’m not sure why.

When I mentioned to Ron earlier, who happens to be here on my editing computer in the other room because his internet is down at his place,( how nice is that to be working side by side, or room by room), anyway when I mentioned to him I only had two days left he bleated out a “Whoo Hoo!” .

And I do too, while I wonder what’s next.

I read and edited the month of April today, and dear Patty came and made the organized piles of my verbiage, we call her the stripper, but I don’t have time to contextualize…but what was in April? Ron. We met on April 9^th, we have known each other for four months now, and it is still an adventure and a huge unknown, yet rife with possibility.

Just as new love should be.

And I am listening to Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports”, one of mine, and my mother’s favorites, even in her last months of life she requested this. And there is a whole great story around that that I can’t tell right now, but maybe I will in a further incarnation of this text.

Hey, what do you think I should do next with what I have written? Bury it on a thumb drive? Print it out and burn it at the beach? Try to make a book? Start a self-help middle aged lecture series? Let it go and move on? Keep writing an posting?

You be the judge.

Oh my, Brian Eno is great. So is Lefty, Laurie, Ron, Virginia, (thanks for the party bag!!!-will call tomorrow, my love to Bernie), and anyone else who reads this.

Me oh my, me oh my.

Otherwise just here, working on the FINAL I hope draft of the script, huge brain strech trying to wrangle about 147 cats, oh I mean cast and crew, and endless admin all in an effort to be in production on the short I am producing starting next Saturday. Alas dear blog, you will not know how it all pans out, for you will be retired. At once a relief and also a surge of panic as I note your demise and feel beholden to those I have taken along for this ride.

I am confident we will figure this out.

I have an immense week ahead of me, split delightfully in half by my birthday and the respite I have planned, by not planning anything but a party for Wednesday. If you’re reading you’re coming right?

Two short stories before Lefty poops and we both climb into bed.

So, I was in Safeway today shopping for dinner which I half made of, and this attractive young woman passes me in the produce section and smiles at me, I smile back. It felt like a smile of recognition, I have taught so many courses over the years it easily could have been. But I pushed my cart on to the root vegetable section and she passed towards the greens and flowers. While I am contemplating broccoli and cauliflower, thinking I should go green, here she comes again. She asks if she can talk to me, and I have a feeling I know what it’s about-yep, she wants to use me as a hair model…and as it turns out she works at the station next to Dani who is cutting my hair tomorrow morning. We laughed lightly as we moved onto our shopping and my demons told me that the assignment for the grad students was to find tired looking middle-aged women with thin lack luster hair, and then I thought about the coincidence and laughed outloud to myself right there and then as I picked cauliflower.

And then something even smaller world happened. Ron’s Mom found out he was seeing me, not from him, but from the post mistress in the largest town next to her, a place called Penland, North Carolina. My friend Veva just moved to the area, which I think I may have mentioned before, and this place is pretty much in the middle of small town obscurity, and where Ron was raised is even smaller than that, but Penland is the postal hub from what I can discern. Veve relocated there to study ceramics at a noted outpost ceramics school, and as one does in outlaying areas, goes in to get her PO Box set up with the post mistress and mentions that she knows Ron, who is going out with me and who she met at her going way party where they discovered she was moving to his remote place of origin.

And so Ron’s Mom finds out that he is dating someone new from the Penland Post Mistress.

So there you go.

It’s moments like these when I feel closer to the answer of the way of the universe, acknowledging that time and space, future and past are all here now and that in the most perfect world for us stunted humans is to be in the presence of this multidimensional concept, because we can not comprehend it, we can merely sense it. I think some people call it god, others call it physics. I call it hyper awareness and it is a feeling bigger than being in my aching and tired body, or being in a moment of happy connection with others. And right now I am feeling its omni-present multidimensionality.

I remember a moment nine years ago when I bumped into Dore, a dear and respected friend, in the Mission. My mother was dying and I was in the zone, and she asked me how I was doing. Dore is one of the smartest people I know and I knew I could spill my guts, in the proverbial sense, but also in the from my real guts sense and she would get it. So I said something like this: “While I watch my mother die I know that there is no defined past, present or future, no forward or backwards in time or place, no up down or sideways, but that all of this is happening simultaneously and that out limited perception keeps us on this forward and time based path. We understand time and our own aging in this very linear way, it all pushes ahead relentlessly, but being with the dying somehow gives us a glimpse into other possibilities. I don’t think we come back, but I think there is an eternal nature that exists that is not time and dimensionally driven. There is, or perhaps are, many more ways of being in time, space and mortality than we can know about given our perception of the world, godspace and universe”.

Just look at a dead star, black hole, or a nebulae and you have to admit there is more out there than us, more intelligence than we can comprehend. We are limited, but thankfully beautiful to oursleves.

And all the above has almost nothing to do with my day.

I learned a lot from my dearest friend Virginia, thank you, may the words above be a corn on the cob for you.

And then I worked like a good pitbull on Tayeb’s film; we are forming a shape out of a jelly mass of ideas and curious people, it is hard and entrancing.

Ron and I got together at 8pm to drive, in my once again ailing car, to Jays’ 41^st birthday dinner, and that was fun as we met them for birthday cake because we were too late for dinner: we had to go because he had put my name on the cake, that being his nature, since my birthday is, yep in five days away…and speaking of shelf life, mortality, time space continuums, this, the FIFF blog thing, is  going away in four days.

I am happy and…and I don’t know what.

But what I do know is there is a little dog that needs to get walked and a Ron, who almost never spends the night because his work day ends so very late and starts so very early is here and I need to be there, in the simple human setting called my bedroom.

I just had my first unsettling and disappointing experience with my boyfriend and because I WROTE about it, to him, and now here, I am not holding it in my heart to let it fester and become something it’s not. I don’t grow disappointment, I move on with a cold heart. And that may even be worse. I truly felt my heart tightening against hurt about an hour ago. But because I value and respect this relationship, and Ron, and myself more and more, I am not letting my heart shut down, I am going to be patient and understanding.

When it comes to gratification I can be greedy and demanding. Ron is slow. I am fast. Both of us are insanely busy. Anyone out there got any advice? I think it is keeping openness and honesty, (knowing that truth can change in a second) by your side as your counsel.

I got a whole month up on the wall at the Gallery this evening. Feels good. And even better, the move towards production on Replikaaa, the short I am producing like Sisyphus and his big rock, is going well, but rock seems manageable today.

Oh yeah, and I slept well and no creepy sweats. But as my dear nemesis, Scott, said today after I told him I wound skip menopause he laughed and said I would skip death too-he’s right, it’s coming, and whether it’s now, or next week, or in 2012, it’s coming. But I am sure my experience will be interesting and fine-feedback girls? I mean woman? I mean crones?

Goodness, writing really has helped me feel better after my late in the day disappointment. Writing to you Ron, and writing here is good.

And I have no idea what’s going on in the world. I tried to fix the radio in my car today, but it seems to be one of those head fuck, need the magic code situations that somehow I can’t conjure. I have however been pressing buttons and praying to unknown gods to get the radio back on-these days one of the only places I get my news I am ashamed to say.

But my bubble is just fine right now, how will it feel when this, my dear blog bubble bursts in just a few days? Of course I am obsessing about my final posting and how I will feel and deal post FIIF, but of course, despite my phobia about last things, it will all be better than fine.

OK-enough. Always more to say, but now that I am reading all this (crap) I know that pithy works better than filler.

I woke up angry and frustrated after one of the worst nights sleep in months. I was at Ron’s, and I have to admit, without the passion of a fun overnight, it is an uncomfortable and odd place to sleep. He lives like the quintessential bachelor real live/work sapce, and while I admire him for that given his life circumstances and his devotion to his work that allows him to largely ignore his domestic surroundings, I have to wonder where the man can be relaxed and comfortable in his own home/shop. But it doesn’t worry him as far as I can tell, so I will just let this one be.

But after getting home at a little after 8am and needing to get so much done, and feeling like a wild eyed bag lady, which is what I look like after too little sleep, I just sat down, and well got a lot done. I plunged right in. This comes on the tail end of a handful of scary days feeling like I am out of control and will never meet the necessary expectations of my current producing job, my personal and financial life is a wreck, both me and my dog are grossly under exercised and I still need to finish my installation at the Gallery and we’re looking at least 50-60 hours of work between now and mid/late August, oh yeah, and school starts on the 13^th, and oh yeah, we go into three days of intense production on the 14^th…but nonetheless I plunged right in and got a lot done.

I don’t have time to be distracted or freak out. Oddly I am up to the end of March, beginning of April in editing my blog for the text installation, and I was going through the same kind of pragmatic, take care of business, take no prisoners, ignore the demons, accept that you are tired attitude back then. But if I remember correctly, while I was fine in the big push to completion and meeting (false as it turned out) deadlines, when I was done I had that horrible thing happen to my hand that has only, 10 weeks later, almost recovered, yet not fully. And I haven’t done much to change my environment to prevent it from happening again, and I am back in the same manic, compulsive stress loop.

So the blog has been a good touchstone for me, but have I taken heed?

Hell no.

But the point of tonight is love. As challenged as I was going into today, yet being present, working hard and putting it out there and not retreating, which was my waking instinct, paid off; and the message in the pay off was love.

If I nurture and love, I will be nurtured and loved in return.

Most of this exchange can through mutual work respect today, but also through being present and honest with a few people.

I realized as Laurie and I were re-stinging the grind lines at the Gallery this afternoon, (talk about love, thank you Laurie) I realized that my uncomfortable night, hours of light sweats and insane anxiety dreams might be do in some part to, I even hate to write it, para-menopause. I have slept warm all my life and can get a little sweaty, especially after late food and drink, but last night was different. It was long and persistent and really uncomfortable in an uncomfortable environment.

My heart sank as I said out loud to Laurie what had been on my mind in the middle of the night. I hate this, I don’t want it to happen, and even if it’s not now, it is coming and just like my mortality and eventual demise, I have to accept it.

And saying it out loud, first to Laurie, and then to Ron, who were both patient and sweet and accepting, was the manifestation of love.

And that’s my love story for today.

Too much.

I sit here at 10:39 and have a week of work to do before I go to bed. And bed is at Ron’s place, is this smart?

And my percolating grief and anxiety about stopping this, my blog, makes me feel uncomfortable and maybe sad. But I may be glad too.

In the meantime I don’t have the luxury of reflection. I am too busy to sit and contemplate the last year, let alone the last minute.

It is my birthday in a week and that is freaky.

What’s even freakier is being recruited to be a hair model in Safeway this evening. A young pierced hipster tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to be a hair model for her was I available on Monday? I didn’t know given the chaos of my life, but I asked for her number and more info, and she is legit, and called her later and I am getting a downtown cut on Monday. WTF?

Why the heck did she pick me? My hair is a baby hair joke, maybe that is why. She wants to style it and give it volume.

Oh dear blog, and invested readers, I will be able to report back on the outcome before the kill date.

And I am getting my new teeth on the upper left side on Tuesday, the last day of this.

And then I have a blog farewell party, and welcome 51 party, at 323 Gallery on the 11^th from 4-8pm.

Wow, I am feeling off and odd and uncomfortable about this whole non-blogging thing. But I really do need to move on…

I just made a great pasta with lots of mushrooms, tomato paste and leftovers in the fridge.

Gotta go-but want to say the film I am producing, Replikaaa, is coming along, not such a heart stopper today.

Ah preproduction right before production; it’s really hard.

Just like a criminal going to the death chamber, and there is no governor’s reprieve, this is it, you are going to die.

Wow, yucky imagery. But who hasn’t thought of that? What it would be like to be aware of your last moments?

But I am not here to ponder that now.

What am I here to ponder now?

That I am once again a wound ball of stress and anxiety. But not as bad as I used to be, not as bad as last year under comparable circumstances. A gift of reflection from my dear blog.

I was visiting briefly with my friend and coworker Dina in the early evening before a series of Replika meetings back to back until 10pm, and got to reflect on…I forget.

Under saner circumstances I would have deleted this shaggy dog story, but I think it sums up where I am at-the intersection of monkey mind swinging from tree to tree meets steel enforced mind that can only handle the task at hand.

Hence I write here, but the distraction of Laurie taking out ice cubes and Lefty’s interest in this activity distracted me enough to completely forget what I was going to write.

Does this happen to you?

I am full bore on producing this short and it is taking my breath away. Working for a first time director is wonderful and awful. I don’t know if I will get the time before this beautiful albatross dies to fully explain…but working in film is always challenging, and always engaging. Patty likened my role as lead producer tonight as comparable to leading a small nation. While the analogy is pretty right on, who would want to lead a small, or large nation for that matter? All those politicians need to get their heads and personalities checked, and oh yeah, egos. The folks who are motivated through altruism are bound to fail, you need so many other leadership deceits/skills, or in the case of the last George, the right incarnations with quick evil minds around you.

I am going off and rambling.

Today I learned a lot about special effects contact lenses and other things too.

I have also decided to have a good bye blog, happy 51^st low key birthday party next Wednesday at 323, come by, and say bye to FIIF and buy a print, they’re going like hotcakes.

OK, I am over my lite limit in this not lite ramble.

I am anxious about my blog dying, but I am also anxious about a bunch of other things right now, so get in line little sister.

This old Lise was the Lise of hope and expectation; the new twist is it’s the Lise of hope and thankfulness.

Boy that sound corny, but I swear it’s true.

How did I know this? Well first of all I am feeling better. I have a drive forward as I do what I need to do, even getting my blood drawn, all nine viles, opps I mean vials, of it for the neurologist who I do not trust, like, or think is right in his diagnosis or summary of me as a person. I have decided to see him once more and let him try to prove to me that I had a stroke, but I do not think so, it was my body in revolt in much more tangible ways that his empirical mind and crappy attitude could never see.

With that said, part of my buoyancy is having seen the good witches of my recovery today. My PT was honestly happy at my recovery, and I am about ¾ back and have the mental and pain space to address the original problem I went to her for, my RIGHT hand, that is still injured, but got eclipsed by my palsied left hand. Having anyone in the medical system see you as a whole person and really want to help you is an amazing and wonderful feeling.

And I have two of them.

Next I got to go to my main doctor across town: not only my doc, but my guru and mother confessor, the lovely MA, and she too was beyond happy with my rapid recovery, (btw, I am typing with two full hands!!!), and I went on to tattle on the dark neurologist, the one with the awful bedside manner, and even worse insistence on bad prognosis…she took my blood pressure and it’s fine. What the fuck, he wanted to slap me on high blood pressure medication without knowing me, and he was WRONG, and I told him he was wrong, and thank the big universal thing that may be out there, and all my Jewish and obstinate Norwegian ancestors who have given me indignation and balls.

And then I came home and did all the things I am not meant to do anymore-sitting at a shitty desk, not taking breaks, not getting exercise, eating salty foods, not spending enough time with Lefty, and then running off to a 4pm meeting followed by a weird and wonderful presentation in San Jose at a makeup school where we are recruiting free talented makeup work for the film I am producing.

This is how bereft my downtime life is—going to Daly City for a meeting, and then going to San Jose for this funny little, but oh so useful networking, made me feel like I was on a road trip. I got that feeling of being in unknown places, almost wanted to eat on the road junk food, but then got the most royal stomach aches of recent times just thinking about it.

So I stopped at the gas station, used the restroom, filled up the car and moved on.

Maybe this is the answer to everything. Feel your body, respond, and carry on.

I have to think about this.

Just had a thought.

The one hour plus I have taken for this, my dear blog, nearly everyday for almost a year I could have spent on: exercise, my relationship, learning to cook fish, doing my taxes, meditating-(don’t laugh, it has been prescribed to me and my monkey mind), art making, sleeping, clearing out my garage, making more movies—

My hunch is the body first…I do all of the above compulsively, so, as my Grandma Swenson said, according to m Dad, put your health first.

What a good idea.

The weather here is cold and mostly grey, the fog only lifting after 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

I am feeling small and burdened by the enormity of what I have to pull off in the next two weeks; even my Uncle Ralph told me today that he doesn’t know how I do all that I do, while I sit here in my life and chastise myself for never doing enough. I know he is right, I am trying to do too much, a boring lament at best.

How do people with kids, or hobbies, or serious spiritual practices, or horses, do it? In all honestly I can say I guess they don’t do it the way I do it which seems to be coveluted and always time consuming.

And of course there are ways I have control over what I do and how I schedule my time. I am locked into a full stride, at least through late August, but by mid September I likely have some control over how I do what I do.

But honestly, I know myself. If something I think is interesting, or a great opportunity, or lucrative, or enables me to better chase a dream, my instinct and my nature is to grab the opportunity and add it to my dance card.

One thing I do have to report is dear Laurie and Ron are in the kitchen cleaning up after out shared dinner. Funny, I know these eavesdropping reports were flavor of the day a month or so ago, but it feels like ancient history, and it is fun to have this back. All of us, Ron and I extremely, have been so busy and anxious and responding like the hybrid beast of hungry coyote, come scared rabbit, come fierce Mama bear, which makes you myopic on your path, excluding all else to the point of not knowing you are in, in this case a new, tender relationship.

But our relationship has only grown more with it’s strapped on work boots, medical and business compromises. If we can get through this and still laugh like heck together, I think we may well be talking to each other, perhaps even loving each other fiercely, after this not so easy honeymoon period.

All this romantic musing in context-we really did finally spend some time together today. He came over last night, and I was over at his after my opening on Thursday. When we woke up together late today, super late for him, we laid and talked for three hours.

It was beautiful.

And after working throughout the afternoon I picked him up for a walk on Bernal with Lefty and then a visit to a secret place of his, a SF mini park at 25^th and Minnesota that I have never seen before, that is small, hidden and very well taken care of, even with the guy shooting up in the bushes.

And I need to jolt out of somewhat laid back land and jump in fully to the next two weeks to get ready for returning to City College and producing and shooting Replikaaa, the SiFi short I am helming. And I have to finish my laborious and time intensive text installation and I need to start fucking adapting my lifestyle to take better care of myself.

Good lord, I could not do all of this without the support of the key people in my life, as Laurie and Ron cackle next door in the kitchen.

Scott dropped by today, and I talked to Susan yesterday. I am thankful for my friends and family today and feel fully supported.