When I have nothing to do, I encounter The Nothing.
You may remember it from the film The Neverending Story. It is the embodiment of annihilation, portrayed as a menacing black wolf.
It terrified me in nightmares as a child. As an adult, I experience it in my waking hours, whenever I am waiting, or listless, or have no plans.
It is my fear of insignificance. My fear of being forgotten. Of having missed my moment or the right turn to realize a dream.
Read MoreI sat there, palms sweating, trying to hex the basket of name slips in my favor. “Call my name next,” I channeled, psychically trying to force my name to be called.
Read MoreThis is an essay about performing improv:
The metaphor I want to suggest is that your improvised character is a wheel, with the center of that wheel being the first thing you say or do as your character, and the spokes being the context of the scene.
Read MoreRead this article on Medium.com
The first thing I do when I teach improv classes is ask the group to get into a circle.
I count how long it takes them. The average for a group of 16 students is about ten seconds. The quality of the group’s movement is lethargic, meandering, hesitant and a bit dismissive of the need to make a circle in the first place. Why do we have to do this…aren’t we adults?
Read MoreRead this story on Medium.com so you can see all the pretty pictures in it!
I don’t like magical thinking. I don’t like getting my hopes up for something that isn’t feasible or attainable. I value action steps. I believe in possibility but don’t like wishing on a star. I want to wish on a business plan. You can blame this on me being a Capricorn at heart, though my astrological chart is complicated.
But there’s one place in the world where I suspend my disbelief and buy into everything I’m promised: Korean spas. I go crazy for Korean spas.
Read MoreMy friend Brian is both a Buddhist and a Bro. He seems like your typical, straight-acting, CIS, sports-obssessed, white boy until you get to know him. He bought me Infinite Jest as a present the day I stepped down running The Annoyance Theatre NY. He taught me how to ride a 150cc scooter and achieve Zen in the art of it. And when I got deservedly pissed off about something the other day, he told me, “It doesn’t matter if you’re right.”
I often want an apology from the world. I can’t fathom when people behave irrationally or rudely or in ways that go against my sense of justice. This doesn’t mean I hate when people make mistakes; on the contrary, owning up to wrongs is something I value above all and am working on myself.
But, when the world fucks me over, I want retribution. I want to duke it out. And a part of me wants to see it burn.
Read MoreI’m terrible at buying things. I always screw it up.
Let’s start with my blisters. I failed to buy the same pair of shoes this week three times. I went to Macy’s after my stalwart pair of black boots I’d had for three years burst a hole in the bottom during a rainstorm. I slogged my way up to the shoe department and threw down for a size 10 pair of waterproof Timberlands. I wear a size 10 shoe…normally. But, as I later found out, Timberland shoes run big. But I ran out the door, late to some appointment, assuming the shoes (though a bit loose) would be fine. By that night, I had blisters on both feet from them rubbing against the heel, my feet jostling in the enormous shoes.
Read MoreThey say it’s the mother of all emotions.
I woke up today, a week since switching to a new antidepressant called Abilify, and felt a switch had flipped inside me. Very simple: the glass was no longer half empty. I was looking at the same things as before, but instead of seeing them as less than what I needed to feel whole, they felt like blessings on top of a sturdy foundation.
Read MoreIt all started to go downhill under the fluorescent lights of the Supermarkten in Amsterdam. I had eaten a mushroom ‘space cake’ about 45 minutes earlier. It was starting to kick in; I could feel the blossoming rush of awareness. But the setting was all wrong. I was supposed to have reached the Vondelpark (the central urban park of Amsterdam) by then. Instead, I was in checkout lane hell.
I had packed gourmet cheese and a nice bottle of red in my backpack. I just needed to get some good bread to compliment it. But it was Sunday, and learned only after I’d eaten the ‘space cake,’ that all the local bakeries were closed on Sunday. I was dead set on getting bread though, so I went to the supermarket. They only had stale bread for sale. But I could feel the wonder-clock in my head beginning to tick, so I made peace with the day-old loaf, grabbed it and tried to get out.
The checkout line was endless. The Dutch do not rush. They ask each other how it’s going and so on and overuse the word “Ok.” Panic began to creep into my awareness. If the trip hit me here, full throttled, I’d be doomed. I needed to be in nature!
Read More“And I think Jesus would want me to tell you all, right now, that I’m gay,” I said from the pulpit of the church.
What followed was the deepest silence of my life — 200 bodies coming to total stillness and shock as I walked trembling back to my pew. It was the fourth, final day of the sacred retreat called Kairos that I’d attended with my Catholic High school Senior class. We’d been told that morning to “Live the Fourth,” and express our newfound selves. I volunteered to give the Homily at mass and then publicly came out of the closet. My peers were for mostly supportive afterwards, though the priests told me that while they were very happy for my ‘life discovery,’ Jesus would want me to be celibate…advice I did not end up taking.
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