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MissMelisshttp://www.missmeliss.com

Sunday Scribblings: Happy Endings

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There’s a line in The Pirate Movie an appallingly bad movie version of The Pirates of Penzance, in which Kristy McNichol breaks character as Mabel and tells the camera, “I want a happy ending.” She then proceeds to re-arrange the cast into couples, and action resumes. It’s an exceptionally cheesy moment in a movie that was over the top when it came to corniness, but there’s a sincerity in her delivery that has made the line stick with me for a couple of decades.

There are days when I’m feeling so frustrated because my muse isn’t speaking to me, the dogs are being obnoxious, and my husband and I just can’t manage to communicate that I, too, want to demand that the universe provide me a happy ending.

The thing is, though, happy endings aren’t something anyone can give you. They’re something you have to make for yourself. While it’s true that there are events that you often cannot control, it’s equally true that what we can control our own actions and reactions.

In one of the early episodes of his show, Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, everyone’s favorite fashion mentor tells the subject of the week to repeat these words: I cannot control how I am perceived; I can only control how I am presented.

It’s a phrase that made me rethink a lot, and helped me change my attitude about life in general. It wasn’t a moment of epiphany, or anything, just another concept clicking into place. The realization that I can give myself a happy ending whenever I want.

So now, when the dogs are driving me crazy, I still get frustrated with them, but I can step back and watch them and realize they’re pestering me because they adore me. Being adored is never a bad thing. Likewise, when Fuzzy has to work late and is being terse and uncommunicative over IM, I remind myself that his behavior isn’t intended to annoy or insult, he’s just wrapped up in whatever he’s working on, and his absence is a sort of a gift: two more hours of me-time before I have to focus on another person.

In improv, we are taught that there are no wrong answers, just high and low percentage choices, and that there are no mistakes, just gifts of a new direction. Most of the time, I have no real plan. I’m not a list-maker or a compulsive calendar-writer. I wing it. I do know, however, that even though I don’t know how it will happen, I will have my happy ending.

New Addictions: American Theatre Wing Podcasts

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I was slow to jump on the podcast bandwagon, for reasons I can’t really explain. Nevertheless, I’ve since seen the proverbial light, and am now addicted to the medium.

Recently, I’ve become hooked on two free offerings from the American Theatre Wing, which organizations gives us the Tony Awards among other nifty programs, like sending theatre professionals into New York City schools, or making it possible for NYC students and their parents to attend special performances of various Broadway shows that also include a discussion with cast and crew members.

Downstage Center is a true podcast featuring in-depth interviews with performers, producers and playwrights. It’s available via RSS and XM Satellite radio as well as on iTunes.

Working in the Theatre is a video cast available on the ATW website or via iTunes and is produced in partnership with CUNY (City University of New York). It’s a panel-discussion show that rotates epsiodes featuring performers, producers, and playwrights.

Both are fascinating if you’re a true theatre geek, and interesting enough for the casual audience as well.

Thick

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Crossposted from my LiveJournal.

Popcorn eaten while at the movies for a late matinee showing of The Happening was consumed with a rare treat of Dr. Pepper (I’m not really a soda drinker), and as a result my tongue is thick, both physically and metaphorically. I feel mentally parched, and water isn’t quenching my thirst.

I used the money on an Aveda gift card I purchased for myself several months ago during a sale to pay for my salon services today. I went over by $20. That’s not so bad. My hair is not entirely unpinked, but we used a sort of cinnamon-y brown (they call it a golden brown, but it’s less yellow than that) and a color called “Boysenberry” (which I prefer more than any ordinary jam hair color) which is a warm light-chocolate brown with red-violet in it. The dye, before application, looked much like the color of chocolate milk – sort of half-way between purple, mauve, and brown, and yes I know that’s one too many halves – it made me happy.

I had purposely NOT ordered more ATOMIC PINK Special Effects dye from Amphigory, because ten days ago when Fuzzy was out of the country I was certain that I wanted to be completely “normal” hair-color-wise. Then, Thursday night, I panicked. “I told the Algonkian people I have pink hair. They’re going to be expecting it in August. What if I’m really unpinking because I think I need to be more ‘professional’ and not because I’m bored with the color?” I said to myself in a sort of hyper babbling sort of voice. We went to the mall (which I never go to, because I do not really like malls), where not only did I get stopped by many people who told me my hair was cool, but I ended up giving pink-dye advice to a gaggle of teen-aged girls who were encamped at the dye carousel at Hot Topic. (I went to Torrid first, actually, but they didn’t have the color I needed.)

Torrid/Hot Topic no longer carry Special Effects. Well they sort of do, but it’s a special mix/rebranded version made JUST FOR THEM, and the bottle said it was alcohol based, which scared me. I purchased RAW dye instead. It’s a softer pink, but it did the job.

The end result? We touched up the pink around my face and in select parts of the rest of my hair with the RAW, and used the other two colors to do low-lights over the bulk of the pink. So, I still have punches of pink showing through in different layers and my bangs are mostly pink, and the effect is like the pink sky during sunset, with warm cinnamon-y browns as a backdrop.

Think of fresh raspberries dusted with cocoa powder. It’s like that.

It’s only been about 12 hours, but I like this new color. It’s a bit more sophisticated – more artsy, less aging punk – and the plan is to gradually de-pink until the cinnamon and boysenberry are the only colors.

And then I think I shall add a few highlights of vivid blue or purple, for fall/winter.

Now, my brain is thick, but unlike my tongue, it’s thick with thoughts, ideas, so many things I must pin to paper before they float away.

Who Needs Sleep?

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I was up all night with a brain burning with activity and a sick dog. The former is still abuzz, the latter is now stretched out along-side my right leg, in blissful sleep, and the warmth of his tiny body is comforting in a way only Animal People truly understand.

*~*~*

I tried to catch some sleep today, but a gorgeous thunderstorm kept me awake. I feel like I’ve been waiting months for rain, and I didn’t want to miss it. Storms are so magical to me.

*~*~*

I’m torn about my hair. I was ready to go in and have them strip all the pink out, last week, but now that I’ve had time to think, and had a mall full of people tell me they love my hair, I’m not sure I want to completely de-pink. In fact, I was at the mall because I’d been so certain that I was DONE with pink hair that I didn’t re-order my usual color. The pink I ended up with is a softer one…maybe it will be a good transitional shade.

*~*~*

I just started reading Eat Pray Love. I was initially put off because of the title, but I’m two chapters in and so far I’m good with it. The author’s approach to spirituality and religion is much akin to my own, except that I like the “smells and bells.”

*~*~*

Natalie Goldberg once took a classroom full of students on a walk between raindrops. Sometimes I try to do that on my back deck. To step between the drops isn’t to defy nature, but to perceive it from a different angle.

*~*~*

Clay is my muse once again. He taught me a secret to success that I hadn’t considered before. I am in all kinds of love with the universe today.

*~*~*

Bed now.

Five Star Observations

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I’ve always enjoyed reading travel guides, and over the past few days, I’ve had a lot of time to explore online versions of Frommer’s and Fodor’s among others, but when I think of travel books, really, my brain first goes to a series of mystery novels written by the man who invented Paddington Bear.

The novels, written by Michael Bond, are a series of gastronomic mysteries featuring restaurant critic Monsieur Pamplemousse and his faithful bloodhound Pommes Frites.

These are comic mysteries, and always involve mishaps that occur while Mssr. P. is on a mission, trying a new restaurant to see if it deserves to be included, or have it’s stockpots (their rating system) increased, in Le Guide.

Somehow, in my travels, I’ve never seen anything as absurd as a man being koshed on the head by his own baguette, or being locked in a pay toilet.

I have, however, often paused to observe young lovers, arguing couples, and parents with children, and been as amused watching those interactions, than I ever was with the fictional detective and his pooch.

Time Travel?

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After two weeks in Hong Kong building out a new client’s data farm and stringing miles and miles of CAT5e cable in fashion colors, my husband is finally on the first leg of his journey back home.

Actually, he’s been on it for about 90 minutes, and he texted me before take-off that it was, “…a crappy old 747-400 without updated power or an entertainment system…” Poor guy. 14 hours in the air with literally NOTHING to do. I hope he remembered to buy a book. Oh, well, it’s an overnight flight – he can sleep for a lot of it.

You have to love traveling across the international date line, though. In Hong Kong, it was 2 PM Monday afternoon when he boarded the plane, and when he gets to his stopover in San Francisco, it will be 11:30 Monday morning.

I wonder if there’s a time paradox in arriving before you actually left?

There’s no business

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I don’t know what the best anti wrinkle cream might be, but judging from the Tony’s tonight, Patti LuPone does. That woman has not aged in decades; if anything, she looks younger.

Liza Minelli, on the other hand, still scares me.

Watching the Tony’s is always a bit weird for me. There was a time in the mid-nineties when I watched them to see if any of my former classmates were winning anything (they often did), but before and since, I’ve watched them because the beginning of a musical’s overture is still a dose of magic for me. I like movies, but I LOVE theatre.

The problem is, now I want to write a musical instead of finishing my book.

Note to self: ONE project at a time.

Restful Weekend and the Spoken Word

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I’ve spent the weekend in a sort of “radio silence” mode – the mental equivalent of a colon cleanse – writing and sleeping and listening to short stories on NPR (yesterday) and breaking during meals to watch things like the Tony Award Nomination Concert tonight.

I’ve got TiVo set to record the Tony’s as I’m feeling very tired just now, and want to rest. They are the only award show I have any interest in. Live performance has some magic that no other medium can provide. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fully produced Broadway musical or a mother reading a book to her child and doing all the voices but the spoken word connects us.

Madeleine L’Engle reminded us that even the Judao-Christian view of God is bound in Story, but I don’t have the energy for philosophical discourse just now.

Words written and spoken, stories told, songs sung, dreams taking flight.
This is my world right now.

WOW: The Invisible Picket Fence

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Becca, who I count among those “friends as yet unmet in person” is hosting a summer writing roundtable called “Write on Wednesday.” Today is Saturday, but she assures me it’s not a problem, and her first question has been tumbling around my head for a few days.

She asks: “Why in the world do you come to the page?”

At first my answer was flippant and terse: Because I have to.

But it’s a question that deserves more than a four-word answer.

I write to explore, to create, to still the buzzing of ideas in my head, to give other ideas new life. I write because sometimes a conversation overheard on line in the grocery store or in a cafe is just enough to spark a story. I can’t follow a stranger home to observe the next part of their life, but I can imagine what might follow.

Did the mother of the five teenagers like whatever chocolate they chose at Tom Thumb while their harried father gave advice, at nine PM on the Thursday before Mother’s Day? Did the kids get stuff THEY wanted after all? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do know that there was something about this poor man surrounded by gangly young people trying to make sure his wife had a present from every child without blowing their budget that touched me. He had a story, and I wanted to know more.

Or what about the poet I used to chat with when I was 19 and working at a bookstore/cafe in San Jose? He let me read some of his work, asked me advice on word choice and comma placement, and never guessed that almost twenty years later I’d be thinking of him in his ratty fisherman’s sweater and jeans, scribbling in what I now know was a Moleskine notebook, and sipping slowly on latte after latte, as I worked on my novel. I don’t remember his name, but I remember the angular script he used, and the soft grey of the pencil strokes on the unruled paper.

In one of my favorite books ever, Outside Lies Magic, the author, John Stilgoe, mentions that if you’re riding a bike along-side a picket fence, and manage to find just the right speed, the fence becomes essentially invisible. The rational part of me knows that it’s just an optical illusion, that the fence is as solid as ever, and that the right speed simply synchronizes our active vision with the gaps between the slats, so we’re never looking at solid boards.

The more fanciful part of me – the observer, the writer – that part of me accepts that sometimes you can find magic in ordinary things.

For me, those things are words.

I write so I can see – and share – what’s behind the invisible picket fence.

Magazines

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I’m primarily a reader of books but there are times when a magazine is the best thing ever, and other times when there is no other reading material available.

I like all kinds of magazines, but am especially partial to literary zines filled with short stories, and home decor / lifestyle publications like Real Simple and Mary Englebreitt’s Home Companion, and sometimes, I confess, I do read good old Martha, even if the fact that her hair is always in her eyes constantly annoys me.

At the salon, I indulge in my guilty pleasure: fashion magazines filled with everything from diet pill reviews to runway fashion shoots, and dishy celebrity gossip. These are the magazines I refuse to actually buy, but enjoy in small doses.

At home, we accept delivery of only three or four magazines: The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Discover and National Geographic.

Everything else, we only pick up as the mood suits.

Your turn: What magazines do you read? Which ones do you avoid at all costs?