Let smilin' dogs be happy

Tuesday I got up at 6:45 AM, and by 7:15 I was in an utterly foul mood. I won't bore you with the details; suffice it to say that I probably would have slapped my own mother if she had looked at me funny, and not thought twice about it. All bundled up and looking, I must imagine, like a dead ringer for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I got Max ready to go out for our morning walk. He seemed eager enough to go; unless it's raining or he's really tired, he loves his walks. Grumbling to myself as I crammed doggie clean up bags into every available pocket on my parka, I opened the door and stepped out into the near blizzard winds. Grumbling out loud as the first blast of arctic air hit me, I pulled the door shut behind us and turned to step off the porch.

And that's when it happened.

Max realized that overnight a huge amount of The White Fluffy Stuff had landed in his front yard. He immediately went into this ridiculous butt-wiggling, front feet stomping canine jig that I've come to associate with unbridled happiness on his part. He poked his entire face into the snow and came up with a small mound of it on the end of his nose. Tail wagging furiously, he looked up at me as if to say, "Did you see this?! This is GREAT!" He then threw himself into a full-on nose dive into the snow that had drifted around the cherry tree, taking mouthfuls of the stuff and trying to throw it up into the air the way he does his toys. Despite my foul mood, I caught myself chuckling. Max responded to the slight shift in my mood by cocking his head and perking up his ears ("C'mon, this IS great, right!").

I decided that instead of taking our usual walk we would head down to one of the open fields at the bottom of the hill. There's this little stand of pine trees that sits in front of the party center. The place ain't exactly hoppin' at 7:45 AM on a blustery Tuesday, so that's where we went. As we approached the field, Max went into excitement overdrive, bouncing on his front feet and wagging his tail so hard it came all the way around to his shoulders. With his ears pinned back and his mouth open in excitement, he pulled me over to where he knew the edge of the grass was under all this new White Fluffy Stuff. I told him to calm down and he dutifully, if extremely impatiently, dropped his butt to the ground. I laughed again, because he was staring longingly at the empty expanse of snow, wanting to get out there so badly he was practically vibrating. I unhooked his leash and said "Go get 'em!"

That was all it took; he launched himself forward, stretching into this kind of cheetah-like run that he does. My Maximus is a fairly large dog, and he's got the long body of a Great Pyrenees (which he gets from his mama), so when he gets into a really good running stride, it's kind of impressive to watch. I stood there for a solid five minutes, watching him do laps in and around the strand of trees, running for all he was worth then skidding to a halt, turning on a dime and heading in a completely different direction. He would come bounding up to me with a huge grin on his face (anybody who's ever lived with a dog knows that they do smile), darting and fainting at me, trying to get me to play with him. We found a stick, actually a small branch from one of the pine trees, complete with floppy pine needles still attached (the needles perplexed Max to no end, but since there was a bare section of branch at one end, that was all he needed) and I threw that for him for a while. He would go rocketing past the branch, snatching it up as he went, usually without even slowing down. Sometimes he would stop abruptly and just shove his whole face into the snow, looking for God only knows what under the inches of precipitation that were so bothersome to me just a half hour before, but were now brining both of us so much joy. And that's exactly what it was. Watching Max tear around in the snow, I thought to myself that there should be a picture of this scene in the dictionary, right next to the definition of 'joy'. And I realized that I'd been laughing at him the entire time, and that I was no longer feeling any trace of the foul mood lingering from before. I think that's part of the magic of dogs; just by doing whatever it is they do, they make us feel better. I have never in my life met a human being capable of doing that, but it's come naturally to every dog I have ever had.

I am a human coffee plant

Nothing brings a smile to my face quite like the smell of coffee brewing. There's something earthy and deep about it that literally goes right to my soul and sits there, making me feel all warm and fuzzy and happy. My friend David is a wine connoisseur; he belongs to 'Wine O' The Month' clubs (not to be confused with Wine-o The Month…ahem) and knows all the 'rules' about what wine goes with what kind of food, and at what temperature the wine should be served. I can barely separate good wine from bad fruit juice. However, I told David once that I am as offended by bad coffee and he is by bad wine, and it's true. My point being, I am quite serious about my coffee. Anyway, since it was early and the house was quiet my mind started to wander. I accessed that part of my brain that I have dubbed The Archives of Useless Information (because as some people will tell you, I am a cornucopia of useless information) and did a quick run-down of everything I know about coffee. I came to the startling conclusion that being a coffee farmer and a creative person are not at all dissimilar. Why? You wonder. Well, of course I'm going to tell you. Read on…

The best coffee beans grow in ancient, dangerous places – rain forests, soaring mountain ranges, even the sides of volcanoes. It takes years before a coffee plant (it's a shrub, actually; there's a piece of useless information, to you from me) will start producing its full crop. Even once it does start producing, all the fruit (the coffee beans are actually hanging out inside a berry) does not ripen all at once, so it's necessary to return to the same plant several times in order to get all the coffee the plant has to offer.

Once the berries have been picked, it's on to the roasting process, which is, in and of itself, a monumental pain in the ass. These little suckers have to be roasted at low heat for a specified period of time, until all the hull and berry parts burns off (I'm told this stinks to high heaven, BTW). Then the beans have to be stirred up, the heat increased and the beans babysat until they get to a specific color and texture. There's no set list of times for any of this, because outside temperature, humidity and altitude all play a part in how long it takes to roast a bean. There are fast, cheap, easy ways to do this (I will not entertain any comments regarding fast, cheat and easy people), and there is the expensive, time consuming, labor-intensive way to do this. Take a guess at which one yields the best cup of coffee.

What I'm saying is, creating anything-art, music, literature-is just like harvesting coffee. If it's really good art, it comes from a place inside that may not be easy to get to; hell, it might even come from a spiritual or emotional place where we don't like to venture too often. It's never realized in just one trip to this dark place – we have to keep going back in and picking around until we are able to extract exactly what we need (which may not be what we WANT – but that's another blog entry entirely) in order to make whatever it is we are creating come to life. But even once we do pull it out of ourselves, we still need to work it over, turn it this way and that, and sometimes beat the snot out of it until we're able to use it in our art. This process is not fast. It is not easy. It is sometimes not the least bit pretty. We get dirty and we get tired. But when it's all said and done and we're sitting there, admiring the pretty thing we've created, it makes us smile. It's like breaking that vacuum seal on the bag (or can) of coffee, that instant when it hits you and you think "This is gonna be good!"

I'm just sayin'.

That's a wrap

So it's done; we wrapped production this morning at 5:30 am. Tonight was the wrap party, and after spending several hours surrounded by bowling balls and booze (you wouldn't have thought that would be a good combo, but there were no injuries and a good time was had by all)I had to call it a night. The drive home from Elyria was a blur, because moments after I got in my car I was overcome by this slightly surreal mixture of sadness and gratitude that I'm still sorting through.

On the one hand, I'm saddened that I won't be seeing a lot of these people ever again. There were many folks that I would have liked very much to have gotten to know better, but there simply wasn't time. I've also made a couple of new friends - people that I'm sure I'll keep in touch with even after the office is locked up and everybody has caught their flight home, or to their next job, or where ever their road is taking them.

And on the other hand, there is this certainty I have that spending so much time around so many talented people has pushed me to better my craft. You can not be in the company of so many amazing people and just be walking through it yourself - you have to do the absolute best that you can do, and more than that, you must do even better. It's very humbling, and at the same time very inspiring. And I don't think I could ever, in a thousand years and with all the words I've ever heard or read, thank those people enough for that.

The Sum of My Exhaustion

Wow. Just... wow. It's been a ridiculously hectic 3 weeks. As of today, we've got 3 more weeks of filming, and one more of post work (closing up the office and shutting down all the accounts, etc.) and that'll be that. And it made me a little sad. This past week was the first week of filming, when everybody was kind of thrown into the fire, and we're all now used to how the people around us operate on a daily basis. I now know who is a scatter-brian, who has a martyr complex and who is just flat out lazy. But the 3 of us production office ladies (or "Crazy Office Bitches" as we've been dubbed) all get along really well. We work well together, and we stick up for one another even though we'd never met before mid-May. I totally dig that. I know I'll be sad when it's over, because most of the people on this film are from out of state, and the likelihood that I'll ever see them again is pretty small. Then I got to thinking that if I were to get one of my screenplays made, I could hire the people I like and work with them again. Strange logic, I know, but it's been motivating never the less. In honor of that motivation, a snippet of a song by one of my all time favorite bands (that would be Carbon Leaf). It's called 'Changeless':

Let fondness be our souvenir
To keep it warm, we'll keep it near
Otherwise with no heart to recall...
A memory's just a memory after all
I will not leave this pulse alone
Though it may take the long way home
I will not wait until the end
For my applause for you my friend

What are the odds, what are the odds?
This ends and we don't meet again
What are the odds, what are the odds?
This ends and we won't meet again
What are the odds, What are the odds?
That I have missed your smile

The more she saw, the less she spoke...

...and the less she spoke, the more she heard.

So here we go. This week I started work in the production office of an indie film that's shooting here this summer. I'd be lying if I said I had any terribly important responsibilities. It's been a lot of "We need keys cut, can you run to the hardware store?" and "This Word doc has to be transferred to Excel; have at it." But so far, I'm loving it. And I'm learning a ton about the business end of making movies, which I figure is going to be really important as I advance my career (wink wink). Yesterday I had lunch with the director and one of the producers (ok, that sounds very Hollywood... basically they let me tag along) and I seriously learned more about film finance and distribution rights in those 90 minutes than I could have ever hoped to learn reading articles online or taking classes. I have also already figured out that I far more enjoy the creative side of things to the business stuff. And that's ok, because it's kind of like I had a question answered by the universe, which is always a nifty feeling.

The really cool thing is, these guys are the real deal. There are a lot of posers in the Cleveland film community (not being hateful here, it's just a sad fact) but these people I'm working with (for) have walked the walk. And so far they're all very nice people. A little unwound, but hey, you'll have that anywhere you go.

A new tattoo recipient's manifesto

Friends, family, passing acquaintances: I have a new tattoo. My first, in fact. I would be happy to show it to you if you want to see it (though I have not been running around forcing people to look at it). Be advised, however, that me showing you the tattoo does not constitute me asking for your opinion of said tattoo. Yes, I know it's not a conventional design, especially for a woman. But please understand that I did not get this tattoo for you; I got it for me. It has meaning to me. I thought long and hard before settling on this design and it's been a little startling how many people feel the need to tell me (or even tell someone else after the fact) that they do not approve. When this happens, I feel like telling people that I was already slated to go to hell, on account of my pierced ears. The Puritan days are over; let's try to make the best of each others' Free Will and move on.

A rip in the space-time continuum

I've come to the conclusion that snow makes time go faster. I know, I know, usually it feels like time has ground to a halt during the winter months, but I seem to manage to have time get away from me completely (especially regarding school work) during the spring semester. I have a big test due by tomorrow at 1 pm (it's an online class) and I have barely looked twice at the material, mostly because I swear just yesterday was February 1st and I still had 15 days to take the test! I don't even have any real excuse for being behind; I haven't been doing a lot of writing. Ok, I haven't really been doing ANY writing, so it's not like that's been taking up my time. As it has every year since 1992 (my first year of college), it seems like spring semester has it in for me, and all I can do is hang on for the ride. At least it's sunny out right now; arctic temperatures seem to be easier to handle when it's bright outside. We're supposed to get another dump of snow in the next 24-48 hours though, so in all likelihood I'll be back to wanting to hibernate by this time tomorrow. In the mean time, I'm off to find something (sparkle-y bit of jewelry, pieces of tin foil, etc.) to distract me from taking the Ethics test. Cheers!

Looking Fear in the face...

Jalapeno! It's been a while, I know, and I feel really bad that I haven't been keeping up with this like I wanted to (even though no one is reading it). The holidays were nuts, then school started and I've been up to my eyeballs in mind-numbingly boring Ethics homework (I'll get into how much I hate philosophy at some other time...). Anyway, I'm back now - so on with the show...

I recently realized that I am scared half witless of the possibility of having one of my dreams come true. I'm not afraid of the work, or the long hours, or the minor failures that lead up to those "Ah-HA!!" moments when you finally figure out how to do something. No, what I'm afraid of is letting people down. The thought that someone I care about is willing to go out on a limb to help me attain one of my goals scares the hell out of me, because if I fail I will be letting them down. But if I get this particular opportunity and don't take it and run, I know I will regret it for the rest of my life. So I'll just continue to psych myself up as best I can, and make the immortal words of Anais Nin my mantra:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Here We Go Again...

...School starts tomorrow. First time in many semesters that I won't have any film-related classes. I think I'm already missing it.