Apples and Bananas.

Made it to New York City safe and sound, y'all. Interesting travel day, being the day after the Heathrow arrests. We ended up quite dehydrated, that's for sure. And I had a lip balm confiscated.

New York City, which I remembered being in love with, is even better than I remembered. All human emotions and experience has been thrown into a big salad/stew/pie thing and it's sweet tangy spicy tart delicious. I love being here even though it has been a total rollercoaster. How does two days feel like three weeks? Amazing.

The show is going well, though all things surrounding the show have been insanely frustrating. We arrived at our Saturday morning tech rehearsal to discover that we don't have a venue tech, so there's nobody really running the space, so no matter how hard you try to get it so that you can set up your show in the alotted 15 minutes, everything you so carefully planned will have been fucked with by the time you arrive the next day. And the venue director is a bureaucrat to the max, only able to spout the rules, unable to flex. She and I got to the point where I suggested we never speak again and only Kim should talk to her. Kim is Penelope's boyfriend and a total gem. Anyway, not having to deal with her, (which, by the way, I did my best to do diplomatically), has freed me up to just deal with the technical nightmare. Yesterday I ended up in tears in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Strange, strange day. I cried and cried in a Catholic church. I don't think God thought it was weird, though, I think God gets it.

My computer has been acting up like a crazy little machine, and currently seems to have deleted ALL my writing. Solo show, standup, play....whatever else there was. Interestingly, I had actually created a backup folder just in case something like this were to happen, but, as it turns out, if you only back up a folder in the backup folder, and not each individual file, then you only end up with an alias of the folder, and no actual files. So, I think I've lost all my writing. Sigh. I'm trying to just take it in stride. Bicycle stolen, writing lost...etc. The universe is trying to tell me something. I'm not sure what it is yet because as I try to examine it I end up just looking up at all the beautiful buildings and down at all the crazy people and handsome people. There is a lot to occupy your mind here.

My eyelids are purple and swollen from the tears yesterday. And my bowels are in an uproar because all I had for dinner yesterday was a giant bowl of jello. There is a diner across the street that has the best jello ever. Me and Ken, the guitar player in the show, sat in the diner and talked and talked and talked for hours, he is a great listener and a swell guy. We tried to get to the root of my emotional vomiting, and ended up talking about the most interesting things. Anyway, we ate a lot of jello when I was supposed to be having a meal and now we are all paying for it because there are four of us in a teensy studio apartment.

Ken reminded me of all the things that could be contributing to being overwrought, and gently reflected that maybe I am too hard on myself in terms of my expectations of my own strength.

I am having some grief come up, to be sure. Being in the city where my stepdad grew up, but realizing I have no idea where to go to touch base with his roots, and I guess I always thought I would come here with him and be able to get to know his history. Ken's mom died when he was 21 so he has lots of long term healing insight, plus he works in social services and his girlfriend works in post trauma counselling. He had lots of good things to say. And now I'm going to stay with my friend Briana in Queens and she's a therapist, so I think I'm in good hands.

Okay, I have to get in the shower. More to come.

Nutshell - NYC is beauty, (pronounce it bay-you-dee), and I am a strange blend of hormones and memory.

xo
r.