"Are you alright?"

Fifteen to twenty crew members ask me this with concern in their voices every morning as I run around trying to get things prepared for my boss's arrival. The first couple days I always answered with a martyr'd sounding, "Yeah, no, I'm good, thanks..." and wondered exactly how awful and freaked out I must have looked to have THAT MANY people concerned about me.

I'm not sure how it clicked, but somewhere I realized their heartfelt "Are you alright?" is the English version of my "Hey, howyadoin'?" Oh, yeah- there's English and then there's English English. I felt like a jackass for letting my drama queen answer for the first few days. Now I toss it right back:

"Hello, Bianca, are you alright?" "Hey, yeah, howyadoin'?"

Our 2nd AD is doing his best to train me away from a lifetime of American English. The trash can is a bin, my trunk is my boot, and its not WATER, its WAH-UH. I'm not very good at it. But I have adopted the long, cute British phone goodbye.

Rather than the usual, Thanks-Bye-Hang-up, I notice calls end as follows with both participants speaking in a higher and higher pitch until its kinda singy:
"Ya, alright, thanks, cheers, bye, buh-bye!" And its a call-and-response, too, so you can really get into a few rounds of the "bye, bye" section. Adorable. I can't help myself.

Furthering my transformation away from American Girl, I've pretty well mastered Right-side driving. I don't hesitate with crossing lanes to turn right, I've figured out the rhyme and reason to roundabouts (hint: KNOW where you're going and PAY ATTENTION to what lane you need to be in) and I'm now comfortable running over someone's lawn to pass. The roads are narrow- usually too narrow for two cars to pass comfortably, so both cars drive half on the grass, gutter, or embankment on either side to make it. I'm excellent at this.

I found myself so good at Right-side driving, I got relaxed enough to re-adopt some of my awful American driving habits like working while I drive- UNTIL exactly 30 seconds into writing a reminder to myself on a piece of paper when I drove onto the curb of the highway. The curb was too high for me to drive off lest I pop my tire, so I stayed on the curb/sidewalk until it disappeared for a second and I was able to steer my car back fully onto the road- and realized I had popped my tire anyway. See sheepish in the dictionary? That's me.

(What's funny is all three driving Americans had an incident of some sort on the same day. Two flat tires and a busted side-view mirror. The crew definitely had a laugh about that.)

Sun sets over The White Lion Hotel, our Thanksgiving hosts

Uncle Sam says "Eat your turkey!"

 This week was Thanksgiving ("It's a big deal to you people, isn't it?" said my 2nd AD). Being NOT in America, we had a full day's work but afterward found a restaurant in nearby Aldeburgh (the ONLY restaurant) serving a Traditional Thanksgiving Turkey dinner. The appetizer choices were hot wings or mozzarella sticks- clearly American (?), if not traditional fare. We didn't care, we went straight for the turkey (amazing), green beans (actually yummy) and sweet potato mash (oh yeah) topped with pretzels (...what?).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pretzels, my new Tgiving tradition

                          The restaurant was bleeding red, white and blue wrapped in Forth of July decorations and we couldn't get enough. It was really very sweet- Yay, America!

Our shooting schedule has us working 6-day weeks so when you consider I worked all last weekend, this has literally registered as the longest week of my life.  I'm starting to go kind of bats. The hotel I'm in has no gym and I'm working from before dawn until well after its dark. On the suggestion of one of my set friends, I decided to try running at night after I got home. I was so restless, I was open to anything...

So it's black as pitch here at night. No streetlights. None. I knew this and decided to run anyway thinking my eyes would get used to the dark. They don't- it's THAT DARK. Thank God for my flashlight app (yeah, I'm in love with my stupid iPhone, shut up.), its the only thing that kept me from breaking my ankle on the uneven roads. Also, I don't know my way around my neighborhood- I haven't had the chance to explore anything yet- so my plan was to keep the curb on my left and I would retrace my steps... instead, I found our neighborhood pub (ANOTHER place I haven't had time to explore) and realized I just jogged a 10 min circle. I chalked the experience up to "super stupid" and made fun of myself for doing it. Until-

Cheshire Cat watches over my run.

I did it again. Hotel life is either lonely as hell or you're in the hotel bar every night. Having spent every night in the hotel bar to this point, I decided to try again. This time I was armed with a working knowledge of which street I would take and I had Rihanna's new album to keep me company. And it was pretty fantastic.

There is really NO ONE around and it is REALLY DARK so if you want to dance down the street or pretend you're running away from a hideous maniac in the dark or sing at the top of your lungs with the wind blowing your hair around like you're starring in your own music video you totally can.

I know because I did.

This was the scene as I left my hotel for my run tonight. I actually had a bit of dusk to light my way the first few minutes.

This pic has nothing to do with this post other than its what I woke up to this morning and ITS SO DAMN PRETTY!!!

thirty-five minutes...

Is the grand total of sleep-- I'm lying, I snuck in a 20 minute nap midday Sunday, so 55 minutes is the grand total of sleep I've had since I woke up at 830a Sunday morning. Its Monday night, almost 11p.

I'm pretty impressed with myself.

I haven't had a melt down, I haven't even cried. And today was one of the hardest days of location for me: Move-in day. Imagine all the stress of moving into a new house and hooking everything up, discovering the internet doesn't work, the coffee machine is too fancy to figure out and you've been frying every electronic device you've been plugging into the wall.

Oh yeah. Something about voltage and maybe watts or transformers and numbers like 220 and 110 and 13 volts floating around. THANK GOD Apple products are all yoked up and ready to work internationally. Not so much for the Radio Shack computer speakers that squeaked out one last burp when I plugged them in. So it looks like I'm going shopping for a few things.

A little warning, yall? I've heard a bazillion times I don't need to tip at a pub, but I've never heard about the all-mighty English power of electricity that is so behemoth as to literally electrocute my poor little electronic toys to death. Have I...?

The house I'm in is stupid. As in phat. Or like dope. Or along the lines of "OMFG THIS PLACE IS EFFING AMAZING!" (Became very aware of my grandma with that last sentence, yall know what I'm talking about.) Huge with lotsa bedrooms, but who cares because the ACRES OF ENGLISH GARDENS are where I want to sleep and eat and shower and live forever. I want to roll around in the herb & vegetable garden. I want to sleep in the heated pool. I want to dance in the flowers- this, I will do.

I didn't know I loved English gardens until I walked through this one and had a prettygasm. It is so damn pretty! But difficult to photograph. In fact the only picture I've taken in this place is of the best toilet in the world.

It ain't an English Garden

I like toilets. They're important. 

Hey, I should totally blog this...

...I thought while having breakfast with my cousin Brian in London.

I've blogged all my major trips (all two of them, whatever) but it's been a long time since I traveled.  And since then, the internet has exploded into massive overshare with Facebook, Twitter, etc, of which I participate (Follow me! Friend me! Nah, you don't have to...) so it took weeks for blogging to occur to me when I found myself traveling again.

But here I am, now: a writer (who hasn't written anything in months) with a great new job (that I both love and then not-love sometimes) that gives me to opportunity to travel the world, so why not? As I sat in Brian's kitchen eating blood pudding with hammy bacon and waxing poetic on the relationship of travel to inspiration, there I was- inspired to write again! Using more than 140 characters! Nice!

A quick moment of prequel... eh, nevermind, I kinda just did that.

So anyway, because I've already spent a month working in Alaska I'll do a quick speed-through:

Anchorage, Alaska: bleak, cold, desolate, beautiful, ugly, shady as hell and easy to navigate.

Anywhere around Anchorage: raw, natural beauty. A whole spectrum of "Holy shit..." inspired landscapes. I spent so much time trying to take pictures at snow-covered mountains as I drove that my inner monologue was continuously writing and re-writing the news lead: "LA women crashes into gorgeous mountain and dies in fiery snowball" was the usual.

And I wasn't the only one- for some reason it became one of our favorite games to play on set. "Make-up artist spontaneously explodes into fiery snowball..." "Movie producer falls overboard tour boat into fiery snowball..." You could die in any way as long as you met your ultimate fate in a fiery snowball. I loved it.

I had my first two helicopter rides in Alaska, and I gotta say- if you think Alaska is pretty from the ground, it blows your damn mind from the air. Helicopters are fun, fun, fun. I always wanted to levitate, and that's what riding in a helicopter is. Both times we floated over and landed at glaciers that were so graceful and gorgeous that words are too small to describe.

Glacier Mouth... say ahhh...

I can honestly say Glacier #2 (of course every single one of these big girls have names and naturally I can't remember a single one) is the most beautiful place I have ever been to in my life. See for yourself...

No words...

If Alaska has to be so effing cold, at least its to make unreal stuff like this. And Jesus, was it cold.

The rest of my Alaska impressions are tangled in with all my badass crew members. GREATEST CREW EVER. Man, I loved those guys...

Love.

Which brings me to...

The UK! Suffolk, to be exact. Woodbridge, to be more exact. Rendlesham Forest to be ever more exact. The first time I saw the address, I got tired.  Suffolk is 2 hours from London, a county of tiny villages on the North Sea. I haven't seen any of it yet- I've been working my ass off since I got here, staying in the production office til dark, and lemme say: dark is DARK in Suffolk. It's country, yall.

A few things I'm excited about for this location...

Accents. Sweet lord, do I love British accents. I have crushes on every person I've met so far- male, female, gay, old, pot-bellied... I'm open for business. Just sayin'.

Right-hand driving. Meaning driving on the WRONG side of the rode ("RIGHT SIDE" my new accented friends jibe me) in the WRONG side of the car. The first 2 times I drove, I followed one of the guys to and from work like a duckling. The next day, when I woke up 2 hours late and 1 hour from my catching my train to London, I threw my Sat Nav in the car, roared onto the road, and made it to the office only getting lost twice. Nothing like a greater fear to overcome your other crap. (Feel free to use that nugget of brilliance in your daily mantras & affirmations.)

Aliens & ghosts. As my driver drove me into town for the first time, he informed me Rendlesham was UFO and ghost central. Despite 12 hrs of travel I perked up like it was my birthday (It was my birthday!) and got him to tell me everything he knew, which wasn't much. Still, I've quizzed everyone who will answer and its true! Rendlesham is the Area 51 of Europe. More on this as I do research, but I heard of a haunted hotel that I'm determined to spend a night in.

London. Instead of spending my first weekend in Suffolk laying groundwork for any possible future making-out, I took the train to London to work for the weekend. London is SO CLOSE I dream of dashing out to get my boss big city things I can't find in Suffolk like cute boots and cashmere sweaters- er, I mean Cuban cigars - on a weekly basis. We'll see, but getting to spend the weekend here was outstanding!

Oxford Street

Pee or call...?

LOVE a great bathroom!

One of these things is not like the other...
but all equally phenomenal!

Big fan...

 

What about those other guys?

Oh, them. The good ones. The ones I take for granted as I wrestle and roll in the muck with the unclean, the unwanted, the misunderstood demon lovelies that distract like screaming brats two hours past naptime.

The Angels.

What of angels? They get all the praise and all the credit and all their pictures up in places of worship. They get hymns and holidays and celebrations all over the world. They get to sit on top of Christmas trees. Frankly, I'm so used to angels they don't even register-

Correction. They didn't used to register.

I started a new job about six weeks ago that has absorbed all my time and attention. It can feel like the greatest job in the world one moment and the worst decision I've ever made in the next. This job is, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life.

I sound like I'm over-exagerrating for drama's sake. I do that a lot, but this time I'm telling the God's Honest Truth. My new position challenges me in every way I've never let myself be challenged before. Not little challenges either- these are K2-sized bullies. I've burst out crying to my mom, in front of assorted cashiers, and to postal workers- not all the time, but I wouldn't call it a rare occurrence either. The job frustrates me, infuriates me, surprises me, thrills me, entertains me, spoils me, comforts me-

...What? Wasn't I just talking about how much everything sucks? It depends on your perspective. Being challenged is hard. The bigger the challenge, the more difficult it feels- but that doesn't have to be bad and that has everything to do with awareness. And this is what got me noticing the angels... and I learned a few things.

A. Angels are everywhere. Even on the phone. I called a hotel and a clerk I'd spoken to the night before answered. I didn't tell him I was stressed or worried or having an anxiety attack, and yet prompted by nothing, he told me I was doing a great job. He reassured me with his marble-y Louisiana accent that everything was okay and that I was okay. I silently cried on the other end of the phone line- it was exactly what I needed to hear.

B. Angels have perfect timing. From the guy who lets me in front of him at the grocery store right as the twenty pounds of vegetables I'm carrying in my arms are about to fall and scatter all over the floor to the shipping company who defies expectations and delivers precious cargo a week early impressing my boss enough to compliment me (text: "u rock!") right when my ego needed it.

C. Angels give you what you need. Easily. Turns out all you have to do is ask for help. This is something I didn't use to do because I was wired to believe I could do everything by myself perfectly with no help from anyone because I was smart/strong/capable. I thought if I needed help it meant I was dumb/weak/worthless. Not everyone, mind you, just me. That was then. (Note "then" = pre-Awesome Breakdown 2011.) This is now.

Now, I humbly ask for as much help as I can remember to. Remembering to is the hardest part, because over 30 years of habitual perfectionist martyrdom can be a tough groove to skip, but practice makes perfect.

So I give thanks to every angel who's thus done me a solid in the past six weeks. And as I continue to ask for help, I look forward to continued visits, phone calls, and pleasant surprises from my halo'd posse. And maybe if I can get my act together, I'll expand my musings from my horrible demon-lovelies to include some of the virtuous, pretty, white-tutu'd angel babies as well.

Thanks, yall...

There's No Place Like...

HOME.

I'm home. I was so excited to come home, I became a cheeeezball and listened to "Home" a lot before I hopped on the plane. I love home, I love it here, it's a vacuum of everything me, and for a narcissist that's like a gift baggie of smack to a junkie.

"Narcissist?" Igor gasps. He rushes into my head, checking around to make sure no one heard me. His voice lowers...

Igor: Uh, ix-nay on the arcicssism-nay. People don't like them. They're lame douche-bag assholes.
Me: Yeah, I can be a real asshole sometimes.
I: (waves away the point) So can everyone. Just don't call yourself a narcissist out loud.
Me: Why?
I: It's not pretty!!! (Catches himself. Breathes...) I don't think you know what the word means.

We look it up:
nar·cis·sism/ˈnärsəˌsizəm/Noun

1. Extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration.

2. Self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects.

Igor looks at me. He bites his chapped lip. "Just- shut up." I gloat in satisfaction. He sees me gloating and sneers. "You're not that bad."

He's right. According to a Dr. Drew's online Narcissism Test, I'm above average, but I'm no Jersey Shore.

Still, in the interest of my demons, I'll call a spade a spade, and I'll call myself an asshole when its true. Of course it's not true ALL the time, but probably more than I'd like to admit and that's okay. I think most people are crappier than they want to take credit for, and as long as we're able to realize it (hopefully in the moment), admit it (maybe to our audience, certainly to ourselves), and apologize for it (if you must, and I'll tell you right now- YOU MUST) then who cares?

Anyway, back to the notion of home.

It occurred to me that home has little to do with any demons and more to do with ghosts. I'm surrounded by the ghosts of everything that made me into Me. The ghosts of my childhood hide in the shallow eyes of the stuffed animals my mom still keeps for me and in the ritual of burying my head into my mom's arm when I feel like crying. The ghosts of my innocence call to me from places around Austin where I grew up too fast, vamping up and down Sixth Street or riding on the back of my boyfriend's motorcycle through the Hill Country as I fell in love for the first time.

These ghosts haunt my dreams, and people I haven't thought of in years visit me, love me, tangle with me, make-out with me. I see old friends and catch glimpses of past lives in stories I can't remember but they can. They ask me about other friends, people we both couldn't care less about, people I've lost touch with, people I never knew in the first place, and I shrug and smile.

It doesn't matter how anyone is, I realize. If they're anything like me, they're exactly the same as they've always been except in the exponential ways they've grown that you could never measure with a bank account or number of offspring. We're all annoyingly the same- except totally different.

On one hand, I never again want to see the red glasses I wore from the ages of 10-13 that meant I was nerdy and ugly (I thought). I don't want to see all the places my boyfriend's family took us to dinner where I would sit and laugh and glow with the knowledge that they would someday be my family, too (I thought). I don't want to drive by my dad's first apartment after the divorce and look at the sidewalk and remember how every time he and I would walk to the park, I would step on every crack and make the same wish...

 

 

But I do. I dig up the red glasses. I wonder if my ex-boyfriend's family still meets at E-Z's for milkshakes and burgers as I drive past. I look for that sidewalk and that apartment and damned if I can't find them. (It's honestly driving me crazy.) The insecurity, the desperate need to belong, the magic-disguised control issues of an 8 year-old... I seek this stuff out because they are my ghosts. Mine. They it made me who I am, and I love them for it.

The thought that my current life will become a ghost to haunt me in the future comforts me more than it terrifies me. Yes, I'm terrified of getting older. But, I'm comforted by the knowledge that I'll continue to grow and evolve (even moreso than I am now, and I think we've all decided that is pretty evolved, narcissistic tendencies notwithstanding... sorry folks, just a little ego humor.) - and maybe in my evolution, getting older won't be such a fat, wrinkly deal.

As an aside, not every trip home is such an existential exercise. Truthfully, I rarely think this much.

 

 

...That's a total lie. Regardless, I blame my spiritual transformation- Thanks, Awareness, this is almost fun.

Well, That Happened.

Demons.

Funny, part of the reason I started this blog about demons is because I've always liked the misunderstood. I believe there's good in everything, even the Tea Party, even Evanescence, even demons. The way I see it, they're all just doing their jobs. (Like the Tea Party's job is to keep me fighting for universal health care, equal rights, freedom of choice, and all my other liberal beliefs, and Evanescence's job is to make me stop listening to work-place radio.)

Demons simply do what they do, whether its torturing humans or just acting ugly. They don't mean to be "evil", its just our perception of the effect they have on our lives- if you even believe in demons, because you can't get hurt by something you don't believe in... right?

Sigh. Let me tell a personal story and see if I can answer my own question.

The truly observant may have noticed I've been off the radar lately- particularly where this blog is concerned. It's a long boring story to everyone but my mom, but the bullet points are:
- I got my heart broken.
- Had a nervous breakdown.
- Haven't written a word.
- Am still recovering.

Because these bullet points are reading far more dramatic than I anticipated, I'll flesh each out a little.

Heartbreak: It's happened before, it'll happen again, but this one was the nastiest motherfucker to date. Not because of what any guy or girl did to me, but because of what I did to myself. I can't attribute this heartbreak to anyone but me. I broke my own heart. I'm my own bad boy.

Breakdown: I use the word flippantly. I didn't get a diagnosis from a doctor. But I did need help. Lots and lots and lots of help, and I found it with my spiritual practitioner. What I call "breakdown", she calls "spiritual transformation." Spiritual transformation sounds groovy, spacious, and smooth. To me "breakdown" more reflects the choking, desperate, writhing place I found myself in. I do like the movement and hope embodied in the word "transformation" rather than the dead-end that "breakdown" invokes... okay, fine, spiritual transformation.

Haven't written: I really haven't done much of anything beside reflect. And listen to endless TED Talks. For the first few weeks, being upright was a major accomplishment. My Type-A Barbie is doing her best not to whine and judge and remind me that writing is what we do! And if we don't do what we do all the time, how do we ever expect to get paid to do what we do?! ...she's trying.

Recovering: Sometimes I feel awesome, sometimes I feel stupid, sometimes I feel like I can conquer the world, sometimes I feel like I'm not good enough to eat. The point is I'm feeling. And feeling means I'm living. And living means I'm not still curled up in a tight little ball in my comfy chair.

...What was my point? "If you don't believe in something, can it hurt you?" was my question.

I hurt myself, I broke my own heart, because somewhere deep inside I believed I wasn't good enough. This belief was so deep and ingrained, I thought it was a fact of life, like my heart beat or my brown eyes. This belief was my default.

Over the course of the last two months I've begun to re-program my thinking. Contrary to what I would prefer, it takes longer than a weekend in bed to exorcise a demon I've had for a lifetime, but at least I'm aware now. For the most part. Enough to know "I'm not good enough" is total bullshit. And awareness is a wonderful gateway drug to healing, acceptance, and love.

So can something I no longer believe in hurt me anymore?

No. It fucking can't.

It feels good to be back. (Barbie just died from yessing too hard.)

D-bags and DOMINUS PENARUM

This demon is no joke. DOMINUS PENARUM (lets call him DP for fun) is a most rigid, controlling devil with a pimp cane. He's a demon used in love spells, but I'll get to that in a sec.

So I have this friend (not me), who's been putting up with a D-bag (you don't know him) for way too long. Why? Because, that's why. The point is my friend (NOT ME) cut ties and this demon still contacts her. Nonchalantly. Like they're friends. Like it's okay.

WHY? This, I don't know. But I have a theory, and it goes a little something like this:

Non-committed passionate relationships lead to non-committed seperations, so the door remains open where He and She are concerned. That's all well and good if both parties are on the same page, in the same phase of their life, and totally honest with how they feel - or don't - about each other, etc. This, however, is rarely the case.  So one or the other settles for less and/or puts up with more than they should, ignoring the nagging Igor that points out what's not happening and what they aren't receiving from their fuck buddy.

Why do I care? Because, that's why.

I care because people (yes, people, because women are just as guilty of assholery as men are) have become cowards. I don't care if you're only sleeping with me because it was better than what you had in your Netflix line-up, but BE HONEST ABOUT IT. Don't pretend it's something more. Don't say things just to say them and don't give me hope if there is none. Don't toss out phrases like "When we go to Palm Springs..." or "I can't wait to (fill in the blank) with you..." because they sound good. If you want to use me for sex, let me in on the plan so I can make an informed decision- otherwise you're lying to get me into bed and that makes you a fucking asshole coward.

People (again, people) are afraid to say what they mean, either because they're afraid of being rejected or they're afraid to reject or they just can't own up to what they want. You know what? Too bad. You want to be a big kid and do what big kids do? Grow the balls to talk about it.

I'm not blameless. I have my moments of swallowing questions because I don't have the guts to ask them. You know what that means? It means I'm involved in a bad relationship and I should go home alone. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Regardless, I'm aware of what I'm doing and making an informed decision- even if it isn't always the best one. I'm still learning..

This is why it fucking galls me when this douchebag tests the waters by texting an oblivious "How you doing?" after years and years of turmoil, broken promises, loving someone else, and disregard for any feelings but his own. Where is his consideration? Where is his awareness? Where are his balls? If he wants friendship, show some respect and call. If he wants sex, come out and say it. Don't hover on the fringe of a relationship by giving the least effort possible to forge some sort of connection.

"How you doing?" DELETE.
"Everything good?" DELETE.
"I saw a picture that made me think of you." DELETE.

Know what's maddening? The longer he's ignored, the more persistent he becomes.

How do you exorcise a demon like that? When you've already screamed and Julia Sugarbakered their ass (to which you received a dead-end "Sorry") and they still contact you and the more you ignore them the louder they get and they don't stop, what do you do? If it were me, I'd get mad and loud and destructive. (It's still not me.)

There is no undoing to the demon, Dominus Penarum, that I know of- all I have are his stats.

DP is connected with power and control. A magician conjures DP to completely break the will of his intended, i.e. who he's crushing on at the moment, so she will be bound to him and powerless. The demon torments the woman until she bows to her passionate compulsions, no matter how unnatural. A direct quote: "As the Lord of Torments, this demon would be well-suited to make the target's life a living hell."

Yup, that sounds about right.

~Thanks to "Dictionary of Demons: Names of the Damned" by Michelle Belanger. Llewellyn Publications, 2010