help me to make it

 on repeat.
 ((you know those days that for no particular reason you feel completely
dull,
flat,
boring
and about 1,000 years old?))

 today.


 ps. i can i just get to the outdoors already??

the nerd patrol

I came to a realization in college.. probably about 1/2 way though.. and the realization came as I was standing at the opening of an amazing art show in a gallery on the main floor of the fine arts building. As I looked around at all of the incredible art that was up on the walls, I thought about how much I admired the people who could create things like this.. and I looked around and realized a lot of the people I knew at this art opening were artists themselves and almost all of them created amazing things of their own. All of those people, so admirable in my mind were not just cool because of what they created, they were just genuinely cool people, dare I say "hip". Everyone was so hip and beautiful-looking and I am sure they also read the right books and listened to the right music and had all the right opinions about things. As I looked around, I realized something.. Theater (the art i do more than any other kind) is hopelessly UN-hip. It really is. Film can be pretty cool, theater-- not so much. A. Miller, T. Williams, A. Checkhov, just not that hip in the minds of the kids these days. Yet, as the embarrassing part of my personality that desperately seeks to be cool mourned the uncooldom of theatre, I also realized that night that it's kind of okay with me.. How nerdy it is and all.. and that's because, I just love it. I do. I love acting in plays. (I love acting in other things too). Last Sunday I wrapped up another nerdy play. A comedy by Noel Coward called Blithe Spirit. And as I sat back stage on the last night I tried to ponder how many hours of my life I had spend sitting on unfinished steps behind what, to my view, is just totally exposed wood slabs nailed, stapled and glued together to hold together what, to the audiences view, is a cozy little cottage in the English Countryside. How many times have I marked up a script, sat through a first reading or checked in a costume and I just have to say that I really love it (all of it). While the run of this show was incredibly dramatic (off stage) and- quite honestly, the finished product was only so-so, I still relished it. No matter what happens in my future, I know I will always relish it and if that makes me the un-hippest of them all, I think that I am learning to be okay with that.

i want to unfold

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

one time, i was in college

(and all i did was text on my cell phone..)

2011 from Alex Shahan on Vimeo.

5 words

being married is really great.



*more on that and other topics coming soon


(brevity of this post brought to you by the fact that the newly weds live in a trailer that has no internet hooked up... their iphones are the only connection to the information super highway)

fixed places

“Poets claim that we recapture for a moment the self that we were long ago when we enter some house or garden in which we used to live in our youth. But these are most hazardous pilgrimages, which end as often in disappointment as in success. It is in ourselves that we should rather seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.”

-Proust

Right now

(amid wedding and all the excitement)

there is so much about coming "home". To Las Vegas, to myself, to understanding love and relationships and myself. I don't know how i can still be so mysterious to myself.. sometimes.

Part of getting married means that you are now in charge of all of your things. Every box and every old photograph. It's no longer your parents job to store that stuff up. Over the last couple of weeks, my mom has given me all the boxes that have been collecting dust in her storage for years. I haven't gone though it all, but everything I have gone through has been a so interesting and I have all these strong emotions about it all. I've really loved my life-- I love remembering. Sometimes I think about myself in the past and the one thing I love about past emily, is that she knew and understood those "fixed places" inside of her. Something about growing up made those a little shaky for a while-- but i feel like it's finally coming back. I still have fixed places, and that's nice to know.

One of the best things about the person i get to marry is that he reminds me to not take life/myself/anything too seriously. He is an enduring optimist and he reminds me that i am one too. One of my fixed places is next to him

(Probably fast asleep while he watches the rest of the movie- but next to him)

once in your life

the wedding dress