ALL the things!
Well Hello there! Oh my goodness, I realized, that it's actually May. May.
Where in the world is the year going? I feel as if I am standing beside a bath tub, watching the days run like water, so effortlessly swirling down the drain, and I am somehow helpless to put a plug in the tub and get into those days and soak a little while. But it's okay, I'll ditch my bubble bath and my shoes and run outside and down the dirt path to the irrigation ditch, and with a cannon ball splash, I will submerge myself, floating along the banks of the Fire Mountain Canal, exchanging the smell of lavender for the smell of dirt, and ditch water and blue birds singing sweetly in the newly leafed out elms.
I realize it's been a really long time since I've written anything, actually, totally not true, just a long time since I have published, anything, that I have written.
You see, I'd start in on a piece, a story, and then I'd have to go to work, or get to bed so I could get up and go to work and so I'd come back to it, and by then it wasn't quite accurate any longer or there were more pressing things to write about.
This has been going on for a while. Like seriously almost five months. So in synopsis, I'll tell you what I was writing about but didn't publish.
I wrote a lot about this guy I fell for around the time of the holidays. I wrote about meeting his family and how much I was falling for him, and how incredible he is.
I wrote about bringing him home to my home town and the looks on my brothers faces as they met him, their heads inclined, smiles shared, listening.
I wrote about the two weeks we spent together over Christmas and New Years, with his family and my own; before I had to take him to the airport, where he waved goodbye to me from the other side of security while I stood on tip toe in someone else's boots, tears rolling down my face, waving back.
I wrote about missing him. I wrote about the struggles of long distance relationships. I wrote about uncertainty, and secrecy, I wrote about love and meant to be.
February came and I wrote about movie making. Our Wing It Films crew- comprised of my brother Logan, my best friend Teya, and her older brother Nathan- shot all the footage for our newest short film entitled 'Left' (as in the direction) in one day. Nathan and I were the actors for this short seven minute artistic film about the crossroads and choices we come to in our lives.
It was a huge break through for me, because for one of the first times in my acting career, I was not type cast, (which means I wasn't just supposed to be playing myself) I had to dig down and try and connect with someone completely different than myself, someone who was, well, how to I put this nicely.. I guess I don't.. who was a Bitch.
But it was liberating and exciting! Challenging to play someone I so rarely pull out in myself. Her anger had to be my own anger, her reproach had to be my own, but more than just acting angry, I realized I had to find the root of her, and understand her, why she felt the way she did deep inside her twisted and fear driven mind. I had to love her, know her and move from her, rather than from myself. And I've found that in the weeks, months and days since, I have known a new kind of peace, her brazenness has rubbed off on me a little, I find that I am much less afraid to have opinions, or strong feelings now.
Playing Vivian, someone who moves in ways I don't know as my own has stretched me and I am less afraid to let the light shine in. I think it's also given me a new understanding of humanity and those overpowering emotions and now, hopefully compassion for the people they inhabit.
So then, after all the filming, I wrote a lot about editing. EDITING, editing editing. Going crazy for a week, sitting in my fathers house, the clock ticking steadily on the wall while I pulled clips into the Final Cut Pro project, skimming over faces scrunched in pain and eyes looking down one lane roads.
It was an intense week, our deadline fast approaching. But then my incredible team took over and I went on a road trip to Albuquerque to a dance exchange - I do believe I wrote some about that weekend- and when I trundled my way home, sweat soaked, sleep deprived, and with new holes in my dance paws, but also so intensely happy and grateful for my friends, and for blues dancing, I started work. Jumping into the rush that is spring for a Goat Midwife like myself.
For those of you that don't know what I do, apart from being an actress and a dancer and a writer and an avid liver of life; I am a Goat Midwife- Milk Maid- Nursery Care Giver and general Farm Hand on a local, small, goat dairy called Avalanche that is set just under the imposing and beautiful base of Mt. Lamborn and Mt. Landsend here in Colorado.
Spring arrives with a vengeance here, or, well, winter carries on, covering us in white snow and cold western wind and our Does, who are heavy with their pregnancy, drop their spunky wet kids onto the straw.
It's a good job, one I have worked, with Avalanche, for three springs, but one I have been doing since I could toddle after my mother down to the barn.
I love goats, they were my first friends.
This year, we had over 400 babies born and I have held and fed, every single one of them.
It's kind of like being a mom. But getting payed for it.
As february wore on, I wrote about over work, and dreams and money.
I started researching film acting programs. Knowing that my dreams are hungry and I am ready for a new adventure.
I started looking up summer programs and reputable colleges and what they offered. One day I stumbled onto a website that is changing my life.
It's an off broadway theater company called the Barrow Group located in Manhattan, NYC.
I looked at their summer program; a 6 week course on film acting, the thing I want to learn the most. They talk simply, not trying to convince you to give them money and attend they're school, although quite a few well known actors and actresses have attended there and Anne Hathaway - you know who just won an oscar- says that this is the place where she really learned to act.
They talk about subtlety, and realness in front of the camera, connecting with the deep root of the character your playing. They talk about how they are like a family, all gathered together to share in the passion and love of the craft.
The program was by audition only, so I pulled out my trusty camera and went looking for a quiet place with a good back ground.
The quiet place, ended up being a pain in the butt to find, and my best audition performance ended up having the sound of one of our solar regulator fans coming on twice, in the middle and end, of my three minute monologue.. But something said to send it anyway, so I did.
I was in the library, when I got an email asking about a viewing problem, which we quickly sorted out and then not four minutes later I received another email, congratulating me on my acceptance into their summer program.
(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
I was in the library, but I still screamed.
Little me, little small town farm girl Elizabeth, going to the biggest city to pursue a dream I've had forever. Oh. My. God.
I don't think the smile came off my face for a week. But it put a lot of questions and logistical planing into action;
Where was I going to live? I started asking around on Facebook and Luckily, a friend of a friend was subletting a flat in Brooklyn and so that's where I will be staying for my time in NYC with a flat mate who I have never met who's name is Melvin.
More questions began to lay with me awake at night, before I collapsed into the sweet relief of sleep smelling of baby goats and milk.
Could I make all the money I would need to be able to go working as a goat midwife?
Probably not, but that wouldn't stop me from working my butt off. I began to dream and scheme and think about fundraising. I started talking to my brother about filming a short film to help my fundraising efforts (It's in editing right now! Stay tuned!) and researching crowd sourcing like KickStarter and Indigogo.
Because you know something happened when I got accepted into this school. Maybe it is only a six week program, but I've had a single weekend completely change my life and as I sent in 89% of my life's savings as my deposit to save my spot for the school, I found myself filled with excitement and.. terror but so much grace and so much faith in the pull, and the solidness of committing fully to the adventure of life; to the road I am given and what God plans for me and the song that deeply answers the call inside of me.
Next came March, a flurry of a month, arriving with a multitude of baby goats and snow. A trip over the great divide to fly down slushy roads towards the same airport I had left half my heart at almost exactly two months before. The arrivals gate was empty, it being nearly midnight on March 4th but I stood there, my roughly homemade sign spread out, proclaiming Welcome Home Babe! I trembled slightly waiting for him to come into sight up those escalator stairs and finally close the 5,000 mile gap we had been bridging. And then there he was, with the same smile on his lips I had left him with.
Such relief.
The next weeks crept by in a whirlwind of confusion and comfort, work and sleeping together in stranger's beds, (housesitting) the expectations that had accrued over two months of separation after two weeks of bliss, sat up late, stiff and full of unexplainable fear.
My birthday came and I was awakened by a kiss on the check and the sound of bare feet running up to my door. Teya, my best friend and my man carried me to her waiting truck and we raced to watch the sunrise from her warm bench seat.
That night we threw a 1940's -breakfast -for -dinner party at a friends house and gathered to make pancakes and scrambled eggs in heels and pearls.
The night ended with a few of my favorite friends sitting on the newly cleaned kitchen counters, passing around a jar of Nutella and the dregs of the champagne, telling stories, our laughter echoing against the windows that the night pressed it's self against. And just like that I was 22.
Then I wrote a stream of posts about insecurity, and my drive for perfection (these still might see the light of the publish button) in light of Dance.
Dating someone who is a rock star in the blues scene, who has traveled and taught blues for almost ten years in at least three continents, is a little bit intimidating. Especially because I like to be good at what I do. and I like to be able to match my partner.
I am driven to be good and to seek a special kind of approval.
It's not healthy.
I limped through an entire blues event, feeling self conscious and untalented and worse still, unsure how to fix it.
Even when I asked for help, we couldn't find anything that made sense between us so I suffered through the weekend, on a weakened immune system and a bruised sense of ego and a drained spirit. And dancing which has always been my haven and my place of recharge, was a desolate abyss of confusion.
I also wrote a post about being someone's girlfriend again. and how it felt to be introduced with those words as my catch phrase. The pride and adjustments in being called that to this talented, demanding, and charismatic man.
After the weekend I went home on monday, leaving the man to spend time with his family and me to go back to work.
Then I wrote a lot about love, and relationships and expectations. I slept and I wrote more about the internal struggle to find peace, and make peace with the past and with the truth, with that drives us to challenge ourselves. I wrote about dreams and meant to be. I wrote a lot of vague poetry that felt painful and weary.
And then I didn't write, but if I had written, it would have been about sunflowers and picnics high above the valley floor the smell of new spring in the air, catching in our hair. It would have been about the joy and struggle of trying, of investing and of really loving.
I would have written about one of our dates being highjacked because a goat mama was having immense trouble. The way the dark moved around us, his hand in my own as I led him towards a barn, the light shinning dimly through the cracks in the door from within. I would write about taking off my jacket and my pearls and handing my scarf to sit on in the manger while I took off my rings and put on some gloves and rubbed olive oil up my forearm. The look in his eyes, as he stood there, watching me, more than elbow deep in goat, untangling leggy triplets. Or the way he kissed me afterwards, careful not to touch my arm that still had blood and amniotic fluid dried to my freckled skin, but in his kiss he told me he was proud of me. But that I was a strange creature in his eyes.
And then I wrote this:
Clean sheets and clean hair. But my eyes are cloudy from a night spent too long awake. Outside a meadowlark sings her trill to the morning and across the valley the hills are turning green.
I've been filled with so much fear in the past four months. A fear, up until now, I have never known.
My fear muse, curled long fingers through my hair, pulling so many strands free, as if they were the stitching that holds me together. I felt sickened at her fingertips.
She laid awake at night in the cotton sheets, her angry head on my mismatched pillow. She spoke her words in secret, in whispers harsh and scared.
I let her words sway me. I let her hands grip me. I let her secrets and her fearful ways move me in to the shadows and I let myself believe her when she said it is safer there.
I was completely terrified, to be myself, because for the first time, there was a great possibility that it wouldn't be enough.
That every rivulet and river running through me, wouldn't be enough to satisfy the thrust in this man. I let the fear swallow me. and I have scarcely felt as panicked, or shadowed, or empty and less like myself, ever.
The fear inside of me followed the fear inside of him. We made a pair, our dancing shadows, hiding and panicking that it might not be enough, that we might not be enough.
I found in the end, that fear isn't real. I mean it can be a reality we can choose to dwell in, but it is not a natural state of being. No, because faith is brighter and bigger than fear. and nothing, no, nothing is more powerful than real, true and deep love.
He walked away, with shoulders slumped and a magnet for a heart, heading out into the world, with his fear and his homesickness to keep him warm.
I watched him go, with eyes no longer cloudy. I watched as his footsteps took him away from me, away from my life. He was the thing I was the most afraid of losing and that fear dwelled in my life so fully as to block out the sun. But the things that makes me whole on the inside, watched him go with steady eyes.
I had to realize that Faith is more important than selfishness, and that love, real, true, deep, unconditional love is the only kind I want to cultivate. And I know that however long it is, before hands hold mine again, that eyes search mine for the treasures they possess, that lips brush my own with a gentleness and a desire so deep and tender as to melt my weakened knees; that I will still be here, not defined by the fact of having a man or not having a man to walk beside me.
I am whole, and growing, and that is the most incredible blessing I could ever ask for.
I am blessed that my lessons come in ways that I can learn and that I know, deeply, truly and without doubt, what real love really is. and I am so incredibly blessed in that.
