The My Heart Project

Don't worry--I wasn't eaten by ravenous wolves.  Or pugs for that matter.  Nor was I chucked down some horrible spiral of doom as of last Fall.

But, I'm still figuring out the new job, still trying to grapple with changing cities/living situations, I got into a car accident, and my pug barked at me when I came home to visit the other night.

She didn't recognize me.

After a year of living together.

I get the feeling, though, that feeling routine disappointment over stressful things that happen in life isn't quite the point of life.  

So, onward and upward to new and better things.  That's where *this* comes in...

The Music Video Project

I'm in the process of pulling together a crack! team (mostly because I like saying crack! team) to help me build stuff for a very cool project.

Remember the song My Heart?

No?

It's ok. It hasn't gone viral.... yet.

I posted a live performance of it on Facebook a while ago right after I had written it--back when I had more leisure time and a lot more pug loving--and it seemed to catch peoples' attention. A lot of friends said they got it stuck in their head, which both annoyed them and buoyed me. Anyway, things got busy, I got overwhelmed, the pug forgot me, and I forgot about this song.

But, then I played it for some new friends for the first time.  And they reminded me that there is a potential here for something that could be entertaining for a lot, lot more people, thanks to the handy-dandy Internet.

It's always been in the back of my mind that I would love to do a music video with an actual group of other artisans. Working at a theatre, I'm surrounded by talented artists, but so rarely do I get to work on a creative project with them.

That's when I gave my friend Jonathan Potter a call asking if he'd be interested in doing a film together.

It Begins

So, here's a taste of where I'm going.  Below is the storyboard I've been working on edited by Jonathan with one of the recordings I have of the song.  Be warned:  it's not the final draft of the storyboard, nor is it the final draft of my singing the song (I know there are a couple wonky notes in there) but overall, it's a great beginning.

Bye!

-Beryl








Happy Leap Year!

I forgot about Valentine's Day this year. 


Ok, ok, so it hasn't yet happened.  


But, I had completely forgotten February has a national holiday (other than the awesomest holiday ever because it only happens once every four years--and no, I don't mean the Winter Olympics opening ceremony).  


By the by, when you google image search "leap" or "leaping" eventually you will find this photo:

I feel as though this image is a perfect jumping off point (ha) for what I'm going to discuss this time around.


**And every time I make an awkward leap of judgment, this will be the defining image.


Why Is It That Relationships Or Any Kind Of Relating To People Usually Involves You Relearning About Yourself?  Is That An Ego Thing?   


I love my subtitles.  They make more sense than anything I write after them.  Except for this.  

Anyway, I forgot it was Valentine's Day coming up until I kept seeing store fronts covered in pink and red hearts.  At first, I thought there was another blood drive campaign happening.  But, then I realized Red Cross probably doesn't want to encourage digestion of Necco Candy Hearts, no matter how conversational they are.

"Anatomical and redundant"

And it clicked in my head that "Oh... that holiday... is coming."  I haven't been one of those singles who is dramatically affected by Valentine's Day:  I don't sit at home and willfully anti-celebrate it by singing "All By Myself" Bridget-Jones-style whilst chugging the red wine.  Nor do I go on a rant and rave about how America's capitalistic system supports a surplus of expenditure on useless products and profits off of our insecurities.  No, no.  


The economy is bad.  


Buy that shit.  


I just have the memory of a baby gnat when it comes to other people's celebratory days (yea...I forgot my best friend's birthday this year--sorry, Maia!)  And being single, I routinely would forget about Valentine's Day.  I remember thinking for five minutes last year, "Oh.  Well, that'd be nice to have a date.  I wonder if Berkeley Bowl has a new sharp cheddar up for free tasting?" 


This year is a bit different.  I, for one, am not going to divulge my private life on a public blog--other than the stuff that only affects me because I don't care if you know I used to write marriage proposal letters to Alyson Hannigan...actually, wait.  I didn't want you to know that.  

BUT, there is someone out there I'm trying to impress.  And by impress, I mean not letting her know that I used to write marriage proposals to Alyson Hannigan.  


Help me out here, people.  


Don't let her read this.

Even though I'm still posting this on Facebook.


And my mom just friended me.

The lowdown:   


I bought her tickets to something she said she wanted to go to a while ago without checking her schedule first because I was afraid the tickets would sellout and now I'm pretty sure she can't go because it turns out it's also the same exact night as her main project-y thing you do when you're working the work she's got and therefore I am screwed.


Then I realized it was Valentine's Day coming up.  So, I have a failed attempt at getting a nice gift in the midst of the Day Everyone Must Succeed At Giving To The Person Who Lets You Kiss Them.


Turns out:  I reaaaally should get a calendar.


I ordered one for work. But, then it got lost and my coworker had to mass-email everyone to recover it.  And when he did and told everyone else, it ended up just looking like I had stolen it in the first place.  Thanks, Andrew.  Thanks. 


The point is this:  


I would rather celebrate Leap Year at this point.  And, I think a lot of people--not just singletons, couplers or those like me in between--really don't know what to do with Valentine's Day.  We all feel this urge to complete a certain level of sameness in expressing love, our idea of love, our imagined perception of what love should look like to everyone else.  Meanwhile, we're all struggling to uphold standards that quite honestly don't fit the way any of us actually express love. 


Case in point:  The way I express love usually involves some form of babbling about a random fact I learned for the day because I would want to share that with someone.  Hence the blog.


I LOVE YOU ALL.


-Beryl




p.s. 








Photojournal from Fall of 2011

Hiya.

Since writing and having the space of mind to write is untenable these days I thought I'd share one of my other passions with you and also give myself another Get Out of Jail Free card with the blog.

So, I give you my amateur photography.  I took these while out on a small walk in Alameda last October.  My favorite time of year is Fall, so I had a ball running around getting these colors together.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when running around with my camera.

Tree moss...

Moss on fence post.

Pretty, pretty colors...

Sharp red--we don't get the kinds of leaves like on the East Coast but a few are good like this one.  I wonder what kind of tree it is?

Hello, Mr. Pelican.

-Beryl








iFail: New Years 2012

I think it's clear that the blog has taken a bit longer to get in touch with during the mess of this time.

Therefore!

I shall just say I am working on it.  The only trouble is, my room(s) are in a mess.

I think the problem is I went from living off of part time work, living with the parents and BARTing my butt everywhere to owning a car, renting, working full time and possibly planning devious plots to take over local dives with my music.

Life got intense.  Real quick.

Then there was the blog.

And in the back of my mind I kept thinking, "I should update.  I should update soon.  But, what to update about?"

It seemed rather boring, if not self-indulgent to go on and on about my doings, but the trouble is my doings have kept me from learning interesting facts and watching tons of documentaries like I used to when I had free time.

Therefore, you get a split kanich of the two:

A Woo Update.

I know you've been wondering a) Whatever happened to that adorable fur ball and b) What is Beryl going to do now that she doesn't live with her anymore?

The answer to both is:  I am going to find a way to steal her.  Don't tell my family.  They don't need to know.  Even though they follow this blog.

Anyway.

Woo!

She is the love of my animal life, even though I think she spoils me.

But, it's a mutual kind of awkward adoration:  when I have food she will cut a bitch (no, really--if there was another female dog near her who tried to take me-with-food away from her, there would be hell to pay) to protect me from harm.

She also falls asleep routinely and didn't even notice when I moved out.

Or rather, when I came back after being gone for approximately a week she didn't even bat an eyelash, let alone get up out of her pug bed.

Ok, so sometimes she might look up--but only if the food factor has increased by a likelihood of one crinkly bag being opened near her.

You think I'm joking that this is what she looks like snuggled.  But, I'm not.

I think this is about when she mistook my camera snapping photos for a new version of crinkly food bags.

Sadly for Woo, there weren't any treaties to be found after this photo shoot.

I am going to miss Woo, even though she will not be too far away.

We had some good times together, like when she and I went as Robin Hood & Friar Tuck for Halloween:

She also was a routine analyst in general of my wardrobe.  

She also is a great accessory to pajamas.

She is so delicate in nature.  So subtle. 

And she just knows where exactly to go to find the blackest item on any surface.

-Beryl

NEXT WEEK:  The story of the woman who went around the world in 80 days.  But, unlike Phileas Fogg, she did it in reality.  Say WHAT suckah?!  Yea.  I said it.








The Unicorns Got to Me

Just...

Watch.

-Beryl








The Fool

In the name of giving myself a break this week while I still get settled into my new job, I've pulled an excerpt from my journal.  No, it's not a recent entry. But, I find it entertaining.  I hope you enjoy it.  I did when I found it last week.  

-Beryl

Loneliness crept up on me the other day.  So, I naturally went to shuffle my tarot cards to read myself a fortune—or rather, to keep reading my cards until I got a good one.

About halfway through shuffling I had a sudden out of body experience and saw myself in that moment, sitting cross-legged in my childhood bedroom, sharing the wall with my parents, about to read my tarot cards. 

I had reached a new level of teenage regression that even for me was too much.

So, I packed up the cards and went scrolling around Facebook (as usual).  There are a couple profiles of friends I always end up commenting on, if not routinely right back on my own to respond to the messages I got for the day.  When I went to my list of latest posts I couldn’t help but notice a girl I’ve had a crush for a year or more has interacted with a couple things I had thrown out onto the Face earlier that day.

She had posted a response, she had obviously liked a link I had posted because it had coincidentally been linked again on her page right after I had said something on hers, which also tells me that she went to my profile—and success!

She had to have looked at my profile!  My face was in front of her face!  I might not have been aware of it at the time… but what of that?  There’s no need for retrospective speculation.  I am just burbling with joy that she even looked me up.  And thus, the pitiful, foolish, ritual begins anew.

Saying, "You Do It, Too" Just Means We're Both Creepy

Whenever I happen to find someone I like on Facebook I have a ritual I go through. I've asked around and I'm not alone in this.  Facebook allows us to anonymously snoop without feeling bad because of the Golden Internet Rule:  Post unto others as you would have posted about you.  Aka, if she didn't want me to see it then why make it public?  But, this girl decided to not publicly declare whether or not she likes girls.  How dare she.

Rather than just plain asking her (because that would be too scary) when the girl popped back under my radar I returned to her “info” page of her Facebook profile and sat and went through every bit of information as if the secret to her sexuality were right there sitting in front of me.  

I just have to crack the code, I tell myself—get enough evidence, find the secret out.  It's all right there in front of me because who we are is what we love (negating the fact that we sometimes fluff our profiles to look better for others to see).  And if she's straight (by my rubric) then it's my loss and I should move on.  If she's not, then I can allow myself the luxury of hoping I'll catch her eye one day in the future.

I always check first to see if her preference for guys or girls is even listed—but of course, that is ever vacant, which causes me to become all the more curious.  Why wasn’t it posted?  Is she just afraid of weird lesbians trolling around on Facebook searching for any sign of The Gay because in actuality you leaving that information hidden just makes weird lesbians search for signs of The Gay.  


I just… I can’t let it go.  That’s the problem.  I think if I had got the message long ago that she was completely utterly straight, I’d be far less interested and burning with curiosity not knowing and always wondering if I just made it up in my head that she could be queer.  

Objects In Rearview May Appear Gayer Than Before

Gaydar is funny this way; to those who have it, usually it means you get a slight tingling sensation about a person that you have more in common than your Buffy DVD collection.  It grows subtly inside of you until that perfect moment he/she says something along the lines of "I was reading the latest Sarah Waters novel the other day," and BOOM.  You knew you were right.

For me, Gaydar is unfortunately retrospective.   

So, I surf past the “Relationship status” on her page as always with a grimace—it’s the steady reminder that “even if her sexuality was listed this doesn’t change anything—remember she’s with so-and-so and you’re definitely not so-and-so.”

At least, that blue underlined link is not to my Facebook profile.*

Anyway, I go back to the meat of my possible discovery—I feel like an archeologist, sifting through minuscule remnants of stone and bog-preserved tissue, trying to piece together the truth I know existed at one point.

My criteria?  There isn't much to go on.  But, it's all I've got:  her favorite books, movies and tv shows which, arguably, could be all within the same bracket of criteria. These are the things that emotionally stuck with her that she would like to share with other people. It’s likely she will not list her ex-girlfriends and boyfriends, you see.  

So, I pull on my mental archeologist outfit and get to work.

I begin by scouring these titles.  And it is then that I turn into Superficial Beryl.  Every title places an invisible hash mark under either “queer” or “straight” in my head.  And it is through this ridiculous rubric I make up on the spot that I try to figure out her level of queerness.

Do You Have a (Rainbow) Flag?

No flag, no queer community.  Those are the rules I've just made up.  If there was an App for this--there should be an app for this--I would call it:  The Queerubric.  You plug in a title.  It tells you if its fans are queer or not with 80% accuracy. What?  I'm no Steve Jobs.  80% accuracy is good enough.

I start off with Favorite books:

Jane Eyre… straight… Pride and Prejudice...straight…** 

But, as with any rubric, I quickly feel constrained and start adding categories to take off the edge of disappointment and leave wiggle room for change:

Never Let Me Go… straight and secretly masochistic…Harry Potter... straight but British...

Not getting the answers to my Queerubric I wanted, I move on to movies:

Love Actually… hopelessly romantic but hopelessly straight… 

It isn't looking promising.  But then, within the folds of blue verdana comes...

Serenity.

It's like a beacon.  A giant, Joss-Whedon-shaped beacon.  

Queer, point 1.

Success.  I greedily read on, heading into TV shows.  Suddenly, I see the queer in everything.

Shakespeare in Love….drama geek...and/or queer ... Bones… queer… 30 Rock… bi-curious tennis shoes… The Office… UK version = queer, US version = not as good either way… Lost…annoying either way…Babylon 5…queer…

And then finally, as a finale to this whole dehumanizing--not for her, for me, realizing that underneath it all I really am just this superficial--experience, I reach favorite music.

The Beatles…pansexual…Joni Mitchell… straight, but depressed… Rufus Wainwright… queer but male…Fiona Apple… female, but straight and self-destructive…Damien Rice…interested in women but male and self-destructive… Sondheim… genius either way… Tegan and Sara…


Wait...Tegan and Sara?


GAY.GAYGAY.VERYVERYGAY. 

That’s when I stop stalking her profile and figure “I’ve got my answer.”  I smugly smile to myself and think “It’s fine.  She’s secretly gay and doesn’t know it.” I’ll just sit and wait here, I think.  I’ll just sit and wait here…as I’ve been waiting for the past couple years.

That’s when I pull out the tarot cards again.

*Am I the only one wary of setting a relationship status with someone new?  Ending a relationship on Facebook and changing your status from "in a relationship" to "single" is the worst; you have to cancel your relationship.  Cancel.  Like a dentist appointment.

**It should go without saying but one of my favorite stories (and BBC mini series ever) is Pride & Prejudice.  By my own rubric I am possibly straight.  And given that 80% accuracy rate for this app of mine, I am now questioning if in fact I am.








Prune Trees and Bimmers

Hello.

I've had a couple of oddball stories winding around my way.  So, we're going to have a new installment today of mini-stories.  I won't say short-stories because technically they're not even that long.

Starting last Sunday I went to go hang with my grandpa.  We just recently buried my grandma's ashes and to tell you the truth, I'm not sure how well he is doing.  Hell, I'm not sure how well *I'd* be doing under the circumstances.  So, I show up and I bring him homemade pot pie.  The pie went down well enough and we sat, watching the classical music ARTs channel while I put photos away that had been piling up.  About halfway through putting the photos away--mostly of people I don't know--one fell out onto my lap.   It was a very nice, beautifully pristine black & white photo.  I recognized not one but two faces, both very young--painfully young, smiling sweet.  It was my grandma and grandpa's wedding photo, decked out in white--both of them, my grandpa had a white suit on--and my grandma was wearing a classic 40's pinched shoulder dress.  I looked up and there he was, smiling in the same way, but far more wrinkles.  He was happily telling me about  the Prune Tree Farm in California his father's father had owned.

***

For the past week or two I've been car shopping.  Usually, when I involve myself in any sort of Big Buy or Life Altering Moment I tend to curl up inside into a little ball of nerves.  And not unlike the process of a star turning into a black hole (bear with me, I've been watching How the Universe Works for the past four days straight) the pressure of my nerves has actually caused me to draw further within myself.  I've become quiet.  I've become taciturn (at least, I think so).  

My mother, who hasn't bought a car in 22 years, very kindly took on the task of being my wing woman throughout the car-appraising process.  That translated into Mom being the Good Cop and Beryl being the Bad Cop.

Good Cop Mom: "It's got a sunroof?"
Bad Cop Beryl: "How many miles does it have?  Show me the Carfax.  What do you mean you don't allow a mechanic to check it out first?"
Good Cop Mom:  "Beryl, it's got a sunroof--AND heated seats!"

It was a confusing time for all.

One particular car caught my eye.  It was a 2003 BMW 3 Series sedan, steel blue.  All you need to know from those words is that it's blue with four doors and isn't ridiculously old.  The Toyota Camry you see everywhere?  Same year.  Same color.  It caught my eye because it was relatively young and in my price range and also holy mother goose, Batman, it was a Friggin' BMW.  Plus, I have been worried I'd end up with a Lesbian Car, aka a Subaru Outback (Sorry, Alex) or a Hipster Car, aka a 1991 Volvo sedan (no, Mom, this doesn't make you a Hipster).  I've wanted an Outback for a while but the reality is I don't even fake going camping nearly as much as that kind of car implies.  Plus, I am not fashionable enough to pull off the hipster ironically retro look.

So, I walk over to the dealer, who looks like he just walked off the set of a bad mafia movie, and say to him, "I'm interested in the BMW over there--the blue one.  Can I do a test drive?"  I take note of my surroundings as I say this:  The cars around me look nice enough.  But, the dealers have also got a mobile home for temporary office space, which to me signifies less that they're being low-budget and more that they have a get away car for an office.

He disappears into the Office On Wheels and comes back, shoving his hand through the air a couple times at his 20-something mechanic to go pull it out for me.  He then turns to me and pushes the key in my direction:

"You drive car now."

I take a moment to let that sink in.  I want to make a comment about Mother Russia, but I found it inopportune as this man was likely to decide the price on the car.  I did not want the conversation to go as such:

Beryl:  "Is that price fixed or can it change?"
Surly Dealer:  "No, it's not fixed.  For you?  5,000 more."

I ended up not only test driving, but re-test driving it, bringing my father along to drive it, bringing a mechanic to test drive, and then buying it.

So.  I have a car now.  And yes, it's a Friggin' BMW.  As Mother Good Cop says, "And Beryl, let me tell you, this is no Lesbian car."

-Beryl