This is really inspiring to me.

Tig Notarro found out she had cancer and went on stage to give the most raw and honest performance of her life. This podcast is especially personal to me because recently I have begun to question the very trait that has defined me most of my life; I've often been described as raw and honest. The double edge sword of this trait is that it is something people are hungry for but never satisfied with after it's received.   This podcast is also near and dear to my heart because as I struggle with blood tests, MRIs, cancer scares, lesions, pain and chronic discomfort I wonder just what right I have to write about it. And how can this horror turn into something artistically and culturally relevant.  This disease has marginalized me in such a way that I have gone down dark paths. How macabre of me to try and find the humour in this- or perhaps simply just the humanity. I think Tig is really brave for what she did - and inspiring for me. Thank you Tig!

Listen here to Tig and enjoy! =)

This is exactly the kind of content I want to make right now!

Atonement in Judaism is the process of causing a transgression to be forgiven or pardoned.  But why should I cause a transgression? 

Its Yom Kippor and I am totally an Atheist Jew. I'd link to think this Ted Talk really exclaims how I feel- wonderment at what we don't know and the wisdom to stay away from labeling it and defining it. 




ciao
me

I don't know what I knew before But now I know I wanna win the war

It's been such a long time since I've finished making something. Funny enough I feel as if I have doula'd so many other people's writing, whether it be through my screenwriting classes that I teach or coaching my friend on her blog to help promote her product. I successfully branded her and have helped many others in the same way. What does it mean when your identity revolves around helping others? Its the beta male of identities isn't it? Think about it: Producers vs Directors, Teachers vs artists, Doula's vs the Birther. In every scenario its the person who's DOING who comes out the rock star and its the helper who gets the phone calls, thanks and misty gratification. And that's no one's fault but our own. Don't get me wrong- there are innumerable levels of helper statii that garner serious respect: Nurses, social workers, campaign advisors, political speech writers, ghost writers, well heck- screenwriters...they never get any respect. But how do we optimize the aspect of personality that everyone loves about us to help ourselves. The other day I received a txt basically asking me to travel to my home town and spend the night to chat with a friend to help her organize her thoughts because her husband, mother, therapist and coworkers could not. WHY? Because I was willing to go to the distance. Because on some level i pride myself on my ability to be courageous with other other people's emotions, secrets and problems. I'm not afraid of ugly. I am afraid of mediocrity. And now of obsolescence. Soldier on kids.

Bears, wombs and watering holes

I must have slept for twelve hours in the spare room of Erman and Chris's. Their tattoo'd nuptial bliss echoed through the walls as I awoke to the sound of the baby cooing downstairs while lawnmowers whirred in the distance. The bookshelves here are lined with pushy gurus like Osha and Thoreau
demanding of me that I not snarkily palter love and nature. Love and Nature.  That's why they moved. Isn't that the natural stream of events that should happen in a human's life? They met, they fell in love, they broke a condom, they went to city hall, they threw a party and moved to the country. Anything else seems abnormal.

I moved 96 frames per second - conscious of everything and yet aware of nothing but the rattle in my own brain.  Maybe if I moved slow enough the deus ex machina would occur and the plot of my life finally would be resolved.

My feet felt strange as they palmed the unvarnished repurposed wood that constitutes their floors. I creaked down the stairs and suddenly began to feel like one large unfertilized egg in the coop. The one thats going to be cracked up and thrown away. Every step I made felt like a noisy invasion into little baby Jonas's kingdom.  And so in even slower motion I ambled to the coffee maker. I relished every tiny cottony moment. My sense of smell heightened and comforted me as if I was now appropriately armed in the wilderness that is someone else's life. My skin prickled when the air touched it.  Morning TV of the housewife variety resounded through the living room; and scratched my soul. My nerves started to burn.  I looked at the dog and made a run for the yard.

Oh me. I had these visions of what I would accomplish up here for the week. I would meditate and practice yoga EVERYDAY! I would lose five lbs from all the hiking and country produce. I would write 50 pages: 13.5 a day averaged out of some formula I had constructed.  I would come home feeling- not only refreshed but cleansed of guilt. But sloth and pleasure took over.   As soon as I arrived here we had a feast in a little red caboose. Deanna, a sultry whirling dervish of a Chef was experimenting opening up her own restaurant and so we gorged on stuffed pork rollatini in blueberry sauce and stuffed homemade manicotti. There were meatballs, bruschetta, crostini and wine- lots and lots of it. The next morning I dragged my poor post pregnancy friend on a hike- we made it one half up the hill before my conscience led us back down.  There would be no detox or writing retreat. I would have to let go and just breath in the smells of the trees and sigh in the silent night.  The night air that was filled with bears.  At night I would move quickly and overly alert as I am scared shitless of bears and am sure my finality will be at the hand of a vicious mauling.   At one point I ran into the house after hearing a twig snap and banged into a small ripped copy of Macbeth.


Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

That morning we set out to the creek and found a large watering hole where one's courage could be tested upon at various levels depending on what cliff you decided to gorge jump. I kept wondering where all my moxie had gone?

At one time I had been typecast as the dangerous child. This by a doctor and a survivor.  Fear of death was the inception of my mother and the shake to my father's office shingle.  

Poor Hamlet - I hated him and yet I understood him.  It would be so much easier to let others lead you in your journey under the false hope of love.  I got his problem. Somewhere in his development he to went from a fearless child to the man standing at the edge of cliff too scared to jump in and too afraid of what the others might think if he stayed still.  Death is still.  I wanted to jump.  My heart raced a million miles an hour.  Hadn't I dived off giant cliffs in Ithaca?  My body round and bloated with self loathing and yet my desire to live fully reached further.  But now its different.  I no longer believed the odds were in my favor.

The rednecks piled high onto the far side of the watering hole.  Chris laid the baby on a blanket and asked me to watch as she jumped happily into the mountain drink.  Mike, a portly painter from Michigan, at first, tried to kindly coax me off the edge.  He proposed various logical exits swearing the underside of the cliff's edge couldn't physically come near my head and the water was way too deep to hurt my self.  When his safety surveillance of the scene didn't work he jumped off several times to prove his case. But he was 6.2 and about 280 lbs.  His plunge echoed through the canals and became endless foder for the hicks to praise and laugh at.  They were sunburned. They guzzled their 20 ounce bud cans in one long swig and then took running jumps off of the bridge across the hole. As they climbed passed me they would coax me. "come on- you'll hate your self if you don't." My self loathing kicked into high speed mode.  My knees shook. This cliff jump was every thing I had never done in my life; it was the script I never wrote for my graduate festival, the trip I never took to Thailand! It was every lover, friend, job and opportunity that I never rose to the occasion for or simply didn't try hard enough.  ENOUGH.  I'm almost 37, I thought, NOW GO AND JUMP OFF A CLIFF.  Mike said he was going to try a dive. I asked him sweetly to please to another gorge jump for me.  He said he would only forestal his olympic diving practice if I agreed to jump once. I shook on it.  Immediately I began to back off from my promise. I said I couldn't do it. Chris and Mike shook their wet mountain dirty heads disapprovingly   JUMP! Who am now, if I can't stand by my word.   Every local standing around the perimeter began to chant: " DO IT, DO IT.DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT.

I closed my eyes. I jumped.  Nothing happened. I was alive.  The Budweiser guys cheered.  It wasn't even that far.  I jumped three more times and then packed up and marched behind Chris who stealthily mined the slippery rocks, with a baby strapped to her body and mind to do so much more.

We drank around the fire that night as we talked about local native American history and how to hold a shotgun if you in harm's way.  Turns out- you just shoot straight from the hip.

BLOCKED

This morning I spent the day glossing over OPWS- other people's websites. This feels, to me,  more personal than looking at their significant others. At first it started out as a sadistic tool of torture as I perused the very well formed and successful sites of ex loves and friends whom I unconsciously compete with. But then, thankfully, my brain switched over to learning mode and I became way more interested in how people are able to successfully brand themselves.

I have a speech that I give to my students- it's very Debbie Allen at the beginning of FAME. Here it goes and forgive me for quoting myself, but I have this speech down to a science:

"what is it that you think makes a film maker successful? You and I are a dime a dozen. Everyone and their mother wants to be a famous artist in some form or another. Especially in NYC!!!!  And among these legions of starved artists,  hungry for their artistic endeavors to be legitimized, there are plenty of talented, intelligent, schmooze-savvy and ambitious film makers. And yet- even THEY don't make it. Who makes it? What leaches out the lucky from the unlucky?  Is it just luck? It's the person who has all of the latter and one more thing: their own unique, consistant and attainable voice. "

  I thought about this for a while before I started to say this to them.  It would be dishonest of me to spew out my own Darwinian philosophy of success without bravely facing my own feelings of failure.  Which is why I added the word "attainable" at the end. Frankly the whole speech stinks of Freudian psychology.  Words like legitimate and hungry pepper my pep talk with flavors of my own lofty past.  Hunger is something I have pondered often.  Physically as I battled with weight and existentially in the financial and romantic droughts of my life.  Legitimate is an even more intriguing word:

Main Entry:	legitimate  [adj., n. li-jit-uh-mit; v.li-jit-uh-meyt]  Show IPA
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	authentic, valid, legal
Synonyms:	accepted, accredited, acknowledged, admissible,appropriate, authorized, canonical, certain,cogent, consistent, correct, customary, fair,genuine, innocent, just, justifiable, lawful, licit,logical, natural, normal, official, on the level, onthe up and up, orthodox, probable, proper, real,reasonable, received, recognized, regular,reliable, rightful, sanctioned, sensible, sound,statutory, sure, true, typical, usual, verifiable,warranted, well-founded
Antonyms:	illegal, illegitimate, invalid, unlawful,unwarranted

My father uses this word very differently than most and I think it indicates a lot about his personality. He may have many flaws but he is the one person I know for sure does not have a mean or selfish bone in his body. My dad is painstakingly a giver and a morally upright person. He doesn't judge others to much and he tries his hardest to help those in need.  So when I tell him a story of someone doing something kind or helpful his response is often "they're legitimate people."  Which is to say that outright kindness and extra help is not extraordinary but actually what is only admissible.  The defines his moral code and my love for the expression defines my admiration for him.

Therefore I suppose my feelings are that not succeeding is not admissible. One is not legitimate unless they get what they say they are going to get....And one can not get what they say they are going to get if their voices are unattainable.  This is the didactic spiral that consumes my brain.

 
To be a teacher, presumes the notion that you have done all the things that you are teaching. I have not.  And as the time passes as my temporary rent payer becomes a full time mistake- I am forced to meet face to face my true misgivings of my past in order to move forward.  It is not shocking then that  I am unbelievably blocked right now on the book. As I start to write the chapter on love and aspirations I am tongue tied. I sit for hours at my desk wondering what it is I have to say- it seemed like I was frothing at the mouth just a little while ago and now? I am so incredibly stopped up. Not shocking, my disease that I am partially writing about is also is at an all time flair up. Is it that I am sick of thinking about myself? (pun intended)   Chronic physical pain can isolate you in a way that is incomparable to any other disenfranchisement I have ever experienced.  I have been 100 lbs overweight in the past.  I had cystic acne and unruly facial hair in college due to an ovary condition.  I've been the only person in the room without a film or a real career. The only single person.  The only Jew. The only white person. The only democrat. You name it, i've been the only person standing in the room feeling the way I do. I've been the monster in the room. But being sick is different. Having a vague, hard to describe disease that effects hard to talk about places and creates a surplus of hopelessness and despair is more of an emotional quarantine.  And writing is an even more isolating event.  But not writing is inadmissible.

Still, what is so unique about pain? Even if I weren't sick of stewing in my own thoughts. What is so unique about charting the timeline of your life for places were you were traumatized? Perhaps I am missing the point. Perhaps its not the content but the wording. And words are sacred to me. I'm letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. I know it.

But I started this entry about branding. Why? Because branding flipped over on its side is individuality and individuality laid down on her side is self awareness.   And there it hit me.  Loneliness is not alone. Being alone with yourself, sitting with your self and looking deep within in the dark cold murky places nobody can see is a skill that takes years of practice.  I have not been sitting with my self. I've been running from myself my whole life.

There is an expression. The teacher teaches what she needs to hear.  Perhaps I need more talent, intelligence, ambition,  and schmooze-savvy. But what I really need in my own writing is a singular voice that jumps out of the page at me, kisses me on the cheek and says "hello Danielle, here I am babe. Lets do this together. "

Illustration by E Deutchman
emilydeutchman.com

30 something.

I just had a moment where I could not remember how to spell soul
I kept writing "soal" and I looked at it and I knew it was wrong but I could not retrieve the right word out of my head. Thankfully I did not have to look it up- it came to me! This inability to retrieve that which I KNOW happens often and on so many levels. I sometimes find it hard to express empathy and kindness to family members even when I have a surplus of it for my friends. I can't even muster an iota of encouragement for myself but I can tough the shit out of you till you finally do what you need to do just to shut me up. I find it hard to retrieve good writing although I know what good writing is. I find it hard to pull from myself that which is the core of who I am. This is what I pondered today on my favorite day.

Sunday is my favorite day. It is a loathed one for many. Perhaps its because I have spent more time in my life not working than working. But I do remember when I worked that cursed 10-6 5 days a week where my very soul ( here is where I could not remember how to spell) Even so- I loved Sunday. I love endings. I love goodbye parties. I love endings because they often mean beginnings. I love endings because I am so ready for the moment to be better than the last. The only ending I do not like is the sun setting. I'm hard wired for depression and when night falls I crave the precious good mood neurotransmitters that the sun enables. Sundays are the quintessential ending. Its when the week ends- although really - its the beginning of the week according to harvests. Its the quiet day- the me day. 

Chasm

By Danielle Liza Beeber

Lost sense of incoming substance
While bees buzz nightly at the hub of my old existence
I check the battlements and doors
My watch is ticking and there is no time to be anywhere
I am lost
Where is my check?
Where is my ploy?
Where is that new?

Written for Poetry Magazine 2011

Take Care of Me Please

Dear Bella,

Greetings from your SuperEgo. Yeah I know I know, I'm supposed to be so subterranean that you can't reach me unless we get some hypnosis or some other cockamamie* crunchy ass treatment that I have no doubt you would drag me through. Listen up lady- I'm here and I needed to peer up and speak to you for a minute. So whats up with all this LA lunching??? Huh. In the past month you have had not 1 but 5 mentoring informational meals at fancy places where the other person did most of the talking and paid. You sat and listened to wise but late coming advice about breaking it through in the industry. You smiled and acted grateful while these five people who ARE YOUNGER than you paid the bill and told you to keep your chin up. You patted your self for being beyond age and able to hear the last strands of maybe meaningful counsel while pondering how you are gonna sell your car, move your shit home and have enough money to flee the country when the sediment clears from your impending nervous break down that you shall have when we move back in with your 70yr old folks.

Then dear-heart- you administered one more blow- you dialed the number of a boy 8 yrs your junior after your attempts to date him faltered 3 times young lady. DEAR BELLA- WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME. Hello Hello? Does this thing work? Can you hear me???? This is your ego speaking. I do not want to hear any more advise from juniors nor do I want you cavorting with little boys. ARE WE CLEAR??? Good. I'm glad we had this talk. Now go out there and seize the day- no sleeping, no web stuff except writing about me. Now I am going to re-submerge myself and make you do things you don't want to do without knowing it- all in the name to make your self look good to others.

Love
Your SuperEgo.

*Yiddish for devoid of good sense or judgment

Where to next captain?

My mind is like a neglected child lately — so spoiled by lack of structure and discipline that it just does not want to face its own deficits. Instead it thinks about everything it does not have. Lately, instead of pondering how not to be lazy and fruitless, I've been wondering how to live that slacker life-effectively. How can I live off the grid? If I did not have a real job, could it be somewhere like Hawaii or Thailand? How do I escape the clutches of conventional ambition if it has not worked for me yet? Or, am I missing the point. The buddha says life is suffering. I know this. I AM being cheeky here. I want to succeed. Its just I want to succeed in a different way than what I use to want. I want love and kids and a modest nest to call my own. I want peace. I want legitimacy and small daily doses of contentment. I want to stop wanting. I want to not be poor anymore because I am the picture of everyone's pity. It is really hard to be a woman alone. I do not mean to be sexist here but woman have so much more readily apparent love to give and to be single to me is that much more hurtful. Men are stronger on some level. They are tunneled. They are guided by an innate sense of entitlement to conquer whatever stands in their way and most often than not, they know what they want. Women are different. We circumnavigate the waters until we find the right path. We lie still in the waters struggling with the sharks until somehow they no longer want our blood. Men just shoot first-they kill the sharks. But women, we are complicated. And life-it takes a partner to help us gather ourselves. Its too hard to be your own cheerleader, mentor, secretary, mother and wife. Women hold up the world with their hearts while men attack their world with their spirit. And each of us find a way to bolster the meaning of it all for ourselves...I suppose

Between the Canyons and the Cobblestones.

Dear Los Angeles,
Greetings from my head. I wish you here. I know that you know me as someone who is never at a loss for words but lately I find that the questions have gotten so hard that I literally stutter instead of being able to speak. The good news? Well life is so compounded with immediate problems that need solving that I literally can not waste time worrying about the larger existential issues looming in the dismal gray sunset. Oh dear LA. I have taken you for advantage for my entire time here. I looked straight through your eyes for someone else and just now am seeing the beauty in your own curvature. Or perhaps its the escape you provide for me. Its true- New York will always be my true love. But I like you LA. If only I had more time to give you the chance you deserved! If only I could do it all over again. Its sad really. Things take time. I find that I cannot even fill my fleeting days here with volunteering as one needs to do training and make appointments for workshops that are scheduled into the summer. People want guarantees. I have none. In any case LA- I want you to know that I it is with a heavy heart and an injured mind that I most probably will leave you in a tiny minute. So farewell Adieu and va presto.

xoxo
bella

My first Adult relationship on Steroids.

I need to get a on a regular writing schedule I know- if not for any other reason but to get better at expressing myself because there are too many situations in my life where what I really need is not being attained. I'm the middle of yet another permutations of something that has plagued my life: "the un-relationship." Have you been in this situation? It has so many variations. Sometimes it involves sex and the miming of partner like behavior bordering marriage type performance. Sometimes these dynamics are more of an unspoken bond. Its the best friend of the opposite sex who simulates partnership in every aspect of your life except of course the physical component. The latter was the common type in my life. I've had so many male friendships in my life who loved me for being there emotionally for them and making them laugh and cooking for them and sleeping in their beds with them- but nary would they lay a finger on me or call me their girl. It was a sterile marriage based on mutual appreciation of each other and perhaps a very strong neediness on my part- and an availability of course! These relationships destroyed my self confidence. They turned me into a unich. But at least in those relationships there was a fluidity- a mental conviviality and intimacy that I would take over being someone's lover any day. My last relationship was with indieboy. This post is to be continued.

Cha Cha Cha Changes.

I'm 34. I am a very iron clad cliche - too old to be fun and whimsical and too young to just give up. I'm at that place where I am looking back-looking back hurts my neck. I'm going to admit something. ten yrs. ago to the date I thought I was going to be a very famous screenwriter and possibly director. At that time I was actually writing and doing things. I was not behind - in fact I was ahead of the game. Life was moving forward. I finally made the friends that I had always wanted my whole life in Film School. I finally found the nerve to change my lifestyle and lose weight and become a whole girl by halving myself. I became a fixture in a scene that I felt at home with- and had real dreams. Now I am standing at the precipice of a decision to leave that dream. One may think that this is extreme thinking. After all you can always write. But it's not just the act of physical creation that joins you to this life. It's being present in the scene. It's working the connections it's being "a filmmaker" I was never a film maker. I never felt comfortable telling people that. I was never confident in my ability to write. I was always confident however in my opinions. I thought I had something very important and smart to say to the world. I thought this would be how.

Last saturday I sat through a three hour examination on Psychology. It was the most I had worked in yrs. I studied for a month every aspect of the brain, the endocrine system, the sensory modalities, all 150 yrs. of psychological history and theory, the implicit inner-workings of memory, statistics. To be honest- I needed this test. I needed to know that I still had a functioning above parr brain - it's the one thing I have been lynch-pinning my thread-barring ego onto. I hope I did well. I need something to offer up to my loved ones and say, "here, look at this- I did something!' i don't even know if I will make the deadlines ofr school or if I will be accepted in. I don't know if I will make a great therapist. But i know this- I have no qualms or fear about trying- nor do I doubt the necessity of my calling. What I fear is not that I will fail, but that this success will not heal the loss of my failures. What I fear is that I will not be able to overcome regret and therefore how will I help others to move on past their own life traumas and mistakes. Scratch that- I don't fear that- I'll lie. This is what I fear. What is going to happen every time I see a beautiful film that lifts my soul and is executed so artfully that I come to tears. I use to love that experience because it reminded of what I wanted to make- how shall I love these things now? How shall I honor my colleagues w/out wondering if they are pitying me or worse feeling disdain for me because i am the picture of their worse fear- art impotence- failure. Failure Failure Failure. Its an ugly word I know -but I keep thinking that if I purge it enough from my brain it will somehow blossom into opportunity for change. I'm not quite buddhist enough for this enlightened thought.

And there are the larger implications of these decisions we make- after all i am forming my life views as i make these movements. At what point is it ok to let go and admit that you are not good enough- maybe never was. Is that even possible- or was it always a lack of faith? What is worse is that I just wish I could know of one other person who went through this process with me who is also exchanging the romantic notion of art for something else.

The misconception that you'll figure it all out.

I don't remember the exact moment art and I broke up. It was sometime in my mid twenties but I walked around Brooklyn wearing his ring for years. I had this funny notion that if I just kept having an idea- well eventually art would consume me and elate me and tickle me. But it died in me and I never saw him again. Every year my conception of our relationship was extrapolated and diminished down to a newer less high maintenance relationship from last year's failed attempt. I thought the entire time that art was just not giving me what I needed or that he was acting like he really did not want to be in the relationship but the whole time it was just me withholding. Then one day - it occured to me: Art and I were never going to be together. Art was not mine to own. Others had surprisingly amazing open relationships with Art- but not me. I was just too conservative for Art, too much of a perfectionist. I wanted Art to take me over- but it was me who was trying to take over Art. While others relished in Art's beautiful and freeing presence, I cowered...I buckled. I got scared. Art did not care anymore for me than any other beautiful brained person. Art was a hippy, a polyamorous cad with a pention for making people feel self important when they were able to espouse Art's voice. But not Danielle. I do not know Art any more. I know Story. He's a good guy. He can be interesting. He is just there to help me get by. I miss the wild and crazy days when I thought Art and I were an item. It was intoxicating but I lost interest. Now, I just need story- that is until I get strong enough to be in Art's good graces- Until I get comfortable enough to be with Art with everyone else.