Running Again.

I went with Mom to a big sports stores in Muncie to get some new running shoes yesterday, and while I was at the store I decided to get 2 15-pound dumbbell weights so I can work on my upper body while I'm here, too. With a very familiar mix of gratitude, relief, and shame, I let her pay for everything. Not that it was a surprise, her insisting.

On the way home, we measured a route for me to run. There's a path along a road near the house, and if I run out to the end of a path and back home it's a 3-mile run. Seemed like a reasonable length to start out. Well, just running out to the end of the path nearly killed me, and I walked back. In my defense, it's very warm and the humidity is heavy and thick, even at 10 p.m. But, there's no denying I'm in poor shape. My legs were fine, but I was flushed and soaked with sweat from head to toe. I haven't exercised a lick since I was hit by that car last summer. I stopped riding my bike, stopped lifting weights at the gym. I evens stopped walking much because I got a car. Apparently you just can't do that when you're almost 50 years old.

I got a little lost in the neighborhood. My parents live in an older sort of rural/suburban development. Big yards. Lots of huge trees. It's pretty. And very dark at night. In the car, the route seemed very straightforward, but it's not and I missed a couple turns. I thought I was more lost than I turned out to be. Or, I should say, I was lucky that I guessed right a couple of times and ended up finding my way back to familiar streets. So, I might actually have run more like 2 miles than 1 1/2.

This little spate of hot, humid days is supposed to end soon, so maybe the running will get easier. Maybe? My legs don't feel a bit sore today.

Equal Rights. Not.

From the New York Times today, in their story about the California federal court ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional:

“Being gay is about forming an adult family relationship with a person of a same sex, so denying us equality within the family system is to deny respect for the essence of who we are as gay people,” said Jennifer Pizer, the marriage project director for Lambda Legal in Los Angeles, who filed two briefs in favor of the plaintiffs. [emphasis mine]

I don't think I've ever heard this stated quite so simply, and it's exactly why I don't consider myself to be gay anymore: because that is what being gay is about now.

So now, if I were married, I'd have rights equal to other married people in California. But I'm not, so I don't.

It's Monday.

I dealt with most of the loose ends I’d been worrying about. My brother is going to keep my car in Columbus. He has plenty of room in his airplane hangar. M’s bicycle was stolen recently, so I gave him mine. I’m going to leave the boxes of unsold CDs here with J. I’ll store some stuff with my parents in Indiana.

This is it. It’s Monday -- in fact, it’s noon and I haven’t started, so I’m already behind. On my list today: 1) buy a big suitcase at Texas Thrift, to pack my clothes in, 2) go to the comic book store for more boxes, 3) buy packing tape. And I guess 4) would be … pack.

Hippie Clown Jesus, Etc.

I have 70s New York on my mind today. I'd forgotten that Godspell was set in the city, too. It's odd, and I'm not really sure I like it, how art that depicts the World Trade Center now has an immediate potency and poignancy.

This opening sequence from Hair is my favorite opening sequence from any movie, ever. What I love about film is that there is seemingly no limit to the quantity and variety of genius that can be contained in it. The horses are dancing, y'all!

Bravery.

People -- friends, fans, family -- tell me they think I’m brave, most recently referring to my move back to New York, but people said it about my first move to New York when I was 20, about my life of poverty and art in the 80s, about J’s and my decision to live on the road, etc.

Brave? I don’t know. I never felt particularly brave, just scared. I think sometimes I certainly did what excited me regardless of risk, did what I wanted to do while brushing aside any notion of danger, but many many times, those apparently courageous choices were actually just me doing what I thought was the least terrifying option available.

Absolutely the thing I am most scared of, because I am literally afraid I would commit suicide, is giving up art and getting a regular job. I’m not sure why that is so awful to contemplate because sometimes it sure seems like it would be a hell of a lot more pleasant than all this uncertainty, rejection, disappointment, poverty, frustration, but I can’t even contemplate it without starting to feel panicky.

Art-making has brought me countless moments of pure joy, thrills beyond anything I imagined, and deep satisfaction, but I also associate it with a constant background of anxiety. I don’t mean the economic anxiety that has resulted from choosing this life, but a more general “I have to do something but I’m not sure what it is” anxiety that I’ve felt ever since I can remember. It’s always there, and I regard it rightly or wrongly as the source of my creativity.

Am I brave? Most of the time, I feel like these big life choices are out of my hands, like someone or something else is pushing me along.

Giving up, it seems to me, would take real courage because that’s where the real demons live.

Leaving.

I’m leaving Austin a week from Friday, which is two weeks earlier than I had planned. It turns out Labor Day weekend is a good time to begin work with the woman who is directing Lizzie Borden for the festival showcase, so I’m going to be in New York by Labor Day instead of mid-September, which was a more or less arbitrary arrival date anyway. But I still want to spend a few weeks with my parents, and that’s why I’m leaving here so soon.

There’s really no reason to stay, except to have more time to procrastinate. I don’t have a ton of stuff, but still I don’t enjoy packing. It always surprises me how much stuff “not much stuff” looks like when you have to put it all in boxes. The bulk of what I’ve carried around with me the last 7 years falls into two categories: 1) unsold CDs -- I have 6 or 8 big boxes of Life in a Box soundtrack CDs and 3 or 4 boxes of Y’all CDs (mostly The Hey, Y’all Soundtrack, our Nashville album); and 2) the Y’all archives -- I have 5 or 6 boxes of miscellaneous stuff that I think is historically important and I won’t throw away, such as the masters to our recordings, a box of old posters and programs and scripts and press and letters and other printed stuff, a couple boxes of videotapes and audio recordings in a variety of obsolete formats, and all the Life in a Box stuff: the original tapes as well as hard drives with backups and rough cuts of the film and some printed logs and stuff like that.

Other stuff I have: a few photo albums, my grandmother’s scrapbooks, a box of my journals going back to high school, my high school yearbooks, a box or two of other personal stuff I won’t throw away, such as drawings I made when I was a kid, old report cards, some letters. I admit that I am sentimental about some of this, but seriously it’s pared down to next to nothing. Our living situation on the road didn’t allow for an excess of sentimentality about objects.

And then there’s the stuff I use in my life. Clothes (a very small dresser full, a few shirts in the closet, and a couple jackets and a winter coat. And my computer, which is kind of a big honking old Mac tower but it has served me well and I’m taking it with me. I also have an even older G4 Macbook or whatever they called them back then. And a printer. I have some good kitchen stuff, but I might leave some of it here for now since I don’t know when I’ll have my own kitchen again. There’s not really that much.

This week I am devoting to goodbyes. I have lunch dates every day all week. Next week I’ll pack.

It All Comes Back to Liza.

I was thinking today about the period of time when I was logging and editing Life in a Box and all my living expenses were covered by the film’s budget, a period of about 2 1/2 years that I spent in front of a computer in Jersey City, Nashville, and San Francisco, when not only did I make a feature film that I’m extremely proud of, I wrote several short stories and a screenplay. It was a really fruitful period of art-making for me. I think what made that possible was that I didn’t worry about money during that time. I knew the bills were paid, rent, and I’d have a little left for cheap entertainment and a few beers on the weekend. I literally had no worries. My life was basically perfect.

Now I have all this idle time. I do a little writing every few days, but it’s slow-going and it’s a struggle to stay focused. Worrying about money occupies way too much of my brain. I hate it.

Which reminds me of this bitter, hilarious op-ed in Huffington Post that a facebook friend posted. I sort of in my head substituted “artist” when she wrote “writer,” and it’s all still true. Nothing is supposed to be about money, but everything is about money.

And that, because I'm gay, reminds me, of course, of this. My favorite movie ever.