Moving is no fun

I have adored my current apartment in Cambridge. Really adored it. Located between Harvard and Central Square, it's been the perfect place to throw parties, to have house guests and to just hang out. In fact, the only downside to this apartment has been that it's a fifth floor walk up. Now most of the time I don't mind walking the 64 steps to my apartment. It's good for me. Makes my blood circulate. Builds muscles.

However, now I am moving. And moving furniture down 64 steps is REALLY not fun. Really really not fun. Particularly, when I've acquired so much crap. Lately, I've understood my friend Karin's recent comment when she moved. "You know, all of these objects we acquire, all of these things...they sort of make me sick. Sometimes I feel like purging everything and starting over clean."

Here here to that!

Disappointing movies and the Countess

Yesterday I went to see Prairie Home Companion. I like Robert Altman. I like the NPR radio show it's based on. I like Meryl Streep. However, this movie, well...it's not so good. In fact, it's a mess on the order of Dr. T and the Women, rather than a brilliant piece of filmmaking like Nashville. Garrison Keillor is stiff. Kevin Kline's role is unnecessary. Lindsay Lohan (who I actually like) feels like a typical teenaged caricature. And as I sat in the Harvard Square Cinema, eating my Raisinettes, I looked up at the theatre's clock that has never worked and thought, this is probably the last time I will ever go to this theatre and I wasted my time watching this?

One of my favorite things about working at the theatre at the Harvard Film was the Countess. Ah yes, those of you who've been to the HFA know who I am talking about. The Countess is probably in her early 70s. She rides a bike (sometimes in a bikini). She saves plastic bags (which she likes to sort loudly in the movies). She kicks people in the head jumping over the seats in the theatre (which is how she got banned from the HFA). We call her the Countess, because that is how she introduces herself.

Yesterday I got a card from Mary Kenny. Do you know who was on the cover? The Countess! This picture is going permanently on my bulletin board, because she is my favorite crazy street person in Boston.

It's late June and I still don't know what's going on...

Do you know what happens when you don't take care of yourself? You end up passing out in the park and having to spend the weekend in the hospital for exhaustion and dehydration. It's not very fun and then people also think you're retarded because you're 31 and you should, at this point in life, know how to take care of yourself.

When I got out of the hospital I opened my P.O. box and found $1000! Can you believe it? That is so much money! And due to the fact that I am going to have to sell a kidney in order to pay for school, I am extremely grateful!

I also found two great envelopes. The Japanese girl envelope is from my sister, but the criminal envelope is from... well, I actually have no idea, other than it was stamped in Seattle. It had a dollar inside but no note and no return address.

Please send more envelopes! And if you read this blog, tell your friends to send me a dollar!

The Movies and Walking

Sometimes, when I'm sad, I walk. It gives me time to think, time to figure out what I am going to do for the next couple of days or weeks or months. Today I walked four and a half miles. Not endless walking, mind you, but destination walking--walking home from a friend's house who lives a town away, or walking to the indie movie house, where I get to go to the movies for free. But nothing was really resolved...

I am giving up my apartment at the end of the month in an effort to save money. I plan on putting my stuff in storage and couch surfing for two months. I still don't know about where I'll be living in New York, I still haven't figured out my financial situation (like paying for tuition), everything feels so horribly arbitrary. I wonder if my life will ever be stable again?

This week I am going to the Newport Film Festival to head the panel for student (high school) judges. The folks who run the festival like to refer to me as the teen camp film counselor. Perhaps that's what I am. Regardless, I am looking forward to getting out of town and seeing a bunch of movies. And Newport is lovely and not yet overcrowded in early June (though maybe it will be since I've never been to Newport during the festival).

Maybe I'll see something that will move me. Change the way I think forever. Mend my aching heart.