SuperRowan and 3-D Humility

Note: I have a cache of unfinished and unpublished entries. I want to cross the Ts and dot the lowercase Js, and get them up. I'll be doing this over the next few weeks, and to prevent any confusion with this blog's timeline, I'll make a note of the blog's original timestamp in the title. There's one about my favorite eateries in Baltimore that needs to be posted. I'm a little achy for B-more lately for a variety of reasons, so revisiting my favorite eats will be a little salve.

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Over the summer in Baltimore, I was blessed to have 3 interns reporting to me. They were each wonderful in their own way, and I miss each of them dearly. One of them, Rowan, asked me to send a recommendation letter to her high school, attesting to her performance over the summer and what she learned working on the campaign. It was pretty much the easiest writing assignment of all time. Rowan is still in high school, she's years from fully crystallizing into an adult, and I cannot wait to see what she does once she takes flight. I told her that I'd do whatever I could to help turn her into SuperRowan; this is an inevitability. I remember looking around at my classmates in high school, maybe during a lecture or when one of us was making one of the eleventy-trillion presentations we had to make in our four years, and thinking, "We're going to shake shit up." I met a few people over the summer who gave me that same feeling, and Rowan is one of them.

Now that the year is drawing to a close, I'm thinking back on how I spent my time and looking forward to what moves I want to make next. Since Thanksgiving or so, I've been circling some big themes, plotting what I want to do next, what I want my next writing project to be, and yesterday, I was smacked in the face with one of those "You're on the right track, girlfriend!" moments. And what beautiful serendipity that one Miss E-Cav was with me!

Let's begin with some classic DKM trivia. Question: How many times did DKM see "Titanic" in the theater? (I'll provide the answer in a future post. Ooh, suspense for all 4 of my readers who probably already know the answer.)

Suffice it to say that I spent well over an entire day in the theater watching that movie. Not in one sustained period, mind you. It was spread out over several months; that movie stayed in theaters for a long time due to its Oscar attention. Aussie Cat was my hype girl for several of these viewings because a) she had wheels and a driver's license, and b) she is as enamored of the grand/romantic/sparkly/epic/melodramatic/sweeping as I am, easily turning a blind eye to reason or logic [or discerning taste] in favor of a chance to be knocked breathless if even for a moment. (There aren't that many of us, and even fewer that aren't completely pathetic. See "Twi-hard" for some reference points for the pathetic among us.) Even at the time, I don't think that I was gushing about the quality of the movie. I probably talked some sugar about how much I wanted to make out with Leonardo DiCaprio-- that really shouldn't be in the past tense, if I'm honest-- or about Kate Winslet's performance, which still holds up. But I don't think I tried to convince anyone that it was the greatest movie ever. (It isn't. Like, at all. I could get fucking academic on that point, trust.) It was essentially a cheap high. Bear with me.

"Titanic" came out when I was a sophomore in high school. That is prime angst time, right? I was in the throes of the first major gut-wrenching, insomnia-inducing, borderline-unhealthy, unrequited crushes that I've ever had [there've been 3, and I'm pleased to note that all 3 have turned into genuinely interesting, accomplished, compassionate men-- my flawless taste started early], and I had no productive outlet for this vast store of lovey, starry-eyed, romantic drive that propelled me. I should've been learning how to write love songs or finding an agent to start a career in teen rom-coms because I probably would've been really prolific. (Yeah, that's right, Taylor Swift. You're not the only one who had high school crushes that basically made you cognitively impaired; you just managed to write some catchy and marketable songs about them.) It was like I had truckloads of bricks but no idea how to build anything with them and it was maddening. A major archetype in my heroine's journey is satiety. Even when I was really young, I remember feeling like I could never get enough of anything. I always wanted someone to pick me up. I always wanted one more person's attention. I always wanted to hear a song or a story one more time. I always wanted one more helping of whatever Jan was feeding us even if I knew, logically, that my belly was full. This 15-year-old version of that hunger/drive/craving was no different, and it just wouldn't go away. But, I remember sitting in the theater, when the lights would go down and the previews would start, and that gnawing feeling would quiet down a bit. I had 3 hours of relief that I couldn't find anywhere else. I would be captivated. I'd be swept up into something big and bombastic. Seriously, it was like a drug. It's efficacy faded, of course, but I was able to get an adequate fix for at least a handful of those viewings.

So, bring it back to the present day. That lack of satiety is still a major theme. I know that part of a political campaign's appeal to me is that it is entirely captivating; it demands everything of you, physically, mentally, emotionally. If you have any sort of intensity, you can unload it on a campaign. You can be as passionate and competitive as you want and it's rewarded. It's fulfilling on a different level if you can tap into the idea that you're doing something for the greater good-- probably why lucrative private sector campaigns have zero appeal to me-- and there's definitely some romance and drama to it. It's a reasonable outlet for someone like me. But it's also a stop-gap, a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, a temporary solution. Campaigns end, everyone goes home, and then what? I'm in that "then what?" phase right now and it definitely activates the crazy in me. (It unleashes the kracken.)

I'm waiting for the next campaign to start, I'm working an entirely stress-free job in the meantime, and it leaves a lot of time and energy. I spend a lot of time ruminating over my own psychosis, amusing myself with the ridiculous shit that keeps things quiet for a few hours at a time, and trying to be productive with that incessant burn. Is it any wonder that the blog is suddenly active again? Or that I have 2 screenplay treatments in the offing? Or that I can't sleep or eat normally? Or that I suddenly have the energy to work out like I haven't had since, oh, 2001? [I've lost about 10 pounds in the last 3 weeks, for real.] I've gone through these phases before but this is probably the most acute it's ever been. Thank GOD that I don't have the appetite for actual destructive behavior because "right hot mess" would not suffice as a descriptor.

So, yesterday, I'm sitting at a movie theater with E-Cav [in the very same building that the "Titanic" shitshow began for me], and what preview do we see? Oh, yes-- it's for the 3-D re-release of "Titanic" to celebrate the centennial of the ship's failed passage. It was like getting a grinning middle finger and a beckoning gesture from the universe; "yes, Dana, you are entirely f'ed in the head, but you're on the right track so keep going". The movie that E-Cav and I saw was "Young Adult", a dark comedy about a woman in a suspended adolescence, returning to her hometown to revisit a high school love and ask some questions about what fulfills us and makes us happy. I'd like to think that I'm not as fucking awful as Charlize Theron's protagonist, but there were some moments in the film that seemed almost too germain.

So, what fulfills you? What makes you happy? Do you know anyone who is actually fulfilled and/or happy? Are you? I'm beginning to think that my hunger thing-- the void that is never filled, the voice that keeps saying "THIS ISN'T ENOUGH!!"-- is probably my greatest blessing while also being the main source of my demons. Someone once told me that I'm a building on fire; I can't ever extinguish the flames completely, but the choices I make dictate how long I can keep the building intact. When I was first presented with this metaphor, I was in a slow tailspin and it was way before I had any sort of grip on my own mental health-- it scared the shit out of me. It doesn't anymore. Part of it is that I like that there's part of my essential composition that is uncontrollable, unstoppable, ungovernable. And the other part is that it's not entirely accurate. I definitely feel my own destructive ability but I'm not the doomed building, ready to crumble at any time. In that picture, I might be the fire itself. I'm lethal at times, and I'm not easily contained, but I throw light on things, and I offer warmth and/or heat. (And I'm usually too hot, literally.)

Should I ever realize my creative ambitions and find that my name is heard outside of my immediate circle, then this blog will be fucking hilarious.