J's Thanksgiving Countdown

Playing catch-up:

November 8th--I am grateful for good memories and friendship. Yesterday, November 7th was the birthday of a good friend of mine from high school named Demetrio. His mom was my drama teacher and we became friends and shared all of our favorite Bond trivia. My first experience of NYC was with Ms. Vialpondo and her son Demet--and it was the thrill of my 1998. I was sure I had arrived, in that black stretch limo with the black-lit interior and a mini-bar, which I couldn't drink from, but how chic I thought it was. Now that my reality is in Manhattan, Broadway is a street I cross everyday and not a distant dream, my perspective has matured and I don't necessarily long for fame--but success I still hope for. I am, however, still grateful for those dreams of youthful nostalgia and good friends to share them with.

November 9th--I am grateful for the realization of imperfection within the supposed ideal. We watch short films and feature films and sometimes we get to meet the people who made them. Sometimes these people are quite famous, and to a distant public which oft-times includes myself there is a pedastal upon which these people and their products are placed. I realize more and more, though, that they are still figuring out processes and facing challenges just like I am, and most of the journey involved in making films and art includes giving up those things we had envisioned because perhaps they didn't work in reality, and accepting the process and discovering the ways in which shortcomings and imperfections can be explored and molded into a product that finds a way of working and is appreciable by the process distinctive to the artist at work, and not worshipped as a product of perfection that simply came about because the person who made it is also somehow a superbeing. Our lives are much the same--we have expectations and ideals, and sometimes our circumstances or present states don't quite allow for those things we had hoped--but we can find in that process ways of discovering a more complete life that includes those things that aren't quite perfect, but they make us real, and therefore our lives are more memorable and remarkable, vs. a stiff reproduction of an unrealistic yet flawless ideal.

November 10th--I am grateful for time when I think I have none. I was going to act in a film this weekend that got post-poned, and now there is time for my own projects and family that was quite unexpected. Yes, post-poned means that time will be taken up later, but what I have now is what I can experience and make the most of.