I’m embarking on a new journey: fiction film. I’m about to make my first. It’s a short based on a short story by one of my favorite authors. I’ve known of this piece since I was 18, when I first heard someone speak one of the stories in the author’s book of short stories as a monologue. Rachel, the young actress, lived two doors down from me in the dorm at NYU and was putting herself through school. She was one of the most impressive people I have ever met…

Anyway, a little over a years ago I started storyboarding the piece. I needed something to do that would totally take over my concentration. I was still so sore about breaking with Molly, and had been unemployed for a long time. I needed a project that would consume me. Storyboarding is tough in any case, but it’s even harder when you can’t draw.

I sat on the piece, only half-storyboarded, because I ran out of gas and started working a bit. Then I took more time because I couldn’t find the right people to work on it. Now I have the two key people, the lead actress and the camera operator, and am ready to start again in earnest.

Karin, the actress, is mesmerizing. She’s a stage actress, but has a presence that SCREAMS on film. I’ve filmed her a bunch at local friend’s shows and finally had that “ah-ha!” about casting her. She loves the piece too, and we’ve started the long to brainstorming and workshopping. This film will only work as a collaboration. It’s about an emotional agreement, and so the working team has to be in the same headspace.

The camera op is a still photographer and a friend. He has a wonderful eye, loves beautiful women–which Karin is–and has a deep, passionate soul. What I needed was for the core team, the three of us, to all be nice people in addition to having the necessary talents. Gonzalo brings an eagerness, a calm strength, and the kind of passionate curiosity you’d only find in a Latin…

So, we’re off! Karin is working on another show for the next couple of weeks, which gives me time to go over storyboards with Gonzalo and try to select a short “scene” we can shoot as a test. he and I, also being camera-obesessed-will also test a few different cameras to see what we like for a look.

It’s very exciting. A perfect challenge for my artistry and meditation. I’ll have to listen more than anything else. Can’t wait.

1.

I won’t ever know what you meant. You have to say it like “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh…..” Type out the rhythm on the side of an upright bass. Make the dude who usually plays it hold the thing up for you. I could be moving. I could be moving. I could be moving.

Everything is possible when you realize no one is waiting for you.

2.

“the meat is you who stand aside, and do not bite. the meat within is what’s to take at end of Spring. meat’s all that we have, isn’t that sad–make it raw, rare, or now/later–i’ll eat it either way. keep it here, though. i want to touch it when it’s ready.”

3.

when it comes it’ll be a gleaming surprise. i’ll look up and go: “oh. fuck.” smiling, breathless, in the most excited way.

I’m so very very tired of being taken advantage of. Its really gotten to be so much, enough, that I just don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I think the struggle for equality–as a woman and as a kind person–is just too much and I think to myself that I want to give up and just do some simple day job close to home, make my mortgage every month, watch TV, and wait to grow old and die.

I am so, so, so sick of making less money, everywhere I go, than my male counterparts. It’s so goddamned exhausting to remind one more boss that, yes, what I do is just as valuable and yes, I should get paid the same.

It’s also so so so exhausting treating someone soooooo well day in and day out while they treat me like shit. I’ve made my peace with their behavior, but it’s really wearing on me. I wish I could just be a distant benefactor: put a bunch of money in an account every month and have that be that. Honestly, how selfish can someone really be? How long can a selfish person maintain their selfishness before it comes to bite them in the ass?

And how long can I continue to support that which doesn’t support me?

The question is: what else can I do? In terms of the job, I have a great one in a terrible economic crisis after having been out of work for over one year. Do I have a choice there? There aren’t any jobs better than this one for me. This one is amazing, but how amazing is it really if they discriminate against me?

As for the kindness thing, there is just some care-taking of others that I can’t not do. I can’t walk away from the wounded and helpless. Some people have had it so much harder than me… but to that my friend Alison would say: “And you’ve done enough for a while. Take a break and give to yourself a bit. No more strays.”

I am so tired of being reliable.

I’d like to start a new PAC: Americans for the Preservation of Leisure.

Hurricane Irene has been inching it’s way toward me since early this morning and while, officially, I’m keeping my eye on the weather reports and listening for sounds in my house that I don’t readily understand, unofficially, I’m watching movies and eating popcorn. In other words, the storm has given me license to do nothing but relax. And I kinda like it. But wouldn’t it be better if it didn’t take a storm of hurricane strength for me to “go offgrid” for a day here and there to catch up on sleep and let my mind be at ease? Who gets helped by me being exhausted and stressed all the time? And therefore, I advocate a new standard: the return of Sunday.

I don’t mean to make light of hurricanes. Not at all. I was in New Orleans right after Katrina and filmed a lot of the devastation and spoke to a lot of people. I just think there’s quite a bit our culture needs to re-evaluate, and appreciation of ourselves and of silence is a good start. Humility, lack of hubris is another.

Ali and I were in the Sony studio offices and he was talking to me. Even though I was looking right at him, and hearing the words, I didn’t process one, single thing he said. I was, instead, hoping and praying that I would be able to make the flight from Orlando to Boston. It was the last flight that night and I was sweating, worrying that if I missed it, I’d be driving all that long way. Hopefully, though, if it had come to that, someone would have convinced me to take the first flight out the next morning, as I would not have been in any condition to drive.

It was something in Dad’s voice, in the way he said “Well, that’s up to you” when I asked whether he thought I should come up or not. I was working and it was a critical time for the project I was on, but… my mother was in the hospital.

Tomorrow will be the anniversary of the day after I arrived–my birthday. On that day, Dad, usually never one to forget anything, caught a bit of what my brother was saying to me over the phone (he was wishing me a happy birthday), and while I was still on the phone I heard Dad say under his breath, “Oh for heaven’s sake…” He’d just realized it was my birthday. We were driving, on our way back to the hospital in the early morning.

Saying I miss her still doesn’t even scratch the surface. Of course I do, but as grief evolves it turns into other things and today my grief feels like profound loneliness. There’s no unfilled hole anymore and no wrenching pain, there’s just that feeling of my other half being gone. I am incomplete.

The meditation helps me to stay centered and objective, and even joyful, but it also strips every barrier away so that I can more clearly see how lonely I truly am. I am, indeed. It’s not a romantic relationship that I’m missing, though, it’s someone who knew me, and saw me, and cared about me every day. Someone who thought about me every day. We need that, I think, and I’m coming to realize that it might just not be in the cards for me for a long, long while, if at all. I’m certainly not looking for it because… where would I start, ya know? That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone. So instead of actively looking for someone I’m just living my life, doing my incredible projects. I am so grateful that my day job and my independent artist work are the same thing: making films. Ridiculous. Amazing. The kind of love I need and want will come if it’s supposed to. In the interim, I will enjoy the joys of those I love. Seeing joy in the face of someone I cherish is worth a lot.

Thanks for all the vanilla cakes, Mom. I miss you.

This (below) is EXACTLY how I felt this morning, and I was there on 9/11. Smoke and human remains-filled ash flew into my Brooklyn apt windows. On that day the weather was still warm enough to have the windows open. On that day, if I hadn’t decided to work from home for only the 2nd time in my whole life, I would very likely have been trapped underground on the 2/3 train as it headed near the Trade Center on it’s way uptown. All the trains were fine on that day, but Mom and Dad and all of you wouldn’t have known where I was until hours later, and then only if I had been able to get a cell signal out. On that day, by 9:30am, cell service was barraged and many many many calls didn’t get through until the afternoon.

Sometimes you just have to let go. It’s horrible, dreadful, you love this person… but they’re gone… even when they’re still alive. Sometimes.

I haven’t been able to write. Where do I start? So many emotional commitments now… Who will read this and think the wrong thing and not have the courage to contact me to ask?

Years from now I’ll start writing this backstory, fill in the blanks. But for the moment, please know that I did all I could for you. There’s so much more, but you’re not in a place to take it in…. and so I’ll take it all into the future with me and keep it safe. For when you’re ready.

…

This will be a very “meta” post, as I originally wrote part of the below in an email to my aunt, and then added to it a preface that I then, along with the email, published onto Facebook. It now here, in it’s entirety, with yet a new preface. A Pre-preface?

Anyway, I think the message contained herein should be shared far and wide, and so I’m publishing on the interwebs in the two places where I know it’ll do the most good. Enjoy.

“Hey everyone. This is my first FB note. It’s actually an email I wrote to my aunt who is a dream worker. I am adding it here because my situation is universal, and I thought maybe some of you are feeling the same way. I thought sharing might help some of you to not feel so alone and scared–as I do sometimes–and might help me let go of some of the hope I have that I will be able to keep my sweet, safe life exactly the way it is right now: sweet & safe. I’ve been studying Buddhist meditation and philosophy for over a year and have been resisting the concept of impermanence since the beginning. I guess sharing this note is my way of finally accepting it.

Anyway, I hope you can get something out of this. This is a terrible, terrible time for so many of us, but something I’ve learned recently is that the love in the artist community here in Boston is a-s-t-o-u-n-d-i-n-g. You all have helped me so much I almost don’t know what to say except that I am grateful. You are all so beautiful it actually brings tears to my eyes as I write this, and makes it sooooo clear to me why I’m a filmmaker: I have a classic excuse to stare at all of you FOR HOURS, and have the skills necessary to help share your beauty with the world.

Enjoy, and thank you so much for your grace and vulnerability. We are giants.

With love,

Alexia

“I had an intense dream the other night that I haven’t been able to forget. Thats impressive for two reasons: 1-I haven’t been dreaming much in the last few weeks, and 2-I think I can count on one hand the dreams that have lingered in my mind days after having had them.

The dream is very simple in imagery: my iPhone broke. That’s it. Here are the details…. I was talking with someone about the iPhone being very rugged, and that I’d dropped it a lot and had only incurred minor scratches and cracks. As I was talking I accidentally (truly an accident) dropped my phone. It crashed to the floor and looked fine from my vantage point of just bending my head to look. But then I bent my whole body to pick it up, and when I grasped it I saw that it had been split in two, vertically. This is almost completely impossible for an iPhone. In order to achieve this kind of break, you’d have to put the phone between two vice grips and forcibly snap it. Even then, you’d never get the straight-up-and-down break that I got.

I picked up the phone and rose. The edges of the breaks were jagged, but I could still push the pieces together and have them fit. So I did just that, and what do you know, the phone still worked. I had to hold the pieces together very tightly, but my friend and I thought it was pretty amazing that it still worked even in that scenario. Still within the dream, as I looked down at the blinking, broken phone, I thought to myself, ‘Well, there it is, I have to get the new iPhone 4.’

That was the end of the dream.

There was an ominousness to that last thought, however funny, about needing to get the new phone. This thought has it’s origins in my very scary economic situation… For two years I haven’t been buying anything. At all. Food and gas and the occasional beer. That’s it. I haven’t gone out to eat, haven’t gone to the movies, haven’t bought a book, haven’t gone to see any of my friends’ bands play if there was a cover charge. The only times I’ve left the house, actually, have been when I was able to arrange for several meetings and events to occur on the same day so I wouldn’t waste gas. You get the idea… My current iPhone-a used one given as a gift to me from Michael (my brother)-has been testy and slow for over a year. I have needed a replacement for a long, long time, but haven’t dared spend $300 to get it for fear of not being able to make the following month’s mortgage payment. This is a fear that’s been with me for a while. It’s no longer a paralytic fear, but still there none-the-less.

Anyway, the fateful day has finally come: it’s January 20th and I don’t have enough money to pay for February’s mortgage so I have to open up one of my retirement accounts. I only have two and the one I’ll be opening was started for me in 2003 when I was at Harvard-Smithsonian. They contributed to the fund, I never did, so, in a sense, all the money in there is “free.” Taking any of it out, though, before I’m 65, will incur a tax penalty. So for something like $4000 I have to remove $5000 and lose $1000. Again, as this is essentially “free money” I’m not stressing too much. I AM stressing about what will happen if I don’t get a job before April 1st. Because if that happens, then it will mean that I have to go into my second retirement account, the only one I have left, the one I’ve been adding to and growing since I was 23, and the one that I hoped would be my nest egg. If I have to go into that one, then the small life I have come to know, the tiny life here that I have worked and saved so long to build around me, will slowly evaporate.

In the dream, when I looked down at my phone I thought: ‘If you hold it together very tightly, it’s definitely still a phone, but you can’t ignore that if you let go… it just won’t work any more…’ “

I know that extreme weather events are endemic to our world, so this isn’t going to be an whiny, alarmist “Oh, holy shit, climate change is going to fuck us all in the ass within MY LIFETIME!” post. No. Because what I’ve been reading in the last few months has more to do with unprepared our designed world is than what Mother Nature is bringing down the pike.

New Orleans, Nashville, Brisbane, Brazil, California, California, California. These are places where extreme weather events have happend and caused multimillions in damages, and many deaths. But these events didn’t happen only because weather patterns are becoming more extreme and extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, they happened because our urban infrastructures aren’t designed to collaborate with these events.

That’s right, I wrote “collaborate.”

If you haven’t yet, please read Dan Hill’s long, but very worth the time article about the Brisbane flood: http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2011/01/flood.html#more Dan spells out clearly that the major issues of the flood were ones of human engineering hubris rather than devastating water. Specifically: 1. building a city on a massive flood plain, 2. building houses and other structures in designs not allowing for water to pass by or through.

You see, we have to work with the rest of nature, as all of the rest of nature has always worked with each other. After all, we are as much as part of nature as plants and animals. We are organic beings. In a flood, unless we’re weighed-down, crushed by something, or unconscious, we’ll float. We can also climb trees and run away. And, we’re smart. We can design living structures and communities that deal with any amount of water or wind or mud. We have the tools to save ourselves, but we have to rethink how we live and implement those designs NOW.

Dan Hill said something which really floored me with respect to “collaborating” with the rest of nature. Regarding the Brisbane flood, he said only the humans were suffering “devastating” effects from the water. All other living things, especially the drought-plagued earth, were thriving. Critters and bugs were floating on the water and cooling off and plants were drinking and drinking and drinking. Makes you think. Well, it makes me think, anyway.

We have “evolved” in many ways as a species, yes, but now it’s time to look backward at logical designs and evaluate possible collaborations with them and everything we know now about materials and design engineering. The worse the weather gets, the better it could be for our understanding of ourselves and our world.

The first stop on what has been a very, very, very long journey came yesterday. I finished the stringout/1st roughcut of my second documentary, “The Dirty Truth About Coal.”

This journey began in August 2007 when I read an article that got me hopping mad. You can read all the backstory about the film on the website: www.thedirtytruthaboutcoal.com. I began researching everything I could about coal production and the dangerous and expensive options Big Coal and lobbied legislators were proposing for how to deal with the carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants that were contributing disproportionately to global warming. After a couple of months I realized how little the average American knew about the dangers associated with coal-fired power plants. We all know enough about the horrors of mining coal, but once it’s out of the ground the troubles are harder to see.

In September of that year I met the man who would change my life: Scott Terrell. Scott was from Truckee, CA and worked for the local branch of the major utility there. As a result of his job he heard that the utility was proposing to build a coal-fired power plant right there in Truckee. Scott freaked out. He knew about the dangers and so, putting his job in jeopardy, he told his neighbors, and before long a grassroots campaign sprang up to oppose the building of the coal plant. Here’s the kicker: they were successful.

I met Scott in San Francisco at a green building conference called “West Coast Green.” I was in the media room waiting for my next interview, which wasn’t for another hour. Scott walked in and said he had a story to tell about coal. I said, “have a seat.” And that’s where everything started.

At the end of the interview Scott connected me with Tim Wagner, then the head of the Utah Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Clean Energy Campaign. He was living in Salt Lake City and traveling all over the state educating small communities about the dangers of coal-fired power plants, and helping them to organize protests. We talked over email for a few months and then I moved back to the East coast in June 2008. On my way driving cross-country, I stopped in Salt Lake and interviewed Tim and a bunch of local farmer activists. And got some amazing and horrific b roll of HUGE coal-fired power plants in otherwise gorgeous and unspoiled rugged terrain of rural Utah. Some of that footage is in the current roughcut. On that trip I also stopped in Chicago and interviewed a young activist, Dorian Breuer of Chicago’s P.E.R.R.O. activist group, who would tell me about Dr. Jonathan Levy, a public health scientist at Harvard who had written a definitive report on the effects on public health of emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Up until that interview with Dorian, I had no idea that the pollution from the coal stacks was so harmful.

At a media conference in Boston in February the following year, I met the VP of programming for PBS’ wonderful series, “POV.” I pitched her the film, which at that point was very broad but did include what I had discovered from reading Dr. Levy’s report. I told the VP that it was likely that anyone under the age of 50 in the United States hadn’t take a clean breath of air in their lives. Immediately, I saw her eyes sparkle. “This is definitely something we would be interested in,” she said, but also advised me to review the coal-related films POV had already aired and see if I could come up with something new.

Terrified, but up for the challenge given her interest, I did more research on the health effects of pollution… and the rest, they say, is history.

I’ve been editing the film for just over one year. In October, 2009 I went back to Chicago and captured three of the interviews that would become crucial aspects to the current film: Brian Urbaszewski (Respiratory Health Association of Metro Chicago); Dr. Susan Buchanan (MD with specialty in enviro health); and Kim Wasserman, coordinator of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization–a neighborhood youth org. that educates the low-income community of Little Village about air and other kinds of pollution in their neighborhood. Little Village sits 100 feet (across the street) from the Fisk Generating Station (coal plant). I have footage taken from a public park across from Fisk where kids play on a jungle gym in the shadow of the stack.

Even after all these interviews and then finding the legal activist treasure-trove of Conservation Law Foundation here in Boston, I still didn’t really think that I would actually figure out how to make a film that would have a real impact on society. After all, I thought, I’m not Spike Lee, this isn’t “When The Levees Broke.”

And yet, it is.

Somehow, after a year of editing and more interviews, and researching, and white-boarding and finally deciding to settle on a trajectory, I have finished the first roughcut… and it’s fucking GREAT.

This month I’ll add some placeholder b roll to cover all the talking heads, and then will send that out for the first round of feedback. I’ll also submit the film to festivals and grants. This is going to be quite a few months…

In the midst of all this there have been other changes and today brings about punctuation points to them too. Sometimes we have to let things go. It’s not giving up, persay, it’s saying to yourself, “This is no longer something that is helping me to see clearly,” and so if you have the courage you stand up and face your fear about leaving this thing by the side of the road. I’ve done that in a few small ways this past week and already feel lighter. I reorganized my bookshelves, picked stuff up off the floor, ate the leftovers, and sat down for ten hours and cranked out a film. As a result of letting some things go, I am seeing more clearly.

It’s important to remember that losses aren’t deaths. They’re just losses. We should take from what was what helps us and leave the rest. Not even deaths are deaths. The idea that death means the end of someone is silly. People live forever in our hearts and memories, and, if we choose, in actions we perform to honor them and the gifts they gave us. Today I choose to honor those I’ve lost by staying in the present moment and really seeing everything I see.

I also want to thank all of you who read this for your incredible support over these last years. It has made ALL the difference.

Happy Solstice!

Love,

Alexia