Spiri-Creativity : Screw the Landlords, Let's Build a Colony

Ah, home.  I've spent the last fourty five minutes circling the greater area of the Upper West Side, attempting to find a spot to settle down for a bit of delightful writing.  After trotting up and down Broadway for twenty blocks, I finally rounded back and took up temporary residence in the Starbucks on Columbus & 73rd.  A lovely Starbucks, I might add.  Small, but quiet, an conducive to my peculiar cat-like writing mood this evening.

The past few days have been extremely unsettling, and I'm not entirely sure why.  I've habitually been a night-owl my entire life, but five a.m., six a.m., seven a.m. without sleep?  Bizarre.  I think it has something to do with the restlessness [finances, economy] and frustration [lack of auditions, silent agent] that October has seemed to bring.  For a minute there, in mid-September, things looked like they were picking up!  Auditions galore!  And suddenly, three weeks of absolutely nothing.  There isn't anything in the world that makes my spirit sink then non-productivity in the industry I love.

Funny, the Upper West Side.  I can't help but break my train of thought for a moment here to reminisce about the "once-I's" of when I lived on 85th Street.  Once I, once I... once I met a lovely individual who asked me to coffee on that corner, or once I had a terrible date with the lovely individual who asked me to coffee on that corner after I found out he had three children and a wife.  Or, once I broke into that apartment when I was a power broker for Citi Habitats.  Once I kissed a man in winter for three hours in that part of the park.  Once I danced with that lamppost.  Once I, once I, once I.

Fall and winter usually breed excitement in my daring little soul.  I'm trying not to get down, allowing the trivialities of money and other ridiculousness to cause perpetual [and literal] unrest and stomp out my attempts at creativity.  I have so many goals I want to tackle:  I want to finish my second screenplay this month.  I want to shoot a short.  I want to hire a PI to follow my favorite William Morris agent.  You know, the usual. 

While I know we have to make rent, I think artists [because I know I am] are especially susceptible to fluctuations in the economy.  It unsettles us, spiri-creative-ly.  Constantly worrying about the landlords certainly can't help one sit down and love-languidly write a novel, toying with each sentence and continuing her once sordid relationship with a certain Thesaurus she once knew.  Sigh. 

Life, such is life.  That said, who wants to build a colony?

A few fall-evening thoughts, Ashley Avis