I'm starting this post from the proud hippie/homeless people populated coffee shop of Grand Junction, Colorado. The competent barista spilled my decaf coffee all over the tile floor before she managed to pour me a proper cup. After taking a seat in one of the only slightly broken chairs, the good woman proceeded about her business cleaning up, concentrating most fiercely on the area directly underneath where I was sitting, jabbing her offensive broom at my feet and passive-aggressively wiping the table around my cup. I stubbornly pretended not to notice, but then relocated outside after a few more jabs of her broom wore my mule-like nature down. There is a motley group of young men playing the mind-bogglingly boring game of hackey-sack to my left, but I'm finding the activity fairly stimulating, as an errant ball seems to end up in my lap every five minutes or so. They are very apologetic as they approach me to retrieve their balls. I smile politely and say, "Don't worry about it, I'm not bothered," and then continue on to write this rather snobbish paragraph regarding them. The joys of being a writer.
Needless to say, I do not enjoy this coffee shop. I am here because it is Sunday and my favorite coffee shop closes its doors at the shocking hour of 14:30 on the Lord's day. Jesus doesn't believe in afternoon coffee, apparently.
I have been back in the states for one month as of today. During this month I have:
- coerced six sane looking people into taking yoga classes from me. These people are not members of my immediate family and are returning, week after week. While I don't fully understand why they do this, the opportunity to teach is making me exquisitely happy. I have only injured one of them.
- been offered a job as a substitute teacher at a hot yoga studio in town. I taught a 75 minute class last week and received three raving reviews.
- volunteered at Mountainfilm for the third year in a row and was offered a position at Telluride Film Festival. Telluride Film Festival is where The Artist premiered. August 30th can't come quickly enough. My duties will most likely consist of answering phones and organizing events, and my free time will consist of drinking phenomenally good coffee, star-spotting, and watching films for free that most people pay a minimum of 390 dollars to see. Telluride Film Festival
- had one reading of my play about children and their nightmares and received very positive feedback.
- started writing a screenplay with Alex about a condition called prosopagnosia.
- got a part-time job working as a gardener with a delightful elderly woman named Judy. Judy has an exuberant yard completely blanketed with various local and exotic flowers. I spend my days with Judy planting flowers, pulling up elm, spreading horse manure, designing watering systems, and engaging in pleasant conversation in one of the most gorgeous, relaxing environments I could possibly have the pleasure to work in.
- started training for a 5K. I don't know if I'll ever actually run a race (I'm too competitive for my own good -- I used to get migraine headaches from playing cards with my grandparents. I can't imagine what a 5K would do to me), but I enjoy the training process.
- Wrote absolutely nothing. This was primarily due to the:
Perils of Paris...
I had ten days to while away in one of the world's most breathtaking cities. I had museums to visit, cheese to taste, wine to quaff, parks to nap in, tours to take, metros to navigate, couchsurfers to find, sausages to gnaw at, espresso to sip, and French to butcher (the language, not the people). This left very little time for writing, as you may or may not have noticed. I scribbled the occasional note in one of my yoga notebooks, making sure a particular jewel of an experience or snippet of conversation didn't slip into my subconscious memory without writing it here first. I wrote down the names of the famous painters I recognized (I'm terribly uncultured, thank the good lord, so the potentially limitless list was only about a page and a half long), and planned to write a blurb about each artist followed by a picture of the painting I was most profoundly affected by. I have gone to bed every night for the last month with Degas, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Picasso, Renoir, Goya, Dali, Matisse, Cezanne, Sisley, Van Gogh, Seurat, and Signac all standing about my room with grave looks of bitter disappointment painted across their genius faces. "Why have you not written about the glorious things you've seen in Paris, Aimee?"
"It's just too much! I'm too overwhelmed! I don't know where to start! AAAAHHHH!"
And my tormenting artists disappear in a puff of brain smoke, my feeling of shame lingers in the air a few more seconds, and then I fall into restless sleep, punctuated by impressionistic lilies with abnormally long stems prancing through the desert.
I will write a decent post about Paris one of these days, but I'm going to skip over it for now. I need to start writing again, and thinking about the massive blog Paris demands makes my brain fog over and my fingers feel prematurely arthritic.
As my gallivanting is momentarily confined to the dreary town of Grand Junction, I will write about my playwriting efforts, my running training, my yoga teaching, my failed attempts to make the perfect pork belly crackle, my gardening experiences, and my plans to move to Portland by mid-September. I anticipate that this blog won't be nearly as entertaining or insightful, but it will serve as a necessary outlet for my itchy fingers.
