Abby and I took the bus from the bottom of Summit on CR road. i waited for her to get to the bus stop with my mom in the car and my mom told me stories about her college experience. lately i feel really stressed when i dont focus on college- backwards i know...
if i let my mind wander to... say... the terrifying concept of my second day interning at Big Beach Productions in Noho where they lay on me such immpossibly tasks as answering the phone and reading screenplays...
but it really is stressful- my first day, last friday (i go in on fridays) i read the script of "Jack Goes Boating" its Phillip Seymore Hoffman's directorial debut. it was the saddest story- i mean really. i almost cried and also, being in the middle of my first terrifying 10 to 6 day in the american life of office work, i was feeling a bit awake to the pointlessness of life. i mean, i could go for four years to film school and end up behind a desk doing everyday what i am doing this summer every friday; having opinions on other people's work and asnwering and connecting other people's phone calls.
and the screenplay was about this man, jack's, sad life. In the white loft office, listening to clicking of the secretary infront of me and the intern behind me, listening to Jack and his friends in my head, imagining jack as P S hoffman who i have to say makes me feel like im going to cry the minute he walks on to the screen- dont get me wrong i love love love him as an actor but- hes just to fucking talented. and when your that talented and playing charecters that are that pathetic its painful to the audience and... anyway last friday i read the screenplay and listened to the clicking and started noticing the way i was breathing
and hearing the moisture in my lungs
and feeling my heart working
and seeing bright white pulsing
and it wasnt pleasent.
I tried to explain to Abby as we waited for the bus.
"i feel like everything is going to go wrong."
"wow thats not like you."
"i know!- wait your not being sarcastic right?"
"no."
"yeah! i know. like i felt like you wernt gonna show up. and now i feel like were not going to make the bus."
"katie we're sitting right here."
"i know. and-" suddenly scared i stand and dig in the pocket of my tight jeans- i have to stand to dig in the pockets. i find the ten dollars that i put in my pocket for the bus. "i have to like hold this in my hand." i tell her "othewise it will go wrong and i wont have it."
abby understands.
Abby is going to college in salt lake city. they have a good Ballet program there. on the bus i ask her leading questions
"were you like so much better than everyone at the audidtion?"
im trying to figure out if the program is really prestigious. i think it is. i think abby is a really extraordinary ballet dancer but i want her to say she is. it will even out the way i keep saying my program is so prestigious. and i cant stop saying how prestigious my program is. because if i let the feeling of huge pride leave my chest for one minute i start worrying about Phillip Seymore hoffman and using the copy machine correctly and answering the phone.
We meet Brogan in time square where the square is trying to be more of a square and there are large peices of it coned off from traffic and replaced with tourists reclining in beach chairs under the buildings on the cement. the white painted traffic lane indicators and arrows ignorered under the chairs.
a helpful tour guide company employee gives us a subway map when we stand for too long on one corner discussing directions. i want to tell her that we arnt tourists and that we only live a short bus ride from the city and that i have an internship in the city at the production company that made Little Miss Sunshine. but the map ends up being really helpful because we are tourists and we dont know where we're going and we have been standing on one corner for too long.
we took the subway to Brooklyn and walked in the same square of slightly slanted brooklyn grid for about an hour looking for a street which Brogan might recognize as one near the thrift store where we were trying to get to.
a kid outside a coffee place called something to do with muffins (where we stopped to eat sandwhiches (lemon chicken with pesto and mozerella omgosh heaven, for me, PB and J for abby) gave us directiosn to fifth ave which we apparently couldnt comprehend because we ended up back around the same bit of grid again, across from the same "Muffin" place.
"that kid can see us." i mused.
we finally found our way by asking the fruit vendors on the corners of every street along Atlantic Ave if we were still going the right way.
"fifth avenure?" Abby asked one
he pointed in the direction we were walking. we walked in it until we reached the next vendor and asked him. it was like following arrows on the floor of a museum that lead you along to the next print to the next print finally to where you want to go, to the animal who matches the print. i remember following prints to find the huge whale at the Museum of Natural History... but its a whale... that cant be right...
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