Allison Mack's Official Site

Full Stop

8:00am. I am forty five minutes late already! I still need to shower — do I have any clean underwear? Oh no! I didn’t shave my legs, so no skirt today. Wait?! Is it Friday? It’s Friday and I haven’t written my blog entry. So I need to wash my underwear, write my blog entry, shave my legs before I leave in . . . 10 minutes . . . hmm . . . Okay, I can do this — oh shoot my mom is calling, that’s right I told her I would have time to talk at 8:00 this morning, should I answer the phone? Yes. She is your mother and you love her, answer the phone . . . but then I won’t have time to shave my legs. Okay, went to voice mail . . . I’ll call her back in the cab–I’ll take a cab! If I take a cab instead of the train that will give me an extra thirty minutes and I can make phone calls and think about the blog post on the way into the city. Perfect . . . okay — Shit, look how fat my legs are, seriously? Come on Allison, did you need that extra glass of wine? Underwear — you need to clean some underwear — okay — no. I’ll just buy some while I am out. I am wearing pants anyway. Now just focus on getting out the door — oh crap! I forgot to call my agent back. Another phone call for the cab. Dammit, she’ll think I am the biggest flake ever. OK, agent first, then Mom, then underwear . . .  what am I forgetting?

STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stop. Just stop. See the beauty in the intensity of being here now. Stop.

The searching and the seeking just avoids living. Living is here, now. Understand and appreciate all I am,  all I have been given  . . . so stop. Just stop.

If I just sit here . . . now . . . . uncensored thoughts and feelings . . . unencumbered intensity oozing out of every pore. Maple syrup dripping over a stack of pancakes. Too much richness to soak it all in.

I am blessed with such “excess.” I begin to salivate and within minutes my mouth is filled with some delicious nourishment. I start to feel a chill and before my teeth chatter I am wrapped in a cashmere blanket. I never want for comfort. I am abundant in this. It is my soul that aches. My insides that feel pain. Not the tangible blood and guts, but the ‘me’ beyond anything tactile or movable. The me that is impenetrable and infinite. The self. The true self.

This exists everywhere. In every moment of a simple afternoon. I walk up to the apex of my Brooklyn Bridge, between the two archways where you can see straight up the east side of the city and out past Ellis Island. I weave in and out of the tourists sporting different accents taking pictures of my favourite sunset, the one that hides right behind the Statue of Liberty.

And I see it on the way back. I purchase a coffee from the sweet woman with a ring through her nose and I ask her how she is doing. I look behind the eyes I stare into; I pay attention. I see there is something more. Something beyond my senses.

“A little sad today,” she says.

“Yeah? Me too.” I reply.

“I think I just need a good cry,” she concludes.

An honest statement in a robotic world. I pay attention.

If I stop with the chattering distractions of “stuff,” cease the to-do list, the have to’s, relationships and deadlines . . . all things of great importance . . . I get this moment, this person, this honesty, this chance to connect with myself and her. Awkward and human. The human in the human. The perfectly flawed self.

I could have these moments with my mother, my agent, my to-do list, my underwear even. All of this is important, but why each is important is where I get confused. I am not enslaved to my life like I tell myself I am. I forget that these are opportunities, chances for me to experience myself.

And when I fall in love with the depth of myself, maybe I won’t be a scratch looking for an itch. All the illogical blame and hatred could fall away and I might see that we are all striving to be present for the most curious and chaotic experiences possible.

Nerve endings firing, heart breaking, soul searching self. The infinite possibility of possibilities. Accept it. And then you can fully accept all.

My new favourite video…

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement

J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association. (via http://harvardmagazine.com)

A podcast. Check it out!

My dear friend shared this podcast with me. I found it so honest and inspiring. I want to do things like this, have an impact like this. I want to know I created this potential and possibility in the world.
I hope you enjoy this the way I do.

Anne Frank says something awesome!

“How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world! How lovely that everyone, great and small, can make their contribution toward introducing justice straightaway… And you can always, always give something, even if it is only kindness!”
-Anne Frank

The Cynical Romantic

I spent the last week rehearsing “This Old Love” by Lior to sing at a wedding for two of my closest friends. This morning I got the news that two more of my nearest and dearest are getting married. Last summer, I went to four weddings and it looks as though next year will be filled with a similar schedule. “I do. I do.” Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

People warned me I would be flooded with weddings when I entered my late 20s, but I had no idea it would be like this. Marriage, commitment and relationships are on the brain and I feel jaded. I feel skeptical. Critical. Righteous.

Every man I have met over the last three years I have described as “I really like him, but….”. I feel like a Seinfeld episode, searching for flaws in every experience to justify my decision to run in the other direction. Telling myself and every person who brings up the topic of romance that “I am much too busy and focused to take on a relationship right now.” I strive to make myself sound as important and independent as possible, convincing you while convincing me that there is nothing but ambition and vision at the root of my choice to remain single.

But there I am, sitting on the floor of my friends’ living room, blubbering away while they hold hands and exchange vows. The tears completely expose the truth: my hard approach to love is a total act. I can’t hide the fact that I love love.

And in this moment, surrounded by a community of friends and family who have gathered to celebrate these two people and their love, I am swept away by my honest opinion. The strength of their love hits me like a wave and drags me off my beach of cynicism and leaves me without a bathing suit coughing up saltwater. I have been schooled. Love can be like that.

Their love is splattered in technicolor on every corner of the room. Every sight, sound, and smell is an effect of how they are together. Lilies, gerber daisies, birds of paradise and eucalyptus branches fill the room with their home countries, South Africa and Australia. Chocolates in the shape of Buddha’s and gluten-free dishes cover every single table and Roberta Flack’s voice carries their feet down the stairs as they seemingly float, barefooted, to the front of the room. She is an elegant, natural woman with a sweetness so organic she can’t help but radiate. He is a graceful and soulful leader so full of depth and wisdom just his presence reminds me of what I aspire to be. Together they act as a team of elevation, love, promise, and strength.

I sit in the front row listening to my friends exchange their vows and I start to think about what it means that they are doing this. My friends are making life-long commitments to something that has no guarantees. There is no product they can walk away with, nothing to pick up to prove its existence. Love. A completely intangible, ephemeral experience. An experience based in trust and truly just “taking someone’s word for it.”

I have had two major loves in my life, and both I assumed I would marry at one point or another. I went so far as to tattoo one’s name on my chest, and start a family of animals with the other. I was so caught up in the romance of this “feeling” that I gave myself a permanent brand and two new dependants.

When my last relationship ended so did much of my belief in eternal love. I had a very naive perspective. I believed love should be easy. I believed commitment should never feel like a challenge and love should always feel good. I felt entitled to this fantasy and got angry at myself and my partner for being so complicated. Couldn’t he just match the picture in my head? What was so difficult about being my boyfriend marionette?

But I have given up the belief that love is like a water slide.

Love and commitment are no longer simple concepts I copy from a Disney movie. I can’t fool myself into believing the John Hughes story line where all the girl’s hopes and dreams come true when she opens the door to a new car and her latest crush. I am learning to know better.

I am beginning to understand the reality of what it takes to uphold that commitment. To have the courage to unlock your box of fears and let Pandora have her way. Abandon your ego, and invite the muddy, unclear, soft mushy parts of your soul just hang out there. It is so messy, unpredictable. It feels so unsafe, so unknown, yet so, so passionately alive.

I hear my name called and I am snapped back to the wedding. Oh yeah, my friends are getting married. I walk to the front of the room with my band mates, it is time to sing our song. And with a snot-filled Kleenex clutched in front of me, mascara running down my cheeks and eyes leaking like the kitchen faucet in my first apartment. I sing a song of appreciation to my friends. My friends who are committing to early morning kisses with unmasked kitten breath, heart breaking misunderstandings, unclear or unmet expectations, and vowing to let their guts hang out so they can unabashedly and honestly swan dive head first into this exposing, cumbersome, tender, gorgeous, vertiginous life long dance. What an honor.

Gift Of Presence

So, it’s Christmas and I am walking through NYC with a bright pink nose, frozen fingertips (because I can never seem to find my elbow length vintage gloves), and four layers of cashmere and cotton under my overcoat. Every restaurant plays their favorite selection of holiday tunes, the lemonade and iced tea I drank all summer has been replaced by hot cocoa and cider. Brightly, colored lights adorn the street lamps and Little Italy is covered with Buon Natale garlands. Rockefeller Center is all aglow and the windows at Barney’s are outrageously filled with sparkles, sculptures and creativity. Every street corner holds a miniature forest of pine and fur trees imported from Vermont just waiting to be chosen, taken home, and dressed to the nines. Christmas in New York. There’s nothing like it.

Scouring the streets, shopping for presents, I try to decide the best things to give my friends and family. I am looking at a random stuffed elf in a box sitting on a counter filled with other random stuffed elves. There is a sign that claims this “Shelf Elf” is the “The New Holiday Tradition”. This elf makes me sad. It is bastardizing the word tradition. You can’t just decide to market something as “tradition;” that is not what tradition is. Tradition comes with time and commitment, it is a titled earned with loved ones, not a cheap holiday trinket and not something named by a PR firm which names anything special if they think it will sell. Anyone remember the pet rock?

I have been through every different, bizarre phase of gift giving possible. My relationship with wrapping paper and bows has gone from totally materialistic, like the mobs in the city running from store to store manically trying to gather enough stuff to feel as though they have served their holiday obligations, to non-existent, essentially boycotting the idea of giving and spending the holidays on my soapbox protesting over consumption. And on the reverse I have also found gift giving incredibly meaningful, spending hours looking to acquire the most awesome and impactful present I can find, the one that sums up all that the recipient means to me. Mixed CDs that outline my exact feelings for a friend, homemade scrapbooks illustrating memories and poems, letters, and cards with content that is poured from my heart.

A gift can be a perfect opportunity to encapsulate all I feel about somebody I love. A whirlwind of memories cascade through me until I come up with the perfect symbol of all the experiences I have shared. It is “me” imbued on an object and then shared. The closest thing to my love for a person in tangible form. Crazy.

Two days ago the temperature here dropped to the degree that demands the BIG scarves and jackets. I keep these things tucked away in a separate box because they take up too much room in my drawers. I get on all fours and peek under my bed. There amongst the dust bunnies and single socks is my winter clothes box. I open the lid and reveal…the most beautiful and perfect scarf I have ever seen in my entire life.

Every year it is as though I unwrap this present from my dearest friend for the first time. It is the best scarf that has ever existed. To start, it is HUGE! Somewhere between a blanket and a shawl, this hand-knit scarf covers every part of my neck and shoulders. It consists of about twelve colors, each one hand selected and individually knotted to the color that came before it. Several holes patched throughout the design represent scars that have come as a result of my somewhat mindless way of walking through the world and the middle of the scarf is soaked with the smell of gardenia and jasmine oils; I have become a part of the scarf now. My friend and I have blended our memories, our smells, our styles and our lives, all entwined in this scarf. It has become a metaphor of our friendship and the beautiful blend of souls adventuring through separate lives together.

Even before I was given the gift, it had been covered with the essence and personality of the woman who created it. Every stitch had been wrapped through her fingers as she knitted at the back of theatres, inside box offices, and on her couch in her beautifully tiny apartment on the prettiest street on the North East coast. She knows me better than any one. You can tell by the yarn she chose. She knew me well enough to know I could only really use something that is multi colored. This comes from years of changing my mind. You can tell by the size. She knows how hard I try to come off tough and independent and how most of the time I am dying for a hug, so she made one, a hug for me to wear all the time. She is my best friend for life and my first friend from childhood. I call her “concrete”. She grounds me in all that is true and real and reminds me of who I am and what is most important to me. This scarf is a representation of all that.

This scarf redefined gift giving for me for the rest of my life.

So I race through my city, across my bridge and into the madness of frenetic shopping and holiday jingles. I struggle to keep my focus on the goal in collecting these presents. But now, armed with five feet of wool wrapped around my neck I can keep my head on straight. I can remember the true purpose of holidays such as this. And I can keep myself focused on finding the most perfect symbol of affection for those I love most. The warmth of friendship draped over my shoulders, protecting my neck from the bitter cold and holding me true to what is most important.

Wishing you peace, good will and your own giant, multi colored, scarf hug of love this holiday season.

7 Stages.

From Tiger Beatdown (via bibliofeminista)

But we’ve been doing it for a while now, the feminism thing, and the theories are already out there and readily accessible. They even feel unquestionable, some of the time: Authoritative statements about our lives, like those uttered by Freud or the medical profession. To say that they just don’t feel right, that they don’t describe you or who you are or how your life has gone thus far, feels wrong and heretical; it might get you accused of false consciousness or bad feminism or internalizing the oppressor. Instead of starting where we are and trying to theorize it, all too often, we take the theories and try to cram our lives into them, and ignore or cut off the parts that don’t fit. What we end up with is a vision of ourselves that often feels purer and more Feminist-Approved than who we really are; it feels nice and strong and Good and, most crucially, safe. However, we’ve also barred off all of those messy, complicated, unlikable parts of ourselves, and forbidden ourselves to examine or learn from them. Which is a bad move, given that the messy and complicated and unlikable and as-yet-untheorized, the unspoken and the unspeakable, is where we’re supposed to start….inspire that sort of courage: To point you to the parts of your life or yourself that you can’t quite look at directly, or that you haven’t quite figured out, and to tell you that they’re where you need to go next. They’re where you’re going to learn the most. And if there’s nothing in your ideology to explain them, well, then: Make some new ideology.

Warrior Heart and Buddha Soul

I recently had two friends over for breakfast. Nothing fancy, just your normal eggs, toast and tomato with a simple fruit salad, beautiful chai tea, and Edith Piaf playing on the computer. One of my guests looked up and said, “It’s always such a cultural experience being with you Allison.” the other quickly followed with “Yeah, it’s like going to Camp Allison….like an explosion of life.” I loved this! I love that this is how my friends perceive me from the outside looking in. It almost makes up for the fact that from the inside looking out, I feel a little crazy, like the Tasmanian devil spinning in circles around myself in an attempt to do all that I can. Constantly running on this fear that I might miss an opportunity, or an experience, something life changing and astounding might happen while I am not looking.

I am insatiable. Greedy, in a way. I live with voracity and intensity . . . voracitensity. If I were a color it would be florescent. I am working on subtlety, but it is not yet my strong suit. I live in big, bold, brush strokes.

In the days that followed that brunch, I started to think about where this desire comes from. I mean, why am I so hyper aware of the fact that every moment counts for something?

Then I remembered my mom.

When I was six years old my mom was diagnosed with cancer. For a year she went through hell. Chemo chemicals and radiation coursed through her veins as she fought for survival with every fiber of her being. The chemicals killed the cancer, along with most of her physical strength. In the first months there was a general air of fear and unease. No one took the time to explain to my brother and I what was going on. One day my mom was gone and then she didn’t come home again for a week. No one said anything about chemo, or what it would do to her. I can’t recall what was said.  I just remember she was gone.

More treatments. Months passed. And one memory I have forever burned in my brain.

It was the middle of the afternoon, I can’t remember why, but I found myself alone in the house. I wanted my mom. I wanted to crawl into her bed and feel her warm back on my cold nose. I wanted to feel better. My parents’ room was always filled with light. Light and fresh air. My mom and dad could not stand stale air, so no matter how chilly it was outside we had our windows open. No heavy drapes in our house just natural light pouring through a delicate sheet of tightly woven lace dancing in and out of the window frames.

I had woken up in a sweat due to a nasty dream I was having. The cool air on my moist pajamas was giving me chills. I pulled my damp body out of my twin bed and raced down the hall to her. Flinging her door open, I assumed my mom’s room would be as it always was, drenched with light and fresh air; all I wanted was a breath of fresh air. But what I found was the opposite: drapes replaced the curtains and the windows were closed, locked. I could barely see the bed, but was able to make out a lump I assumed was her body. The lime green plastic mixing bowl my family reserved for throw up was next to her bed and as I walked closer I could hear her wheezing. Her breathing was brutal, it sounded almost impossible. The room smelled like old vitamins and throw up. I turned around, walked outside, and shut the door.

The war she was fighting was tortuous. This had become painfully clear. I still didn’t understand what this “cancer” thing was, or why my poor mom was the one having to battle through it, but I knew there was nothing my little hands could do to take away the pain she felt. All I could do was watch and wait.

In the days that followed I saw her turn to an ash gray color and lose all the weight that used to pad her body. They were killing her. It was killing her. Something was killing her.

But then, she got better. With the same quiet potency the cancer had used in its approach, my feisty, tender, sweet mom began to crawl her way back to us.

Amazing. They could rob her of her hair, her curves, and the rose in her cheeks. They could cripple the body that had carried two children, played tennis in the sunshine, and even, for a time, quiet her laughter.  But her love for life was beyond anything they could touch. It was invincible. My mother became a warrior for love. She took the challenge head on and came out with a powerful heart and mind. Her tenacity earned her a place in the world that would not be taken away. She survived.

Her unwavering determination became my example. I didn’t know what to do or where to go, but she remained strong. She continued to wear her Este Lauder “Pleasures” perfume and her soft sweaters. She kept life as normal as possible while her white blood cells fought to outrun the poison flushing through her veins.

It isn’t until you see the end of something that you understand its true essence. The value of all things becomes apparent when it seems as though it will run out. I had the painful privilege of witnessing my mom dangle her toes over the edge of her life, and luckily she survived. So many don’t, so many strong, brave, powerful people don’t get the chance to take this lesson into the next chapter of life, which makes it all the more important that I do. I’m inspired by those who fight and win, and live with deep gratitude and respect for those who fight and lose. We can take nothing for granted.

My mom set the example for passion and determination. Through her battle with cancer, she taught me what it is to love life. From extreme violence came ultimate beauty. She still reads a quote from Anne Frank that I keep in my pocket for days when I feel like the best decision would be to hide away.

“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”

I took her advice to heart and made a vow to fill my life with all I could. At six, I was determined and I still am. I always hit the ground running.

To a fault, I’ll admit. I saturate myself in what I love and I would rather have too much motivation than none at all. I struggle to ground myself in one place for more than a few days and sometimes I plan so many activities that I am racing just to get to the next appointment rather than enjoying the reason they were scheduled in the first place.

There is a balance to strike, my four-year-old nephew is teaching me that. Last summer he came for a visit and I got to have him to myself for one day.  I made a plan. I packed our day full of outings and ideas. But as quickly as I made the plans, my nephew changed them. His spontaneity and fascination with the world around brought my plans to a screeching halt. We ended up staying in a one block radius around my apartment. No big outings, just a simple afternoon in Brooklyn.

As we headed home, skipping the cracks in the sidewalk and talking about Luke Skywalker, my nephew looked up at me and proclaimed, “This is the best part of my day ever.” The part with no agenda, no activities, just walking and talking. Amazing.

I needed a child’s perspective to remind me of the immature confusion that led me here to begin with. Valuing existence doesn’t mean over booking. It doesn’t mean more stuff, more content.  It just means more me, more attention to the moments making up my life.

Thanks to my Ma. Thanks to my nephew. To the warrior heart and the Buddha soul.  My greatest teachers.

xo

a

This is what I’m talking about…