The Miracle of Life

I wanted to write about the 12th anniversary of the Columbine school shootings, as I did last year, but my mind was empty all day. Instead, I looked through one of my albums on facebook, "practicing the miraculous in everyday life," and found inspiration there. I started this album two years ago, as an attempt to focus my attention on the beautiful parts of my life. I decided not to care whether my pictures came out cheesy, artsy-fartsy, or self-indulgent. I was just going to take pictures of things that made me smile and share them.

It worked. I became increasingly more aware of what inspired and moved me. My surroundings played a bigger part in my appreciation of life and beauty. There was room in the album for nature, city life, silly faces, loved ones, funny moments, melancholy, nostalgia, and, of course, love.

It is my collection of miracles, and it has restored my faith many times.

It is through some of these pictures, then, that I will honor life today.

Practicing the miraculous in everyday life. 2009-2011

The steps to the fountain in Washington Square Park, where I go when I need inspiration, or just a little love from the city.


Sunset on the 4th of July, view from Brooklyn. Kerri and I ran up that crazy hill in Dumbo on that night, trying to get to this sunset, and then to the fireworks. Worth it.

Footprint on the sand in Hermosa Beach, CA. I love wet sand, and my favorite is when it has that moonlike consistency, where your footprints kind of rise up for a few seconds. It delights me.


I found this one day in Central Park two summers ago, when I really needed to restore my faith in love and romance. It also reminds me of Notting Hill, which happens to be one of my favorite movies. (I know. Whatever. Leave me alone.)


I have a passion for face masks, especially bright blue ones (the smurfier the better, I say, for smurfs have such good skin!), and this picture became an instant classic.

Gratitude and God

I tend to bargain with God.

I'm not really a big God person but, sometimes, I do talk to someone- and not just an energy or vibration, but someone very specific to me, whose presence I can feel clearly and closely. And I call that someone "God", because it's practical and, honestly, I haven't come up with anything better.

When I have food poisoning and feel like I'm about to throw up my lungs, I start talking to God. Ok. Listen. I'll do anything. Just make me feel better. I know you can do it. I know you just want my attention. So here's what I'll do: I will sell my Prada bags and use the money to buy meals for homeless people. How does that sound? Please, just help me out here.

Or when I want to do well at an audition: Yo. Here's the deal, help me do really well in this audition, because I really really want it and I need a sign that I'm still supposed to be doing this, so help me get this part, and I'll pray every night for a week. Ok, I probably won't. But I'll remember you. I'll blog about you. How does that sound? I'll remember to be grateful. I promise.

Essentially, I turn to God in times of need and, for the most part, forget all about God when things are going well. It reminds me of a Chuck Palahniuk quote, "Your parents are like God, you turn to them when you need them."

But every once in a while, I remember to make a gratitude list before going to bed. It's mostly just an outline of the simple things I usually take for granted. I feel a shift immediately, a relief of being unburdened from always wanting more.

So here's today's list, may this be my tribute to the powers that be.

Today I am grateful for...

Sleeping well.

Warm covers.

Technology that allows for alarm clocks.

Cuddling and body warmth.

Caring about someone.

Coffee with a super fun co-worker.

Rain.

A warm coat.

Monthly unlimited metro card.

A painless subway ride.

Bagel with butter.

My laptop.

Email from an old friend.

Boredom. Far better than stress.

More coffee.

Scrabble.

The outdoors.

Smart women.

Press passes.

Washing hair.

Hot water.

Pink fluffy towel.

Birthday dinner.

Reconnecting.

Sangria.

Tapas.

Chocolate mousse crack cake.

Walking.

Peter Rabbit.

Tea.

Don't have to wake up early tomorrow.

Bed.

Old pajamas.

Blogging.

Mary's Story

This was the very first poem I wrote in my very first poetry class in college, 6 years ago. I sat down and wrote it, and edited very little ever since. It is completely simple and yet I have always felt an attachment to it. It wasn't about me, I didn't actually know the circumstances of which the narrator in this poem speaks, but it seemed to all just come to me, like a fiction story that was somehow personal. And a couple of years later, I would play a character who went through these exact circumstances, and this same poem would surface again to help me find her heart. I share it here with you now.

Mary’s Story

So Mary came to me in a dream.
She told me how she lost her virginity.
You wouldn’t believe it unless you heard it.
She lost it to some guy, Doug,
who said she was a pretty girl.

He liked her lips.
She liked the way his hand felt on her cheek.
He said I love you baby.
She said Don’t you tell ok.
And then she was knocked up.
Mary wasn’t allowed to be knocked up you see,
and guess what, she went to
the same Doctor I went to!

But instead of digging into her and yanking it out,
Doctor said,
Mary I’ve got a brilliant idea.
Mary, legs spread open, naked and doped, couldn’t wait to hear this.
Doctor said,
I’m going to make you the mother of a prophet.
I’m going to give you an eternal virginity.
Mary, well she thought this sounded just swell.
But in my dream, just to me,
she confessed that maybe it wasn’t the best idea after all.

See, Doctor didn’t have any brilliant ideas for me.
He just shoved the whole world inside me it seemed,
and then I guess my vagina vomited it all out,
and somewhere in that mess was
my slaughtered baby.

Maybe he could’ve been a prophet too.

Faith

I am sick with an ugly cold, which usually means I need to slow down and re-assess my life, but since I've been on vacation for two months, doing nothing but slowing down and re-assessing my life, I'm restless and not at all in the mood to stay in bed and think. And so, against my will, I found myself in bed this morning, shivering, having the following sequence of thoughts, "I feel like shit. Oh God, please let me feel better. Did I just talk to God? Yes, I did. How dare I turn to God now, when I need Him. Did I just call God a Him? With a capital H no less? Who am I? I need to figure out what I believe in. Do I? Yes, I do, so that I don't feel guilty. Uhg, guilt is such a Catholic thing to feel. Well, Larissa, you were raised Catholic- sort of. Once a Catholic always a Catholic, right? No, I don't think so. I don't support religion, really. And yet- here I am, talking to God. Choosing my words carefully, in fact, so as to not piss Him off. There, I did it again, I called God a Him. Well what's wrong with that? Could the feminist in me just shut up for two seconds so I can figure out what I believe in? Actually, Brain, can you just stop thinking so I can sleep and God can do God's thing and I can feel better when I wake up?"

Needless to say, I didn't stop thinking. I started tracing my history with religion and faith, which, of course, starts with my parents.

My mother is Catholic, but I wouldn't say she's an extremist on any grounds. She baptized us and I had a First Communion and I read the Bible (sort of) and she wore her saints around her neck, but she never really forced her children to be Catholic. She took us to church, but when we didn't want to go, she didn't make us, which I think is rather remarkable. I didn't have a bad experience with Catholicism, I mostly just found it boring. And I was never going to memorize all the I Shall and I Shall Not's in order to live my life as a good Catholic, so I pretty much gave up on that at around the age of 10.

My father is not religious at all, but very spiritual. He had a metaphysical magazine for 8 years called Amaluz, meaning Love Light, which was the Brazilian version of the Sedona Journal. He once published some poems of mine in his magazine when I was 13, which was a beautiful gesture and surely influenced my sense of my worth as a writer, as well as poking at my curiosity as to what it was he believed in. Behind his office he has a meditation room, filled with his pyramids and crystals and books on quantum physics. He never once mentioned God to me, but he taught me about meditation. And meditation, for me, brings up an energy that is far beyond my physical self, an energy that connects me to what I call my "soul" and to what I call a "Higher Being".

And then there's the main reason I know there's "something" beyond my human existence: Acting. I felt it the first time I stepped on stage, at the age of ten, to impersonate Nathanial Greene in our Social Studies class. The very shy child that I was known to be transformed instantly and completely into the Revolutionary War General and awed my classmates and teachers. I remember stepping off the stage feeling the most alive I had ever felt, thinking, "Was that me up there?", a question I would continue to ask after every time I performed for years to come.

And the answer I have now (I am aware it will probably change, since I'm still in the beginning of my journey, relatively speaking), is that No, it's not exactly me up there. I am a vessel for a force much higher than myself to express itself. My job is to keep my heart, body, mind, and soul open for this force to shine through me and tell the stories it needs to tell. As a teacher I had in grad school used to say, As an actor we open up our hearts so the people in the audience, in the safety of their dark seats, might open theirs as well. People will go to the theatre or to a movie before they go to therapy, and so in a way, actors are humanity's healers, offering them a glimpse into their own wounds as well as an opportunity to mend them. This explains as well why when I feel like I have failed I take the blame upon myself, whereas when I succeed I attribute it to a higher force. If I "fail"- a term that is difficult to use, since I am not quite sure if it is in fact failure- I believe it is because something in me is closed, and so I have failed at being a vessel for creative expression. When I am open and out of my own way, it all "just happens", my performance "flows". And it is in those moments that a Higher Being, that God, that the Creative Forces of the Universe, are real to me. It is in the space between technique and talent that this untouchable energy exists and I find my faith. I call it, simply, "It", since I cannot find a word that truly encompasses everything "It" means to me. What I know is that I have to have faith in It, nurture It, speak to It, and pray to It, in order to succeed as an performer. My heart won't open if I ignore It, and what I do is simply too important to me- I dare say it's vital for my existence- for me to dishonor It in any way.

Acting is sacred to me, I have rituals and prayers and charms for it, and I really believe it is my mission in this life to be an actor. I don't even like to say I have a "talent", I much rather call it a "gift". I was given this body, this heart, this mind, this soul, this life, so that I can tell the stories and bring to life the characters that humanity needs me to.

So, my faith seems quite clear to me in regards to acting, but it's still rather hazy in daily life. I hesitate to speak directly to God because I attach the deity to religions I do not identify with. And I do not want to attach a gender to my Supreme Being, and God most certainly feels masculine to me. I often end up speaking to The Powers That Be, which also sounds religious, but feels more accurate than God, especially since I do not feel this Energy to be singular.

I think that's how it's supposed to be though. Dictionary.com defines Faith as "Belief that is not based on proof". And so I conclude that part of faith is doubt, and not knowing quite how to define it doesn't mean it's absent from my life. Plus, it's probably healthier to accept the ambiguity of it than to attach myself to certain definitions and thereby limit something that feels so immeasurable. I shall rest my mind now, and let equivocal faith bring its teachings and treasures into my life as it so wishes.