Just Be

New York never stops, but occasionally it is forced to slow down. A two-day blizzard is one of those things that can force this electric, sparkling, ever-moving city to take a slower breath. And that's what happened. It snowed and snowed and then snowed some more, and the cabs and buses had to slow down, subways were delayed, schools closed down, some people couldn't get to work, and everyone looked out their window to see their familiar views coated with a blinding white dripping curtain that spelled, "stop, stay, be still."

If you were to ask me, I would say my life is not rushed. I don't ever overbook myself, I don't overwork myself, I do things every day to slow me down. I am intensely aware of how stiff New York can make me, and so I constantly keep my "armor" in check. I think I do a pretty good job of keeping an open heart and a soft exterior. I think I have not let New York City's sleepless rush get to me, for the most part.

And yet...

I was pacing around my apartment. I called my friends and no one wanted to do anything. I looked at my desk and there was no work to be done. I often read plays when I'm alone, only to end up acting them out by myself all over my living room, but I had done that the night before and wasn't feeling inspired. My nails were done. My hair was done. My apartment was clean. My laundry was done. There was nothing to cook. I wasn't upset about anything so there was nothing to obsess over. There was simply nothing to watch on TV, and I don't like watching TV anyway. I didn't even want to watch a movie. Somehow, I didn't even have a book I wanted to read.

Essentially, I had nothing to do but just be.

What a rare gift that is, and how little value is attributed to it, I discovered.

I sat on my big comfy arm-chair with a blanket. I sat there with myself and thought, Ok, I'll just sit here until the next thing comes up. Boredom can be a good thing, I thought, it doesn't necessarily have to be something I have to try to get rid of when it shows up. I can just sit with my boredom for a change. I can sit with impatience too. I can sit with loneliness. I can sit with silence. I can sit with the noise in my head and not try to change it. I can sit with lack of inspiration. I can sit with anxiety.

I found out that I am afraid to just be with myself and sit with all these things because I place my worth and the value of each day on how much I "get done". Even if what I get done in a day consists of talking to a friend over coffee for a few hours, going to yoga, and then cooking dinner for myself, it still makes me feel more accomplished than if I sit around doing nothing. It terrifies me to let a whole day go by where I've done nothing. To not even have a productive thought throughout an entire day. I am afraid that if that happens, it will mean that I am empty.

There is a famous acting exercise where an actor goes up on stage and stands in front of her colleagues and does nothing, usually for a few minutes. Or tries to do nothing. Tries to just be, in front of people. I have been made to do this exercise countless times in classes, workshops, rehearsals, etc., and I always felt that I am terrible at it. I get so anxious and afraid of doing nothing in front of people that I almost poop. I am filled with a fear of not being entertaining. Of being painfully boring. Moreover, because I am on stage, I feel an obligation to do something, to move the people who are watching me in some way. It feels completely unnatural to do nothing. I usually spend my whole time up there waiting for it to be over and wondering why the hell I am being made to do that.

So, as I was sitting around with myself, sitting with all the discomfort and anxiety of doing nothing, I was forced to face myself and all my fears and feelings. Soon enough a voice came up, that sounded like an older version of myself, saying, quite forcefully but not unkindly, Hey, sometimes, you're boring. Sometimes, you're not entertaining- not even to yourself. Sometimes, you don't have to do anything. Sometimes you're not patient or exciting or calm or any of those good things you like to be. And that's ok. That's part of being human.

This realization came as a relief, and I sat there feeling a tremendous weight had been lifted from my chest. I was able to breathe very deeply because there was so much more space inside me, I wasn't cluttered with the heavy need to do something useful or create something meaningful. I could relax. I could, finally, just be.

I can see now I was overdue for a day of slowing down. I needed a blizzard to hit the city and life to strangely yet perfectly align itself so that I could to spend a whole day with myself. And, as it turns out, allowing myself to do nothing ended up being anything but empty. In fact, I think it might have saved my life.

The World In My Head

I don't remember how old I was when I read "The Little Princess", but I remember it had a profound impact on me for the rest of my life. The protagonist, Sarah, was a rich girl who was sent to a boarding school that was strict as hell, but she brought the place to life with her imaginative stories, which the girls would gather to hear. When her father died in the war, however, Sarah became a servant at the boarding school. She survived life's sudden harshness by returning to her stories, by living in her imagination, by transporting herself far far away from her reality.

Luckily I was never sent to boarding school nor did my father die in a war, but certainly- like most people- I had to survive the events that, one by one, took childhood away from me. And after I read "The Little Princess", I became my own version of Sarah, living in my imagination as often as necessary. It didn't take much to send me there- I was an extremely sensitive child- and my mind soon had a world of its own.

In my head lived endless possibilities. When my parents fought- which was always and never nicely- I could go be the most beautiful girl in the world, a princess, who lived somewhere beautiful and safe, where I could walk through jungles with giant waterfalls and have pic-nics with koalas. When I would see starving children my own age begging for money on the streets of Sao Paulo, I could disappear and go to a ball where I could wear long romantic lilac gowns and have curls in my hair and satin gloves. When teachers lost their patience with my shyness, I didn't have to sit through a lecture about social skills, I could go off and run through vast green meadows while the wind gently hit my face. I could do anything. I could be anyone. It was intensely freeing.

I would say I lived in my imaginary world quite often, and I would say it served me well sometimes. But it also worked against me. I was so used to detaching myself from anything difficult that I didn't know how to be present anymore, even when I needed to be. I couldn't focus, it became difficult to study for tests, I felt like a bad friend most of the time because I didn't really know how to listen, and I didn't know how to sit through or with any kind of pain. If I had grown up in the U.S., I probably would have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and given drugs. I don't know if the drugs would have helped me though, because I was very attached to my imaginary world. But by the time I got to high school, I recognized it was getting in the way, and I was afraid I would soon be failing all my classes.

I went to an English teacher I kind of liked and told her of my "problem". I explained that my imagination would get the better of me, even in my favorite subjects, like English, and I couldn't bring myself back down to earth once I was off in lala land. She suggested that every time I start to drift off, I take out a notebook and write down where my thoughts were going as though I were writing a fiction story. I was a little disappointed to hear her say that- I was hoping she would just tell me I was normal and that it would pass. But I was desperate to find some solution before I simply failed out of school, and so I took on her idea.

You may have guessed what happened. The girl who lived inside her head brought her head to paper, and a writer was born. Journals upon journals were filled with stories, observations, images, poems, thoughts, essays, dreams and, ultimately, my pains. And once I had a place to put my thoughts, they started to get out of the way.

I still have a tendency to detach from anything painful, but I catch it quite quickly and try to breathe through it instead of run away from it. I still write things down though, but I don't have to, I can usually focus when I need to. I have learned that our painful experiences are our fuel. That which makes us feel weak in life can be our weapon in creative outlets. A paintbrush, a pen, a piano- those are all important tools, but without our life, without our pain, without our willingness to access it, we can not create.

I am really grateful to have had Sarah, that wonderful imaginative little princess, for helping a shy, overly-sensitive child find a world she could live in, then to have found the teacher who guided me towards my voice, and now to have the courage, every day, to face the reality of every moment, with a present mind and a working imagination. The World in my Head is not so much an escape now, but rather a way to understand reality and generate a creative force which gives me power, freedom, and presence.

Trapped Tears

I was 7 and I fell and hurt my knee. I wailed in pain as tears streamed down my face and I sobbed wildly. It was simple then: I got hurt, I was in pain, I cried. Not just "cried" with my eyes, but with my whole body. I sobbed hard, gasping for air, letting out whatever screams my body developed in response to the pain. It was a complete release of what I was feeling at that moment. There was no self-consciousness, there was no censorship, there was no control.

Then the woman who was taking care of me got down on her knees, took my face into her hands, and said, "Don't cry darling. A lady never cries."

Those words quickly and imperceptibly traveled from her lips and into my face, freezing themselves onto my cheeks, where they would cozily create an army base called Fort Larissa Shall Not Cry.

Our bodies are smart. They figure out what they have to do to survive and they remember it forever. On that day, when my 7-year-old self's ladyhood was threatened, my body was quick to help me: it froze my face so that no tears would cross it, no matter what.

Here's the thing, though, about our bodies deciding something for us when we're 7 years old: we're bound to forget the decision was ever made. It's possible I would not have been bothered by that, if I weren't an actress. But I am, and I found out that sometimes characters have to cry. So I soon realized that it was practically impossible for me to shed a single tear in front of other people, even if I was completely emotionally connected to a character's reality. And I really thought I would never be able to change that. I didn't know why that was the case- I figured maybe it was because I should only play "strong" women who never cry.

That could have worked for the rest of my life, if I were the kind of actor who only wants to play one kind of character. As you may have guessed, that was not the case. I went through high school and college trying out all sorts of tricks, reading all kinds of books, studying with many teachers. But to no avail. I couldn't cry. One day, shortly after graduating from college, in a moment of despair, thinking I would never be a great actress, I wrote a prayer, "Please, to the Powers That Be, I ask that you help me open up as an actor and be able to express every emotion necessary with truth and honesty."

A month later I was accepted to The Actor's Studio M.F.A program, and I went. I didn't know it at the time, but that would be the answer to my prayer. It was actually a simple phrase that did it. After one of the basic exercises in sense memory, I was frustrated with my inability to let go and be fully affected by the exercise, and my genius teacher said, "Your problems in life are your problems in acting. Your habits in life are your habits on stage. Your blocks as a person are your blocks as an actor."

Immediately I was transported back to that day, 14 years earlier, when my body made a decision that would become so permanent I would assume I had no choice over it whatsoever. As though the Fort Larissa Shall Not Cry residing in my cheeks had been made of solid ice, my teacher's words became the hot air that melted it, and I was free.

It was not an immediate process. I was able to let out a few tears, but there were simply too many years of repressed sobs for me to be able to suddenly let it all go. I would find myself, weeks later, lying in bed at night and suddenly sobbing, loudly, like a child, for no particular reason. I knew something had really shifted when I watched the movie, "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" and cried hysterically in front of friends who had never seen me cry before. At the same time that I was crying, and they were asking me over and over again what was wrong, I was laughing. I was so incredibly happy, I felt so relieved! I was crying, really really crying, with abundant tears and crazy child-like noises, in front of my friends!

As my teacher predicted, as soon as I started letting go of my armor in life, I was able to open up on stage, and my prayer was answered. Bringing that day when I, at 7, learned that a lady never cries, to consciousness, gave me a choice over it. I told another teacher of mine about it and she said, "well, ladies can't be actresses, so you better give that up anyway." And I did. I cried. I cried in front of people- and not gracefully. I was no lady.

I still have to soften my face and give myself permission to cry, every day, and certainly every time before I act. It's funny because people who have only known me within the past four years think I'm a cry-baby; they think I have absolutely no problem whatsoever accessing my vulnerability and releasing emotions. I'd go so far as to say I'm known for my ability to cry. I was even recommended recently for a part that demanded a lot of crying, under the premises that "Oh, Larissa can totally cry on cue." I have to say it's still hard for me to believe that something that was nearly impossible for me for 14 years is now only a breath away, but it is, and I am forever grateful.

As I have said in a previous post, I aim to be an open vessel for every character I play to live through me. It is a gift, not only to me but to every character I play, to have this block removed from my face, history, and heart. In life, too, I find the moments when it's appropriate to sob, scream, thrash, gasp for air, and cry ferociously, uncontrollably- like a 7-year-old who has never been told a lady never cries.

It's delicious, it's precious, it's choice, and it's freedom.