Your eyes should be on the bottom of the pool
Not a very interesting place
A blue line of tiles interrupted by black ones that cross and then make a T
The sign the you better take a last breath and flip over or your cranium will make serious contact with cement
It is a kind of meditation, watching those little blue tiles glide by
as you flail around doing your swimmer's best on the surface
Like counting breaths, who could be anxious here?
At one point, my imagination flies away with me and I am
arguing in that dreaded meeting and cruel words are being spoken
and there is no stillness, so I grab for the gutter on one end, close my eyes and wait for it to stop
I hope the lifeguard doesn't think I need to be taken out of the water.
It's only panic.  
Then I return, really focusing again on climbing up that blue line

Went to film school, want to be a filmmaker still
My dream unfulfilled, but still unfolding
I look at what used to inspire me: magazine articles about
the great directors.  always male. even today.  I used to want
to be the female version.  Not anymore

The New Yorker has a piece on one
Describes the process: a demanding scene where
Julia Roberts walks down a street and then gives a LOOK
This is not drama.  drama is conflict.  the new yorker doesn't know this
describes the making of "art" as the shot is repeated with different LOOKS
It's all taken so seriously: a large photo of the ARTIST on the facing page
He has four o-clock shadow times a few days.  this is the look of a filmmaker
you will see it in the second half of the semester at any film school
and he looks worried, intense, confused...gassy?  artists are never happy
is life a pretty picture?  the artist knows this and cannot, will not smile

Later, "the Brille Building," in New York.  wow.  a building with a name no less
a building where many films are edited, have been edited over the years.  
a sweatshop for editors of picture and sound, and a place for the director
to continue, now out of the shadow of the STAR

He's using a lot of profanity now. Just because he's an old white geek don't think
for a minute he ain't kool, he ain't street.
Actually, go ahead and keep thinking that, because you're right
Amazingly enough, he, from his heights of artistry, is slumming it with take-out
Oh, the dedication.  Oh, the fear of ever leaving the building and being reminded
there is a whole world outside that doesn't care about you

His brother is the editor (no, don't say there is nepotism in this business, it's your imagination)
They review the shots of THE LOOK
There are many takes and now, this director who adapted someone else's novel
to the screen now claims, he wrote it.  Really.  It is all his.  

Yes I still love making films but I've never loved the biz
And as I get older, the more I think that real artists don't get written up
in the New Yorker with such verve because they'd think it was just too silly

She says, over and over again
Get here, with me
the frustration--how can I just change my mental state
especially when I'm so upset.
All there is, is this moment.
I breathe, count the breaths
Suffocate myself a little with carbon monoxide just like in Adam 12
My hands are the paper bag
And gradually, I can do it, in the protection of her office
I build the muscles of my mind

Let me reframe this for you and show you the positive side
After I sit and listen to accusations he believes are so true
and he has the power and he can take this job from me as he likes
and my saying what I think will likely have no impact
But it is the most important thing in the world
It's more important than having the job or not
To live and be here, in yourself and what you know to be true
in spite of attacks from authority, to live in that moment
and know: this is not true, I don't agree with you
Is everything

I have them written down for the big scary meeting
Yet my mind races, reviews the scene again, creates dialogue
find new innuendo
Anxiety.
It can be quiet now
I know what will happen, I know how I will be painted
as an incompetent
And I now what I will say in return...variations on
I don't agree

A different view on the world
birds, a flock today so high up
how I wish I could just jump off the
ground and fly
in a strange formation, coming together
moving apart, not how they're supposed to be
they looked confused and sometimes there's clouds
Cold clouds, even rain, and I track the shapes and every
move that will reveal the sun and warm this place

When my mind is quieter from torment
When my inner world has "settled down," I will find you
who you are, where you are, I don't know
We won't meet on College Walk or in the library
It won't be so bright and innocent
but it will be a better match and knowing my past mistakes
we will find each other, not just kids anymore
but now fully formed, who we really are
and ready to match together