1. I am shutting down my forum for now due to some not so lovely things being posted more than once. I don’t really want to provide a space for stuff like that be put out, and so I won’t.

2. There was a bomb threat in Times Square. A bomb threat in Time Square.

Let me re-iterate that again. There was a bloody bomb threat in Time Square this afternoon!

The morning was gorgeous. The universe was open and shining beams of vitamin D all over the bare shoulders of the New York blood-cells pulsating through the arteries of a city that thrums on humanities heart-beat.

I walked to work. It was too beautiful not to. My friend insisted on trying on my sun glasses to shield the rays from her retina and I stopped at Whole Foods to gather my daily dose of Kombucha for my new best bud, Mary Mitchell. Everything was extraordinary. I didn’t have a care in the world.

As I was gathering a few things to head out to an audition over lunch, there was a casual announcement made about a “bomb scare in Times Square again.” Apparently this hasn’t been the first in the past few weeks. Everyone groaned and it seemed less than dramatic. I realized this kind of threat is quickly becoming something we are used to. It is quickly becoming something we simply accept. Just like when the a train breaks down.

What!?!?!?

How can we accept this? How can we be okay with the fact that people are planting bombs in the most public of places so as to kill as many innocent by standers as possible just so they can get their voices heard– so they can make a point. When did we get to the place where we stuffed so much cotton in our ears that we can’t even register a plea for help, or decency, or common human respect?

And as I sat there, proselytizing to several of the dancers in the show, I realized I was talking to myself.

It is so important that we all look to pull the cotton out of our ears and listen to each other. Find your enemy and make them human.

Hear what they are saying.
Reach out for peace, don’t expect it to fall on you.
Because it won’t.
Peace, love, compassion. All things earned.
It seems so simple. But, like the Indigo Girls say “the hardest to learn is the least complicated”.

This is not a lecture.

It is not meant to be high and mighty, so I apologize for the soap box. I simply found myself in an incredibly responsible and oblivious place as I was complaining this afternoon.

I want to look at the world and make my choices based on ideals. The ideal world. The ideal me.
A world where no one blames.
No one is suppressed.
No one steals.
And violence is a thing of the past.
I sigh.
Begin now.
Peace out homies.
xo
a

Book Links

• Canada: Amazon
• Canada: Chapters
• The U.S.
• The U.K.

I have not written in so long and to be honest I have not really paid much attention to anything other than work in the last little while. But as I spend a few days relaxing with my family in LA, I realize how incredibly important it is to sit and be.
Just be.
The most challenging and intense thing I ever do in my life is “be”.
So this is the year of “being”. I am excited about what I will see and hear with a little more silence and a little more thought.
Yipee… mid-late 20s and some growing up!
Here I come!
I hope each of you are having a spectacular holiday and I hope that this Christmas (or holiday season) you are having as wonderful, profound, and relaxing experience as I am having.
Thank you for your gift of support and the generosity each of you have shared with me in this wild and exciting life!!!!!
xoxox
allison

As you might have seen on the official “alice & huck” facebook page, “alice & huck” has been traveling the festival circuit: The Big Easy Shorts Festival, New Orleans; The Hollywood Shorts Festival; The Honolulu Film Festival; Omaha Film Festival; and the Las Vegas International Film Festival. It has won awards for direction, editing, sound, artistic merit, and even audience choice award for short drama in New Orleans.

We couldn’t have done this without the excitement and support of all of the sponsors and the sponsors.

And now the long wait is over. You can now purchase “alice & huck” on DVD.

The DVD includes

• the short film “alice & huck” (15 minutes in length)
• two “making of” mini docs
• and a “swingette” showing how the swing shot was made in the film

$8.99 CAD + shipping and handling

"a & h" DVD

US and Canada $8.99 International $10.99

or

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=7145802

New Swag is also now available at our cafepress shop:

http://www.cafepress.ca/aliceandhuck

There you will find posters, magnets, t-shirts and lots of other cool items.

All proceeds from the DVD and swag sales go to pay for the film.

All our thanks and we hope you enjoy the film as much as we do.

Kaleena / Allison / Rob

Email your submissions to submissions@essenceexpressions.com and we’ll post them!
Please note: Any art you submit to the MackEvents can be used by Essence Interactive, Inc and Allison Mack for any purpose.

So of all the cats in the world I pick the one who has a rare case of anemia that doesn’t have any sort of solution or predictable rhythm.
I swear he was put on this earth to teach me how to care about something outside of myself.
To take care, simply because I care.
What a lesson!
xo
a

Have you ever caught yourself doing that? It’s so ridiculous. Like, why not just tell your friends you ate the chocolate cake? Why lie about the way you lost your front tooth? Somehow the story is so much more compelling than the truth. Lie. What are the implications of such a habit? No trust from anyone. That is one.

Huh, so to transition lies to storytelling… maybe I use my powers for good rather than evil. I will practice telling stories. I bought a book. Yes, I believe there is a book for everything, and I bought one for a daily writing practice.
It is called “A Writer’s Book of Days“. It was written by a woman named Judy Reeves and it gives you a writing exercise every day.

So September 1, I started.

I thought I would share what I write with you all and if you like, you can write along and post as well! Sort of like an online writing group! Yay community!

Here goes:

September 8th, 2009
_________ is the color I remember.

Orange is the color I remember. Burnt orange. Burnt, vibrant, deep rich orange.
I remember cutting the flesh of a vegetable that reminded me of skin coated in iodine.
The smell of iron overwhelmed anything having to do with the banana bread baking in the kitchen.
I was 14 and I had just gotten my belly button pierced and iodine was the answer to infection at that point.
So every day I laid down in the living room, and poured the metallic liquid into the button on my belly so as to ward off evil bacteria from the new hole I chose to impose upon my body.
It was back to school time. Autumn in Los Angeles is a time of clearing skies and smokey sunsets.
The Santa Anna winds rush the overly dried desert with fires across the coast line for weeks in the end of August. And everyone is always so surprised.
It happens every year, and yet we have no memory of the past.
Why is it that certain things stick in our minds, burned into the folds of our brain, never to be forgotten, and other things we repeat as though we are on a loop track?
I suppose the enjoyment of living in Malibu supersedes the annual fires that blaze through the properties there.
I think of these things as I enjoy the burn of air that floats around me and twist my belly button ring in and around the internal and external portion of my soulful carrying case.
“I am such a rebel”, I tell myself. “Blake Heron is going to think I am so hot!”. Oh yes, the puncture wound was an attention strategy for a boy. I wanted desperately to be dangerous. To be desired. To be mysterious. And so I had a human pin cushion jam a needle through my abdomen and called it “cool”. Several years later I would repeat this patten with needles and ink. Scarring myself with pigment and indentations on my chest and ankle as a way to disprove my own value and confirm the value I found in the approval of the man next to me.
Just like the people who refuse to acknowledge the annual fires that dance along the Los Angeles coast line. So do I refuse to acknowledge the life time commitment to consistent abnegation of worth or trust for the next cool, confident, powerful person in the room.
Permission, permission to learn, permission to move on, permission to grow.
Permission to explore other places to live that may be equally as beautiful, but without the fires.
Hmm, that’s a thought.

It’s a word I use constantly! All the time! I find myself discussing and calling for compassion as often as I use my name . But what is it? How can I claim to stand for something I can’t define?

Have you ever asked someone to just “be honest”? What is that? Can you define this process for you? Ghandi said (and I am paraphrasing terribly), if you ask someone to do something you would never do yourself it is an inhumane act of enslavement.

So, essentially, does that mean that if I ask someone to “be honest” or “be compassionate” and yet I have no understanding of what this even means to me, that is, in fact, an inhumane act?

Huh? How does that work? I find I spin in circles with this one. If I want a world of compassion and non-violence, and yet I am violent. I will “fight for peace!” What?

Anyway.

Compassion? What is it? Definition to come.

xo
Allison

Submissions are now being accepted to the current MackEvent!

Creative Muse: Write a letter to a stranger

Instructions
Write an anonymous letter to an anonymous person. Place the letter in an obvious location, labeled clearly that it is for anyone to read. Document via any media source that you wish the process of creating the letter and leaving it. You can even hide and take a picture of the stranger reading it if you want! Create art out of any part of the process and submit it!

Send your submissions to submissions@essenceexpressions.com by August 24th!

Note: By submitting your art, you are giving Allison Mack and Essence Interactive, Inc full rights to the digital copy of your submission. Please only submit your original art or a digital representation of your original art.