It rains in LA.

Once or twice a year it feels like. And both times I'm all over it. I'm full out in it. I'm writing about it in my journal - not because I want people to read about the rain in LA. Because it feels like everything that happens at all is so powerfully related to these precipitative occurrences that all I have to do is mention the cactus pots on my balcony being flooded, succulents gasping for ultra violet dehydration, and you get what I mean. Magellan’s dream. That desert sun guaranteed discovery.

Quite occasionally there is the unoccassion of overcast skies in LA as well. Once in a blue moon, there's even a completely clear nite and as I late nite boogie down the city side walk back to my ride, I am not drunk, I am not troubled. I am high. I've been dancing and I am high.

I've been moody, too, like these unorthodox southern California skies. I've been spending time meditating on one detailed thing in a king sized bed. I've been riding my bicycle all over the damn place drinkin tea, drinking wine, drinking freshly juiced beets, apples, lemon and ginger in reused bottles. I've been singing to still my mind and deepen my breathing most of the time.

Because what's a little weather worth if you aren't documenting it? Yesterday my agent recommends I turn down an audition she got me in order to direct my career a specific, more integral way. Today my friend suggests I cancel and audition saying to trust in my skills in addition to my looks and to have faith that the money will come. Soon. I make love twice in twelve hours and look forward to an incredible hot bath later on.

This is the stuff storms are made of. This is a very special moment at a very special time cohabitating with very special humans on a tremendously unique planet.

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Some people think my life is all play and for the most part ... it decidedly is. The rawer I get, the cleaner I get and the more an expression of moment to moment selective reality I become. I am fascinated and baffled by what happens in an afternoon of my life. I try not to act like even I know what the next moment is probable to bring, else the spontaneous, the miraculous, the fascinating and baffling will cease finding me.

I don't really have time for things I don't like anymore. I don't really have time for arguing or social fluffing. I don't have time to wake up tired and I definitely don't have time to watch television.

Yes, my life, in respect, is all play. But that doesn't mean I don't play hard. I might end up working only 30 hours in an entire month, but like shooting this commercial for Progressive Insurance, those 30 hours might all get lumped into a literal 3 day period. And how many 9 to 5ers who really do work their asses off come home with a - what did the set medic diagnose it as; a "torn" wrist? And a sprained ankle. And a purple and blue mark that covers the entire inside and outside of my thigh. And that's just what you can see. Sore muscles in every crease and crevice formerly undiscovered by magnificent Lover or lonely tour bus lower-bunk finger tips.

Now I know why Chelsea Pictures, the Progressive commercial production company included "stunt" pay in our contracts. My, my - I play hard.

I love what I do. Because it endlessly surprises my childlike curiosity and entertains my fatally adventure-ravenous spirit. At one point yesterday I found myself being coached to drop the “bedroom tongue” and use the “postage stamp tongue by our director as I stabilized painfully atop a precarious pyramid of five actors dressed as gremlins - kinda Clockwork Orange troublemaker, kinda English orphan. I fell out of that pyramid but my heart and massaging hands went out to the man on bottom. Holding us all. Kudos to the strong men whom offer their bodies with only gratitude and private satisfaction as glory. They are the men that hold our world up.

I jumped off some kind of mechanical elevated scaffold into a huge, blue crash pad. I've never jumped and landed like that before, but it was fun. I'd like to do it some more. I'd like to get better at it. I didn't think about it, but after every jump, after the director had moved on, my heart was still open and my smile was still beaming. I was having fun jumping off of things. This is hard play.

But when I scraped out of the 25 foot high, larger than life newspaper boxes, I must’ve torn my wrist then. I was too busy listening to the director, Nicholas Barker, give last minute camera coaching and then silence for ... "action!” I was too busy making "gremlin chatter" and concentrating on the hand grip Bonnie Morgan, a fellow talent (I love how production calls us talent), offered me. I was too busy trying to be safe and still pull off the best shot I personally could for film. I was also busy just feeling what it's like to jump out of a 25 foot high newspaper box. It musta happened then, but I didn’t specifically feel it. All I know now is my wrist is twice its normal size and several shades darker its normal tint.

Plum is quite a nice shade of purple. Quite a bit prettier than a lot of old prison or military tattoos, too. My arm is plum and there are raspberries on my inner thighs. If you'd like to see for yourself, lettuce go back to my place - no dressing for this film and television salad.

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How far back is your earliest memory?

In support of a modern physician's perspective on the effects of marijuana, I have no clue what I was doing yesterday at this time. I can't remember if I saw your number on the ID of my phone. I can't actually remember what I was walking into the other room for and why there is a pen covered in wax on my nitestand and why the heck is the light on in the hallway again?

But I pioneeringly propose that short term memory loss not be seen as an unwanted and often embarrassing side effect of euphoric herbal ingestion. Rather perhaps, short term memory loss is the secret to true happiness.

My short term memory is blindfolded in the back of a passenger bus – we still get to Colorado, we just have no idea how. My long term memoirs though – watch out – are hovering on the moon making maps of Universal history for God’s remodeling plans. I mean, get this: I can remember counting Easter eggs shades of spring flowers from behind white crib bars. I also remember the way the people's feet sounded on the second story apartment stairs from my apartment below – I moved from that home when I was 2.

And somehow, if I really put some effort into it, I am convinced I can remember things before I had words to describe them. What if I could go back and have an actual memory of that warm, dark cave. What if there is a memory before that?

My long term memory is challenging my simple earthly happiness, but like an avalanche gaining momentum, the motion is addictive. I am endlessly curious, I love to learn and heck, I am good at this long term memory shit, so why not feature your assets:

I can remember watching television standing up. I was very very small. I saw two young black men on a show they called Star Search (the old skool series) and those two young seemed really alive, more than any other person I had seen on the screen, and they wore matching white suites and their skin was so so black.

This is how I remember it from 3 years old at least. So intelligent. So honest.

Those men in the matching white suites danced and made sounds with their feet - nice sounds. Their aliveness and those nice sounds made my feet move, too. They danced without music. The nice sounds were the music.

My mom caught me grovin and said, “Tonya, do you want to take tap lessons?” I started tap dancing when I was 4 years old - only one year older than Shirley Temple. When my shoes were the size of a deck of cards, and my little tiny taps already sounded nice, I imagined I was a lot like Shirley Temple, indeed…

Chicago, IL hosts The Human Rhythm Project, an phenomenal annual tap festival where famous hoofers perform and give class and create community. I was getting schooled in a master class by Dan The Man Porter, after he had taken a Polaroid of us together, written his digits on the bottom of is, and handed it to me saying how “good we look together”. He taught me everything I know about a shuffle in one week and he told a little story about how in the day, he and his tap partner snuck two costumes from racks backstage and barged out on the Star Search stage before they were anyone doing anything. They just riffed off of each other, hoofer improv style, and of didn’t even use any musi. They danced a capella.

Today I just got out of a tap class with my favorite tap choreographer, Amanda Leise, and well ... I can't remember if I ever thanked my mom and dad enough for just throwing me in tap dance lessons at age 4. They didn't know. I didn't know. But little kids have to try. And the more chance you give them to love something, the more things they will discover they really love. And shouldn't a kid have a basket of things to love that they can choose from or not even have to make a choice. Just have it all. Just have everything. Just die with a store house of beautifully connected, fully appreciated memories. Now if I could figure out how that light got turned on in the hallway again.

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