Clearing out heart space

No luck giving the records back before the New Year starts.  Did cleaning and recycled a bunch of stuff, so that's something.  Waiting for the next bus to a party at a friend's house, so I'll write.  (It starts at 7 running 'til whenever, I believe several years ago we all started to fall asleep before midnight.)

So this ex, somehow feel there's more I need to let go of, since he shows up in my life more than most people I know do.  We dated in college, met in theatre.  At the time I probably loved him more than I've loved anybody (as much as that was possible.)  He was very light, I was very heavy (he's a Sag, I'm a Capricorn, and I was going through some heavy shit at the time on top of that.  I was a big ball of exposed nerve endings.)  He made my life a lot more fun, I possibly gave his more weight (he's not superficial, but it is what it is.)  He was romantic in a strange way that worked for me (probably more than anyone I've ever known, weird, goofy gestures; person who left phone message earlier actually comes a very close second.  Not hugely important, but it was nice.  It's sweet, and it shows that the other person is paying attention.  It doesn't replace substance, but I do like it.)  Said something that destroyed me when we broke up, though I now suspect it wasn't entirely true.  We were like oil and water; we never really fought, that I can remember.  I wish him every good thing that could come into his life.  (Please come take your records!)

Phone message.  Good guy, like hanging out with him.  Find myself telling him things I wouldn't think I'd tell anyone.  But, elephants, elephants, elephants in the room.

Person I've imagined I'm in love with.  He made me see myself in a different way, and that's a huge thing.  It changed my life.  But maybe that's all it is...maybe I mistook my own gratitude for love.

Anyway, goodbye to all of that.  I think all of that energy's been stuck for me, and I want to clear it out and start a new year with new space in my life for new energy to blow through.

Happy New Year! Cheers!

Awful photo

Ugh.  I look almost the same as my previous picture, only more criminally insane, if possible.  Six years, I was wrong on that.  Crowded, too: a small room packed full of Capricorns.  They were on 290 when I walked in, I got 342.  I think I waited an hour, looking at the pictures on the screen of state parks, thinking about where I'd like to visit.  I even went and looked in a mirror before my number was called, did not help.  It's a relatively long wait between when they tell you to look at the blue button and when the flash goes off, plenty of time to do something goofy with your expression.  The employees are extremely pleasant, however.

I'm sorting through records now, I know all the punk, garage, new wave, local, and brit pop are mine, and the Queen, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Dave Brubeck :( are his (I really like Dave Brubeck.)  There's a Bowie, Kinks, Joni Mitchell, and Endless Summer that could go either way, I have no recollection of buying them, but not out of the question.  I'm not particularly attached to them, though I think I might have gotten them at a garage sale.  Might just give them to him, just 'cos I don't want anything of his, and he apparently has a working turn table.  I do not (just have a whole lotta' vinyl.)

The heater is blowing out cold air.  Been gloomy, cars had their headlights burning all day.  Damp and chilly, not cold enough for snow.  Checked my phone messages today, had one from the solstice from someone I sorta' dated earlier in the year (been months since we talked.)  Would help if I answered the phone once-in-a while (but it's a lot of end of the year asking for money calls, and they always make me feel guilty, and I'm really broke-tuition, driver's license, holidays, rent.  Half of my email every day are solicitations as well.)  Or if he ever left his phone number.  Not really sure what happened, or what was happening.  Oh, well...we're probably still friends.

The clearing out is overwhelming me.  Time for a hot chocolate break.  (A gift from a co-worker: hot chocolate on a stick, she made marshmallows, too.)  It'll taste good, and I'll own one less thing.

Monday

Finally got around to watching the movie version of "Frankie and Johnny," I like the play better, but at least he kept in most of the dialogue.  (Playwright wrote the screenplay as well.)  And it's interesting how he changed when various parts of dialogue were said, but spacing it out over so much time takes out the immediacy of it (the play takes place on one night, in the movie over weeks, it seems, more realistic, but not as urgent.  But you know, doing well by the "show don't tell" edict.)  And I like how Michelle Pfeiffer plays Frankie, the bravado, the aching loneliness, unhappiness, the fear.  How you can want something right now, but not the next step, up against the everything right now of Johnny who let things go before and doesn't want to anymore.  It's different enough from the stage play that it doesn't really affect how I think about the script (for performance/monologue purposes.) In general, I don't like to watch the screen adaptations of plays.  I need to get ahold of a script again (only one in the whole library system) I'll probably have to buy it.

Advice for the day (to me), "Stop saying yes to what you don't want to do." (The only one keeping you trapped is you...just writing it down so I can remember it.  It's actually for Aquarius, but I need to be reminded of it, and it's my rising sign...talk about conflicted.  It matters because I have a sense of responsibility on steroids, and say 'yes' to everything to the point where I'll spend all of my energy on everyone else except for me.  Not healthy.)

Need to go renew my driver's license.  Times like these I wish I wore make-up, my skin is splotchy, and I want a new picture because my old one is awful.  The offices downtown don't have any mirrors, you pretty much walk in and they say, "Stand over there and smile."  No time to prepare yourself to look halfway decent.  (I kinda' like the picture on my bus pass.  The first one was horrible, but they let me take a second.)  Sometimes I think I might look better in the DL pic if I tried to look worse.  Last time I renewed my passport I retook the pictures several times...you have to live with that one for ten years, at least the driver's license is only four.

Two days left to get all of this cleaning done, or at least make a dent in it.  I like to start the new year with a clean slate, part of that is space.  Maybe I'll start with the records.  Cheers.

Sunday, walking home

Walking up the hill on my way home after stopping to watch the last quarter of the Seahawks game, I see flashing lights from 3 blocks down, see traffic being diverted, realize it's in front of my house and start running the last couple of blocks.  Cops everywhere.  There's a crash in our yard again (at least third one in recent memory.)  Apparently, someone rammed a cop, cop car in the yard, had to be towed sideways to get off of the sidewalk, other car much more totalled, front end smashed to the tires.  No ambulances, but I don't know how long ago it happened.  Outside my window I can hear the constant whistle of traffic being re-routed around.  Lucky that they didn't knock over the power pole.  No one seemed particularly tense as I made my way through the scene (which I had to do to get to the door), so hopefully, no major injuries.

Anything else I was going to write about now seems trivial.  Spent the day at the Frye, looking at the Franz von Stuck exhibit, not sure how I feel about it.  After viewing it once, there was a guided tour announced, so I went back through.  They encourage audience participation, so it was interesting to get what other people saw in it.  He was influenced by Freud, Darwin and Nietzsche and used a lot of symbolism: from mythology, fantasy, and the Bible.  The wall tags comment that Darwin's influence was in the paintings of the men fighting over the woman...and I'm curious about his views of women.  While his wife, Mary, might have been a co-creator and sometimes a muse, women seem to wield a strange power, and men the helpless fools.  In a depiction of Adam and Ev(a), Adam is depicted in the classical Greek form, while Eva is a sensuous seductress, with the snake entwined around her and offering up the apple in it's mouth to Adam.  As if they are co-conspirators to corrupt man (Adam.)  That motif with woman/snake appears elsewhere in his work. Maybe it's Freudian.

The cops stayed long after the cars were cleared.  I heard shouting and went up to see what was going on, and then my roommate's brother was knocking on the door, so I let him in and we tried to figure out what was going on. (He was hoping their car had been hit, so he could total it, no such luck.  Actually, there's very little damage to the wall, and not much debris in the street.)

Earlier today I found out a woman I knew from when she was a kid, and also more recently from a theatre class, had just walked the Camino this past autumn.  She walked from St. Jean to Finisterre.  Neither one of us made it to Muxia.  The Virgen de la Barca church (it's at the end of the movie, The Way) was struck by lightening on Christmas and burned down.  At the time I was there I didn't feel like walking the last 33 kms to get there and figured it would always be there and I could come back...it's nice when there are second chances, but if there's something you've been dreaming of doing, you know, I hate to quote Nike, but "Just do it."  We live from day to day, who knows if there will be a tomorrow?  Second chances are certainly a gift, but you don't always get them.  Peace.

Friday, vacation

I'll make a list after I do something today, just so I can check something off.  But then again, I am on vacation.  Slept most of the day, got up late, and then went to drop off some dvd's at the library and got some mexican food on the way home which made me sick, so when I got back home, I curled up in the fetal position until I felt better.  I'm not sure what it is, it's something that some restaurants put in the rice, and some don't.  I forget which ones do it, usually makes me feel sick immediately after eating it though, lasts for a couple of hours.

Did laundry, cooked and cleaned out the bath tub, but didn't get around to looking for the records...woulda' been the easiest thing to do. I don't have his contact info anyway, will have to wait until we run into each other again, happens every two-to-three weeks.  I know what street he lives on, but I'm not gonna go knocking on doors, even if I am rather ready to give the records back (to let go of my past.)

I was watching Bill Moyers earlier while I was cooking, the first half of the show he was talking to Thomas Cahill about Pope Francis and how much reform he thought could get done.  Cahill said something to the effect that to make major changes (such as with women) Francis would need more backing than he has.  Cahill also mentioned that his personal belief is in the teachings of the Beatitudes (blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, etc) and not in any one denomination.  And then my favorite thing he said was something to the effect that there are really only two choices in life: to be kind or to be cruel.  Which will you choose? 

The remainder of the hour was with the poet Philip Levine and his poetry of Detroit.  He was disarming, I'll have to go look for his books.  I liked his poetry.  The interview also reminded me of the importance and necessity of art in our lives.  Reinforcing for me that what I'm pursuing is not frivolous, even if those thoughts kept me from pursuing it earlier.  I've pushed those voices further away, but it's nice to hear the validation.  Maybe I wasn't ready to do it before (I tried in my early 20's, but stopped for the next 20 years until recently.)  Perhaps this is the right time...at any rate, it's the time.  "Athletes of the _ heart."

Long term things I want to accomplish this year: to be making art as well as observing it.

Thursday and home again

So, Christmas eve was a strange day, everything took longer than I expected, but the delays allowed other things to happen: the thing with the ex, chasing down the garbage truck, etc.  Finally left town around 7:30.  Fog thick, temperatures dropping, thoughts of freezing fog.  It dropped five degrees between Everett and Marysville.  I stop in Marysville, a passenger train passes, rumbling northward.  I get back on the freeway, fog glowing a sulphur yellow, headlights slashing through it.  At 8 I switch the radio to listen to the broadcast of the NW Boys Choir's Lessons and Carols from the night before.  I take a back road in Mt. Vernon and am stopped again for the same train pulling into the station.  Turn toward Whidbey, fog thickens, try to follow the car in front of me, but it speeds beyond my ability to see it, fumble my way over the dark, winding, foggy roads.  As I near Deception Pass, the last song in the concert comes on "Oh, Holy Night" fog still thick, then, as the first verse ends I hit the bridge deck and the fog dissipates revealing stars so brilliant, and in such a multitude it takes my breath away.  It's true there is neither a moon nor light pollution from a city, but they feel so vibrant and close.  I don't remember the last time I saw the sky and the stars so clear.

The next evening, I drive my sister back to Bellingham, just after sunset.  I don't like certain sections of the freeways, and have my pocketful of go-arounds.  I take a backroad at the last minute, hoping I can remember the route, I don't know that I've driven it at night before.  (If there's a back road, I'll probably take it.)  Memory kicks in, places and turn offs look familiar.  We pass through Edison: shut down, silent, but totally lit up with Christmas lights.  Magical.  Not a soul around.  I take the wrong exit on the way back, have to get back on the freeway and find the right one.  I timed it this time, slightly over 20 minutes for the detour...I don't know how long the freeway route is, but the detour is prettier, even at night, and I'm not in a hurry.

Spent remainder of my afternoon at home watching a show on mermaids and then on Megalodon...goal for vacation is to clear out my space of things I don't need before the New Year.  Present seems like a good time to start.

Odd

I just had the funniest thing happen.  I've decided to purge any ties I have with old boyfriends so that they don't affect my ability to meet anyone new and have a healthy relationship.  (In came up originally because of the Meisner task where I came across as conflicted about a different boyfriend, and then a friend said she didn't think he actually sounded like a "good guy," and you know, that's probably true, I've considered him a friend, but why? He disappeared for 3 months and the next time I saw him he told me he was engaged.)  The first one I did that with was the one I keep running into.  There aren't any hard feelings, I just want to release the past with him, if we are friends going into the future on it's own merit, fine.  Anyway, I go to Bartell's to print out some calendars, but I copied the files to my computer instead of the memory stick, so I got in line to pay for the other stuff I had, with the plan of coming back.  There's some mix-up with the register and suddenly ex and his daughter are standing in front of me looking at me.  He introduces me to his youngest daughter as his college girlfriend (which is funny to me, he coulda' said friend, it was 25 years ago.)  Anyway, then he says he has an odd question, and asks me if I still had any of his albums.  I mentioned having Queen and a couple Beatles albums, honestly, I gave almost all of them away to random people.  He said he'd like them back if I didn't mind, I don't.  I was thinking of keeping The White Album, but then decided I would return all of them, I mean, why keep them if I'm trying to purge a memory?  I'd actually forgotten I'd had them.

When he walked off to the next register, the woman behind said that was pretty awkward.  Maybe...I'd actually wanted to meet her, she seemed like someone I'd like to be friends with.

The Universe answers things in interesting ways...do I mean it?  Yes, I guess I do.

Christmas Eve morning

For those who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas.  For everyone, may you spend your days in the company of people you love and who love you, and feel your full worth simply because you are.

This is a Christmas hymn I particularly like- "Awake, Awake, and Greet the New Morn"- Marty Haugen

Awake! awake, and greet the new morn,

an angel heralds its dawning,
sing out your joy, for Christ will be born,
God's gift, this Child of our longing.
Christ comes as a baby weak and poor,
to bring all hearts together,
to open wide the heavenly door,
and live here inside us forever. 

To everyone who sorrows or fears,

Emmanuel comes asinging;
the humble song is quiet and clear,
but fills the earth with its ringing.
Music to heal the broken soul
and hymns of loving kindness,
the thunder of the anthems roll
to shatter all hate and injustice.

In deepest night Christ's coming shall be,

when all the world is despairing.
Where people long to love and be free,
Christ comes to speak of God's caring.
A soul without voice breaks forth in song,
a lame one leaps in wonder,
the weak are raised above the strong,
and weapons are broken asunder.

Rejoice, rejoice, take heart in the night,

though winds blow wildly and cheerless,
the rising sun shall crown you with light,
be strong and loving and fearless.
Love be our song and love our prayer,
and love, our endless story,
may God fill every day we share,
and bring us at last into glory.

Music: Rejoice, Rejoice Marty Haugen (20th C)

Words: Marty Haugen (20th C)
Sequence: Cathouse Pandemonium, Ltd.

The day before the night before

Happy day before the day before Christmas!

I read a post regarding aging well yesterday.  It reminded me of that question that floats around, "If you didn't know your age, how old would you be?"  It also reminded me that for some reason, I spent half the year thinking I was older than I actually am.  The man that annoyed me by calling me by my formal name, told me how old I was.  Not sure why I added the year, I was kinda' relieved to figure out I was younger than I was thinking.  It'll be true soon enough, my birthday is in three weeks.

I feel sorta' old when I realize that all of my college friends are now in their forties, my ex-boyfriend (from when we were 21, he's a month older than me) has a daughter that is in her second or third year of college, and my former bosses' little girls who ran around the Christmas parties in fairy wings are also college age now.  Or when I get asked out by 20-somethings (can't go there.)  Other than that, I don't think about it all that much.  I think acting-wise, I'm more likely to get cast on the younger end of the spectrum than my actual age (I'm going with mid-20's to mid-40's.)

Also, a friend commented that she liked my skirt, and I mentioned I wished it were shorter, by about two inches.  When I bought it, I thought maybe I could have it altered, but that turned out to be too complicated, so I roll the waist-band like a catholic school girl.  It's funny, the older I get, the shorter I want my skirts, I had unfortunate body issues when I was younger, dressed like a boy or in baggy clothes.  Guess I'm reliving that now...is that my mid-life crisis?

Here's a couple of snow pictures.

Pathway/L. Herlevi 2013

Tree with snow/L. Herlevi 2013

Saturday, waking up

Didn't actually have the chance to take a break until 2 pm yesterday, I walked to get food.  By the time I walked back I was exhausted and freezing, the last two hours crept by.  Napped a little on the bus, but needed to go to the store, felt whiny walking the last ten blocks.  It's the type of exhaustion you feel in the chest.  Crawled into bed around 6, attempted to sleep for about 13 hours, actually slept a good deal of it, though none of it solid.  Weird thoughts.  Weirder dreams, in one I discovered a couple of fish, I didn't know I had, they were alive, but I hadn't taken care of them in ages (years, it seemed.)  There were other people around, I tried to play it off, but I was panicking inside.  What have I been forgetting to nurture (for years?)  Or is it just an anxiety dream, like having to take a math final in a class you never bothered to go to?  Anyway, I'm not sick, just tired.  I get this every couple of years. (Although, I did wake up at 4 am, and I walked to work, because I like snow...maybe it's run-of-the-mill tired.)

Had the thought this morning that I need to make some external life change, to support all the internal ones, so that all the internal shifting that I've been doing all year is not in vain, that I don't just fall back into the same ruts I was in. The mere suggestion of this (even by me) causes alarms to go off in me, still, I want to be the one to make that decision and not have it pushed on me from outside.  I don't know what that would be, I do know I don't want to start this process again.  The mean voice in me says, "yeah, what'd you really do this year?"  Some other part says, "you put yourself on the ledge of where you thought you could go over and over and over again,"...all good things, but emotionally and psychically, exhausting.  Internally, been a very intense year (right now it's not, so easy to forget), externally, you probably wouldn't be able to tell, except, I think I feel more brave than I have in a long time.  I'm not sure what happened during the early part of the century, but I lost a courage I used to have (really, the ability to hold a conviction strongly), and I'm glad to feel it returning. (It's the steady chipping away of tiny pieces of you, undetectable, but constant, and years later you realize there's a hole, a part of you that you let go because it seemed so minor every time it happened: the keeping the peace at all costs, the being liked, the trying to fit in, whatever it was...you can lose you that way.  Not suggesting to always be contrary, just not to lose yourself.)

I should get out of the house. 

Happy Solstice! (Days getting lighter minute by minute now, in the N. Hemisphere.  Something worth celebrating.)

What the heck

Oh, well if it's the moon, it's lingering.  More gushy compliments out of my mouth to random people, there isn't anything wrong with it, it's just that I've never been good at it, and these are falling off of my tongue before I have time to think twice about it.  I'm not sure what caused this to suddenly start spilling out of me.  I'm sincere, it's not bullshit.  Maybe I'm taking my own advice from earlier this year where I said something about letting people know things (while we are all still alive), when it makes a difference to say and hear them, because for the most part, most of us really don't say what we mean when we have the chance.  We say plenty, just not the words that would matter.  I don't. Not enough.  Too afraid.  At times, too insecure to think anyone would care what I think, (and in truth, a lot of people really don't) so I don't say it, leave it for someone else to say.  Someone that isn't me.  Too afraid of the consequences if it should change things, and it might.  Still the photographer, hanging back, observing, 'cos that's what's comfortable, just not necessarily living.  At least, not the life I want anymore.  And perhaps some part of me is finally letting go of the fear and control enough to allow that to change...could be from the Meisner work.

Very quiet.  Can barely hear the traffic: yes, it is snowing, pouring down.

Always impatient

Today is a brain-exploding kinda' day.  I keep having to walk outside and remind myself to breathe.  It's nothing major, none of it, just an raging, constant onslaught of pissy little things...which kinda' points to my attitude as much as anything.  Breathe.

And it was stunning out this morning: hard frost sparkling in the sunrise, the western mountains and sky glowing pink, almost constant visitation of my bird friend...still, I can feel my jaw clench and I'm on the edge of crying at the merest hint of a word, good, bad...probably even neutral.  Ironically, the only things I'm able to get accomplished are in relation to the big move-out I'm working on...that is actually inching along, thankfully.  I'm hitting roadblocks everywhere else.  Every. Where. Else.  I just want to get something done.  It's an ever-growing to-do list that never can have anything checked off, so I'm being buried by it.  And my lack of organization makes it worse: if things turned over quickly, I wouldn't need to remember to get them done, but now they sit and linger and get forgotten, buried under whatever the next crisis is.

And then, someone calls me right before we close and says they will take care of everything tomorrow...and whatever was the block dissolves and washes away.

And later still, the choir rehearsal is a series of songs where I just lose myself in the harmonics, so, so beautiful, I just want to rest there in it, and it's all over too soon, though my throat is a little raw from the singing and the (possible) cold.

God, I'm lucky.

Wednesday

The morning brings my hummingbird, singing, resting on a bare branch, rain dripping down.  A new batch of flowers have opened up since the hard freeze.  I think this bird has taken ownership of this camellia bush.  It spies on me sometimes, hovering in front of my window, which in a bird, is endearing.

Later, sat and read these Joseph Campbell short stories I found at the library.  They were published as a collection in 2012, only one had ever been published during his lifetime.  He wrote them in the 1940's, prior to writing The Hero Has a Thousand Faces.  They had a mythological viewpoint, not in sync with either the "gritty realism" of Steinbeck or Hemingway, nor were they Sci-fi like Asimov.  There was no audience for them at the time, and then he devoted the remainder of his life to writing non-fiction.  I've read two so far.  I think there are six.

Getting ready to exit the bus, looking back to see how many people were still on it, I locked eyes with a woman a few seats back, one thin black line down her cheek, she held my gaze defiantly, neither of us speaking, until I broke it to walk out the door, into the cold, and quickly clearing night.

I've started to get up early and write again before work, still need to do physical centering, and to encourage my inner five-year old, but it's a start.  Two-and-a-half weeks.

I'm fighting off a cold again.  Sorting out the logistics of Christmas with my family, always complicated, and the project at work, which now has the slightest glimmer of hope that it might be completed before I go on vacation...things are slowly starting to turn.  I think I need to watch Christmas cartoons now, I'm feeling stress.

Good-night.

Favorite Theatre/Performance of 2013

Well, my number 1 isn't my favorite for the year, but all the rest are.  This is basically performance (not including straight up dance or music, more theatrical in nature) that got under my skin, grabbed me by the collar and held my attention.  I saw a lot of work this year (not as much theatre as was warranted), most of it admirable, but these are my top five for their affect on me, and for the perceived level of commitment by the artists involved.

5.  Trouble In Mind at the Intiman's Summer Rep Festival.  A view into systemic racism, hypocrisy, and also humanity, in this show, in regard to the theatre, but this could be anywhere.  Flawless, as well as showing (along with the farce, We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay! the previous night) the dynamic range of the actors.  I think it was the best overall performed scripted show I saw this year.

4.  Northwest New Works at On the Boards, June 2013.  In particular, The Satori Group and Josh Martin.  The Satori Group's work was a beautiful journey into an afterworld and I'm a sucker for a narrative arc; looking forward to where this goes.  Josh Martin - who knew the human body could move like that?  Sure, I've seen dancers do some of this minuscule movement before, but not like this, and not sustained.  Just cool.

3.  The Seattle Rep's The Hound of the Baskervilles is my other favorite (scripted) show of the year.  I felt like everyone was at the top of their game on this across the board.  In the performance I saw, one actor briefly broke, and it only served to point out to me how seamless the show was.  Wonderful (and fun) theatre.  I wasn't sure what to expect and it blew me out of the water.  Pretty much the definition of perfect.

2.  Splinter Group's The Salesman is Dead and Gone (at the Richard Hugo House.)  Hands down, my favorite show of the year.  I believe in the show, and by extension, in creator of it.  The show I would most recommend for it's beauty, imagination, commitment, and flawless execution.  Restored my faith in something.

1.  St. Genet's Paradisaical Rites (On the Boards) for punching me in the face with violence, and spectacle and yes, at times beauty, and then holding my attention for days, no weeks, after the fact while I obsessively read everything I could find in relation to the performance.  You know, with all the others on this list, I would heartily recommend them, this one, I can't really, only with caveats.  I wasn't going to include it, much less make it #1, but then I thought if my criteria was that art should affect you, and also the level of commitment by the artist involved, this one wins in spades.  I can't say I loved it as a whole (the nihilism), however, it was flawless.  And I still contend that it was a shamanic journey, definite narrative arc here, which I applaud.  I surprised even myself choosing this as my #1 for the year.

Looking forward to seeing and hopefully, making art in the new year.

Tuesday

The morning arrives with the jarring juxtaposition of the thick, dampening fog, and absolute chaotic traffic and construction...I feel unsettled.  Ran into an ex-boyfriend (the one I always run into) while trying to get to a bus that was running, and he commented that he thought I was a (high school) student making my way to school.  Then he said it was better than saying I looked old.  (Weird mostly in that his youngest daughter is finishing high school, and that we cross paths a lot, I don't look drastically different...maybe it was the location.)

It's not just the gushing on Facebook, I've been speaking my mind more in general the last couple of days, to a lot of people.  A little less timid, less self-conscious.  Maybe it's the moon, maybe it's exhaustion, maybe it's Meisner...a healthy thing for me at any rate.  Hope I manage to keep in the habit.  I tend to trend toward passivity in life.  Perhaps I'm afraid of the consequences of action (both good and bad), afraid of what it would mean if my life changed and whether or not I could handle it.  The devil you know... The problem with that is that you don't end up necessarily where you'd like to go, and while the journey might be a good one, you are blown about by whatever the strongest outside influence pushes you: your life is acted upon, rather than acted out by you (me.)  Hasn't been a bad life, just really passive.  (This year has been an exception, 23 was as well, and 2004.)  Maybe all the internal shifting over the past year is finally affecting my behavior...or maybe it's just the moon.

Speaking of moody:

Lighted trees/L. Herlevi 2013

One more down

Hmm.  Went from swooning over the way someone speaks, right into a lively discussion of pig intestines: afternoon mind travels quite serpentine.  (The trials of ordering food when you do not understand the language.  Or in the intestinal case, eating whatever happened to be served.  I'm not sure how talk of comedic plays got to pig parts though.  Some discussion of ramen, as well, in the middle.)

Waiting for the bus home, a long wait as there were service cuts for the quarter break, I noticed how much my breath hung in the air, as if the air itself were greedy for moisture: it lingered, drifted slowly back over me.  Barely had time to change before my ride to our last concert (Finnish) arrived, fog rolling in.  By the time we finished singing, you could barely see a block, so thick the fog.  Our last concert for the year, the other choir is singing three more times.  (Traffic was light, and we were early to the venue, which was good, gave me time to fix my shirt, I put it on inside-out: this dress is beautiful and it fits well, but definitely not a quick change kinda outfit.  A bit complicated to wear.)  Will see how long I can keep all of this up, I like it, but I suspect outside Meisner rehearsals might be increasing, and I can't do all of it.  At any rate, we sounded good tonight, what I could hear, and the people we sang for were appreciative.

When I could see the moon, it looked almost full (mysterious, shrouded in wispy clouds before the fog came between us)...is it?  I'll blame that and caffeine on my earlier gushiness of the day.  Or all the Meisner work.  I can't help it, I believe in the work.  If I came across as a fool, well then, I suppose that gives me leeway to continue to do so.  (Earlier facebook post regarding something I liked.  No, loved.)

Need to muster up the energy to change.  The dress, it's getting itchy.

Three weeks off

Very uncomfortable bus ride downtown this afternoon, literally, there must not have been any shock absorbers, or the roads were quite damaged.  Continually, almost painfully, jarred.  The way home seemed fine, same route.  Waiting for the bus, a white carriage and horse crossed a dark intersection, ghostly against the one decorated tree.  It started to rain.  On the bus, I was reading Arthur Miller's "After the Fall" and then overheard a conversation talking about Nazi Germany; second one in two days.  I don't know why this keeps coming up, only that if there is a lot of synchronicity, one should pay attention.

The review went well, we both noticed similar issues, she is kinder to me than I am to myself, much of what I need to work on is stuff I've previously mentioned: grounding, getting in touch with all sides of my inner 5-year old, softening...most of tonight was really personal, but the upshot is that I will be in the class next quarter.  I didn't really think that I wouldn't be, but she's honest, so I thought that option of not continuing if she didn't see progress might be there, or if I didn't care enough.  But I do care.  I do want to do this.  And I feel this work gives me another entry point into doing the type of work I want to do, learning the actual tools to approach it, as opposed to being locked out of it because I wasn't finding the right way in for me.  It is building on other work I've done this year.

If I had gotten into the language intensive this year my life would be very different: good in it's own way.  But I'm more grateful for the rejection than you can imagine.

I noticed the effort, I did.   I appreciate it, greatly, if it shocked me a little at the time.  At the least it means we are not enemies, I never wanted that.

Later on Saturday

The cranberry sauce is good, had to use frozen, they didn't have fresh.  I also used maybe a 1/3 cup of sugar, it tastes fine.  The last recipe I looked at called for 1 1/4 cup of sugar, that seemed excessive.  I put in a little bit and then taste it.  It's substituting for lingonberries, so it's fine.  I use fresh apple juice instead of water, so that probably helps as well.  (And I threw in a pink lady apple, a cinnamon stick, orange zest, and a small handful of raisins.  I make it different every time, can never remember what I did the previous time.)  Wow, the spell check just gave me the option of Klingon instead of lingon.

Later.  My first attempt to leave the house, my shoes were hard to walk in so I stopped to switch them, and realized they were both falling apart (heel separating off, I guess they are at least 15 years old) so went back into house to change into boots.  Left again, after I got through the intersection, someone said part of the dress I was carrying was dragging on the road, stopped to fix that, dropped the cranberry sauce, broke the container, walked back home, tried to separate it out enough to keep the grocery bag, but ended up tossing all of it.  Third try, made the bus, got to the church where the dinner was.  Told them.  They were fine with it, someone felt bad for me and paid for my dinner.  Also, because I had said I needed to leave early, the program was switched around so that we sang all of our music at 6:15 pm.  (So, when they say everyone is cold here because of all the N. Europeans, you know, maybe they should take another look, and try harder.)

Barely had time to change and eat something, not a full dinner, ran out to try to catch the bus downtown, saw a bus, thought it was early, ran, but missed it.  Said there was another in 9 minutes.  Sat and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  It didn't come.  That bus would have gotten me downtown with 10 minutes to spare.  The times jumped around on the reader board and a bus showed up randomly, right before I was thinking I should try to flag a cab, 10 minutes late.  Hit every red light heading downtown.  I don't know when we got near the theatre, but I got off and started running toward it.  The street was under construction and all of the sidewalks were closed.  I  ran in the street successfully avoided getting hit by a car.  There was a really long line waiting to get in.  Did get in in the end.  It started late.

The show was great, you'd never guess they had never rehearsed together. (They all had rehearsed with the director.)  I sat really far back, so couldn't really see everyone, but I knew at least three cast members, one of whom was who I thought invited me, but not positive.  At any rate, I'm glad I got the invite, as it had fallen off of my radar and I had meant to come see  the show.  I have a pretty bad headache in addition to everthing else that still hurts (tried holy water (from Lourdes) and tiger balm on the knees, but they still hurt to bend.)  Maybe I am coming down with something.

So the third bummer thing that happened was that I lost one of these glass-bead earrings that I was wearing...they were from the 20's or something.  I kept hoping it would fall out of my clothes, but no.  I suppose, if there were three things, I'm glad they weren't worse.  I should sleep.

Saturday

Woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck.  It's not the flu, did something I eat get contaminated with potatoes?  Did I do something I don't remember?  I hope so.  I don't want this to be a permanent change (it always could be.)  I have to get up to go buy cranberries to make sauce for the Finnish Christmas party/concert later today.  And I don't feel like moving.

Running out of that to try to get to the Theatre Anonymous show of "It's a Wonderful Life."  No, I'm not in it.  It's the one I'd wanted to audition for (you were to send in a resume/headshot and no one would know who was in the show except the director, you'd meet one-on-one with the director and then on the night of the show, tonight, you sit in the audience and say your first line from there and then go up on stage.  I didn't have a headshot, and I really shoulda' just had someone take a picture...oh, well.)  Anyway, I'm hoping they hold my ticket, I won't even be in the neighborhood until 10 minutes before the show starts, probably still wearing my Finnish dress.  Apparently, I know someone in the show, someone from the school I take classes at (because they are the only people who have that email address.)  There are at least three versions of "It's a Wonderful Life" going on this weekend, this one, one at Town Hall, and an improv version in the U-District.  I'm excited to see the show, and curious to see who I know in it, I think I know, but I could be wrong.

Went to an art installation last night, it was in a shell of a building in Belltown, that felt like a warehouse, dark and cold.  I thought I'd check it out for half hour but ended up wandering around for two.  It was called "hydrOsphere" by interstitial theatre, was loosely based around the theme of water.  I think there were thirteen installations.  My favorite two were Vrstva (Amy Popova and Rashelle McKee) a live movement/dance piece, where they moved very slowly in response to each other and throughout the space; and Sandbox of Life (Casey Scalf, Sensebellum) which involved a sandbox of white sand and a camera/computer/feedback/light above it creating these moving light patterns, that kinda' reminded be of a virus.  If you blocked the light by waving your hand over the sand, the light pattern would repopulate the bare sand in a crawling kinda' way.  It was fun to play with, and I like the repurposing of technology (it used a Microsoft Kinect.)

There was also this sound installation called "Space weather listening booth" by Nat Evans and John Teske.  It was down a staircase lit only by tea lights in a dark parking garage.   A voice in my head said, "No! Don't go down into the dark parking garage!"  But I didn't listen to it. There were some tea lights on the floor there as well, and a carpet with pillows.  It took a while for my eyes to adjust, but I realized no one was lurking in the dark corners (it's not a haunted house, afterall).  Several people came in after me, I think someone laid down on the carpet, but it was hard to tell.  I like the idea of it.  I want to work more with sound installations.  The building was really cold, I think it was actually warmer outside.  I can't imagine how cold it was last week in there.  Was gonna try to get to an opening in Greenwood, but just wandered around Westlake for a while, singing along to the piped in Christmas carols (Feliz Navidad, and the Mariah Carey song.)  On the way home, the man sitting next to me kept falling asleep on my shoulder.  I don't mind that much, but he was really heavy. (I think the woman on his other side was leaning on him as well, so I was probably feeling the weight of both.)

Maybe hot water would help.  I was gonna post a picture but all of the editing programs keep crashing.  Happy Saturday morning!

Friday-drizzly

Spot caws loudly, deeply, reverberating through the trees, only silence as an answer.  Sometimes I think birds must like the way their voices sound, and call out just to hear it.

I was one hour late for work, misplaced my house keys and tore my room apart looking for them: on the bright side, I found several things I had misplaced, and managed to get rid of a few things.  They turned up on the kitchen table underneath a stack of advertisements.  (Have no idea why I put them there or when.)

While running frantically around the house, my roommate told me to be careful in traffic: she got hit by a car last night, on her way back from another emergency room visit for vertigo.  They had to take her to the hospital in an ambulance, she says she's really sore.  Luckily, the driver stayed and helped her, and there were a lot of witnesses (and apparently, we have a lot of nurses in the 'hood.)  I think she's okay physically; emotionally, however, it's upsetting to have someone hit you with a car, or even a near miss (I've had both.)  It's ironic that I was actually considering going and seeing a therapist about the fact that on my way home last night, I really, really, really had an aversion to being around traffic, to the point where I was dreading crossing the street, even when I had the light: people just don't pay all that much attention.  Maybe it was just something about the energy yesterday, 'cos even after she told me this morning, I was fine going to the bus stop, back to the usual state of things (but, of course, it wasn't dark out.)

I came across an article about using Meisner work for preparing monologues should find that again.  I think I have the two I want to do, but haven't started seriously working on them yet.  My mom is going to pay my membership fee to TPS (Theatre of Puget Sound) for the year (Christmas present), so now I just need to figure out how I'm gonna pay for headshots.  I want to have them professionally done, but if it comes down to the wire, I'll have someone take a picture of me and use that; I can't use that as an excuse not to do the auditions; but they are pricey: it's grocery money for a month.  Otherwise I have to wait another year, and I want to start making practical use of all the classes...which is rare for me, I usually like to learn for the sake of learning.

Trying to get my arms around a big project I just took on.  I like having this much to do, but it is like herding cats together for a photograph: there are so many little pieces that keeps wandering off that need to be brought back into the frame.  It needed to get done yesterday.  I'm on vacation in seven days...time to work miracles to get it finished by then.

Onward!

Thursday

The Byron poem was "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage."  I'll admit that I haven't read the whole thing, but I remember being blown away by what I did read and how evocative it seemed to me at the time (I was 21, I think.)  It's his descriptions of places, made me more excited about seeing the world.

And looking back on the year, I am thankful for second (and third and fourth and fifth) chances.  Been a lot of those this year.  Got to know some wonderful people I wouldn't have otherwise.  Sometimes first impressions are spot on, sometimes they are not.  Sometimes our own baggage and insecurities get in the way.  And sometimes everything changes from moment to moment and you can't figure it out.  There is that baggage where someone reminds you of someone else and that gets in the way of seeing who this person standing right in front of you actually is.  Always heed the red flags that come up, of course, but sometimes we judge people too quickly assuming we have nothing in common and would never get along, and sometimes we are wrong.  And I had second chances this year where my first impressions were wrong, and as a result met people I'm happy to know, my life is better for it.  (One of them is possibly the most remarkably thoughtful person I've ever met, and my belief in my inherent value as a human being goes up in their presence.  It's little things, but they are really thoughtful.)  Grateful for this year and the roller-coaster ride it's been.  I know it's not over yet, another 19 days to turn my life upside down, why not?

That's not meant as a taunt, only as an observation on how much change there has been this year, and how often that has occurred.

Cheers.

Books

Think this might be the first time in over two weeks that I'm home long enough to do laundry (clean out the fridge, vacuum, etc.)  Yea.

This is a list of ten books that influenced my outlook on life.  Sorta stole the idea from a facebook post.  No particular order.

Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho (got up and walked 2,000 miles)
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Romantic/Victorian eras-at one point reading Byron changed my life)
Rilke's Book of Hours-Barrows and Macy (translation - Rilke was a lifeline when I was going through a really rough time)
Living, Loving, Learning - Leo Buscaglia (got me through my late teen years)
The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood (I have no explanation, I just really like it.  Her most humorous book, at least to me.)

(Could include, A Sand County Almanac, The Actor's Art and Craft-but I haven't finished it, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Little House on the Prairie, The Colussus of Maroussi, but need to limit it.  Oh, and Sam Shepard had a big influence on me in college.)

Don't really know what to do with myself, although I still do need to come up with a self-review before Sunday.  Feel like I just survived something and am now in a respite. 

Cheers!

Finito

There were moments where it connected, where we communicated, where we came close to where I hope to be...and those moments are magic.  And it's what I want to do.  I had a little bit of it last spring in class scene work as well...but it's difficult to let go of control and let life happen.  It's not about the words in the end, it's what you use them to say to each other, and that is unknown from moment to moment, could be anything under the sun, and when you let go of control, it is free to go everywhere, and you to follow.

Evals and then back at it again in three weeks.  It sounds kinda' scary, but we're all in this together.

Homework and reading

I crack the window open and the cold air rushes in.  No snow.  Not here, anyway.  Rehearsed for a little while.  Found a free copy of "Death of a Salesman" read it on the bus, and finished it when I got home.  No answers to the questions, but as I read it, I remember the text playing in the background.  Who was the "Starman?"  (And that Bowie song keeps playing in my head every time I think or see the word.)  Someone suggested that I find a monologue here: "Linda."  It's pretty good.

Only the seed of a task, not sure how to pull it off, but I know who it's about.  Who is "Jules" to me?  I think I would fight him to save "Binnie."  I'll try it, I guess.  We have to evaluate ourselves tomorrow, give feedback on what we thought worked, didn't work.  Feeling a bit bleak from the play, well, both plays really: the one we are working on and the one I just read.  How and why would I share the activity with someone?  Something I would do if my heart were broken...I know what that would be, but how do I make that about someone else?  What keeps me from being a "summer girl?"  How far would I go to keep him from hurting her?  Which emotional truth rises to the top?  What I feel about my task?  What I feel toward Binnie?  What I feel toward Jules?  What I feel about the state of my life?  If there's conflict (in emotions) you can play both, but one at a time, and fully out.  My brain has stopped consciously processing this now.  Too much, too much, too much.

I wretched my hand while getting off of the bus this morning, and now it really hurts.  I hope I didn't damage it anymore.  Ugh.

I suppose the giddiness was the caffeine, now I feel bleak.

Just 'cos

Still waiting for the much anticipated snowflake to magically fall from the sky...

Just thought I'd list some of my favorite things for the rest of the month:

Coffee shops:

Star Life on the Oasis Café-University District, Seattle
This would be where I had that fantastic shot of espresso.  Attached to the Grand Illusion Theatre.

Bedlam (Coffee and Toast) - Belltown, Seattle
Make the only coffee shop chai that I'll drink, also serve rose mochas hitting my soft spot for consuming all things floral.  If they are annoyed by all the Meisner work going on in there, they've been very polite about it.

Joe Bar - Capitol Hill, Seattle
Crepes, beer, coffee, really good value in a cheese plate.  My favorite place to read.

The Oddfellows Café (technically, not really a coffee shop) - Capitol Hill, Seattle
Rarely feel cool enough to come in here alone any time except the morning, but love, love, love the ambiance.

Honorable mentions: Café on the Ave (U-District)- used to study here all the time when it was Café Roma, has the right amount of noise for me to concentrate.  (Had two exhibits here.)
Café Allegro (U-District)-Oldest coffee house in Seattle, have spent a lot of time here over the years.
Bahaus/B&O both have had to relocate due to demolition, have not visited them at their new locations, spent a lot of time in the old ones.
Victrola (15th Ave location, Capitol Hill)
Burke Museum Café (U-District) - another good study location, although lately I've sat outside.
The Grateful Bread (Wedgewood)- they have really good sandwiches. (Had an exhibit here, and again, technically not really just a coffee shop, more of a bakery.)

Feeling hopeful and quite giddy, perhaps too much caffeine.

Sunday-One more class session

Documentation has it's place and there is a way to have a point of view in documentation, and personal projects are artistic statements, but...if you tend toward introversion, it's easy to become an observer of the world (which is fine) rather than a participant.  I want to be more of a participant now.

Sang at a memorial service (actually two) this morning.  Again, just really inspired by someone else's life, whom I knew so little of, and I wish I had known more.  A relative spoke to the fact that she had an "easy passing" that she was laughing and enjoying time with her family.  She was 97.  He said that at the end as the outside things closed in and were no longer possible, that she became love itself...and I think about that and all the striving to prove something (and in her life she did many things, knew many things) that really what matters in the end is our ability to love, and to be able to express that, and to have the ability to accept it as well.

Later.  Still processing, but tonight was freaking awesome across the board, there was life and passion.  The work was just transformative.  We were smack in the middle, and I was afraid I would be dead on stage, but I wasn't.  We all got stuff to do before we entered, and we all got to fight on stage (or tussle) which just brought everything to a whole different level.  It was really fun, if sometimes also scary.  And we got out an hour early.  Still haven't thought of a task, but I know something that I need remember on stage...subtext, subtext, subtext...would make the words infinitely more vital.

Oh, and one of my friends went to the show, so I got to talk about it with someone...and that makes me happy.

Maybe I can do this.

Cold out

I like the show anyway (and I think everyone should go see it), but also that I really want to put something original out in the world.  Most of my originality is currently going into cooking and writing no one sees.  I have done photography (still do a little) but it has felt more like documenting something rather than creating and expressing that.  It's true that you document from your point of view, from your subtext at the time.  One assignment we had in a studio lighting class (everyone was working with film at the time) was to photograph a roll of toilet paper, and everyone's work was vastly different.  I had been feeling kinda' cliche and uninspired, so finished the last shots out of desperation, and those are the ones I used, kinda' film noir look.  My work was pretty moody at the time.

Subtext changes...a subtle shift and you wake up from the previous moment and everything has changed.  You become a different person, how you see the world, what you want...everything changes.

Here's a picture of the swag.  (One of my artistic endeavors of the day.)  It's a little crazy, my fingers started to freeze and I couldn't twist the wire.  Seemed warm in the sun initially, not actually the case.

Swag/L. Herlevi 2013

Saturday

Arrggh.  I want to talk about this show with someone.  "The Salesman is Dean and Gone" by Splinter Group, at the Richard Hugo House.  First off, I liked it a lot.  The director, Paul Budraitis, mentioned that while he'd been thinking about it for three (I think) years, they've only been actively putting it together (on it's feet) over the past month (though it was work-shopped two years ago.)  He also mentioned that he had added a character a couple of weeks ago, I can make a guess at which one, but it was all pretty seamless, and all seemed essential.  It was mostly performed in a cloth-walled room on stage (there were things that happened just outside the door to the room as well), which I think must be purgatory, and even though there was a cloth wall between the audience and the performers, it somehow served to make me feel like I was more in the world of the play than I normally would.  The soundscape, a constant drone or buzz, served that as well, when the actor playing Willy covered his ears to try to block out the buzzing, the sound softened for us too.  His interaction with his wife was interesting; there was a distance even with the physical contact, she felt like a memory he couldn't connect to, whereas with the son there was an aggression played out, but the contact felt present.  I need to read the play, I think.  I have some sense of those relationships, but not deep enough, as to why it might play out that way in an afterlife. 

This is the blurb from their kickstarter campaign page (The Salesman is Dead and Gone, raising money to pay the artists):

SPLINTER GROUP's production begins where the original play leaves off, with the car crash that ends Willy's life. He finds himself in an indeterminate place where time is irrelevant, and where a second, miniature house that closely resembles his home receives audio transmissions that cause him to re-experience moments from his life. Through these transmissions, he grapples with the ramifications of his choices, trying to make sense of his life and his place in the universe.

Why did the buzzing stop?  Whose skeleton?  Which was the added character? (all seemed essential.) Among others.  I've never read "Death of a Salesman" and there were a couple of references in the show (the skeleton, the buzzer) that might have come from it, so maybe if I read it I'll understand it a little more.  Only gripe is my usual one: put a blurb about the show in the program, give a scaffolding.  Sell your work to the audience, invite the audience in, give yourself credit, let us know why you did the work.  Honor the work, be proud of it.  It's good.  And it's awesome to put something new out in the world.

Off to go make some sorta Christmas swag, and then decorate cookies at a friend's house, and then to sing at the Finnish Independence Day dinner. 

Close to having text memorized.  Still no task.

Ciao.

Blur

Feel like I've been going just on muscle memory lately.  If I didn't think too hard about the music tonight, I could sing it, if I tried to make sense of it, I got lost...we had a lot of new music to go through and some of it was challenging (Britten, for one, couldn't tell you what the rest of it was, everything is a blur.)  Also, I keep getting second, and I like singing first, I like the high notes, but I suppose it's good for my brain to find the notes for the second part.  I stayed late at work to lock up after a meeting, and then went to pick up my mail (been trying to get there for over a month) and was early back to rehearsal, so went and had some coffee nearby until the doors were unlocked.  I ordered an eggnog latte, and while it tasted good, I couldn't taste the eggnog, and I was trying to figure out what the sweet/bitterness was, I knew I recognized it, but couldn't put my finger on it.  Much later I figured out that what I was tasting was a darn good pull of espresso, which then made me realize that I haven't had a good cup of coffee (or espresso) in a really long time.  That man knew what he was doing.

We only have two more rehearsals before Christmas...I feel like it was just Halloween, time just flying by.  When I come up for air enough, I force myself to walk through the decorated parts of town.  I enjoy the season, but I feel so unconnected to it right now.  It makes me happy to look at the lights and the trees and listen to the music, but then I forget again.  It's been a crazy year.  The folk choir has two events over the next two Saturdays, but they decided to give us Monday night off...unexpected, and I'm grateful: we have to present our scenes for class the next night.

Gonna go to a show tomorrow night, but aside from all that, my brain is blocking out any other commitments.  Overwhelmed, again...my memory and problems solving ability seems to just shut down, just to basic survival things.  Curious.  It's supposed to be really cold tomorrow night, it was already going to be cold (in the low 20's), but now predicted to be windy as well.  That'll be fun.  Need to remember to wear enough, it was my face and toes that felt the brunt of the chill last night.

Memorization.  And Christmas music time.

Good bye

RIP Nelson Mandela.  All the more inspiring for being a regular human being with love and hate like any of us, but not letting the latter control him.  And if he was a human like us, we can all work toward the same. 

This is from John Carlin http://news.yahoo.com/mandela-was-just-a-man--and-that-made-what-he-did-extraordinary-214037514.html 

and then this:

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

-William Ernest Henley

Thursday

Rehearsal process was a struggle.  Hard to stay with partner when I don't have lines memorized, especially the monologues, I kept dropping out of the moment.  I need to do it in smaller chunks of text.  I realize this is what I've been wanting to do with scene work, and even if I'm frustrated by my current lack of ability, it's a huge relief to have the opportunity to work this way, to really slow it down and connect.  I've got about 1/3 memorized, still haven't come up with a task for the run-thru's on Tuesday.  I have no idea what to do.  When I was just talking to her, my emotions were all over the place and I was comfortable expressing all that, but as soon as we get into the work...boom! Just gone.  Got nothing.  Maybe I'm not remembering to breathe enough.  I don't know.  Or I'm afraid I'll "perform" bad, that the truth that I "can't act" will be discovered???  I can rationalize that that would be the point for studying this now, but rational doesn't really jive with the emotions, and they are having none of it.  Keep working.  (And let go of wanting to be "liked"...it doesn't matter in the work, you let whatever happens on stage go, when you walk off of it.)

Yesterday, while wandering around to be out in the sun, I came across this "space" in a clearing.  I don't know if it's an art project (probable) or what.  It's like a phone booth/confessional/space for contemplation/secret meeting place.  Second picture is of a tree.  The sun made the chill seem bearable, but once the sun set, I was underdressed.  It took me two hours to get home from meeting with my scene partner last night.  I eventually just caught a bus going in the general direction because I was super cold so that I could warm up a little, and then walked the rest of the way home. (In a car, it takes 10 minutes door to door.)

Secret meeting place/L. Herlevi 2013

This is a tree/L. Herlevi 2013

Wednesday

My one free evening this week, will rehearse.  Sometimes I feel like part of my brain was raptured and the rest of me returns to the scene of departure and wonders what I was doing and why I stopped in the middle of the process and wandered off.  Overloaded.

Wish I had the time and money to take another class along with this one, to complement the process.  I think I need to start getting up and doing physical theatre stuff when I wake up early, I'm too much in my head again and the reason I'm even doing this now is because of the physical work (both in biomechanics and singing) I did last winter that woke up the idea in me it's possible to find all the stuff I hadn't been able to access through my thoughts, in my body.  Even if I just start with fifteen minutes that's something.  I'm feeling so much resistance, and my center of gravity is creeping up.  It'll help.  (It's easier being responsible to someone, but I'll have to find some strong inner motivation to overcome my inherent inertia.)

I was reading Esper on the bus this morning and one of the exercises had me in tears, I was sitting in one of those side-facing seats, kept having to wipe my cheek, but kept reading.  Then I was trying to think about what I lost (for the scene) and that made me teary, will see if I can actually pull that into the rehearsal process.  Esper says something interesting about objectives, that it's like knowing where you are going, and you have that knowledge to guide you, but you don't need to keep thinking about it.  We haven't actually gotten to objectives yet, perhaps I should stop reading further.  Maybe I should buy it.

The freezing nights bring starry skies, fluffy birds, sparkly mornings.

Tuesday

No snow, got some "grapnel" and rain, ground miraculously dry when I left for work.  It's also slightly warmer than originally forecast, but still chilly.

I just blocked out the first three months of 2014 for classes, crossing my fingers that it's true. I think I will get through my block, even if it hasn't happened yet.  I definitely want to continue, time and money are a small sacrifice for personal and artistic growth.  And tonight we started on the type of work that I want to learn, to do: making your partner more important than the words, using the words to communicate the subtext of what's really going on between you.  I knew of this from my first acting instructor here, with the contentless scene work (five short lines of text that contain no meaning in themselves, but are used to deliver whatever is going on between you.)  It was also part of the scholarship audition.  It's great stuff; difficult to do with more loaded text, text where you easily could have preconceived notions of how to deliver, and you need to throw all of those preconceptions out and have a real conversation using someone else's words.  You know, so you sound like human beings talking, and not actors reading text.  Hard.  Hard.  Hard.  Hard.  Hard.  It was definitely a struggle tonight, but this is where I want to go, and this is the road, which is exciting.  And when someone hits it, there's suddenly life on stage.

I was told to wear a dress (which was my first thought, but I didn't tonight.)  And to come up with a task/action that makes up for something I lost (or never got to have.)  I'm not sure what I need for Sunday, since we aren't doing the task until the last class, and I need an "as if" for sister, and I think for what I lost as well.  And need to clear out schedule to find time to rehearse a few times before Sunday...this is a pretty packed week, and our work schedules are opposite (days vs. nights.)

I think I understand what it means to have your world rocked...it's all one way or the other, there's nothing safe or passive, it's either everything lights up or my heart drops...not saying it's healthy or not, just that it is.

Chance of snow

Fighting off a virus, watching the very bright blue sky, feeling the sun reflect from the windows across the way onto me and wondering if it will snow today.

I need to come up with a task related to something I'm passionate about, that keeps me from being "a girl of summer," which my character is not.  Food.  Cooking.  Travel.  Art.  Photography and performance art, in particular.  Spain.  Nature, in particular birds.  Plants, trees, medicinal nature of things.  Religion/spirituality/philosophy.  Singing and music.  Storytelling.  Food and justice issues.  Altruism and the finding of common ground.  Books/reading/writing.  I'm sure there are others.  Last night I was like, "I don't know: nothing."  What would make a good engrossing task?  What would keep me out of trouble, keep me from being a "summer girl?"  Ah...and what am I wearing?  Need rehearsal clothes. 

We're not getting into context of the play at this point, but when I was in college, I did another scene from this playwright (N. Richard Nash), and on the surface she's a similar type of no-nonsense (Katharine Hepburn played Lizzie Curry in the Rainmaker) character.  (That would be the other time I kissed someone on stage, a friend of mine, a man that time...and only once.)  It's actually a kinda' cool transformation for the character (the "I'm pretty" scene, she sees her value through an outsider's eyes), but at the time I just thought it was corny.

It will be at or below freezing all week which is cold for here.  I have to sing tonight, should probably not wish for snow...still, I do.

Fifteen more hours

The thing about the guy on the bus is that if it had been a woman, I woulda' intervened, is it hypocritical to not have because it was a man, or was I being presumptuous that there was anything wrong?  There was an incident with a woman once, where she started to slam herself into the window to the point where she was bleeding and wailing.  It didn't seem like she could speak or communicate well; the bus driver was asking what she should do, and eventually, she pulled over and called 911.  It seemed at the time that someone had maybe hurt her (prior to her getting on the bus) and she couldn't communicate that.  It was hard to tell if the blood was from before or from slamming herself (in a way of dealing with whatever had happened) on the windows and walls of the bus.  It was a late, crowded bus, and you don't always pay attention to who gets on or off of it, either because you're tired or trying not to make eye contact.  Now it seems trivial to talk about anything else here.

Kinda' excited about the scene work, learning a new way of approaching text.  I was frustrated with the little chair work I got in today, it was just feeling static, and since reading Esper, I didn't feel like I was living up to what the exercise should produce in me.  It just felt so rote, nothing emotional coming up, but maybe that's why you stay with it for half an hour.  Some of the partner exercises are so dynamic and interesting to watch, and I'm not there yet.  It's probably a combination of things: not being specific enough, not dropping into the relationships and meaning enough (or at all) before I come in, along with the fear of the days long crying jag after that voice class (which hit me out of the blue) and fear of violence, maybe.  Fear of being seen as vulnerable, fear of caring too much...I don't know.  Someone else mentioned this, and it's true for me as well, I go through such a wide range of emotions in my regular life, every day, but something shuts down when I get on "stage."  If it's because it feels artificial, then I need to do enough work so that it's not.  I did it in the last clown exercise last summer and felt a lot of emotion toward my partner and that was a random last minute pairing, with no time to prepare for it.  Why could I do it then and not now? (My "as if" was that we had been travelling together and I loved him, but that as soon as we walked off of the stage, I was leaving him and never going to see him again.  I mean, it's simple, specific and it worked...what is getting in my way from finding that now?)

File under "loved"

Or unexpected.  Saw The Hounds of the Baskervilles at the Rep tonight, I had a vague idea of what it would be before I went (had read the storyline) but really ended up enjoying it more and more as it went on.  I especially liked Darragh Kennan (who played Sherlock Holmes) as his other two characters, particularly the one that was a disguise; and I didn't see the ending coming.  You know, it's a mystery, and it's not necessarily espousing great truths, but it was really well-cast (strong across the board), well-written, and well-produced, all of which made it a pleasure to watch.  Definitely in my top five performances I've seen in the past year (the whole show.)

I was there with a friend from the show last summer, though we weren't sitting together.  I waited a little while after the show to walk to the bus stop with him, but didn't see him and really wasn't feeling well (still don't feel well) so left to catch a bus.  On the D-line downtown, there was a young man asleep and holding a couple of sets of packaged headphones.  At first, I just thought he was wearing baggy jeans.  Then I noticed, his pants were really low, and he was wearing the wrong kind of underwear for them (briefs, not boxers) he was showing a lot of skin.  Then I looked at his pants and thought they didn't really look like they fit.  And he had on a zip-up hoody, only partially zipped, but didn't have a shirt on (it's not super cold yet, but it's late) and then he sorta' woke up, either groggy from sleep or drugs or drugged and asked someone where we were and then proceeded to exit off of the bus, pants still down around his knees. (Getting off of the bus there seemed random.)  It didn't look like he'd been beat up, but it almost seemed like someone dressed him in the wrong clothes...it was weird.  When I got off of the bus a few stops later I wondered if I should tell someone, though he probably wasn't at the stop anymore and I didn't see anyone to tell, so I didn't.  What should I have done?  I don't know, and I didn't end up doing anything except pray that he'd be protected from harm.  It was late and sketchy where I got off the bus.  I hope he really did know where he was going.  The woman across from me had a shocked then compassionate look cross her face when she looked up and saw him.  She said something to her friend, but I didn't catch it.  Treat yourselves with kindness.

I hope this isn't food poisoning.