Pictures from Tuesday

Hit about a 3-hour window of calm weather.  It was actually sunny before I got off of work, but I couldn't leave yet.  Got a lot done, but not all.  Pulled up most of the tomatillos, and now I have to sort through a large bag's worth to decide if they are safe to consume or not (I have no idea what stage of ripeness they need to be, or that they have reached, since they basically stay the same color.)  I left when it just began to rain, as I had a large (paper) bag of stuff to put in the yard waste bin.  The rain picked up as I got off of the bus, but I made it home without the bag breaking.  I'll have to go back tomorrow, regardless of the weather.

Is it support staff appreciation week?  Two of the groups I help schedule rooms for (not my office) gave me gifts this week: a coffee cup (the kind with a lid, name is eluding me), and a gift certificate.  Also won another gift basket from a different grocery store.  This time nail polish, most of which I will probably re-gift.  It's because I enter all the time.

Here are a few pictures from Tuesday.

Heading out, October 27/L Herlevi 2015

Fog at Bainbridge, October 27/L Herlevi 2015

Into the unknown world, October 27/L Herlevi 2015

Obscure, October 27/L Herlevi 2015

Emptiness, October 27/L Herlevi 2015

Friday

Woke up to a dark, wet, and now, blustery morning.  A month's worth of rain in two days.  And I need to clean up my garden today and tomorrow.  It's my own doing of course, I was hoping things would ripen a bit more (tomatillos, for one), and I haven't had time to get back since last Saturday.

On Tuesday (the nicest day of the week), took the ferry out to Bainbridge to visit with friends, I think it's been four years (!) since I've seen any of them.  Caught the boat home as the sun was dropping low, fog lingering, water calm, and a relatively quiet ferry ride.  Gliding back toward the city, only an outline in the fog, but always visible, as was the Mountain, there was a sense of sailing into the unknown, like being at the edge of the known world: serene, yet desolate, and a pervading sense of melancholy, that took me a day to shake, even though I walked off the ferry to go have dinner with another group of friends.  Ah, maybe it's the weather, the time of year, the season of Scorpio, the silence, the sense of impending loss (real or imagined.)  Again, the idea of what am I waiting for, why am I holding my breath?

Cooked dinner for some college students on Wednesday, and by the time that was over, the melancholy had lifted.  The result of action, I think; and giving.  We made chili.  It was edible, but would've been improved by more salt, and a longer cooking time.  Also, we made way too much.

Did my first "activation" of the sculpture work last night.  I watched the second group, they did the same pieces, I think.  Watched to see how they determined when to take it off, you do everything at the same time.  Also, I found I wanted mostly to look at the people, and not at the form itself, had to train myself to look at the overall shape.  I'm signed up again on Saturday, as part of a public lecture.

There are a ton of shows I want to see, lot of friends doing work right now.  I really need to get off my butt and audition.

Cheers.

Stuff happening

Feeling more inspired, looking at classes for winter: an acting class working in verse (which I'll have to audition for), or a beginning play-writing class (which I'll have to apply for), or some other story-oriented courses.  Any of them would be useful.  I've been thinking a lot about story telling, what I like to see/hear, and I don't know if I can do it yet, but since that auditioning class year, it's been on my mind whenever I watch a show: what is the point-of-view?  What is the director/writer trying to get at?  And the projects that work best for me as an audience member, are the ones where I can engage in at that level, and I realize that's not important to everyone, but I want it.  I'd like to figure out how to do it.  (I can be all over the map, myself.)

Also, I skipped this art training (and was thankfully able to do a make-up session on Saturday) in order to attend this party at the Burke Museum on Thursday, where the drinks were strong and after having one I had conversations about poison frogs while I casually picked up mollusks and let them cruise along my hand (the snail was interested, the slug sorta' went to sleep.) Later I moved on to have a long discussion about spiders with a spider expert (those big, purplish spiders running across the floor and hanging out in the bathtub are probably male spiders looking for a mate.  The females are usually hiding somewhere.  They all spend their whole lives in your house, beneficial, as they eat other insects in the house.  Not likely to ever actually bother you.  European house spiders.)  I guess you could also have held a tarantula or a snake, but those lines were longer, so I didn't.  And opossums are remarkably soft, just as a reference, you probably don't want to be petting one in your yard.  (And whoever planned that event, that was a brilliant marketing move, both for fundraising, and for getting people into the museum; they had to turn people away.)

The art training was to be an "activator" for Franz Erhard Walther cloth sculptures.  A friend had printed out the volunteer opportunities at the Henry Art Gallery and left the paper on my desk, so I signed up, not really knowing what it meant; I thought it was helping the public directly interact with the material.  Instead, we unfold the clothes and then "put them on,"  and essentially become part of the sculpture itself.  These are all from the 1960's, I think.  The artist was there on Saturday to go over them and answer questions.  We will only be able to "activate" ones that we practiced with.  There is one where two people are essentially yoked by the material, about three feet apart and facing each other, and that one almost feels like performance art.  There is something that happens in the intimacy of the distance, much like the chair work in Meisner.  I didn't actually do it on Saturday, but I learned it, so I can do it in the future.  I want to do it, I'm curious how we will react.  All the other ones were held taut, but this one can't be because it's around your neck; someone commented that it felt like the material was alive, because it moved with the breathing.  Anyway, there's an open house on Thursday, and the show runs through March.  Not sure how often the sculptures will be activated.

That two-person one made me think about cultural differences with distance and contact.  The artist mentioned that once, when another piece where people step through, facing one another, was in a gallery in Europe, how a man from one culture just stood still the whole time, and the woman facing him, from another culture kept walking back and forth through it.  I find it all very interesting.  (Like in greeting and leave taking, do you bow, shake hands, kiss, hug?)  Anyway, I'm excited to be a part of this.

After the training there was an "art break" where a group of us experienced and discussed Pae White's "Command-Shift-4" which is downstairs.  Inspired by the supergraphics of Sea Ranch, California, it's made of yarn, paint, and numbers.  Someone commented that it was similar to the "half the air in a given space" exhibit in the filling up the space with very little, how all (except the bull head), the materials in this show could fit in a paper box, and yet they take up the entire ballroom.  I was wondering how different generations see it, for instance, spending my early childhood in the 70's, it made me think of funk, cartoons, album covers, and Detroit.  One of the curators, who must be around the same age, got the references, but didn't think of Detroit (as he is actually from there.)  But what does someone born in 2000 or 1990 think of?  I had a very strong, distinct reaction to it, I don't usually (though I cried when I stood in front of both El Greco's "The Holy Trinity" (something about the face of the angel in blue) and Picasso's "Guernika.")  Triggered memories.  (And I love the tours and the discussions that bring more depth to the experience of art.)

Also, found out about a show I was hoping to see, so will definitely try to go, and just got back into cold-reading practice again.

Been in a bit of a funk, but waking up again.

Only this

Took the day off yesterday.  Had PT in the morning, after freaking myself out all weekend about the hip issue, and wondering if it meant that I'd be unable to walk shortly; contacted my regular doctor over the phone and she just prescribed stronger anti-inflammatories...anyway, felt better after the PT, so maybe it really is just my back.  Read and watched movies, interspersed with walks, all day.  Got no gardening done (which had been my intention.)  Still, walking around the lake mid-day felt somewhat like an illicit joy, like playing hooky.  With the exception of summer vacations, I've rarely had a weekday afternoon truly free, where I didn't have to: 1) do homework; 2) be somewhere later; 3) look for a place to live; or some other task.  Weekends just don't have the same feeling, and I didn't have any free time last weekend, and no other free nights this week or next.

On Saturday morning, I'd gone to get coffee and then ended up half-way around the lake, kneeling on a dock and staring into the reflection on the water, mesmerized.  There was something about the angle of the sun, the clouds, the darkness of the water, and almost (but not quite) stillness of the surface that made me lose sense of perspective, losing sense of where the edge of the dock was in comparison to the water, and I had a sense of looking into infinity.  Ducks quacked and whistled in the glare of the sun, enough that I couldn't make out who they were.  The eastern sky above the mountains had a pinkish-orange tone, even though it was long past sunrise.  There was rain falling high in the sky, gray curtains; a wind must have been blowing, pushing the lower half of the curtain at a 90 degree angle to the upper half, making the sky look like a mirror.  I was there for longer than I'd planned.  (I was kneeling because it's the only way I could sit.)  I heard a man's voice call out behind me, "It's a nice place to meditate."  I turned and looked at him to answer.  He asked, "Who designed the lake?"  And I answered something about water retention, because an old roommate used to make fun of the lake, saying it wasn't "real" that it was only storm run-off.  (And while that's where the in-flow comes from now, it was actually carved by a glacier, and got it's name because of algal blooms.  It used to cover more area, but when they put in Hwy 99, the area around got filled, the former creek flows that fed and drained the lake got covered over, and now it is pretty stagnant.  But it is a natural formation...I looked it up after.)  We said a few other things and he left.  He looked familiar, but I can't place him; some former life, I suppose.  Anyway, I wasn't carrying a camera, which I usually do, because I hadn't planned on walking there, yet, but the coffee shop was across the street...so, no pictures.  Only in my mind.

Ran into a friend as I started walking again, he turned around and walked with me, we talked about theatre, and perception, and truth, and witnessing.  I might write more on that later, not ready yet.

And because of the walking issue, was glad that I decided to finally walk in Spain when I did, and as much as I did (almost 2,000 miles.)  And then other things I've learned this week, just made me think about what I (we) get hung up on, why we don't say "yes" when we can, the petty things that don't matter, when do we think "life will happen," when is this "tomorrow" or later?...There will never be the perfect moment to do something.  What the hell are we (I) waiting for?

Friday

Friday.

In the morning, I search your face as the sun seeks you under the overpass. And writing now, hours later, I can't recall what I'd hoped to find.

At the performance, arriving late, just as it had begun, so waiting further off on the sidewalk, while most everyone gathered in a parking lot, encircled by runners.  A beginning.  Feeling left out, ceremony.  People wearing name tags, I wondered if I should have one, too?  (And when we entered the lobby after, I did make one, though it was unnecessary.)  Instructed to move closer when the dancers/runners stopped, a story began.  New ways of thinking about the streets (what was before, and before that?  What ghosts walk alongside us?)  Wondering about the whales, was that just part of a story or are they here, waiting along the waterfront? (Someone saw whales at Deception Pass, not the southern pods, who only eat fish, these ate a mammal, perhaps a migration.)  And then we marched solemnly together through the neighborhood and into the theatre, smoke sat heavily along the floor and the performers gathered and waited on the stage.  And so it continued.  I was a witness, though I don't know what happened.

Going home after, as I got off of the first bus, a man lying on his back on the sidewalk in front of me, hands at his side, luggage three feet south of his feet.  I stopped and watched his breath, not sure if I should approach any closer. Not sure if he was alive.  He did breath, then his left hand twitched, as I continued to watch him, he rolled to his side, eventually sat up, I asked if he was all right, he nodded, I can only guess if it was in answer.  He lay back down.  A woman further down the street waved me over, asked if we should call 911, neither of us had a phone.  A bus pulled up and she told the driver, he proceeded to get off of the bus and walk over to the man, said something to him, told us he recognized the man, that he was drunk, that he would call someone.  Her bus arrived, I crossed the street to wait.  He pulled himself unsteadily to his feet, unbalanced legs wide. Sat down, pulled his luggage (a blanket in one of those plastic zipper things they come in) over to him, zipper broken.  I began to read, when I looked up again, he was gone.  Just his luggage there. I worked my eyes to the corner, he was talking to another man, then stumbled into the street, traffic coming, he made it across and wandered off into the night, I prayed any angels to spare to watch him tonight.  As my bus pulled up, I heard another man say, "oh, shit" and then the sound of piss hitting the sidewalk as I got on the bus.  No inhibition.  Sirens blare in succession the whole time I wait.

Monday

Ah, who writes this dream dialogue anyway?  A friend gave me pick-up line so ridiculously stupid it woke me up...I may have to use it for something.  (And I find myself ever so slightly in love with that person today, so I guess it woulda' worked in waking life.)

Went for an urban hike yesterday, good to get out with other people.  Afterward, sat around re-reading my clown notes, and coming up with more ideas for pieces.

Anyway, all of it a spot of levity on an otherwise heavy day.  Being a parent is always, not just when you feel like it.

Random things

The closest weather gauge has the rain at almost an inch (it's now 2:22 pm), and I believe it: the side of our yard, against the house, is flooded.  A sudden increase of wind kicked up as well (and it was quite warm, though the temperature has since dropped back to the low 60's.)  We seem to be in this pattern lately of getting a month's worth of rain on one day.  I  don't mind the wind, but I hope the rain lets up a little, I have a gig shortly.

After, ended up bidding at the auction...happily lost on the mandolin, someone told me later he thought the frets were off, sounded like an easy enough fix if you knew what you were doing, but I don't.  Guess, I'll still learn the banjo, then.  Ended up with a very colorful (chaotically so), 70's style, afghan for $10 because no one else bid on it.  Always wanted one, and it's getting cold at night again.  I might pay a little more when I give them the check, also ended up with a clutch purse from the 60's or 70's, and a loaf of bread.  It was a fundraiser for the Finnish church where we rehearse.

(Apparently, it did get warmer when the back end of a hurricane passed through.  It's still breezy, but the rain has let up.)

Went to a puppet show last night, raunchier than last time I went, and stretched the definition of puppetry.  There was a workshop today, but I couldn't go because of the singing gig. I'd like to get more involved in it.   I like puppets.  (In my mind, circus/puppet/clown/mime, etc., all kinda' live in the same world.)

And in other clown news, a bunch of clowns rallied to save a block of Belltown slated to be redeveloped and succeeded in getting landmark status for one of the buildings mid-block: Well done!

Ah, this blanket makes me happy.

Saturday

Can't believe it's already October.  Feel like I just saw a friend, but it was almost a month ago.

When I passed by the Henry on Tuesday afternoon, the room was free of balloons.  I guess there were special gloves with pins in them used to pop the balloons.  It might've been kinda' fun (if exhausting) to do that.

Woke up dark. Weird dreams about empty theatres, going back to houses I never lived in.

I keep volunteering to bake things lately, not sure why, I can probably count on two hands the amount of items I've baked in the past ten years, not counting this recent run.  Made these cookies from a childhood recipe, looking at the book, it's from 1965, I think.  I'd asked my mom if I could have it last time I was home.  The dough was really wet, and I was thinking I needed to refrigerate it, but my roommate happened to walk by and comment that it wouldn't make any difference and that I should just add "more batter," which I interpreted to mean "flour."  They turned out, got them in on time.  I'd been stressing out about it (as I always do) but in the end, they only take about 10 minutes max to mix, and 12 minutes to bake...I spent more time worrying about them than it actually took to make them.  (Peanut butter, made use of the jar I got in the gift basket.)  The book itself (one of those paperback books that people send recipes into) has all sorts of cookies you never see anymore (carrot, banana, date and peanut butter, etc.); I wonder if anyone would eat them, the choices around here are basic (peanut butter, chocolate chip, oatmeal, snickerdoodle, etc.), would these be too unfamiliar?  Some of the ethnic bakeries (Scandinavian, Iranian, Greek) have more choices, but Seattle is lacking in variety.  I digress.

The folk choir sang at this heritage award concert last night, with a Finnish-American kantele player.  While waiting for the program to start I saw a flyer for a free vocal workshop today.  My housemate woke me up at 1:30 am by hollering and stomping up the stairs, and I stayed up and watched a movie after that, then the power went out.  I decided I'd go to the workshop, the power wasn't back on by the time I left.  It was all day, I just got home.  Mostly for opera singers, as it turned out, but to my mind, any performance advice is good, and I enjoyed it.  We did classic/opera improv, and since improv scares the pants off of me, I volunteered to go up in the first group: four people sat in a circle, touching each other, everyone with eyes shut, and the quartet created a song together, by one person starting and then the others coming in and adding and building on it.  My group worked only with vowels, but later on groups got words they could take apart and explore...either way, the results were haunting and beautiful.  Then there were jibberish arias, mostly those were the opera singers that did them.  Not a form of voice that gets to do improv much.  I left when they were practicing auditioning, I have to work tonight.

The movie I watched in the middle of the night was "The Devil Wears Prada."  It's not a great movie, but I like it for the relationship between Andrea and Miranda, there aren't many movies that have that intense of a relationship between women (and I love Stanley Tucci.)  My only problem with the movie, and I haven't read the book, is that I don't think Andrea falls enough for her friends to turn on her like they do.  It's not justified (for me) by what's on screen.  The way it's played, she deserves more sympathy than scorn.

Been thinking about friendships lost.  Three in particular I'm willing to fight for to get back.  One, I've started to rekindle (the one I've already mentioned.)  Another, can tell me to ef-off if they want, but I feel I need to try.  And the third is so complicated.  But recently, I came to the conclusion that perhaps there was some outside sabotage involved, not that we didn't do enough ourselves, we did, youth and insecurity.  I don't know where to start, but it's the only one my heart breaks over.  I can forgive the hurtful words, though since I heard them secondhand, I don't even know that they were ever the truth, only that at one time, I believed them to be, and so I was done with it.  I suspect at this point that they weren't fully true, I don't know why they were told as if they were, though it no longer matters.  Deep, deep down, I think there's love still buried, a friendship that mattered.  How does one begin to recover something so long lost?