Monday

By morning, fog had enveloped everything.  No surgery for now.  Hand therapy.  (Which I might add, I tried to get 2 years ago, but all that was offered to me at that time was surgery.  Maybe there'd be less damage...no way to know.)

I am completely overwhelmed.  I know I keep saying that, but there are not enough hours in a day or a month to do everything I said I would.  Tunnel vision, just jumping through the hoops as they appear now. Wish I'd bought a tv dinner, I need to eat and am too tired to cook...working my way through a bag of almonds. (Came home, dropped off my stuff, went to rehearsal, just got home again, dealt with the garbage and recycling and now I'm tired.)

Started reading the book "Quiet-The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" by Susan Cain.  It's an interesting read, and I liked her TED Talk on YouTube... I had been thinking maybe I'm a shy extrovert, but on the unscientific introvert quiz, 15/20 were true for me and a couple were "depends on the context."  I'm fine in a big group once I know people.  And I like crowds, but eventually get overwhelmed, and noise bothers me more the later it gets, exponentially.  I might actually be an introvert that's closer to the center than the far end.  (For instance, I like performing.  And I'll take big risks, but not regularly, and I tend to mull over them a lot beforehand.)

Time to learn more lyrics, just in case I get the exercise soon.  And to get solid on why I'm doing my physical task.  Got my membership card today.  Feel official now:)  Met the new choir director, she studies Baltic music, I think.  I was asking her about Songfest and if she was going this summer, she is, not the one in Tallin, but the one in Lithuania.  I want to go to the one in Tallin and sing "Tuljak" with 40,000 people, maybe next time.

I have a couple of blurry pictures of birds and this (the birds didn't want to be photographed today-a n. flicker, a nuthatch and a bunch of robins):

Alley Wall, Jan 27/L Herlevi 2014

Afraid

Meisner.  Chair work is tortuous.  It's harder having taken such a long break from it.  I like the value of it, I see and value it's usefulness in connecting with someone else on stage and being able to pick up on what's going on, and I know it makes me a much better actor.  But, if you are easily distracted, which I am, it's really hard to do.  And I realize doing it is good in helping me to focus, calling my focus back again and again.  It's just a really long time to completely focus on someone else, or to have them focus on me.  What is seen?  It's so intimate.

Today is class seven of twenty four.  We are about to go into three classes a week (for three weeks, I think), this scares me.  I realize I survived this in clown last summer, and that was intense and I'd sit there with growing dread knowing I'd have to enter the ring at some point...it's easier to go first.  Anyway, I feel that way about the two-minute speech tonight, I'd rather get a root canal than give a speech.  And this class is scaring me now more than clown.  I feel tense in my core just writing that.  And I guess my biggest fear is that after surviving these nine months (like gestation) nothing will have changed...that I'm really just a fraud.  Maybe it's that fear that keeps my imagination hiding in some dark corner I can't get at.  Still, I think perhaps I have changed and it's just all the voices that told me I wasn't good enough trying to drown me out.  Time to get my homework done, so I show up with something to share, and those voices don't win today.

Peace.

Two Days, Jan 26/L Herlevi 2014

Saturday

Just got home from catering gig, reception for a dance troupe...they were very nice.  I was feeling edgy (for the last few hours) eventually had to leave because my bus was gonna stop running soon and I was getting really bossy.  Not sure what that was all about.  A little stressed about the homework for tomorrow, still not sure what I'm doing my two-minute impassioned speech about.  I feel passionate about a lot of things, but when I have to...hitting my very regular wall: emotions/imagination going flat when I need to call on them.  Sigh.  (Got more songs I'll sing though.)

Went grocery shopping before the catering job, and was telling the cashier I had bought too much and wasn't sure how I was going to carry it home and just as I said that, my boss stopped at the end of the register and offered me a ride home, which I took her up on.  I have odd instances of synchronicity.

The first picture is because it seemed to me that the fog made the skyline look taller somehow, and the second was of a house that's decorated for all holidays.

Skyline, Jan 25/L Herlevi 2014



Heart, Jan 25/L Herlevi 2014

Procrastination doesn't help

Well, this is a fine time to go crush-less...not even anyone on tv or a movie or anything.  Nada.  Well, I guess that leaves me with: rage, revenge, terror, or triumph (I did do triumph last week, but maybe I could go for it more.)

So, I rushed out of work and got to the library just as it was closing and got the book checked out.  Skimmed over it on the bus, dilemma: it's from 1993 (one strike), looking over the auditor comments for the last few general auditions there's a fair amount of "not so much sexual, violent, profane, etc." and these scripts are fairly: sexual, violent, profane, etc...there's one that goes black comedy, but my other one goes in that direction, and I'm looking for contrast.  I really want something straight up drama, without trying to prove how edgy it can be (it's not really anymore, anyway.)  It's a tough call, I'm going on the auditor comments, but I have very little experience auditioning (I have auditioned, but I didn't know what I was doing), and the person who I asked for advice has a lot of experience, and I should listen to her.

Went to go pick up my mail, but didn't get the TPS membership card, yet.  I think I'm supposed to get one.  Just bought a theatre pass, too, though I don't really have any free time in Feb: we are in class 16 hours a week for most of the month.  Still need a head shot.  Maybe I'll just shoot it myself.  (It's not entirely out of the question, I have a lot of self-portraits from earlier in life when I did more studio work.  Need someone to do something with my hair though.)

My ankle is really stiff, hurt to walk earlier (before I stopped for the day.)  I don't remember tripping and spraining it.  Curious.  Epsom salts? 

Someone commented to me that she thought facebook was narcissistic...I think about that every time I post now.  Totally aware that this is too.  Cheers.

It was so blue out, and then the skyline looked so clean and new and shiny as the sunset faded pinks into cobalt into black...full of stars.

Bridge, Jan 24/L Herlevi 2014

Poplars, Jan 24/L Herlevi 2014

Sunset from the bus, Jan 24/L Herlevi 2014

January 22

Read "Other Desert Cities" on the bus.  Great dialogue.  Somewhat unexpected twist, not sure how I feel about it.  I get the ending, I get why, but I don't think it's as strong as what came before it.  Was waiting in Belltown to see if my library hold would show up on the shelves before closing, but decided I wanted to go home instead of walking back.  It was the other monologue source that it was suggested I look through.  Guess other people received same advice: all copies now have holds on them.  Got a little bit of writing done.

Here's the daily.

Chapter 1, Jan 22/L Herlevi 2014

Monday in January

Woke up with a horrible headache, dehydration, but I might as well have been drinking.  We ran around playing follow the leader last night, and I didn't drink enough after.  It went on for a while.  By the time I managed to drag myself to the store to get ibuprofen this morning, I had drunk enough water that the headache had mostly subsided.  I didn't do anything for MLK Day.  Read and cleaned and got rid of more stuff at home.  Came across this quote from Kabir (as quoted in John Brierley's A Pilgrim's Guide to the Camino Portugués- Someone asked me about the Camino de Santiago yesterday, so it's been on my mind.) :

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive,

Jump into experience while you are alive!

Think...and   think...while you are alive.

What you call 'salvation' belongs to the time before death,

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

Do you think ghosts will do it after?

 

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

Just because the body is rotten-

That is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

 

If you find nothing now,

You will simply end up with an apartment in the city of death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life

You will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out Who the Teacher is,

Believe in the Great Sound!

 

Went for a walk near dusk.  Wanted pictures of birch trees.  Here are a couple of those.

Birch, Jan 20/L Herlevi 2014

Dusk, Jan 20/L Herlevi

 



No show for me

Got up in the middle of the night and watched the Japanese movie "Departures."  Totally wide awake now.  It's about a cellist in Tokyo who moves back to his hometown after his orchestra disbands.  He answers a job for "departures" thinking it's related to travel, but ends up preparing the deceased for "departing."  A lovely, gentle film...a three-hanky experience, but perfect.  Ranks up there with "Ice Fever" (an Icelandic film about a Japanese man, also dealing with death ritual) as one of my favorite films.  I usually fall asleep when I watch films on my computer, but this was quiet and engaging, completely awake. (It's 5:30 am.  It's due back at the library today.)

Now I guess I'm not going to 14/48 tonight either (disappointed, I really want to go), my scene partner doesn't want to go because it runs pretty late (I only had a late night 2/1 comp left), which is true, if I take the bus, I'll get home after 1 am.  We need to do chair work.  I started writing on both the things for tomorrow (prep work for my emotional task, and general ideas of what I'd do if I suddenly had $100 million.  It's not "juicy" enough, but it's a start.)  Now, I'm trying to find a song to sing that "makes me alive."  Music pretty much always makes me alive, and my best exercises involved music in some form or another, but...now that I have to do it, it's sent my emotional response into "rebellion" mode.  Sigh.  Most of my Finnish music is at work because I left suddenly, and I was thinking of using something from that, but I need to memorize it...I need to look up the structure of a sonnet as well.  Probably will end up singing part of the Kermit the Frog song or Finlandia...I know I have that buried here somewhere, I sang it recently.

Meant to go out again, but I didn't.  So, here's my daily picture.  Coffee foam heart.

Coffee-foam Heart, Jan 18/L Herlevi 2014
 

End of the week

Not to get all Matrix-y here, but if people open doors for you, you have to actually walk through them on your own.  As nice as it would be, no one's here to hold your hand (or mine, as the case may be.)  And a lot of doors have opened.  I'm terrible with follow-thru, but currently forcing myself to do something, anything to make myself move toward what I say I want (but apparently afraid to hope for.  But if I've done, or am doing, the work, I have as much right to enter as anyone else.)  I also have a serious commitment problem, I think I'm afraid of closing doors behind me.  You do have to choose at some point.  It doesn't have to be the "right" or perfect choice, I just need to commit to it.  I can say this in general, but I'm mostly thinking of choices on stage, in class.  It's making my actions/interactions muddy.  Make big choices! (and commit to them!)

I'm excited to see what the shows will be tonight.  I watched a Vimeo video last night on it, the directors and actors are all drawn the morning of.  They posted it earlier, too.  Trying to give my 2/4 comps away, but can't wait any longer for date/time.  I did give one away, I'll probably use two of them, myself...but I have one more.

Sadly, lower expectations doesn't keep disappointment at bay.

The show was great.  Saw it 2x (mostly, I left before the very last one because I didn't want to miss the very last bus.  In retrospect, I probably coulda' stayed, but why risk it?  Also, I was feeling pretty sick to my stomach all night.  Not sure what's up with that.)  The 8 pm show was sold out, so lots of people standing.  I saw it from the back, near the middle, and saw the 10:30 show from the side.  The middle was definitely better for the first few plays-there were seven, but the side was good for others.  Someone I didn't realize was an actor, was friggin' hilarious.  There was some wonderful physical work, noticeably in the first piece after the intermission called "Boxed Wine" and also by a woman that played a dead turtle (come back from the dead) in "My Pet and My Dead Pet."

I was ushering through the beginning of the second show.  One of my best friends from when I did theatre (long ago) showed up to the 8 pm show.  I haven't seen him in probably 15 years.  It was great.  I think about him a lot.  Last time I saw him was strange, I was working as a waitress and he came into the restaurant and I didn't talk to him because I felt stupid because I was working at that restaurant.  I was just insecure.  I've always felt like an ass about it.  He introduced himself to me tonight (I had a name tag on, and he came through my door) and we hugged, and then he came over and introduced me to his wife, and we talked a bit.  It was good.  I needed that.

Bus got me home after 1 am.  And it's pouring down rain.  And there were geese flying and honking to each other between the bus stop and home.  These pictures are from Friday.  Gone from (boring) night shots to cacti. (I spent my lunch hour in a greenhouse looking at desert plants and frogs.)

 

Not Cacti, Jan 10/L Herlevi 2014

January 10/L Herlevi 2014
 

January 6

Here's the photo for January 6, 2014.

 

January 6/L Herlevi 2014