Maybe it's the prednisone

I just had this random memory pop up from my sophomore year of high school.  I guess the recent passing of Malcolm Young of AC/DC made me think of the song "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" which made me think of my friend's little brother who really liked the song.  And then I remembered doing something stupid one afternoon after coming home from school which resulted in my cutting my arm open in three places, and since no one was home at my house, somehow going to the neighbor's across the street with my arms bleeding.  It was just my classmate, and her younger brother and his friends (one of whom was my other friend's brother) home at the time.  They let me in, and I think it was my classmate who took care of me.  But the junior high boys were standing around me, probably a little bit of "Carrie" fascination going on, but I think they were also generally concerned.  Someone got ahold of one of my parents, or someone, because I had to go to the hospital and get stitches.  And I got yelled at for the dumb thing that I did (even if I had a good reason for doing it, it was admittedly the wrong choice: I broke something, that then cut me.)  My family's first reaction at the time tended toward yelling, "Why did you do that?" rather than asking how I was.  Maybe that was a stress reaction.  I imagine they cared on some level, I suppose they had a hard time showing that in a way I could understand.  (Now I would say we had different love languages.  And I understand why I got yelled at, I deserved it, but I also needed the spoken or demonstrated concern for my well being, in a way I could see.)

Anyway, I had just walked into the bathroom when I remembered this, and burst out crying for some reason, my face was soaked.  And I had to stay in there until I stopped and could wipe it with my hands, since I didn't have a towel with me, and I didn't want to freak out my housemate as a sobbing mess.  It was the memory of the junior high kids giving a damn, but even more so, I had friend, and we'd been friends since we were three years old, and I was over at her house a lot, but her father pretty much kept to himself; I don't think in all those years he'd even said a full sentence to me.  He checked up on me that evening to make sure I was okay.   Yeah, that thought of his concern is still making me cry.  He passed away some years ago.

The next day, I went to school with bandages on my arms.  After PE, one of my friends made a half-assed rumor/joke that I'd tried to commit suicide.  The other girls chided me, not in an unkind way, "Liz, why you wanna' kill yourself."  I may have been depressed in 10th grade, but I wasn't suicidal.  Just did dumb shit at times.

And I'm fine, I was having a pretty good day today.  Not sure why I'm remembering that.

Stories to remember

There is a bird with a very high-pitched wheeze outside my window, sharp, it cuts through all other sound.  The clouds are burning off, and soon it will be hot again, in the house.  Thankful for the lull over the past couple of mornings.  Have a bug to clean today, although, stopping to write is putting a bit of a drag on the energy.  Have cleaned a table, and put out new flowers.  At least that looks nice.

Looking at the photos people are posting from the reunion makes me a little regretful. I went to another friend's gig on Friday night, she was in our class as well.  The band before did an REM cover from about 30 years ago, and it was a strange, "where am I?" moment, could've been at a gig back in my 20's again, everyone knew the song.

Read a couple screenplays with former classmates yesterday.  Thankful that someone organized it, also a Meisner group for continuing practice.  Back to the idea that to do art, you need to practice it, but acting is hard to practice alone, since so much of it involves your reaction, to a situation, to another person.  Also, these people are really good at improv (we did improv for some situations after reading the screenplays a couple of times, to see what else came up.)  Really important for everyone, to see what the subtext is, what's going on, what each person thinks the scene is about.

Walking home from an ice cream shop the other day, I cut across the grass, so I could walk barefoot, and decided to check out the fig tree.  Someone was up on the tree, and threw me a couple of figs, the second one burst in my hand, so I ate it when I got home.  They were massive, and juicy, must've been the rain last week.  I appreciate fresh figs from the grocery store, but like any other fruit, so much better from the tree, almost not even comparable.

Earlier today, I went to shake someone's hand, and they bent as if to kiss it, but then stopped.  Someone I'd never met.

All this reading of other people's stories reminds me that I should write my own, things I want to remember, before I forget them.  (And then also, to give myself the liberty to make them into fiction, but not yet.)  And as I began cleaning, I came across undeveloped rolls of film, and I'm itching to get them developed.  They are old, I haven't shot film in a while.  Hopefully, some are from Finland, and from Portugal/Galicia (5 years old, now, I have a memory of taking pictures of some goats in Finistere, late in the day, before I got lost looking for Ara Solis, which doesn't exist.)  Can't get anywhere today to develop them, so will have to wait.  There's a lot of film, at least they are all in one place, now.

I should just dedicate 15 minutes to one area, then I won't get overwhelmed and might actually accomplish something.

Oh, poop, primary ballots are due on Tuesday, need to figure that out, lot of people running.

Wandering

Psycho-geography.  Spent all day wandering alone, mostly along waterways.  Places I hadn't been to in a while.  No memory triggers (directly related to place.)  Passing an abandoned Metro building, the gate was open I walked in.  Shattered glass, I took a picture.  Memories...I was five or six, it was summer, the streets were deserted except for us.  I don't know how we got there, bus?  Everyone else on duty. Stevie Wonder coming through the window of some building we passed.  Grilled cheese with pickles in the cafeteria, we are the only customers.  Sometimes I want to go back, I don't know what reality is anymore; I dream so much about that landscape I don't know actual from dream.  We drove by the house, to show where we had lived, but it was gone.  Only a patch of lawn remained, a house-sized space between two others.  It didn't make me sad.

Hours later we meet again.  I speak my mind about a show (I've thought about it a lot) to someone involved, he doesn't walk away or get defensive or change the subject or seem to hate me.  Redemption.  And then a while later, a tenuous meeting, another kind of redemption.  It doesn't matter if I see you again, there's a little less to fear. So why you and not him?

Geese, July 20/L Herlevi 2014

The Clown, July 20/L Herlevi 2014

Richard Sera's Wake, July 20/L Herlevi 2014

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.