Wednesday

While I was looking elsewhere, the trees near the entrance to the building became covered in leaves.  They cast a green glow in the rising morning light as I pass by them.

In class last night, talked about "conflict" and the idea that we know we are going to lose in the end, we know we will die, but we choose to fight for things anyway.  We choose to pursue love anyway.  It's what makes us interesting.  It's what makes us brave.

Here's a poem for the day (I'm on a Neruda kick):

Sonnet XVII: I do not love you as if you were brine-rose, topaz

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

 

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

 

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda 

Trust

Way too scattered.  Feel like I'm running in one direction, chipping away at something, then running off in a different one and chipping away at that.  It's exciting to be in a place where anything is possible, but exhausting to not be able to stand on anything solid until things settle.  It's like being in the middle of a whirlwind (or being the wind), I don't know what direction to go in, I don't know direction.  All that remains is trust, and a belief that the world is "safe."

Happy that we're mostly back to a regular class schedule, it helps me feel grounded, and that the work is progressing, and not in a vacuum.  I need the interaction, the connection, the feedback.  And the accountability, there's so much going on, if I don't have to focus on something, I won't, and I need to.

I am by no means in despair, actually feeling rather upbeat, but I like this poem by Wendell Berry (and as it's National Poetry Month):

"THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS"
by Wendell Berry

 

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

After class, stressed out again: so much to get done, so little time, such a lack of clarity in my head...so, head feels like it's screaming.  First things first...choose an event, buy a tape, record the exercise.  Shit. Oh, and I still haven't done the empathy exercise.

Back to the beginning

The strawberries I bought on Saturday have sprouted fur already.  My housemate commented that at least you know there's nothing on them, and offered to pick through them to salvage, so I gave them to him.  He's braver than I.  I salvaged a few.  I should probably eat them already.  I'm itching to get outside, nicest day in months, possibility of hitting close to 70 degrees.  Have begun my new slew of housing contacts.  Optimism!

Back to the love thing, maybe there is no such thing as a "love of your life, ie soul mate."  Maybe we've just bought into a fantasy and we "wait" for something we will never find, missing out on people we'd be compatible with and would be good for us and vice versa.  Maybe it's just a marketing ploy to sell books to lonely people.  I don't know.  (I was just having this conversation with someone, we have it fairly regularly.)  I go back and forth, it's a nice fantasy, but it's not so nice if it makes you look over someone's shoulder.  It's not nice, if it holds you back from living.  And how would you even know if you met them?  You just need to decide to build a life with someone, with each other, I suppose.  Commit daily to each other and to making it work.  (This is kinda' deja vu, I might have written this last year, as well.)  Jury in my head is out, but tends to lean slightly in the latter direction, after all, fantasies keep you from actually living.  (Okay, now I'm sounding like the movie Serendipity, which yes, I admit, I have seen on tv, and also a word someone just used right now...more synchronicity.)  But the thought of being someone's entire universe all the time, makes me feel claustrophobic.  I want a relationship, I want to feel like we trust each other and that the ground is solid, and that we share our lives, but I don't want to be so enmeshed with someone to the point of suffocation.  I'm pretty independent.  It sounds conflicted, but I think a lot of people are able to find that.  Yeah?  Always the possibility that I change my mind, but there it is.

Futility lingers like smoke

shoving hope into the outer reaches of the room.  The feeling remains, less today than last night, but it's still there, and a panic below the surface that I won't find an affordable/comfortable/safe place to live before the end of the month (and yeah, I know, it's only the 6th.  I just want to set this, so I can put my energy into other things, I also need to do.)  The ones I had been in contact with all seem to have fallen through, so: start over.

I'll probably feel better if I get some of the homework done, or started really.  I'm overwhelmed, there's just a lot that has to get done.  And that makes me panic, and feel trapped.  I pretty much just stop, and freeze in place.  And I know I need to act, to do something, anything, to get out of it.  And I will.  I'm just panicking.  Just a step in a new direction.

I woke up at 3 am, thinking I'd heard knocking on a door.  Still don't know if I imagined it, but I lay there trying not to make any sound and reaching for pepper spray.  Coulda' just been a dream, I don't know.  Couldn't go back to sleep.  Worked on my monologues (silently), and re-started my meditation practice that had fallen off recently (past few months.)  Actually managed to stay awake for all of it:)  Looking for an oracle to show me some light.  And the thing is, I want to walk into something good, a better situation, rather than just run away from a bad one.  (And I guess what I'd looked at weren't the right ones...but does it always need to be right in the nick of time?  Can't these things work out early?)  There is a difference.  I want my life to get better.  And even though I feel like if I don't fight it constantly, I slide back into the same rut, I have to believe that life will work out, that because I'm not the same person I was even last year, because I've changed, the world I'm inhabiting is different.  As we change, our worlds change around us.  It comes down to a matter of trust (you'd think I'd have learned this life lesson by now...but I get this one quite a bit, even had a miracle-or ten-around this, and it's still a struggle.)  But there it is.  Again.

Later.  Oh, wow, as they say "Ask and you shall receive."  Okay.  Now I'm only feeling cranky because of low blood sugar and cabin fever (feel this way every Sunday, always better when there's class in the evening or something) but no longer panicky.  Guess I'll keep cleaning, it feels like getting something moving.  I have a ridiculous amount of books.

Saturday Night

Everything changes...sometimes that's all we've got to hold onto.  Everything in flux, more now than usual, but always in flux.  Will start all over again.

The rain falls.  Gravity wins.  Water will seek and find it's source.  Always.

Whatever unrest in my private universe, the world goes on: winter transitions into spring into summer into fall, everything as it should be.  It will work out.  As it will.  As it will.

Lone tree/L Herlevi 2014

Lawn flowers/L Herlevi 2014

Saturday

Went to another "Incubator" show last night.  Again, just really enjoy seeing what people are creating, I think all three pieces were original works; I didn't keep my program (again.)  Last night had the added bonus of Shellie Shulkin, probably my favorite working actress in Seattle, in the middle piece, Serpent's Tooth, by Susan McNally (who also wrote the play Hearts that I went to the staged-reading of on Monday.)  Shit, she's good.  I found all three pieces engaging, nice emotional transitions for the actors.

On the way to the bus after, I am bombarded with requests for money: a quarter, a dollar, more than I usually am.  After I respond, they tell me to "be safe out there."  I feel an odd heat rising up my legs from my feet, from the pavement (?) I don't know.  I don't feel sick anymore (I was most of the day.)  When I look up, I can still see the sliver of the moon fairly high, which also seems odd, I suppose I expect it to cross the sky quicker than it does, it's doesn't seem all that further along than it did six hours before.  I think the bus is late, but it's only because I looked at the wrong schedule.  It's only a little after 9 pm when I get back home.  I watch a strange and wonderful Italian movie called Le Quatrro Volte about a goat herder who dies half-way through, and then it follows the path of his soul as it inhabits a goat, a tree, and a charcoal kiln.  Essentially there is no dialogue, just everyday life.  And the behavior of the animals is also pretty wonderful, especially the goats.  Such strange creatures.

I have a pile of library material, this was one in the stack.  Going to a matinee on my pass, and then hopefully to a third "Incubator" show, it's sold out, but there always seem to be seats, so I'm gonna get on the waitlist.  Ciao.

And it's even sunny out

Friday afternoon defies the forecasted rain.  Instead, big, puffy clouds float across the bright blue sky, while a tiny sliver of the moon holds court at the center of it all.  Down below, only a breeze kicking the odd, old leaves down the pavement.  It's warm in the sun.  None of this reaches deep enough into me to wash away the lingering disillusionment that reading (yet another) script has left me with.  Script dealing with unfaithfulness, really depresses me.  Why bother being in a relationship at all if you are only looking to find someone else, someone better when the time comes?  I know there are people who are faithful.  (I even recognize that there are people who would have been faithful to me, had I let them be.)  I know there are people who renew commitments to one another when they haven't been...but god, it all just seems so futile.  (Plays about the destruction of the world I can read without flinching, plays about betrayal, on the other hand, leave me in a funk.)  And I want to shake what I'm feeling off of me, but I can't.  Ugh.  I mean I can sit here and read Strindberg spewing his misogyny and laugh at it, it's just so ridiculous, even if there might still be people who think that way: it's his fear and misguidedness, not mine.  (And I volunteered to work on Miss Julie because of that.)  But I lose a sense of hope reading about an affair, go figure.

And when I'm feeling particularly jaded (which is by no means all of the time) and I hear a love song on the radio I'll think, "yeah, but they're not together anymore."  So was it real, or did it just sound good?  And still...as perhaps the writers of the songs took the plunge and maybe even if they lost in the end, it is better to hold out hope to believe in the possibility of, and to seek out love and risk the loss than to live a life devoid of it.  And to search out for it and live in it as long as you can than to run away from it.  (Someone told me a mutual friend said that she believed she was with her soul mate in the end, having given up her former life to be with him as his life was ending, they'd known each other for years...the two opposing ideas holding court in my head: to follow your heart to find the love of your life, regardless of the consequences vs. settling with someone because you don't want to be alone right now.  Perhaps the play dealt with both.  Or the actual depressing idea, that for one of you it's the love of your life and for the other, it's the best option right now.)

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

But the script still bums me out. (Orange Flower Water, Craig Wright, for the record.)  Guess it's not my thing.  And I'm not really making sense.  Oh, god, what a downer.  Happy weekend anyway.

Trying to finish "Marisol"

So, this is me reading the last 10-15 pages of Marisol in public (restaurant): read a few lines, eyes start to tear up, read of few more, tears run down my face and I need to stop and wipe them off and blow my nose.  Wait a few moments.  Read a few more lines, eyes tear up, tears roll down my face, need to wipe my eyes.  Oh, and I totally stopped breathing.  It's not even so much that it's sad, it's moving.  It's powerful.  It's full of beautiful and broken humanity.  Still have a paragraph in the last page I haven't finished, read around it, knew I was going to just lose it if I tried.  It made me think of eating painfully spicy food: you think you should stop, but you want to experience it so you keep eating it even though your gums, lips, and tongue are on fire.  I was thinking of that analogy while reading/crying.

Interesting conversation I briefly eavesdropped on while walking to lunch: two young dudes, one carrying a skateboard.  One says to the other, "so I found God during break."  He starts to explain, I walk away, go wait at the crosswalk.  As the light changes to "go" they are behind me and the one says he would give up everything to defend the light against the darkness which is coming soon.  Everything. (Read into that what you will.)  So, Marisol is in part, the story of a battle between angels in heaven to restore the universe, because everything is falling apart. (It is an awful lot like Dogma.)  And the characters have encounters with their guardian angels telling them they are leaving us humans alone to fend for ourselves against the human-generated depravity rampant on the streets, so they can go fight in this war.  No one is safe.  The angels go off to battle, and we humans are left to our own devices.  (In the end, all the broken humans decide to fight on the side of the rebel angels.)  It was just a weird synchronicity.

Later, choir runs late.  Music is challenging (and high.)  Voice pretty shot, and I'm exhausted and shaky.  I need to cook, but I can't stand being home.  Need to work something out.  Get home and there are 5 pages of move-out instructions.  Sigh.

Read, read and more reading

Am loving Jose Rivera.  Almost done reading Marisol, reminds me a lot of Tony Kushner's Angels in America: apocalyptic, angels, New York, messages, although more chaos, more dystopian, (in that sense, closer to Kevin Smith's Dogma), and yet still with an aching, yearning hope alive.  The will to survive.  To want more, a world restored, maybe balanced.  I want to stage this.  (I read Zoo Story, Albee, last night.  Didn't grab me, I was hoping it might.)  Reading as much as possible, to find out what moves me.  What makes me feel awake and excited to be alive?  Whose writing thrills me?: Kushner, Rivera, Shanley, Mamet (because I had to dig), Auburn (Proof), Jon Robin Baitz (Other Desert Cities), so far, open to more.  Still reading.

In clown group last night, the last exercise we did made me think of Beckett, so I think I'll read him too, though, probably not something we can do for final scenes; just something to build a clown performance from.  I'm finding more "ins," more chinks in the solid wall that made creating something seem daunting and off-putting (because I couldn't figure out how to begin.)

Took pictures yesterday, but was too exhausted to upload them last night after getting home from clown.  Probably need to be eating more, (clown) used up more energy than I woulda' thought, it was less than two hours.  We ended early, partially because I was hungry.  There was talk of dismantling the group, but I hope we can get enough people to show up: I like doing the work (and people find us on line and show up, which is cool.)

I heard back from another place, an apartment, with a woman.  Will check out both places this weekend.  (And get rid of more stuff.  Should post the furniture on craigslist.)

Keeping my fingers crossed that something works out soon.  Cheers.

Middle of the week

Read two plays yesterday, started a third at the bus stop.  Was going to re-look at Proof but I must have packed it accidently, because I can't seem to find it now.  She also suggested I look at Rivera (Marisol), and Genet.  (Not a fan of existentialism, but I'll read it.  Doing the play, which I'm open to, would limit again who I invite to see it. I don't know.)  Anyway, have a huge stack of material I'm reading.  We had conferences last night.  I still need to allow myself to take up more space, and I like being in a situation (class) right now where I am still receiving external permission, because I'm still getting stuck in my head, afraid to make a choice, and having the external coaching helps me get out of it and into what's actually happening right now.  Eventually, I'll have to do that for myself, and I will, but I'm not there yet, at least not all the time.

I feel myself neutralizing everything, both on "stage" and in life, she mentioned that maybe I'm just more aware of it, and that I'm not necessarily doing it more.  I don't know.  I don't feel particularly safe right now, so I'm retracting so as to not draw attention to myself.  Not healthy, but survival mode.  (Which I really want to get out of.)  Speaking of which, I need to contact the person I dated to let him know that I contacted the ad.  I don't know if he still lives there, but I don't want it to be weird if he does.  (You know, if you live in shared housing for any length of time, and date people that live in shared housing, this is eventually gonna come up.)