Fires

The air last night was acrid.  Acrid and hot.  Stopped by a grocery store to pick up something for a block party, put some ice and water in a small cup and walked outside.  By the time I'd gotten to the end of the block, the ice had melted.

This morning there was some haze, but air seemed cleaner than last evening.  By midday the smoke had sunk in down to ground level, on a wind blowing south from British Columbia: forest fires in Central B.C.  I saw a map earlier that showed the entire Washington state, minus the higher parts of the Cascades, covered in smoke.  Air quality is listed as "moderate to unhealthy."  You can see it hang in the air when you look outside, making the air look thick.  My nose burned when I stepped outside.

Everything a tinder box.  It rained a little bit at my house last Thursday morning, but it's been dry, 45 days without measurable rain.

The sun was unctuous and luscious as it set: first a rich gold, then deep shades of orange, then a duller red, then pink then fading into gray as it dropped below the facing hill; the accompanying trail on the water a golden river, to a  red streak like a carpet rolled out, to a broken, faint pink line, then: nothing.  No sunset in the rest of the sky, just the smokey haze to dull into darkness.

It never got as hot as predicted, but it's still 81 outside now, and probably closer to 100 inside; no relief tonight.

Tuesday

The man across the way has violent sneezing fits every night.  I only ever hear it in the summer, when it's hot, as both our windows are open.  Last night it cooled down enough to grab a blanket, but we're at the start of a heat wave.  Thankfully, work stays at a comfortable temperature, the attic will be unbearable by mid-week.

Have to keep the boot on for two more weeks, so, grateful for the dry weather.  Both feet swelled up last night, iced them for almost an hour.  Not sure why the pain, still there in the morning, and I laid in bed after waking up, contemplating the act of standing, and walking down a flight of stairs...was consequently late for work.  Broke down and started the prednisone I was supposed to start last week.  (I don't like to take it, but it works.)

The air was dry grass, then jasmine.  Sprays of water from the early sprinklers drifted softly back down to the ground.

Had to return most of my books last night, checked out new ones, but don't like two of them, so might return them rather than suffer through.  Finished all the others, minus the owl book, it had a hold, so couldn't keep it.  Interested in the ideas of the stories we tell ourselves, the ones we believe that form our existence.  Have a lot of ideas I've been wrestling with from reading "Brave New World."  Ideas especially around the Savage, societal expectations, and Shakespeare as oracle.  Went to a volunteer after party for the Seafood Fest and had a long conversation about the latter idea (not just Shakespeare, but literature, or writings that are re-discovered, and then used without any idea of context to inform your world and how you respond to things) with a man whom I sat across from, because there was an empty seat.

Saw "Fool for Love" on Saturday night, and then Monday heard that Sam Shepard had died. (RIP.)  Seeing it on stage changed my thoughts of what it was about.  The director, in his notes, made a comment about gas-lighting to control the narrative, and yeah, I see that now, but when I first read it, at 21, I saw it as "fated" love or something (in a twisted way), and then after working on a monologue last fall, saw it as an abusive relationship, and perhaps not just a game to see who can hurt the other the most, but maybe she really does want to be away from him.  And then seeing it on stage on Saturday night, it became about the Old Man, and how all that happens is the repercussion of his fantasy life, his inability to own up to anything.  I'm still trying to write something about it.

At any rate, it's the stories we tell, that take on a life of their own.  How we may never know what any truth is, how different people in the same event and circumstance define the truth of what occurred differently, and how that shapes who we become and how we determine future events.

Monday

I'm hungry.  Have downed a couple of "Finn Crisp" crackers to see if they are acceptable...once again, food poisoning, or something.  My boss offered to drive me home if necessary, faster than a bus commute, and a shorter walk.  (I didn't feel sick until I got off the bus and started walking to work, the closest stop is no-where near work.)

Foot in a boot, for the past week.  I'm supposed to keep it on for 10 days, and then increase an hour each day where it is off.  Been having issues since October, so, finally bit the bullet and asked my foot doctor for a boot.  It took some time to get used to walking in it, and level changes and stairs are difficult.  However, there is a great reduction in pain.  (It's been particularly bad since the theatre class in June.)

What I find most interesting about the experience of wearing it, is directly experiencing the barriers that people with mobility issues face: stairs, over-heavy doors, lack of railings, steepness, hills, the extra time one has to take to get anywhere, not only because you might be already moving slower, but also because of the detours involved in the accessible routes, the getting on/off of public transportation, etc.  (And on the note of hills, the hospitals on First Hill all require the navigation of steep hills.)  And, it takes more energy to move.  I'm lucky enough to hopefully be able to take mine off.

The nice thing about the boot, other than the easing of the pain, is that it gives me an excuse to not do anything active, it allows me time to read.  I'm doing this "Library Book Bingo" thing this summer, each square a different type of book/genre to choose from, such as: reread a book you read in school, read a book from the year one of your parents was born, read a book set in a different country, etc.  I have five or six books at the moment.  I started reading this book about owls (two, actually, one by Desmond Morris, and one by Paul Bannick), because I had to wait for all the books I was interested in, and then four of them came in at once.  Out of those, I've read (and immediately wanted to read again) "A Wrinkle in Time," (could be science fiction, banned book, YA book, etc., in bingo card), and was already reading "The New Jim Crow," Stephanie Alexander,  "My Beloved Country," Sonia Sotomayor, and have now started "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley (kinda' boring to me, to start), "Remains of the Day," Kazuo Ishiguro (so much to love: point-of-view, societal change and how that is made manifest in this character/his life, etc.), and then I picked up "Are You My Mother?" by Alison Bechdel (a graphic novel), that I haven't started yet.  I'm competitive, so that eggs me on in my head, but I'm also using it as an excuse to expand the type of things I read, I've been in a rut, re-reading books multiple times rather than picking up something new.  (Just started reading a lot more science fiction.)

I did a bunch of weeding yesterday (needed to be done), with the boot, and I have to wear a heel on the other foot to keep level.  I knew I needed to pick a zucchini, have known that all week.  It was difficult to get to even without the odd footwear, thankfully, one of the neighbors waded into the plant life and cut it off the plant for me: it's a beast.  This is the first successful zucchini planting I've had in about 15 years (the last few years, I've had plants that only produced male flowers, never figured out why.)

My culinary adventure yesterday was figuring out what to do with these spiralized, butternut squash "noodles" I had bought on a whim.  Ended up making something between a latke, spanish tortilla, and a rice "pancake" someone I used to live with made with leftover rice.  Sauteed onion, sage, garlic, then the chopped up squash noodles to soften them a bit; salt, pepper.  Took out of pan to cool, added smoked paprika, that powdery form of Parmesan cheese, some leftover brown rice, and then two, slightly beaten eggs as a binder, and fried them in olive oil.  (No measurements, added until it looked right.  If I make it again, I'll add more sage leaves, there were two, it could use more, and I'd add a scallion when I add the rice.)  Not bad.  Don't think it's what gave me food poisoning, at least I hope not.

Sitting around

Editing personal work all morning, so, technically, haven't gotten up yet.  Woke up with a headache, dehydration, and probably roommate smoking.

Bartended at the Ballard Seafood Fest last night, it was pretty slow for our shift, but the weather was good, and it seemed like a good time to hang out on the street for the evening.  There was an 80's coverband playing.  None of us knew who was playing or at what time, so we got excited for music during the sound check (a cover of Dead or Alive's, "You Spin Me 'Round") which they stopped half-way through, and so not actually immediately realizing it was a sound check, we joked around that they'd broken up mid-song, a brawl on stage...clearly we needed more to do.  Anyway, they did return, and played for a couple of hours.  By the time they started, the crowd had gotten quite large, and people were dancing and having a good time.  At some point, I was holding an empty cup, and the woman next to me and I clinked glasses for a song (can not remember now what song), and then since mine was empty, she poured half of what was in her cup into mine.  And, yes, I drank it. (Ah, the song was "Respect" by Erasure.)

We get a food voucher in return for working.  I was hungry again, even though I'd eaten a burrito before my shift, so I took the voucher for Hattie's Hat, instead of the salmon meal, since those weren't available last night, and wandered over after about an hour.  When I walked back up the street, the band was still playing, though, they had switched instruments by that point.  I think they are called, "Nite Wave."  An older man stopped to ask me if I knew, he said he liked them.  The last two bands I've seen have been 80's cover bands...and actually, the shows were in connection to things I was volunteering for, other was a SIFF event (80's Teen Movie Dance Party, where I stood on the street with a sign for a party shuttle near the Seattle Center, and people kept walking up to read the sign wondering if I was asking for money, and also, for some reason, telling me random things about their pasts...but after a point, the driver and I hung out at the party, to see if anyone wanted a ride back Downtown.)

Anyway, got to the bus stop, just as the routes were in the process of re-routing, some did, some did not.  I walked over to the re-route, just in time to see the bus I wanted not take the re-route.  Took over an hour to get home, most of which I was asleep for, but thankfully woke up for both my stops.

I'm still tired, should probably get this checked out.

Just shy of the half-way point

The idea that one's focus on stage should always be external is a helpful/comforting one.  I've yet to figure out how to "pack" the moment to elicit and emotional response on cue (because the script or director requires it) without leaving the current circumstances to drum up some memory (emotional recall) or thought that will trigger the desired response.  I don't want to have to go into my head or body to get it at the cost of leaving the present circumstances going on, on stage, or set.  I've gotten there before by creating strong enough circumstances in the room itself, but I haven't done that enough to call it up on cue.

Anyway, in class tonight, it was more about how you are never the most important person on the stage (but whomever, or whatever, you are responding to, is.)  That focus/aim, direction, and distance, and your relationship to the things/people on stage are important.  That if those things are clear for you, they will be clear for the audience.  (And we've probably talked about this before, and I've probably written about it before, but I'd forgotten about it, and it's good to be reminded of it.)  That all of the forms that we do are toward the end of using them to be a better actor, because in the end, this is an acting intensive, even if it feels like stand-alone exercises; and it all helps to get out of one's head, and to pay attention to what is going on around you, what does the group need?  What does the room need?  Where and how are you sending your energy/focus?

In the breakout sessions, we worked on ways to come back if you've lost connection on stage: one point, relaxation, ki, and I can't remember what the other one is called, but it has to do with the underside of your arm/foot/leg, etc.  We also worked on connection with props. the way you sit with a connection to the chair, or the way you hold a cup, etc., and then we started the tightrope walking, both for focus, and for the idea of not playing the end, not worrying about getting across the rope to the end, but saying this speech, and working toward this objective with this tactic, and then the next one, etc, or taking one good step, and then another good step, until you get all the way across, and in a play, until you come to the end.  You know what your goal is, but you have to get there step by step.

Only 28 more hours of class.  And the performance piece is coming together.  And we get to fall for that one, so, I'll need to practice that more.

And I know what to expect, still, I remain in a state of being terrified and excited at the same time.  I want to be there, and I'm afraid of what is expected.  Not sure what consequence it is that I fear...no one's gonna hurt me if I mess something up, I'll just have to do it again.  It's not expected that I'll be perfect, there would be no point in being here if that were the case.  The training really is for the betterment of the room, and the practice.

Friday, and no break in sight

The crows have babies.  Was walking around the building at work, and a crow was cawing (aggressively) in a nearby tree.  Four students were walking just behind me, one commented that he wouldn't miss the black birds.  The crow became more ruffled and agitated.  He clarified to his friends that they swoop down at people.  I turned and said that it was because they had babies.  One of his friends paused a moment and replied, "I'd kinda' like it."  Another chimed in, "Me, too."  I haven't heard that before.  I like crows, but I don't particularly like getting dive bombed; perhaps they wanted any contact at all with a wild animal.

I took Wednesday off of work, so I could do some gardening, (weeding, planting, etc.) and wash laundry (I'm pulling 16 hour days right now).  The weeding and turning soil over went without incident.  I was watering with a watering can, and a chickadee landed on a poppy plant nearby.  Didn't think all that much of it.  Next thing I know, I have a bird land on my calf, and another smack me in the head, and then follow me over to the faucet.  Not sure what was up with that.  Was I near a nest (but I'd been near it for the previous hour)?  Did they want water?  Don't know.  Both intrigued and frightened me a little, only lasted for a few minutes and then they were gone.

Class is going alright.  Trying to remember everything, and if I focus on one part, something else gets dropped, i.e., I remember to breathe and I forget how to move my arms (or which arm is doing what), or I focus on my partner and then forget to sing.  And then I remember to move from my center and breathe and for a moment am more present and balanced, and then I forget.

I'm still really tired, but I feel good.

I need to start writing again, and reading text/monologues; I'm falling out of practice.

Begin again

Starting the theatre intensive again, tonight.  The nerves persist, even though I know what to expect, and I know I've been here before, and survived it (and actually enjoy it).  Still, they persist.  (In a nervous energy-how-can-I-fill-the-time-beforehand-business, kinda way.)

I'm less cocky than I was last year, half wanting to be in the regular group, and half wanting to be newbie group to relearn everything.  Wondering how they will split us up.

I just found this

A woman from a group called the "Camino Companions" that work out of the Pilgrim's office in Santiago, had offered me a cup of coffee and said if I needed to talk about my experience she was available.  I hadn't thought I needed that, but there was a lot going on in my head, not the least of which was saying out loud the pain and anxiety I'd been feeling for months, things not directed at me, but that I feel nonetheless because I give a damn about others, the not sleeping, the broken or breaking of something inside, and then all the experiences and insights I had while (willingly choosing to be) an outsider, an "other," a "them."  The not being "enough."  The things I didn't feel like I had the "right" to feel or express, and so didn't know what to do with them, because I did feel them.

Anyway, my housemate just asked about my trip (I didn't realize anyone knew I had been gone, I'd only told my landlord.)  And after trying to explain it, I came upstairs and found these poems/thoughts, etc., that the woman I'd spoken to had handed to me when I was getting ready to leave.  I'd meant to read and think about them on the trip home, but that's a whole other adventure, so that didn't happen.

This is one of them:

Trust in the Slow Work of God 

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually-let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete. 

 - Pierre Teilhard de Charding, SJ

Ennui

I'm bored.  Out-of-my-skull: bored.  And is it hyperbole to say, "I've never been this bored before?"  I probably have.  It's the now it's-always-Sunday-afternoon feeling.  It's that what's worked before, no longer is, and the next thing hasn't come in to fill the void, so, I'm in the void.  Ultimately, it's a good thing, a good place to be, but...I'm bored.

And I decided to go to the doctor last week, because I'd been having throat pain (for a while), and I sorta' figured it was the thing I'd had four years ago, but wanted to rule out something more serious.  At the last minute, she decided to have her assistant run a strep test, and it came back positive, surprisingly; I don't feel all that bad.  Anyway, just have three more days of antibiotics left, but I took the day after off of work, in the event I was contagious, and that's when I realized how bored I was, so I went back to work the next day.  But seriously, what did I do before to occupy myself?  I've been trying to cut back on using the internet, my computer, and that's part of it, how much that had been filling my waking hours.

On the sick day, I finally finished uploading my trip photos (almost 4,000 and a very slow process), well, all the ones off of the first card.  Went out for a walk to see if the headache was actually from caffeine withdrawal, since it was already afternoon.  Ended up at the lake, spotted the giant orange fish near the shore, and was reminded that it was carp-spawning season, though they were just cruising around at that point.  A thought about released goldfish crossed my mind, and then an older man walked up to me mentioning something about koi, and we got into a long conversation about local wildlife, and then, tropical biology, bats and birds and that sorta' thing.  His wife works at the zoo, and they've traveled a lot in Central and South America, into the jungles and the cloud forests.  Ended up walking the whole lake, even though I'd originally planned on turning around earlier: I don't often meet someone that is interested in that.  (I'd spent time in a cloud forest in college, studying natural history/rain-forest ecology.)

And then I did eight hours of gardening on Saturday, and consequently slept most of Sunday, because I'm still rather exhausted.  I was awake for almost 40 hours trying to get home (was planning on sleeping during the 9-hour bus ride, but had a creepy dude sit next to me, so that didn't happen), and then the first week I was back, I had a bunch of life stuff to catch up on: an overgrown garden, volunteer commitments, choir rehearsal for a performance, a bake sale, the actual performance, the other rehearsal (which has an upcoming performance, as well), plus jet lag, etc., etc., and I can fill the time, but in a way, it's noise, and underneath the noise, is a restlessness, and what feels like boredom.  I don't know what should be there.  And I feel incapable of paying attention, or making any major decisions.  It's not the right time.  Something happened, something changed in my mind, in my view of myself, while I was travelling, and I'm only starting to catch glimpses of that, to begin to comprehend it.

And I've been feeling a little anxious that I have nothing new going on this year...I mean the travel (a super-privileged thing to have been able to do), the singing at Folklife, the theatre-workshop are all a deepening of things I've already done, nothing wrong with that...but life is short, and I'm more than half-way through mine: what could I be doing?  What do I want to be doing?  Why is depth not enough?

So many people I spoke with while traveling talking about having a mid-life crisis, or preemptively avoiding one, ("I'll be turning 40 next week." "I'm 50.")  And I guess I'm feeling a late one, now that I've gotten back home into the demands of every day life...and I suppose that's how it should be.

When you no longer feel the need to please everyone else, follow someone else's rules, to quell someone else's fears of the world, what do you choose?

Home again

I'm in a half-space, half back in this reality, half back in the one I left, the one without an importance of status, or time, the one of openness to the other, the one that says, "Good morning," to every passing face (or tree or ant or whatever.)  I don't want to lose the latter, but it feels too exposed and unwelcome.  A place without a phone, and with the exception of a tv in a bar (usually on futbol, or a game show, or an emerging scandal), and foreign-language newspapers, no contact with the "outside" world.

My body still in another time zone, but I wake up with the light (2 hours earlier here) and get up rather than linger.  Yesterday, arrived at work almost an hour early, because I just got up and started walking, thinking something would be open for food, nothing but Starbucks, and I had no food in the house.  And letting things go, letting myself not be responsible for everyone else.  Not everything needs to happen right now.

I need to sleep, found ants crawling across my bed, which made me feel itchy, and I was too tired to figure out where they'd come from: we'd never had issues with them in the house before.

I can feel the pain in my hands returning slowly.  Had no real RA symptoms while I traveled.  Took for granted being able to use my hands.  Something to think about: was it the sun? the dryness? the lack of stress? the lack of technology? the constant movement? the food? the new germs to contend with? (I ate potatoes like they were going out of style, and I can't do that here.)  What made the difference?  Can I replicate it here?

So, much silence, I could hear the thoughts that race through my head and run my day...so many small anxieties, adding up to dysfunction.  Someone told me to just focus on one thing to change, and if I fail, to try again tomorrow...every day, until I get it right.