It's snowing

Somewhere before 3 am, I look out the window and I see that snow has drifted into the corners of the neighboring roof.  I go downstairs to look at the front window, I can see it falling in the light from the streetlamp, but it isn't sticking.  I go upstairs and read (insomnia, as usual.)  I look out again an hour later, and it's still pouring down, but not sticking anywhere.  Finally fall back asleep.

Now it's morning, and it has stuck, enough to cover everything in white, still coming down.  Everything muffled.  Traffic in the distant, a quiet roar; nearer, the caw of a crow.  Think I need to go out in it.

Walked around the lake, the western side was somehow out of the wind and so I felt like it was warming up.  Then I got to the south end and either the wind picked up or it just wasn't hitting the other side, strong and really cold.  There were white caps on the lake, and the waves where crashing up against the wall and splashing across the path.  My face and hands were freezing, so I took a detour about a half-mile later on a path that goes up toward a main road, and away from the water.  At one point I looked back and the water looked steely, and I thought I wanted a picture of it, so I stopped.  My hands were cold, and it took a minute to get the lens cap off, and to hit the on button.  While I was doing that, I hear a loud cracking sound, and look to see a tree fall across the path I'm on, about ten to fifteen feet further along from where I was standing.  Suddenly, there are people everywhere.  Someone runs over and looks under the branches to see if anyone got trapped (I don't think there was anyone else near when it fell, there was a shout, but that was me.)  It took about five seconds to fall, but there was something strangely gentle about it.  Perhaps I was seeing it in slow motion.

You know, I'm not freaked out in any way, but there's this small part of me that thinks, "I could've died today, and I didn't...why not?"  (I don't want to die.  It just makes me think about what I'm doing with my time.)

Later, at home, some random woman walked out of our bathroom.  I said "hi" to her.  There is an off chance she was my downstairs housemate, but I didn't really recognize her.  And now my smoke alarm is chirping so I'm back out to the store to buy a new battery.  It's been an odd day.

At least the wind has died down a bit.  It's gorgeous outside, a silvery light (as a friend of mine used to call it), but freezing.

Here are some pictures of the walk.  Fallen tree is the last one; the path to the right was the one I was following.

Muddy pathway, Nov 29/L Herlevi 2014

Yellow trees, blue sky, November 29/L Herlevi 2014

Windblown, November 29/L Herlevi 2014

Tree that fell today, November 29/L Herlevi 2014

Keeping the door open

"Yes, and..." is better for keeping the doors open for change than "no."  Re-framing the change in the positive.  It's important to be on your own side, even if it feels you are the only one.  I think I'm there now, I'll learn what I need to learn and move on.  If I have to work harder than anyone else, then I guess I will.

And in light of all that's happened, keep looking for the best in yourself and in one another, you might discover it.  If you focus only on the worst aspects, that's all you will find.  We will become more fearful and divided, building thicker walls.  There is no future there, none that any of us really want.

What does it mean to love your enemy?  To behave on your highest impulse, even when you want revenge?  To find common ground?  To practice empathy?  Would it change anything?

Sunday

Curiously, now all I want to do is work on theatre stuff.  Feel like I have something to prove.  And some direction to move forward in.

Tired

Spent a long time this morning slow-reading the Frankie monologue.  Still need to get the Emilia down, but it's interesting if I do it one word at a time, how much I actually remember, and how much time I have to think about why I'm saying what I'm saying.  It's an exercise you usually would do with a scene partner as you start working on a scene, you'd sit across a table, or just facing each other, and read each word at a time.  (It can be slightly uncomfortable to do, releasing a lot of nervousness, or maybe that's just because I've always worked on those in front of other people.)  I don't know how it'll affect the delivery tomorrow, but it helped today.  Still not solid on the driving action, not with either of them.

Had a memorial service to sing at, and then had meant to walk with the other monologue, but took a nap instead, and then it was dark out, so tried to read it sorta' quietly on the bus until someone sat next to me.

Rushed to a dance performance, David Rousève/REALITY "Stardust," at Meany.  All I knew about it beforehand was that he used a Twitter feed in the background, and that it was partially to be annoying, to make a statement about how much we check our phones and email and Facebook even when we are with someone else, because perhaps we fear we might miss something important, and because I had heard that, I wasn't reading them all initially and was trying to watch the dancers.  But...they were important.  The whole thing was the story of a teenage boy, African American, gay, who initially lived with his grandfather, and then went into foster care.  And all he wanted was to be loved.  (And that story was told in the Twitter feed.)

It destroyed me.  I had my hand clamped over my mouth by the end to keep myself from sobbing, and it's the first show in a while that I jumped up for a standing ovation for.  Just powerful.  I felt myself alternating between heartbreak and anger, that there's that spark of humanity in all of us, and that anyone would snuff that out of someone else.  What right do you have?  That you would never know that because you need to have power over someone else to feel good about yourself...what effing right do you have???  That this kid looked at Van Gogh and got it.  Heard Nat King Cole and found a kindred soul.  Thought of pigeons as ghetto angels...and then how someone could take advantage of him, kill his soul that was just starting to find itself.  (Was he a saint? No, but none of us are, we all deserve to find our way in the world, or reason for being, should such a thing exist.)  Sure...it's "fiction" for the stage, but it's happening somewhere for real right now.  Someone takes someone else's power away, or slaps a label on someone and decides they know all they need to know about them.  They know nothing, and the label builds a wall, prevents them from seeing a human being, or learning anything.

Even when you know someone well, there are secrets you never reach, what makes anyone think they can know a stranger on a snap judgment?  They don't.  We don't.  We make up stories to keep ourselves separate, to justify our actions, our discrimination, our fears.

The labels we choose to put on someone else tell more about our own prejudices than they do about whomever we choose to label.

There are too many bullies in the world.  Open your heart.  Become more human.

Wednesday

Find I was free, saw a Facebook post regarding a closing night show, tickets $5, so I went.  "Horse Girls," by Jenny Rachel Weiner at Annex.  Campy and fun, for being a bit of a slasher.  The girls are supposed to be about twelve-years old, obsessed with horses (yes), but only one (Anastasia Higham as Margaret) really pulled off the young age.  Rest came off as mid-teen.  It was cute, I liked it.  thought the lead did a good job with emotions, I don't know who the actress was, they didn't have any programs left.

I've decided that my problem is that I'm not risking enough.  I think about it, but I don't follow through; I'm holding back.  It's the knowing what I need to do, but always finding excuses of why I need more information before actually acting on it.  Had a conversation with a friend about it last weekend, there is a point where you need to stop always reading the acting books, and actually practice the exercises.  He was saying the same thing about himself.

Anyway, decided to go back to Emilia and Frankie for the monologues.  Tried to daydream for Frankie this morning, about what's going on with her at that moment before she's asking him to leave.  Couldn't get anywhere with it.  Seem to have difficulty daydreaming when I have to do it.  Also, went for a walk during lunch where I could say lines out loud without a lot of people around.  I'm trying out the idea of taking a line or word I'm stuck on and practicing saying it with as many emotional states and emphasis as possible.  The idea was suggested at the cold-reading event.  It's to help free up the words from preconceptions of a set meaning, and also, to help you access what you think in your head, so that it comes out that way when you say it.  It doesn't always (it often doesn't.)

Joined another short-term choir for the season.  We are singing for a fundraising event/caroling competition (Figgy Pudding, benefits the Pike Market Senior Center and Food Bank.)  We only have two rehearsals, not sure what we will wear or sing, but you know, I'll find out soon.  It'll be fun, and we get fed.

Walking home last night, both Broadway and Westlake were being decorated with Christmas lights, and the Nordstrom Santa (land?) was being constructed.  It hardly feels close to the holidays for me, in spite of Thanksgiving being a week away, and the change in the weather.  Fall quarter is almost over.

The cold and sun have left, and the warmer gloom has returned.  No shooting stars tonight. Well, none that I can see.

More to think about

Henceforth get thee away!  Reading Shakespeare on the bus, and now am thinking to myself in Elizabethan English which is both amusing and a little annoying-and yes, that's the best sentence I could come up with after verses of mistaken identity, accusations of sorcery, and servants taking the blame for every last misunderstanding.  (And yes, had I begun sooner, I might've written this post that way...maybe next time.)  Not actually sure why it stayed in my brain so long.  "Comedy of Errors."  Not sure if I will use a monologue from this or go back to "Othello."  (I am inconsistent with punctuation.  I know it.)  They are with the Abbess now, but I haven't finished it.

Went to a cold-reading workshop.  Will try to find more opportunities.  I just need to do it, and I like having the feedback.  I need to get over my self-consciousness, let myself to flirt with text (been an issue before), and figure out why I'm shutting down my impulses before I even know they exist, or at least how to stop doing this.  It was an issue all last year in Meisner as well.  Has not always been, nor has my squelching emotions.  I need to take the judgement off of these things (of myself).  I wasn't always like this, I used to be pretty fiery (not always the best choice in life, granted), but within the past several years I haven't been.  It's not like that was ever particularly safe at any point, so why the sudden stop?  If not always helpful in life, it would be useful in theatre; I'd like to get it back.

If I can get past the self-consciousness (making a boring choice? a dumb choice? a foolish choice?), maybe I can learn a foreign language, too...well, a lot of things.  It held me back there as well.  So much of this is boldness.  Pushing out as far as you can to see what too far is, and where you can come back to.  ("Make big shapes I can move in."-Rilke, my mantra for taking chances.)  Need to be brave enough to be a fool.  To look like a fool.  To sound like a fool.  To actually do it, out loud and, not just in my head.  Thinking is not the same as doing.

No risk and nothing ever changes.

Monday

Unless I can get this Emilia monologue to work, totally new monologues next week.  We need to present two for the final class (like a real audition) plus also do a side for a call-back situation.  We'll probably have an outside audience, possibly a casting director (because people requested that.)  So, a lot of work to do.  At least, need to choose, so I can do the character work.

Went to the drop-in Suzuki session tonight.  Took time off of work to go; there were three of us, plus the instructor.  We did marches and slow-ten (not sure how to write that.)  I like the slow-ten.  Feel very uncoordinated and amateur otherwise; started to get the marches by the second time through.  Started to.  Learned an arm movement we hadn't done in the intensive, which confused my body-brain connection.  It's still: the centering, the actual movement, the stillness, the holding of the stillness for as long as possible before moving (as quick as possible), the rhythm, the moving in sync with everyone else, and the switching of sides (not to mention just trying to remember what the movements are supposed to be), and the focus.  And then we did the whole sequence again, switching sides of the body, to the non-dominant one, which always throws me off.  Perhaps it's like learning to play the drums, or the piano, or whatever it is where every limb is doing something different and you just have to learn all those things and then forget about it.  When I was learning how to play a drum kit a number of years ago, I remember the moments where I had each limb doing a different thing, and I'd get excited about that, and then think about it, and then lose the groove...actually, that's acting, too.  And I guess that's part of why this is good for that.  (Acting is holding all those parts of the character in your body and voice and mind, and using yourself to communicate their story for them.  You do all the work, and then it's there, and available.)

Anyway, it's only an hour, and in some ways that seems so short, but in others, plenty.  I think the only thing I might have been able to do at the end of the hour would have been statues, and not very many of those.  I was super shaky.  Fatigued.  And really hungry.  (And then I had choir rehearsal after, so wiped out now.) Surprising how much energy it takes to hold focus, intention, and stillness.  I'm not sure when I can go again, but it's the sorta' thing that needs a lot of practice.  I enjoy it, when I get over the nervousness.

Onto the next thing

Feeling sick to my stomach most of the day.  In the morning, I went for a long walk to make the most of the sun, to see what birds have come, (so many birds, and when I walked to the shore for a closer look, they swam over, expecting to be fed) and to work on the memorization of a monologue.

Later at clown group, I think we have a start on a few things.  The show feels very soon.  Once home, I had to force myself to go out again, had a ticket to a (final, I think) Beckett show.  This one more based on inspiration than an actual Beckett play.  And as such, and because it was physical/clown, and because it had some hope in it, I probably liked it the best of the bunch.  Not all the dialogue worked for me, and again, there was more hope and redemption involved, so, not necessarily as true to Beckett, and there seemed to be more a sense of cause and effect...at any rate, possibly because of all these things, I found myself more involved in what happened.  And while I didn't necessarily laugh, (a lot of the audience did), I did find that I cared what happened to the characters, and I liked the way it was staged.  (And since I felt sick the whole time, I was glad it was relatively short and I could come back home to curl up again.)

I was late arriving.  The bus had to wait at an early stop.  A man had entered the bus, I'm not sure what was going on with him, but he kept trying to sit on the driver, had difficulty maneuvering himself about, at one point his pants dropped down to his ankles, and I saw the driver's hand point, presumably to pull them back on, which he eventually did.  He was finally able to find his way to a seat and sit down after about five minutes of this.  Not dressed for the weather at all, wearing just a couple of thin shirts and the pants.  The bus plowed forward, to make up the time.  At any rate, I wasn't the only one late for the show, about five others.  They held the start.

What possessed me to go find frozen yogurt when I got of the bus, every storefront I pass darkened for the evening, though it's not yet 10 pm, already shivering from the cold air, is beyond me.  The shop is open, and I, the sole customer.  I walk home carrying it in un-gloved hands, no chance of it melting.  Perhaps it will settle my stomach.

Looking up as I near my house, the sky is magnificent.  So clear.  So many stars.

Such sky

Above the rush-hour traffic, the crowds huddled and hurrying to get on the next bus, the noise that ends the workday, the clear sky fades from blue to black.  The stars prepare for their nightly dance.  All is still.  A holding of breath.  Waiting, and full of possibility.

Anything can happen now.

Almost Friday

This wren is hopping around and peering in all the windows...perhaps it wants to come inside.  Cold out.  Breezy, too.  The sun is welcome, at least for me, my mood is better without the gloom.  Still feeling relatively uninspired.  My creative endeavor being making broth on Tuesday and making soup this morning.  Lately, I feel a bit of pride if I cook anything at all.  Lord knows I spend enough time thinking about it.  We're meeting on Saturday to work on ideas for the February show, there's a possibility of one in December as well.  The creativity is sometimes easier in motion, and bouncing ideas around off other people

Unexpectedly have tonight free.  Rehearsal got moved to yesterday, and between that and Tuesday having been a holiday, I've lost track of days.  Got a bunch of plays staring up at me, (every time I walk into the library to return anything, I end up walking out with one more than I had, so the pile keeps growing.)  Couldn't see well enough last night to read: eye exam, left me blurry and, even five hours later, looking like a love-sick seal, with my massive pupils.  Could kinda' read the music at rehearsal, didn't seem like reason enough not to go, I've missed too many this season, so I went.  I believe the right play is Comedy of Errors, or at least that is written down in relation to nothing around it.  I do have it now.  Not sure what I'll do on Sunday.  Just not feeling Emilia from Othello.

Not feeling any of these monologues at all, but you can't wait for inspiration to move ahead, just have to keep trudging through, believing that if you do the work, eventually you will see progress.  It's not all for nothing.  I keep thinking about what J said, "If you really want it, you'll make it happen."  (I know that was issued as a challenge.  I accept that, think about it daily.)  And I do, more than most things.  Just feeling doubt.  I know I've done good work in the past, so I'm capable, just not getting to the same level at the moment.  Unsure of what would get me there.

I need to find or make more opportunities to work with other people.  The isolation isn't really working for me.