I'm back! After four months of hopping state lines and living in roadside hotels, I'm finally home again.
I've actually been home for nearly a month now, but I'm only just beginning to feel like I'm back. Like I'm rooted and making connections again.
Touring was good for me. It taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of. It made me desperately anxious to finish college. Having an actual, honest-to-goodness, legitimate paying job in theatre put to rest a lot of fears and reservations I've had about going into the arts. Sure, it's a risk. Sure, not many people can make a living from it. But spending four months with nine other people that are actually making it work was really eye opening. And empowering. It's actually possible. You can actually make a living doing what you love. I don't know if I've ever believed that before because I know very few people that make it happen. Now that I've seen it, I can believe it. I feel I can move forward with confidence in the direction of my choosing. I will no longer wonder: "What am I going to do with a theatre degree?" Because the answer is simple: Theatre. I will use my theatre degree for what it was intended: working in theatre.
Resolutions
Often Things Are Better Left Unsaid
I wonder if baby chicks ever decorate the insides of their shells before they realize it's all going to crumble around them?
I don't want to be back from tour. At least now I know that jobs exist out there that I could enjoy doing. I'm subbing as a tracker at Dixon this week, and while it's only a measly four hours a day, those four hours will feel at least twice as long as a full twelve-hour work day on tour. Turns out jobs don't always have to feel excruciatingly mind-numbing to be classified as work.
I'm looking for a car. A cheap one. Preferably a working one, though I will accept slightly busted.
Summer is coming, or already here, depending on which scale you use. According to the school scale, Summer has arrived for the cougars, and will arrive soon for the UVUers this week. My sister in High School will not see summer for another month. Of course the only true measure of Summer commencement is the signal from a chorus of crickets that is yet to tune their instruments this year.
What goes around, comes around. Over and over again. And again and again.
I moved back into my parents house for the Summer. Or at least for the part of the Summer that I'll be here. I moved back into my old bedroom that I haven't lived in since high school. It's a nice room, the only room that's ever really been my room.
Do you think chickens ever realize that they're never going to fly the coop? Or do they always keep hoping for something better? Do they know that anything out there is better?
Allergies in full swing. Nose versus Nature. Nature always wins.
Anna came back from India. She's really tan. I can't tell if it's from India, or from tanning since she's been back. She seems happier. She's moving to Salt Lake this week. I'm jealous.
Can chickens really run around with their heads cut-off? Could I run around with my head cut-off? Do chickens' heads realize they've become detached?
I think my brother was upset that I left him for four months on tour. I would feel the same way if he had left me with that apartment all to myself. I feel bad about that. I love my brother. I need to make it up to him.
Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you reading this?
Do chickens know that they're chickens? If not, what do they know?
My grandmother's blindness has affected her memory. She's come unstuck in so many ways--she asked me twice what month it was. She used to tell me the same stories over and over again in detail, her eyes darting back and forth scanning the intricacies of her inner imagery. Now she tells the same stories, but without any detail. Her eyes are clouded with cataracts. At least she still knows who I am. I still love to be with her. Her soft, knobby, leather hands are still the same. Still hold mine just the way they did when I was four years old.
Do dreams happen in real time, or faster than real time? Up to one third of your life is spent sleeping. If I live to be 90 years old, I will sleep for 30 years.
Wouldn't it be great if you could program your dreams? Like popping a dvd into a dreamplayer that would let you live out an alternate reality in your sleep. Or at the very least a book on tape. There's a lot you could learn in 30 years of dreaming if you could remember any of it.
I wonder if my grandma remembers what I look like?
I watched part of a show on the Discovery channel with Stephen Hawking talking about different ways to time travel. If you orbit a black hole in a spaceship, time will move slower for you than for everyone else in the universe.
My sister tried to tell me that chai was herbal tea. "Well it's made out of plants, isn't it?" Yes, it is, along with Coca leaves and Hemlock, which also make excellent herbal teas I hear. Everything that's natural is good for you.
I ate leftover chicken for dinner. It was dry, but had buffalo sauce on the side, which made it more bearable. What is it about that sauce that makes it buffalo? Did people ever eat actual buffalo with that sauce? Wikipedia says that buffalo sauce is named after Buffalo, New York where it originated. Wikipedia answers so many questions and destroys so many beautiful mysteries.
I saw Dan and Liz on Sunday. Rocklyn is teething. That's one thing I'm glad we get out of the way before we start remembering things. Can you imagine how traumatizing it would be to experience that as an adult? Especially if you didn't expect it and had no idea what was happening to you. Although, I suppose that's really a lot what puberty is like.
Standing in line at the Hollywood Video going out of business sale:
Cashier: You got some good ones. And a lot of them for almost nothing--nice work.
Guy: Yeah, I totally did. It's always good when video stores go out of business.
Cashier: Good for you, at least.
That would be really hard to be faced with the fact that your job was terminal. Especially right now.
Cashier: Oh man, I think our printer just died.
Other Cashier: I call breaking it.
Cashier: Yeah?
Other Cashier: Yeah. With a baseball bat.
And other times, the things you think you shouldn't say out loud are just the things that should be said.
Avoidance
The other day I was wasting time surfing the web and had the urge to check up on an old friend, but I couldn't remember what their blog address was. I jumped around on several other blogs I thought might link up, but still couldn't find it. While I was in the process of doing this, I remembered that I had a link to their page on my own blog, but some sort of gut reaction inside me jerked and I realized that I didn't want to visit my blog.
Then I thought: well, that's ridiculous--why would I not want to visit my own page?
But after being unable to find a link on any other pages, and giving in and visiting my own blog, I realized that it was true. I was, in fact, avoiding myself.
Why would I do that?
I feel like I'm someone who's pretty comfortable in their own skin. I do ridiculous things onstage every day on tour. Really embarrassing things, and they rarely ever even phase me anymore.
But I am an avoidist. (Yes. I did just make up that word)
If something makes me uncomfortable or creates the potential of adding stress to my life, I will go to lengths great and small to avoid it.
For most people, the definition of 'efficiency' has something to do with maximizing the amount of work you can accomplish in the least amount of time while exerting the least amount of effort.
For me, efficiency, is more about achieving the greatest amount of action while minimizing the duration and intensity of discomfort. And perhaps I just described Mill's concept of 'utility' in a twisted sort of way. Backwards.
Am I really uncomfortable with myself, and I just don't know it? Consciously, at least?
Maybe I'm just becoming less comfortable with disclosure, with the idea of putting myself out there on a digital platter for any cyber snoop to take a sniff of.
Or maybe I just don't have that same need to express myself that I used to, or maybe my expressive needs are already being met at the moment. I definitely don't write much when I'm involved in an ongoing creative endeavor.
Then why am I writing now? Sometimes I write when I'm lonely. These hotel rooms are starting to feel more and more like home. A strange home where the sheets magically change themselves everyday, where you never have to go grocery shopping or redecorate. A home where no one is ever waiting for you unless you lose your key and have to go down to the front desk to get a new one.
...
I just got off the phone and I'm lonlier now than I was before.
But really I don't think it's lonliness. I think I'm not ready for this to end. Tour has been hard, but it's been so rewarding and gratifying and met my wants and needs in so many ways. I'm not ready to go back to everything old--to my shitty overpriced apartment that is less home than this Best Western. To all the jockeying and cloying of the theatre department.
I shouldn't complain, I've got a lot of really fantastic opportunities lined up for this summer, but in some ways it all seems like a demotion. I'm not ready to come back to earth, to my old self.
2.2.10 (late night in Vegas)
(1)
"--and because"
those linking words.
We've got a show in the morning
and we'll drive half-asleep to the stage
smear make-up
dribble lips loosen chords limber up
(Where do we go from here?)
and I'm enjoying all of this but I feel so half-asleep
Lights lights lights
neon vegas lights
and finding my light the edges are blurry sometimes it's hard to find
She was half asleep when I called her
always on the fringes in the morning and at night we meet
across the timelines timezones time of mine
calling long-distance
she said sometimes the dyslexia makes some things better
45 or 54?
That's great. Just great. So great. Great great.
living long distance
I've been here before--and really I don't mind it
(tethered balloon keeps in contact with the ground.)
All the kids--bright kids. Good kids. Kids kids.
It's like Disneyland for wash-up kids
Caesar'sPalaceDisneyPalaceLuxorParisGrand
full of smoke and the drinking and the kinking and the girls
and the girls selling girls selling girls on the street
snapsnap"nightclub"snapsnap"specialdeal"
selling snapsnap neon lights neon shirts neon love snapsnap
(four miles south of the strip now)
SuiteEmerald. Green Carpet. No new towels. Could be worse.
Apathy incarnate. But everybody wants to feel, wants to
looking for snapsnap
snapsnap something that pops
something that's bright (snap)
that's sheen shiny shimmer shifty shining schnapp snappy
something that (snapsnap) fills the night
that feels so wrong snapsnap so right. (sna--
and it never comes. A city full of seekers looking for a deal
a real deal, a good meal, a deal deal, a budget budget scoring deal!
Airplanes overhead--circling for effect.
Jets. For a show. For us or them?
And what is this all about anyway?
We're somwhere around here--underground garage parking. there it is.
So Many Things
I have no pictures for you, and for that, I apologize. Perhaps sometimes the thousand-words that a picture can convey are still not enough to do justice to the moment of a memory.
Some things in my life seem too good to be true, too sweet to be lasting:
I'm actually being paid to spend all my time in the theatre.
It's been this way for nearly a month now and I still can't quite come to grips with how good it is. The festival gave me a place to live, pays me a decent salary, adds a stipend for food, provides a car that the company shares, and picks up the tab for dinner every evening. I still can't believe it.
On top of that, my fellow actors couldn't be a more kind and considerate group of people to live and work with.
...
Grassroots held a successful workshop last Saturday, and while I was sad to be so far away, I am thrilled to hear that the show went so well, and was glad that I was able to contribute in helping with the cutting and in organizing.
I can't wait to put together a summer show with the troupe--we've got so many talented people on board and in the wings.
...
Got a call on Thursday about a job offer in June--Directing one of the shows with the Noorda Summer Program. Could not be more excited! What a great opportunity to sharpen my skills and get my feet wet.
...
Also getting more and more excited for Study Abroad in July--The Globe has a great season, and I'm eager to see what the other theatres will be offering. I'm also feeling pretty great about working with Scott on Rappacini's Daughter--our brainstorming sessions were electric. It ought to be an amazing experience--a once in a lifetime opportunity.
...
Also, I got straight A's for the first time in College at the end of last semester.
...
Writing all this makes me really nervous--everything really does sound too good to be true. I keep waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under me--can life really be this good? Am I just in some sort of crazy sweet spot in my life where I'm young and naive and nothing will ever really be this good again?
Breathe.
Game plan: Whether it lasts or not, I'll enjoy the sun while it shines.
Watch for a postcard in your mailbox.
