Everyone plays roles in life - no matter how true to yourself you are, you still alter yourself to fit different situations, like pressing certain keys on a piano to produce certain meoldies. It's always a piano, even when a few notes are silent. And I like to think I am fairly honest about myself in the world - I keep a lot more to myself than most people would guess (given my propensity for chatter), but I maintain a consistency of self.
It wasn't until I got really tired I realized how constructed and effortful the animation of that self can be. I am tired - not sleepy, not exhausted, as my physical self is coping pretty well despite some late nights. But my psyche is road weary.
I went off to lunch with some people the other day, one of whom I have a distaste for that I endeavor to keep to myself, and on the way there I nearly cancelled. I didn't have enough energy left to be civil and social. I was going to say I was too tired to pretend I cared what people had to say but actually, they had interesting things to say, and listening helped galvanize me a bit. However, it took great effort to ask questions. I would have preferred eavesdropping to having to participate in the conversation.
So I think it's time for a break, a mental wander in the landscape, an escape.
Right after I finish pretending to be a pig for three performances. I've heard of playing your type, but after the past few children's shows, I'm beginning to worry my type is actually a motherly pig. Frightening.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
A Chance to be Sally
Denise had never liked her name. She was a tall girl, mismatched in so many other ways that the ordinary disconnects in life failed to make an impression: she never noticed when the blankets on her bed didn't even cover her shoulders, or if there weren't as many buns as there were hot dogs, or if the battery in her walkman went dead a mere half hour before she'd finished her run. When you were a tall girl with a short girl's name, a brunette whose eyes really belonged on a blonde, a size 10 shirt but a size six pant, when your life was measured out wrongly from the very first day, you didn't notice petty quotidian miscalculations.
Denise hadn't known as a child that she would be too tall for her name, naturally, but even then her dark hair and some deep seriousness had marked her as, well, not a Denise. Also, from the outset she had differed unmistakably from her older brother and sister, who were close in age and temperament and gave off the clannishness of a salt and pepper shaker set. David and Julia were both blonde and cheerful, and while they didn't look alike, exactly, there was something about one that reminded you of the other. Denise was so unlike them that teachers who had taught David and Julia didn't even ask if she was related to either of them. Penny, Denise's best friend of the third, fourth and fifth grades, had three older brothers and a pale, pale complexion from sitting in their shadow. Penny was jealous of Denise's clean slate. Penny's life was like a constant mountain climb with one or another of her brothers adding to the mountain's height all the time. Compared to Penny, Denise was walking on level ground. But it was deserted ground, or if not empty, filled with incongrous images, melted Dali clocks and plinths.
When Sam first called her Sally by mistake, it resonated, absolutely, but her life had been so calico and kalidescope that she didn't recognize the pleasurable sensation for what it was. She didn't correct him, hoping he would do it again and she could dissect the feeling. It was, she realized months later, the elusive click of fit.
Denise hadn't known as a child that she would be too tall for her name, naturally, but even then her dark hair and some deep seriousness had marked her as, well, not a Denise. Also, from the outset she had differed unmistakably from her older brother and sister, who were close in age and temperament and gave off the clannishness of a salt and pepper shaker set. David and Julia were both blonde and cheerful, and while they didn't look alike, exactly, there was something about one that reminded you of the other. Denise was so unlike them that teachers who had taught David and Julia didn't even ask if she was related to either of them. Penny, Denise's best friend of the third, fourth and fifth grades, had three older brothers and a pale, pale complexion from sitting in their shadow. Penny was jealous of Denise's clean slate. Penny's life was like a constant mountain climb with one or another of her brothers adding to the mountain's height all the time. Compared to Penny, Denise was walking on level ground. But it was deserted ground, or if not empty, filled with incongrous images, melted Dali clocks and plinths.
When Sam first called her Sally by mistake, it resonated, absolutely, but her life had been so calico and kalidescope that she didn't recognize the pleasurable sensation for what it was. She didn't correct him, hoping he would do it again and she could dissect the feeling. It was, she realized months later, the elusive click of fit.
Please don't kill the cyclists
I bike as often as I can. I love it, and love the bike as a means of transport, especially in the city. It wouldn't be efficient for every city, but for the City of Chicago, it works really well. I just have two basic requests of the world at large, and I don't think they are that unreasonable:
1. Please don't kill the cyclists.
and
2. Do you need to ask me Every Single Day if I biked to work/rehearsal/an event? If there is a foot of snow outside, Do You Really Neeed to ask me if I rode my bike??? What's your wildest guess? If it is raining outside but my hair and clothing are obviously dry ten minutes after making it to a location, do you NEEEEEEDDDDD to ask if I rode my bike??
Now, I know what you may say - it's a joke. Here's my point: I have heard it before. And not even nce has it been amusing. If you're just looking for something to say, look for something else.
All right, now, back to Number 1. In this I am partly at fault, but I'd like to make a case for cyclists. I fear for my life on the roads, even when I do obey every single traffic law, and I feel that fear stems from the general dislike of cyclists. Motorists just don't care about helping you out. I'd like to expand that view. Sure, I appreciate that cyclists seem to get in your way - they take up some of your road, their travel patterns can be difficult to anticipate, and they occasionally cause you a few seconds delay. But people, I beg you, think of the difference in your situations. If you lose a few seconds waiting on a bike to pass by, you tap that gas pedal and you're on your way. If you cut off a cyclist, they lose momentum that they physically sweated and groaned to achieve - they had to get up that hill using their on muscles, not an inch or two of fossil fuel.
Which leads me to my argument. You're looking at this the wrong way - you're forgetting that you really WANT cyclists on the road. The more people who take to the bike to get around, the more who are NOT in their cars snarling up the road in front of you. Cyclists aren't using up precious resources, so there will be more left over for you! You should be trying to help the cyclists, make their journeys more efficient, so that they never want to get in a car again.
I'd like to appeal to your sense of fairness as well. It's raining, it's windy, it's cold out. You are huddled into your nice warm SUV with the seatwarmers cranked up. A cyclist, cold, soaked, and struggling against that wind creeps by you. Isn't it worth an extra three seconds to let that poor cyclist continue on their way? The three seconds it takes you to give them a break are, for you, warm and dry. Help them get to safety! Get out of the way!
In the end, it comes down to attitude. I rode in London for a year and the only time I got heckled or attacked was for riding my bike inside a park (which is weird to me, since it seems fine for children to ride bikes in parks). Here, people go out of their way to roll down a window and offer loud, unsolicited advice and ridicule. Let your anger for the cyclist go - embrace the cyclist. The more of us there are, the easier your commute would be.
So from the bottom of my heart I repeat my constant cycling mantra:
Please don't kill the cyclist.
1. Please don't kill the cyclists.
and
2. Do you need to ask me Every Single Day if I biked to work/rehearsal/an event? If there is a foot of snow outside, Do You Really Neeed to ask me if I rode my bike??? What's your wildest guess? If it is raining outside but my hair and clothing are obviously dry ten minutes after making it to a location, do you NEEEEEEDDDDD to ask if I rode my bike??
Now, I know what you may say - it's a joke. Here's my point: I have heard it before. And not even nce has it been amusing. If you're just looking for something to say, look for something else.
All right, now, back to Number 1. In this I am partly at fault, but I'd like to make a case for cyclists. I fear for my life on the roads, even when I do obey every single traffic law, and I feel that fear stems from the general dislike of cyclists. Motorists just don't care about helping you out. I'd like to expand that view. Sure, I appreciate that cyclists seem to get in your way - they take up some of your road, their travel patterns can be difficult to anticipate, and they occasionally cause you a few seconds delay. But people, I beg you, think of the difference in your situations. If you lose a few seconds waiting on a bike to pass by, you tap that gas pedal and you're on your way. If you cut off a cyclist, they lose momentum that they physically sweated and groaned to achieve - they had to get up that hill using their on muscles, not an inch or two of fossil fuel.
Which leads me to my argument. You're looking at this the wrong way - you're forgetting that you really WANT cyclists on the road. The more people who take to the bike to get around, the more who are NOT in their cars snarling up the road in front of you. Cyclists aren't using up precious resources, so there will be more left over for you! You should be trying to help the cyclists, make their journeys more efficient, so that they never want to get in a car again.
I'd like to appeal to your sense of fairness as well. It's raining, it's windy, it's cold out. You are huddled into your nice warm SUV with the seatwarmers cranked up. A cyclist, cold, soaked, and struggling against that wind creeps by you. Isn't it worth an extra three seconds to let that poor cyclist continue on their way? The three seconds it takes you to give them a break are, for you, warm and dry. Help them get to safety! Get out of the way!
In the end, it comes down to attitude. I rode in London for a year and the only time I got heckled or attacked was for riding my bike inside a park (which is weird to me, since it seems fine for children to ride bikes in parks). Here, people go out of their way to roll down a window and offer loud, unsolicited advice and ridicule. Let your anger for the cyclist go - embrace the cyclist. The more of us there are, the easier your commute would be.
So from the bottom of my heart I repeat my constant cycling mantra:
Please don't kill the cyclist.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Like Byron Himself....
I am lame. There is no other explanation leaping to mind - I have allowed small rodent-like aliens to infest my soul and eat it for a sugary snack. Of course my soul is sugary - excuuuse me, but I am reckoned to be a sweet person. Although I admit to a tangy sarcasm at times - so maybe my soul is more like a Swedish fish or a sweet and sour gummy thing covered in sugar. Preferably in the shape of a big pair of lips.
So why am I so lame? Because I have thoughts, I really do, I think about things and make myself laugh at my own cleverness. Wow, that's really something, I think, ha HA! Am I funny or what! I need to write that down... But when I come to write down anything at all, I stare at the screen or the page with a slack-jawed-ness that is envied by the slack jawed. Sloths feel outdone by my ability to get absolutely nothing done.
Just the other day I was having a thought, and it was amusing, honest. I thought about what a nice change it would make in terms of a weblog entry. And now that I come to make said entry, I have NO IDEA what that thought was. It's gone. Instead my head is filled with muddled verses of the song "We Go Together" from Grease. I mean, come on, the song doesn't even have many real words!?
So the only explanation is massive brain cell loss on an unusual scale. I've led a frighteningly pure life overall and I haven't done too many things that actively kill off brain cells. How did they die? It's like Flowers for Algernon here, people, I have a moment of lucidity with which to lament my oncoming brainlessness.
My vote is for alien invasion. Yeah, that's it. Give me back my brain, aliens!
So why am I so lame? Because I have thoughts, I really do, I think about things and make myself laugh at my own cleverness. Wow, that's really something, I think, ha HA! Am I funny or what! I need to write that down... But when I come to write down anything at all, I stare at the screen or the page with a slack-jawed-ness that is envied by the slack jawed. Sloths feel outdone by my ability to get absolutely nothing done.
Just the other day I was having a thought, and it was amusing, honest. I thought about what a nice change it would make in terms of a weblog entry. And now that I come to make said entry, I have NO IDEA what that thought was. It's gone. Instead my head is filled with muddled verses of the song "We Go Together" from Grease. I mean, come on, the song doesn't even have many real words!?
So the only explanation is massive brain cell loss on an unusual scale. I've led a frighteningly pure life overall and I haven't done too many things that actively kill off brain cells. How did they die? It's like Flowers for Algernon here, people, I have a moment of lucidity with which to lament my oncoming brainlessness.
My vote is for alien invasion. Yeah, that's it. Give me back my brain, aliens!
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