Blow it up and start again

This is post number 200 for me.  I liked the idea of ending the year on a round number, so I saved it for today.  I'm just not sure how best to use it.

I don't have any regular readers - though I do have a handful of incredibly sweet intermittent ones, of course, to whom I am grateful.  But mostly I keep this as a journal - mostly I keep it for myself, I suppose.  The blog's original purpose was to flirt with someone without appearing to flirt with him, then it became a nice outlet for some frustrations of working with a specific group of people, then morphed into a way to use downtime at an office.  

But as soon as I started using this space to complain about anything I realized I could never really publicize it - I wanted to be honest about how I felt but not hurt anyone's feelings, and while I don't use anyone's real name, I think there's probably enough info that someone could work out certain details.  So I can't tell anyone it's here lest I've said something that will offend, or I could tell people it's here but then never say anything truthful again.  As for my possible offensive comments, I've just been blowing off steam - I don't have any lasting rancor for anyone, honest.  I'm capable of wishing everyone happiness and joy, no matter what.  

Anyway, I lost the desk job, and didn't post anything for a long time.  I got caught up on the fact I had so few readers, who would care if I wrote anything?  I love my 5-6 readers, but I am pretty sure I could call each and everyone one of you up on the phone if there was something I really needed to say to you.  But finally I realized: clearly, I only post things I am trying to work out for myself.  So I got busy trying to work some stuff out, and here we are at 200.

Am I working things out?  Does the effort of writing things down help me process and transmute those events?  Is it just a really really long-term flirt...as in, someday, out of curiosity, my original reader will return and be blown away by my charm, wit, and insight?  Ha!  Funny, I'm capable of wishing for that (though it's not my conscious purpose).  I've gone from thinking I'm kind of a nice person to realizing I often behave like an insufferable know-it-all driven entirely by the wish to be right and the only partly submerged desire to be gorgeous.  In other words, I'm realizing I'm vain, petty, and condescending.  

But I'm not mean-spirited.  And yes, writing things down has been helping me.  

So I'll probably rack up another hundred posts this next year.  Maybe the writing will get better.  Maybe the insights will get deeper.  Maybe the life I'm describing will get more entertaining.  

Thanks for stopping by.  Comments are welcome.  I'm not asking you for anything, but I'm very grateful for what you've given me without being asked.  

Happy New Year.  This one...this one's going to be amazing.

Enveloped

I just finished reading a novel and eating a bunch of tasty food, including lots of chocolate.  Ah, holiday.  Now I'll need to put all that slothful indolence behind me and get busy refining myself.  I'm looking forward to it, actually.

I'm looking forward to everything right now.  It's been a strange year, plenty of setbacks and trials, naturally lots and lots of mistakes.  Mine, I mean.  And some loss - people dying is no fun, even if it is a completely natural part of life that we all have to face eventually.  Doesn't mean we long for it.

I feel hopeful, though.  Like I'm closing in on something, and when I get there, it will be good.  I got a good breather in here with this awesome show I'm working on - I can keep going for a lot longer with this under my belt.

To everyone who made my life better and not worse: thanks.  I'm cheering up now enough to notice how lucky I am to know you.  Wow, I'm really lucky sometimes.  Thanks.

Gifts

Oog.  The one thing I do dislike about being relatively short on cash is that Christmas sucks because I can't afford to buy anyone gifts.  I know I sound holier-than-thou or disingenious, but I really like giving people the "perfect" gift, and though yes, the perfect gift might not be expensive, it does take a certain amount of money to get EVERYONE a perfect gift.  Or more time than I currently have.

This is why I've begun to prefer Thanksgiving.

For Later

Things my future self should know, or might need to be reminded of:

• It might be a while before you get cast in something as awesome as the awesome project again.  Don't despair.  Don't stop trying.  You love it, you love it more than all of the other things people tell you to love - it's the closest you get to storytelling, it's the closest you get to God, it's the closest you get to some sense of purpose.  You inhabit yourself those rehearsal rooms, on those stages.  Don't give that up because you get tired of waiting.  It's yourself you are waiting for, not the next job, because you truly live in the plays.  Feel free to find a better way to amuse yourself in between times, but don't stop trying.  You love it in a way that means it should be your job - because you'll care about it.
• Try to relax.  You're only going to get older from here.  Try for dignity and grace.  You've spent a large part of your life sad and disappointed about all the things you're not.  LET IT GO. There are a lot of things you are not.  But inherent in that is that you are something.  Concentrate on that, meditate on that.  You are something.  Distill it if you can.  Transcend it if you can.  But start stepping on the stones that are there instead of mourning the ones that are absent.
• Honestly? You're bad at giving things up.  At letting them go.  Think of it as habitual lateness - you need to set the clock ahead a bit to accommodate your natural inclinations.  It will take extra time to let some things go.  Go ahead and accept that.  
• You're still going to be a complete fool.  No matter how hard you try, how much you mask it, you heart is bigger than your brain.  You pretend it isn't, you spend a lot of time hiding one behind the other.  Good luck with that.  I'm not sure how that's going to work out.  I'd say let's blow it wide open, future self, let's just love as hard as we can, but there's a lot of pitfalls there and if I knew how to avoid them we'd be somewhere totally different by now.  I guess you should just get more comfortable with the idea of being foolish.  Settle in.  
• You're going to need some more luck for everything to work out the way you want it to.  But if you stick with doing the things that bring you joy, things will work out.  It's like wanting to be at the table where everyone is laughing - spend your time with the joy, and you can't regret it.  

When in doubt, look for some joy.  If you find it, that's where you should be.  All right, future self.  I hope you're reading this and thinking, oh, yes, that was the day I figured out how to get here, and you look around at your sunny kitchen that always has good music, good friends, and good food, pets and maybe children hanging around the kitchen table (the one you've had sex on), and you think, yes, I got here, finally.  Now smile and go make a cup of tea.  Here's to being something, finally.

Rethink

I'm getting the feeling that I have a consistent amount of idiocy no matter what I try to stop myself from doing - if I decide I'm going to quit doing one stupid thing, I inevitably end up doing something else stupid. As if instead of losing weight I'm just using a corset to shove the extra stupid around.

Well.  Hmm.  I'm working hard to be a grown up here, and it's worrying to see regression instead of growth.

But (hang on, my metaphor isn't dead yet), doing stupid things is a lot like eating junk food - empty calories, of course, but so tasty and irresistible.

Side note - if every unhealthy choice had a healthy choice sitting right next to it, for instance, the counter of Little Debbie Snack Cakes had a container of celery sticks right next to it, could you/I/one go ahead and do the "right" thing more consistently?

It may be that when I was younger I tried to avoid doing stupid things, and for the most part I did ok - of course I did some stupid things but overall I basically wasted the part of my life where people expect you to do stupid things.  I spent it trying to get things right.

Now I have certain things right and it's...it's...   Well.  Being right isn't always very interesting.

It's as if I worked so hard to color inside the lines, and look, I did!  And what I have to show for it is a really neat, uninspired set of drawings that anyone could have produced.

Oh, sorry, in case I haven't mentioned it, I am also still deliriously happy to be going to rehearsal every night.  It's awesome.  It's terrific.  It is NOT in any way stupid or drawing inside the lines or...in fact, it's the one thing everyone probably thought I was stupid to pursue and it's the very best thing there is, which may be why I'm questioning everything else.

Ok, I'm going to try to pretend to be a grownup.  For a while.

Notes from Nirvana

It was like I'd died and gone to an actor heaven.

Last night, first rehearsal for the big awesome project.  It was...blissful.  Terrific. Inspiring. Enriching.

It was like sitting down to a meal after wandering in the desert for weeks.

It was like finally sleeping after a forced march.

It was like curling up under the covers with a great book and nowhere to be, when you can't imagine a single place better.

It was such a relief.  To be in a room with maybe 40, 50 people, and all of them want one single thing: to tell this story as well as humanly possible.  Everyone's excited, everyone's looking forward to it, and some of the best brains in the Chicago theatre were in that room.  It was fantastic.

It felt like home.  Home.  Home.

HG, grad school has nothing on this.  This was like bringing the Titanic up from the ocean floor and restoring her to all her glory.  This was like finally getting every single strand of Christmas lights to work.

This was great.  I am sooooo lucky.  Buckle up, all four of you.  It'll be five months of this much excitement and more.

And maybe, just maybe, if some star is positioned just right for me, this is the beginning of the life I always wanted to have.

Deep Breath

So, tomorrow is a big day.  I start rehearsing for a project I can actually believe in, with people I highly respect.  I get to be one of the people I'm always jealous of.  I get to play with people whose careers I want to model, I get to work on a play I am excited to be a part of, with people who blow me away.

I'm scared, of course, and grateful, and thrilled, and god I hope I have whatever it takes to play on this level.  Because I'm not a gamer kind of gal, but this is most definitely a level up.  Level. Up.

Naturally, I want to spin some kind of imaginative direct bee line from tomorrow to me accepting some sort of Tony or Emmy or some nonsense - and I say nonsense not out of false modesty, but with the acceptance that the trajectory I'm currently on just doesn't logically follow to those points.  But that doesn't even matter.  I was thrilled to audition for this play, and I tried very hard to prepare myself for not being cast, since numerically and historically, my acting career (and to some degree, my life) has been about trying to withstand disappointment.

But, and I'm not even embarrassed to say this, I'm nearly teary-eyed with this, TOMORROW IS A DAY ABOUT GETTING WHAT I WANTED.  About being the person they chose.  About finally catapulting over the endless judging and auditioning and rejection and instead being able to focus on the WORK.  Because I got work, folks.  I got work at a theatre I adore with people I revere and I couldn't be luckier or happier.

I got the work I wanted and I cannot wait to give this theatre my entire life for the next five months.

I know I whine a lot here.  I bitch and moan and cry, and when I read the things I wrote, I feel petty and small and weak.  I wanted to write this post to remind me and anyone who ever drops by that I know how to be happy, wickedly happy, joyously happy.  I'm even pleased tonight to realize and remember that I've felt like this before, because I've been lucky enough to get cast in plays I cared about before, even if it has been a while since that happened.

I'm still worried about my Dad and anxious about money and I yearn for the people who made me smile that are missing from my life.  But at the same time, starting tomorrow, I am the luckiest girl in the world for a time.

Now, let's see if the next five months of posts can reflect that.  Heh.

When You Can't Justify It

When someone else gets something you want (or has something you want), does it make it better or worse that they deserve it?  When you can look at them objectively and see that the object of your jealousy may be smarter, more talented, heck, younger and prettier (or simply more attractive), more creative, nicer or all around a better person...does this make it easier or harder?

If, for instance, someone gets cast in something I wish I could have done...if that person isn't good in the role, then I can comfort myself that a mistake was made.  But if they are not only great, but better than I can imagine ever being, I might feel worse, but at least I know justice was done.

There's someone I feel vaguely jealous of, and as I clicked through to find out more about them I could hear my own voice saying, "Why are you doing this, this is a wretched, stupid thing to do..."  And by then I'd done it, and couldn't undo it, and was trapped.  It wasn't even painful, just eye-opening, sort of like the sensation I imagine people who cut themselves have as the blood wells up from a slice but the synapses haven't communicated any kind of hurt yet.  The way people describe being shot, and looking at the hole where the bullet went but shock blocks the comprehending of any pain.

Smarter?  Check.
More attractive?  Double check.
More talented?  Obviously.
In every way a better choice?  Yes.

And I don't even mean this as a self-pitying rant - I have good qualities, I have talents, I have a modicum of intelligence and I'm attractive in my own way.  I'm not saying woe-is-me.  I'm just wavering between whether it's easier or harder to let an idea go when you know you didn't ever deserve it in the first place.

I think I'm leaning towards harder.  Because it's one thing to lose.  It's another to realize you don't have the talent to win.

As Iris Murdoch wrote: "One must perform the lower act which one can manage and sustain: not the higher act which one bungles."  I too have failed accurately to estimate my own resources.

Holiday

I love my family, and they are great.  I just wish I could handle them better.  There was one really great line in "Winter's Bone" which I watched the other day, something about the dad being an informant: "he didn't and he didn't and he didn't, and then one day, he did..."  That's not an accurate quote but I feel like that about snapping at my family.  I can handle it, I can handle it, I don't mind the backseat driving and constant correction...and then I do, and I lose it, and I regret it.

Because all I want them to know is that I love them, not that they also make me want to tear my hair out.

Un-fraught

I was going to bend your ear about sadness and elation and worry all fusing into some electric dance step today, with a score of kick-ass music behind it.  I was going to steal outright an idea from someone's tumblr about the fact that you can be wandering around in a store and some schmatzy, old-school song comes on (for me the other night it was "On the Dark Side" by Eddie and the Cruisers), and without preamble you are teary-eyed with longing for a past you barely remember.

I was going to try to break your heart.

But instead I've realized I am hungry, and I'm going to just put everything I wish I could have and don't on hold and go make some dinner.

Because despite what I tend to give off, underneath the wild aura of fervent drama lurks a pragmatist.  A girl's gotta eat.

Old

Tonight I was asked if the 23-year-old with me was my daughter.  I have recently been feeling (and vocally complaining) that I look and feel old.  Now it is absolutely confirmed that apparently any youth I had is behind me and never coming back.

I wish I could tell you I'm ready to be homely and wrinkled and not care about age, but instead I'm about to hole up in my bed and weep.

What makes me really sad is that I bet there are times in my life I've been really attractive, and times I've actually felt that I looked attractive, but any time I feel I look pretty the photographs prove me wrong, and any time the photo of me makes me think, hey, I look kinda nice here!  I know at the time I felt ugly and unattractive.  Why can I not synch these up better than that?

And why do I have to care at all?  Why can't I just embrace getting old and having lines on my face?

Why must I be so very vain?  It's annoying.

Wish

If I could have one wish, tonight it would be this:  to live free of superlatives.  Better than, worse than, best, last, these words ricochet in my head endlessly, and I would love to be free of them.  Even when I don't want to be thinking about it, some part of my brain is always feeding comparisons back to me, like a personal ticker tape:  that girl is younger than me, that one is prettier, that one is fatter, that guy writes better and that one is cooler.  That one is much much nicer.

And these comparisons nearly always stop me from doing whatever I'm doing.  Because there is ALWAYS someone better.  No matter who you are, what you do, there's better out there somewhere.

I imagine what it would be like to be wholly freed of superlatives, not to think that you were better than anyone else but just not to think about where you are in the scheme and strata of experience - not to be so very aware of what percentile of knowledge or beauty or wit you inhabit.  I think it would feel wonderful.  I think I would listen more.

Every so often I find a little space where no one else is, or at least where no one invokes this sort of petty classification of myself, and I just get to be.  It's not the same as just being alone.  I can be alone and still unable to halt my mind from its endless rifling through who's-better-who's-best.  Like tonight, when every clever thing I read just strikes the gong in my head saying, "Yep, you'll never be as clever as that."

It's true, I won't.  But maybe someday I'll pick my way past caring and just be me and that will feel like enough.

I suspect it will still take a while.  Maybe you should check back in a few decades or so.

Wow.

So late.  Must sleep.  Here's what I find out when I stay up late at home alone: I am an idiot.

Why, oh why have I put on the most appealing nightclothes I have had on in weeks, when I am in my house alone??  And the best I could hope for would be a phone call?

Makes no sense.  I am an idiot.  Or I want to give my neighbors something to look at.

I suppose one could argue that if I do wear sultry clothes to bed on nights I wasn't alone, I don't end up wearing them very long.  In that sense, I see why the night I'm alone is when I'm wearing them long enough to notice I'm wearing them.

Further proof I'm an idiot:  pretty much everything else on this blog.

I finally accepted something very obvious: the people who arrive at my blog by accident when searching for the terms "torture time" do not stick around to be charmed by my oddball voice.  Nor does anyone stumbling across it when looking for a blueberry pie recipe.

So the four of you, sometimes five, I think all of you can be trusted with the info that I'm home alone, attractively clad.

Now I'm going to bed.

No way that person on tv uses that product...

I'm tired of being constantly sold to on television - sold to with young, pretty people.  I'm finally realizing that I can't even pretend to be young and pretty anymore - that ship sailed, and I missed it.  I'm starting to resent the very sight of the young and pretty.

Instead, can you sell to me with...hmmm....I don't know...

Tigers?  I like tigers.

How about graciousness?  

Or some good old fashioned whimsy - I'd buy things sold with whimsy.

Of course, there's the problem that I'm not the target for any of this advertising, because not only am I not young or pretty anymore, I have no money to buy things.

Just a little disappointment

Every time I ever go up for a SAG ad, I mentally spend the money I would make doing it.  Fortunately, it's only mental - and technically spending is the wrong word, as I mentally assign the money to my various savings accounts.

Hey, what's a SAG ad?  I hear some of you say.  SAG is the Screen Actors Guild, and it's one of the unions that controls television advertisements.  Like any union, it sets certain minimum payments a company has to give you for certain kinds of work.  So if I were to book a SAG ad, I might not be a member of the union yet (it's complicated), but the company would pay me based on a certain scale.

I confess, I find that scale wildly confusing to follow in written form, so I really have no idea how much money I would make for any of these ads.  But I know a friend made $20,000 for a SAG ad once.  I don't know how often it ran and in what markets and for how long (all of these effect what you get out of it), but she had enough to make a down payment on a condo.  So secretly, ignorantly (and presumably incorrectly), in my mind every time I go audition for one of these ads, I think of myself making $10,000, and mentally change my entire life.

Because I would go on exactly as I do now if I made an extra $10,000, but a lot of the stress in my life would be magically lifted.  Firstly, just the very fact of making that kind of money doing the thing I love to do would be a personal victory.  I would have justified a LOT of the time I have devoted to this profession.  Second, I would immediately fund my entire Health Savings Account (and my husband's).  Hey - for someone who basically pays for all medical expenses that would be an exciting event.  (Yes, we have health insurance, but since we have it as individuals, the plan we can afford forces us to pay for nearly everything.  In my world, there is no such thing as a co-pay.  But if something catastrophic happened, we'd be covered.)

Third, and this may sound funny, but I'd pump up my savings accounts.  I have been making ends meet in a time of economic disaster, but my savings have suffered.  I want them beefy, not lean.  I haven't cannibalized them, but I'm tired of having them erode a tiny bit every year.

I'd pay off some debt.  Duh.  (But honestly, I'd still fund the HSA before anything else.)

I'd throw some money in my car account so that I could pay next year's insurance without even wondering how.

Finally, if I could spread some money around all those places and feel like there was any left over, I would do as many of these things as I could afford:

1.  Go to Macy's, give a personal shopper a chunk of money, and have her bring me scads and scads of beautiful clothes.  I would then buy:  three beautiful skirts, two tailored shirts, three tops of some lovely description, two sweaters or jackets that I adored, three pairs of really amazing trousers (one black, one pinstripe, one whatever I like best), three pairs of shoes and one pair of boots, and a dress that I felt drop dead fantastic wearing.  Maybe some belts and necklaces.  If there was enough money.

2. Buy a plane ticket to somewhere I have a friend I haven't seen in years.  Spend some time there.

3.  Get my engagement ring fixed.

4. Buy something terrific for my husband and my best friend.  (That's two separate people, sorry, all you romantics.)

5.  Get back to eeking out the rent a couple of paychecks at a time, but with a great deal of satisfaction.

If you've read this far, you can probably see this coming.  I was up for a SAG ad this week - and I even got called back for said ad, which means there was an actual possibility I would get it.  The callback was a blast - I had so much fun, and the woman I was auditioning alongside was phenomenal (I really really hope she got cast in at least one of these spots).

But I didn't get this one.

*sigh*

Last nice weather day

I think I would give up all the things I owned if I could go hang out with all the people I love instead.  This sounds easy to accomplish - it is not, as many of the people I love live far away, in other countries, perhaps.  And seeing them would involve some other costs.

It strikes me that in a way I want to visit all the other people I've been, and that may be true, but I genuinely  want to find out how everyone else is doing.  I want to sit and drink red wine out of my friend's heavy goblet wine glasses - they're odd, as if they are props and not meant to drunk out of - and I want to ask her how she finds her life these days and hear her call me "Lizzie."  I want to go see another friend's brand new adorable baby.  I want to go and harass yet another friend until his deadpan face cracks and he actually laughs at something I say.  That could take days, but if I could manage it, I'd be gleeful.  I hope he still has the dreadful piano scarf, though I doubt it.

I want to see my best friend, and do something ridiculous with her that no one else would ever bother doing - put on costumes and go on an adventure, go prom dress shopping (no intention of prom dress buying, just shopping), camp, sit at the Waffle House, consult the I Ching or make up fake potions to help us through our lives.

I want to take HG back to London and find Fran!!!  We'd jump back in time and clean house together and then have jacket potatoes for lunch, gossiping all the while.  Hmmm.  Come to think of it, just to move into the present, I want to visit HG in Italy next year and force her to have some adventure she'd never have thought of...possibly involving wine, but perhaps not.

I'd like to have dinner with a friend I never get to see and see them.  Ask questions, argue, persuade, laugh, remember, and plan.  No, not plan, plot.  I need me some new horizons, and I'd like to have old friends on them with me.

I can't think of a single object I own than I wouldn't give up if it meant I could do this.

Some thanks

So, if you haven't ever met me or noticed from the inevitable return to this subject, I have trouble believing that anything I write here could remotely interest anyone else.  Yet I'm still driven to try to communicate, I still find I want to say something, and I want to believe I can do so effectively, even if some worm within me always convinces me otherwise.

The worm has been winning recently.

I'd like to thank those of you who have stopped by and made a supportive comment, and I'd like to thank those of you who stopped by and didn't make a negative comment.  I'm really grateful.

I keep hoping I can leapfrog over this impenetrable insecurity and get beyond it to something magical, and yet it never seems to happen.  I believe I can lose 15 pounds, too, and that keeps getting put off as well.  The me I think I really am always seems just out of reach.

A friend once told me about some tree that grows something like 15 feet every 5 years.  But it grows maybe 1 inch for 4 years, and then shoots up 14 feet 11 inches in the last year.

I keep hoping to reach my 5th year.  I think it could be coming.  I think there's something in me unexpressed, something ferocious and necessary.  I don't know what it is, or if I can ever find it.  Maybe I'm too old and off center, too plain and easily dismayed, too vain and too analytical.

But thank you for checking up on me, because inherent in that is the idea that I might have something to say that will be useful.  I hope some days I come through for you, and me.

I believe, help my disbelief.

Today it is sunny outside and I drank two cups of cappuccino, and I'm going to go running.  Maybe I should stop talking and try listening.  Call me if you want to take advantage of that intention.

As others see us

I had someone critique me recently as an actor and a human being, and I can't shake how uneasy and uncertain it has made me feel.  First, a caveat:  the comments were absolutely true - I recognized myself without fail in what this person was saying, and I recognized that the advice I was getting about changing my behavior was sound.

But what I was forced to acknowledge about myself made me feel...I'm not sure how to put it...sick to my stomach.  I never like making mistakes, even though I realize intellectually that making mistakes is the only way we can possibly learn anything.  So part of this dread is realizing I've been making mistakes.

The other part is that while this person didn't speak for anyone but themselves, I'm sure to have exhibited this behavior elsewhere.  Which leads me to this possibility - do I fail to get work as an actor because I am a nightmare to work with??

That's a terrifying thought.  Horrifying.  Debilitating.  It can't be universally true, because my actor/director friends would treat me differently if it were.  But it is doubtless absolutely true in certain situations.  Which is keeping me awake at nights now.

More and more I feel my vanity is in my own way.  And I'm bored by it!!  Aren't you?  Wow, I wish I didn't waste any time at all worrying about being good or pretty or right.  Someone will always be prettier and better and more right - probably more often as I age!  But I don't know how to do without it, or how to circumvent it, or how to retrain it.


Hmmm.  This is where I desperately need to reinvent myself because I've become an utter bore even to myself.
Maybe that leather miniskirt/taking up smoking thing needs to happen right away.

Maybe I just need habermasgal and tee to move to town and have weekly dinners with me.

I'll cook....we don't even have to spend money...

Always take the weather with you

I spent yesterday lunch with a friend who recently got engaged, and yesterday dinner with another who is currently getting a divorce.  Whew!  Talk about running the gamut.

What struck me in both conversations is how hard most relationships are.  I'm thinking more and more about why we make any attempt at all to have a permanent bond with just one other human being.  It's such a tricky endeavor, and takes so much work, why do so many of us sign on?  (And if you haven't signed on, you most likely have felt the pressure to do so, even if you haven't buckled under to it.)  I am beginning to feel the same way about having children - not one single parent has ever told me having kids is a complete romp.

It seems like it doesn't matter who you are or who you pick, a relationship gets hard at some point. (Although clearly it's possible to pick someone wholly inappropriate and have the relationship always be a complete nightmare...we've all done that.)  Someone shifts in an unexpected way, or doesn't shift when you do, and a balance is thrown off.  People behave in unpredictable ways.  One may find oneself behaving unexpectedly.  No one knows everything about oneself at the beginning of things, or even at the middle of things.

Because the problem/beauty of it all is, things change.  We work so hard to find a place of safety, a place of continuity, but in the end, that's an arbitrary decision - "this place is safe and will not alter" - you can say that, but you can't make it true.

I think about a couple I know who have been married nearly 50 years.  They bring each other equal parts comfort and irritation.  Is the irritation as comforting in its constancy as the comfort?

I also listened to a radio program recently about quitting, and that's having an effect on my musing.  As a society, we're bad at quitting, though sometimes quitting is the best thing we can do.

Except when it isn't.

Wanting to be right all the time is another form of vanity, and boy, is vanity turning out to be my stumbling block.

I'm going to think about this more and get back to you.

Coming soon...a new look

Yesterday, I'm roaming the farmer's market in my neighborhood when I see someone standing at the door of Starbucks waving energetically to me.  "Yo!"  It's R, with whom I was in a sometimes questionable show earlier this year.  He just broke up with his girlfriend, moved to the neighborhood and is meeting our friend J in a minute.  We chat.  It's wicked fun.  He tells me during his move his car got stolen - while full of stuff.  The cops found it that very night, stripped of parts, but most of the stuff was still there.  The thieves left credit cards and checks he had in there, but took all the cleaning supplies he had just bought at Target.  Naturally, we thought of terrible puns - "Dudes, we cleaned up on this robbery!"  (etc.)

J showed up (late, of course) and I started telling them about my new plan to change my image.  "I'm thinking of taking up smoking," I told them, "I just feel like I need to be more of a bad ass."  

"Shit, who you kidding?" R flatters me, "Girl, you're already bad ass - why you think I was calling to you from the door?  I was thinking, who is that hot chick...oh, man, I know her...and damn, she's already married."  

"Whatever, kiss ass.  I'm really looking fine, rocking this socks-with-shoes look.  I need a hair cut, and maybe a miniskirt..." 

R interrupts - "A leather miniskirt..."

"Please, you know I don't have a miniskirt, leather or not."  

"Just go home and grab any skirt, we'll cut it off for you, no problem."

"Or what about a face piercing?" J chimes in, helpfully.  "Tongue?  Nose?"

We continue being ridiculous until we decide that I will find a leather jacket, a leather miniskirt, get my haircut, buy some cigarettes, and somehow get a facial scar in a knife fight.  Then the two of them will come over and we'll do a photo shoot with me leaning out of the window of my new (not cool) car, smoking.  And post it on facebook.

This morning, J emails me that she walked outside to go to work and discovered her car had been stolen.   

I have two responses:

A)  I WISH I could go check to make sure my new car is still there, but I'm already downtown at work, and

B)  I better make this photo shoot happen stat before the car disappears.

Oh, that's right

I was running on the lakeshore a few days ago right as the sun was setting.  I tend to keep my eyes ahead or on the lake, but I happened to look back over the skyline - the sky was that gorgeous yellowy-orange-pink.  The airplane exhaust trails shone silver against it, like jewelry in the sky.  And I was happy.  I didn't need to be anywhere else for that moment, or have anything, or be someone else.  I was glad to look over my shoulder and see beauty and call it home.

I started rehearsal for something else that same day I had that view, something short and simple that will finish up before I really get started on the next exciting project.  It's not an accident that I had a moment of total satisfaction the day I started rehearsal for something.

How do I forget this?  I mean, I have been through this cycle so often you'd think I would know by now:  I love plays.  I LOVE them.  More than people, on occasion.  (Or if you feel less loved by me reading that, think of it this way - I love you by way of plays.)  And there is a part of me that just isn't alive if I'm not working on something.

It's literally like flipping a switch and connecting more circuits of my brain.  

I remember the moment I figured out I was doomed to work at this as a profession.  I was temping by day in an accounting department and could not figure out why the other workers were so stressed and fretful that numbers weren't in the exact right place.  "Who cares?" I thought.  "Why does it matter?"

At night I was interning at a theatre - one of those nights, my job was taking notes during a run of Once Upon a Mattress.  The finale came, the entire cast was on stage, they struck a final tableau, there was a pause...and the director nudged me to take a note: "Make sure Charles in the back moves about a foot to the left."

And here's the crazy thing.  I could see immediately, SEE, why that was important.  Why moving Charles a foot to the left would make a difference, make it better.  The minutae of this process, while just as pointless, made sense to me.

So why am I ever ever even slightly bewildered if I feel grumpy and restless and depressed when I'm not working on a show?  Why on earth don't I get it by now?

Facebook

And now for a mood change (bring those lights back up!):

There are things people do on facebook that drive me nuts - no, wait, that's too strong.  When I'm in a good mood, certain comments make me roll my eyes.  When I'm in a bad mood, they drive me nuts.

I'm frequently tempted to grouse about it in my status update, but then I resist because people are largely well-meaning and it's really my problem, not theirs.  But here are some things that I could do without as regards facebook:

• Couples who use facebook status updates as a conduit for pillow talk.  Hey, folks, get a room, or at least, how easy would it be to send that in a private message?  Do you have to have the "I was just thinking about you, pookie-bear..."/ "Awww, tinsel toes, I can't wait for tonight!" conversation IN MY FEED?  I'm not trying to eavesdrop, peeps, you're making me eavesdrop.
• The person who is always, without fail, absolutely, first to comment on any and everything I post/my family posts/anyone posts.  Especially the things that have no bearing on his/her life.  I could post, "Going to Zimbabwe!" and this person would comment within seconds something like "I've always loved places that start with the letter Z!"  Uh, great.  Thanks for your input.
• People who post about their awesome, amazing holidays in places like France and Cabo.  Sure, it's nice to tell people you're going on vacation, but there is a different between commenting on a fun time and lording it over the little people.  I guess a better way to express this is:  is it in good taste to brag to the homeless man outside your office about the seven course meal you had last night?  Know your audience.
• My exceptionally religious friend who either takes me to task for not being godly enough or willfully misses that I am often joking.  Sweetie, you know I am not the same religion as you.  Why on earth are you continuously commenting as if we have the same goals and tactics in life?  Oh, wait, it's because you're convinced that if I don't believe what you believe, I must be doing it wrong.  Wow, I can't imagine why that would irritate me.  Especially if I happen to complain about something in my life and you pretty much tell me it would have all worked out if I had just prayed harder.  Yeah....

In contrast, I love when people post about their kids (kids are cute!), and put up funny pictures and say witty things.  Hooray for all those people who make facebook entertaining.  I love looking at people's wedding photos and new houses and trips to fun places and general success.  So if we could just clear up these few pesky bad habits, it would be so much better for all of us!

No?  Ah, well....

Red House Painters

So, you're cleaning, and you dig up an old box of CDs or tapes (or sure, records, if you were into vinyl), and there are all these titles you remember but you haven't seen in ten, twelve years, easy.  "Man, I loved this band!" you think, and you pull out a handful of gems.  It feels like running into friends by accident, you're about to sit down and have a drink with someone you cared about deeply who just hasn't been in your life for a time.  The feelings are all there, just buried under all the careless accumulation of being alive today and now.

Then you press play, slide in the disc, rest the needle in the groove.  But it isn't a casual catch-up drink with old friends.  Your body becomes transparent because you cease to be in the now, your whole self is shoved unceremoniously into the past, frozen there while the songs play.  Maybe you are suddenly 25, and you've been swallowing all your disappointments, and you might not be entirely happy with who you are becoming.  You've been sending out distress signals that are too subtle for most people to understand.  You don't know how to make anything change, you don't know you are the one in control.

In the midst of that someone begins to entertain you - and it feels like it's for you, like a magician who is right there at your table, maybe other people can see the act but you are the audience for this fantastic sleight-of-hand.  This entertainment is a distraction and a summons and a fiction and a delight.  You are enthralled.

You are also taken in.  Because it is not for you - even the tricks and asides that only you catch aren't for you, those bits are really just the rehearsal of material for others.  You are not the audience but an audience.  It takes you a long time to accept that this magic isn't directed at you, isn't in response to you.  It takes you a long time to accept that nothing about you called any of this magic forth, that you were just the one sitting at the table when it started.  You wanted so much to be someone who inspired magic.

And when you finally realize what you are not in this situation, your disappointment wells up and breaks open over everything, it spills down into a few songs that you have to stop listening to, some CDs that you pack away in a box, and try to forget.

"The worst thing: to give yourself away in exchange for not enough love."  - Joyce Carol Oates

Procrastination

Yes, I need to put a budget together and plan my upcoming classes and register my car in IL and exercise and write a letter and make dinner and re-pot the plants in the window and sort through all the stuff I brought home and fold all the laundry and make the bed and...

In short, I have work to do.  But I don't wanna.

Last week my Dad was in town and we went to a few museums.  We got split up pretty quickly due to our different speeds, and so I spent the morning wandering around learning things.  Or, if not actually learning, re-experiencing.  A lot of modern art leaves me shrugging, but sometimes a piece really grabs me.  I built my own airplane on a computer at one point, and tried again to absorb how airplane wings actually make a plane fly.  (It's seems counter-intuitive, no?)  I learned that certain cells in my body are constantly replacing themselves while others stay put for a lifetime.  Turns out my gut has replaced itself about 33 times, but the brain I came in with will be with me when I leave.  (Gulp.)  My resting heartbeat is somewhere between 55-60 (pretty good).  I was fascinated by the wave simulator detailing tsunamis.

In contrast, this week there's little to learn.  Harumph.  I guess the onus is on me to go looking for something new.

I suppose the logical thing to do is stop procrastinating and get some of this work done.

All right, laundry.  You and me are going to have a showdown...

Zippo

I have Momitis - I can't think of anything to say that anyone would be vaguely interested in reading.  (So named for my mother's true statement, "No one wants to listen to what you have to say, they'd rather be talking about themselves."  Which is fair enough.)

I'll just be sitting here looking out the window, humming a little tune.

Getting back to the groove

Whew.  Nothing quite like leaving your parents home and getting back to your own to make a thirty-something girl feel like a grown-up again.  I managed to take a large portion of stuff out of the closet, and make a really good stab at tossing some things I no longer need while hanging on to things that are still important.  Letters from campers 18 years ago, campers I cannot visualize, that end LYLAS?  Gone.  Letters from one of my best friends at age 19 who is still one of my best friends?  Kept. 

Re-entry to my actual life is still tricky, as this is the beginning of school and I am way behind in terms of planning anything.  Heh.

I did smuggle three bags of trash and four boxes of old clothes/flotsam/detrius out of the house, never to return.  It isn't much, but it feels good to toss some things physically, as it allows one to toss some things mentally.  At least I hope it does.

Brownlee, I know the danger of nostalgia, I do, but sometimes you don't see the journey until you look back.  Also, as stupid, vain, whiny, irritating, and boorish as I was to everyone around me, it's nice to see with what generousity I was treated by my friends.  Thanks, all.  Especially the four people I know read this on occasion.  I've saved letters from all of you. 

Smootches.

Life Cleaning

I am overwhelmed.

I'm home with my parents, one of whom has been diagnosed with a chronic disease, and the other of whom has not been diagnosed but has a far more chronic disease.  The house is full.  I can't even begin to describe it without using words that would get me in trouble should anyone in the family ever read this.  I will be driving back to Chicago from here, and here is a partial list of things it has been suggested I could take back:

• 4 wooden chairs
• two armchairs
• two round, glass-topped side tables
• a set of china
• 6 separate lamps, complete with shades
• clothing I last wore at age 14
• a chest of drawers
• all my books

And this is just this evening - more will be offered all throughout this weekend, I'm positive.  Here's the problem - I could take every one of those items away from this house and you would not be able to tell they were missing.  Because there is so much extra stuff in this house, that wouldn't even skim the surface of the clutter.

So the house is what it is, there's nothing I can ever do to change that.  But I came home with the idea that I would clean out my closet.  I haven't even touched the closet yet, and I've been weepy and sad and generally sort of fretful, because I'm reading through bad writing of mine from the past 15-20 years.  I'm trying to toss some of it, too, but no matter how bad it is, it's a marker, and some of it I can't part with because it is terrible but it describes what was going on at the time.

Did I mention I've been stung by a wasp as well, and that my arm is in a constant low-level pain?

And that reading things I wrote + emails is making me realized what a first class dope I am?

Ok, back to the closet.  Pete, I think your stuff is coming up soon - I think for a change I will actually enjoy going through a basket/box/envelope.

Something AWESOME

Wow.  I am.  Wow.

Ok.  This may be the minute everything changes, or it may not be.  But I just got cast in a show, a great show, a show I can be really excited about.  A show with a really really well-respected theatre.  It'll probably be a tiny tiny role, I'm just in the ensemble, but I don't care.  I feel so excited that I'm about to work with these people, these people I respect and think are awesome beyond belief.

I almost can't describe how thrilling it feels.  I have a toe-hold in the kind of theatre I can truly adore.  The kind of atmosphere I can respect.  I get to work with people I think are AMAZING.  I get to do a 3 month run of this show.  It's a play I read and got super excited about because it is creative and fascinating and bizarre and entrancing.  And I GET TO BE IN IT.

I hate to have it be all middle-schooly, but THEY PICKED ME!!!  I'M A PRETTY GIRL, MAMA!

The worst part, now I have to wait three months for rehearsals to start.  But I don't care.  It's going to be awesome.

Thank you, universe.  My something good.  Thank you.

Four Hours Ago...

Ok, the good news is I pulled out of the worst of the bleakness, the bad news is I might be heading back in. I had an audition today, and it was for something I'd really like to do - I'd REALLY like to do. And I tried to be charming and adjustable and a collaborator, and it was good, really, it was ok. But at the end, I just felt sort of dismissed, and I thought, nope, someone will be better at that than I just was. Which is ok, really, it's so much higher a place than not going through this! But...

Last year about this time I had a very similar experience. A project came up that I really had a chance for - it was an understudy gig, but it would have been with a theatre I love and understudying people who are amazingly talented as well as well-placed in the scene. And I went and did a good job! I felt really happy about what I showed them and about my chances, even if I did not feel like I was a shoe-in. And I didn't get it.

So I know I don't know the result of today, but it feels the same, and I think, great! I keep showing up at these theatres for whom I long to work, and I am getting enough feedback back to realize I really have a shot at these roles (else why would they call me for callbacks and such?), and yet I continue not to book them. How long, oh lord, how long? A year has gone by and I'm in the same place. How many more years go by before something syncs up and I'm actually in the right place at the right time and get to do the thing I love???

And I feel disappointed in what I showed them today. I don't think it was enough. But I can't tell. I hate feeling I've disappointed myself - it was almost easier last year, when I felt good about what I showed them but didn't get it. I wonder if someday I'll actually be at a level where I am the reader on an audition like this, and look back and think, whew! I finally got to do what I love! How freaking lucky will I feel. And hey, if by some magic I have booked this show, even though it doesn't feel like that right now, how amazingly, stunningly, thrillingly lucky will I feel. Even though it would just be a small part in an ensemble. Ah, well. It may not happen. And if it doesn't, I get to deal with that however I can. I guess, in a way, just the fact I had a shot at it is progress? I have to tell myself that.

I feel sick

I feel sick. I feel like the second I get to next week (when I have very little work scheduled), I will find it impossible to get out of bed. I have to drug myself with books in order to get from hour to hour. Being awake and conscious right now feels unbearable.

Someone is dying. It's a long story. Not one I will tell - you're safe.

I am very close to sliding back into a dark dark place. I hope against hope to get some good news about getting cast in something awesome, but it's looking unlikely. Though a couple of months ago I thought I had been trapped in this dark place and I managed to wriggle back out, so maybe that will happen.

I need a yes instead of a no from something.

I may not get one. It may be a while before I can write another post. But hey, all four of you reading could use a break, I'm sure.

Someone told me once, bad days are good for the acting. Let's hope so. Let's hope so.

No Squirrels Up Here

I'm on the 86th floor of a building.  The view is incredible.  The sun is out, making the lake glow - I would say like the Bahamas but I've never been there.  The way I think the Bahamas looks?  Maybe.  This is so far up that I feel like I'm in a spaceship hovering above everything.

I'm filling in for someone in their office and hoping I'm not ruining anything.  I'm listening to Pandora and trying to come up with ways to trick it to play me something I like.  I'm sort of surprised that Pandora is not as apt at hitting the musical spot as I had hoped.  Weird...either I have exceptionally eclectic tastes, or Pandora is hamstrung by its silly requirements.  Look them up sometime - it's strange.  Hey, we can play you a bunch of stuff you'll probably like, as long as we don't play the song you say you actually like, or the artist you say you like more than a couple of times.  Strange.

Hilarious - I am in the gooey middle of a wash of sappy, sugary pop music, brought on by the satellite radio in a rental car, so the fact that I can even pretend that I have eclectic taste in music is delusional.  My poor sweetie is so tired of pop music he could throw up, and cracks jokes about the calories that I am burning with all my in-the-seat dancing.

And actually, I gave in and did some street dancing these past few days.  Sigh.  It is ludicrous that I think I am calm, rational and non-dramatic when I will literally dance in the street with my iPod on as if this is just how normal people behave.  Truth?  I'm a weirdo.  I was dancing at band rehearsal the other night!  And here's the thing - I am a bad dancer and yet I can't care.  I can't care about that when some peppy tune is plunking out string pizzacato notes to a funky beat. (pizzicato??  How can I not spell that?  Horrifying...)   

This is in direct contrast to my crying on the bus.  When I think about how little time separates those two events, I shudder and the word manic-depressive flashes through my mind.  You may not be surprised to find it runs in my crazy southern family, manic depression.  

Perhaps it would be better, on this fine, sunny day, to look out over the beautiful city of Chicago in the pearly sunlight and do some office chair dancing to, yes, I can admit it, Sara Bareilles' King of Anything.  Which I am obsessed with but cannot make Pandora play.  You have to approach it by trying to make it play something similiar.  It's like having to aim just slightly left of a target in order to hit it.  Hmmm...  

Oh, lastly, I think Pandora's super high-minded "bios" of everyone are irritating.  Those bios just tell you who the person you are listening to is "like", as if the purpose of the whole enterprise was to link every artist with another, as if music were a big color wheel and you could describe everyone by saying what two other artists combine to make them.  Not my favorite way of exploring people.  I just want to know about them, where they might be from, why they play music, etc.  

Clearly, Pandora has different goals than I do.  Fair, I suppose. 

You know what?

I had an audition last week (I was not particularly good) in which the character I was playing was described as starting sentences with "You know what?"  Sadly, I've noticed I've been doing it a lot since then.

I just looked up into the tree outside my picture window and a squirrel is staring at me.  Weird.

Still there.

It's like he's aiming a branch at me.

He hasn't moved.

I'm transfixed by a squirrel.  What will happen?  Find out in the next post...if there is one...

Delete

Sometimes I hold onto things longer than I should.  But in a moment, I'm going to go delete something out of my phone and I think I'm honestly done with it, absolutely, without a doubt.  It's a bittersweet feeling, to be sure.  And of course, I think I'm done with it now, but I could be wrong.

There.  Done.  Erased.  Just some gossipy text messages from when a friend went out drinking with someone I went out with once.  The messages were from almost six months ago.  The person I went out with (much much longer ago), well, it just never really felt finished.  But today at lunch I was talking to a friend about the difference between meeting someone and being enthralled with them and then having to actually build a day to day life with them.  (Technically, I was talking about it as it concerned my friend, but extrapolation can be made.)  And that situation I think of so fondly from my past...would have been a complete mess had it extended any farther, instead of just an unfinished fizzling out.  I really should have just had my one night stand and been done with it.  Not that I was capable of such a thing at the time, but that's what never got finished, not some great love affair.

The bittersweet part reveals I'm a romantic.  I like the idea of the unfinished, the yet-to-come fulfillment.  In putting that daydream down and getting on with life as it is and would have been, I lose the fun mental side-trip, the boondoggle.  But someday you have to stop kidding yourself.  Today I managed to stop kidding myself about one thing.  It's not much, but it's progress.

So long, you.  I'll just be over here in the corner with this pile of long-cherished illusions.  Hey, just because I junked one doesn't mean I'm free of them...

The weeping must stop

I thought this post would be about the really frustrating kids I am teaching this week.  But I just whined on facebook about that, so, no.

Instead I'd like to mark in print for myself that I couldn't stop weeping on the bus today, which is worrying.  Low-level weeping, not totally uncontrollable - tears but not shoulder shaking.  And yes, lots of things could be behind this - I mean I have reasons to weep, sure, who doesn't?  Death is a good reason, and letting something or someone go, and tiredness and frustration.  Disappointment, anger, being passed over - all good reasons.

But these are things I'd like to imagine I have the stamina to withstand.  Or maybe normally these things, which we all deal with at different times and at different measures, are balanced by the good things.  Don't get me wrong!  I have some good things!  If I didn't, I'd probably not be able to get out of bed.

Which is my point.  I seem to be lacking a fundamental ability to cope on an ordinary, regular level with much of my own bitterness and disappointment and sadness.  If I had any money at all, I would start investigating medical solutions.  Though, tricky - medicine could improve my mood (maybe), but can never make me a better actor, which, truth be told, is what I really want.

Which is my underlying query to myself these days - is happiness overrated?  Is discontent the driving force toward action, or improvement?  If I medically took the edge off of my sadness (presuming I could afford to do so - not a given, as I'm not sure where next month's rent is coming from because a check is late from my print job in APRIL), would I be stuck at this point forever, or will my dissatisfaction with my present state eventually galvanize me toward a better conclusion?

Which brings me to a different question:  do I want more than I have the talent to achieve? 

What's orange and sounds like a parrot?

A carrot.  I know, great, right? 

So, this week I'm teaching a "talent camp".  Who-hoo. It surprises me how much better life gets when I am making some money, however little it may be.

The kids are 5 to 7 years old.  While they are, of course, talented, their "talent show" may not be stellar.  But the jokes, whoo, boy!!

More soon.

New Mantra

I just found out an actress I think of as my nemesis has been cast in a new play I ADORED in the reading...a new play I had no opportunity to audition for.

Let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go let it go.  Let it go let it go let it go let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go let it go.

I'll be at this a while. 

Let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go.....

Ballet Flats

I got to this audition about 5 pm.  It's now 11:15 pm.  Gah.

So, it's hard not to feel like cattle at this point, and in addition, not to be truly repulsed by actors in general, and how needy and irritating and self-centered we all are.  (There's no way I'm immune.)

And, not to be rude, but this particular audition is full of very young people, mostly just starting out, and they have that "everything is possible" sheen on them, and dammit, everything probably is possible for them.  But many of them currently lack a certain focus, clarity or self-awareness.  They're throwing themselves at the text and music without regard to detail or subtlety.

Well, and also there are about 40 people here, reading in endless combinations.  It's a LOT of people.

There's no getting away from the fact that this is a certain tier of work, and it's not the tier I want to be on.  I'm not ashamed of it, I just want more.  So if they cast me, and certain indicators make it seem likely they will, I would happily do the show as long as none of the other projects I'm interested in come to pass.  As in, it's better to do something than nothing, but there are things I would rather do instead of this.

They are all so young and eager!!!  Oh my god! If I hear one more story about the hilarious thing that happened to someone while they were playing some tiny part in a huge musical...

Also, there's a level of effort right now that I feel certain I wouldn't see at an equity audition - lots of performing to impress those of us in the lobby, instead of saving it for the audition room.

I'm tired of these little girls in their sundresses and ballet flats.  Does that make me a bitter middle-aged woman who spews venom at those who will succeed where she has failed?

I think so.  Damn.  Ok, Elsbeth....let it go.  Let it go.  Let it go. Let it go.

Endings

We leave Michigan tomorrow.  It's been a weird year for this gig for me (this was my fourth year with this Shakespeare company), so leaving has its positives, but it's bittersweet nonetheless.  I feel...ah, who cares what I feel, I'm just ricocheting between extremes these days, right?


It has been exceptionally easy to waste time here, and in fact I should head off to the beach momentarily to have one more shot at loafing.  There are all sorts of things I've not been getting around to - phone calls and writing and general work that should be done. (I owe some of you phone calls...sorry, it is true that I don't get good phone reception where I'm staying right now.)  It's hard to feel like any of the things I'm delaying are important.  And technically, yes, I guess none of it is important.  Or all of it is.

I don't seem to have anything to say, so I'll just stop abruptly.  Happy summer, all.

So proud

The interns I directed performed their scenes tonight and they were so awesome!!!  Ok, maybe they wouldn't be ready to star in a Royal Shakespeare Company production or a Hollywood picture, but they were clear, and funny, and knew exactly what they were saying in real words and had a blast.  I was especially pleased about how clear they were - they were making choices!  Thinking things through!!  It was great.

I'm so very proud of their work, and thrilled that I got a chance to work on scenes with them.  It's been work, more just arranging everyone's schedule to allow for rehearsal, but the good kind of work, the kind I like doing.

I still prefer acting myself, and I discovered more about what I wanted to direct them to do (or not do) when I walked the script with them, but it was a very gentle, easy introduction to directing.  Or really, coaching, I guess.

Yay!  No more Macbeth.  I may miss Midsummer, but I don't think I'll miss Macbeth.  Fake blood is really sticky.  Ugh.

Thunder, lightning, and in rain

It rained last night on Macbeth, which was sort of awesome, and ended up getting me home at a reasonable hour.  I was in my pajamas reading by 11:30 pm, and in bed one serving of cherry pie later.  Ah.

I know shortly I have to go back to the real world and to real work, and also to really being broke, but for the next three days, it's all books and food and music.  One of my friends has promised to teach me some new songs and I know tonight we'll all get to wail on a few good country numbers - pre-show of Midsummer Night's Dream, there are 3 guitars, a banjo, a harmonica, and occasionally a vibraphone that mix in different combinations to play country versions of Dead Flowers, California Stars (that one is totally awesome), Jolene, Took a Lot of Pills and Died, I'll Fly Away, This Land is Your Land, and a few others I can't remember.  I love it.  We tried to work up Patty Griffin's Long Ride Home, but it's too complicated to master quickly, and no one knows it well enough to put it in performance.

But it's really nice to sing like a banshee, and add the harmonies in for some of those tunes.  I can be pretty happy, knowing that's coming.

Now, to nap.  Ahhh. 

Some silence

I had the rental house to myself this morning, and it was lovely.  Well, really afternoon, since I slept until about 11:30, necessary after getting to bed at 3-4 am. (Completely worth it, as that involved getting to sing along with 4 guitars at once last night - wow.)

At the house, I cleaned, I folded laundry, I rearranged the refrigerator, I made some lunch, I took everything out of my bag, cleaned the bag, and put everything back in.  Mostly in an intense silence - this house is in the woods and far enough away from other houses to be isolated.  I liked it, although it got even better when I finally figured out I could set up my computer to play some background music and sing along. 

It feels good to be alone right now.  And I am happy that being alone makes me feel stronger instead of scared and weak.  I feel returned to myself, I feel like there's a center there somewhere that I might still like if I can get back to it.  I'm happy I'm not scared by silence.  It means I have a reservoir of peace somewhere.

And the house is really beautiful.  It's a pleasure to clean it - though I did get burned because the "cleaner" left in the house is actually watered down bleach, which has now quasi-ruined one of my favorite shirts.  Oh, well.  I seem to destroy clothes whether I want to or not, so maybe I should just accept I won't ever be able to wear anything "favorite" for long.

Ok, off to work with interns on their scenes. 

Clearing

You know what I like?  Books. 

You know what else I like?  Being in plays.

You know what I'm doing for the next eight or nine days?  Reading books and being in plays. 

So, it turns out I can enjoy myself after all. No, I don't have big parts and that's still hard to deal with, but I'm still having fun and there are fun people around.  It is really beautiful to have my whole job be just being in plays, though.  I'd forgotten how much I like that.

In other news, I am both happy and frustrated to report I got a request to audition for one of the theatres I did a general audition for back a few weeks ago.  I'm absolutely thrilled to get the request - I feel like I must be doing something right, finally, or the company would never bother.  Sadly, I am still here in Michigan when the audition takes place, dammit.  So I can't currently go.  Grrr.  It's so irritating to find my timing is so off.  But on the whole, the request still makes me feel much more positive.  And there's always a chance that I'll be able to make an audition on another day - I'm not sure what their schedule is.

I would love for everything to turn around for me...would LOVE to get back to being permanently gleeful.  Or at least getting to do what I love and feeling like the path to making money at doing what I love is open, not closed.

In the meantime, I went to the farmer's market today and had a wonderful time chatting with my friend.  One of the stands had breakfast for sale, actual farm eggs and farm bacon cooked to order and it was delicious.  Then I bought raspberries and blueberries and beans and black cherries.  And I came back to the tiny little place I am staying and made myself a cup of tea.  The next time I'm required to do something will be tonight at 5 pm.  Right now, in this moment, life is utterly blissful: I'm going to go sit on the porch, eat cherries and read silly books.  Then, tonight, I'll strap on a broadsword and run around the woods pretending stuff.  It's great!

Not bad

"I demand that you put that book down, turn off the lights in there, and come out here to look at the stars with me!"

You know, there are a lot of things that ease when someone is kind to you.  To one.  To me.  And a sky full of stars doubles as a net to hold in camaraderie.  I still feel old and mostly untalented, and I still feel on the fringe of this experience because I just don't do quite enough in these plays to take hold somehow, but on the whole, doing something artistic always feels better than doing nothing, and if I don't get to do much acting, at least the people around me are worth watching.

I might find a door back into my life in the next ten days.  The sun shines across the harbour as I ride my bike to rehearsals in the morning, and wildflowers splash over the paths.  I think life is rough sometimes, and saying goodbye to people permanently is hard, and I want to think about it and don't want to think about it in equal meaures.  At least, as I run on the hamster wheel that is my brain and my heart trying to process loss, I can get off long enough to look out over the lake.  There are blessings.  There are joys.  And kindness is being offered to me from many different sources right now.

Thanks, kind people.

Now, give me the blessing of a nap, and I might start acting human again.

Change of Scene

So, we've arrived in Michigan, me amongst this merry band of Shakespeare players, and I'm happy to report that at least the change of scene is a great benefit.  I'm shaking off some of the worst of the hopelessness and trying to get on with enjoying what I can.  After all, it's beautiful up here, and every one is pretty nice, and no matter what, it's fun to perform here. 

We're in the midst of tech, which can be a hassle but usually runs more smoothly than we expect.  I'm installed in a corner of a tiny room on a bed that's not even an actual bed (it's a sofa over which a small mattress has been laid), in a room with two other women, and it is cramped, definitely, but at least both women are nice and we're all working to make it as comfortable as possible for each other. 

I've been to the grocery store, so I finally have fruits and vegetables to eat instead of just endless burgers and sandwiches from the diner-like place next door (it's got great food but not the kind that will make your body feel better), and I may even have time for a short nap. 

While I'm still pretty removed from the vacationy, life-is-good mentality I often get up here, I am glad for some small mercies and I know I'll enjoy slinging on a sword tonight and tromping around the woods in my army boots.  And there's no one up here I can't stand - or rather, I can find a way to enjoy some part of every person who surrounds me.  That's a relief.

Now, if I can keep away from the Crescent Bakery and stay focused on the tasks at hand, or at the very least focus on reading all the novels I brought (and not on my continuing failure as a human being), I'll get a real vacation from myself.

That would be nice. Ahh.

Low

I'm balanced right in between losing it and keeping it together.  I'm not sure which one I want more.  Of course, yes, I'd like to be strong and fierce and fight off despair in some heroic way, but there's something to be said for just plain losing your mind - when you're done you're exhausted and low and you collapse.  You can expend all your grief and fury all at once, a typhoon, whirling dervish, tasmanian devil.  Then you sleep, empty of everything, and start climbing back from the lowest point.

I'm tired of bad news, and being graceful and accepting in defeat.  Well, attempting to be graceful in defeat.  (I think I tend towards bitterness and whininess and miss graceful entirely, but I do try.)

 I'm really tired of being last choice for all the things I want.  Even if I could keep my mind off of past and future and fix it firmly to the moment, I'm tired of being useless in this moment.  I just realized I am supposed to be in the scene that went by - turns out, I've missed it the last few times, and no one has noticed.  That's how much I'm getting done onstage this summer.

I'm tired of feeling like I've failed at every career goal I've ever had.

I'm tired of being underemployed. I don't mind working hard for my money, and I don't mind not having piles of it, but not being able to earn enough to keep ahead of the rent is starting to make me panic.

I'm tired of being a disappointment to my family.

I'm especially tired of being a disappointment to myself.

And of course, you gracious four, somedays five, people who occasionally stop by to read this, I'm tired of not having better news for you.  Trust me, no one misses me being joyful more than I do, and I hate that shame and disappointment is all I have to offer.

Come on, wheel of fortune, turn.  TURN.

A Three Legged Dog

I saw a three legged dog today.  A three legged golden retriever.  This may sound odd, but I bet if you think of the phrase "three-legged dog" the image that leaps to mind is either some sort of Jack Russell terrier or a mutt so ugly its momma had trouble loving it.

Though maybe that's just me with that set of associations.

So this particular dog was not tiny, or a mutt.  It was a beautiful purebred golden, the head cheerleader of dog breeds, only with three legs.  And damn it, that dog looked happy.  Gleeful.  Like it had caught a squirrel.  Or outstriped a dalmation in a race.  Or found a particularly amazing stick.  ("Look, I have a stick!" dogs always seem to say when they have a stick, so proud of themselves.)

Three legs, no problems.  Love it.  Now, if only I could have given that dog a stick...

Change of pace

So much death talk around here!  Let's change it up. 

Today, an open letter to the many Matts in my life.

Dear Matts I-III, which in my own parlance I'd label Earth Angel, Jug Ears, and Floppy Hair:

You know, thanks.  All three of you tried to be my friend, in different ways, and though I was really lobbying for you to love me (or in a few cases, just care enough to snog me on sight), all three of you tried to let me down as easily as possible.  And I was a mess with all three of you - I took it personally, I whined, I made accusations, I acted childishly.  All of which behavior I'M CERTAIN confirmed that you were absolutely right to move ahead and find someone more sane to date, or kiss, or romance.

Dear Matt IV (we'll call you "Steve"):

Thanks for teaching me what true disinterest looks like.  Wow, that sounds really snarky but I'm actually grateful.  I have run into disinterest again recently, and I can recognize it (I think) for what it is.  And look!  I didn't take it personally!  Mostly.

Lesson: Just because someone loses interest doesn't mean you aren't interesting.  However, it still stings.

Unfair

So, it turns out I am being very very unfair (see below and below). Here's what can be said about a woman who tried her hardest to give her community what was expected of her:

"She was a lady who who excelled at maintaining grace and dignity at all times and in all circumstances."

And that is something to strive for, definitely.  She liked birds, and dancing, and playing the piano, and she loved her garden, which was lush and beautiful and full of flowers, not practical vegetables but flowers.  She read incessantly.  She kept her spine straight and her pride in place while living through some very hard times, and she always did what she thought was right, even if it was hard. 

Goodbye, Miss Myra.  I hope you're with your son and your husband and your own mom and dad, and that you are transformed into your best self, and are laughing and dancing and gardening.  Or maybe all of that has fallen away and your best self has transcended all of that to be at peace.

Help me maintain my own grace and dignity throughout my own hard times.

Crazy Town

I am acting like a crazy woman.  My exterior and interior life doesn't match at all.  I'd like them to match even less, actually, would like it in a way if no one knew that my grandma had died.  Everyone is so solicitous, and sympathetic.  I'd like it if instead they would ignore me completely, if I could simply melt into the furniture.  I'd like to be completely absent.

I'd like to erase myself for a while.

Curious, I was truly affronted when I was accused by my cousin this week of being a dramatic child.  That's what it felt like, an accusation.  It certainly wasn't a compliment, it was something very much "other" that she claimed not to understand, something distasteful that she was having trouble grappling with in her own daughter.  Maybe I'm being unfair to my cousin.  It's my mother who is so against any attention-drawing behavior - my mother who shushes me when I laugh at a play, my mother who says "no one wants to hear what you say", my mother who finds being dramatic in bad taste.

And right now, even though we're a thousand miles apart, I would do anything at all to make my mother happy.  To take away her pain.  I would like to remake myself into a sober, serene school teacher who lives about two hours from her and is creative in mild, sanctioned bursts in classrooms but not in public.  Who married a nice dentist.  Someone my mother could be proud of, someone whose accomplishments could be listed easily to folks passing by in a receiving line.  Someone who had the requisite number of children she could instruct and spoil. 

Someone whose mere presence would ease her suffering. 

Of course I'm none of that. 

It doesn't help to reflect that my mother, if she admitted it to herself, probably feels the same way about her own mother.  Nothing my mother did could ever truly please my grandmother - or rather, any choice my mother made for herself was sure to be in conflict with what her own mother wanted for her, expected from her.  And now, it's too late.  Well, it was always too late, because of who my grandmother was. 

I'm not sure any of the girls in that family, my mother and her sisters, ever felt really loved by their mother.  Yet I myself heard my grandmother tell them she loved them.  One day it occurred to me that I wasn't around for a lot of years.  What sort of upbringing did my mother have that she can't really believe it when her mother says I love you? 

This is all supposition, of course.  I'm so dramatic, I probably have the wrong idea entirely.

Sigh.  I wish I could disappear, take myself off like a dress and wander unthinking through the next few days like a shadow.

Gathering

You know, there's nothing like family to make you realize you are an abject failure.

Alternately, I went to a funeral of a woman who was always very intent on what people thought of her, on keeping her good name in her community.  She spent so much time being blameless that in a way, there wasn't a lot you could say about her in her eulogy.

I suppose I could link these ideas and say, well, if I'm a failure, at least I give the family something to talk about. 

That logic seems faulty, though.

Don't listen to me.  The veneer of sociability has worn down.  And I hate that I cannot convince my family that just because I don't live in the South doesn't mean I don't love it.  Or that I don't miss it.  Or that I feel in any way superior to it.

Flight 4144

I'm on my way to a funeral.  Time seems to have slowed down. 

I don't quite know how to feel.  When someone is 94 and in poor health, and they shuffle off this mortal coil, do you really have the right to feel sad?  Conversely, do you have the right to feel relieved?  Both seem inappropriate. 

Because no matter what, no one gets out of this life alive.  Why do we as a culture never seem to have a way to deal with the fact that we all die eventually?  A faith helps, and the Southern instinct to ply grief with food, but our rituals do seems to fail us in a cosmic sense. 

Maybe I'll find I'm wrong.  Whatever we do as a family for the next three days, I hope it helps my Mom.  Her mother died.  I am not looking forward to having such a thing happen to me someday.

Sometimes books find you

From "Immortalizing John Parker" by Robin Black, in a short story collection titled, "If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This":

"She stands still in her doorway for a few moments -- as though there's an obvious next move to make and she just can't remember what it is.  This is a familiar sensation, since George's death.  She waits and nothing comes to mind.  Nothing ever comes to mind.  It is the sensation of absence, she knows, disguised as an impulse to act.  There isn't a damned thing to do, except see it for the trick it is."

and later:

"Time makes fools of us all,"  Clara says.  "Every single one of us.  It's possible we need to ignore that fact.  And get on with our lives."

Nope

It's not the vitamins.  I took some this morning and I'm equally crabby.  It might be the hayfever.

Here's the thing.  I grew up without allergies.  On a recent trip to New Orleans, I was without allergies.  Back in SC on vacation, I was without allergies.  While, yes, I may have a cold, the symptoms I'm experiencing seem much more like allergies.

WHAT THE HELL AM I ALLERGIC TO IN THE MIDWEST?

Could it be...failure?

Oh, wait, that's boring, I can come up with much more entertaining things for me to be allergic to in the Midwest:

• Blue-collar-esque clock-punching
• A tendency for the visceral over the verbal (sounds like a complicated math equation, yes?)
• Blocky, featureless office buildings (Damn you and your functionality, Mies van der Rohe!!)
• Flatness - and I mean figuratively as well as literally.  Yeah, yeah, the grid means you planned your city, it's easy to navigate, and you have a place to hide your trash (because there are alleys).  But personally, I prefer complexity to boredom.

If I say sooth (working on Macbeth lines, can you tell?), it has to be some plant that's making me sneeze, but those others contribute to my general irritability.

Drained away

Maybe I just forgot to take my vitamins today...

Sometimes, I read something so well written and moving that it throws all my pitiful, paltry efforts into the harsh light of reality.  As if I'm coming home from my stained glass training all proud of the bird on a branch I made, and I walk under a Tiffany dome.  When faced with artistry and talent, it is clear what I do is dabble and posture.  Poorly!  And irritate the sweet people who put up with me.

Then I go to rehearsal, and lucky me!  I'm playing a character who isn't a good actor, and it doesn't seem like I'm even doing a very good job at that.  And all the fun stuff I was doing is getting cut because my character is so unimportant that she shouldn't be doing anything that would steal the focus from the rest of the play.  I kind of want to go hide in a corner until we open - it seems like it would make the play better.

And I sent a stupid email today that I regret highly.  But the worst thing you can do in such a situation is write AGAIN and say, uh, sorry I said that, I really feel like an idiot now. 

But maybe I should just take my vitamins when I get up at 4:30 am tomorrow.

Vanity

It should be no surprise to my two whole readers (hi, Michael and Becky!) that despite my claim a few weeks ago to Really, I Mean It, Go on a Diet, I have not particularly.  The irritating thing is that I'd like to shift 10, maybe 15 pounds, and that's not a lot, but I like eating, and this is prime holiday season, and there have been and will be things to celebrate.  The problem comes in that I find it hard to care enough to not eat when there is tasty food.  I mean, we made Ginger Lemon Sorbet!  It was awesome!

Drat.

But I still prefer the self that has dropped these 10 pounds - and for sheer vanity.  Gracious, I am finding these past few months that vanity is a bigger motivator for me than almost anything else.  It may be why I'm not as successful an actor as I'd like to be.  There are lots of parts you can't play well once your vanity is compromised.  Note to self: give up on vanity, it's not helping you.
 
So, I'm going to redouble my efforts to lose some weight, and start today, and go running in the bargain.  I won't be defeated by my own vanity!  At least, not permanently.

Of course, my vanity is also appeased by all this time spent thinking back into the past, because I have shifted a good deal of weight I used to carry around (physical and otherwise).  It's nice to think I have conquered a few things over time.  It makes my eventual success provable.

A Completely Successful Evening

We had a friend over for dinner last night, and it was outrageously fun.  I spent the entire day, really two days, cooking and cleaning and singing along to music while I cooked and cleaned.  And every single part of it was so satisfying. 

First, cleaning this apartment was beyond necessary.  We like to keep the windows open and the air conditioning off when possible, which is lovely but lets in a lot of dust and dirt, and we end up ignoring the layers of dirt and dust for a long time.  This time, cleaning, I moved furtniture around and cleaned the baseboards and picture frames and, instead of mopping, got on my hands and knees and wiped the floors down.  (My mother's stance:  Mopping just moves the dirt around, if you want to get it clean you have to get down on the floor and wipe it up, and I am definitely her acolyte in that regard.)  There are some rooms I didn't get to at all, but the rooms that are clean are CLEAN. 

Side note:  I wish I had a really great vacuum cleaner.  I can't decide if it is wonderful or sad that I dream about getting a Dyson, for instance, the way other people might long for jewelry or a fur coat.

So I like cleaning and find cleaning incredibly satisfying.  Hooray.

Second, I like cooking.  If I say so myself, I made some amazing stuff for dinner last night.  My friend is a habitual late-comer, and it was forecasted to be 90 degrees, so I decided to make things that could be served cold.  Well, I did make a blueberry crumble for dessert, which could have been hot, but I made it the day before and warmed it up a bit.  The main course was a harvest grain mix (it has stuff like orzo and couscous and red quinoa all mixed in) and I made a an orange sherry vinegarette and chopped up a bunch of stuff into it - artichokes and grape tomatoes and chicken and mushrooms and feta cheese.  It's pretty good.  And it seemed to impress my friend, which was definitely the crowning glory.

Third, I love singing. Especially singing along to the radio or my itunes while I'm driving or doing something else.  Thoughtless singing, the kind that doesn't have to sound pretty, singing that's just you carving sound out of yourself, finding resonances in yourself you didn't know you had.

So it was already a great day.  Then my friend came over and we had a fantastic time!  I hadn't seen him properly in ages, and had been saying I would invite him over for dinner for about a year, and it was so wonderful to sit down in my nice clean house and eat incredibly tasty food and catch up with someone who talks about the things I care about - books and jazz and plays and food.  He's a Brit, as well, and spends a lot of his time bouncing between London and Chicago, so it was wonderful to vicariously be reminded of my other home. 

Now, the one down side is I drank too much wine and went to bed at 2 am for the second night in a row, and had to get up to go to rehearsal this morning.  Oog.  But it was a small price to pay for having such a damn fine time!  Glorious!

Now, if I can just get myself back over to the UK, it seems my friend's new girlfriend is buddies with Benedict Cumberbatch.  Really.

Let fly

Time: 5:30 am
Place: Chicago's Lakefront Bike Path
Weather: Sun rising, between 65-75 degrees
Destination:  Michigan Avenue workplace
Music: Elbow: "One Day Like This"
Mood:  Complete Bliss

The past two mornings I have ridden my bike from Andersonville down to work in the above conditions.  It's fantastic.  It's almost like flying.

I am regretting several of the last few posts, and might take them down.  After all, should one ruminate on one's own foolishness? Is it healthy to look back and compare then to now?  And of course, if you act like a fool and have proof you were a fool, should you leave it on the internet for all to see?

I think the answer is no to all of the above.

In the meantime, I am drinking a cup of tea and wishing I could go hiking over Catbells, though by this time of year it would be crowded with people, which I don't want.  I think I'd like to find a mountain to climb - not metaphorically, a literal mountain.  I want the physical sensation of having to move my body up an obstacle.

I'm not making a lot of sense these days - Life is wonderful and laughing about 75% of the time, and the other 25% is on an endless loop of questioning, as if my brain is trying to win a complicated chess game and pushing all the moves ahead to see what the consequences are. Consequences - yes, I am working out the consequences bit by bit.  I am not sure there is a way to win this chess game.  But I'm not a very good chess player.

I may need to say goodbye to things I really like having in my life, and I've never been good at that either.

Something I am good at: hand-woven pot holders.  Though I need one of those frames that come with the kit.

Stunned

Wow.  I found a BUNCH of stuff I wrote in the past, and it is...shocking? revealing? hilarious? eye-opening?

First, apparently I have the ability to write great text with a great idea...that lasts about 2-3 pages.  I don't seem to be able to follow through on an idea.  There's this great bit about a caretaker who kills her charge because no matter who she works for, she gives that family/person what they need, and this person needed killing.

Sadly, I have no idea why s/he needs killing, I didn't write that part.  I'm not even sure who got killed, aging grandma or tiny tot.  But even if I'm explaining it badly, it sounds really intriguing for the two pages it lasts.

And laced through all of this are the hopes and loves of a previous me.  And there is no doubt that I behave like an idiot for most of the time.  I (currently) pride myself on being fairly even-tempered, not the drama queen that's expected in my profession.  HA!  Oh, I know how to luxuriate in the drama...it's as if I subsist only on milk.  As in, milking it.

However, I am cheered by all of this, if only because one of the most aggravating, most disturbing pieces is an eight-page account of my slow acceptance that something vaguely romantic had ended.  (Sorry to be so irritating - I couldn't call it a romance and I wasn't dating this person, so I'm stuck without a label.)  I'm cheered because in the ensuing years I actually seem to have learned something, progressed, even (gasp!) grown up a little.

The story makes two interesting points I no longer believe:  1) If this gentleman is no longer interested in me, I must be uninteresting, and 2) without this person to amuse me, I am bored.

Hooray!  Two demons completely vanquished!  No one person has that much power over me anymore. (Except maybe my husband, but it's balanced by the power I have over him.)

But even better, I was transported back to that girl for a second last night, and when I got back to me, I realized I was sitting in rehearsal to be in a Shakespeare play.  And I would get paid to be in that play.  Both facts that seemed distantly impossible to certain previous me's.  Look at me!  I'm getting what I want!  Not all the time, perhaps, but sometimes.

And then we all danced a square dance for the end of the play!  Really!  And I was happy. 

Slapped by the past

I make no claims of goodness for the following poem - I'm just shocked by it, shocked that I wrote it in 2004 about someone who is in no way important to me now.  I'm cleaning out a box I thought was just pictures and instead it has a bunch of emails and letters and fragments of stories and poems I wrote over the past 15 years.  I'm sad in some ways how much doesn't change, glad at how much does. 

I really thought this poem was about someone else, then I found a date on an earlier draft, March/April 2004 and realized who it must be about.  Apparently my feelings about anyone who has ever dumped me are interchangable.  Though I suppose that's true for all of us up to a point.

So:
Villanelle for the One Who Moved On

Elliptical and sly, he comes alight
and all that danger howling in his eyes
keeps counting up the fierce price of delight.

He snakes his way past your defences' height
and dances there a while, to your surprise.
Elliptical and sly, his eyes alight.

His words are cardinals, his thoughts a kite
to lift you double-winged in rash surmise,
but surely there's a price for wild delight.

The bastard went and turned your pastels bright
with all his tumbling words that seemed unwise,
elliptical and shy, you flamed alight.

How will you pay?  Your courage is too slight
you cannot hock the flattery once it dies.
Can you afford the price of such delight?

You hate the final stanza turns out trite
as: woman mourns and pays, man finds new skies.
elliptical and sly, he blazed alight
and never paid a dime. What price delight!