Much better

Sometimes, you just need everyone to go away and work through some stuff you've left undone for weeks. Then you do the dishes and crank the music up, and life just gets juicer and more vibrant.  You've added the metaphoric equivalent of half and half instead of skim milk.  You've used butter instead of margarine.  You've started listening to soul instead of smooth jazz.

Ahhhh.

I like being alone.  I feel vaguely re-set.  I have a lot of doubts about what I want and how I'm going to get it, even though on the outside, it appears nothing has changed for about twenty years.  I am definitely doubting my ability to function in the world in a relaxed yet purposeful way.  Then I just let the music hit my skin like light and sing along, careless, unworried, and I remember something important.

I know joy.  I know it.  I know where it lives in me, what parts of me are activated by it, and the activities I need to pursue to obtain it.  And more or less, everyone I meet and talk to either helps me find it or obscures it, and I'm not always smart enough to know which is happening at what moment.

But if everyone just goes away, and I'm left to my own devices, I can clear some of the detritus out of the way and get the path really open and clear.  Music helps, as does travel.

Ahhh.  Better.  I'm going to finish the dishes and spend some time alone, and I'm going to love it.

Shoulda

I'm reading Moll Flanders, in which the main character has had three husbands before page 100, and is making increasingly more sketchy choices as the narrative moves forward: crime, prostitution, who knows what she'll get up to next, there's nearly a hundred more pages of this stuff.

I find it fascinating that a) the book was written in 1720ish, and is pretty frank about how much she has to sleep around, though not entirely graphic, and also, b) that Moll's basic defense is simple - she is driven to all these extremes to stave off poverty.  She says, over and over, if she could have worked for enough money to support herself, none of this would have been necessary.  I think in terms of the 18th century, that is absolutely fair enough.

But I look at my own life, and the questionable choices I have made/continue to make, and what drives me to those conclusions?  Nothing so immediate and supportable as survival.  Nope.  It keeps coming back to vanity.  I want to be important, prized, valuable, funny, attractive.  I want to be right.

I could use a self-importance diet.  I'll think about that and get back to you.

Grumpy

There are some days when everything hangs together, people smile at you, the weather clears, parking spaces open up magically, you can laugh at everything, you're open and all the choices are yours.

This was not that day.

So there are also days when you miss all the cues life is giving you, and you're a half second late for everything, jokes, buses, lunch.

This was that day.

On the plus side, there are those days when everything you touch disintegrates, when you are a walking bulldozer, when you make every possible mistake and some extra ones no one knew were possible.  During those days, I can't justify my existence because I'm just plain screwing everything up.

On this plus side, this was not that day.  Not today.

Like celery

So my basic metaphor was going to be that I like celery, but some stalks taste sort of bitter and sharp, while others are deliciously sweet and crunchy.  I think you can see where that was going.

But it may not fit the point I'd like to make.  I noticed something in the first big snow yesterday.  Wait, back up, I gotta let you in on where my head's been.

We're in tech for the awesome project.  It is literally the longest tech I've ever been a part of.  We've been in tech for a solid week and haven't finished teching the show.  If that all sounds like Greek to you, tech is the part of rehearsing a play where you add the technical elements of a show and rehearse how that changes things - lights, sound, in our case, tv projections, quick changes, and...well, I don't want to ruin the surprises.

It's taking for-freakin'-ever.  Because this show is chock full of technical elements.  The down side to how slow tech has been is that I no longer have any conviction in the show, or even any idea how it fits together.  I am positive I will have forgotten nearly everything we decided by the time we actually run the show again.

It is tiring.  Tedious.  There is no excitement or glamour in this part of the process.  I can even safely say I don't love this part of the process.

But yesterday it snowed.  I had the good fortune to have booked a voiceover gig which turned out to be in an office overlooking the Chicago River.  I looked out of the window into a great white beauty, the peaceful silence that snowfall brings.  And that evening I went to rehearsal and sat around and made jokes with my incredibly lovely cast mates, and went drinking with them.  I woke up to go to a meeting about teaching.

I felt something lovely all through yesterday and today.  It's not the same kind of pure, unalloyed happiness I felt at the beginning of this process - actually being in this play has its own worries and insecurities and frustrations, and that's life, that's the nature of being engaged with the world.  But the details don't niggle the way they once did.  I feel...I feel like this is the life I'm supposed to get to live.  I can't eliminate sorrow or need or irritation or indeed anything negative, but I can live my life in such a way that the work I get to do makes those things palatable.

I think I'm content.  Not that I have no ambition or hopes for the future, but that this moment is a good one, even with its tedium.  I will take this tedium, because I know it leads to something I care about.

I wrote a poem a long time ago that started like this:
"You are like a snow that will not stick, and I love snow."
I remember the poem fondly, as if it were a beautiful and brilliant poem - if I ever found it I'm sure it would be embarrassing instead.  But the poem was about how as a southerner, I'd always loved snow, even though logically I could imagine all the irritations that actually getting snow brings.  Just like love, you see.

It was nice to look out at the snow and remember that despite the coming slipperiness and cold and grime, I still do love snow.  This snow, this snow is sticking.  Thanks, universe.

2012

Year of the Dragon.  I'm tired - we're going through tech, and it's painstaking.  This is an exceptionally tech-heavy show, and some of my love for it is just dialed in right now because everything is taking a really, really long time.  Like we're doing the play in molasses.

I'm a little bit bored, to be honest.  More because tech is a boring process than anything else.  I have a book but my current one just isn't very absorbing.  Hmm...that's a fair point - I was enjoying tech much more when I was reading a more exciting book.  Maybe I should stick to trashy novels until we're out of this phase.

I'm still just astonished by how nice everyone is.  Interesting, too.  I will spend the next 3 months with these people, so that's a happy discovery.

I wish I had some deep insights for you (and me), but most of my energy is being spent making sure I can help and not hinder this process.  And trying not to get frustrated because everything is ssoooooo slllooooowwww.