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.