Can't lose or can't win

My flight is delayed.  Excessively delayed.  I don't intend to imply irritation with the word "excessive" - in fact, for once, I am in the enviable position that either way, I'll be fine.  Yes, I have work that I am scheduled to do tomorrow, and it would suck to miss it.  One of my appointments is for a vo gig, too.  But I figure if weather makes it impossible for me to get there, what can I do?  Everything I need to do can be  rescheduled.  In the best possible way, I'm not so important that 24 hours is going to ruin anyone's life, even mine.

Now, if I were a heart surgeon....

I think in general it would be less inconvenient for everyone if I get back to Chicago tonight, but here's the kicker: if I don't get on the plane tonight, it will probably be AWESOME for me.  I would be forced to take a cab back to the beachfront condo, where I would have to stay alone, by myself, with only endless television for company and only whatever I can scrounge out of the cabinet/freezer for food. (Or of course, whatever I can walk to, which is actually a pretty good selection.)

If I want, I can then spend the rest of the evening on the porch listening to the surf, or curled up on the sofa watching black and white movies, or writing a letter or reading.  I would be entirely self-reliant in a place I feel entirely at ease.

Of course, the likelihood is that this flight will continue to be delayed but eventually depart and eventually land, late, at O'Hare, in piles of snow.  After a tedious and protracted journey home, I will open the door back into the life where people need certain things from me.  That's all right.  Mostly they need the things I want to give them.

I'm just saying that if I slipped the net for an extra 24 hours, I'd relish the hell out of them.

Leaving

I'm not looking forward to leaving tomorrow, yet I know real life must be taken up again, and with a vengeance.  Strangely enough, I enjoy these flights back to the past much more when things are going well in the real world, but to some extent, no one in my southern family life actually comprehends how my work really, well, works.  If I ever get to be in a commercial or a tv show or a movie, it will make so much more sense to everyone because that's a product they can see and experience, but most of what I do and how I do it is a big mystery.

Which is fine.  Everyone in my family is super nice about it, usually supportive, and if not supportive, never openly derisive, which is about as much as one can ask.  After all, lots of people work in professions their families cannot understand - quantum physics, for instance, or perhaps activism.  Regardless, coming home and visiting has been a delight, and easier without the lovely husband in tow.  He is great, but the pull between his expectations and the expectations of my family is often strenuous, and I can never quite win, so it's useful to make trips alone at times, just to help my powers of concentration.

This has been a particularly lovely trip, in part because the weather has been warm if rainy, and in part because I managed to spend so much time with my best friend, who is (no cold medicine or wine at work this time) the best.  Honestly, life would be much better if we could live next door to each other.

I also got to drive a Mazda Miata with the top down on a sunny day through the beautiful South Carolina low country, so that was amazing.

I saw a trillion things I want to write stories about, and I wonder if I will ever manage to DO it instead of thinking about it.  When I'm here I always want to record every word, every drawl, every nuance, and once I'm gone it's lost and I feel something missing but can't quite work out what it is.  I wonder if I'll ever have a chance to integrate these parts of me, the part that nods and smiles out of a deep loyalty and respect to the past and the part that shakes off the expectations of generations in order to be whoever it is I need to be?  Maybe if I could find a way to thread that impossibly small eye of the needle, I could write about it more.

Maybe I should stick to acting out the words of others and hope someone awesome writes a great play about it.

Woozy

This time it's just cold medicine.

I'm so glad my best friend is my best friend.  I could wax poetic for days and it wouldn't come close to the things I would want to say.  I want to write about how cool she is, but I have a feeling I would always look at whatever I said with the dissatisfaction of someone not quite able to express something ineffable.

Also, I'm just starting to get high on this cold medicine.  But she's still really great!!  Even when my veins are completely free of additives.

Southern Charm

Y'all.  It is so beautiful here it almost hurts to walk around in the rain.  Streets paved with flagstones, earthquake bolts, ironwork.  It's stunning and old and tony.  The sideways houses manage to be patrician and shabby.  I took a walk today and got distracted following the sound of bagpipes that stopped abruptly just as I reached where I thought they were coming from.

We ate roasted oysters tonight at a cinderblock shack that's been roasting them for over 70 years.  The wooden tables have uneven squares cut out of the middle of them, underneath which lurks a trashcan, and the cook comes around with a bucket or a shovel and dumps piles of freshly roasted oysters across the table for you.  As you consume the oysters, harvesting them by carefully prying apart just-separated shells, you toss the shells in the trash.

It's a scene I've been part of, off and on, since I was a kid.

My brother is pretty awesome.  Like any sibling, I know enough about him that I could probably tell you a little more than just "awesome", but we'll stick with that for public consumption.  Tonight, I thought about how well he's mastered the art of ritual.  This weekend, this birthday celebratory weekend, has a lot of known points of contact.  Meals will be consumed, people will shop, oysters will be eaten.  Every time it happens, there's a hand reaching across all the years we've done it before, years where I wasn't there and years I was, moments where new people were introduced and yet everything remained the same in its essence.

He's caught on to this, somehow, caught onto the way the structure of sameness allows everyone a moment to remember everything that came before and yet still be right here right now.

Happy birthday.  It's a really really beautiful place, the coast of South Carolina.  Check it out sometime.

Yes!

You know who's great?! My best friend!  And what else is great?  Drinking with our favorite theatre teacher!  Also, all young women who take our jobs or men are scabs and it sucks when friends die and art is incredibly important and it's sort of fun to discover tv after years of only watching the news.  Plus, sometimes sitting on your friend's sofa in her adorable little apartment is oddly like sitting on a completely different sofa over ten years ago and having similar discussions with her late into the night after the Daily Show.  As in, perhaps only the furniture changes.

It's amazing (but inspiring different feelings than "great") to see letters you wrote your best friend and try to read them but be alternately embarrassed and sort of proud of yourself, sometimes even in the same minute.  Also amazing is looking back at the cool things your friends wrote long ago and remembering they were all sort of awesome weirdos and you sort of don't care as much about being pretty as you do about being awesomely fascinating (though the ability to fascinate men as much as a pretty woman can certainly would be a thrilling experience).

I might be able to parse all these separate thoughts out some night I'm not exhausted and tipsy, but for now I think I can boil it down to this:

Not all of you are lucky enough to know my best friend.  She's a superlative to surpass all superlatives. You're missing out.

Going home

I've got a break between shows, and I'm heading south, folks.  Where I hope to goodness it's warmer than it is here.  I think it will be wall to wall family for the next 6 days, and I'm all right with that.  It's time to pay homage to roots.

I want to go visit my aunt, who I haven't seen since my grandmother died.  Sometimes you need to visit people to make sure they know they are important to you.  Sometimes you don't.  There are people who are important, and you know deep in your bones they will always be important, and they know they are important, and it never goes away.  I'll admit these people are few and far between, but they are yours, somehow, and nothing really changes that.

But family doesn't always know this.  They know they are family, and that there's a certain obligation there, but not how you truly feel about them.  Wait.  I realize I'm making some serious assumptions here.  This is the way it works in the polite south, where if people have been well bred enough, you can't tell if they truly want to pay homage or are just going through the motions.  (Side note to the side note - well bred has nothing to do with money or race, I'm using it in context of taught polite behavior.)

So, you are supposed to pay homage to your elders, pay them visits, give them attention, listen to their stories.  That's how you show respect.  But I actually love my extended family, so I want to see them, I want to visit and listen to their stories and lavish them with attention.  I want my aunt to know that I love seeing her and eating far too much at her table, that she's always made me feel as if she's in my corner, that I appreciate both the sacrifices she has made and the things she has held onto.  I have four aunts, actually, and I can say that about each one of them.  My last few visits have been rushed, and I've not had enough time to see everyone.  I miss my aunt, and I want to show up so she knows she's important to me.

Now I just have to convince my mother to come with me.  That's the wild card.

I get six days of wild card, folks.  Complete, total wild card.

One thing at a time

Turns out, if you give up one thing, it's pretty certain your resistance and willpower is going to get used up concentrating on that one thing.  Other things are going to get through, things you have been resisting just in the natural course of things.

So, I'm on a diet.  It's taking most of my brain power right now.

A lot of other things are sliding. I'm sleeping too late, watching too much tv, letting myself walk a lot of  the time I ought to be "running".  I'm behind on a lot of stuff, including writing anything at all here or elsewhere.

But you know what?  It's ok.  I'm just going to take one thing at a time, and enjoy this app that tells me I should reach my goal weight by...May 17.  And I did run/walk outside today before the temperature dropped and it started raining, so I'm doing all right.

Oh. Ohhhh. Oooohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Y'all.  My life changed drastically today.  I had a massage.

I am blissed out in the extreme.  Don't get me wrong, I have had massages before, professional massages, but not for years and years.  This was...dim lighting and a heated table and aromatherapy.

It was fantastic.

It was a present.  I gotta say, if you want someone to really appreciate that you care about their well-being?  Give the gift of massage.  Someone once mentioned to me that they got massages because otherwise they didn't get touched enough.  That made sense to me until today.  Because even in a life where I would say I am touched quite a lot, I never get touched like that.  Even my awesome husband giving me a massage (which he does, cause he's awesome, and its awesome) doesn't feel like that.

I thought it would be weird to have a man as a therapist, and that I would inevitably and inappropriately think of sex.  Fair enough, I was totally thinking about sex at some point, but the therapist had nothing to do with that, and in fact almost didn't exist.  I was sort of surprised and disgruntled when he had a conversation with me at the end.  These disembodied hands suddenly attached themselves to a person with whom I had to have some sort of polite relationship, a fact I resented a bit.  Come on, disembodied hands!  Go on about your business and stop making me think about you as a person.

Of course, he was perfectly nice.  But nicer was just lying there remembering that I live inside my body, the one that really enjoys being touched.

Best part?  Massage one of three.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Bike Ride

Rode down to work on the bike today, despite the 30 degree temperature.  It was lovely, if creaky and slow.  Six weeks off the bike really puts one out of practice.  Still, I turned up the music and it was sunny and clear, and it helped me feel more in control and happier.  I don't really understand why, on days when I have nothing specific to do, I don't take long bike rides on the lakefront because it always improves my mood.

I'm thinking about something, and if I write it down, maybe it will be clear what I should do.  An actress in town is starting an online magazine for female actors, and has put out a call for articles.  I'm thinking about trying to write something for her/the magazine, because it seems like the sort of world I'm writing about anyway here.  But I'm stumped because I don't know what sort of thing I could write and stand behind.  There are plenty of things I think about other productions and people and ways to behave that I would happily tell a friend but would hesitate to put out there in a larger platform with my head shot attached to it for everyone to judge.  Because let's face it, for every person that might read something I wrote and be amused, there's probably two or three who would think, "What does she know," or "That is absolutely wrong," or "OMG, she just trashed me without naming me!"

And to ask the larger question, do I have anything I have a burning need to share with the community at large?  Is there anything special about me and my experience that could speak to anyone in the community?  It's hard to believe there could be.

Ordinary

I'm back to my ordinary life where I just go to work and come home and do ordinary people things.  I'm of two minds about it.  Part of me is enjoying it.  I can watch Netflix!  I can make dinner!  I can call people up and meet their brand new adorable babies!

And the other part of me is biding its time.  It's back there seething with impatience at being sidelined.  It's looking for a way out.  It's going to make me sing too loud in the shower, and write really poor poetry, and get into inappropriate conversations with the next person who crosses my path that asks the right wrong question.  It's going to flare out at awkward times and most likely embarrass the hell out of me, because I like to think of myself as very measured and calm but only part of me is, and the longer this other part has to wait its turn, the stronger it is going to get.

In the meantime, I am doing a pretty effective impersonation of an ordinary person.  I'm sad to think perhaps I really am simply an ordinary person who just wishes she were not, hence all the struggle.  If I would just give up this idea that I want something different and extraordinary, I might go gentle into that good night.  I could buy larger pants and let myself really go and look for a job as a secretary again.

I know people who seem to have given up working on their talent in favor of being absolutely ordinary.  They seem to like it.  I don't mean to make the word "ordinary" seem pejorative.  I like making dinner and reading books and working for my community.  I just have this thing that drive me to tells stories and in my very secret, private moments I think of it as talent, but it might just be proclivity.  Some days I square up to the idea that if it isn't talent, I'd do the world a favor to stop trying so hard.  I could just make money and pay lots of tax and be a citizen like an ordinary person.  I could do the world a favor by just becoming a consumer.

Part of me really believes what I just said.  And the other part thinks it is nonsense.

I guess we'll see which part gives up first.

Succinct

You know, I could have summed this up better:

There are lots of things that suck, but I'm back to dancing badly in response to a kickin' tune, many of which I now have at my fingertips through a truly awesome downloading spree funded by an awesome closing night gift.

Excuse me, I have to go jam while I finish the dishes now.  Lots of shoulder action going on in this house.

(Will it make more sense if I explain I downloaded tunes as diverse as Jackson Browne, Childish Gambino, The System, The Black Keys, Paul Simon, Shearwater, Kayne West, as well as songs off of Nashville and Smash? Probably not.  You hate me now for my incredibly poor taste in music, I can tell.)

Working forward

Today I downloaded a bunch of new music and went running and cooked dinner for my husband and focused on the positive and sang while I did the dishes.  It's gonna be ok.  I'm still, underneath, sad, so sad.  And it's not just that the show closed.  I feel deeply sad that I'm older now without being wiser, that I've lost track of people I cared about while hanging on to some that didn't value me at all.  I feel deeply sad that I've fallen so far short of what I want myself to be, what I think I might be capable of being.  I feel deeply sad that as I'm getting older, I'm losing some things and right now, I can't see what replaces them.  Nothing?  Emptiness?

I feel deeply sad I only ever write lists of things.

But on the other hand, going running outside, the lakefront path clear while all the grass remains covered with a blanket of snow, listening to new music that doesn't have any associations just yet, cooking whatever I choose for dinner, watching a movie in bed, making plans to see neglected friends, giving in to yet another %&*$ list, I can make a little bit of peace with the rest of it.  I am in more control than I thought, and I still have all the things I want within my grasp.

Well, close to all the things I want.  Really, really close.

Will I solve this problem?

I'm sad and I'm distressed.  I sit here, trying to make myself accomplish any one of a few minor tasks and stay away from just a few these-things-won't-help timewasters.  Emotionally, I'm close to the edge.  Minor irritations were huge stressers for me today, which is always worrying.  When you find yourself flying off the handle for small things, you know you can't trust yourself.

The funny part is how rationally my brain understands I am overreacting.  Given a few minutes, I can take a breath and calm down, talk myself off the ledge.  I can also quite rationally work out exactly what I need to do to make myself feel better.  Turn on the heat.  Read a good book.  Go exercise.  Get a massage.  Allow myself to cry.  Call some friends, do something for one of them instead of just wallowing in what is over.  Then, after a little rest and a little judicious, planned wallowing, make plans to see people I love, watch theatre I love, and then work on getting better at making theatre I love.  

It's not a hard prescription.  Tonight, though, I just have to take the pain-killer that is tv.  Let's hope God has pity on me and that the Horse Doctor is on the newly re-surfaced Korean Channel.

I love the Korean Channel.  LOVE IT.

Shut down

The body knows when you are in crunch mode, when you have to keep it together.  And it knows when you have gotten past whatever is driving you.  That is the point at which the body shuts down and gets sick.

I am well on my way to being sick sick sick, because the show closed.  Worse, I can feel a sort of black malaise coming on that I may be powerless to avoid.  The seratonin injections from performing and doing what I love have ended, and I am going to be going through serious withdrawal pangs.  The theatre dt's, if you will.

Ugh.

Closing

This is awful.  The awesome project just closed.  It's beautiful and sad and bittersweet.  It's driving away from the old apartment, a lump in your throat.  It's the goodbye at a bedside that you're afraid might be the last one.  Right now it's past midnight and I'm pretty tired, so I'm probably not doing it justice.  There's such a swirl of pride and longing and delight and separation anxiety and deep regret at an ending of something beautiful and soul-filling.  Your last meal at your favorite restaurant.  Does that mean you won't eat?  No.  But you can't eat here again, in fact, here doesn't exist anymore, and can never be recaptured.

There's also just a little embarrassment because I talk too much and too effusively at parties and I can only imagine I say all the wrong things awkwardly and loudly.  Things I can replay in my mind over and over and over.

On the other hand, there are lots of happy moments from the awesome project I can replay over and over - funny moments backstage, reading all the prop books, finding out how awesome the lady taking care of wigs is in her real life, laughing about Stubby the painted hawk statue, dirty jokes and gossip and sharing audition information in the dressing room.  Lots more.  I just hit a wall of tiredness, so I'll have to save it for another day.  For now, I'm both profoundly sad and glad.  I feel lucky to have been a part of such a success, and hope in the deepest part of my soul that this isn't the last time I can be a part of something as awesome as this.

Ok, universe - thanks.  I'll take another.  I promise to treasure it just as much.

A moment

There's a moment in the awesome project I don't want to forget.  The show has a great, rousing opening number - my character isn't in it, but there's a black curtain dividing the opening scene from the rest of the stage, and everyone who is in the second number (myself included) waits behind the curtain as the opening scene works to a close.  The lights dim out front as between-scene music plays and a whole row of benches then slide off stage in the dark as the black curtain goes up.  It's dark on stage, s the audience can't see us, but as the curtain rises, the muffled, underwater quality of being hidden from the audience clears suddenly, like wiping an arm across a fogged mirror.  We can hear the orchestra first hand instead of through the monitors, we can see the faint lights in the aisles or the flashlights as ushers seat latecomers, the exit signs come into focus.  The veil is lifted, and we actors move down into the space, set ourselves, and wait in place for the lights to come up, revealing the town and townspeople, including a beautiful painted backdrop of a landscape.

It's thrilling.  It's the moment before, the here-we-go-we're-doing-a-show electricity.  The music swells in an upward pattern, and presto!  Lights up! We're on!  We start singing.

It's a magical few seconds, mostly because being behind a black curtain and then being revealed gives me time to invest all my being into that time, that experience.  I love it.  It's rare that the staging of a play gives you that kind of space to breathe into it.  Often you're on when you're on and you have to throw yourself at it.  These few moments in the dark feel like an inhalation.  Every night I take a deep breath and try to hold in the thrill of looking out across 1800 full seats, all eagerly awaiting what we're about to show them.