All right then

Every time my husband and I try to celebrate being married, someone seems to end up in the hospital.

I know this is happenstance. It's certainly not scientific.  But it makes trying to relax a tad nerve-wracking.

There's not much to report - it's nearly Easter, but it's been so cold here for so long that there are just a handful of crocuses blooming, nothing like the wild riot of spring green and bloom and flower I'm used to down south.  Somehow, despite some really great experiences and some excellent career excitments, I currently feel the way this Easter is looking - bare ground, barely thawed from the harsh ice and snow of winter.  I feel hardscrabble, flinty.

I don't feel bitter, however.  My New Year's Resolution was to make this the Year of No Bitterness, and that's happily progressing.  I go see plays with other people in them and don't resent their success.  I heard about good things for others and I wish them well.  (Ok, yes, you caught me, there are some exceptions, but I'm not bitter about those people, I just don't like them and don't want to see them rewarded.)

So, now that I've drawn the line - I'm thrilled with the thrilling things that have happened.  But suddenly I look around and I...I miss spring.  It's like remembering I'm exiled from my favorite place.  Is it getting older, that metaphorically I've passed spring and am well into autumn?  Is it just the effect of a cold cold winter?  Is it the impending sadness of inevitable death?  I don't think so - I think I want some EASTER up in here!

I've written about this before, about how Easter is really the best of holidays.  A Christ-child is great, a miracle of extra light for eight days is great, a day of atonement is a fantastic idea, a sugar feast is definitely my idea of awesome, I could go on and on BUT but but...you just can't beat triumph over death.  Death - the unbeatable foe, death is beaten, beaten by rebirth.  It's beautiful in a way that lasts, that transcends.  We need spring.  We need the hardscrabble ground to crack open to show us the flowers.

So hey, I'm grown up enough to admit that I'm basically all right, but not everything is how I wish it could be, and thinking about that, I'm tearing up.  There's a huge capacity for spring in my life, and I need it, I need it soon.

I don't go to church consistently anymore (which is strange because I was a very committed church-goer until I turned 30), but I will tell you this:  I think I'm going tomorrow.

And I think I'll probably weep, for all the things and people and relationships that die.  But I hope, oh, Lord I hope, I will leave with visions of eggs and bunnies and flowers and empty tombs and whatever other symbol I can clutch tight in my psyche of spring, the great rebirth, beginnings.

Beginnings.  May you all find some Easter, whatever you may call it, and however it manifests itself to you.

Tempting Fate

The utter impossibility of everything I want in my life came crashing down on me about an hour ago.  Look, life is still a gift and I'm not knocking it, it's a place that has laughter and tasty food and interesting books and sex (with yourself or with others, still fun!), but all the thing I individually wanted and felt like I was getting a little closer to and thought might be coming together all took a giant step back and said, "HA!  Just kidding!"

Today I am very poor, and un-changeably large, and only very vaguely talented.  I have worked for money that no one will pay me.  I have auditioned for projects in which one one will cast me.  I have attempted to accomplish things that seem utterly outside of my grasp.

Meanwhile, all of you who knuckled down and got to work are enjoying your houses and condos and children and cars and health insurance and fabulous fabulous success.

Or, hell, maybe you're not happy either - it's not a competition, I don't get to be happier if you're unhappy, but we all have our moments of discontentment no matter what we're given.

Maybe I'm just tired.  Maybe this is how things come apart when you spend a day in the hospital watching someone in pain.

Emergency Rooms

I have now spent two days of the last two weeks in emergency rooms.  Things could be worse, I don't mean to startle anyone.  Just wanted to put in writing my excuse for not posting more.  And remind my future self that these were the days when people went to the hospital and got back out again, relatively unscathed...that is, if by "relatively unscathed" I just mean "alive".  Which I currently do mean.

I think certain things are going to get worse, or maybe I should say, in the scheme of an entire life, some bad stuff is going to happen.  So eventually I'll look back on these troubles as mere skirmishes.

Try to stay safe, people.  

Technology

I can't help feeling as if I'm using technology incorrectly, but I don't like the direction it's going.  Look, I love being able to access information all the time, any time, from any computer.  I like being able to check in on people I know and find out about events.  I like being able to chat with people I know using this tool. I even like wasting a certain amount of time looking at funny pictures.

But I strongly dislike the move toward incredibly tiny thoughts and re-posted images.  The internet ought to give us a platform to have BIGGER ideas - space is meaningless here, and access is comparatively egalitarian.  That we have hamstrung our culture into making everything into abbreviations and hashtags and 140 characters - it's such an arbitrary limit, and it's becoming de rigueur.  I'm not advocating total abandonment of the twitter platform, but it's as if we are voluntarily choosing to eat only 100 calorie snack packs for the rest of our lives.  Is that really satisfying?

The re-posted images sort of gets me, too.  It's like we're all back to playing that chain letter game, only it's a link we pass on, and we don't even think about it.  Go create some content!  I'm not a huge fan of people who take pictures of their meals but at least that's something new out there.

It can be argued that our human attention span is what's driving this abbreviated virtual lifestyle.  But that's backwards.  In weight-lifting, you never increase your muscle ability until you push it to fail: only by trying to do more than we can and failing can we do more than we did.  So if we only lift the things we can carry, we'll never be able to lift anything larger, ever.  In the same way, if you cater to the short attention span, you keep it small and restless.

But this shortness, this rapid fire, this smallness, it's so pervasive that I started this entry out with the phrase: I'm using technology incorrectly.  I don't want to flip that and say that everyone else is using it incorrectly.  It will be more accurate to say that we are narrowing our vision of a medium that could be anything, could encompass anything.

Tasks, and not doing them

I'm.

Well.

I don't have a great story to tell or anything fun to say.  It just turned out to be a good day.  I saw a show, waxed poetic about Shakespeare with one of my co-actors (who in turn taught me about string theory, complete with chalkboard diagrams), had an actual conversation with a friend, saw a show, and got to chat with people I totally adore at said show.

I'm still the same imperfect, riddled-with-doubt, terrified of failure girl I always am.  But today I didn't mind so much.

Sometimes when you least deserve it, the world throws you a softball.

Sometimes you even manage to hit it.

In what country....

"And tonight I'm gonna party like it's...1799..."

So I'm working at a benefit tonight that's themed around the year 1799.  I get a fancy dress and someone's going to do my hair and makeup, and I suspect it will be a loooooonnnggg evening, but fun.  I'm looking forward to it.

However, it just occurred to me to wonder which country I'm meant to be from in 1799.  I know the dress I'm wearing means it's definitely something European, but it could as easily be Vienna or Paris or London or Zurich.  I suppose it may not matter.  I suppose I could spend some time today looking at the information they sent us about the event and see what it tells me.

Yes, now that I type that, I think that may be the best solution.

Waste

Just feeling the waste of things this morning - waste of calories, waste of energy, waste of emotion, waste of time.  I've misused my resources and misfed myself.  Sadly, noticing it is not the same as finding a remedy.

In flight from my ultimately repetitious (and unhealthy) thought pattern, here's a completely disparate topic:

Last night, someone I was with asked another friend why she doesn't have a boyfriend.  I must admit I was sort of floored by the question, though I know it was absolutely meant as a friendly and conversation-opening query.  But first, aren't we past that now?  Does a woman still need a reason not to have a boyfriend?  Would anyone, male or female, ask a man why he doesn't have a girlfriend??  Do we honestly think that's the first and best question to ask each other, as if to say, hey, I don't have a question about you yourself, what you like or know or do, but I sure am interested whether you have a partner, and if not, why ever not?  Why are we still defining ourselves among ourselves depending on whether we occasionally get taken to dinner by someone of the opposite sex?

I could get more strident about this but I don't have any problem with women having boyfriends or husbands or partners and I don't want to give the impression I do.  My problem is with the assumption that we have to have them, and that if we don't we must provide a reason.

I think of my mom - she doesn't like to drink, and when she was younger she got a lot of push back about it, so she took to telling people she was a recovering alcoholic to curtail the argument.  Using the same logic, I think the conversation stopper to "Why don't you have a boyfriend?"  is probably something like, "My husband died.  I'm not ready."

I suppose, "My divorce just went through," is as effective, but it opens the door to a whole different kind of judgment.  Maybe this ploy needs work.  Or maybe women shouldn't ask other women questions phrased in such a way as to subtly blame them if they don't happen to be shackled to a partner, no matter what gender that partner may be.

I would also guarantee that if the original commentator ever saw this post, she would be surprised I even thought any of this, because to her the question was innocuous in the extreme.  Maybe it is.  I do sometimes over-react.

One's best Margaret Mitchell impression

So, I was looking forward to having brunch with my friend M, who is actually one of the three, maybe four people who read these bulletins.

But as he was crossing the street to get to the breakfast place this morning, a car hit him.

The scans and xrays and tests and various pokings and proddings have produced this summation:  a dislocated finger now "reduced" into place (with a lingering troublesome bone fragment to be examined later), a nasty bump on the head that bled a lot but looks all right now that it's been cleaned up, and a left knee aching with enough pain that walking is out and crutches were being fitted as I left.

I have now stress-eaten a cookie I immediately regretted (pretty much, "chomp" *swallow*, "Oh-I-shouldn't-have-done-that...") and am battling the guilt (cookie guilt and accident guilt).

I am perfectly aware I didn't hit him with a car.

But if he hadn't been there about to meet me...

Also, timing-wise, I probably got there right as it was happening, and somehow didn't see it at all.  At. All.  Either I'm exceptionally unobservant or I just missed it.  Either way it feels wrong.

Lastly, no matter if none of it were my fault, I strongly dislike having a friend in pain and being powerless to help.  Though I have a feeling that as everyone I know ages, that's a feeling I'm going to get far more familiar with as time goes on.

Feel better, M.  I guess it could have been a lot worse, but that's small comfort when your knee hurts like hell.  Hopefully your settlement will be large and plentiful.

Everyone else, watch out for the unexpected.  Though I suppose that's impossible.

Return

I have a rare night with nothing in it, and I'm using it to try to return to a time before something.  Sometimes it would help to double back in life to a time where you hadn't made a certain decision, or turned down a certain path.  I have a very clear memory of a pure sort of happiness two years ago of a weekend with my best friend.  It was an amazing spring day, we were in a beautiful city, and I knew I'd be in a play when I did get back to Chicago.  The day, warm and bright, with the sort of glee that the first comfortable weather brings, was full of tasty food and one of my favorite people, and some of my favorite landscape in the universe.  It was a day saturated with yes, bathed with delight.

After that, a lot of strange, confusing and, to be fair, occasionally magnificent complications began to develop.  Those complications have mostly resolved themselves now, and I lie in that odd calm where one is both grateful the storm has broken and missing fury and excitement as your bland, storm-free life continues.

So tonight, with this oasis of free time, I thought I'd try to bodily transport myself to the simpler version of myself.  I used to be left on my own on a Saturday night pretty often, and I'd cook and clean or putter, and listen to the radio.  I got very fond of The Vinyl Cafe, a Canadian program that showcases long form storytelling alongside musical guests.  The storytelling is homey, personal, small town events and family dramas that vault beyond their humble origins to touch something about being human.  I thought it would be nice to sit and crochet and listen to the Vinyl Cafe, and pretend life was so simple that I didn't need to worry about anything or anyone except making a crocheted toy for a toddler.  (Someone else's toddler, I hasten to add.)

They've changed the schedule.  Vinyl Cafe plays on Thursday nights now.

But never fear, the internet came in handy, and now I sit, awash in Stuart McLean's Canada, with my crocheting, and I try to pare myself of complications.

I think too much about things I've lost, and then I waste time regretting all the time I'm spending thinking, and all the regrets start running together like beads of rain collecting down a windshield, gathering momentum.

Maybe tonight I can just make a lion and listen to a story and it'll be enough and I won't miss complications.

Thank goodness for other people's stories.

Unfortunate

I blew an audition today, and it's still bugging me.  I can't shake the feeling of failure, the re-playing of all my mistakes, my utter inability to get on top of what I was doing instead of having it swallow me.  It wasn't horrific, yet I feel wretched when I think of it, the mis-steps, the feeling of "oh, I'm choosing the wrong song to sing now and this is going off the rails and my legs are shaking just a little because I'm nervous in a way I can't master, can't overcome".

Interestingly, my experience outside the audition was enviable.  A bunch of people were auditioning who I know, and I know them all to be absolutely top notch.  Better, I've worked with all of them in some capacity.  Some are working in awesome shows right now, some just auditioned to work in upcoming awesome shows, but of course everyone was there to audition for this company and this summer.

And everyone was really nice.  Genuinely nice, as to a peer.  Not that any of them would have been mean to me, it's not that kind of town, but there's a difference between being cordial and being friendly, and these folks were all really warm and friendly.  I was a walk-in, I got there really early because I had very little time to spare and if I didn't get in during the first hour and a half, I'd have to give up for the day, or doubletrack across town hoping to be seen.  Right as I was reaching my deadline, the monitor put me in the lineup, and the two people I knew who were left in the audition room actually gave a little cheer for me!  I was really touched.

So then it feels in some ways like I let all of those people down by being off-kilter and shaky and not showing my best self.  It somehow shames me all the more.  I feel like it's been a long time since I've felt successful at a singing audition, which is odd because I feel very confident singing with big bands.  But somehow it isn't the same, and I cringe to remember any of it, and I was definitely dismissed without being asked to come to a callback, or really without being asked anything at all.  "Thank you.  Goodbye."

I need to get better, and fast.  How do I do that??

It's Complicated

Whew, boy!  I'm working on a new project, and it's a doozy.  I'm excited and challenged and my brain is switched firmly in the "on" position.  It's a great contrast to the "awesome project" and though it is completely awesome in its own way, it's entirely different.  Small cast - well, smaller than 34 - and intimate - well, it would have to be more intimate than 1800 audience members - and politically incendiary.  It's about the death penalty, and it's a play where the characters all have real life counterparts.

We've had two rehearsals, and it's fascinating.  The thing is, it's about a lot of really fucked up things - the criminal justice system, and racial prejudice, and who has power and who doesn't.  So while I am relishing it, engaged in it, trying to be faithful to it, it's not the kind of project I can just say, ooo, today was super fun!  It IS fun, and the cast is laughing a lot, and the play itself has a lot of funny moments, but there's an inordinate about of sad injustice brought into the open during this play, and it feels disrespectful to imply it's a fun romp for the actors.  I don't play a huge part, but the bits I get feel important, I feel like I have to do justice to the people whose story I have been elected to tell.

It's also a co-production with a university, which is exciting in its own way.  Y'all, there are several things I would be mad to write down online about how this co-production works and what I think about it, but I'll admit one thing about it that's entirely personal.  I have a chip on my shoulder about this place, and I have to work really hard not to bring that chip into the rehearsal hall.  See, the theatre students who graduate from this place seem to have an instantaneous leg up on the rest of us - just studying here seems to write your ticket to be in whatever fabulous play you want.  And I've sat in the student union a few times already and looked around.  I admit fully that what I'm about to say is biased and I have great hopes I will overcome my prejudice, but everyone seems so feckless.  As if real life worries don't apply to them, as if they'll never have to do their own laundry or pay their own rent or even relate to someone else without a computer or a smartphone in hand.

It's partly their youth, their very extreme youth, that bothers me, not that they are inexperienced but that, having little experience, they do not value experience in others.  And it bothers me that they are often right - their lack of practical experience will not stop them from getting cast in something instead of me due to the connections they have made while in school.

Ok.  I'm going to work on overcoming this irritation I have, or at the very least work on defining it more clearly.  For now, bed.

Storm Coming

How lazy am I that all the talk of an enormous storm just makes me think I could hunker down in my house and read books and maybe (if the power holds out) watch tv?  An audition just got moved, and if it's really horrible, maybe my work shift will get called off tomorrow as well.  This could be a great, great day.

I bought a ton of groceries, so we'd be set. As long as the heat stays on. Heh.

In other news, I have a first rehearsal tonight, and I am both excited and nervous.  I think I want a hot coffee to gird my loins but I'm a little afraid of what will happen to me if I drink coffee this late.

It's so so lucky to have another show booked.  It's great.  I hope I can spend the rest of my life bouncing from play to play to project to play.  I love it.

Now if I can just get this nervousness under control...

Palm Court

Y'all!  Y'ALL.  I sang with a swing band last night for a couple of numbers, just as a tryout to see if they would be interested in having me sing as a sub sometimes.  It was super fun (duh), the band is SMOKIN', and it was all around an exciting experience.

The guy who asked me to stop by hung out and chatted on his break, explaining the Palm Court at the Drake Hotel is where all the famous jazz and swing bands played in the 30's and 40's - Glenn Miller, for instance, and a whole mess of awesomely famous people.

On the way home it struck me.

I HAVE NOW SUNG IN THE SAME ROOM THAT GLENN MILLER PLAYED.

That's...it's...I'm...

It's pretty cool.  Also, the band sounded amazing, and not only were they outrageously fun to sing with, I may get to do a whole gig with them sometime.

It was a really really good night.

Snow

Snow is dusting down like flecks of powdered sugar and I have just finished my omelet-made-with-one-slice-of-bacon, and I'm stuck between taking the day for myself and tending to a million other things.  I have a talent for indolence, I'm afraid, and though sometimes I spend my indolence meaningfully, by reading a really good book or talking to interesting people, I more often simply fritter it away.

The quandry is that I enjoy the indolence so much, but I am well aware giving into it means I don't achieve other goals.  I should be auditioning, for instance, and when this next show is over, I will gnash my teeth in frustration but it will be at least partly my own fault for not staying out there auditioning.

Oh, well.  Let's be honest. Sometimes you need to fall back and regroup.  And weirdly, sometimes you need to stay un-busy so that the strange, unforeseen opportunity can fall into your lap.

Those are my justifications for watching an episode of The Horse Doctor next.  Heh.