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!

Three in a Row

If you take a look at the last post, I had a nice audition last week. Saturday I had an another audition - it was fun, though I have no idea if I will get cast due to lots of scheduling conflicts.  Then today I had a really really nice audition.  I'm on a roll!  I love it!

I'm trying to write down the excitment and thrill I feel now, because there's a high probability I won't book any kind of work from any of the three, and then I'll feel pointless all over again.  But right now I feel pointful!  Pointed! Pointy? 

So I could bore all of us with the play by play of today, but the gist is this: they kept asking me to do more things.  I sang, they gave me a scene to read.  I read, they gave me a song from the show to sing.  I sang again, they asked me to stay and read some more. 

Plus, the accompanist was this truly awesome, Julliard-trained piano player I've worked with and think is wonderful (and he really is, he's insanely talented) and on one of his trips out of the audition room he turned to me and mouthed, "That was really GREAT!"  And then later something like, "You sounded great!"

Which made me feel...gleeful. Pleased. Grateful. Lucky. Talented.

It made me feel like, whatever else happens, I'm doing something right.  Not everything, perhaps, and not enough that I'm where I need to be, but something.  Maybe even enough to keep at it a while longer.

And it's not just the praise - I mean, yes, of course, my vanity is sated, but there was also just the joy of getting to sing a pretty song in front of people, and have it sound good.  It was the musical theatre equivalent of the general audition the other day.  I do this for the sheer delight of doing it - I want so badly to do it well, and when a note rings in your voice a certain way and you know you're selling the song, you know it suits you and you land on a note with the ease of a gymnast, it feels so GREAT. 

Then I got to go to rehearsal and learn a square dance!  What a great day this has been!!!

I wrote it down because in a few days, when no jobs are forthcoming, I'll start to feel like I imagined it all.  I want to pull out this description like a shiny locket and remember that when I get to do it, I LOVE IT.  Even for a few minutes.  Even in an audition.

And that's worth sticking around for.

I'm going to describe yesterday afternoon briefly, because I'd like to capture it, and I know my delight will be all too brief.

I crashed a general audition - got there at 2:30, waited around until they did finally see me at 5:15 pm (which isn't that long - I have waited from 7 am to 4:45 pm to be seen).

The 2 1/2 hours were pretty torturous. Waiting around at a general audition, you see a smorgasbord of people who are feasibly better than you are and will get cast instead of you. Most of the girls are prettier than me, or if not, thinner, or if not, DEFINITELY younger. Someone always knows someone else, they have big lovey reunions with each other, then stand around talking about what show they are in at the moment.  It's always some play you want to be in but didn't get cast in, or an audition you weren't called for, or some project you know you would never in a million years be able to do.
The mental capacity required to withstand this kind of water torture (because every person who arrives is a) another drop, and b) another slot full so you might never even get into the room) is attainable but elusive. Sometimes I can take it, sometimes I feel like total crap the whole time. No matter what, it brings out the "judgy" in me.

But then, right at the very end of the day, when everyone else was gone, they had me come in and audition with my 2 minute piece. AND the three people in the room, those gracious, lovely people, after 7 hours of watching people, had the grace to laugh, more than once. And for a moment, a pure, inhabited moment, I wasn't begging for a job. I was telling a story to people who were listening and enjoying it. A funny story. A story they could identify with.  Sometimes it made them laugh with recognition.

And here's the thing. I feel whole. Not bored. Not anxious. Not inferior or sad or confused or wasting my life. Today, for 2 minutes, for an audience of 3 people, I was exactly who I want to be. Who I am supposed to be. As if the tumblers in my particular lock have finally synced up and something came loose.

Tomorrow it'll be gone again. But this is why I haven't stopped yet. Because sometimes it clicks.

Ok, it starts

Two years ago, I spent my summer rehearsing for two Shakespeare plays and dieting/exercising.  The dieting was tough, because I like eating.  But I did manage to get rid of some extra weight and I found I really liked being that size of person. I still wasn't skinny even then, but it was easier to buy clothes and I felt much healthier.  Ironically, even then I would have had to lose something like another 20 pounds to think about being an actor in LA, but since that's not a goal of mine, I didn't worry about it.

By now, I have gone back to eating whatever is tasty and gained that weight back.  However!  I think I am going to try to regain that ground this summer, starting tomorrow.  No more excuses, no more, oh-just-this-one-cookie...it's an effort to reintroduce myself to discipline, because I feel I have been shockingly undisciplined in my life recently.

Also, I just realized I probably have to wear a skimpy costume and play a fairy in about 5 weeks, and it would behove me not to look as if I have been stuffed with marshmallows.

One down

Okay, I was able to get a hold on myself and refocus.  One audition has been successfully hurdled - I may or may not have been brilliant, it's a subjective medium and I couldn't see myself, but I was able to:

• show up on time and prepared
• dress appropriately
• do my piece with confidence and with some actual choices in place
• not apologize
• make minor small talk without impeding the flow of the audition

While I wish I could tell you I was totally amazing and they'll call me in for every show this season, instead I can report I showed up and tried to show them who I was.

I'm trying to stop thinking about these auditions as thresholds of fear and instead be grateful for the tiny vote of confidence it is to be seen.  The theatre I just did an audition for, less than an hour ago - well, I would LOVE to work for them.  I love their work, I love what they do, and I would count myself super lucky to be involved there as an actor.  And, that theatre had my information and chose, for whatever reason, to audition me for their general auditions.  They contacted me with an audition time.

I haven't done a general audition at that theatre for four, maybe five years?  So the fact that they saw me today, that's the victory, that's the success. 

This weekend, while I was feeling so very frightened, I looked back over a lot of the entries here on the blog, back when I did an Equity show, back when things seemed to be coming together.  I wanted so much to turn those experiences into more success, more work, and instead, for whatever reason, the economy or bad luck or still possibly my own lack of ability, it didn't.  So I was saying to my husband, "Do you think I'll ever get to do an Equity show again?"  His answer was, "If that's what's important to you...."

Within a millisecond, I realized I definitely hope to do an Equity show again someday, but that wasn't what was most important to me:

"I just want to be in a project that means something to me again someday."

His response, so true that most of my roiling fear settled immediately: "Well, of course that will happen."

That's right.  And probably more than once.  But I won't get cast in them if I stay in my room second-guessing myself or my talent.  Bad actors get cast too - we all see them all the time, so my talent or lack thereof isn't even the point. 

Time to roll up my sleeves and get back to work.  One scary scary audition has been faced down and conquered...more to come.

They were out of moxie at the store

So, I've been putting off dealing with the fact that I have some general auditions next week.  I always claim to like auditions - and I do, I feel like often they are my only chance to act anymore, and on the rare occasion I can surprise even myself, I feel connected, I feel capable.

But to be honest, my recent track record with auditions is frighteningly bad.  I haven't booked a job from an audition in over two years.  And the last audition I did I thought, hey, it'll be great!  I work with this company every year, they have to cast me!  I went in, hoping to break my streak, and felt pretty good about what I did.  Then I got a special phone call from the producer, saying, hey, we just want to check that you'll still do the season with us, after we tell you the tiny little roles we cast you in.   So even when a company has to cast me from the audition, they will make sure to give me as little as possible to do, just so I don't ruin the plays for them.

General auditions are just that, general, and often phoned in by the companies that are seeing you.  As in, they have to hold general auditions, but they have already cast their entire season from people they already know.   But surprise!  I have just this evening realized I am scared out of my mind.  Possible crying jag coming up.

First, before I get into details, let me explain that I figured out I am terrified when I noticed I had made a batch of buttercream icing with almond flavoring from scratch.  And ate it.  Licked it right off the spoon.  I think this is a pretty good indicator that I am stressed. 

So, what's different?

Because an audition is an opportunity to show someone what you've got and I have nearly run out of belief that I have anything to show.  I feel like I'm going to market with an empty truck, how am I going to sell air? 

Just...I don't want to sound all woe-is-me, I mean this quite baldly: the fact that I have not been chosen so many times in a row seems to me an indicator that I have no ability in this field.  There are lots of hints - a theatre where I did a bunch of shows has stopped calling me to audition, the theatre I work with every summer has me playing almost nothing, the cabaret review I've been involved in for three years didn't ask me to do year 4...  When do I catch on to what everyone else already knows?

But I LOVE it.  I love it so much.  I love doing it so much I'll do bad plays with bad actors and love it.  And the chance to be seen by theatres I would really love to work for, it's overwhelming, it's terrifying, it's a death sentence if I screw it up.

Ok, death sentence sounds dramatic, I know.  But I'm out of moxie.  I've got no belief left - I haven't surprised myself at an audition in so long.  Maybe the reason I continue to fail is that I haven't got the talent you need to succeed.  And if I get to the point that I truly believe that, that not an ounce of me thinks I can do it, I'm finished, kaput.  If that happens, how on earth do I survive it?  I won't do anything dramatic like kill myself, but in a way, that's worse, you know?  I'd just be mostly dead inside for another, what, thirty, forty years? 

Or, hey, yes, I could find something else I like to do, sure.  Something I like, not love.  But even then, even shunted into some minor path of least resistance, I'll think of myself as a failure.

This is why I'm so scared.  I don't WANT to fail.  I don't want to be the person I'm describing.  If this were a film, I would feel so very scared, this would be the entry into the third act, the dark night of the soul, and next week I'd be brilliant in my auditions and everything would turn around!  I want to triumph, I want to get to do the thing I love and I want to be good at it.

Right now that seems like a pipe dream, I'll admit.  My life isn't a film. 

Worrying

Certain experiences and ideas are so deep seated (deep seeded?) that no amount of reprogramming can correct them.

Hmmm.  I write that and it sounds true-ish but unconvincing.

I don't have anything new to report, and suddenly that feels like my fault entirely - have I tried hard enough?  Have I made any real attempt to get the things I actually want since last I whined or complained? Have I even taken the time to see outside of my little bubble recently?

And how am I planning to earn $600 to pay for these tickets I just bought to go visit my family?

But I also feel a deep failure of creativity - I feel like if I truly had anything to offer the world, I have given it the old college try and the world has said, repeatedly and clearly, no thank you, we've had better.

Oh, right....

I managed to walk right into the sharp oven door today (sharp because it's missing its cover, ow) and I was cursing and making arghy noises and my husband rushed in (the way he does when I make these noises, because as he confessed to me today, I sound as if I have chopped off my finger).  He put his arms around me and made kind soothing sounds and as I stood there, feeling pissy and in pain and pitiful, I actually said out loud....

"I know, I know.  I need to be in a play."

Because none of this raging bear in the woods act goes down when I feel actualized.  When I feel my soul is being used.  When I have worth because my energy is going into something I care about.

It sounds as if I am saying I wouldn't have walked into the oven door if I were in a play.  Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.  I wouldn't have.  Sound crazy?  Yes.  Held up by historical fact?  Yup.

You watch - all this self-pity and whining...it may not evaporate, but it will lighten considerably come June 6.  Well, I think.  I might not be quite excited enough for that project, but I think even a bit part in something will flip my switch to the "on" position.

I certainly hope so.  It's like having to wait for weeks between fixes.  One gets the DTs.

Adventure

I had an adventure!  I went somewhere new!  I talked to fun and intriguing people, saw beautiful and crazy things, ate way too much fantastic food, and got no sleep.

I also found a new drink of choice - the Moscow Mule.  I like it.  Give me another!

But now I have that back-from-a-magical-land-with-no-hope-of-return feeling (which feeling is trademarked and reserved for a friend's project).  Hopeless end-of-second-act, dark-night-of-the-soul music plays as I type.

And the ants, my mortal enemies, are back.  Argh.  It will be a long summer.

Funny story quickly becoming legend:

While I was in line for coffee one morning, a woman interuppted the ordering process to complain to the barista - she had an accent, French maybe?  Perhaps Austrian or Swiss?  "This sandwich," she was brandishing a plastic container full of sandwich, "it has come on a crossaint.  I don't eat crossaints.  I asked for bread." 

The barista replies, apologectically, "We don't have bread.  That's the way it comes ma'am.  That's normal."

Her reply, said with utter scorn, "For you.  I do not eat crossaints."

There was more to the conversation, but the plain, flat-out statement that such a thing was clearly not normal was so outrageously fantastic, so "It's the pictures that got small..." that we've begun to adopt the phrase elsewhere.  Try it - it's enormously satisfying.

Overshare

I have always been an oversharer.  I come from a family that keeps a lot of useless secrets, in an extremely self-editing fashion, and it's exhausting, so I try as much as possible to keep information truthful and consistent.  It seems easier.

For instance, when my parents bought a BMW, my mother initially didn't want to drive it home to her family's house.  She didn't want anyone to think they had so much money they were buying BMWs. 

There are plenty of other, smaller instances - I find them baffling and obfuscating in the extreme.  I try to avoid them.

Yet, I find myself in a situation...well, technically a trio of situations...in which I must keep certain things to myself.  Partly to keep from offending or hurting others, but mostly out of sheer self-preservation.  It's odd. I found myself saying about one of these, "If there was anything to say, we would have said it."  And now that I think about it, this is a complete and utter lie.  Precisely because there is something to say, I have left it alone. 

Now, granted, what there is to say is not USEFUL.  It's being left unsaid for several reasons, one of which is because it would sound insane if it got said aloud.  And another - it (and by "it" I refer to several different unrelated things at once) would damage assumptions I have about my life that I need to keep in place.  Or it would disturb the precarious balance I've developed.

I know this must sound impenetrable.  The reason I'm writing about it is in an effort to examine whether I'm turning into my mother yet. 

You want an example?  Sure.  Here's a completely true instance:

My amazing husband is the bees knees.  Given the choice, however, he would never ever move again - we would stay in this admittedly lovely apartment forever.  Now, me, I have never lived anywhere as long as I have lived in Chicago...and I am getting antsy. 

I keep this to myself, because right now there's nothing to head to instead.  Unlike some folks I know, my husband is never going to roll the dice and decide to pull up stakes and wander off to the west coast or even further.  Ironically, that's one of the things I love about him - he gives me roots, gives me a home. 

So I keep my wanderlust under wraps.  I don't discuss it, I rarely mention it, it's just one of those things that gets tabled because there's no use taking about it.

But it doesn't go away.  I just keep not choosing it.

In all fairness, if I did sit down with my husband and talk to him about wanderlust or moving, he would try to make someting happen.  He'd let me go traveling or he'd move to Iowa or he'd find a way to make me happy.  But he'd be miserable doing it, and making him miserable would take most of the fun out of it.  I don't want to ask for things like that.  I don't want him to change his nature.

Not to make it all about my husband - I have similar problems with myself and my own assumptions.  I decided a long time ago not to become an academic so I could pursue being an actor.  So far my success has been limited, and I wonder if I'd have been happier being an academic who acts for fun.  But mostly I choose not to think about that, because thinking about it jangles the compromises I have made and leaves me upset and disappointed.

Now, none of the above are the things I really shouldn't talk about, though the above are true.  But there are such things, and I am trying to figure out if I am being a coward or a genius by keeping them to myself. 

Or am I just turning into my mother?  Her side of the family, I've said time and time again, have an inexhaustible capacity for selective self-awareness. 

I am not immune.

Soundtrack

I miss being possible.  I feel like as I am getting older, I'm less possible.  As if I'm walking down a hallway in one direction, so all the doors I've passed are closed forever.

But this is a misperception, surely?  I pass different doors nowadays, certainly, but the supply of them is neverending, or at least, is only limited by my own imagination.

I can tell myself that, and it holds true when I look at other people's lives.  I can witness all around me the people who at any age, are ageless and fantastic because they explore life no matter what.  No matter what they explore, it brings them energy.  And I can see people who got old just because they sank into their lives, like sandcastles washed away by the tide.  I can SEE it and my mind believes it.

My heart is infected with doubt, though, and in the dark, late hours of the night, all I hear is the doubt.

Right now I'm trying to find a really great soundtrack for my life, and crank it up, so I drown out that doubt.  Any suggestions? 

No One Complained

There are lots of times in my life I've walked out on a limb and it has broken off the tree.  Naturally, the mere idea of trees is enough to leave me swimming in regret. 

But, as I've been saying, I don't seem to be able to learn from my incessant failure, so here's another poem for the three people who stop by.  You don't have to like it, but no one's making you read it, so don't be unkind.

18 March 2011

Cavities, Rachel realized, could be growing for years

undetected, unfelt, no one the wiser.

By the time you knew you had a cavity it was

too late, time for a root canal or worse.

But they weren't really a surprise, you could

have found them any time, just let a dentist

poke around, take a picture or two.

Why, then, thought Rachel,

since it was your mouth, after all,

should you be the last to know?  Why not

wake up and feel the empty space growing in you?

That your body kept such things secret from you,

Rachel didn't feel they were on the same side anymore,

she and her teeth.  Or gums?  She wasn't sure.

It gnawed at her.

Dear Universe

Dear Universe,

So, I can tell you're bored, because of the way you've been messing with me.  In the past month, you've given me more surprises than I thought I was equipped to handle, made me question things I thought were rock solid and exploded myths I've held on to for years.  Congratulations.  I AM thoroughly confused, and find myself capable of all sorts of things I never imagined, while still without the opportunities to make the life changes I've been planning.

I'll say this for you, Universe - you have a great and quirky sense of humor, and I've always liked that in a person.  Thought you may be bored enough to play around with me and my future, I have Not Been Bored At All.  I've been buying lots of high heels and short dresses and makeup, too, just to make sure I'm ready for whatever you have next in mind.

You should know that I've learned absolutely nothing yet, so if you have a specific point, I haven't grasped it. 

But I'm not down.  Now I'm just waiting.

Your move, universe.

Short-lived

Wow.  No matter what happens to you as an actor, there is no way to safeguard against feeling like shit when you don't get cast.  You could win a Tony, and still feel like shit the next day when someone else gets cast instead of you.  Well, I suppose that may not be true - since I *clearly* haven't won a Tony, I don't really know. 

This is one of those moments when I think, why, why do I do this?  Why not just hang it up and go make money? 

No, that's bullshit.  I know I why I do it.  But I wish there would be a huge thunderstorm, and I could go out in the middle of a field, and scream for a while that it is some kind of sick sick joke when someone is given the desire and the determination, but not the luck or the talent for success.

You know what I miss?  Not the money, not seeing my family, not good weather, not QUITE living in the UK, not hearing rain on the tin roof, not childhood or my first love, not having a house, not having fantastic clothes, not being rail thin, not being Thumbelina in the school play, not all the friends I've lost.

I miss being good at something.  I know this sounds like self-pity, and to some extent I'm sure it's born of that, but I miss being good at something.  I'd say "anything", but I'm still good at working the copy machine, for instance, and that's not getting it done for me.

Being good at something feels like flying in a dream, and right now it feels like I know that I'll never be able to dream that again.  And how sad would you be if you thought you could Never Ever dream about flying? 

Well, good-bye, incredibly short-lived three weeks of confidence.  Hello, alcohol.  We've never really gotten to know each other, and that seems like a shame.  I hear you're good at making people forget.

Yeah...

You know when you do something and later all you can think is, "Well, that wasn't me."  I think they call that compartmentalizing.

Also, when you do something you shouldn't but somehow you expect not only will you get away with it, but you will have no ill effects whatsoever? 

I think they call that "hubris."

Of course, there's always the case where you do something a little bit shady to avoid doing something clearly insane and destructive.  I'm not sure there's a term for it, but I'm going to go with calling it "innoculation..."  (Though wikipedia seems to think the idea I'm going for is called variolation.)

Several Disparate Things

First, I'm working in...a really tall Chicago Building today and the fog has moved in so all you see out the window is fog. It is eerie and beautiful, if dizzying, I feel like I'm in Brigadoon and the mist is shifting in to take me into the clouds for a hundred years.

(I had the name of the building, then I thought it might be like catnip to my stalker. My hours at this job are random and untrackable, so I am probably safe, but why make it easy?)

Second, there's a TON of wacky stuff happening that I either don't know what the facts are or I'm stuck keeping other people's secrets. People getting fired, having affairs, taking drugs... It's crazy town! Every part of it is bugging me and making me want to write about it on this blog, and every part of it would be stupid to have in print on a blog, even this one that no one reads. Dilemma.

Third, I am working on the no fear policy, right? The first step always comes out defensive, right? Like the time I bought a backless dress - the first time I wore it I spent the night saying, yeah, yeah, I know I never wear stuff like this but dammit, I like this dress! And then I finally firgured out no one cared and the next time I could just wear the dress without constantly commenting on the fact I was wearing the dress.

So, forgive me when I have to preface this today with: the hell with it...you stopped by, here's a poem for you. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. (Eventually I can do without the disclaimer, but baby steps, ok?)


========================================================

14. (9 August 2010)

I wanted to howl at the moon
but Larry kept saying that was the last thing my momma needed to hear
the phone ringing late with policemen and their mumbled apologies for waking her.
He was rolling joints and soon we were arguing
cause he said that rusted out barrier was a levee.
"This one? This? I think it's just a big gate
stuck in what amounts to a pond."
Larry said what did I think a levee was anyway
(about then I noticed how the moonlight hit his mustache
how it looked greasy, how his hair looked greasy,
and it made me wonder when was the last time Larry had showered).
All of the crime of the night drained out of a sudden,
and it came to me how different the night would have been
if I could have loved Larry, or not even love,
maybe nothing as grand or complicated, but if I could look at him
and see more than just a two-bit hoodlum in training,
more than all the layers of filth he couldn't wash off.

The night felt absent, like it had just moved out
before Larry and I got there, like an empty apartment
and we were pretending the dust and flotsam left behind by the last tenant
were their furnishings, their nick-nacks.

So I did howl, loud, like a wolf in a horror film,
deep in the throat, letting it tear out of me like a rocket,
and in the distance, some animal barked back
and for a spilt second that night was full of night.
Some animal in the dark had heard me.

Das Loop

My life is currently on some strange feedback loop where I get to examine the past and who I was there and the choices I've made. The universe is fucking with me, I can tell.

Naturally, I see everything a little differently from fifteen, twelve, eight years later. But I look for themes, so I find them. Our computer age means that in theory, I don't have to recall the situations from memory, I could just go find the emails and chats I saved and get a sense of how certain things went down.

Except that I went through and threw away a lot of supporting material at some point in an attempt to free myself of its effects. Which I find odd because I normally save everything. So now what is interesting is to read the handful of things I actually did save, think about why I saved those few messages, and ruthlessly dissect the few remaining clues.

Oh, by the way, the themes I noticed? I get obsessed with things easily, and I've been far far too afraid of making a mistake.

The obsession tendency...I have it with songs, people, food, clothing. I'll find something I like and play it to death or wear it out or eat it all the time. And then sometimes I'm just done with it, and I never listen to that song again, after having played it a million times before. With people, I concentrate on a few, and I try to know them well. Sometimes very very well. I get immersed, emmeshed, fascinated.

In general, the people I care about remain important, as opposed to getting tossed aside when I've worn through them. I'm finding, sometimes inconveniently, that once I've loved you, there's always a pocket of that feeling left. Maybe it would be more accurate to say, once I've trusted you, there's always a spare bedroom of care you can crash in. I'm thinking of friends as much as romances. My closest friend today I knew in high school.

I guess the downside of the above is I don't always let things go. Which in turn leads to some very stalker-like tendencies. (Yes, Michael P, that time I "ran into" you in your office building? I was pretty much looking for you, even though I pretended it was total coincidence. But you knew that. Thanks for playing along.) Which is why I was pleasantly surprised that I managed to toss whole reams of internet interaction from my past. Although next time I go home to my parents' house I bet I find at least one folder of things I kept. But still, hey, it's not around! I don't look at it all the time! For a stalker, that's growth.

Theme Two: Fear. Wow. I wish I could time travel and set myself straight on some of this. I would love to see what would have happened to me if I'd had true audacity to go with my big mouth. I would have gone to Sarah Lawrence. I would have gotten drunk more. I would have made a lot more mistakes. I would have better stories.

I know the answer is to start living with no fear NOW. I'd like to. Habits are strong, and there's more at risk now, more to lose. Still.

Still.


All right, then. I'm getting used to wearing three inch heels and getting my way.


Maybe it's time to buy my own pin-striped suit and start kicking some ass. I threw all that stuff away to have room for what's NEXT.


Bring it, universe. Bring it.

Uncomfortable

So, two things, and quickly, because I need to go to bed.

One is that looking at the "stats" has ruined me, because I feel extra conscious of the hitherto throw away titles. A lot of people end up clicking to the blog because of the title about unemployment and its ups and downs. I doubt they stay, because clearly that's not the kind of thing they are looking for, but the point has been lodged in my brain that a chance comment could be a search string by accident. So now I'm overthinking the titles.

Two is that through an odd set of coincidences, I've spent much of today thinking about how my past actions might appear to someone else. Since I don't know, I can only imagine the worst, and the worst is pretty irritating, annoying, pitiful, and occasionally stalker-like. I have to hope that's not really how I come off, but it definitely makes me grateful to the people in my life who have looked past my sometimes odd behavior and forgiven me for some of it.

Also, I don't like looking back at situations where I cared more about someone than that person cared about me. But, hey, doesn't everyone have those?? Why do they seem so very embarrassing? Why can't it seem brave and noble to care about someone? Nope, it just seems pitiful.

In contrast, I often feel sad about the people who cared about me that I couldn't return the affection, but the truth is, I don't think about those people a lot. (Or maybe there aren't as many of them? I had a penchant for the impossible dream back in the day. I was good at pining, not so good at other woods.)

So, tomorrow I'm going looking for things I'm happy to remember, even if I remember them incorrectly.

Who are you, stalker??

So I've got some free time, and I've just written that no one ever reads this blog, which made me go check my stats, which made me realize that after months of really no one reading this blog, someone came by and read most of it. Yesterday.

Who is my stalker?? I have ideas but I'm sure to be wrong.

Also, Blogger lets you see how people are finding your blog and when I look at the history for all time, I find a search string that made me laugh my ass off:

actress "no one *** wants * to hear ***what I* think"

(The astericks aren't really there but I'm trying to confuse future search engines.)

As my husband said, "Do you really use that phrase a lot?" The answer is no, but apparently I use it often enough for someone to look for me that way. Which also makes me laugh my ass off.

Oh, stalker. I hope you come back so you can see you've brightened my day considerably. I typed leave a comment but I can't guarantee my stalker enjoyed any of my ranting.

Wow. Life is fun sometimes. This is one of those times.

Oh, and don't miss the new post below - TWO in one day after such a long drought! It's all for you, stalker! How you inspire.

Re: Your title here

So, I don't think anyone reads this - and I'm not complaining, I never write it, so the fault is mine, right? It was just a place for me to throw all sorts of thoughts that had no other place in my life. And send secret messages to men who weren't my husband. But two things happened to severely limit my blog time. One: I did finally accept that the men who weren't my husband that I was targeting were not receiving the messages (and that really, my husband was the man I was most interested in, full stop). Two: I got laid off from a desk job that paid me to sit in front of a computer.

But I have sort of a day job again, and sometimes it lets me sit in front of a computer and get paid. Rarely, but sometimes. Guess what tonight is.

And the fact that that most of the men I'd like to communicate with don't read this blog has turned out to be fortunate. Marriage, it turns out, doesn't mean every particle of your interest in the opposite sex has focused itself into one other human being. It means you don't act on any of those interests, but it doesn't mean you don't have them. I am lucky - I have realized that my husband isn't perfect, but no one else I meet could ever possibly give me the relationship we have. Three years in, I still feel lucky and loved. And that I made the right choice for me. Even his imperfections suit me.

But there are all these other men. Men from the past, men from right now, men I have yet to meet, and they are often Interesting. It's like looking back over a Choose Your Own Adventure Book at the turnings you didn't take.

I made a scattershot list the other day of Men I Should Have Slept With - it was surprisingly short, considering I didn't get around much, and there were notable omissions (the man I was totally, head over heels in love with for a year overseas? Not on it). Here's what's funny: I don't really mind not sleeping with them. Ok, well, there is ONE person that the universe and I agree I should have darn well slept with, but it's not who you might expect. Mostly it's a list of sweet men that I was too scared to trust, but would most likely have been very trustworthy.

Aw, side note. Susan - one of the people who made the list was that guy from Ireland, the one who had murdered someone in self-defense and you kept calling him "the murderer?" Thanks for messing that one up for me. He was sexy. That was one good time I really ought to have had.

But overall, I traded trying lots of people out for the privilege of being able to personally make a decision about who those people would be. No one ever forced me, no one ever guilted me into it, no one ever got me drunk.

While that may strike some as a shame, it makes me feel powerful.

It may also strike some (and rightly so) that I might have control issues. Hmmm.

See, this is where it helps that no one reads this. My mother would have a heart attack reading this.

Anyway, I've met men in the last month that I want to add to the list, but I can't really say I SHOULD have slept with them, since I'm married and some of them are also married, and that matters. I don't ever plan to cheat on my husband - it's not worth losing him. No, seriously, there is not a single person whose bedroom skills would be worth losing the best relationship I have ever had. And since it's true for my marriage, it's also never worth the karmic fallout of ruining someone else's relationship (for me).

But I'm not blind, deaf, or resistant to flattery. So there's a new list:

Men I Would Like to Have Slept With.

Are you on it? Probably not. Then again, some of you may be. It's a short list, but it does have room for growth.

I'll Know My Name As It's Called Again

It's autumn, and new things are happening. Not exactly the things I want, but good things, things that might get me to what I want. Maybe.

This is the time of year when everything seems more possible. I suppose spring feels that way, but autumn has more resonance of beginnings for me - echoes of a new school year, echoes of moving to Chicago, echoes of shaking off the excess and getting down to business.

I think I am the one in my own way. I am going to try to get out of it. I don't want to feel bitter or untalented or wasted, and I think I am the only person who can either escape that, rise above it, or just change my life back to feeling how I felt once - the luckiest person ever, with all of life's opportunities ahead.

And I should stretch more.

I'm listening to Chaka Khan sing, "Tell Me Something Good" and it IS. She is the living embodiment of sex and glory, and you just want to tackle the nearest person and take their clothes off. Slowly.

I keep getting opportunities that, if I could land them, would change everything for the better. And so far, I don't land them. But then more come along. And I don't land those either, but then a few more swan by. Law of averages, something has to stick, right? One of them will come through eventually?

I wrote an image down the other day: a box of old silverware, mostly forks. And I like it. I like thinking about that box. I like thinking that everyone stole the spoons and melted the knives down for jewelry, and there those forks are, hogging that box, finally it's all about them. Hurrah!

I have to get better at enjoying NOT being perfect. How do you enjoy the music if you're worried about how your dancing looks?

Been sick

I've been sick, sore throat, low fever, a little sniffles, aches and pains and general malaise.

Now I'm putting off going to the gym. I'm not sure I really feel up to it, but somehow I think I need to get my body back in gear, at least a little bit, regardless of the sore throat.

And I'm ... fretful? worried? anxious? I start a class today, feeling pretty untalented and physically out of it. It's an improv class, and while I can't say I was ever any good at improv, I used to love it, I used to feel so happy to be doing it, until I got scared off it by dismissive men.

So I want, naturally, to discover today that I am magically really good at it! Actually, after these past couple of months, I desperately want to discover I am good at pretty much anything, but I can see the danger here: I am unlikely to be magically good at improv, because like all things, it is a skill - one I have not spent any time developing.

Yet I've lost my mojo for all things - the veil of hubris has been removed and I am actually not good at ANYTHING I love. I want my veil back - well, honestly, I want to be proved good in reality, not just in my mind.

I would like to just show up to class ready to have fun and learn something - that's the point. But underneath all that reasonableness I am yearning for something cosmic, some proof that I have not wasted 15 years of my life.

And will I be disappointed when I don't get it? We'll see.

Into the Void

Ok. Got it. I am writing all of this into a void, because no one reads this page. It's hard to get tone right in type - I'm ok with that, since I only ever had...hmmm...I think about 5 or 6 people who stopped by on occasion, and I didn't post anything for nearly a year, so fair enough.

So it's like I'm writing in a diary that someone could stumble upon. Should this make me more cautious or less cautious?

I wanted to post that I'm back to learning things at this internship. I was in on Friday watching auditions and thinking about how to prepare for commercial auditions and how to decipher what the agent is telling you. I watched a lot of people struggle with the directions and with the spot in general, and a lot of people had prepared but were not able to take direction to change their preparation. They weren't able to think of anything off the cuff to improv further in the scene, and most of them seemed completely thrown by being asked for anything beyond the script.

I can appreciate that feeling of being on the spot, so it made me think about how I could prepare myself for such an eventuality. In the nervousness of the moment, a lot of your thinking shuts down. I guess you have to do your thinking early, and THAT'S the kind of preparation you have to do.

Also interesting, the phrase "go further with it" from an agent's lips never refers to going bigger, it refers to extending the text. The trend in tv spots is small and real, unerplayed, deadpan, etc. The bigger you get, the less real you seem for today's spots. I haven't seen an exception yet, but I bet I will. It's just a trend, not an absolute.

I still think personally I am not very good at this, but yesterday I was able to get back to trying to figure out how it works. Maybe I can get better...I'm definitely going to take a class soon. I'm still pretty disappointed in myself, and it's hard to shake the idea that I'm never going to book real work because I don't have the talent for it. But for the moment, I'm going to keep going, and see if I can improve.

I wish I had something more to show for the 9 years I've been at this. Oh, well.

Unexpected Twist

It's late, and I can't detail this development the way I'd like to, but I discovered something disturbing today.

I'm interning at a casting agency. One of the perks is that I can watch the dvds of some past auditions - even ones I auditioned for. Today was slow, so I took a look at some auditions.

I am not very good. Please understand, I'm not complaining so that someone will tell me how great I am. (I mean, no one will look at this blog for at least another couple of months, I'd starve to death waiting for that.)

I mean objectively, watching the tapes, I'm no good. I'm not embarrassingly horrific, but it's easy to see why I didn't book any of these jobs. I pull faces, I sound disconnected, and I currently look massive onscreen. The camera adds ten pounds, Christmas added ten pounds, at my lowest I still needed to kick off an extra five pounds - add that up, I'm wearing a flesh overcoat of at least an extra 25 pounds. I look ridiculous. I look like I had my skinnier self for a snack.


I have to go to bed now. But it's a shock to the system to discover that the reason I'm not getting more work is that I'm actually not good enough to get it. I've often said that just because I love acting doesn't mean I'm good at it, but it's still shocking to discover that I'm NOT good at it.

I'm not sure which is stranger or harder:

Giving it up because now I know why I won't get anywhere,

or considering keeping at it with the full knowledge that I'm not good.

I do realize there's an outside chance I could work at getting better, but I'm a good ten years into trying to make this a profession - it's a blow to find out I lack some basic skills.

I've often complained I don't feel like I'm good enough: this is a different statement. Today I looked at proof that I am indeed not good.

I'm off to sleep on it. Maybe I'm still good at theatre?? But somehow, it seems so unlikely...