opening night

i am now a high school theatre teacher. our last fall show opened tonight, a serio-comedy by beth henley. the worst part is the last twenty minutes before the show starts. all sorts of doubts come pouring in, and the audience comes trickling in, and someone says "we forgot the egg!" and someone else says "it was advertised as 7:30, not 7!"
i sit in the balcony and watch what we've been working on for the past 5 weeks. not a long enough rehearsal period for me personally. but the kids are stupendous. one has a beautiful beehive that we weren't sure would work -- but it does. another has a tattoo of a ship sharpied on his chest. still another slays the audience without a single word, just a gesture, a grimace, a certain way of peering into a coffin, makes the crowd roar with laughter.
it went so well, and it's just going to get better.
afterwards, amidst the joyful hubbub and greetings and congratulations, one of the actresses is steeped in sullen tearfulness. i ask her what's wrong, "what happened?" and she says, "nothing," putting on her sneakers. i see her again waiting for her dad out in front of school. i ask again and she tearfully replies, "nothing. nothing."

obligatory link to the ever-fascinating thorn star

here is an actual thorn star. i have no idea what it is... but i think it's cool-looking.

starting again

the hardest part is thinking up the title for my new blog. i sort of agonized over it, in my quiet way. one title seems too trite, another too self-deprecating, a third too esoteric, a fourth just plain uninteresting.
finally i got help from a favorite novel, georges perec's LIFE: A USER'S MANUAL. it is a novel of numerous inconsequential details taken from the lives of tenants in one paris apartment building. in chapter 51, a painter is described as painting himself into his intricate paintings, with all the little tiny specifications, "and all around the long procession of his characters with their stories, their pasts, their legends:

3 The deaf cat on the top floor with one blue & one yellow eye
16 The nurse casually leafing through a shiny new photomagazine
27 An international thief taken to be a high-ranking magistrate
50 The boy seeing in his dream the cake he had not been allowed
51 7 actors each refusing the role after they'd seen the script
103 The building manager, trying to solve his cash-flow problems
118 A gay waltz being written by an old friend of Liszt & Chopin
158 A sword-swallower who on medication threw up a load of nails
174 In a polka-dot dress, a woman who knitted beside the seaside..."

(i chose just nine of these one-line descriptions out of a list of 179.)

the first time i read this list i was on a night flight back to california from texas. i think i was coming home from christmas vacation. i started to cry in my cup of three dollar beer because i thought it was so small and beautiful.
i would like my blog to be like that, a multitude of inconsequential, life-changing events that might be amusing, or thought-provoking, or poignant even, once or twice, for some stranger, or for some estranged friend.