i went to a fun birthday party.
i had interesting conversations.
i had lunch with my friend.
i ate chocolate and strawberries for dinner.
i got nuzzled by my cat.
i took a nap.
i sweated.
one of my favorite movies is wings of desire. one thing i like about it is the way the angels notice the tiny things people do.
nothing is wasted.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
april 28
happy birthday frances.
NO TITLE REQUIRED
by Wislawa Szymborska
It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It's an insignificant event
and won't go down in history.
It's not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrranicides.
And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
And since I'm here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.
Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.
This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn't beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.
And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It's just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.
Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not.
NO TITLE REQUIRED
by Wislawa Szymborska
It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It's an insignificant event
and won't go down in history.
It's not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrranicides.
And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
And since I'm here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.
Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.
This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn't beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.
And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It's just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.
Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.
The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.
So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.
When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
drainage
i decided to stay in bed today.
there's something going on in my throat, probably caused by some drainage (eww, drainage), probably caused by some allergy or other. all i know is, whatever's going on, i'm tired and prone to crankiness.
i'll go to school at noon and have a fabulous half-day.
rehearsals are going well. everyone is having fun. we finished blocking on tuesday so now it's time to fill in all the little blanks with color. i wish i had heard back from lynda or her publisher; it would have been nice to have had some contact with them.
two of my seniors have very good grades and have asked me to attend the summa banquet with them. i think that's really cool.
i need to buy distilled water to put in my... radiator? gah, i'm so ignorant about my car.
there's something going on in my throat, probably caused by some drainage (eww, drainage), probably caused by some allergy or other. all i know is, whatever's going on, i'm tired and prone to crankiness.
i'll go to school at noon and have a fabulous half-day.
rehearsals are going well. everyone is having fun. we finished blocking on tuesday so now it's time to fill in all the little blanks with color. i wish i had heard back from lynda or her publisher; it would have been nice to have had some contact with them.
two of my seniors have very good grades and have asked me to attend the summa banquet with them. i think that's really cool.
i need to buy distilled water to put in my... radiator? gah, i'm so ignorant about my car.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
tuesday
i didn't want to get up today.
my birthday brought me some nice presents, both figurative and literal ones. nic sent me a dvd. friends marc, fran and zoe ate dinner with me at la fogata, which was lovely. i got a daniel lanois cd, chocolate, two poems, a massage gift certificate, a book, and a handmade card.
on saturday at the UIL region contest, my fine arts boss gave me a little boost by telling me that she had absolute confidence in my directing abilities. yesterday my sixth period class sang to me. and one of my favorite students gave me a woody allen book and wrote a note in the front that i will turn to for strength in future days.
i am a blessed and fortunate man. so why is it so hard to get out of bed?
my birthday brought me some nice presents, both figurative and literal ones. nic sent me a dvd. friends marc, fran and zoe ate dinner with me at la fogata, which was lovely. i got a daniel lanois cd, chocolate, two poems, a massage gift certificate, a book, and a handmade card.
on saturday at the UIL region contest, my fine arts boss gave me a little boost by telling me that she had absolute confidence in my directing abilities. yesterday my sixth period class sang to me. and one of my favorite students gave me a woody allen book and wrote a note in the front that i will turn to for strength in future days.
i am a blessed and fortunate man. so why is it so hard to get out of bed?
Monday, April 24, 2006
poetry
last night fran gave me a poem by yevgeny yevtushenko:
People
No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity,
making his friends in that obscurity,
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.
They are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
By the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures,
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?
Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.
They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.
And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.
People
No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.
Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity,
making his friends in that obscurity,
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private,
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.
They are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
By the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.
Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures,
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?
Brother of a brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?
We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.
They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.
And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
a three and an eight
i have lived 38 years.
not very long.
fifteen years ago i was in moscow and the american kids were visiting from north carolina. i was hanging out with them in their hotel, eating their pot brownies, smelling their sweet incense, looking at their fresh faces. it was truly wonderful to see them from that perspective-- like getting a glimpse of myself from the other side of the glass.
on the eve of my birthday i was sitting in the lobby of a hotel discussing life with cigdem, one of our acting teachers. she was reading joseph campbell and expounding on myth. interesting, on my trip to moscow in '96 i took his book myths to live by and finished it while i was there.
i told my friend beth i was feeling haggard and unattractive and she said she went through that phase too-- the pre-forties puberty phase, but now she feels sexy again. so there's hope. :-)
not very long.
fifteen years ago i was in moscow and the american kids were visiting from north carolina. i was hanging out with them in their hotel, eating their pot brownies, smelling their sweet incense, looking at their fresh faces. it was truly wonderful to see them from that perspective-- like getting a glimpse of myself from the other side of the glass.
on the eve of my birthday i was sitting in the lobby of a hotel discussing life with cigdem, one of our acting teachers. she was reading joseph campbell and expounding on myth. interesting, on my trip to moscow in '96 i took his book myths to live by and finished it while i was there.
i told my friend beth i was feeling haggard and unattractive and she said she went through that phase too-- the pre-forties puberty phase, but now she feels sexy again. so there's hope. :-)
Saturday, April 22, 2006
rock 'n' roll is not dead yet
the first time i went to russia my friends there gave me this tape. it was music by boris grebenshikov, a russian rock star. it changed my life in the sense that it cemented my love affair with those friends and that place and time. as we flew home i listened to that tape and had a deep gratitude and a thrill of excitement that i had discovered something i was meant to discover, that something very right had happened. when i returned to moscow to live there for 3/4ths of a year that feeling continued, expanded, grew roots and spread. i ended up speaking the language with some facility and promising my friends i'd be back every five years. i went back in '96, five years later. now it's 2006 and i haven't been back again yet.
one of the people in that apartment where i heard grebenshikov for the first time was yulia, who now lives in los angeles, has a green card, and has a daughter who is a US citizen. yulia recently went back to moscow to see family. her ex-partner sergei, the father of her son and my close friend (also part of my first moscow experience) is an alcoholic. the last time i spoke to him he asked me for money. i said, "when?" he said, "tomorrow."
i didn't send it, and i haven't spoken to him in over a year. my russian has become so lame that it automatically becomes even worse while i'm speaking it because i realize in the process how bad it is and that stilts it further. but i spoke to yulia on thursday and was relaxed enough to actually express myself on a basic level as well as understand most of what she said. i didn't quite understand the details of some medicine sergei is taking for his alcoholism, something you take which keeps you from drinking because if you drink while on this medicine you die. i didn't catch the details on that.
when i came back from my 9 month stay in moscow i was really happy to be back in the united states. i felt that something had sunk in and i could continue life. i sometimes wonder how it would have been if i had stayed. i wonder when i'll go back, and how long i'll stay there. i wonder how it's changed. when i work with my students on chekhov scenes i think about going to chekhov's house in moscow, not far from the american embassy. it's all museum-ized and almost impossible to imagine chekhov there. yet something still moved around in that house. or maybe i was projecting.
i sat on a park bench on tverskoy boulevard and read a book, snapping it shut on russian flies. i let my hair and beard grow long. i tried to disappear into the muscovites. i tried to eradicate all trace of an accent. i avoided my mom's american bible study friend whose husband was working construction at the embassy. it was fifteen years ago.
i have transferred the grebenshikov tape to cd. it is crackly, with truncated songs and awkward transitions. i have lost the visceral thrill of that music, but i remember the way my heart beat differently when i heard it, all that spring and fall until i went back.
one of the people in that apartment where i heard grebenshikov for the first time was yulia, who now lives in los angeles, has a green card, and has a daughter who is a US citizen. yulia recently went back to moscow to see family. her ex-partner sergei, the father of her son and my close friend (also part of my first moscow experience) is an alcoholic. the last time i spoke to him he asked me for money. i said, "when?" he said, "tomorrow."
i didn't send it, and i haven't spoken to him in over a year. my russian has become so lame that it automatically becomes even worse while i'm speaking it because i realize in the process how bad it is and that stilts it further. but i spoke to yulia on thursday and was relaxed enough to actually express myself on a basic level as well as understand most of what she said. i didn't quite understand the details of some medicine sergei is taking for his alcoholism, something you take which keeps you from drinking because if you drink while on this medicine you die. i didn't catch the details on that.
when i came back from my 9 month stay in moscow i was really happy to be back in the united states. i felt that something had sunk in and i could continue life. i sometimes wonder how it would have been if i had stayed. i wonder when i'll go back, and how long i'll stay there. i wonder how it's changed. when i work with my students on chekhov scenes i think about going to chekhov's house in moscow, not far from the american embassy. it's all museum-ized and almost impossible to imagine chekhov there. yet something still moved around in that house. or maybe i was projecting.
i sat on a park bench on tverskoy boulevard and read a book, snapping it shut on russian flies. i let my hair and beard grow long. i tried to disappear into the muscovites. i tried to eradicate all trace of an accent. i avoided my mom's american bible study friend whose husband was working construction at the embassy. it was fifteen years ago.
i have transferred the grebenshikov tape to cd. it is crackly, with truncated songs and awkward transitions. i have lost the visceral thrill of that music, but i remember the way my heart beat differently when i heard it, all that spring and fall until i went back.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
wednesday
rehearsals for one hundred demons are going well. around monday i was worried that we weren't going to have enough time, because it was taking forever to block these intricate, tightly-woven scenes. but tuesday was a little more efficient, and today we actually got a lot done. i'm thinking we'll already be halfway through blocking act II by the middle of next week.
i feel so good coming home when i know i've had a productive day.
the students involved in the play are a pleasure to work with. my students in classes are a slightly different story. while reviewing vocabulary during 2nd period, everyone kept talking. i gave them several chances to simmer down before i finally just stopped. i figure if they're not interested in reviewing the vocabulary (thereby making a good grade on their semester written final), i'm not going to force them.
i feel so good coming home when i know i've had a productive day.
the students involved in the play are a pleasure to work with. my students in classes are a slightly different story. while reviewing vocabulary during 2nd period, everyone kept talking. i gave them several chances to simmer down before i finally just stopped. i figure if they're not interested in reviewing the vocabulary (thereby making a good grade on their semester written final), i'm not going to force them.
Saturday, April 08, 2006
my mechanic, my fiancee
i wanna marry my mechanic.
he's polish, late 40's, named stan. he's got a big fat black and white cat. he's got a thick accent and you can't really understand him over the phone very well. he's matter-of-fact and gives me discounts on oil changes. he actually wants to help. he works alone. he loves his job. he knows everything about my car, and that kind of intimacy turns me on.
when somebody has such a depth of knowledge in a field where i am almost completely ignorant, that person immediately becomes attractive. well, it's also his kindness and soft-spoken manner, and let's face it, he's polish. i'm a sucker for eastern europeans.
i'll never marry stan, in this world or any other. i'll never feel his rough thick hands caress my delicate piano player's fingers. i'll never have to wash his oily trousers. i'll never gaze, mechanic at my side, upon warsaw spires. but ain't it nice to fantasize...
he's polish, late 40's, named stan. he's got a big fat black and white cat. he's got a thick accent and you can't really understand him over the phone very well. he's matter-of-fact and gives me discounts on oil changes. he actually wants to help. he works alone. he loves his job. he knows everything about my car, and that kind of intimacy turns me on.
when somebody has such a depth of knowledge in a field where i am almost completely ignorant, that person immediately becomes attractive. well, it's also his kindness and soft-spoken manner, and let's face it, he's polish. i'm a sucker for eastern europeans.
i'll never marry stan, in this world or any other. i'll never feel his rough thick hands caress my delicate piano player's fingers. i'll never have to wash his oily trousers. i'll never gaze, mechanic at my side, upon warsaw spires. but ain't it nice to fantasize...
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
brief time out
monday i held auditions for our upcoming black box production, my adaptation of lynda barry's ONE HUNDRED DEMONS. 42 students auditioned for a 13-member ensemble cast. during auditions i decided to make it a 15-member ensemble cast. after auditions, when i got home, i upped it to 20. from 8 pm until 3:30 am i shuffled the audition sheets, considered the possibilities, juggled the roles, until finally i came up with a workable ensemble. yesterday i posted the results. someone is always going to be let down.
being sleep deprived at school yesterday was interesting. it made things slower. or it made me slower within things. i'm not sure which. i like the way my life is unfolding. i like being able to handle things better, and how i'm not as afraid as i used to be. what was i afraid of? i never wanted to go to school as a kid, or go to parties, or go to events. i always just wanted to stay home with my mom. venturing out of the nest was not a pleasant thought. i faked being sick.
today i am staying home from school. i'm not faking being sick. i am liking my job more and more each day. but i am taking a personal day today, to read and work on ONE HUNDRED DEMONS and watch MARAT/SADE.
yesterday mr. stevens and i talked about what shows we want to do next year. he's thinking about doing a version of bulgakov's HEART OF A DOG, which is exciting. he suggested we do shaw's SAINT JOAN, which i need to read anyway.
being sleep deprived at school yesterday was interesting. it made things slower. or it made me slower within things. i'm not sure which. i like the way my life is unfolding. i like being able to handle things better, and how i'm not as afraid as i used to be. what was i afraid of? i never wanted to go to school as a kid, or go to parties, or go to events. i always just wanted to stay home with my mom. venturing out of the nest was not a pleasant thought. i faked being sick.
today i am staying home from school. i'm not faking being sick. i am liking my job more and more each day. but i am taking a personal day today, to read and work on ONE HUNDRED DEMONS and watch MARAT/SADE.
yesterday mr. stevens and i talked about what shows we want to do next year. he's thinking about doing a version of bulgakov's HEART OF A DOG, which is exciting. he suggested we do shaw's SAINT JOAN, which i need to read anyway.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
mom's day
well, it's been a nice cool winter and spring. until yesterday. when i got in my car it was 99 degrees. let the profuse sweating begin.
today is my mom's 70th birthday. last night we had a party for her at my sister's house. mom was surprised to see a few of her old friends there, friends she hadn't expected. my brother and sis-in-law wrote a song for mom to the tune of "leavin' on a jet plane" and we sang it to her. we ate fajitas and cake and gave her gifts. we sat around her and reminisced. my dad kept making sentimental speeches-- he's become a real softie in his old age (he's 73). my mom's closest friend, who just recently turned 80, is starting to lose her memory. sometimes she will say "where are we?" when she's in a familiar place. the good thing is that she still realizes she's losing her memory. but it's a little depressing to think about the deterioration ahead of her...
but back to my mom. she's cute. happy birthday mom.
today is my mom's 70th birthday. last night we had a party for her at my sister's house. mom was surprised to see a few of her old friends there, friends she hadn't expected. my brother and sis-in-law wrote a song for mom to the tune of "leavin' on a jet plane" and we sang it to her. we ate fajitas and cake and gave her gifts. we sat around her and reminisced. my dad kept making sentimental speeches-- he's become a real softie in his old age (he's 73). my mom's closest friend, who just recently turned 80, is starting to lose her memory. sometimes she will say "where are we?" when she's in a familiar place. the good thing is that she still realizes she's losing her memory. but it's a little depressing to think about the deterioration ahead of her...
but back to my mom. she's cute. happy birthday mom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)