multitudinous

he said he wished he was me.
someone expressed confidence in my ability.
you don't know how people see you.
they all slipped through my fingers.
like when you have your hand out the window of a moving car.
if you grasp the wind, you lose it.
the only way to hold it is to keep your hand open.
i rode my bike home from school.
a student passed and yelled, "see you in hell!"
which was f-ing hilarious and kept me smiling all the way home.
i walked back to school to pick up my car.
today was frustrating.
i felt angry and there was no potential for anything good to happen.
sushi lunch helped.
fran dinged the man's car next to us and he rolled his window down.
that was right after she said "i usually can't stand handsome men."
or something to that degree.
everyone ate spaghetti and left fast.
there was no closure.
no one even gave a speech.
a girl thanked me.
she said she wanted to go abroad.
i said, "you'll blossom there."
i'm sweating.
i finished my online book studies about an hour ago.
next challenge.

last

last day of school today. sixth period. one exam. chairs. gum wrappers. abandoned folders. goodbyes. announcements. deadlines. meetings.
tomorrow night is our department banquet. tomorrow day all my grades have to be turned in. i'm pretty caught up with those, just have to enter today's after the exam.
i was talking to fran about it. i said i thought i'd feel more of a sense of closure. she said there's never any closure, it's like you're running on a treadmill, faster, faster, then it just stops. so, no real satisfaction. but when i think about the year i feel a sense of accomplishment. i know the things that worked and the things i need to do differently.
summer plans starting to get solidified.
i'm going to re-do my office.
kerrville folk festival with ET.
dallas national speech tournament.
finish certification.
direct ex-students in two plays.
drive mikki to austin in july.
hang out with pals.

last week of school

the final performance of one hundred demons! was friday night. it was the best performance out of the three, in my opinion. the audience wasn't overwhelming (as it was on thursday), the energy wasn't frenetic (ditto), and everyone onstage was relaxed, ready, understandable, and having fun. the video tech teacher and two of our drama students filmed the performance on thursday and already had a copy to me by friday. even though "video kills theatre," i'm glad to have this document, and i'm sure all the cast will be happy to have it also.
unfortunately, lynda never showed. oh well.
friend beth, who is moving out of colorado and into some as yet unknown territory, visited me on her way through texas. she came to see the play, which was fun for me, since beth and i share such a rich theatrical history; then we had time to hang out all of yesterday and most of today. we ate, drank, talked, smoked, cooked, saw a movie, and went to a museum. it was so much fun to spend a little time with her. also, we visited marcus at work. (maybe that link will inspire him to update his postings.)
right now i'm making copies of the one hundred demons! soundtrack for everyone in the cast and crew. here's the song list:
1. lovely day - bill withers
2. sunny afternoon - the kinks
3. brand new key - melanie
4. papa was a rollin' stone - the temptations
5. twist and shout - ike & tina turner
6. my little grass shack - amy hanaiali'i
7. one-sided love affair - elvis presley
8. time of the season - the zombies
9. dusty - daniel lanois
10. life on mars - david bowie
11. god only knows - the beach boys
12. pet sounds - the beach boys
13. do you believe in magic? - the lovin' spoonful
14. white rabbit - jefferson airplane
15. san francisco - 1 voice
16. hello it's me - todd rundgren
17. can't you see - waylon jennings
18. coconut - harry nilsson
19. bennie & the jets - elton john
20. (they long to be) close to you - the carpenters
21. bring the house down - s club 7
22. with a little help from my friends - beatles
23. love is the answer - todd rundgren
i would like to point out that s club 7 wasn't my idea. several girls said it would be appropriate for a certain transition. and it certainly was. but as opposed to the other songs on this cd, i would never listen to "bring the house down" in my spare time.
one more week of school. all i'm doing is exams. it has been a very good year. when i think of my first year of teaching there's something completely detached about it, as if i'm looking at another person in another place. it was so different this year. and thank the lord for that...
this year i learned about letting go of things students say, things they don't realize they're saying that hurt your feelings. i learned that it's not always good to be the "director of the department" when all that means is paperwork and bureaucracy. i learned that i love directing plays and that's what matters. red noses, the wake of jamey foster, and one hundred demons! were wonderful learning experiences. i learned that magic can happen in a classroom, but i actually have very little to no control over that (so far it seems mostly to hinge on chemistry).
now if i can just get through this week of exams, grades, papers, details, loose ends, deadlines... yeah, i'm sure i'll be just fine.

summatime

i have two students who are graduating summa cum laude this year. that means they have a GPA of 100 or higher. i was honored to be asked by both of them to attend tonight's summa reception, which consisted of 200-some-odd summa students from our school district and their chosen teachers, sitting in an auditorium together along with principals, school board members, and family. i thought it would just be teachers briskly walking across the stage with their students, getting certificates. i thought it would take an hour and a half, maybe two at the most. when the superintendent of our school district got up at the beginning and said, "tonight we will honor our summa students, and we'll hear from each of them a little bit about the teacher they've brought with them," i was a little dismayed, thinking, ugh, we'll be here forever, listening to a lot of brainiacs ramble on about their teachers. i looked at my watch-- seven o'clock. see you again at midnight, i told it, and braced myself.
the two summa students who invited me are both precious people. robyn transferred to our school as a junior. she is not the kind of person who is demonstrative about her thoughts or feelings. she's relatively quiet, and when i first directed her in a play i couldn't understand how she worked. her process of discovering the character was very slow, almost imperceptible. at first this translated as "she's not taking my notes! she's not doing anything!" but when it came time for dress rehearsals and performance, i realized that there had been a very subtle, interesting evolution at work. i am always pleasantly surprised and satisfied with her work. last week she left a sweet note of appreciation in my mailbox at school. it brought tears to my eyes, partly because it was a surprise-- i'd never known i'd helped her, or made any impression on her at all. it was a joy being onstage with her tonight. she finished her short speech with something like, "and he makes me very happy!"
jared was in the first play i directed in the black box, a pirandello piece about gossip. he came in during the last two weeks of rehearsal, replacing the old mayor, who found himself unable to pass latin. jared had a sort of awkward, reedy voice and an incredibly bright attitude about everything. in the two years since that first play he has worked on my tech crew for just about every show. when i give him a job he is meticulous about it-- like painting cracks on the sidewalk in the exact way they were rendered in the sketches. he is very sensitive and perceptive, and picks up on people's vibes. he also says hilarious things like, "that makes me feel happier than a mug full of unicorn giggles!" his tongue is in his cheek, but at the same time there's an innocence to him that is brilliantly refreshing.
the evening of summa students giving little speeches about their teachers wasn't dull or distressing in the least. i didn't even get tired of clapping every two minutes. some of the speeches were funny, some were tear-jerkers, some were both. some were memorized, some read off note cards, and some improvised. expressions on teachers' faces were anything from stolid to giddy to embarrassed to anxious. i saw a lot of beauty going on up there. and once again, i felt blessed to be asked to stand next to my students and support them, and to receive the beautiful gift of their appreciation.
i forgot to check my watch to see when it was over. must have been around ten. i've got another nice memory to store in my banks.

monday

well, it was fun. we had a small house, about 45 people in an 86-seat black box. but the crowd was appreciative and the kids had fun. a couple of props were forgotten, a couple of lines were flubbed, but i never felt crazy about it, like i have with other plays. somehow this one came easy, and i'm sure it's because i had such a love affair with the material. lynda barry is a goddess.
i get so much love in this job. sometimes i can't believe how fortunate i am to have been dragged into it. it's more of a blessing than i ever bargained for.
we got the terrible news today that one of our drama students who graduated last year, jonathan dolan, died in a car wreck on I-35 on sunday. he was on his way to surprise his mom for mother's day. that put a pall over our morning, a sort of unbelieving stunnedness. hard to process the human condition of now you're here, now you're gone. we are going to dedicate the show to him on friday. jonathan's sister is a freshman in our program and she won't be back for the last two weeks of school. she is in my theatre II class; ironically, she was in a final exam scene that had to do with grieving over a lost family member...

show

haven't posted in too long.
busy busy busy!
our show opens on monday. tomorrow we have a long saturday rehearsal. everyone's exhausted by the end-of-the-school-year chaos. one of my actors came to rehearsal with a pinkeye diagnosis today. but the show seems to be coming together pretty well. there are so many tiny details in this show, and it flows so fast, with short scenes, kind of like a movie. if everyone will remember their props, costumes, and entrances, we'll be in excellent shape. i think it will be good for the kids to have a day off on sunday so that they can come back on monday fresh and rarin' to go.
i'm very proud of the work we've done. it has been a blast working on this material, and i think it will be even more fun in performance.

bad fortune

sometimes, without my conscious permission, i enter into a blackened state. char-grilled swordfish. i don't usually realize this is happening until i go to work, where i must interact. when people speak to me, they're speaking into a vaccuum. there's something violent about it. everything they say to me, everything they're saying that requires a response, which is everything, is a nuisance to me, because i don't have any good responses, they've all been taken, or everything i would think of to say would sound horrible coming out of my mouth, and people tend to observe me as "tired," which makes matters worse, because i must then respond to a judgement of the state i'm in that i had no awareness of. because when i was by myself i seemed completely fine. in an environment where i was the only one i had to answer to, there was no need to answer, and therefore no effort and no reflection, and no tiredness. but when i have to start responding, reflecting, it all turns hopelessly stale, futile, exhausted and angry. kind words are seen as judgemental attacks, observations turn into indictments. it's sucky.
monday and most of today were like that. during monday's rehearsal i quietly attacked one of my students, terribly hurting her feelings, because of her seeming lack of preparation. when another student showed concern, i said it was nothing and that i didn't know he was talking about.
this morning i talked with the girl i'd flayed for being unprepared. i apologized, looked at her sad eyes and listened to her feelings of being overwhelmed by all the end-of-the-year tasks in which she's required to excel. at the end of rehearsal today, interacting with that same student who had shown concern, i felt myself beginning to emerge, through no effort of my own, back into some sort of tangible daylight.
i am pretty sure that these dark states are primarily physical in origin-- something's going on in my body that is causing these strained emotional reactions. if i were watching my diet better, if i were exercising regularly, if i were getting enough good rest, these states would become non-existent, or at least manageable. i believe that's true because when i am more in touch with my body, these states have been less able to dominate me.
it's not good fortune, it's not bad fortune. it's a natural fluctuation that i can either be prepared for, or not.
one thing my physical state might have made me susceptible to was the news, yesterday morning, through e-mail, that the theatre where we were going to perform the pillowman rejected the script because of its provocatively negative portrayal of christ. will we find another space? maybe. but performing in the space we had counted on was one of the things making me so excited about that production. that news might have pushed me further into the crappy blank gaze.
conversely, one of the things that may have aided me in my eventual turn towards daylight today was the visa bill that came in the mail. eh? you may say. a visa bill caused joy? well, in this case, yes, for you see, i cut up my visa card with scissors back in january, after being sick to death of my balance hovering around the unpayable $1500 zone. i cut it with scissors into the trash can, immediately thereafter feeling the ability to take the first deep breath of the new year. since then i've been paying it off slowly, bit by bit, without accruing much debt in the meantime, so that now i'm set to make my last payment of $400 which will bring my balance down to $0 for the first time in years. (ah, the vapid joys of a consumer in overseas-wartime america.)
so yes, there are little factors that may push me in one direction or another, but at bottom, it's up to me how i react to them, and it's up to my mind to keep my body in mind.