wishes

merry christmas
happy new year

concerns

yesterday i was watching the turner classic movies channel and a "we remember..." montage came on. i was grieved and surprised to see that solveig dommartin was part of the sad lineup of faces from show business who have recently passed away. solveig stars in a couple of my favorite films, wings of desire and until the end of the world, both directed by wim wenders. i looked her up online and sure enough found this. she was only 45.
other prayertime goes to:
justin, who is recovering from surgery;
john, who went to the doctor yesterday to get a mass on his head looked at;
terry, who called me yesterday to let me know he's on a list to get a heart transplant.
...

and nothing but the truth

i haven't posted since thanksgiving.
however, i have been posting drawings daily (except for weekends) on my new drawings blog www.thornbook.blogspot.com
i'm doing well. we have a little more than a week and then it's the winter break. i have been having my ups and downs. this week i have enjoyed my co-worker's absence due to strep throat, which i don't believe he really had. i enjoyed his absence because work felt more relaxed and fun without him. he tends to bring stress along in his baggage. while he was gone i was able to strike a more relaxed rhythm that i hope to sustain for as long as possible. why do i doubt that he really had strep throat? well, my experience of strep throat is that it's quite serious and really knocks your body into left field for at least a week. i see no signs of that kind of stress in him. not that i'm scrutinizing. i just think people should be honest. i'm over the whole acting-sick-in-order-to-take-a-day-off thing. the last time i wanted to stay in bed instead of going to school, i did so. when someone asked me why i wasn't there, sometimes i said "i didn't feel well," and sometimes i said "i couldn't face it."
"what do you mean?"
"i couldn't face you children."
"so you just stayed in bed?"
"yup."
it's liberating to tell the whole unabashed truth. i'd like to do it more often, especially at work.

stuff-your-face day

happy thanksgiving.
happy birthday to marc who turned 34 yesterday.
right now i am in bed listening to the polyphonic spree's rendition of nirvana's song "lithium." it's cool because there are tons of instruments and all kinds of vocal layering, and when he sings "I'm so happy" at the beginning, i actually believe him.
i am having a nice week off from school. yesterday i went back to the cool fiesta store on n. main to get ashley's christmas present. i have a crush on a worker there. i started drawing on a big piece of cardboard. i feel sort of like i'm teetering these days between complete contentment and complete breakdown. the last few days i've felt like that.
i have to think of ways to get through the rest of the school year. i hate to say that, but it's true.
please visit my drawings blog and leave comments. it will cheer me up.

brewing

i was thinking about traveling around for a year.
i could visit different places. like go to new mexico for a month. portland for a month. brooklyn. austin. boston. seattle. san francisco. chapel hill.
it would be expensive, but if i could find a couple of friends in each place that would let me stay for a couple of weeks each, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
i could make drawings in each place and see theatre.
i could decide on nine or ten places, and stay at each place for a month, then come home and decide where i wanted to move.

another closing...

the royal family closed last night. the show was great, as opposed to thursday's show, which was low-energy and clumsy and mush-mouthed. today we strike that huge set and put the show officially to bed. it's been very hard work! but i think for the most part, the students have enjoyed the experience. last night they gave me a big card they all signed, a little photo album, a framed 8x10 of the set, and a lot of candy. they know me so well. sort of.

new blog

hey kids!
please visit my new blog for artwork, http://www.thornbook.blogspot.com
i will be putting up drawings and such as often as i can.

music head

today i'm going to the gym for the first time in 9-10 weeks. i'm not particularly out of shape because i've been running around so much. and i was never that in shape to begin with anyway. in other words, there wasn't a lot of shape to lose.
my friend peter hedges has a new movie out-- dan in real life. peter graduated from NCSA as a drama major 3-4 years before i did, and came back my senior year to create a theatre piece for us, which was one of my favorite college experiences. it was called a report on the solar system and we got to smash pies in each others' faces at the end. (i smashed mine a little hard and still feel guilty about hurting shad's nose.) peter went on to have his novel, what's eating gilbert grape? directed onscreen by lasse hallstrom (i got to go to the sneak preview), had several plays produced in new york, and continued writing screenplays. pieces of april came out i guess almost four years ago now. i'm happy for him, he's doing so well. i may try to see dan in real life today.
i have been downloading a lot of new music lately.
ANTIBALAS - security
ART OF NOISE - (who's afraid of) the art of noise?
AT THE DRIVE-IN - relationship of command
ELVIS COSTELLO - spike
EURYTHMICS - ultimate collection
GEORGE HARRISON - all things must pass
IRON & WINE - the shepherd's dog
JOHN DOE - a year in the wilderness
JOHN LENNON - mind games
JOSE GONZALEZ - in our nature
MEKONS - natural
MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND - pinata
MICHAEL JACKSON - thriller
PYLON - gyrate (plus)
RADIOHEAD - in rainbows
TV ON THE RADIO - young liars EP
VAN MORRISON - common one AND st. dominic's preview
YOUSSOU N'DOUR - rokku mi rokka
and
ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK - the darjeeling limited
i guess i've spent a lot of money on music these last few weeks. i don't even feel like going to barnes & noble anymore. what's happening to me?!?!?!?

another opening...

the royal family opened tonight. it went well! a few flubbed lines here and there, an overturned coffee urn well-played comedically, a very appreciative audience (i counted 64 ticket stubs)... not bad for halloween.
i was very proud of them, and i am thoroughly exhausted.

the monster show

who would have known that such a souffle of a show, such a lighthearted, airy romantic comedy, would be so much work?!?
i have been yelling at the kids a lot. but on wednesday we had our first four-hour rehearsal and they finally started stepping it up a bit. thursday was good too. on friday, two students left the theatre for unexplained reasons and i had to yell about that ("what do i have to do-- cut my arms off and throw them at you?!?!?"), but at the beginning of the week i decided to start giving it all up to jesus, and that was a good decision. it's their show. let them do what they will.
fortunately, i have my brother-in-law danny, who is a home builder, and he has been the channel through which a lot of the immense set has been built. today we had a tech day in which we got all the remaining flats put up and painted, doors hung, trim glued on, stencil designs painted on flats, chairs and tables acquired, props organized, tickets printed, portraits gathered, sound cues solidified, hats made, hairstyles agreed upon, makeup bought and experimented with, more painting, painting, painting, and the list goes on...
it's been really satisfying work. the dedicated kids break my heart, just a little bit more than the undedicated ones who suddenly show an interest when they realize "hey-- this might be something after all!"
and once again, i'm thrilled for opening night.
they open on wednesday. more to come.

more small steps

yesterday i bought 5 gallons of rose-colored paint, 2 gallons of red mahogany stain, a stencil to do wallpaper designs with, exacto blades, tape, and a few other items. in the evening we got started painting the flats. i also got a golden brownish paint for the floor.

mind-numbingly delicious

i just glutted myself on reality tv shows.
first i watched two episodes of 'queer eye' back to back (the first one made me cringe, the second sappier one made me cry-- but just a little). then the season finale of 'top chef.' i had missed the first half of it last week when it aired, so i got to see it tonight.
when it was all over my brain had melted out my ears. it took me a minute to get up. no, i mean a full minute. try it, it's a long time.
i'm worried about our play. the kids are so exhausted. school is too intense. we have so much to do in such a short time. in brief moments i'm comforted by the thought that we pulled under milk wood out in eight short hours... but royal family has so many demands that we haven't even thought of yet.
small steps: today we began using the actual sound effects for the doorbell, buzzer, and two phones. also, we got some plywood cut for the siding on the stairs.

hooray for fall, hooray for theatre

cool mornings... october is here!
my theatre arts two class did a staged reading performance of dylan thomas's play for voices, under milk wood, the past two evenings. we had only four class periods and one evening rehearsal to put it together, which amounts to a grand total of eight hours, and considering that shortness of preparation time, i think it turned out pretty well. the students were focused, enthusiastic, and for me, a delight to watch. with the exception of one student who actually removed her cell phone onstage and texted something into it, everyone took the performance seriously and brought something unique to his or her parts. it was moving to watch them, and it came at the end of a somewhat stressful week.
students are stressed right now in my world. too much work, too many activities, too many deadlines, just too many expectations being piled on them in general.
our play is coming up and we only have a handful or two of rehearsals to get everything done. today we are going up to school for a saturday work day, in which i hope to accomplish a lot. my brother-in-law, one of the kindest people i've ever met, will be there to help us, so that's a real cool thing. we need to get two nine-foot platforms up, build and set up two staircases, and frame and face several wall units. if we do those things, these things will be icing on the cake: paint the walls, stencil, paint the floor, create the fireplace, create the doors, and figure out a way to make styrofoam look like molding.
hooray for the theatre!

update

the pillowman closed this past sunday. it's one of the best theatre experiences i've ever had. i was never anxious before going onstage. though i'd get slight butterflies, i was never worried about dropping lines or things going wrong. i imagine this lack of anxiety was a result of feeling comfortable with my fellow actors as well as the fantastic script we had to work with. every night i was able to play with the lines, changing inflection, experimenting with pauses in different ways, drawing out a moment of eye contact or discovering a new area of realization. this play renewed my faith in myself as an actor.
this past saturday i attended a luncheon of the constance allen heritage guild, a local women's club, and was given an award, along with about 14 other local educators, called the yellow rose of texas education award. i was very honored, as most of the other honorees were at least 50 years old and had been in education for many years. my mom and dad came, as well as one of my bosses at work, two of my past teachers, and the man who nominated me.
now i turn my attention fully to our production of the royal family and i attempt to build this magnificent set and collect these magnificent costumes. i have no idea how i'm going to pull it off, but in actuality, i never do; so, this is nothing too different.

the best $20 i ever spent

last year during south pacific i was sitting in my office at around 6 pm and was reminded of the existence of Nerds Ropes. for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, Nerds Ropes are long strips of chewy stuff covered in Nerds candy. i suddenly had an overwhelming craving for a Nerds Rope. so i asked one of my students if she would go to the store and get me one. she said sure. as i looked in my wallet, i realized i had only a twenty dollar bill. the moment of decision had arrived: either forego the craving, or plunge in. i chose the latter.
"take this twenty," i tasked her, "and buy as many Nerds Ropes as you can."
she and two friends presently returned with two plastic shopping bags full of Nerds Ropes, 81 of them to be exact, which we proceeded to enjoy and disseminate.
it was the best twenty dollars i ever spent.

labor

school starts.
play rehearsal for the royal family.
classes.
performances of the pillowman.
friend beth visited.
discussion of acting.
she gives me a note that i try, and it works.
day off for labor day.
look at this.
cough and congestion.
feelings of gratitude while washing dishes.
later, sinking self-hatred over scrambled eggs.
i let it pass.
and worry hovers like smoke i blow away.
on a student's MySpace, he has cited me as one of his heroes; i find out by chance.
i update my own space.
i stay up till 2:30 am.

an attractive, adventurous option

summer of 2007 is drawing to a close.
i've had one of the best summers of my life, i think.

in june:
-i was in a play. rabbit hole reminded me that i have a wealth of emotional reserves inside that are very strong and readily available;
-i joined a gym, and to my surprise actually enjoyed working out, for the first time in my life;
-i finished my sketchbook of altai drawings, self-published them at kinkos, and distributed them accordingly;
-i went to a bitchen pool party and played water volleyball with jockish aplomb;
-i visited friend beth and new friend von in austin, and my brother and sis-in-law in waco;
-i cleaned my apartment for the first time in months (whew).
in july:
-i went to france (did i mention?);
-i started rehearsals on another play. the pillowman is reminding me that i have something in common with everyone in the world;
-i took another healing trip to austin;
-i slept as much as i wanted to;
-i spent fun times with friend marc.
in august:
-i watched the rain create a makeshift swimming pool in the grass-patch outside my window while i sipped coffee in my cozy cave;
-i started on a new set of drawings, inspired by some affirmations i put together for myself, aided by a cool person named mary;
-i house-sat and dog-sat at my parents' place, watching old dick cavett interviews with famous comedians;
-i had a great healing visit with von, during which we went to the mcnay and to a rock shop, and made a good dinner using one of jean-jean's recipes;
-i saw a good movie called golden door;
-i enjoyed a clean-up day at school with some of the advanced theatre students;
-i started paying more attention to my diet, eating healthier food;
-i finally read dave eggers's a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

and of course i met quite a few wonderful people this summer: thad, asia, forrest, michele, von, mary, rick & odile...
but i think mostly what i learned, and am learning, in addition to continually discovering my personal power, is the way to make each day last longer. now this might sound like a dubious ability, because many people on our earth don't want their days to be longer; after all, the phrase "it's been a long day" generally connotes a feeling of strife and exhaustion. but i'm learning that a long day is one where you're awake for it, engaged in it, actually living it and not coasting on auto-pilot. i haven't always wanted this, and sometimes i still don't-- sometimes i just want to disappear into my couch with the tv on and let the day go by like so much annoying pageantry... i'm learning, however, that being awake and engaged is an attractive, adventurous option, if i'm willing to go there.

france part five

FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE
after three days in paris, we checked out of our lovely hotel and dragged our bags through the metro to the train station, where we sat and waited for a couple of hours for our train to arrive. (we got there really early, to avoid lateness.) while at the train station i did some lovely people-watching. we ate sandwiches and sipped drinks. i left one of my little books of sketches there on purpose (see footnote below).
our train ride to nantes, heading in a southwesterly direction, was taken on the smoothest train you've ever felt. it was more like a glide than a ride. more people-watching (inside our 16-person cabin) ensued. two little girls cried as they left people they loved (friends? family?) and set off to nantes with their grandmother. in another 4-seat section, two kids bickered over toys while their mother reprimanded them occasionally. one little girl (9 or 10 years old) played with her barbie in a hilarious fashion, complete with voices and facial expressions. i liked it when she pulled the barbie's bikini top off then screamed, acting out the part of the barbie, who was outraged to be naked.
one of our hosts, rick, who grew up in corpus, met us at the train station in nantes. he was an old friend of fran's from college. he talked a lot, mostly about himself and his ideas, which i found slightly irritating at first; then i realized he was intelligent and interesting, and i gave in and listened to him gladly. he drove us to the home he shared with his french wife odile and their two daughters chloe and emma, in a tiny town called st. julien-de-concelles. we spent six days staying in their garage apartment on a patch of farmland that has been in odile's family for generations. it was so beautiful there, with amazing flowers (hydrangeas, passion flowers, calla lilies, portulaca, roses...) and a full veggie garden, from which we ate each evening. (the potatoes needed nothing... no salt, no butter... oh my gosh...)
rick and odile had an interesting relationship. at first i thought they were really on rocky ground with each other, like verging on divorce. their verbal interaction was intense and aggressive. i found myself embarrassed, afraid i was witnessing their collective downfall. later, however, fran assured me that they have always related to each other this way-- it's them. it's the way they interact. no imminent downfall to be worried about. after fran told me that, i felt a lot better and could freely observe their aggressive interaction, without fear.
while in our idyllic french country retreat, we did many fun things:
mont st. michel is a fortress/church/monastery/village that dates back to the 10th century. we walked all through it, marveling at room after room in this almost labyrinthine structure, full of sacred ghosts and shadows. its sheer size is almost too much for the brain to handle. up above, in the abbey prayer garden, for a second i thought i'd been there before, and for a couple of hours i wished i lived there again.
before visiting mont st. michel, we ate at the relais du roy. though it was elegant and the food was sublime, i felt uncomfortable at this restaurant. maybe it was my weak grasp of french. maybe it was the brisk, intimidating waitstaff. or maybe it was the camembert, whose flavor resembled gym socks.
we also visited a gorgeous, glamorous fortified port town called st. malo. we walked on the beach, out to an island, collected rocks, marveled at the view, soaked in the atmosphere, and then strolled down a cobbled street of the town, which was lined with stores containing high-ticket items. this place was destroyed during the second world war by the americans, and was rebuilt, stone by stone, in subsequent years.
finally... our small tour of the city of nantes came toward the end of our stay in france, so wasn't quite as extensive as it otherwise would have been, since we were a little exhausted. we didn't catch a rugby game; however, we did visit the cathedral (under renovation) and had a droll tour of it (all in french, but we could tell it was funny by the middle-aged tour guide's eyebrows and how they rose on the clever bits); and we walked through some of the castle. we sat outside at the incredibly ornate cafe la cigale (the cicada) and had tea and cakes of various kinds. nantes is the sixth largest city in france and has a sort of combination small-town/big-city feel to it, cosmopolitan yet not out of touch with its roots.
but in the final analysis, perhaps my most memorable moments were spent with fran and zoe and our hosts rick and odile around the dinner table each evening: simple, delectable dishes brought out at random, new stuff, leftovers, fresh from the garden, how do you make this?, oh it's simple, just some garlic, parsley and olive oil, put it in the oven for twenty minutes, talking about stuff, religion, capital punishment, vegetarianism, family, mushrooms, homosexuality, college friends, insurance, wine... all the things that matter in life.
my bottle of cointreau, bought at the paris airport with my last 20 euros, was manufactured in the town of angers, which was actually just "down the road" from where we stayed in st. julien-de-concelles. it arrived home safely, in the wayward bag (remember, the one that had apparently been attacked by dogs?), and is now resting in my refrigerator.
and though this is the end of my five-part blog series, make no mistake: i'll go back to france.

FOOTNOTE: i made a book of small sketches, based on photos i had taken in russia, and decided that i would leave one of my sketchbooks in a random place in paris. though i probably should have given one of them to the stranger making eye contact in the subway, i didn't think of it in time; so i had to leave the sketchbook under a bench in the paris train station. it was both a practical attempt at spreading my work around the world as well as a symbolic gesture of european artistic aspiration. i'm hoping to develop a website soon which will exhibit my burgeoning collection of drawings. i'll keep you posted on that.

interviews

at the end of last school year, in may, the seniors were preparing their 'senior video' (a tradition in our department) and decided to interview my colleague and myself. i found out this weekend (quite by accident) that these interviews have been posted on YouTube. my colleague speaks first, then i. click here.

france part four

MUSEUMS, CHURCHES & CEMETERY:
we decided not to try going into the louvre. given our time constraints we felt that our hours would be more usefully spent in other historic places, such as the musee d'orsay, which contains a mind-blowing amount of famous, priceless art. housed in an old train station (built in 1900), the museum is almost completely lit by overhead skylights, which gives the atmosphere a bright, even, and serene quality immediately as you walk in.
some of picasso's drawings were especially enthralling to me, on a purely technical level-- later drawings where he depicts his model as a voluptuous young beauty and himself as an old lecher or a beast. the van gogh area of the passing exhibit was teeming with people, which was annoying because it was almost impossible to really appreciate the art in that kind of crush; on the other hand, it made me happy to think how happy these artists would be to know that people were still flocking to the work, discussing it passionately, gazing at it, deriding it, drawing parallels and puzzling out odd choices. the place was like a beehive. i've already mentioned manet's 'olympia' and 'portrait of emile zola' right next to it. the latter includes a portrait of the former, as art aficionados will know. we also enjoyed looking at works by degas, cezanne, klimt, munch, cassatt, monet, renoir, courbet... and i was a little mesmerized by cordier's 'sudanese negro' sculpture, which seemed so alive as i walked by it.
the other paris museum we visited was the pompidou centre, which is built 'inside-out,' with a sort of scaffolding exoskeleton and tube-like exterior escalators. at first glance it looks like a building you'd see in a dream, a place full of unpredictable contents, a place you can't wait to go into. this museum was established by french president georges pompidou, a modern art lover, in the early seventies. inside are five or six floors of modern art. we visited a really cool children's installation, where kids got to choose four or five images from a computer screen (eiffel tower, apple, peace sign, heart, skull, etc.), have their picture taken, and have all the chosen images stack themselves one by one like a totem pole on a large screen, each accompanied by a different sound effect, topped by the child's picture and a sweeping harp glissando at the end. the modern art on the top floor of the museum was copious, diverse and absorbing-- sculpture, painting, photography, video... it was yet another treasure trove of human expression, worthy of hours of lazy strolling, gawking, grinning and discussion.
which takes us to the churches.
notre dame, as i mentioned, was a little hectic, which didn't necessarily detract from the experience, since one expects notre dame, naturally, to be overrun with tourists. i took some good pictures of the beams of light coming down through the staggeringly gorgeous stained glass windows into the dark atmosphere of the cathedral.
sacre coeur was less hectic, and the main reason for this was that there was a service going on at the time of our mid-morning visit. as we climbed the final set of stairs to the church, jesus looked down at us from his alcove over the front entrance. inside, the priest was praying and the nuns were singing. the atmosphere was hushed. the church was full of light, the almost modern-looking windows emitting tranquil shades of color. the nuns' voices rang beautifully in the cathedral. i was moved by something that has occurred to me before: small humans, producing all this beauty, trying to understand the mystery of this existence, deciding to spend their time in an activity called worship. it sounds like an analyzation when put into words, but at the moment it was a feeling in my heart that stabbed me a little, which i was ready and grateful for.
by the time we got to pere-lachaise cemetery, it was about 3:45 pm. we strolled on the paths and i for one felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of gravestones around us. how would one ever find anyone's grave, without a guide? fran wanted to find abelard & heloise; i made my desire for moliere known. but at 4:15, as we were sitting on the curb taking a brief rest, a man drove up to us in a golf cart and said we needed to leave, that the cemetery was closing.
someone made eye contact in the subway-- a lover from a future life. back at the hotel we ate cheese and bread, drank wine, and smoked cigarettes on the balcony before turning in. i listened to people on the street below: walking, singing, screeching... alive!

france part three

P A R I S :
our hotel was in lovely walking distance to notre dame. just walk that way down rue cardinal lemoine, cross the bridge and look to your left. it was raining intermittently. fran fired up her first paris cigarette. on the bridge we looked to our left and there it was. i remembered my few-hours' layover in 1991 when i was on my way to russia. i wrote this in my journal then:
"I am sitting in a park next to Notre Dame. It is so beautiful and cool here today... This is my life! This is how my life is unfolding. Children begin running all around me."
i felt happy to have another chance in paris, since the last visit had been so brief. it was also nice to experience it with friends instead of alone.
notre dame, immense and full of relics and tourists, with its luminous windows and intricate carvings and massive arches, was a little bit of a circus. from there we hopped on a riverboat and began wending our way toward the eiffel tower. if i thought notre dame was a circus, then the eiffel tower was definitely disneyland. first of all, that thing is quite huge-- you know how some people get disappointed when they see the statue of liberty for real; they're like, 'i thought it would be bigger.' well, i didn't feel that with the eiffel tower. people were teeming under its legs, standing in long lines waiting to get to a leg, each of which contains an elevator. when we finally got through the line, and up to the 'second' level, we had to exit the elevator and stand in another line in order to get to the top of the tower. the quarters were generally crammed; people with claustrophobia wouldn't do well here; all around us american, german, spanish, french voices. up top the view was nice and everything, and it was a little staggering to think how high we were. 'look, there's the pompidou!' said fran. 'look at the clouds!' said andy. 'i'm freezing!' said zoe. and it was cold up there.
coming down from the top was equally fraught with lines and cramped standing room. once we got back down to level two, and were waiting for the elevator to go all the way down to the bottom, a cold, sideways rain began to whip through the waiting area. some of us opened umbrellas. people squealed and giggled in different languages. and when the elevator came, there was a bit of a crush. fran almost got caught behind a guard rail, as did a small spanish child next to me. but we made it down safely.
i, for one, was happy to have my feet back on french soil after that. and then on french water as we rode the riverboat back to the notre dame stop, where we got off the boat and walked back to our hotel.

france part two

my renegade suitcase arrived the next evening with huge rips in the nylon fabric. it's unclear what happened to it; looks like it was attacked by wild dogs. in any case, nothing inside was damaged except, strangely, a little eraser i bought with a picture of the eiffel tower on it, which was pulverized beyond recognition. delta provided me with a brand new nylon suitcase... but not with a new eraser, alas. mostly, i was relieved that the 1000 ml bottle of cointreau i bought at the duty-free shop in paris wasn't cracked.
anyway, to get back to our trip:
we spent three days in paris and then took a really fast, smooth train west to another city called nantes, which is not too far from the west coast of france. at the train station in nantes we were met by one of our hosts, fran's old friend rick (who is from corpus), who took us back to the house he shares with his french wife odile (another old friend of fran's) and their two daughters. the house is on a little farm in a community about 20-ish miles from nantes, called st. julien de concelles. there we did the following things:
-stayed in a garage apartment
-learned some french
-met emma (5) and chloe (16)
-watched zoe and emma play and fight
-relaxed
-had amazing meals, all very simply prepared
-drank great wine
-picked vegetables from the garden
-took walks
-took pictures
-had interesting discussions
-listened to birds in the trees during the day and the complete silence at night
-played with the dog pistache
-traveled to the coast and saw mont st. michel, st. malo, a small coastal town called pornic (great ice cream!), and toured a bit around the city of nantes, which has a real live castle and a gorgeous cathedral
...and much more!
people in the states had warned me about the snotty attitude of the french toward americans. we didn't run up against this at all. my attitude is that if you maintain a modicum of respect and politeness, awareness of customs, you will be treated in kind. i certainly found this to be true. once, in the train station, i asked a man in a uniform, "bon jour, m'sieur. parlez-vous anglais?" and he turned to me and said, "do you speak french?"
he had a wry french expression on his face as he said this. i continued with my question in english and he was perfectly helpful. i learned that the "bon jour" is a very important component in terms of manners. people want to be addressed properly, starting with a hello. doesn't seem like too much to ask, does it? actually it made me more aware of interactions i had when i got back to the states, and how common it is for employees and customers never to say "hello" to each other at all. if there's no "hello," it's all about the product; ideally, if there's a "hello," it's about people instead. would you rather your life be about products, or people? just asking.
the last time i was in europe i was in russia, so i couldn't help comparing my french experience to my russian one. it's a given that i love the russians and always will; at the same time, i found the french to be much more civilized, humane, and genteel. they care about the quality of each moment; there's beauty everywhere you turn; there's a relaxed sense of pro-human advancement. in russia (at least when i was there), i saw people struggling under the weight of life; their voracious partying was direct evidence of the hardships they felt. france has produced a milder person, someone who doesn't spend all his time fighting against a system, but who moves functionally within it, for the most part.
it would be interesting to compare how the arts are affected as a result of this difference in climate. is it really true that people tend to create more interesting art when they are oppressed in some way? i found myself wondering while i was in paris, "what is the theatre like here?" unfortunately i didn't have time to find out.
(just to reiterate: i will always love russia and russians. but the contrast was interesting.)
in car drives, rick and i had good discussions. we talked about music, movies, school, china, insurance companies... he told me about france's health care policy, and talked about how the united states could improve theirs.
imagine my sense of synchronicity when, three days after my return to the united states, i saw michael moore's new movie, sicko, which takes apart american health care and even compares it to france's. the point was driven home, back home. it seems to me that those french are doing a lot of things right.
next entry: more about paris!

france part one

hi y'all,
i went to france. i thought i was ready to come home but i'm kinda depressed to be back.
i went with my friend fran and her 8 year-old daughter zoe. we spent three lovely days in paris first, at a hotel called the royal-cardinal, on the rue des ecoles in the latin quarter. none of us spoke french, but we all felt bad about it so the obnoxious american factor was at least tempered with some stuttering attempts at rudimentary french. in paris we did the following things:
-ate at a few cafes
-got caught in a downpour or two
-went to notre dame
-rode on a riverboat up and down the seine
-climbed the eiffel tower (yes, there was an elevator-- we didn't actually climb it)
-drank wine that we bought at a tiny store next to the hotel
-sat on the hotel balcony smoking and waxed romantic about the beauty of paris (it's f-ing beautiful there)
-bought souvenirs
-went to montmartre and sacre coeur
-feasted our eyes on beautiful paintings at the musee d'orsay (manet's 'olympia' being one of the highlights... also, there was a picasso/van gogh/cezanne collection passing through...)
-visited gift shops (i bought a musee d'orsay catalogue which is now lost in my luggage, more on that later)
-sat in the pyramid courtyard at the louvre
-rode a ferris wheel (zoe)
-saw young lovers kissing in the street
-rode the metro
-visited the pompidou centre (it, itself, was a structure of art, and it was jam-packed with art)
-ate crepes
-watched birds
-went to the pere lachaise cemetery to see famous graves (abelard & heloise, moliere, gertrude stein and alice b. toklas are all buried there, among many other noteworthies) but it closed shortly after we arrived so we mostly just strolled there and soaked in the atmosphere
-bought a new watercolor set
-walked over bridges, gazed at the water
-used the ATM
-went to the luxembourg gardens but they were closing just as we arrived
-got lost a little
-visited sylvia beach's store shakespeare & co. but it wasn't open (its hours are 12 to 12, isn't that the coolest?)
it did rain a bit in paris, and the sky was mostly overcast, but it was still breathtaking. so many beautiful buildings, the seine, the light, the trees. everything. i will go into more detail and ruminate over the rest of the trip in subsequent entries...
as for my luggage, it's all back except one suitcase which had my whole bag of souvenirs and gifts in it... i'm hoping it will show up today... stay tuned.

beauty

beauty is gilda radner as lisa loopner making a theatre of people sing along to "the way we were."

monday

friend marc and i drove out to kerrville last night to meet friend ET and watch trout fishing in america. we sat on grass, drank expensive lone star, watched jugglers, looked at people. three songs into trout fishing's set, a huge storm cloud rolled into the kennedy outdoor theatre and the wind started whipping dust into everyone's eyes. trout fishing kept on; there wasn't much rain, just scattered ice-cold drops; the electricity went out for a second and we lost one of the mics for a song and a half, but trout fishing kept on. as soon as they finished their set the rain started coming down a little bit more, but soon let up again. marc and i walked around in the slightly surreal atmosphere then drove back home.
legs are aching like hell as a result of working out with new friend thad.
inspired to download some richie havens today. ET was wearing a richie havens t-shirt.

the bomb of gnarly confetti

hey wow, it's summer. and i have had a week of pure relaxation, culminating in a crescendo of enjoyment!
i have slept in late, drawn, listened to music, washed dishes, thrown shit out, cleaned my dining room table off, repositioned my computer for more effective usage, pet my cat, sat on my back porch smoking, lifted weights (yeah really!), made new friends, rehearsed a play, drank margaritas with a friend, cried, laughed... jeez, it's all been lovely.
and as the crescendo, this morning i woke up at 5:45, having had a night of creatively-charged dreams. all this positive creative energy enthusing through my dreams all night. i mean it's not stopping! it's flowing! it's going!
i even found myself down on the floor studying a bug with my cat. this was at 5:53 this morning. we looked intently at this bug. and it put me on a level to see the bottom shelf of my bookshelf, upon which was sitting a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and i'm reading that now.
reading it reminded me of the existence of mcsweeney's, upon which i found this pretty funny list.
ps. i can't take credit for "culminating in a crescendo of enjoyment;" that's from the tracey ullman show, circa 1993.

minutiae

i have two sets of keys. i keep my home/car keys in my right pocket. i keep my school keys in my left pocket. i keep my phone in my left pocket. if i'm carrying my ipod, i keep it in my right pocket. i keep my wallet in my back right pocket. i usually carry a pen in my back right pocket. i don't usually carry anything in my back left pocket. if i'm wearing a shirt with a breast pocket, i sometimes keep my pen there.
sometimes i back up into my parking space, sometimes i just pull in forward, it depends on how tired i am and what activities i'm looking forward to the next day.
when i get home i put my keys, wallet, glasses, watch and phone down on the little counter next to the door and i put my bag on the dining room chair. i say hi to my cat. i kick my shoes off. i keep three pairs of shoes, the most commonly used ones, in my living room at the base of the shelving where the TV is. those three pairs are my black sneakers, my black 'nice' shoes, and my flip-flops. sometimes when i wear other shoes i kick them there too, but i always eventually clear them back to the closet.
when i get to school i open the outside door and unlock it with a little allen wrench on my keychain. then i open the other outside door with the same allen wrench. then i open the classroom with the MKAB key, and the black box with the same key. then i open my office with the AC11 key. i prop my office door open with a little wooden frog doorstop from sam. i turn on two lamps, one by my desk and one in the corner, and turn on the computer. i put on some music. i usually have about an hour in my office and the vicinity before school starts. i check email, talk to students, check my mailbox in the main building, make a list of things to do for the day.
i like the little routines, the little consistencies in the midst of unpredictable life.

process and product: a colon-infested run-down of the UIL OAP

i hate to give in to hackneyed catchphrases, but on some level most of them are true; otherwise why would they be hackneyed?
the catchphrase of the day is "the journey is more important than the destination."
the phrase directly applies to my experience at the state UIL one-act play competition in austin. from 5 am saturday morning until 4 am sunday morning, the one-act party raged on.
5 am: wake up, shower, dress
5:30 am: with robin, our parent representative and truck driver, i go get truck full of furniture and props for our play, which is parked at our bus driver's motel somewhere north on I-35
6:00 am: take truck to the back of bass concert hall in order to load our stuff into the theatre; when we get there, four other schools are already lined up with their big trucks, waiting
6:45 am: meet a small group of our students and load our stuff into the theatre, hand it over to student stagehands who put it on rolling carts and take it away
7:30 am: meeting of all schools in the theatre to hear congratulations, warnings, guidelines and sales pitches (a representative of UT did a little recruiting)
8:30 am: load the bus and go get breakfast at IHOP
10:30 am: return to theatre to meet our runner, tammy, and be shown our dressing room, in the basement washroom of the concert hall
11:15 am: our 50-minute rehearsal commences on the stage, in which we spike the set, run sound cues, run light cues, problem-shoot, get special items approved (ostensibly)...
and here i should launch into a brief parenthetical foray in order to tell you that the vines i wanted to use (and had used in the previous four competitions) were rejected because they were real vines, and in the UIL rule book it is stated "cloth vines may be used." even though there is no only in that sentence, the technical director deemed my vines unconstitutional, and though they weren't integral to the show, it was irritating to have them rejected when
there was clearly nothing written condemning them in the rules...
12:05 pm: our 50-minute rehearsal concludes, having gone quite well, smoothly, and with an incredible amount of energy and a heightened sense of the stakes, which makes it all quite sparkling and fun, and in that huge concert hall... i think it was my favorite part of the whole day. at any rate, we load back onto the bus and head back to the hotel
12:15 pm - 3:15 pm: break for naps, lunch, swimming and rejuvenation. i take a nap and don't eat, not hungry
3:15 pm: group warm-up in small conference room, fourth floor
4:15 pm: bus picks us up to take us back to the theatre, side door entrance
4:30 pm: arrival at theatre, tammy isn't there but another runner takes us to our room in the basement and we immediately start putting on makeup and costumes. over the intercom system we can hear the first play of the afternoon, DANCING AT LUGHNASA, already in performance. before we go on, THE LITTLE FOXES and ROSENCRANZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD still have to perform. disgruntled, i snip off pieces of my condemned ivy and am determined to let our masha and medvedyenko use them for the opening of the play, as incidental gazing-pieces; my hopes are quickly quashed, however, by my colleague, who is paranoid about the rules and is looking at me with a ridiculous intensity that makes my stomach hurt, so i throw all the ivy away in the trash can. then i help students with their makeup, wigs, and costumes. sorin has left one of his costumes behind. pants and shirt are substituted. we're all ready by
6:00 pm: the characters circle up to do vocal warm-ups, with less spirit than in the past, maybe because of nerves, and the other director and i say a few words to the actors; a few tears drop, a few laughs are uttered, we hold hands in a circle and are ready to go
6:15 pm: we're taken upstairs to wait for our time to go
6:25 pm: we're taken onstage to set up for our show. they tell us go, and we go. we use the seven-minute set-up period and get everything placed, with a few hesitations, a few near-miss accidents, a few questions, and a few "don't worry about it"s
6:33 pm: our play begins
this is where the hackneyed catchphrase comes in. the play wasn't stunning, had a lot of little glitches, the audience was loud (coughing, whispering, shuffling, giggling), and i can't even remember certain moments of it. it was nice to have CY sitting next to me, chuckling at
small idiosynchracies of character that chekhov so perceptively included in his play. yet i was sort of detached for the moment of truth, the moment to which everything had been leading. it wasn't glorious. and i'm not complaining-- the students did a wonderful job; besides,
i'm learning as i get older that it's actually much nicer to enjoy the process more than the product: it lasts longer!
7:12 pm: the curtain falls. i say a few (regrettably) rushed words to CY, and run backstage for our seven-minute strike. a beer bottle shatters backstage. as we load the truck, a glass decanter (masha took swigs of vodka from it) also meets its demise. robin has brought the truck back around during our show, and while some of us get out of costume and makeup, others of us load the truck during the next play, a brecht piece about ARTURO UI, and finally make it out to the house by
8:15 pm: to see PAGANINI, to meet friend beth and sit in the theatre with her, and after that, at
9:15 pm: RUTHLESS!, a well-done over-the-top comedy in the vein of the bad seed and all about eve.
10:15 pm: the final play, ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN, we've all seen before, so we exit the theatre to get some fresh air during that one, socialize, talk about our show, talk about the two we saw, and generally enjoy each other's company
11:15 pm: we re-enter the theatre for the SCO-SHOW (sp?), in which the theatre staff has put together a slide-show satirizing the plays of the day, followed by a sluggish yet brightly-colored awards ceremony. our students receive an honorable mention award (for masha) and two all-star cast awards (for konstantine and arkadina). our play receives third place in the contest, which i am personally quite happy with. not bad for first-timers
12:30 am: we receive a sensitive but too-short critique from our adjudicator. he says we "did chekhov right." he means the comedy, melodrama and moment-to-moment-ness of it all
1:00 am: we get back in our bus and head to kerbey lane cafe on south lamar. we wait forever, are finally seated (there are 21 of us, including the adults and my friend ben mcdonald who has joined us for post-show festivities), and we eat. we don't get out of there till
3:45 am: and get to bed at
4:00 am.
it was really fun. i'd say it was a blast. but the most-fun part wasn't watching the performance, which was good but not the best it had ever been. the most-fun part is, after all, the process leading up to the product... and i feel fine.
(first place went to RUTHLESS! and second place to ROSENCRANZ & GUILDENSTERN.)

ouchie! i've become one of those sporadic bloggers... the kind i dislike. sorry 'bout that.
our state meet for the one-act play is saturday. we will take a bus to austin on friday morning and spend the day doing fun activities, going to bed early so that we can get up very early on saturday morning, so that we can take our truck full o' schtuff to the loading dock of bass concert hall at 6:30 am to unload all our schtuff. i don't usually say schtuff; it's getting annoying; ok i'll stop. so we'll unload, then have a meeting at 7:30 am with all the other schools, then go away for a couple hours, then come back, have a 50-minute rehearsal on the stage where we'll spike, check light and sound cues, and get somewhat acclimated. then we go away forever and come back at 5 pm, for a 6:30 pm-ish performance.
i got two new 6-foot ficus trees (the old ones were 4-foot) and a new trunk to use for arkadina's luggage. it's an old german trunk i rented from an antique store on hildebrand. today while cutting rope to make a handle for the trunk i gashed my left-hand ring finger deep on the middle knuckle. it wasn't that bad, but because it was on the knuckle it grossed me out, you know that cartilagey feeling. i got a bandage for it. later when i took the bandage off there was tons of dried blood all over my finger and in the bandage. it was carnage incarnate.
i did yoga this morning for the first time in months. i sweated out toxins.
i got enough rest this weekend to make me feel refreshed for the first time in months. i slept out toxins.
i'm excited for state. there are two jillion things they make you remember, but i am determined to enjoy it.
my friend dena has a son who wrote the following poem. i love it.

THE SPACE TRIP, by Ben Geoghegan

I’m going to the
Moon today. It’s going
To take a year.
By the time I
Get back my wife
Will be 30.

I’m going in my
Rocket now.
I hope I
See some aliens.
If I do I’m
Going to run over
Them with my buggy.

If there are no
Aliens I’d rather jump
In the holes.
Next time I’m going
To bring my wife,
And I’ll push her
In the holes.

the state of a seagull

seagull goes to state!
yippee! hooray! gasp! clunk!

play play

our little lovely production of chekhov's SEAGULL has advanced through zone, district and area and will compete in the regional one-act play meet on friday april 13th. we will compete against five other schools from our region, one of which is a san antonio school (marshall). if we are chosen to advance from region, we will then get to go to the state meet in lovely austin, texas the first weekend in may.
it has been really fun! unfortunately i'm now quite ill, with a painful cough and head congestion, and i've been missing a lot of school lately; but the extra energy expended for work on the one-act has been well worth it.
not much fodder for interesting blogging, just an update so anyone interested will know where i've been.

uil oap

it's one-act play time again. this year not only are we competing, we're also hosting the competition at our school. next year we will also host. our contest manager has been great-- laid-back and soft-spoken. but let me back up for a minute...
back in january when i was three weeks into rehearsal for A LIE OF THE MIND, i got a notice saying that because my cutting was done on a xerox copy of the play, it was illegal and therefore inadmissable. so my colleague and i had to look to the list of approved plays and choose something we thought we could get jazzed about. since we had just done an original version of chekhov's SEAGULL in the black box, we decided we would take jean-claude van itallie's translation (the only UIL-approved version of the play) and turn it into our new one-act play. our actors were already familiar with the characters, and it's one of my favorite plays; what's not to like?
of course it was hard telling the kids that we were switching over to SEAGULL after working on A LIE OF THE MIND for three weeks, but they seemed amenable to the idea of picking up SEAGULL again. so, during SOUTH PACIFIC performances, i made a new cutting, and we started working on this chekhov loveliness.
why do i love chekhov? i had a great experience with SEAGULL when i was in college, an experience which drove me to live in russia for almost a year. i got to play treplev in the moscow art theatre and fell in love with many russians. so i guess my view of SEAGULL is a little loaded with history.
this time, directing THE SEA GULL was different-- different translation, cliff's notes edition (40-minute cutting), slightly different cast, and the obligation to collaborate with my colleague, with whom i get along very well, but with whom i have serious differences in aesthetic vision and working process. since he was recovering from SOUTH PACIFIC when we started rehearsals for THE SEA GULL, i started the rehearsals on the one-act play and was pretty much the only director for the first three weeks of rehearsal. then he stepped in, and the process of collaboration was difficult and awkward-- i'd never done it before like that, and since our ways of working are so different, there were moments when i wanted to scream, or cry, or give up. but i found that honesty was the best way to go, so along the way i did my best to express my frustrations and work them out in a direct way.
also, the process of hosting the competition at our school entailed many tasks which took up a lot of time and energy-- emails, organization, details, schedules... but we managed to take care of things in a pretty functional way. the contest manager we found was very laid-back, as i said before, and had an idea of the true reason for such a competition-- to make it a fun, educational experience for the students, instead of making it fraught with rules and back-stabbing persnickety-ness.
so, this weekend, we had our first competition. we competed against four other schools from our zone, and last night, we won-- we advanced. so we get to perform next week in the district competition. last night we got six acting awards, including best actor and actress. the kids were so thrilled. we hadn't advanced out of zone the past three years. it was a moment of relief and elation.
onward and upward! have i said enough?

letter to ldn

Dear Mr. Naegelin,
You'll be glad to know my mom and dad are doing fine. They're both retired and they golf as much as they want. My dad watches a lot of tv and likes it when my mom sits down and watches with him, though it's usually sports so she usually falls asleep. They're thinking about moving and so they've started cleaning their house, going through boxes, which leads me to the reason I'm writing this letter tonight.
The last time I went to see Mom and Dad, they had a couple of big boxes of stuff for me to go through. It was my old stuff-- papers, letters and photos, and a lot of bad poetry from high school. The most interesting thing I found was a folder from my senior year in your class.
You might be surprised at my next exclamation. Goddammit! You were the closest thing I've ever had to a mentor, and now that I realize how much you cared, and what a great teacher you were, you're gone. It's too late to express my thanks, too late to call you up and ask you to come over for dinner. It's too late to apologize. I was such a stupid young person. On your "Think Tests," I answered complex questions with flimsy, scarcely thought-out answers, using too many semi-colons and not enough substance. On your comments, you said as much, but always ended with an exhortation. You wrote "You're capable of so much." Why can't you still be here, so that I can try to deserve that encouragement? Why can't I discuss those philosophical questions with you now? Why didn't I care enough, why wasn't I smart enough to reflect on the nature of Good and Evil beyond "God is the ultimate measure"?
I'm infuriated, and not even engaged enough to cry.
I realize you were no saint, and I'm old enough now to appreciate that. In one of her songs, Laurie Anderson says, "When my father died, it was like an entire library had burned down." That's how I feel about you.
Come back!
Come back... please...
Help me achieve what I'm capable of, and let me tell you how grateful I am, and how much I love you for caring so, so much...
Sincerely,
Andy

goo-gah

i'm in dallas at the state speech tournament. our school is 5th in the state of texas for number of qualifications this year. yesterday i judged a national finalist in extemporaneous speaking. that's when you get a topic or a question and have half an hour to write a seven minute speech on it, then deliver the speech without notes. it was fun to judge extemp, as i usually don't get to.
i haven't written on my blog in a long time, not sure why. the same old excuse of "too busy" doesn't really cover it.
i'll write again soon when i actually have something to say.

revelation

how much do you reveal to the world?
the world teaches us to build walls, not really to knock them down.
knocking them down would mean revealing, opening the way to potential chaos. it would mean making ourselves vulnerable-- vulnerable to attack, ridicule, to being ostracized. but aren't we also ostracized if we build walls? yes, but at least its an ostracism of our own, by our own choice, and not by someone else. there's a semblance of control.
how much do i reveal to the world?
mostly, i'm afraid of being classified or written off based on my revelations. the image that comes to mind is of someone dropping me in a small box and pushing me casually to the side, saying, "next." like when an acquaintance of mine said, "him? he's harmless."
and though my brain is fully capable of realizing that no one else matters, that everyone in the world could drop me in a box and push me to the side and it still wouldn't matter, i'm still aware of it, afraid of it.
i read a quote from playwright marsha norman where she said something like this: every time i write something, i look at it and say, 'have i written something that will humiliate me?'
the only way anything can be moving or lasting is if it comes from an impulse of revelation. something deep and personal must be revealed. this is true in theatre, in visual art, in music, and in everyday life. it's hard to do it in everyday life, because almost no one does it, and you usually feel like a freak to keep yourself open. it's unheard of. i feel that if i do it as a teacher i will be attacked, ridiculed, ostracized. and this gives me pause, even as i type.

part of a poem

an excerpt from rumi

An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,
when they are held up to each other,
that's when the real making begins.
That's what art and crafting are.

A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.
The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again
so they can be used for fine carpentry.

Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.
Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.
Whoever sees clearly what's diseased in himself
begins to gallop on the way.

There is nothing worse
than thinking you are well enough.
More than anything, self-complacency
blocks the workmanship.

Put your vileness up to a mirror and weep.
Get that self-satisfaction flowing out of you!

empathizing

when i watch a movie or a play, if it's in any way effective, i tend to take on the mood of the movie or play, or empathize with the character(s) to such a degree that it's sometimes upsetting. i do this intuitively, almost subconsciously. like when i watched the movie memento twice in succession, that was strange-- i couldn't quite remember who i was. after tootsie i really wanted some falsies. when i watch wings of desire i feel like an invisible angel who can hear things other people can't hear. yentl, dazed & confused, annie, ... you get the idea. well, last night i watched an episode of ricky gervais's and stephen merchant's extras. it was an episode about a star who kept bragging about how he could kick the ass of another star, how he was "harder" and would have no problem nailing him in a fight. at the end the other star confronts the first star and the first star withers pathetically. though extras is meant to be funny, this ending was just sad and... well, no word describes it better than pathetic. and as i walked to my mailbox when it was over, i felt so ultra-pathetic, so sad and wrong. my job, the way i do my job, the way i don't do my job, my relationships, the way i do my relationships, etc., all these things started to point their fingers at me and laugh, sneering. what is going on!?!?, i thought. then i realized i had taken on all the patheticism of extras. i'm glad i realized it in time to stop it in its tracks, climb into bed, and read a little bit more of this fantastic book i bought: an anthology of graphic fiction, cartoons, & true stories, edited by ivan brunetti. a lovely, diverse compendium!
our musical opens tomorrow night. i have severe criticisms of it, as i almost always do. there's no unity in the cast, a lot of nebulous blocking (wandering around stage while singing), a lot of egregious lighting effects, a paucity of actual communication onstage. and no leadership from the director. after last night's rehearsal he didn't even bother to call everyone out on stage before he began to shout out the game plan for tomorrow, much less did he rally everyone to give notes. i have severe disagreements with his methods...
and ah well. and oh my. it's all so important isn't it... and all so temporary...

mower

more! more! there should be MORE posts on here! not one a week, dammit! there should be at least three a week!
well what should i write about?
anything! your rage! your tenderness! your utter apathy!
speaking of apathy...
the most recent assignment in theatre class is to write a monologue describing your own death. you can be old, young, or in between. you have to write it from your own point of view, and memorize it, and perform it for the class. i saw my 2 classes do these monologues last week and they were, for the most part, pretty darn interesting. people died in all kinds of ways. they were beaten, hit by vehicles, stricken by disease, and there were a couple of suicides. though the assignment sounds morbid, the students really seemed to get into it... a lot of them showed sides of themselves they hadn't shown before. one of my more thoughtful students decided to die of apathy. afterwards i asked her why she chose that, and she said she'd noticed that a lot of the kids she knew didn't seem to care about anything.
i care about things. but sometimes i feel forced to care about things i don't care about at all, like our current musical at the school. it has gobbled up time and space, and this week it will probably make all our theatre classes moot. i wanted to have nothing to do with it, but guilt has gotten the better of me and i am helping out with costumes. it's hard to be in this position of being 1/4th involved. i don't like it at all. in a week it will be over and i can move on to something i do care about, the one-act play.
last week i found out that my cutting of a lie of the mind had been rejected by the UIL state office because i didn't follow the rules in the way i submitted it. it was a hard blow. we were getting somewhere in rehearsal, and it got pulled out from under us. it sucked. so we're doing a one-act version of the seagull, which was already on the UIL "approved" list and which we have some experience with. it's ok. it will be fine. i'm currently waiting on the four van itallie translations i ordered in a blind fever to show up.
i'm not in a blind fever. in fact i'm clear and lucid. maybe that's what makes it so difficult!

whoa... sunshine

i've started a new morning pages regimen (writing three pages longhand every morning immediately upon waking up), and i was wondering if that would affect my writing here on the blog. but i don't think it will-- at least not adversely. i think i pick and choose what i write here, which is only natural-- i have a keen awareness that it's public. and i'm protective to the point of semi-paranoia. i'm not sure why this is. i guess i have a keen sense of potential retribution, or i am afraid of my shallowness being revealed. yet, by not revealing much, i am keeping myself in relatively shallow waters.
last night i watched orson welles's "essay-documentary" called F FOR FAKE. it centers mostly on a notorious art forger named elmyr de hory, who does beautiful matisses and modiglianis and has fooled many "experts" who took his forgeries as authentic. the movie also examines other related and unrelated fakes. it's very playful and fun. when it ended i laughed and felt satisfied; i've never seen a movie quite like it before. for welles fans, another must-see is dick cavett's interview (early 70's) with welles, who is not only a riveting raconteur but is also charming as heck.
though the ice days last week were a welcomed respite, overall last week sucked. i don't know, there was something off about it. i'm looking forward to a much better one this week. we are reading dylan thomas's UNDER MILK WOOD in theatre II. it's fantastic...

second snow day

no school yesterday or today. icy roads.
it snowed in san antonio in 1985.
during my last winter in california (2002-03) it snowed so steadily that an entire subdivision of our town lost power for over a week. it was beautiful and f r e e z i n g. my head became permanently hat-haired.
it was trippy living in all that snow. i loved the transformational qualities of the snow, the way it swaddled our little house by the hillside, how it made the sky look so blue. but i hated driving in the stuff, especially when i had to go over donner pass. putting cold chains on a cold car while pulled over on the side of a filthy, freezingly slushy highway was not my idea of fun. so i was really thrilled when i finally got a toyota 4-runner. it solved many problems.
here in my hometown, people don't know how to drive in the rain, much less on icy roadways. they go too fast and don't leave enough room between cars. and my dad made me sell my 4-runner.
i finally got out my chinese brush & ink set yesterday and doodled around a little.

fantasy dinner party

i loved zhang yimou's CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. i have been enamored of gong li since the nineties when i saw a zhang yimou film called TO LIVE. and chow yun fat is a righteous babe.
so i am compiling my fantasy dinner party guest list.
gong li
chow yun fat
bjork
rufus wainwright
joanna newsom
sufjan stevens
bill murray
bruno ganz
i could go on and on i guess... then i get stumped because... what would i serve?

breath

yesterday during rehearsal i decided it would be fun if we ran a lap around the track. it's about a quarter of a mile i think.
i am so out of shape it's disgusting. i could hardly breathe.
i gotta do something.

cranium

we've started our rehearsals for the one-act play, which is sam shepard's a lie of the mind this year. the original cast, when the play premiered in the mid-80's, starred amanda plummer, harvey keitel, aidan quinn and geraldine page. our second read-thru was today and it's starting off slow and quiet. it feels perfect.
fran gave me some cologne for christmas that's making me happy. also, she brought me chicken soup yesterday at school. it was delicious.
there's an article about christopher guest in the december-january issue of paste-- a really irritating article. the author insisted on using a lot of CAPITAL LETTERS IN ORDER TO EMPHASIZE HIMSELF. the article is obviously written for comic effect, but fails in that regard, succeeding only in being irritating, and not telling us much about mr. guest at all. the author would defend himself, as he hints at in the article, by saying that mr. guest didn't give him much to work with. but that's a poor excuse for a professional journalist. plenty could have been done with what christopher said. i'm thinking about writing a letter to the magazine in order to mention these things; but the article is so blatantly bad that i'm sure someone else will do that for me.
i'm feeling better, snot is slowly receding, headaches dissipating...

persnickety

i have a headache tonight. popped 3 ibuprofen. started feeling really ill about a week ago today and had a horrible weekend. not sure what it was... respiratory infection? bronchitis? missed my teacher workday on tuesday and first day back to school on wednesday. went to my doctor on weds and was disappointed and pissed that she didn't have time to see me, so i never found out what i had. got a flu shot, which fran said shouldn't have happened, since i was sick. made an appointment for my twice-yearly appointment and left. school yesterday and today was fine, though i had a lot of angst this morning upon waking up obsessed with my problematic second period. i've realized it's much more that I'M problematic; they're just being themselves. and so i get frustrated when i'm not able to let go, annoyed with my tendency to fret and EFFORTIZE. just let it go, release the fists into calm palms, fluff the aura, and move on.
i did fine today.