attachment

yesterday was really beautiful here in San An. there was a blue sky with scattered multi-shaped clouds. as i embarked on my walk, a few drops of rain fell. i stopped and thought about turning back and waiting, but it seemed the rain was light, so i continued. 

across the street from my apartments there is an old road which was destroyed by flooding years ago. the road has been closed for a long time, which has made it a good place to walk. yesterday i saw that the road has been changed into a greenway path, a sort of walking/jogging trail complete with mileage markers, paved roads and signs describing the wildlife of the area. it's very nice, and one no longer feels sketchy about walking there. though there are more people on the path, and therefore less privacy or sense of knowing about something no one else knows about, it seems safer and is actually quite beautiful.

i had set my iPod to shuffle on the beatles. when i reached a point in the path where i was ready to turn around, the music stopped. i looked at the screen and it appeared that the next song was about to start... but it never did. i tried several methods of revival, did everything short of giving it mouth-to-mouth, and now it shows me a big red X when i try to start it. 

i am fully aware that we must not become attached to objects in this life, but music is different... isn't it? is it impossibly perverse that i gain so much pleasure from having my entire music collection in my pocket, so perverse that i must be struck down and tuneless due to a faulty piece of equipment?

never fear, i'm being histrionic on purpose. i am going to have to figure something out, though. i'm thinking i'll take it to the apple store tomorrow and see what they say.

in other news... i'm in another play. TRUE WEST opens this thursday. today's our tech day. things are going well enough, though i am at that predictable place of panic which always occurs several days before opening. if you live in san antonio, well, SEE it! 

a lot of thanks to be had

happy thanksgiving.

i am well. the play called booth was relatively well-received, i worked hard on it and even though there were some criticisms of the script itself (mostly that it was too long), i got a lot of postive feedback and felt that i learned quite a lot along the way.

as i throw a piece of wadded raffia for my cat to catch mid-air and bring back to me, i am most thankful for my own unique family-- freda (the cat), and my newly 32 year-old hubby with whom i have been together for six months as of the 29th of this month. i am very thankful indeed.

now i'm working on sam shepard's play called true west. it is at least as intense as booth was, perhaps more intense, and has been a lot of fun. tonight siggi was there and he took photos of us. not sure where they'll be posted, but check back here.

double bagging

today the checker at walgreens forced me to take TWO plastic bags for my "merchandise."

she was an older woman, probably in her mid to late seventies. her hair was swoopy and curled and i had observed her helping others ahead of me in line.

"the handles just broke on that bag!" she said, referring to a bag of "merchandise" she had prepared for a customer. then she said, "scary!"

so when i arrived to the front of the line, with a box of Dots, a stack of blank cds, and a bottle of shampoo and conditioner (all held comfortably in two hands), she double-bagged me!

"one bag is fine," i said.

and she proceeded to take a second plastic bag and place it inside the first one.

"i don't need two bags," i emphasized, thinking for a moment she was hard-of-hearing.

"the handles on these bags have been breaking!" she said. "i have evidence of that right here behind the counter."

so i took the double bag and left.

refuge from harsh reality

my car is stretched out on the couch next to me

its exhaust having exhausted it

present joys lighting the forest

which still and always 

carry their candles out the sliding glass door

carefully, with fur

and bullets.

various

it upsets me a little when people don't like obama.

more specifically, it upsets me when my niece posts something like this on her facebook:

"Obama is in "over his head". Looking at the photos of him and his family watching the returns come in Tues. night was very telling. He looked uncommonly nervous, ringing his hands before and after the networks called the election. No celebratory response, not even a smile. He' a novice and he knows it. BO was created by his party and they own him completely. He'll do what he's told, like the poster boy that he is. As for how it affects us as believers, it is clear that God is pulverizing His church into submission with one political disappointment after another. Watching the pagans put our dear Constitution through the shedder is hard, but politics is not our Savior. We serve King Jesus and Him only."

there is so much that is so wrong with this, it's almost impossible to react at all. i almost didn't post it, but by posting it i feel a little bit better about having seen it. it shouldn't bother me, but somehow it does. and you know, we pagans really should stop putting the constitution through the 'shedder.'

in other news, strangely related, i went back to churchill high school to see a production of arthur miller's THE CRUCIBLE on saturday night. though it is overdone to death, it is still a great play, easily applicable to many periods of history, because of people's unfortunate proclivity to demonize each other. besides all that, the students did it well. 

we had a six-hour tech day for BOOTH yesterday. i enjoyed it. we got to see some of the sets and lights, and based on what i saw, it will be a pretty show. tonight we are dealing with costumes for the first time. i am playing a harsh, egocentric, delusional tyrant with a heart of pyrite. though i have some things in common with the character, it is an extremely challenging role for me... but i am having fun with it, and looking forward to performances.

when i'm in my car and i turn on my left turn signal, it doesn't turn off. this is a recent development.

my cat is stretched out on the couch next to me.

i bought a pizza last night. it was half pepperoni and half jalapeno/mushroom. it was pretty good, but what made it delicious was some hot sauce david made. we ate it while watching iron chef.

president obama

the election of barack obama as our 44th president is the most wonderful and exciting political event i have ever witnessed.

when i first saw obama speak, somewhere on TV, i was riveted. by the end of his speech my spirits had lifted. i felt like what he was giving was a very necessary medicine for our people. we are so cynical about politicians, so jaded about the deception and corruption that has seemed to be taking over. it has become so easy to feel downtrodden about our country's affairs at home and abroad. but when i listened to obama, i felt a little glimmer of empowerment-- i felt like i didn't need to give up or feel hopeless about our situation. 

last night when i got out of rehearsal at 11:15 he had already won. i got these texts from various friends on my phone:

"Times square is a huge party!"

"Woooooo! Fucking awesome!"

"Sarah Palin is wearing BLUE!"

"Yay :-)"

"This here is what we call an election ass whoopin'"

i'm so happy that barack obama won the election, and i'm so excited to see how things change during his presidency.

sunny, happy, chirpy

GLASS MENAGERIE had its last 4 performances in gonzales, texas this past weekend. we performed at the historic crystal theatre. the town looked like the town in 'waiting for guffman.' in fact we wondered if any of it was filmed there. the theatre had a nice feel to it and in my opinion our performances were a lot more relaxed and interesting than they had been at the venue in san antonio. and... WE MAY BE GOIN' TO BUH-ROADWAY! ...not really.

the other great thing about the weekend was that we stayed in a cool old house in the country, with cows and horses and strange burrowing rodents. i sat on a porch staring at a field, took a walk on a country road, and felt myself relax a little. now that i'm entering into the final two weeks before BOOTH opens, i needed that small respite.

i think i'm starting to develop an actual relationship with the idea of my own mortality. i had a sort of death-like experience after smoking salvia a couple of months ago and it really freaked me out. as i have reflected on it since then, that freak-out feeling has begun to change into some semblance of maybe beginning to understand mortality outside the life-after-death paradigm. i guess what i'm trying to say is, i'm coming to terms with the idea that i won't exist anymore.

ps. jo jo d, thanks for your comments. i put your blog in my list of blogs to check daily, so i expect to see some action young man.