goll-damn it's beautiful today. the weather is cool and sunny. it hailed two hours ago (i missed it, was fast asleep). the sky is now white and blue.

rehearsals have started on THE GOAT. it occurs to me occasionally while i'm working on this play that this character, martin, is a great deal smarter than i am, on several different levels. chief among them is his ability to mentally navigate through a quagmire of confusion, joy, sorrow, infidelity, outrage, and wonder. and he navigates like a mo-fo, instantly steering from one to the next, to the next, in the space of mere lines. the challenge this presents to me as an actor is prodigious-- not only to feel and justify these split-second changes but also to make the changes clear and understandable on some level. i'm not complaining-- i relish a challenge; and the director and my leading lady are impeccable. it's time for me to memorize the hell out of myself.

in other news:

david and i are preparing for a trip to seattle, to attend my friend dave's wedding party. we already have a full slate of activities for the extended weekend (thursday through sunday): see my friend beth, see david's friend ade and go to his show, visit with another friend of david's on friday then go to a special screening of 'showgirls' that evening (my friend dave is an expert 'showgirls' commentator), see another of my friends for lunch on saturday, and attend dave's wedding party on saturday evening. we come home sunday afternoon. david and i have never been on a trip like this together. it will be fun. right now there are a few more logistics to take care of, like our rental car and printing maps and such.

long-range plans:

-work on TAKE ME OUT

-work on UNCLE VANYA

the long-awaited (yeah right) answer

ugh! blast you apathetic anti-intellectuals!

the previous post contained bits from chekhov, bulgakov, and (the word 'lepidoptera' gives it away) nabokov.

who can guess the three authors randomly sampled here?

"Say, did Varlamov pass by here yesterday or not?" robber off the balcony by uttering just two words: 'Hang him.' To been moonlike. Then snow began falling, slowly and vertically. They no sooner disappeared than the prankster Dymov, with the first was extremely tempting: to hurl himself at all these lamps some rocks, walked blue silhouettes with hoods and small lanterns. 

"Why illegitimate? Their father and mother were married did likewise. Scraping with his right hind paw, he dropped the knight recognized in all of life's phenomena, be it the smile of a bonbon in even borrowed a hundred roubles from him and still had not to wake him up. Seeing what condition Stepan Bogdanovich was in, circumstances under which they had been first apprehended in an indi-hall. "So I'll take care of that... Today I'll be seeing Pekar-that he was full. Then Pilate filled his own cup, and the guest did the exotic lepidoptera. Then, after the war, when he had managed again to the general's death, everything changed.

whaddaya call it... a mash-up? cut-up? thing-up?

She rested on an army cot, her hide: a small deal dresser with buffalo-hide decorations sold easily for he raised his right hand as if I were about to disagree.

"A while? How about it?"

Took him on as an apprentice when he had just turned twelve. He said later that, no lie, there was something funny about them-- visit his mother. The whole house knew it. She was cheerful even the last 84 days of her pregnancy on food mixed with matter to who knows you. I've been thinking it over. I want you out of here.

taken randomly from Grace Paley, Raymond Carver, and Georges Perec

corny-corn-corn

as corny as it is, i really like the stephen sondheim song called "being alive." its narrator is a person who wants someone in her life, even if that person messes everything up... sitting in her chair, ruining her sleep... because having someone you love mess up your life is better than having no one you love at all.

as i live in this new-ish relationship (going on 10 months now) i must often remind myself of this kind of beauty, the beauty of having someone mess up my routine, drink the last of my milk, wake me up inopportunely, make irritating noises. all this is much better than living in a bubble, as i was accustomed to doing.

i took david to a family gathering last night and was almost perfectly comfortable. i must give my sister credit for being so warm and welcoming and at the same time, casual about it, as if it were meant to be, and there's nothing particularly 'special' about it. these small steps are little revolutions, slowly incrementally changing the way things are done.

in other news...

my sister-in-law has a beautiful poem on her blog today. i will hereby usurp it. it is by mary oliver and i believe it may be called "praying."

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

to make them elaborate, this isn't

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

events that are recent

recent events.

just completed the Forum Theatre Project, this year entitled Borders and Walls. a high-quality group of people assembled to discuss the texas/mexico border wall and to gather stories of immigrants and others involved in the issue. lots of discussion. for the final two weeks, the group met to put together a narrative and to improvise situations having to do with the border and an oppressor and an oppressed. finally, we performed this narrative, unscripted, and other improvisations having to do with oppressors/oppressed. at the end of the performance of the narrative, the audience was invited to intervene and change the outcome of the story.

i think the whole thing went really well. the ultimate goal of the project was to encourage discussion and thought, and i'm sure that we were successful in this goal. also, even though i was surprisingly rusty in an improvisation role, i really enjoyed working with the fine group of people that was assembled, and on such an important topic.

now i turn my energy to edward albee's 'the goat.' we had our first read-thru today and i am already thrilled at how much power and potential this play and these actors have. very exciting!

horoscope

"One often meets one's destiny on the road taken to avoid it," says a French proverb. Sometimes, in fact, you can't even get properly aligned with your highest potential unless you try to escape it. Only by seeking an alternate route are you led into the circumstances that ultimately activate the fullness of your gifts.

-Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny

true west pic

this is from a dress rehearsal of TRUE WEST, AtticRep, december 08. with rick frederick as austin. photo by siggi ragnar.

also, a crush on christopher robin

my brother used to make fun of me for saying "remember when" and then continuing that phrase with a vivid, detailed memory, one that he'd usually had no recollection of. i'm finding myself with all these memories that no one else remembers, especially since re-connecting with old friends on facebook. 

i told you about my friend j.j. who moved away to tucson after 4th grade. i found him and since then we haven't spoken at all. all these years i've been carrying around all these memories while everyone else was busy getting rid of them. i thought at some point i'd have the opportunity to recount them and by doing so, to unload my mind of these weighty tales. but no one else seems to remember as much as i do.

like the mock presidential campaign in 3rd grade, where j.j. was carter and i was mondale. like the driving instructor when we were 15 who said "full tank, full belly." like when adrian tanner turned around to me during texas history class and said, "when i first saw you, i thought you were geh."

the memory knife cuts both ways. just as i glory in the memory of rosa lara who spoke no english and pointed to my I.D. bracelet in sweet reference to my name, i also wince in the memory of getting caught peeing behind the outside staircase at colonial hills. almost at the same moment i'm remembering that terrifying werewolf nightmare from age 9, i'm remembering the exact feeling of riding back from river tubing in new braunfels, dusk, in the car of my brother's friend, listening to "this much is true" on cassette. the smell of the bathtub. the large plaster conehead my brother sculpted, and his imitations of his math teacher. the way i cried and almost peed my pants on that hot day when i wore that thick, scratchy knit shirt.

am i the only one glorying and wincing? do i have an elephantine conception of my past? am i indeed a sentimental fool?

happy moment

good view from our front patio.

at night i look at the graffiti on the side and back of the liquor store and see things that i can't make out during the daytime. at night i see a statue of liberty made of buildings, leaning forward as if retching, strange machinery coming out of its mouth.

but during the day i don't really see it anymore.

i just see blue sky.

dirt yard with scraps of grass here and there.

right now two vagrant-looking guys are leaning against the back wall with some bottles in their hands. they're talking loud but i'm listening to k'naan.

the desire to breathe into a happy moment, thereby perpetuating it.