Sunday, September 20, 2009

sunday quiet house

one of the devastating things about life is that such high and full hopes can be so quickly obliterated.
in relationships, though you may have huge vats of love for each other, a few nagging issues may ruin everything.
in other news...
today i walked along the refurbished north end of the riverwalk. it is, in a word, cool. there are many beautiful plants and flowers, exquisite landscaping. there are interesting under-bridge artworks, like large suspended fish and piped-in birdsong that echoes. there are terraces, benches, pagodas. it is beautiful. as the weather mildens (that's a word i just made up meaning "to become mild"), i will be spending more time on that new riverwalk branch, strolling, perhaps jotting down a note or two, maybe finding time to make a sketch.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

conking

for the past several weeks my car has been on the verge of conking out.
is mercury in retrograde?
one morning david and i went to the bank and as we were pulling out of the parking lot onto the busy street we lost power. though i was pressing the accelerator, the car was sputtering and hesitating. luckily we made it into the median. we decided then and there immediately to go to stan's (remember--my polish mechanic?). stan looked at it, made a simple adjustment (something having to do with RPMs), and the car is working normally again.
i still love stan.
the aforementioned play, which i saw last night in austin, was a sort of rock opera fantasia with a lot of weird names. i went in with an open mind. i appreciated all the thought and hard work that went into it. but it wasn't my kind of thing. basically it boiled down to a lot of people singing dissonantly onstage in heavy makeup and costumes, the subject of their singing being power struggles and exotic names of potential destinations. beautiful lighting. well-funded. they must have a good grant writer...?
joan armatrading is blasting in the dining room. though the volume is a little much for me, i am grateful for a boyfriend who loves her as much as i do.

Friday, September 18, 2009

in the middle of our talk

marc finally called me and my phone conked out. it won't let me use it until it is charged to a certain capacity, i guess? anyway, sorry marc, i'll call you back when my phone is working again.
last night we walked to emily's for wine and project runway. it was fun. we snuggled with the puppies. on the walk home i danced in the street gaily. very gaily. it was a good release for me.
last week my external hard drive conked out. i was able to transfer all the information on it to a new hard drive. i have spent the past week organizing all the music on it. all the music is organized according to artist, except soundtracks, showtunes and compilations, all of which are organized by title of movie/show/compilation/person who made compilation.
compilation. compilation. compulsion. compulsion. compulsion.
i told beth i was spending time organizing my music on my external hard drive and she said, "it's sort of like your form of gardening. weeding, reorganizing, you're not getting enough light over here so i'll move you." she was right. it is like that.
tonight i am going with a friend to austin to watch a play called "the dragonfly queen."

Monday, September 14, 2009

bike satisfaction

in order to make the dream come sort of true, and to honor that cool guy i was riding bikes with in my dream, i walked my bike to the gas station and filled the tires and took a great lil' bike ride yesterday. i rode on down mccullough and turned right on east dewey, then left on ogden and stopped by david's old apartment, whose parking lot is now clean and paved. (that parking lot used to be so disgusting-- we think guys used to go there after the gay bars and get busy, because we'd always see used condoms lying around everywhere. one night david saw a guy naked in his car there.) then i continued on down ogden to the little park behind the gay bars and i circled around it (there were a few kids playing on the swingset and a couple of moms sitting at a table), then back onto ogden, took a right on locust and went all the way down to st. mary's, by the enchilada warehouse. at that corner there was a cab van waiting for someone in front of a house. he was on the phone shaking his head and gesturing toward the house. i went on past him all the way up st. mary's, which was almost deserted, to east craig, took a left and i was home. wow, it was a beautiful day, with huge clearly-defined clouds billowing in a cool blue sky.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

me being with me

i dreamt that i was riding bikes with myself. i was me, and i was riding bikes with another guy that was me. and he was a really cool person to be with.
the psychological implications are almost insultingly overt.
nonetheless, in the dream, i realized the beauty of the situation, and how much i liked being with me, and i started sobbing out of pure joy. it was very moving. i was surprised when i awoke that i hadn't actually started crying in my sleep.

Wednesday, September 09, 2009

nine-nine-nine

it's september 9, 2009.
there may be logistical problems with president obama's policies. there may be financial conundrums he can't solve. maybe he has made too many concessions to the right. his health care plan may be criticized as a grab-bag of policies.
but what is most important to me about him is the direct human element he brings to an office i had grown up being at best indifferent to, at worst cynical about. what i mean by 'direct human element' is that it seems to me our president cares about people and people's issues. it seems he really has people's welfare in mind. in listening to past presidents, i found myself straining to understand them, relate to them, decipher them; i always wondered what ulterior motives they had. with president obama, it never crosses my mind-- for some reason, i trust him completely. when i listen to him, i understand. i agree. i am inspired.
i am still thrilled and inspired that barack obama is our president.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

angst

i'm not exactly sure what happened last night.
when i first decided to quit teaching and focus on acting and directing, several people told me it was a risk. but the ones i remember said it in a tone of exhortation, like, "that takes balls!"
last night nothing happened, but as i was sitting there my framework seemed to gradually slip away and i experienced a profound terror, as if everything around me had suddenly revealed its true nature, and its true nature was much more shallow and mean than i had led myself to believe.
maybe i wandered out to the edge of the cliff and didn't realize it.
maybe i had too much wine (2 glasses?).
i am the kind of person who thinks that events have resonance beyond their visible action. but i don't know how to interpret this event.
i have so many desires and so much to give. yet i am crouching in the corner with my blankie.
it could have been just another coming of age moment where i am forced to grow up real quick-- like ripping the bandage off. it's less painful that way, finally.

Monday, September 07, 2009

bullet points

first: it doesn't take much to inspire someone. my more frequent blog updates are inspired in part by someone else's more frequent blog updates, which enrich my life.

second: i watched bunuel's 1977 film 'that obscure object of desire' the other day, and i liked it. it is the story of a rich man who falls in love/lust with his maid. the entire movie is spent with him pursuing her and her leading him on. all framed by the man telling the story to some strangers on a train. it is based on an old novel and was done as a silent film, i guess in the 20's? three clips of the original silent film are included on the criterion dvd.

third: as a kid, i loved to repeat phrases over and over, often applying a sing-song layer to the phrase. this made me an almost unbearable child, especially to my older brother, who must have wanted to strangle me after hearing me repeat "come...on...lar-ry, give... val... tro-phy" the 689th time. little did i know, however, that in becoming an adult actor, i would draw on my love of repetition to such a large extent. yesterday i did my first ever taping of a commercial for HEB. the commercials will not be shown on TV, but at an HEB pharmaceuticals convention. (HEB is a big grocery store chain in texas.) the three commercials i am doing (i did two yesterday and will do the third one on thursday) are spoofs of popular commercials for GEICO, swiffer mops, and verizon wireless. though they are not particularly creative or innovative in themselves, i had a blast doing them because of the sheer repetition. to do the same 30 seconds of text + action over and over 10 times? love it. also, the guys i was working with were cool and very relaxed, which made it even more enjoyable. so i have officially embarked upon my film career now. the repetition king is here, so watch out!

fourth: this morning our cat was jumping up on us in bed and meowing very insistently. she was using different techniques of meow, soft and whiny, loud and alarming. eventually i got up and followed her very excited trot into the kitchen. she had placed a dead roach right next to her food bowl at some point in the early morning hours. i can only assume it was a gift for us, because when i thanked her and stroked her she purred and began to eat her food, and didn't meow at us again.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

revelation lunches

i have great lunches sometimes with people who inspire me. or, to be more precise, the communion between us inspires me. we talk about ideas, like synchronicity: yesterday, ben said he was at a friend's lake house, walking up from the shore and feeling sad and blah. suddenly he felt a sort of exciting streak of fear pass through him. he stopped walking and looked up behind him and a shooting star went streaking across the sky. he said "i'm sure it didn't mean anything, a lot of other people probably saw the same star and thought it meant something," and i said, "of course it meant something, you were the link between the star and your thought that gave it meaning."
during these lunches we talk about people who make things, about the therapy of making things, about the value of the process versus the product, about sitting and being still. we talk about breathing through the nostrils and how that practice makes time a relative element. we talk about physical awareness and how someone could sit for twenty minutes just focusing on their legs.
i love these lunches. i love being productive. i am struggling, i am perfectly content.
we talk about letting go of addictions, about surrendering to pure being and feeling what we feel, not trying to fill in any cravings but sitting with them. all these things touch on the ends of my nerves and travel through my body like electric impulses. it is fun to have these discussions. putting the ideas into practice is a little more challenging. can i sit with myself? can i overcome the addictions i have mindlessly fostered? of course i can.
i focus on a voice, my breath, my legs. i hear machinery roaring on the street. my cat calls out for me.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

the dump(lings) of theatre

in total, i made over 350 little russian dumplings this weekend. that's the most i've ever made in one sitting. i had promised beth i'd wear a babooshka while making them, but forgot. i made the lame concession that i was wearing a babooshka of the soul. which, in some sense, i was.
it's good to drink beers while making pelmeni. so i think i probably drank 6 or 7 beers throughout the course of saturday's session, building up my alcohol level considerably for the party on sunday. by the time the party rolled around, though i was having occasional bouts of black-out, i was up and awake and non-vomiting till 3 am.
the show was received in a manner better than was expected. we sold out half the performances and made about 15 thousand dollars. even better, people who had never seen a chekhov play done and had misapprehensions about the viability of such a play were, i think, pleasantly surprised at the outcome. my favorite compliment was from a seasoned director named mary r., who said that we brought the play into present time.
she didn't mean we set the play in 2009, but that we made it relevant for contemporary audiences. for this i am deeply gratified.
in other news...
the annual theatre award ceremony that a certain slice of san antonio engages in is coming up in september, and the plays that have been nominated for honors were announced today. david and i were disappointed to see that THE GOAT was not nominated for anything. as far as i'm concerned, it was the best all-around theatre experience i've had, ever, in san antonio-- from quality of script to direction to fellow actors to tech support to design. so it's kind of a crock when that happens.
it's weird-- you work so hard on something and you pour so much of yourself into it, yet you just never know how it's going to be received. but like i told my students, if you're in theatre, you can never really believe what anyone tells you-- all you can rely on is how you feel about it, and even then, be wary... :-)