tendencies

of how much use is incessant nostalgia?

i am a victim of sentimentality.

recently i decided to make a playlist of nostalgic songs i associate with my brother and our childhoods. we used to go into this pool room at the place where we swam. the pool room was, i think, a breakroom for staff, but no one was ever in there. my brother had a knack for finding out about places that other people didn't know about. this was one of them.

there was a jukebox in there. i remember these songs playing.

jambalaya (on the bayou) by hank williams -- we wondered what "fille gumbo" was and sometimes called each other "fille gumbo" if in a fightin' mood;

i shot the sherriff by bob marley -- my brother would go on to be a complete reggae fanatic, even traveling to jamaica in his early 20's;

me and julio down by the schoolyard by paul simon -- which remains my favorite paul simon song and one of the few songs that loses no emotional punch as i grow older;

low rider by war -- sticks on bottles and the deepest groove.

count on me by jefferson airplane -- that country piano at the beginning always reminds me of "behind closed doors" by charlie rich, but this song is so much better, and kind of a perfect 70's love song.

then there are other songs that remind me of our house growing up.

rock the boat by hues corporation -- i remember doing a dance to this and making my brother laugh... the difference was that i was laughing too;

i wish by stevie wonder -- there are so many stevie wonder songs that qualify for nostalgic gems, but this one holds sway over all the others for some reason;

nothin' but a heartache by michael mcdonald -- all us thornton boys were doobie brothers fans, and felt some special affinity for michael's dog-like howling voice;

moondance by cat stevens -- i remember hearing this on the radio in the car on the way to new braunfels once, and singing it to sarah kate, our younger cousin, when we finally got to thanksgiving, or christmas, or whatever family function it was we were attending;

coming up by paul mccartney -- not his best, possibly his worst, but dang i loved it when it came out, that jangly guitar and those silly high vocals;

monster mash by bobby "boris" pickett and the crypt-kickers -- when i was 7 or 8 i got a free transistor when my dad opened a savings account for me... the radio was little, round and white, and it never picked up shit. then one day we were standing in front of our house, on the sidewalk, and this came on, and it was the best song i had ever, ever heard.

there are other songs too.

now that i am over 40 i am afraid that making cds for people is a patently childish thing to keep doing, so i am debating with myself whether or not to make a cd for my brother for christmas. he once told me that if he doesn't like even one song on a cd, he won't listen to it. so i have been selecting carefully. but i am leaning toward the feeling that i probably won't risk it at all.

in any case, it has been a lot of fun for me to revisit these memory-soaked tunes.

good weather

i was walking every day before the beastly summer descended... and DIDN'T GO AWAY.

till now.

yesterday, fall, finally.

took a walk to trade some dvds in.

headphones playing 'bitte orca' by the dirty projectors.

thoughts of ingmar bergman controlling the lighting for his interview, suggesting he interview the interviewer instead.

bright blue sky. breeze.

to walk with hands in pockets, or swinging free? a little of both.

tromped across a grassy field.

on the way back, a poor woman collecting fallen pecans.

following the brackenridge park train tracks to mulberry.

as the train passed, waving to the few kids inside.

a dog hanging out by the river.

two guys fishing.

one of those empty lots with a concrete foundation in it. did a house used to be there? did they pour the foundation and run out of money? would be a good place to shoot a music video.

passing firetruck.

boyfriend calls. "where are you?"

walking home. almost home.

feng shui?

life-changing event #3,771:

i rearranged my room today, effectively opening up an entire corner of the room that was being neglected.

it's like the room is breathing differently. i like it a LOT.

photo shoot

this is me as of one week ago, standing in front of the wall across the street from our house.

week's events

it's been a very busy week for me.

david has been in denver, helping his mom move and seeing friends.

i went in to get labs done, including an X-ray (i'm not sure why, i guess my doctor ordered it).

i got a haircut. i had a photo session with my nephew (for resume pictures).

i drove 2 hours to smithville texas, where i was a special guest speaker in my friend lisa's 7th grade Teen Leadership class. she likes to shake the class up sometimes, so she had me pose as a person who had at one time been homeless, to see how the kids would react. so i came up with a whole backstory and stayed in character all day. the kids were very respectful (at least to my face) and after the first class "performance" i got a pang of guilt. it felt a little wrong to be manipulating them that way, inherently dishonest. and they bought into it so completely. and yet something about that character i was playing, this man whose life is not much like mine at all, came out of me quite organically, and therefore felt quite honest. lisa said the kids were talking about it all the next day and wanted to send me letters and presents. all in all i take it as a great (if voyeuristic) life experience, and a valuable acting experience as well.

i went to three southside high schools to work with students on scholarship monologues. these are students with not many resources (in some cases, hardly even a teacher to count on) but who remind me that the world is much bigger than my usual beaten path.

i had lunch with two good friends and dinner with two good friends, where we watched rufus wainwright's new concert video done in milwaukee. i thought rufus camped it up a bit too much but then i realized... i think that was the point. he looked especially gorgeous in drag.

today i was going to go to two more southside schools, and i was going to see a play, but i felt sick all day, headachy and sore throaty. so i stuck around home drinking Emergen-C and gargling with salt water. i also thought of fran when i took some oscillococcinum. just in case.

boxes

my friend barry wrote something that rings true for me.

Thinking outside of the box is something we must do every day of our life as we are constantly creating new boxes for ourselves. Even the ones we feel comfortable in are best served by our examining them for restrictive qualities. Stimulus is our best asset in helping us to get out of our own way. It can come in millions of forms limited only by our antennae and willingness to receive.

cars

yesterday my dad helped me finance a new car. it's not a new car. it's from 1996. it looks like this. i like it because it is smooth and reliable. it is sort of like gliding in a silver cloud. i feel invisible in it.

this article says you can tell a lot about a person by the car they drive. they don't mention the mercury grand marquis. only porsches, hondas, mini coopers... kind of a stupid article actually. but i was thinking about that question as i drove home from kerrville yesterday. i was thinking, what does this car say about me? that i want to disappear into the background? that i crave practicality? or simply that i am poor and had to rely on my dad to choose a sensible car for me? this last option seems most accurate.

my old car looks like this, except much less shiny and with more dents and rusty spots. it has a lot of character. but character only goes so far when you can't rely on it.

rage of murk

my alma mater has just sent me a postcard announcing an "alumni weekend" at the end of the month. why did they just now send me this, on october 7th? 2010 will mark 20 years since i graduated. what about our 20-year reunion? i mean isn't that sort of something special that should be organized and done right? i am not interested in some sort of general "alumni weekend" that i get a POSTCARD for, THREE WEEKS BEFORE IT HAPPENS!

i have always said i would never go to my high school reunions, but would be interested in a college one.

perhaps instead, next spring, i'll go visit ET in W-S and we'll just have our own private reunion. that way i won't have to worry about certain people in my class gloating about how successful they've been.

i feel crappy today. i'm hot, and my car isn't working, and i have no money.

no one in my class would gloat. that's a statement rising out of my current crappy mood, which manifests as bitter insecurity.

i'm walking to have lunch with my old high school drama teacher soon. we've been meeting for lunch every wednesday. we have great talks and there's a lot of love. there's a turn up.

my cat left a roach on the floor of my room for me this morning.

i watched a 50-minute documentary on frank zappa and the making of "apostrophe/overnite sensation." he is inspiring for these reasons:

prolific

unflinching

knew what he wanted to do

did it on his own

reverence for absurdity

incisive and intelligent

demanded excellence

today i feel like flailing on the ground, flailing on the wooden floor so hard that i would break a hole through the floor, then flail through the foundation, then flail through the earth and just keep flailing until i wanted to flail no more. somehow i feel the need to break free or release something. it's a murky sort of rage inside.

what a storm can do

last night, late, one of the most aggressive thunderstorms i have ever experienced. the lightning was so bright, it really looked as if someone were standing on the roof of our house flashing a bright white light on the garage in back, in successive flashes, 3-5 seconds apart, for at least 40 minutes. the thunder so raging and aggressive, sounding like iron gurneys being slammed onto the floor of the sky and rolled angrily to crash against a very nearby wall.

when it first woke me up it was splendid, because it's great being witness to a raucous thunderstorm, especially if it's in the middle of the night. there's a romance to it. david and i uttered our various "wow"s and "goddamn"s. but as it went on and did not decrease but rather seemed to increase in intensity, i began to sense my utter insignificance. how i could be ripped to shreds, smothered, snapped like a twig by nature, without a second thought.

it wasn't like a woody allen "i'm dying!" existential crisis, but there was a shuddering-in-the-corner-peering-out-into-the-void feeling about it. it made me think that i do not live as if i could die at any moment-- i have way too many possessions, for one thing. who do i think i'm fooling, with all those books?! that was one of the thoughts. another was that i really should clean up, because if the house were ripped in half by lightning, i would be ashamed about all the unneeded muss and detritus when the rescue cleanup crew came.

and also, where's the urgency in my life? where's the fire under my ass? in what way am i manifesting the rage of lightning inside of me?

normal

it's the first day of october. i like the next three months. when i was teaching i didn't like january. but i think i'll like it this year.

the other day i got a call from my old boss at the school district. the man who took over my teaching position is quitting due to marital stress and personal problems. i would like to talk to him and find out the true story, but i don't know him well enough to approach him with those questions.

it's not really cooler today, to reflect the change of month, but the heat has... eased up a little, let's put it that way.

i met with an agent and am going to sign with him for a year. i am really excited about this and have a good feeling about the agent.

i have been listening to ben folds' "way to normal" and liking it.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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... :-)