resistance

i've been noticing little ways that i resist everything-- i resist the pleasure of the moment by worrying about ten minutes from now. i resist healing by dwelling on the past. i resist so much every day without realizing it. it surely started out as a coping mechanism, a protection device put firmly in place after i got hurt or humiliated, until it just became part of my unconscious modus operandi. but now i'm becoming aware of it. 

they went back to school two days ago. i wonder how it's going. i've gotten reports here and there from different students... they've painted the drama hallway red. other stuff like that. i am deeply happy not to be there; at the same time i have some anxiety about my future and that is why i am realizing about resistance and how insidious it can be. 

you know, i'm really haunted by that goddamn aesop's fable about the grasshopper and the ants. was it a grasshopper? i think so. he spent the whole summer playing and making music while the ants worked. in winter he froze because he hadn't prepared. that thing really messes with me! that story of impending doom became a building block of my identity! 

of course a solid work ethic is important, chiefly because it gives one a sense of purpose. but that story is such scare tactics, and it's caused me, in the past, to not enjoy the current moment, worrying that if i have too much fun, i'll pay for it later. 

love and trust more; hate and resist less.

too much reality

ten years ago, sergei and yulia were visiting me in truckee. with dion, my native american friend, we went to a jump dance ceremony in happy camp. we drove to the coast and the redwoods. one night when we were driving home i hit a deer, grazed its back leg. it got up and ran away lopsided. i knew that deer was my spirit animal so i took it hard, trying to understand the spiritual implications of such an event. i never came to any particular conclusion. now as i look back i can see that my spirit was damaged during that trip with dion and my russian friends-- i felt torn between them, it wasn't harmonious. a couple months after sergei and yulia had flown home, i knew i had to heal and called the whole thing off with dion.

the other day while watching a documentary on sasquatch, i got excited when they interviewed people from happy camp. it's a very small town on the klamath river way up in northern california, not far south of ashland oregon. 

yesterday i read about edouard manet. we ate thai food. we watched LOST IN LaMANCHA and then the documentary CRUMB. i never considered CRUMB an overly depressing film, but watching it with someone else made me realize that it is pretty distressing. i believe david said, "too much reality!"

summer lovin'

it's already august. right now at 12:25 daytime, it's overcast and mild outside-- not really hot at all. it's been a quiet, pleasant saturday morning. it doesn't hurt that i'm in love. 

last night's opening went well, though i had to stop the show 5 minutes in because a screen onstage had not been removed and would have messed everything up. so we got rid of the screen and started again from the beginning. the show was passable, wasn't at its best, but that's usually true of opening nights anyway. as the actors settle into their routines and begin to feel more comfortable, the show will improve.

this week i got the pevear/volokhonsky translation of WAR AND PEACE. it's lovely to read it again 15 years later, and even better in this very conscientious and readable translation. i found an interesting article about this translation and another, both of which were released around the same time. 

tomorrow i have an initial meeting about the next play i'll be working on as an actor, tennessee williams' THE GLASS MENAGERIE. i'm looking forward to starting work on that.

my cat pooped in the corner of my room this morning because her litter box hadn't been changed in two weeks. i am usually very careful about changing it every week, so she's gotten used to a schedule, and that schedule was interrupted, so i didn't blame her for her actions. 

david is making biscuits and gravy and something else with onions that smells really good...

good samaritan opens

THE GOOD SAMARITAN, a play i have been directing, opens tomorrow at the overtime theater. here is an article. it has been really fun and rewarding working on it and i think it looks great. i hope the audiences will think so too.

the beach

i hadn't been to port aransas, that i can remember, since i was in high school. i just went back there this past weekend and it wasn't as i recalled it at all.

the beach was bordered on the shoreline with a substantial barrier of seaweed, the intense bright green bushy kind with berries that looks like something you'd buy in the garnish section of hobby lobby. this seaweed had also been pulverized into most of the sand, discoloring it and changing its texture. where i had remembered soft, duny sand there was now a hard sandy surface. it took me a while to assimilate this change and accept the fact that the beach had changed. as i looked at the little kids running around i thought, "they think this is the way the beach is supposed to be." then i thought of myself as a kid and how someone older might have been sitting on the beach when i was running around and they were probably thinking, "he thinks this is the way the beach is supposed to be." for me then, as for the kids now, the beach was perfect just as it was. nothing to compare it to. after i processed all that, i relaxed into the scene a little better and it became less alien.

yet another jarring development was the warmness of the ocean. i can't remember ever walking into an ocean that felt like warm bathwater. but the gulf felt that way this weekend. it wasn't really unpleasant, but again, it wasn't what i expected or was used to. it seemed just a little wrong. 

despite all my comparing the present to the past, david and i floated in the water and sat on the beach having a perfectly lovely time. also, we visited my aunt and uncle, who live in rockport, and that was really nice. 

hiatus from blogging is over

last day of school was june 5. we had a clean-up day, painted my office wall back to white (it was grape jelly-purple), threw lots of stuff away, moved stuff around preparing for the summer, and i bid the place goodbye. i was tempted to steal the red velvet couch but did not.

once again i have found that when you make your desires known, they tend to manifest in real time. i had written down this quote, but i don't remember where i found it: "If you don't articulate your conscious desires, your unconscious patterns will come true." seems like both an exhortation and a warning, don't you think?

so some exciting things are happening:

a really wonderful relationship is developing with the people of the AtticRep theatre company, and i'm now a company member as well as educational outreach director. currently we are putting together acting workshops to take into schools this coming year. also, i will be appearing in two of their plays next season, TRUE WEST (sam shepard) and THE GOAT, or WHO IS SYLVIA? (edward albee). i will also be working with the classic theatre company on THE GLASS MENAGERIE, which starts rehearsals in august.

right now i am directing a play called THE GOOD SAMARITAN, by scott mcdowell, with a very talented group of actors at the overtime theatre. this play was written by a local writer and it is a 50's film noir detective mystery. it's going well. we finished blocking last night, are thinking up some interesting ideas for lighting and staging, and we open on august 1st.

i'm going to the coast this weekend with david. i haven't been to the texas coast in a long time-- though i've been near it, i haven't made a beach trip since i was a teen. how weird. so i'm really looking forward to that.

favorite music in my world recently: noise for pretend, vampire weekend, american princes, slow runner, philip glass's saxophone album, balkan beat box, foals, joan as police woman, and the new martha wainwright album.  

the performer performs

LINCOLNESQUE is going well. we opened last thursday and tonight had our first performance of the second and final weekend. 8 shows total.

we got a good review in the san antonio express-news, and a sort of hard-to-tell-if-she-liked-it-or-not review in the san antonio current.

my whole family came to see the show last saturday, and that was a good show for me. a lot of my students have come too, which is sweet. theatre friends from all around san antonio have also been extremely supportive.

two more weeks of school. i have started final performance exams in class. yesterday a hoola-hoop performance was breathtaking. today, a boy who wrote his own song sang and accompanied himself on guitar beautifully, poignantly. 

friend beth is going to siberia in july.

my south america plans yearn to be solidified.

life is good.

terrible acknowledgement of kid sabotage (taks)

schools in texas are under the weight of a test called the texas assessment of knowledge and skills, or taks test. schools are rated and ranked based on the results from these tests. as a result, the tests are strictly monitored, stringently directed, and anal-retentively administered. 

today i got called into my assistant principal's office. i have enjoyed a relatively good relationship with this man; we have never been pals, but have been perfectly cordial. today's meeting however was somewhat unpleasant.

it started out innocent enough. 

ME: you wanted to see me?

HIM: i saw on this report that you didn't attend the training for the TAKS test. can you tell me why?

ME (glibly): i don't know.

HIM: why not? this is very important.

ME: oh. really? you're not being sarcastic?

HIM: no, not at all. 

ME: oh.

(moment of adjustment.)

ME: well, that was a busy week, we were getting ready for state, all kinds of things were happening. but i got my training later and everything worked out fine.

HIM: your colleague didn't miss the training and i assume he too was preparing for state...

ME: i would like to say that i did all the TAKS paperwork perfectly. the counselors in the office said that a lot of the teachers didn't turn it in correctly but that mine was all done right.

HIM: did you ever stop to think that because you required a separate training time from all the other teachers, you were taking valuable time away from the counselors who had to stop what they were doing in order to train you separately?

...

basically what happened was, i got reprimanded, nay threatened, because i did not attend the TAKS training session. the threat: this breach will go on my teacher evaluation. 

"what does that mean?" i asked, the glibness having vanished, being replaced by a confrontational defensiveness.

"it means it goes on your report. if you think of some good reason why you missed the training, let me know."

"no, i can't think of any reason." i said, trying to leave.

"of course, the TAKS is the most important ranking our school has; the only thing that would be more important would be our football team winning state."

"well i guess i just don't share your priorities."

"i was joking."

"really? i couldn't tell."

"this is not to downplay your second place with the one-act play at state. of course that's a nice feather in your cap. but blah blah blah blah blah....."

...

i spent my eighth period theatre class sitting and talking to a few students, watching a few playing ball, watching some practice martial arts, listening to one play the guitar as he strolled around the room. i was thinking how nice it was to sit and relax and enjoy the students as people and not expect anything of them. it was really nice. i needed it, and i think they did too.

...

ME (what i should have said): i have had several students tell me that i have made a difference in their lives. i have had a few say that they would not have taken or stayed in theatre if it weren't for me. i waste no time in worrying about TAKS requirements when i remember what i am really here for-- to teach students, and to learn from students. i refuse to, and indeed am unable to, change my priorities to reflect a meaningless standardized test simply in order to achieve a rank among people who understand very little about education.

plays and life

well it's been a week and i'm just now feeling able to write about this year's one-act play experience. 

our play was called DA. it was written in the 70's by an irish playwright named hugh leonard, and he always claimed this one was his favorite. he got awards for it. it's about a man who goes back home to clean out his parents' house after his father's death. his memories start coming up before his eyes and he interacts with them-- his father, mother, and himself at a younger age. 

our cutting of DA was mostly a comedy, though the full-length play is actually quite dark. i must admit that our cutting excluded much of the complication the main character faces in dealing with his past and what he's become. you can understand: when you are cutting something down to 40 minutes, for use by a high school drama troupe, the things you keep tend toward the light. 

this year, the state one-act play meet was not at bass concert hall, but at hogg auditorium, right in the middle of the UT campus. we weren't looking forward to this new location-- an older building, a smaller stage. but i must say that hogg was very kind to our play, which lends itself to a more intimate setting. also, being more central on the UT campus, it felt more like being in austin.

like last year, we woke up very early on saturday morning and headed over to load our props and furniture into the back of the theatre. we were reprimanded by the director for having so much stuff. because hogg is such a smaller space than bass, everyone was expected to pare down on set items. our 7-foot rolling prop cabinet had to be removed. there was a meeting with all the casts and directors at 7:30. at 8:45 our official rehearsal began. we were the first to rehearse, since we were the first to perform. our rehearsal went well-- we set up the stage, put spike tape down to indicate where everything should be placed according to the lights, we set sound levels, ran through blocking. a couple of our items were not approved (the holy water font, which i always hated, was made of a ticket-taking cabinet. it was the one thing i had wanted to change but never got changed, until it was un-approved at our rehearsal), so we had to improvise a bit with set pieces. the UIL crew was very helpful, even the man who did not like my vines last year. 

we had several hours between rehearsal and performance, during which we ate at stubb's, rested, and did warm-ups. as we waited behind the theatre at 3:30, baking in the sun, some of the other students came to wish everyone broken legs. trevor gave me an amazing bouncy-ball filled with sparkly magenta liquid. for me that ball became an icon representing the entire experience-- there was a certain perfection in it which delighted and encouraged everyone. i know it sounds strange, but for me it was really remarkable: it became a representative of joy, resilience, and the passing nature of everything. it made a strong impression, but at the same time i realized it didn't have long to live. just like the whole experience.

the performance was lovely-- everything went smoothly, nobody fell down, things clicked, and the show ran 38.50 or thereabouts, which is perfect. cy was there, as were a good fan club from churchill. 

after loading out of the theatre and back into the moving truck, we gave ourselves a little time to get food in the area, which was when i experienced jamba juice. the smoothie i consumed comes as close to orgasmic as anything i've ever had. maybe my senses were heightened; maybe i was just glad the performance was over. in any case, that smoothie, like that bouncy-ball, rocked my world.

we saw the second session of plays in the evening-- all good productions. the awards ceremony started very soon after the final show was over. we took two "all-star cast" awards and one "honorable mention" award for acting, and we took 2nd place in the competition.

my eyes see clearly. i don't want to go all esoteric on you. right now i feel truly alive. i must always remember this feeling, i tell myself, this is who you really are, an extension of the earth, someone who can appreciate joy and beauty, who is sensitive to struggle and suffering, but has roots deep enough to bend and come back to stretch his arms into the sky. 

the amazing bouncy-ball didn't even last a whole week. it was hurled against brick walls, thrown in the football field, squeezed, gazed at, and admired until it passed away quietly in my car on wednesday. i don't have the heart to throw it away. i feel it should be cremated or something. it's pretty funny, how certain objects are endowed and can teach you things. i will never forget this bouncy-ball.

four more weeks of school. 

LINCOLNESQUE opens in 5 days. 

today i'm going to thrift stores to get pants, shirts, shoes, and suspenders. 

barry, if you read this: i tried to send you an email but it got returned. do you have a new email address?

horoscope

my rob breszny free will astrology reading made me smile, like a mug full of unicorn giggles.

"It's high time, in my opinion, to give yourself an enormous amount of slack... to forgive yourself for not being perfect... to dissolve any guilt you feel for not having accomplished all your life goals yet. In that spirit, consider the following time-wasters: (1) Send letters to the editor about grammatical mistakes in the classified ads. (2) Make yourself the world's top expert on a person randomly chosen from the phone book. (3) Keep a logbook in your bathroom to verify that the toilet bowl cleaner really does work for 1,000 flushes. (4) Set the Guinness record for time spend reading the Guinness Book of Records."

www.freewillastrology.com

blatant thoughts

when i first started blogging i was living in northern california. i had just watched a documentary on the donner party, so i named my blog The Forlorn Hope. (that's what one of the donner party called a last ditch attempt to get over the pass and find help, which wound up being successful.) the name i went by was Stupid Idiot. the name was meant as a joke and was satisfying to me on several levels, but people didn't like it, so one day when my self-esteem was high again i changed it.

in the years i've blogged i have rarely gotten much response on anything. the posting that was most popular by far was an account i wrote of a visit to the church i was attending, a united church of christ with a very liberal and eclectic way of worshipping. a friend of mine even had it published in an online newsletter about spirituality.

i don't write the blog in order to get responses, but it is always nice to see a comment here and there.

yet at the same time there is a level of internal censorship going on. i won't share absolutely everything, somehow thinking that would be naive and potentially damaging to my image or something. (it's vague as to what exactly would be damaged.)

i have suspected that i don't trust people very much anymore. i think several experiences during my formative 20's caused me to be suspicious, and guarded about what i disclose.

i remember how great and refreshing it was to start a new phase of journaling one summer when i was in wisconsin. my summer-fling boyfriend got a hold of my journal and wrote this in it: "What we are showing for the new section is only the most blatant thoughts. Out are the discussions plagued with paranoia of the possibility of other's reading the writings. For instance writing retractions or qualifiers is very last section. Broad generalizations are in for daily activity descriptions, but specific accounts of evening activities, divulging lots of detail is very this section. Pictures are classic and therefore always in."

this was a cool guy and i spent one of the best summers of my life with him.

of course he was talking about a private journal, not a public blog. but his assertions are noble ones. why journal at all if it's full of apologies, retractions, and holding back?

advancing

our one-act play was chosen to advance to the state level last night at the region meet.

we competed against mcallen memorial, harlingen south, san antonio marshall, laredo alexander, and austin high. 

this morning i don't feel a sense of accomplishment, satisfaction, or potential. i only feel that i am naive and thick-headed. i can't find words to express what i mean by this, at the moment.

i am very happy for the kids, whom i love. 

i'm staying home

i downloaded howard jones' album human's lib. are you quietly judging me right now? during my turbulent high school junior year, this album was my refuge. i had a cassette of it. later i got the cd. later i became ashamed of it and eradicated it from my collection. now i've come back around. as i type these words it fills my ears with its synthesized goodness.

it's rainy. i'm staying home to incubate and learn as many lines as i can before tonight's rehearsal. i will go in half a day today.

favorite students 1

p. is a student who suffered last year, right around this time last year, from a tumor at the front of his brain which had to be removed. his surgery was very successful and though there were some rocky moments when we weren't sure we would see him again, or that he had changed drastically because of his surgery, he is well and pretty much almost all the way back to normal. there are ways he has changed, though-- he seems more strident in his speech, is more likely to ramble loudly, and has lost a certain edge in his personality, a kind of dry wit that used to be there that just isn't there anymore. this does not change the way i love him, he is one of my favorite people, he is generous, kind, funny, and can roll with whatever you throw him. 

e. is a student whose grade point average is somewhere around 104. last year, during her junior year, she would come into my office almost every morning just to hang out while i was checking my emails and getting ready for the school day. we started a ritual of choosing a word at random from the dictionary and putting it up on the dry erase board. she would comment on my music, or my omnipresent snack of apples and carrots, and we would name things-- starting with stuffed animals left in my office, like a stuffed dog with no nose (derek), the naming mania eventually spread all the way to incidental washers found in the black box (billy), or discarded pomettes from costumes (hillary). e. is one of my favorite people because of her steadfastness, her sharp mind, her sensitivity to and curiosity in the world around her. she asked me to attend the summa reception with her this year, which felt like being asked to the prom.

i will miss these people.

a few events

what happened today?

i had trouble getting out of bed. feeling really exhausted.

had no time for breakfast or coffee, could be responsible for my fatigue in the middle of the day, before i had a chance to have lunch.

while i was at starbucks an elderly woman pulling out of the parking lot ran into a cop on a motorcycle. though he was down, he didn't seem seriously hurt. i was more concerned about the elderly woman, who seemed stunned as she stood over the cop with her hand outstretched.

in my theatre I class, an advanced tech student named Z, who was visiting, led an improvisation game which the class loved. Z had just hours before told me he was interested in teaching as a career, and seeing him with the students made me think he would be really good at this, if he decides to do it for a living.

official

well, i have told my students that i am leaving at the end of the year. we had a big meeting. it was cathartic-- both sad and joyful. there was an outpouring of love, which i felt privileged and comforted and energized to receive. i feel sad about not being there for many of the students next year, but they were 100% supportive of my moving on.
it has been a huge couple of months-- i took six students to the harvard speech tournament (we won 8th place in duo interpretation), i went to minneapolis, i took a group to the state speech tournament (we won first place sweepstakes), competed in our zone one-act play contest (we advanced to the district level), and this past weekend i went to dallas for my nephew's wedding.
now it is spring break and i am:
relaxing
cleaning the house
doing laundry
learning my lines for the upcoming LINCOLNESQUE (opens the second weekend in may)
helping one of my students with a film he's shooting
spending quality time with friends (esp. fran and zoe)
by the way, i have finally updated the drawings blog. the drawing called "supine" had been the last one posted for way too long, but was also somehow appropriate, since the blog was a little bit asleep for a while. visit!

guthrify me

the guthrie theatre was established in the early 1960's by sir tyrone guthrie, who wanted to establish a high-quality regional theatre in the midwest.
at some point in the last few years, the guthrie moved from its old location to the warehouse district of minneapolis, into a huge and shiny new complex which includes three theatre spaces, two restaurants, two long escalators, and a host of huge portraits of world playwrights.
i had a general audition at the guthrie on friday, february 22. i auditioned for the casting director and his assistant. the following day, i was lucky enough to land an audition with the shakespeare theatre company from washington DC. i felt that i did well in both my auditions, though neither of my auditioners gave me any indication of their impressions of my work.
i was discouraged by the continuing realization that i do not have an actor's equity card, and how that might be difficult for me, considering my age and experience. but other than this actuality, i feel really good about the entire experience.
i saw a very enjoyable production of peer gynt at the guthrie, starring the magnetic and spontaneous mark rylance. i also saw a production of wendy wasserstein's last play, third.

all the me's (or maybe just some of them)

a volatility in me that sees the same picture through different eyes, depending on the chemical charges being released in my brain, from one moment to the next.
a stability in me that renders me inactive, inert, not all human.
a passion in me that has always yearned so much for others to join in, that when they didn't, it shrieked and berated them and then felt guilty.
a sadness in me that folds clothes into a suitcase, ready to pack up and go.
a compulsiveness in me that doesn't feel perfectly well unless the dishes are done, and as the laundry piles up it wonders about the mold growing under the bathtub.
a critic in me that vehemently opts out of the game then jeers from the sidelines.
a sensitivity in me that responds intuitively to noise, lies, and music.
a hunger in me that rages along the shore voraciously picking up chunks of wood and devouring them.
an aspiration in me that looks into the sun and feels tears of pleasure streaking down its face.

works

northanger abbey is one of austen's novels that was not published during her lifetime. yesterday i read about six chapters. at the end of chapter five, she launches into a parenthetical statement about the bad rap that novels get and how no one will ever admit when they're reading one. maybe it was just me, but after that, chapter six seemed to take on an affected tone. i put the book back on the shelf. i will pick it up again soon.
last night i watched a really good film by kon ichikawa, called the burmese harp. it is about a troupe of japanese soldiers in burma at the end of WWII. through an odd series of events, the soldiers learn that the war is over and that japan has surrendered, and they surrender to the british troupes that are in the same village. soon, they hear of a japanese division that is refusing to surrender, a half-day's walk away, in a mountain; and one of the soldiers, who has a certain higher level of finesse, is asked to go persuade them to give themselves up. since japan has surrendered, their continued fighting is helping no one. so the soldier goes. and the story unfolds from there.
i really liked the composition in the film, the way the shots were set up. in an interview afterwards, kon ichikawa says he wanted to be a painter, which makes sense. there is beautiful use of light and balance on the screen. also, the story is very emotional.

reading

i wake up today wanting to read.
the computer has damaged my ability and availability to read.
i'm going to open up a tome of jane austen.
apparently i was one of the only kids in my first grade class who already knew how to read.
my mom says it's because of my good brain, but i know it's "the electric company"'s fault.
when i was in second grade i told the teacher's assistant that i wanted to be a writer.
i do love words.
(the teacher's assistant was this really pretty tall redhead named miss wood. once when i wasn't feeling well i went to the front of the class and told her. she felt my forehead and said, "oh baby, you're burning up!" i was immediately in love. somehow i kept in touch with her and when i was in fifth grade, got a note from her that i kept. she'd gotten married by then, which made me feel a little dejected, and at the end of the note, she asked, "do you still want to be a writer?" ...it's the only evidence i have that i'd declared that wish as early as second grade.)