the great frank zappa

i felt a terrible loss when frank zappa died. he died of prostate cancer in 93. he was about to turn 53. it's not much of a consolation, but lucky for us humans, he was an incredibly prolific and perceptive artist and person. i entertained the idea that the government knocked him off because he was just too smart and subversive and proactive, or that he knew too much. i'd read an interview where he discussed the power of sonic waves, that sound could actually be used to control people or even kill people. for a while there was a movement going to get him to run for president. he was very politically aware and had lots of good ideas. i'd like to live in that world, where zappa could actually get nominated... that would be a better world.

his music is a balm to my soul. it feels healing and dynamic, like something's happening inside me when i listen to it, like wounds are being tended. it's not a cerebral appreciation. it's very visceral. and i just discovered a great album of arrangements by the ensemble ambrosius. re-workings of some of zappa's classics like "RDNZL" and "inca roads." sweet arrangements.

i once had a dream i was taking a shower with frank. it wasn't sexual, but it was very intimate. i woke up feeling so close to him, it was excellent. yeah i know it's ridiculous, put it on the same list with my dream that i was hanging out in an apartment with andy and colin from XTC, or when i had become the 4th beastie boy (AdRoc mentored me). 

but you know, thank God for dreams because otherwise i never would have had these amazing opportunities.

new technology

despite my apparent devotion to my iPod, i have upgraded to a new iPod which contains more memory. ah, the fickleness of the music-obsessed consumer.

so now i have room to put everything in my little silver lozenge, even my extensive frank zappa collection, much of which i haven't listened to since 1998. wow, "artificial rhonda." just wow.

as for the old iPod, i have taken care of it, taken care to provide it with a caring new owner, which just happens to be my boyfriend david. so it's all in the family.

missions

today david and i packed up some water and snacks in a backpack and drove out to mission concepcion. we walked around the church for a while then, after a brief tussle, drove to mission san jose, which is bigger and more impressive than mission concepcion because of its living quarters skirting the perimeter of the grassy area and the relative scope of the place. i liked to imagine the indians having affairs in the grass with wayward fathers, or escaping the mission walls under cover of night, coyotes baying in the background. we walked around there a while, then set off on the mission trail. we got about halfway to mission san juan then turned around and walked back. i'd say we walked somewhere between 4-5 miles in all. it was fun walking along the san antonio river (the real one, instead of the riverwalk), and we both needed the exercise and the sun.

why did my mom never take me to the missions when i was growing up? i realize she was busy and all, having four kids, and me being the youngest, well i guess she was tired by that time, always multi-tasking and then she got her own career going, so in some ways i understand... yet i also felt amazed at the thought that we have these incredible, historical monuments to colonialism in the guise of spirituality in our fair city and we never visited them even once!

the only time i've been to a mission (well, besides the alamo, which seems tiny in comparison) was at my friend mikki's wedding. i've forgotten which mission it was, but it was a beautiful place to get married. i was fantasizing about getting married to david at one of the missions. one of us would have to dress as a woman to fool the priests. i was imagining david in blonde wig and tight raspberry taffeta.

so tonight i put lotion on my face. i feel like my summer is now complete, having acquired a sunburn; and it couldn't be at a more appropriate time of year-- the autumn equinox.

this is not an ad for facebook

(and the last entry was not an ad for iPod.)

a few weeks ago, prodded by a friend of mine, i set up a facebook account... begrudgingly. i don't know why i was so reluctant. i guess it seemed like something 'young' people do, like people of my students' age. and true enough, most of my contacts have been former students, but there have been other contacts as well, like theatre people in the area.

but this week i had two great surprises.

there comes a time on facebook when you start racking your brain for old, old friends-- like the kind of friends who are so old they've become kind of legendary in your mind, because all your memories of them have been so rehashed over the years, and it's been so long since you've spoken to them.

one of the friends i got in touch with was philip, my next-door neighbor from childhood. we had a lot of fun together doing kid things, and he had a pool at his house AND a tennis court we played on. i wasn't sure he would want to contact me, because i was kind of a weirdo as a kid (i'm TOTALLY normal now, make no mistake), but phil wrote back and asked how the hell i am. he is now living in phoenix and has a little family going.

there was an even bigger reaction, however, last night, when my best friend from first, second and third grade (my first, and therefore truest best friend) responded to my friend invitation. his name is j.j. and i have all kinds of memories and stories about him. i hadn't seen or spoken to him since he moved away to tucson after fourth grade. nary a word. so you can imagine, over the past thirty years there's been plenty of time to miss him, wonder where he is, and think about all the things we did as kids. this is the kid i loved so much that i threw a rock at his head. it's true.

last night all my long-standing questions about j.j. came to a resolution. he's an aerospace engineer (he was always really smart), has a wife and three kids, and lives in nearby austin. he looks great in his photo, still like himself and not transformed by the overwhelming grief of life. i don't know if we will keep in touch or rekindle our friendship, but the important thing is just to know he's well and thriving in the world, and that he actually does exist outside my memory. it's a nice feeling and... well, it's a life-changing event.

iPod pleasure

when did i start loving music? when did i start really paying attention to it?

my brother had this huge LP collection. then he won a drawing at a local music store and won something like 500 more LPs. it was a huge deal. a lot of them were garbage, but a lot of them were worth keeping. if you had a question about a band or an album, craig would usually know the answer. he gave me hand-me-down 8-track tapes of rickie lee jones, earth wind & fire, and barry manilow. and later he gave me cyndi lauper's "she's so unusual" on vinyl, and linda ronstadt's awesome rock album, "mad love," which featured at least two elvis costello covers.

craig gave me my first mixed tape, "music for white men" (i was called "white man" as a child because i was so lacking in pigment), when i was a freshman in high school, right around '81-'82. it contained: laurie anderson, the roches, randy newman, mel torme, peter gabriel, the violent femmes, todd rundgren, the shangri-las, xtc, kid creole & the coconuts, jonathan richman, tom waits, godley & creme, dionne warwick, tom tom club, frank sinatra, the waitresses, loudon wainwright III, bryan ferry, the beatles, lindsey buckingham, and kate bush. this particular tape, i have since realized, shaped my sense of what a music collection should be-- eclectic, above all... also, surprising, fanciful, with blasts of the past and the future. i have told craig about the debt i owe him for bringing such a broad and rich spectrum of musical taste into my life. i don't claim to have particularly good taste; but you can't deny it's eclectic.

this broad and rich spectrum has taken on many vehicles over the years (walkmans, car stereos, discmans), but the most recent and most amazing vehicle so far has been my iPod. now i have sensed the backlash against iPods, and i understand it-- there's something a little evil about them in the sense that they are becoming ubiquitous and that they seem to cut people off from each other. true enough. my pleasure in the iPod is the still mind-staggering fact that my e n t i r e  m u s i c  c o l l e c t i o n can reside within its perfectly compact rectangular body. something about this fact turns me on no end. i can float down memory lane by flipping to "sandwiches of you" whenever i want. all those songs i love can be in my pocket at all times. i made an iPod playlist of "music for white men" and it is beautiful... still beautiful.

i got my iPod in may of '07 and have been loading it down with pretty much every album in my possession since then. it is now reaching its maximum capacity (i have only 2 GBs left out of 80) and so i have been worrying that i am either going to run out of room or that it will crash and i will lose all that beautifulness. 

so i have been considering ways to insure the iPod. since i don't necessarily still have all the cds that are contained on it, and i wouldn't necessarily feel happy about sitting down to download them all again, i was considering purchasing another iPod and transferring all the music on the existing one onto a new one. i saw in a magazine that there's a doohickey you can get which will plug into two iPods and transfer files from one to the other. i researched that a bit, and it seemed more complicated than i had in mind.

but yesterday i downloaded Music Rescue 4.0. what it does, according to the apple tech worker i spoke with, is: "it sucks the music out of your iPod and into a file, then you can download it onto your iTunes." so that's what i did-- i got Music Rescue, plugged in my iPod and my external hard drive (120 GB), and backed up all my music onto my hard drive. 

talk about bliss. bliss. as tootsie says, "sheer heaven."

that oboe/clarinet solo on joni mitchell's "down to you." the irresistable whistling hook on "young folks" by peter bjorn & john. kate bush's roar on "get out of my house." hey, i remember where i was when i first heard that. i remember the feeling i had. 

surprises

this week i got a great surprise-- i was asked to be the stieren guest artist at trinity university here in town. the stipulations of this residency are that i will teach 5-6 master classes, give a 45-minute public lecture, and act in a production of austin pendleton's play BOOTH with drama students at trinity. i am thrilled about this, for several reasons-- it gives me a chance to work with students on the university level; the part of junius booth in BOOTH will be challenging for me (now that i'm 40 i guess i can sort-of legitimately play a 50-something year-old); and my financial concerns will be assuaged for another blissful period of time. beyond all these particulars, this fellowship being offered means something in general for my life and my decisions that is very exciting, and which fran verbalized well in an email yesterday: "I think you drew all these things to you by embracing your desires-- how magical is that?"

today i noticed that someone named "rocketts" posted a comment on this blog. as i investigated, i discovered a newly-established blog called Box 104C which seems to chronicle in pictures the KITUS years at schoolhouse. 

being a man of the moment, i often live as if i had just been born, forgetting, for all intents and purposes, that i have led a rich, sumptuous, moist, creamy, chunky, volatile, teary-eyed, screamy, itchy, sexy, international existence. but seeing the blog Box 104C reawakened my memory of some wonderful moments in my life, reconnected me to them, thereby enriching my current moment of existence. thanks rocketts, much love to you. 

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.