Tonight, I saw what will probably be the last thing I see in the 2010 resident troupe fall season. I've been at the theatre every day since Thursday, like a groupie freak, but it was very important to me to see everything one more time before the season is over. I cannot believe how much I have learned over the past three months just by watching this incredible group of actors. Each show this season has touched me in a different and profound way and their work truly amazes me each and every performance. It is one of my favorite parts of being where I am.
I have always been one of those people who has a hard time letting things go. This is probably a horrible trait to have going into theatre, where things are in constant flux. I know I always feel this great lump of depresson when shows I am in come to an end and casts part ways and all of that magical unity breaks down (which is part of the reason I love to do what I do). I am feeling somewhat similarly about the end of this season. I have come to know and love these shows and despite knowing that new and equally spectacular things are to come, the thought that I can no longer have a horrible day and go see Wild Oats and leave genuinely happier is somewhat sad to me.
I could, if I so desired, go to see Fair Maid of the West for what would be the fourth time, tomorrow afternoon, but it I do so there is no way I'll get my school work done. Somehow in the process of compartmentalization and self-justification, I forgot about the second paper I have due on Tuesday as well as the rehearsals and scenework I have in the next three days. I am kind of over this semester. I've learned a lot and now I want to move on to new things - namely, not writing papers. The more I realize the type of work I enjoy - reading, discussion, performance and all things that accompany it - the more I realize that I am not cut out for a life of academia. I just want things to happen. I have no patience. I want to work on one thing, constantly, and that is becomming a better artist. A lot of the things I am doing just feel like I am doing something for the sake of doing something.
Before this gets too angsty, things are happening. Maybe they'll be big things, and maybe they won't, but they are things that I want to do right now, and having something to look forward to is the best way to keep things going along happily. In three days, I'll be on a train home. I'll get to see my whole family and my friends and, of course, my dog. Then Christmas is sooner than soon. I have many things to look forward to in the upcoming semester and beyond and, as I say whatever kind of weird goodbye I have to say to this cluster of shows, I look forward to what is yet to come.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Near Death Experience and a Really Bad Week
I almost died this weekend.
People say things like that all the time. "I laughed so hard I almost died," "I was so embarrassed I could have just died," "Seriously, I was so scared I nearly died." But no, no. I really, genuinely almost died. And once something like this happens, one thinks twice about using any hyperbolic phrases involving death. Because it is just no joking matter.
My car has been giving me a lot of trouble. If you ask my father, this is a problem I am creating in order to vex him from 500 miles away. But in reality, the car is old and things are just starting to go. Lately, the battery has been dying at every possible inconvenient moment. On Friday, at 3 a.m. the car refused to start. As I've been doing, I asked a friend at the party I was coming from for a jump. However, in order for the cables to reach, the car had to be moved back slightly. So, I, in my infinite car knowledge, shifted it into neutral while standing by the driver side door. And the car started to roll. Fast. Backwards.
This was one of those instants where the human brain tries to have 30 different thoughts at one time. My first thought was that I had Herculean strength and could somehow stop the car from rolling with my own body power. Not so. My second thought was to push the emergency brake under the wheel. Fail. My third thought was to run backwards with the car while continuing to somehow try to stop it. MISTAKE. The open door caught me in the chest, my feet skidded out from under me, down I went and then my brain went, "OHHHH SHIT. THIS IS REALLY GONNA HURT."
I wondered if it was going to be like an elephant stepping on my head, or like the part in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' where Judge Doom gets nailed by the steam roller, or if maybe it would somehow just bounce over my sturdy, little frame. I held out little hope for the final option.
As I attempted to mentally prepare myself to be crushed by my own car, I heard my friend Elizabeth scream my name and felt myself being pulled by the collar out of the path of the careening motor vehicle. Apparently, my head was a safe distance of approximately 8-10 inches from the wheels - it was my legs that really stood (lol) in danger of being rolled over.
When all this was over, and my friend had somehow ninja jumped into the moving car and stopped it from crashing into a building, I started laughing. Really hard. This quickly devolved into me sobbing uncontrollably for about 45 minutes in, what I have been told, was the first panic attack of my life. Future reference, don't have one of those again.
My friend Steph took excellent care of my hysterical being that night and even restrained herself from laughing when I asked if the head of our graduate program would be sad if I was killed being run over by my car and when I proclaimed that I no longer wanted to study clown because I did not think I would ever stop crying. And nobody likes crying clowns. NOBODY.
I spent the following day shaky and sore in a state of, what I imagine is, shock. I am feeling marginally better three days later, but am still a little achey and distractable.
But the story ends not here. NO. Tonight, I took a small dinner break between a meeting and going to the library and my car died AGAIN in an Arby's parking lot on the side of a highway. After calling the tow truck, witnessing the tow-man put my car into neutral and roll it out of the spot (and experiencing Nam-esque flashbacks watching him do it), having the tow-man ask me if I wanted to come help him on his next job and then listening to his life story in the rain, dropping it at the dealership, and packing a bag to move into Steph's house until this is all resolved because I live far from campus (seriously folks, she's a SAINT) I am exhausted and have no desire to do the massive amount of work that I need to do right now for the week aheard.
So thanks car. Thanks universe. Thanks fates that be for conspiring against my sanity and productivity. THANKS. A LOT.
And now it is late and I just ate pizza with jalapeno peppers on it TOO QUICKLY and I feel like there is a 9 ton elephant sitting on my chest, farting out balls of fire and despair.
Work? Probably not happening for a little while.
People say things like that all the time. "I laughed so hard I almost died," "I was so embarrassed I could have just died," "Seriously, I was so scared I nearly died." But no, no. I really, genuinely almost died. And once something like this happens, one thinks twice about using any hyperbolic phrases involving death. Because it is just no joking matter.
This is how I feel about it.
My car has been giving me a lot of trouble. If you ask my father, this is a problem I am creating in order to vex him from 500 miles away. But in reality, the car is old and things are just starting to go. Lately, the battery has been dying at every possible inconvenient moment. On Friday, at 3 a.m. the car refused to start. As I've been doing, I asked a friend at the party I was coming from for a jump. However, in order for the cables to reach, the car had to be moved back slightly. So, I, in my infinite car knowledge, shifted it into neutral while standing by the driver side door. And the car started to roll. Fast. Backwards.
This was one of those instants where the human brain tries to have 30 different thoughts at one time. My first thought was that I had Herculean strength and could somehow stop the car from rolling with my own body power. Not so. My second thought was to push the emergency brake under the wheel. Fail. My third thought was to run backwards with the car while continuing to somehow try to stop it. MISTAKE. The open door caught me in the chest, my feet skidded out from under me, down I went and then my brain went, "OHHHH SHIT. THIS IS REALLY GONNA HURT."
I wondered if it was going to be like an elephant stepping on my head, or like the part in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' where Judge Doom gets nailed by the steam roller, or if maybe it would somehow just bounce over my sturdy, little frame. I held out little hope for the final option.
As I attempted to mentally prepare myself to be crushed by my own car, I heard my friend Elizabeth scream my name and felt myself being pulled by the collar out of the path of the careening motor vehicle. Apparently, my head was a safe distance of approximately 8-10 inches from the wheels - it was my legs that really stood (lol) in danger of being rolled over.
When all this was over, and my friend had somehow ninja jumped into the moving car and stopped it from crashing into a building, I started laughing. Really hard. This quickly devolved into me sobbing uncontrollably for about 45 minutes in, what I have been told, was the first panic attack of my life. Future reference, don't have one of those again.
My friend Steph took excellent care of my hysterical being that night and even restrained herself from laughing when I asked if the head of our graduate program would be sad if I was killed being run over by my car and when I proclaimed that I no longer wanted to study clown because I did not think I would ever stop crying. And nobody likes crying clowns. NOBODY.
I spent the following day shaky and sore in a state of, what I imagine is, shock. I am feeling marginally better three days later, but am still a little achey and distractable.
But the story ends not here. NO. Tonight, I took a small dinner break between a meeting and going to the library and my car died AGAIN in an Arby's parking lot on the side of a highway. After calling the tow truck, witnessing the tow-man put my car into neutral and roll it out of the spot (and experiencing Nam-esque flashbacks watching him do it), having the tow-man ask me if I wanted to come help him on his next job and then listening to his life story in the rain, dropping it at the dealership, and packing a bag to move into Steph's house until this is all resolved because I live far from campus (seriously folks, she's a SAINT) I am exhausted and have no desire to do the massive amount of work that I need to do right now for the week aheard.
So thanks car. Thanks universe. Thanks fates that be for conspiring against my sanity and productivity. THANKS. A LOT.
And now it is late and I just ate pizza with jalapeno peppers on it TOO QUICKLY and I feel like there is a 9 ton elephant sitting on my chest, farting out balls of fire and despair.
Work? Probably not happening for a little while.
Friday, November 5, 2010
A Day In The Life
I have an 8 a.m. rehearsal and a cold.
Regardless of these two things, I have decided to post a short account of a typical day in my life as a graduate student, since that was the original purpose of this little blog before I got derailed by chickens and cats (the animal, not the musical, though the musical has an important place in my story collection). Today was a pretty good day, and despite not having had class or having done any homework at all, I'll chronicle this one. Fasten your seatbelts.
9:00 a.m. - AWAKEN.
9:01 a.m. - fall back asleep.
10:30 a.m. - Awaken AGAIN fairly certain that if colds could cause death, death would be coming.
11:00 a.m. - Dragged myself out of bed like the most ill person on the planet and did typical morning type things crankily and with no lust for life.
12:00 p.m. - Large coffee.
12:30 p.m. - Clown workshop. Let's pause here and talk about a good time. I love clowning. It is something I desperately want to be good at and something I intend to put a lot of work into while I am here. The workshop was so fun and helpful and I am glad I went despite my sniffy sick buttfaced cold.
1:45 p.m. - Lunch. During our rather lengthy stint at the cafe, an elderly lady creepily stared me down through the window, a man face planted off his skateboard, and Afrophone was born.
3:00 p.m. - Made a very unnecessary grocery store trip. I needed pomegranates and some form of cold medicine. Otherwise, I was just there for moral support. Many items and a lot of dollars later, I now own a coffee maker, so I consider it all worthwhile.
4:30 p.m. - Began cooking dinner with a good deal of help since apparently I have no idea how to cook ground meat. Seasoning it is scary because it becomes this gigantic meatball-esque mound and who knows if it is going to STAY in giant meatball form once heat is applied? I certainly didn't. Then, how do you know when it is cooked? It's too difficult for me to handle. I had company. I didn't want to salmonella anybody. In the end, spaghetti and meat sauce was a success, though I ate mostly pomegranate, since that is all I ever eat anymore.
7:00 p.m. - Attended Fair Maid of the West. Man, that show gets funnier ever time I see it.
9:45 p.m. - DRANKS.
11:00 p.m. - Visited my favorite pug on the planet (and friends).
12:30 a.m. - Homestead. Still sick, but much happier.
1:34 a.m. - Posted a blog on my fascinating day.
Enjoy.
Regardless of these two things, I have decided to post a short account of a typical day in my life as a graduate student, since that was the original purpose of this little blog before I got derailed by chickens and cats (the animal, not the musical, though the musical has an important place in my story collection). Today was a pretty good day, and despite not having had class or having done any homework at all, I'll chronicle this one. Fasten your seatbelts.
9:00 a.m. - AWAKEN.
9:01 a.m. - fall back asleep.
10:30 a.m. - Awaken AGAIN fairly certain that if colds could cause death, death would be coming.
11:00 a.m. - Dragged myself out of bed like the most ill person on the planet and did typical morning type things crankily and with no lust for life.
12:00 p.m. - Large coffee.
12:30 p.m. - Clown workshop. Let's pause here and talk about a good time. I love clowning. It is something I desperately want to be good at and something I intend to put a lot of work into while I am here. The workshop was so fun and helpful and I am glad I went despite my sniffy sick buttfaced cold.
1:45 p.m. - Lunch. During our rather lengthy stint at the cafe, an elderly lady creepily stared me down through the window, a man face planted off his skateboard, and Afrophone was born.
3:00 p.m. - Made a very unnecessary grocery store trip. I needed pomegranates and some form of cold medicine. Otherwise, I was just there for moral support. Many items and a lot of dollars later, I now own a coffee maker, so I consider it all worthwhile.
4:30 p.m. - Began cooking dinner with a good deal of help since apparently I have no idea how to cook ground meat. Seasoning it is scary because it becomes this gigantic meatball-esque mound and who knows if it is going to STAY in giant meatball form once heat is applied? I certainly didn't. Then, how do you know when it is cooked? It's too difficult for me to handle. I had company. I didn't want to salmonella anybody. In the end, spaghetti and meat sauce was a success, though I ate mostly pomegranate, since that is all I ever eat anymore.
7:00 p.m. - Attended Fair Maid of the West. Man, that show gets funnier ever time I see it.
9:45 p.m. - DRANKS.
11:00 p.m. - Visited my favorite pug on the planet (and friends).
12:30 a.m. - Homestead. Still sick, but much happier.
1:34 a.m. - Posted a blog on my fascinating day.
Enjoy.
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