Sunshine Melody

This I learned from Italy:

Sunny Sunday. Comfortable t-shrit. Old jeans with the holes at the knees. Stop at the store: two apples, a croissant, hunk of gouda, some gypsy brand salami, and a bar of chocolate (Veritas Chocolatier's espresso & milk chocolate fittingly).
Grab a knife. Grab a drink.
Grab two scripts off my desk -- one rehearsing at the theatre; one I'm revising for a commission -- and head to the lake.

Nothing but sun and our sea of a lake. A few couples walk their dogs. Some fishermen. A guy who shows up when I do with his guitar. Same mission; different weapons.

But the sun cannot cut the cold, and I last 30 minutes before the chills impede my turning of the pages.

When does this damn city warm up!

I mean, honestly.

Back to the apartment and two sleeping cats surprised I'm back so soon. Open the blinds. Let in the sun.

A picnic on my coffee table.

We can never know what the future would have been.

The Words

Maybe it is because of my new job that I found myself in the script aisle at Borders. I did not go there to buy scripts; with the potential impending move -- still not completely finalized because of a scholarship complicating matters that my homework-crazed ladyfriend is too busy to wade through -- buying scripts that will just add to the weight of boxes that not nine months ago made the walk from the moving truck to our apartment door unbearable...it seems counterintuitive. I went to buy Juno and the new Ludo CD. Which I bought. Along with August: Osage County (which I have since read; a wonderful amalgamation of Buried Child, King Lear, and some other flavor that I just can't define...a sprinkle of Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf maybe?...or maybe it's just Letts himself...maybe great playwrights are like prime numbers) and Three Days of Rain (which I mayhaps will read after I cook some dinner).

But my new job is...well...a departure from what I know about theatre. In fact, in my first 4 days on the job, it has had very little to do with theatre other than it is on the fourth floor of a building that houses two theatres in a cubicle surrounded by people who are in someway responsible for the general functioning of those theatres. That is not to say it's a bad job: as Interim Education Coordinator -- filling a position on short notice and no training when it was left vacant by its former occupant -- I will be dealing with students and teachers (which I have done before and miss) and seeing to the theatre's interns (which also reminds me of my teaching days when fresh-eyed freshman would ask my advice on what to do with their lives as if I had lived any myself at the ripe old age of 25). But it is not what I signed up for; not in the long run.

But, I signed up for it for the next few weeks. Which is why I wake up in the middle of the night fretting over transforming revised Word documents into PDFs and sifting through the applications for the next Education Intern -- "I trust you" says the boss -- when I have only been in the Education department for 4 days and have little idea what makes for an exceptional Education Intern and am wondering if I, in good conscience, can sign someone up for multiple months of free labor in an environment that does not value their interns as students to the extent to which they like to pride themselves or to the extent, I think, they probably should considering the free labor aspect of the deal...

August: Osage County works because it is big, but not out of control. It has thirteen characters and requires a whole house of a set, but by dividing the set into a dollhouse of segmented rooms and by allowing storylines to fade out of focus for periods of time, Letts is able to build a larger story out of smaller components. It's like the backside of Big Ben -- which is actually the bell not the clock but oh well: the world sees a big time piece clicking through the days effortlessly; but inside the Clock Tower hide lesser cogs and gears working in perfect collaboration. I am not saying the play appears effortless, nor would I argue that it is perfect. But it is certainly worth celebrating...

I would rather be talking scripts that study guides.

But it has been only four days. By the end of next week I will know how to comfortably convert files into other files. I will learn how to use TypePad. I will know how to work Tessitura. I will have met the teachers. I will have interviewed applicants. I will have asked my boss for a $30 expense fee per intern to give them an opportunity to take someone in the business out for lunch so that they can understand a little better how the theatre world of Chicago works. This time next week I will understand my new job, and I will be comfortable with it.

And I will be back on the couch, reading another play, wishing I was dealing again with the words.

Psychiatry is our new mythology,
In which we are all our
Gods and Monsters.

Goodbye Bountiful. Goodbye.

Lois and Hallie hold their stare a little longer tonight. The audience probably doesn't notice, but this isn't their third time seeing Trip to Bountiful in as many days. The staredown itself is a rather new, rather lovely, invention. It is a moment of reconciliation. It is a careful negotiation of power. Mrs. Watts offers her daughter-in-law the pension check -- the object of much consternation; her daughter-in-law takes it only to hand it back to her.

Oh here, you hold the check; but don't go and lose it before we get back home.

Sometime last week (or maybe it was only Friday?), Lois began teasing Hallie with the check in this moment. Ever so slightly. Almost lovingly. Maybe lovingly. Since the success of that experiment, it has tempered slightly but the stare remained. And today -- closing -- Hallie held it. A second maybe two. Not wanting to let go. Not wanting this amazing run of an amazing show to be over. You would only notice it if you had seen the show about ten times. Or maybe you had to be in the van on the ride from the rental apartment to the theatre when Hallie laments the show's end and becomes -- some suggest uncharacteristically, but I don't know her well enough -- sentimental.

I found myself getting uncharacteristically sentimental during this afternoon's performance of a show I'd seen twice already this weekend and close to a dozen times over the course of its run. Every moment was final. I would not hear these words I had come to memorize any time soon. All the old heartaches that broke during the opening resurface: when Meghan talks about Robert (I guess any name he had I think was nice), when Devon acknowledges that he thinks his life is a failure, when Lois says goodbye to her house. These aren't characters anymore. They're friends. And then it is over. Lois gives a quick hug and is in a car to the airport, where she will catch a flight to LA, where she will be picked up by another car and driven to some HBO set. The crew immediately begins taking things down. We go to a brief closing party, and then it is goodbyes.

And earlier today I started moving in to my new desk in the Education Department for a 10 week stint as Education & Outreach Coordinator. I am the cheerful nomad of the Goodman's 4th floor.

I'm in the hallway outside Horton's apartment, walking with him to the elevator. He has more spring in his step than when he arrived in February; Hallie found him a damn fine yoga instructor. He forgets his cane, not because he turned 92 in March, but because he doesn't use his cane in the apartment anymore. I joke with Frank's 5 year old daughter that I'm aging backwards, but with Horton it might actually be true.

We're on the way to the theatre for one last show. He begins to get nostalgic, sad that his gem of a play will soon be over.

I say to him, all things must end, with a pleasant smile.

So they say, he replies with an equally pleasant smile.

So they say.

in the air

Today was one of those raw days, or at least it started out as one. It started out like that mosquito net that normally surrounds you, that normally dulls the world ever so slightly (not necessarily in a malevolent way, but as the softest subtlest defense mechanism that comes standard on all models), had been lifted. I woke up to a song on NPR (it must be Sunday) that was sung by Nina Simone three days following MLK's assassination: Why. "A song written for today, for this hour."

Folks you better stop and think Because we're heading for the brink. What will happen now that he is dead.

So I guess this vulnerability to the worlds psychic waves was understandable. Maybe I should start waking up to music rather than to the news. Maybe it will make me less...analytical?

Also, it was beautiful outside. One of the first days that one could reasonably call Springlike. I now subscribe to the folklore surrounding Chicago winters...it is not so much that they are cold (thought they can be), but that they are interminable. And some days the cold feels downright English: wet and invasive, like a fog of ghosts walking around the city sticking their ethereal hands into your chest just for ghoulish shits and giggles. Dead jerks.

But today was blissfully sunny. Rachel is in San Francisco looking at CCA where she got accepted to the Graphic Design MFA program...it is sunnier more often there...and their winters are considerably shorter...it is an enticing proposition indeed. Old friends from St. Louis are picking up and moving to Portland. They are encouraging in more ways than one. They have a successful business making and selling stunning artwork online (that's their work above). They are the heroes of Etsy.com, an online market place of craft. They're actually where I got the idea for darkknightdramaturgy. The internet is not going away, and we are the generation to assimilate this tool into society (or adapt society to incorporate this tool).

I am reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert on orders from a friend. This too might have contributed to the rawness. I didn't think I would like it: I imagined it to be much too self-helpy. But it is surprisingly delightful. Well maybe the delightfulness is not surprising. Gilbert is like a less academically-grounded Joan Didion: where Didion relies on structurally mesmerizing tangents and allusions (brilliantly), Gilbert prefers metaphors and other figurative tricks. It is easy, and enjoyable. I guess the surprise is that it is intriguing. Even inspiring.

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.

It was one of those days when you could see cleverness floating just above your head, waiting for you to pluck it. Everything was in sharper focus. Clarity. It would have been a good day to write, but I didn't have the time unfortunately.

So I simply enjoyed the rush.