rushed

I feel the decaffinated starbucks surging through my veins like a bobsledder on acid. That is how desperate I am for time: coffee at 8pm on a work night. I will fall asleep maybe around 3 if at all. Decaffinated starbucks is, for a tea drinker, like plugging your heart to a car battery.

But I need the time. A project that was proposed a month ago was reproposed three days ago as a larger project with a sooner deadline...namely the same deadline as the other commission I have been working on. Namely this sunday. 45 to 60 minute play in 6 days. Go!

And quickly it becomes clear that plays are like children. And you don't want to have a favorite, but you kind of do...or maybe it is just that the younger one has so much promise and possibility and needs more nurturing and love and is just, frankly, a whole lot cuter than the older grungier child with her problems and hidden tatoos that you don't even want to think about. She won't change and she doesn't care what you think because she is her own independent preteen. So getting her to put on a dress to go to the theatre: an exercise in manipulation, coddling, and bribery.

I have this shirt that barely has any thread left; fits like cobweb. It was my dad's old Wilson baseball tee. She finally got me to stop wearing it because it really wasn't a shirt anymore. But it took her like three years. And I only have three days to make my preteen play presentable.

Passing Go

It is difficult to start again. Like picking up in the middle of a conversation you left off a month ago. Or like writing a letter to that friend you said you were going to call last November and even worked out which day that week you would have time to sit down and actually talk for an hour or so. But you never called. And now you think about what you would say if you did call; you think about this about once a week; the hole of silence becomes deeper and harder to climb out of. You want to say something to make up for the lost time. Make the wait worth it. You want to catch them up on the last 8 months (jesus have I been in Chicago that long; three seasons?; I watched my first Cubs game today [or at least part of it: the exciting part as it were when they were tied and then they weren't and then they were tied again -- I turned it off before they lost]; that was weird) but you don't know where to even start because the person they knew made way for this new person that you are.

I've lost many a friend this way.

Rachel may be moving us to San Francisco, and that impending possibility and the fact that I actually have a full-time job for the time being (I'm not at risk of not paying rent) is driving me into treading-water-mode. Don't pursue any new projects because you don't know how long you can commit or if you are going to need to get a better paying job to afford the move; don't pursue any new friendships because you don't know how long you can commit or if you are going to have to break them off as soon as you've started them: nobody needs another long-distance burden; start evaluating; start prioritizing; start distancing.

It is a shitty way.

Primary Lament

Damn. Reading Bellwether State Fervently Seeks Choice Who Can Win in the Fall in today's New York Times makes me disappointed in myself for my political laziness. I am still registered to vote in the great state of Missouri (the Libra of the US). Which would be great if I didn't live in Chicago. Or if I had gotten my shit together to vote absentee on Tuesday. As it happened, I procrastinated by watching clips about the debates, reading articles about the rise of McCain (yay!) and the demonization of teary-eyed Hilary, and following who won what states and trying to figure out how the point system works. And I never registered in Illinois. And I never called in to get a Missouri ballot sent to my Illinois apartment.

I honestly believe in this Presidential election, which I could not say about the last election because I didn't believe in Kerry because I didn't believe Kerry and I only voted for Kerry because Bush is, well...Bush is, how do I put this...Bush embodies the worst of politics: secretive, obstinate, inarticulate, closed-minded...we could continue because we all have continued and by this point we are all preaching to the choir because the choir is overflowing the church.

But the world is watching this election as we here in the states are (maybe even closer than some here in the states are). They see it as a reflection of what we value and what relationships we want to foster with Europe and the Middle East and China and Russia. The next president could bring the world together even before yo (apparently the new genderless pronoun?) takes office because of the message we will send by electing yo. By electing Obama or Clinton, we will announce to the world, We agree with you: Bush fucked it.

Damn. I should go home to vote. Because: Bush fucked it. I could catch the megabus. $20 down. $20 back. 10 hours on a bus. Lose time on rewriting that commission. Miss rehearsal. Miss rehearsal again, I should say, since I am going to the opening of Talking Pictures on Monday. I guess I could skip the opening.

God that's a lot of work though! But I guess not as much work as the Revolutionary War.

Damn.

Looking at the bookshelf behind me, I realize that I still haven't read The Decameron and realize that I still want to.

This is what blogs are good for! I told Jess at dinner that I had not had coffee for 3 weeks when, in fact, it has been (let's see Dec. 31 minus Dec. 6, plus the Jan. 3, divide by 7 days) 4 weeks. In other words a whopping month!

This victory would be sweeter if I had not made concessions: on a tip from my mom I have had a few cups of decaf (but NOT Starbucks decaf because that's not really decaf) and on a tip from Rachel's mom I have recently started drinking tea on a regular basis. And I don't avoid chocolate. HELL no.

But by most accounts I am succeeding. My sister decided in 5th grade that she would never utter a curse word and to my knowledge she never has. And she's 22 now. (We share the stubborn chromosome.) But if I don't use her as a bar, I'm doing pretty well.

I'm procrastinating (another thing blogs are good perhaps). Or maybe I am warming up before getting to work on one of many potential projects I could tackle this evening. Or maybe I am cooling down after a long day of research at the Goodman. I am nearing an end of my internship which is a shame because I believe in the Goodman (and Unitarian's don't throw the phrase "I believe in" around on a whim) and in what they are trying to do and what they are planning to do. It would be lovely if they had room in their budget for me but they don't so oh well. Time to pack the saddlebags and make sure Ol' Rusty is properly shoed.

***

When you have a lot in front of you to do those things you have to do commiserate and decide amongst themselves that what they want to do is build a wall out of themselves so that when you try to focus on any one of them you cannot help but see the whole wall. And it is easy to step over a stone, but much more difficult to climb a wall. Different muscles. Thus sending your Grandmother's Christmas present is interwoven with writing a recommendation for an old student which is interwoven with researching Veteran Legions in 1962 Canada.

And so the metaphor of wall building and the metaphor of weaving are mixed at last.
We all knew it was only a matter of time.

clownaround

i think this is how Iago felt
justified

tossing things
from
a
ten-story window
hoping to hit

and hurt

i think of the blonde alto
and how
one smothers

but
smothered pride
reminiscing wasted time
concocts plots

then
sits
in a corner
wearing the dunce cap

(brewing)

moral: never trust men in corners
you don't know where they've been

Writing

I owe Jess a play. TOWER was way too dark, and it did not follow the parameters we set for it. That's fine. I'm happy with it, as uncomfortable as it makes me. And I am just as happy to try again.

But I critiqued a friend's paper tonight. A paper she is applying to grad school with.

I like critiquing papers. I do. I like seeing how a paper is trying to work and figuring out how it can work better. Academic writing is intriguing because it is a balancing act: how to juggle in-depth pertinent information without being stale and boring but also without being inappropriate and colloquial. How do you engage with secondary sources without sacrificing your own authority and voice? How can you be creative with it? Wonderful challenges. Fun challenges.

But it takes so fucking long to do a thorough critique of a paper. Not merely commenting on aesthetics, but getting dirty with it. I'm not sure I can write a play tonight because I just spent 2+ hours in a coffee shop reliving the glory days of teaching.

I don't know if she wanted as in-depth a critique as I am giving her. I'm not really sure what she expected when she dropped the papers on my desk. I warned her I wasn't nice and that I don't pussyfoot around. Many of my teachers pussyfooted around, and I never got any better. Not until my friend Nancy tore it all to shreds.

I solicited Nancy to be my adviser on a fellowship project exploring Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. She was one of two people on campus qualified to deal with Middle English poetry. "What do you want from me?" she asked when we first met. I wanted to say "I can sleepwalk my way into an A- just by turning a clever phrase, but I don't know how to write" but I didn't know her as well as I do now.

So I edited: "I have been getting A minuses for three years of college with no explanation of why it wasn't a B and why it wasn't an A. I want someone to be straight with me and tell me when I'm not writing well instead of pushing me through with a grade I won't complain about." Her eyes smiled. She was not teaching at this point because she had turned to the dark side of academia: administration (which she reluctantly started to enjoy). And Nancy loved the harsh and honest critique of papers as much as I do now. Because that's how you get better.

"No pain no gain," the beautiful deaf soccer player in high school would yell as he whizzed by us during one of our morning Brazilians.

I just wish I was faster at it. I barely wrote when I taught because I was always grading papers, and when I wasn't the last thing I wanted to do was think about words. Is that a balance I can teach myself, or is it physiologically impossible to push the brain that hard without illegal and dangerous stimulants that burn bright and quick?

Maybe I should be asking myself whether I should edit the end-comments for the paper I just critiqued. Like I said, I'm not nice. And, like I said, I don't know what she expected or how long she has to revise before applications are due or if she was even intending to revise or if she just wanted me to circle sentence fragments and the spaces where missing words should live. I hope I don't lose a friend over this. That would suck.

exploding lightbulbs

Eventually you probably get over the hump and stop writing about thinking and stop writing about writing and just write. I'm troubled that the most appropriate lines that come to mind are from The Matrix when Morpheus instructs Neo how to fight -- Stop trying to hit me and hit me -- and Star Wars when Yoda instructs Luke -- Do or do not. There is no try -- but I guess movie references are the allusions of our generation and there is no need for embarrassment.

I had ideas today. I have been having ideas all week. Ideas are problematic. At least mine are because my ideas always seem fun and lovely and economically impractical. Not impractical. They don't cost much; they just don't make anything. I'm not bad with money; I'm just not good at making it.

Like on the bus downtown two days ago (was it?). I'm on the 134, that lovely (word of the hour) little express that skips over half the commute and transits along the lake. The lake is beautiful and I am looking right at it but I'm not: it's earlyish and my mind hasn't yet popped into second gear. I don't know what I am thinking about, but not about the lake. And I think about not thinking about the lake and think about how anybody looking at me would say I am looking at and thinking about the lake (these are how the conversations in my head usually unfold) and to these theoretical voyeurs I would cleverly reply: what you look at doesn't matter; but how you look at it...

or something like that. It felt like a deep philosophical thought at the time. I was proud of it. It gave me hope. But I didn't write it down, and minutes later when my mind had moved through about seventeen different topics I was saddened to learn I had forgotten that thought that had filled me with a certain amount of creative glee. The 134 was turning off of Lakeshore and onto Wacker and I tried to convince myself that it was enough that I had thought the thought at all: that simply thinking it was evidence that my mind still had "it" and that "it" would come again when I needed "it" to.

I don't remember when I remembered (if hermeneutics is the study of interpretation, what is the memory of remembering called?). It might have been the same day that I decided I wanted to open my own literary agency for midwestern playwrights (and dramaturgs; and directors). Another idea! That would have put it at about a week after the dramaturgy blog. Another idea! Oh, and I have plans for a new works program for New Leaf if I am asked to move into the position of literary manager...

The job hunt goes poorly because I am stubborn and full of ideas and the Medici are all dead and even when they weren't they lived in Italy...

I just laid on the couch for the last hour listening to This American Life. The one radio show that I don't mind when it plays a repeat. What a great idea...

glimpsed memories

I started work on two shows today with two different companies that open the same week in March.

A long time in high school -- which it is safe to say was a long time ago because a) I just turned 26 (jesus) and b) I have very few actual memories of high school; I do have echoes of memories that have been distorted and colored from bouncing off the walls of my brain for the better part of a decade (jesus), but all specificity of those years has been bumped by more recent memories and more recent relationships; I once had a girlfriend who told me that people fill momentary moments in other people's lives, and once they are gone let them go. I guess I remember that. -- I used to do too many things.

I don't remember why.

I played drums in a garage band with my closest friends, but I never practiced -- to their chagrin -- because I was busied by Spring Musical rehearsals when I wasn't at practice for soccer (first waterpolo: those pictures have thankfully been burned), or tennis. I think at various times I was associated with various other associations: the art club (I think I was VP? Maybe? I don't think we did anything.), the environmental club (I think I joined for the babes? I don't think we did anything), that one club that met in the morning before school (I have no idea what that was or what we did), NHS (we didn't do anything), and yearbook (which wasn't a club, but a class, but we still had to do stuff after school...didn't we...).

They were social gatherings that had names that reflected well on college applications. If you are going to hang out with your friends anyway, call it a club (was I in chess club too? did we have a chess club? maybe it was math league...but only for that one competition because they needed a substitute...) I think I genuinely enjoyed most of them...some of them.

In college I slowed down. Didn't I? Wow: it's already getting blurry. Scents and senses. Shapes and feelings. I can hear Andy's voice but not what he's saying. I can tell you the configuration of my Freshman dorm room but not what Freshman year was like. Good, right? Art classes. Shopping carts. Andy. Mike. Kim. My first martini. Acting I. The Spring Musical. Jami Ake's Shakespeare class. Sophomore year: Andy. McNiell driving to crack church in his gas guzzler. 9/11. Stacking our furniture to have stadium seating in our common room. Dauten. Jacob. All Student Theatre. Medal of Honor. Blueberry Hill. Junior Year. Andy. McNiell painting his room in our apartment blood red. Jon the Mormon. My closet sunroom of a room. School work. Never having time for Andy. No cell phone: talked to Rachel long distance from land lines and free phones at school. Woodcarving. England. Amy. England. Five weeks around Italy and France and Spain. Alone and lonely. The 40 year old Californian lesbian from Ireland who told me I had an old soul in Barcelona (what is the Spanish word for old soul?) Angel. Ginny. Chaucer. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Sussex library. That one friend I made...what was his name...from Emory...what was his name...Amsterdam. Senior year. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Carter. Playwriting. Jon. Ginny. Andy. Julia. Stephanie until Travis came back (bastard). Cruddy cheap off-campus housing. Playwriting. Blueberry Hill. Andy knocking on my window to get me to hang out, me ignoring him because I had work to do. A thesis to finish.

It comes in a rush, and I see so many holes that were filled with school work rather than friends. Studying rather than conversations. At the graduation party, Andy's folks came up to me and said I was a good influence on their son, getting him to focus more on his school work.

My papers were good, and I remember none of them. All my time in the library blends together into one peaceful memory. But that night when we taped Mike to a chair and pushed him to Schnucks in a shopping cart where we were stopped by a rent-a-cop ("not a cop; hate cops")...the night in Steph and Julia's apartment watching 24 (one of the decent seasons) when I told Pedro his girlfriend was incredibly attractive moments before she walked in the door behind him...walking through the gated neighborhood with Andy and getting told we were not allowed to be walking through the gated neighborhood...

You call old friends to catch up, but it's never like it was and every conversation reminds you of that. Every conversation is an exercise in interactive nostalgia. Once they are gone let them go.

This was an entry about beginnings and it turned into an entry about loss. My apologies. I started work on two shows today with two different companies that open the same week in March. New projects. New associates. New friends.

But I miss you guys. For the first time, I wish I wasn't allergic to cameras.

I want to say his name was Doug. The guy from Emory. He wanted to be a writer.

Quick Sand Glass Houses

There is dust in my pocket watch. Maybe it is sand: sand from glass rubbing up against the metal frame...oh wait. Sand doesn't come from glass.

I am sitting at auditions for The Boys are Coming Home. More accurately: I am sitting outside the hallway outside the auditions for The Boys are Coming Home checking in eager actors awaiting an open call. It is a lot like hosting back at Blueberry Hill except the patrons are nicer. They have to be nicer. They don't know if I am taking notes. I am of course, not that anyone can read them:


An actress asks me about the call-back procedure. Another asks me which accompanist is in which audition room. Another asks me, "what are they looking for." Eventually I explain, I'm the literary intern. I spend most of my days reading scripts. I have no idea. I'm here because they needed bodies. I do not detail how I will spend the remainder of my day completely reorganizing the Goodman's library. Logging in a series of plays from the '50s, none of which I have heard of (save Auntie Mame). Questioning the need for our Encyclopedia set in light of that merry little innovation, the Internet. Lamenting the boxes full of random photos from random productions and wondering what the hell to do with them.

I went biking in the rain yesterday. Not wise considering I was fighting off some bug; I am fighting off that bug a little harder today. Low-grade fever. Head full of fuzz. No fun. I hate being sick. Usually I can wrap my mind around it; come to terms with it on an intellectual level; level with it; see it eye to enzyme. But for some reason this one is blocking me. It won't let me in, and so it persists.

There is thunder outside? Fireworks? Sounds kind of like a soft bombing of a not-so-far-away city, but that is probably because I can barely hear it over the Journey that is coming from Rachel's computer. I wonder if that kind of war will ever come here. Liz brought her Venezuelan friend to our taco & tequila party Friday night. Conversations turned politely political. She explained how Venezuelans take an interest in their neighbors -- ten points if you can name one of them -- and their leaders. "Do you know who the Prime Minister of Canada is?" she asks. "Mexico's President?"

I know it was Fox...

All this information at our fingertips...the problem with being always connected, what do you connect to?...I bookmark Canada's globeandmail online newspaper and Mexico Daily...

Do you think the Internet will ever get full? Or will we simply get sick of information piling on top of information piling on top of information...

SIR G
A long time ago, God told me when I was going to die.

LADY B
Is it today?

SIR G
I don't remember.

Beat

LADY B
That seems like the kind of thing one would write down.

The resurrection of the ghost of the noble Sir Gawain

Three years ago, I convinced myself that there was a dramatic structure that could house Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Seeing The Mikado in June made me realize that the poem is about the desperation to live; seeing Passion last night made me realize that it revolves around the bedroom and unrequited love and rejected advances. And now, three years later, with absolutely no time, I know what it will look like.

Sir Gawain seems to awake in a lavish lonely room.

Everynight
The same dream.
Everynight.
The slightest of changes
to the smallest of details.

A Christmas festival.
A night of merrymaking,
interrupted.

A giant
all green:
a green knight
enters on a great
green
steed
and presents my king a challenge.

A beheading game.
A Christmas game:
hit for hit
blow for blow
wound for wound.
Head for blessed head.

My king.
Our court.
My sacrifice.
I will keep my words plain
I ask for this battle to be mine.
What is the life of a knight
next to that of a king?

The ax is heavy --
steel and gold.
Lopping off the knight's green head
is easily done.

All done, I think.
The dark deed's done.
The mad dog's down.
And even now
in my dreams
I sigh.

But his green blood
Stains my clothes.
It stains the stones
and the tapestries.

It stains memory.

And then that thunderous laugh.
The deepest laugh of the oldest tree
buried beneath the greenest moss
hidden in the darkest corner
of Britain's most unholy forest.