See you, space cowboy

I was reprimanded by my buddy Marisa through a comment on the last post. It lovingly reads, "I wish you blogged more, punk." That was 11 days ago, but I am only getting it right now because, as she points out, I have not been keeping up with this blog. My last post on Old Man Ira was a little over a month ago.

But I have been blogging. I have actually been more rigorous in my posts than ever before. But not here. Old Man Ira, I am afraid, was something of a starter blog.

So, if you are still periodically looking to this blog for my wheres and whats, then you should definitely check out http://darkknightdramaturgy.wordpress.com/ as it has been where I've been writing since September 8.

And sorry, Marisa, for not sending out a memo!

Punk.

me and my red pen

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-Winston Churchill

At the age of 26, after having finished six years of university, after having written a thesis and gotten some minor things published, and after having taught Writing 1 for four semesters, I am taking my first non-fiction writing course since AP English, senior year of high school.

Okay, it's not a writing course: it's a copyediting course. And work is paying for it. But still.

I am writing this entry because I am avoiding doing my homework. HOMEWORK! My current assignment is to read Chapter 14 from The Copyeditor's Handbook, "Grammar: Principles and Pitfalls." It's not bad actually; I wish I had known about it so I could have assigned it.

Having never taken a writing course (other than playwriting), I am learning a lot of little things, and, yes, as a writer I really do geek out over them. This whole concept of notional agreement (which formally disregards formal agreement by relying on the meaning of what is being said rather that the words being used) BLOWS MY MIND.

Rachel is sitting next to me, working on a real writing assignment. She is struggling to get started, and asks for advice. I read over the prompt: basic, beginning of the semester, let's see how loose I can get them to go (is this phrase a subjunctive?!), assignment. Write about anything from the perspective of anyone but yourself in a detail-oriented style. I turn off the student inside me (careful, you sick bastards) and turn on the teacher and go to work, with 5 pages left in Chapter 14: the preposition section.

"The more pressing issue for copyeditors is to ensure that the author has selected the correct preposition."

Soon I get to do a worksheet!

in appreciation of articulation

The human body evolved over eons into an intricate machine whose expected fuel is fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, meat, and, since the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago, a modicum of wheat, corn, and rice. Food was abundant only seasonally, while migration or at least nomadism was a way of life. In the epochs before domesticated meat sources, those centuries of hunting wild prey with spears and traps, the body's metabolism adapted to store any caloric surplus in the form of fat--which could be broken down during subsequent starving times into fuel again.

That plan remains the evolutionary strategy of all the human bodies now making their way though our entirely different contemporary world. Reduce the greens in that body's intake, add dairy and processed carbohydrates, make meat a daily part of the diet, shovel in sugar and oils, provide a steady supply for the appetite, and on top of all this turn the hunter-gatherer into a mostly sedentary being, and the result is both unfortunate and predictable. The machine stores fat to its own detriment, while the body's strategy for nomadic survival becomes a fatal anachronism. Evolution did not anticipate nine to five. Evolution has no reply to TV.

From Stephen P. Kiernan's Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System (which I am reading as part of my research for Jane Anderson's Quality of Life, in which we explore the topic of Right to Die)

off the job training

I did not know this morning that tomorrow I would be a student again, but today I found myself registering for UC Berkeley's Extension course down the street from where I work at A.C.T. in the heart of San Francisco. Tomorrow at 6:30 p.m., I will be sitting in a computer room learning the finer points of copyediting. And, yes, I am excited.

I have actually really been wanting to learn Spanish so I don't have to read Hispanic / Latino / Mexican / etc. plays in translation. I searched Craigslist for a used Rosetta Stone (Tangent: This was before Mr. Phelps started promoting Rosetta Stone with that stupid "I like to do everything fast" commercial. If the pool at the 1972 Olympic games had been as deep as the pool in China's Cube, and if the swimmers wore the same Speedo LZR Racer suit that they wore this summer, Mark Spitz would still not have been able to win eight medals because there weren't eight medals to be won), but all of the deals sounded sketchy--the kind of sketchy that means that either a) the program wouldn't work properly or b) I would be caught up in some FBI sting operation targeting this guy named Sam:

I have been in the business of selling these for 3 years now. I am aware
that others on craigslist is selling stuff for cheaper but in all
honesty, I can bet those are not authentic. I can sell burned stuff for
even $50 and make more then what I make on authentic stuff but I care
for my customers and don't want them to get in trouble!

You have to be very carefull with
non authentic rosetta products as there is a license as a copied one
will work anywhere from 3 days to 6 months as rosetta will then see a
duplicate of the license being used and will blur it as the disk will
then read as disk error and there is a good chance rosetta will issue
you a $1000US fine as I can give you contacts of people who have got
these fines.. the sellers of copied rosetta don't care for the buyers
as they are trying to make a quick buck! If you have any problems with
my rosetta products I promise to give even 10 times your money back!

Please let me know
thanks kindly
Sam

So I didn't buy from Sam. I learned that you can access some verion of Rosetta Stone through the library here, but it won't work on my computer yet. All this is to say that I am in no way opposed to becoming a student again, even a student of Chicago Manuel editing rules.

musings of a sore throat in september

It is an ugly day. San Francisco, realizing it should be autumn now, has covered itself with a wet blanket of fog that, unlike its frequent fog, has lasted throughout the day. I think it too is moody that it doesn't really get autumny here. My boss took last week off, finally having someone she could trust with the office (me!), only to get slightly sick with a soar throat. We both joked (when we spoke the one time I called her so that she could explain to me what a House Board is and what my role should be in acquiring the information for said House Board) that it was just her immune system's way of saying, Yeah, well if you can take a break so can I; I've been holding this ship together with chewing gum and paper clips for two years while you went full speed. So screw you, I'm going to Vegas.

But now I too have a soar throat, meaning that it was not just a psychological-turned-physiological phenomenon. And we are out of juice. And it is an ugly day.

I dropped a commission last Thursday. Horrible, isn't it? Someone is actually willing to pay me to write a play, and I tell them to go screw. Criminal. But they didn't meet my terms (my terms begin that I, not they, would own the end product). And I could have probably negotiated, but they were only giving me a month to write the thing, and, honestly, I was sick of dealing with it. Too much going on here.

Stage direction: As he writes this last bit about the commission, a bright pink post-it should slowly fall from the notes from the project in questoin, notes he has tucked between two magazing holders. The post-it should fall like a spray painted leaf, and when it lands the words, "Luis = Warrior" and "Nesto = Serious", should be visible to remind him that he had put some thought into it. He will be left with the question, Should I throw this note away just like I threw the commission away? Or should I save it as a reminder? Should I save it for some future play when I need two brothers, one who is fighting for change and one who is too serious about his future to disrupt the status quo.

I dropped the commission and then preceded to waste my weekend. I have never been good with spare time. Rachel says I need to learn how to relax. I tried to relax by watching Arrested Development on Hulu, and then moseying through episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very different shows, both good and bad for very different reasons. I kept trying to tell myself that I was relaxing, but I kept retorting, you aren't relaxing, you twit, you're wasting time.

Time I should spend doing what exactly, I ask.

To which I scoff, Time you should be figuring out how you are going to spend your time.

You twit.

this message will inevitably self destruct at some point in the future whether you read it or not

I am a reluctant nihilist. I do not embrace this. I do not rejoice in my nihilism (though maybe I do wear it around my neck like a pet albatross), and that I look to the distant future and see nothing but void does not give me a sense of liberty or freedom. The literally inconceivable absence of myself forces me to turn to other options: the breathing of the cat passed out around my feet; a thought on a script I read earlier that day; memories; the near future. Anything. Even writing about it is not thinking about it. Writing about it does not create the panic because I am choosing words. I am carefully crafting sentences to convey a meaning so that I can avoid feeling what is behind that meaning.

Life is a defense mechanism.

I have had many MANY a conversation with the faithful about my envy of their security. Do not mock it, their devotion to a higher power: how can you accuse them of being illogical when they live their lives in comfort and promise? I think missionaries would find me endlessly frustrating: a willing convert whose ______is too stubborn to accept what his______would like to accept. You cannot CHOOSE to believe in something. The question, How can you believe in something, is no more difficult to answer than, How can you not believe in anything? Maybe we should be using "may": How MAY you believe in that? Who let you? What opened you up to it? Where can I get some? Do they sell it at Walgreens?

And yet this is not a sad post for me. I have been grappling with this on some level since I was 13 and in the affirmation program of my church and we were told that we get to decide what to believe in. A great gift, not to be forced into a doctrine; but no doubt a burden to those of us who took it seriously. So this is not a new conversation I am having with myself.

And here's the kicker: the flip side to nihilism is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON NOT TO BE HAPPY. If nothing matters, than misery is just as worthless as happiness. And yet happiness is just so much more enjoyable.

This was going to be an entry about my new life in San Francisco. It tried really hard to be, but fell to a false start. I am thinking about moving my conversations related to theater over to the Dark Knight blog, but that idea stresses me out. That idea makes it seem like I should take it more seriously. And should one take a blog seriously?

i'm writing again i'm writing again i'm writing again so stop nagging my brain and let me write again

Write something.
Write anything.
Sneeze in your hand and wipe the snot on the page.
Anything to start.

Draw a line around the snot.
Oh that's a nice shape.
Looks kind of like a flower.
Maybe you should write about a flower.
You like flowers.
You were a gardener once.
You bought a calathia for your bathroom. Though those don't flower.

Flowers remind me of vampires. Cue vampire segue:
I am reading Twilight that new book (with vampires) that is supposedly the next Harry Potter. It's not the next Harry Potter. It's not a smart book. It's an easy book. It is the kind of novel that makes me think that I could write a novel. In like three weeks. I actually started. In my head. To write a novel. I think the problem a lot of writers have is that they are trying to be good; when I write my novel, I am going to do like Stephenie Meyer did it: to make enough money to pay for maintenance on her mini-van. She needed to make 10,000 bucks; she got a book deal for 250,000.

Okay, I don't know where I heard that, but I definitely heard that. I just tried to find a link to some evidence that this is truly what happened, and came up shorthanded.

Sometimes I am in the mood for that kind of book; other times I read one sentence and am disgusted with myself and more disgusted with how it really is just up to a publisher to decide what becomes popular.

I have often thought that becoming famous isn't all that difficult: you just have to find someone who wants to make you famous who has the power to make you famous. That's it. That simple.

Day 1

A young Hamlet whines of nunneries outside my 7th floor window. Elizabeth admits that this is one of her pet peeves, and when I start writing for the Publications portion of my Publications and Literary Associate gig, when these external recitations compete with my internal experiments, it will probably become one of my pet peeves as well. But for now I can only giggle. I work in an office where on any given day one might hear Juliet bitch out her nurse on the 7th floor patio.

Damn you USPS!

I built my bookcases on Monday. After days of Craigslist games -- The Waiting Game; Cat and Mouse; Bullshittm; etc. -- we caved and went back to Ikea to get some bookcases named after some guy named Billy. And they are lovely, and now all my books and comic books and encyclopedia collection (The DC Comics Encyclopedia; The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology; A Dictionary of Angels; The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft) have been freed from their boxes.

Some books were not so lucky. Of the seven boxes I sent media mail, only six arrived unmarred: the seventh sadly had broken open en route and only a third of contents made the trek: Sylvia Plath's Ariel was unsurprisingly a trooper though her friend Sappho was left behind. God smiled down upon The Five Gospels and A Dictionary of Angels, but surprisingly did not favor my collection of Horton Foote plays. I don't know all that was lost, and all you bibliophiles out there know my heart is breaking.

If anyone sees Horton Foote having a tea party with Sappho somewhere in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, let me know: I'll send Paula Vogel and Richard Rodriguez to come rescue them.

Pilgrimage

I'll begin in the middle of things as it seems like an epic.

Kansas is beautiful. It's supposed to be boring and monotonous, isn't it? It was last time I did this drive when I was coming back from Colorado with my family when I was, what, 16? 15? Maybe earlier. Earlier, I think, because I bought that t-shirt in Durango that I wore through high school (and college), but I was old enough to sample dad's samples at the microbrews. But maybe it was middle school because I remember being poolside at our hotel and calculating the chances that I had with random girl A. That was a middle school mindsent, and a middle school mindset cannot appreciate Kansas. Or was that Arizona? Maybe I was in high school...but still had a middle school mindset.

It is the second shift on Day 1 and I am driving Defne's 1994 Ford pickup through Kansas with the windows down and I think I understand America.

It is the third shift on Day 1 and we are driving north around Denver towards Ft. Collins where we will spend the night at a hotel that allows pets with the sun setting behind the mountain range and I think I understand much of art history.

It is the first shift on Day 1 and I am driving Rachel's 2008 Honda Fit which she bought off the lot yesterday afternoon from a charming salesman who used to be a highway patrolman and has a niece in PT school. He doesn't bullshit us about the price or the trade-in. It's a hatchback: Rach has beamed over hatchbacks since I have known her. I am driving towards Kansas City, MO without cruise control because we are supposed to let the engine relax periodically. I am hoping that this zippy car has the stamina to make the 30 hour pilgrimage. With 5 cats in the back seat yelling in my ear, I am hoping I have the stamina to make the 30 hour pilgrimage. I wonder what the ramifications would be for removing a cat's larynx.

It is Sunday and we are finally moving towards San Francisco. Last Wednesday we drove from Chicago to St. Louis to pick up Rachel's new Honda Civic, which will arrive from the manufacturer by Friday at the latest. St. Louis is not on the way from Chicago to San Francisco unless there is severe flooding in southern Iowa. I enjoy returning to St. Louis more every time I return to St. Louis. Family, yes of course; but the trees. St. Louis doesn't have a lot of height to it. Not like Chicago's apartment filled skyline. In St. Louis, the trees are often the top of the civilized world. At least in the parts of St. Louis I frequent. I am missing a staged reading of a play I wrote for a company I adore in Chicago, but I will be able to attend the opening of a site-specific piece I wrote for a young company in St. Louis.

On Thursday, we take Defne (who is our roommate in SF if I neglected to mention it) to Blueberry to visit with old friends who prove to be very much the same as when we left a year ago. Time moves slowly in that bar if it moves at all. Delightful for us now that we are on the outside, but obviously frustrating for some of our friends who are tired of the stasis. Breaking stasis is difficult, especially when it pays well and the drinks are half off.

Friday comes and still no car. The manufacturer is in Ohio. If the car were coming from overseas, then the dealer who sold Rachel the car (Randy Borth, whom we have dealt with before and who is a straightshooter and an all around great guy...there are some lovely car dealers in this world, let the record show) would have been able to track every leg of the journey. But as the car is coming from Ohio, we are at the whim of the trucking union, who is apparently is not required or expected to communicate with the car dealers. We begin to panic because we wanted to leave Friday, Saturday at the latest, Sunday as a worst case scenario. I am driving the Fit through Wyoming (first shift Day 2) when Randy calls Rachel to tell her the Civic finally arrived.

I am not sure about Utah. Utah has exits off the highway that don't seem to go anywhere. You exit, the road bends, and then the concrete ends. Other exits lead to towns which appear to be merely a short series of trailers. Utah confuses me. Wyoming is beautiful, and it is interesting to me that the state lines are not as arbitrary as I imagined. Wyoming is marketable; Wyoming is a cigarette ad. Ten minutes into Utah, and you stop imagining cowboys and start wondering where people buy milk. You drive for an hour and a half at 80 mph on the same straight highway going between one mountain range and another, congratulating yourself for filling up your gas tank at the last station, listening to the Bible Station explain Revelations and Jezebel because it is the most interesting of three stations and because it couldn't hurt to have God on your side out here seeing as the wilderness seems to be God's thing. I am driving the truck again. It is not as comfortable or as fun as it was on Day 1.

Utah shifts into Nevada without much fuss. We stay in a small city ~100 miles outside of Reno where we get a roll of nickels with our hotel (motel?) room and are encouraged to eat at one of the 7 or 8 casinos on our block. We do. I win a dollar in nickels before losing them.

We get into San Francisco at 2pm on Day 3. Our keys don't work because they apparently fixed (changed) the locks, but luckily the third floor had burst a pipe over the weekend and workmen were around the building with keys and they let us in so that we can let our cats (little troopers) out of their crates. Earlier in the day, Linus had finally had enough and succeeded in expanding a small hole in the carrier he shared with Mabel into a hole large enough for him to jam his head through and subsequently shimmy his body out of. But they survived. We survived.

Tips for moving from the Midwest to California:

1) Burger King has the best vegetarian options of the fast food chains. They also have cheesy tots.

2) Gas is cheaper in Wyoming.

3) Go through Kansas. Skip most of Utah.

4) Drive an old pickup with bunk air conditioning.

5) You could do it two days if you had to...two really long days.

words are words

Taking a break from a marathon playwriting binge, my lower back is getting sore sitting in Argo's wooden chairs. I am sitting with a view out the window, which has been surprisingly unproblematic. I used to peoplewatch. I guess I still do but maybe with less intrigue...hunger? I don't get distracted by them as they walk by anymore, and I'm not sure that is something to be proud of. Have I finally shaken off whatever tendencies that encouraged some random neighbor to suggest to my mom that she put me on ritalin when I was 3, which my mother promptly, and smartly, rejected. Or have I just lost interest? Has cynicism taken over?

Or do I people watch differently? I watch out the window and I see bodies -- some attractive, some less so -- and clothing. I adore our era of clothes, at least in my neighborhood. There is this hodgepodge rebellion against the trendiness of whatever label is big right now. People wear what they want and wear what looks good on them. An eclecticism of colors and styles and fits.
And then there is the blogosphere. This is the first time I have ever used this word: blogosphere. An atmosphere created by electronically reserved ideas. It's funny that my blog spellcheck doesn't even acknowledge it's a word. Now we people watch from the perspective of the people we watch.

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.

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.

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.

while I wasn't writing my script reports

me: that food fight video is f-ed up in the best possible way though i wish i hadn't been eating when i watched it

rachel: me too

me: i am still trying to unpack it

rachel: i had to pause it for a while because i was eating

me: i think it will take a few more viewings

rachel: yeah it's pretty loaded

me: to really understand the symbolism

yeah

are the pretzels Germany?

they are right?

rachel: i guess so

i mean, they killed the matzha

me: right

rachel: matzah

me: and then the croissants were obviously france

yeah

i'll need to rewatch

which means its awesome

rachel: you can dedicate a blog entry to figuring it out

me: I SHOULD

Sent at 3:16 PM on Monday

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