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.

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...

Day Off

Day Off may be a misleading title as I have Jerome Fellowship applications to review for The Playwright's Center. The problem with not having a 9-5 like job -- one of the few problems with not having a an 9-5 like job -- is that your non-9-5 job follows you home; but I have so far done an alright job at keeping the Goodman out of my home life. Or I was doing an alright job before the New Stages Festival started two weeks ago. Six staged readings of six new plays were what the public saw; but behind the scenes was fifteen hours of rehearsal per play plus the prep work. So it wasn't that the Goodman followed me home so much as I never went home.

But New Stages is over! A fairly successful undertaking, I think. I heard an audience member (some one from the industry) comment that it is telling that the Goodman can fill their smaller Owen Theatre for a reading while some off-loop theatres are struggling to get people in for an actual show. Sad. Very sad considering that three of the six readings were not very good. Well I guess this is more accurate: two were pretty awful, two were unsuccessful but show promise (one more than the other), and two were great.

One of them I spent doodling just to keep awake:

Act I:Act II:
And one of them I just straight up skipped after sitting through the final run at rehearsal. There are so many great writers out there who are talking about new ideas in new ways, why do we pander to big names? Tanya gets up in front of the audience every night and explains that all of the plays are works that we are excited about or playwrights who we want to start or continue a relationship with. Maybe she is lying? Maybe this is a nice little PR plug? Or maybe this playwright has just not brought his/her best work to this festival? I don't know. I sit in the dark corner of the theatre, writing down the problems in my head as I sketch out my complaints in the code of a doodle. Silently diplomatic.

That is the problem with being an intern: you are there to facilitate the process but not necessarily the work so you are quiet most of the time. You write down notes that you never show anyone and quietly rejoice when the same advice is given an hour later by someone with a voice. You learn from Odysseus: slip in criticisms as compliments or asides. Undoubtedly a good lesson for one who is often too critical: of twenty thoughts you can choose half of one to share on the elevator ride up to the offices. Pick the most important. Pick the one that no one else is likely to see.

Two plays were great though. Naomi Iizuka's Ghostwritten -- a reinterpretation of the Rumpelstiltskin story and the relationship between America, Vietnam, cultural identity, and food -- was playful and poignant. And Mickle Maher's Spirits to Enforce -- in which superheroes telefundraise for a production of The Tempest, which they eventually perform for a house of supervillains -- is one of the smartest and best written plays I have seen/read in a long time.

Day Off. Right. This is why I usually do the title last. The apartment is clean and the dishes are done. I had a Blueberry Hill flashback as I was handling the cleaner: I almost put the 409 down on the floor instead of on the counter because of health code violation. I read Diana's blog to catch updates: "a successful staff party, hirings and firings, wars fought with managers from other staffs." I miss them. I miss the gossip. I wonder who was fired. I wonder what the battle was over and who won. But I guess I'll have to wait until Thanksgiving to find out.

Shit: still have to rent a car.

Snake and Mouse

On September 12th and email with a new version of Spirits To Enforce snuck its way into my inbox on my computer at work. And there is sat. Waiting until today, when out it leaped, gleeful, to bare witness to my first major screw up: copying the old version of a script for 12 hungry actors with 15 hours to prepare a staged reading of a brilliantly funny play.

12 scripts. 78 pages. 12 x 78. 936 pages. Around $45 at Office Max. And how many trees.

Sigh.

But anyone who has messed up and cares about messing up and not messing up knows that it is not about money or about trees, but about Pride. That lovely and most frequent deadly sin. That over-exploited tragic flaw. In the end the versions are so similar that it mattered little. It took 37 minutes to remedy. And yet I'm still hot and bothered.

Opening

I am in the basement of a fancy restaurant. Waiters walk by with silver trays with expensive wine. Waiters walk by with silver trays with little tomato sandwiches. People are streaming straight from the theatre, around the corner, through the door, and down the steps; the waiters offer them expensive wine and nibbles. Romantic lighting. Money frequents these rooms.

I give my guest pass for two to the lady at the door before we come down. I am downing my first glass of red wine, trying to relax. Society. Where does one learn how to play this game? Certainly not in the public schools of St. Louis.

Introduce Rachel to the other interns. Make the rounds. Congratulate whatever actors you run into. Find Tanya. Find Sarah. Find Kristin. Find Pete. Eat the free food. Drink the free wine. Hide at the intern table. Congratulate Tanya. Congratulate Sarah. Joke with Pete. Joke with Molly. Get out.

Three feet away from me is Paula Vogel. Sarah Ruhl brought her to the opening as her date. Sure. Why not. I'd say something, but what is there to say really. Hi, I'm a huge fan. Hi, How I Learned To Drive changed how I think of writing for theatre. Hi, who knows maybe someday I'll apply to your program at Brown. Hi, hi, hi...network network network.

Of course not. I'm not that guy. I never want to be that guy. I hate those guys. At the Hotchner reading of Demons, some random lady came up afterwards to talk about playwriting with me and Liz. She was a playwright, and would Liz read some of her work if she sent it to her and would Liz introduce her to Carter. Of course, says Liz, here's my email.

At the bar later. Me, Liz, and Carter. The waitress says the kitchen closed early, but brings us peanuts. Who was that woman, Liz asks.? No idea. I thought you knew her, Liz says. That's the only reason why I gave her the time of day...

Networking.
Not for me.
Tastes of bile in my mouth.
A discomfort somewhere in my back.
The urge to leave the room.

Or move around the room to the desert table. Back in the fancy restaurant. Little chocolate cookies stuffed with a coconut paste. Divine. On my third one.

Introduce Sarah to Rachel. Sarah believes in the marriage ritual. We had that chat when I told her in rehearsal that Rachel and I had been together almost 8 years. Sarah's plays are about how the rules of love do not really exist. You love who you love, even if they're thirty years older than, even if they are melancholy, even if they are dead, even if they are terrible people and sell organs illegally. She didn't tell me this. I don't know if she knows. I don't know if it is true. But its there. I think it's there.

She tells me she gave Mark my notes. "Did you notice?" Inside I do a little dance. Three seconds of a three and a half hour play were stronger because of me: Eric enters looking for the Village Idiot. A scene (page 77) was clearer because I suggested she change 1 word. Of course I noticed. Later I will do a little dance to the 151.

Second glass of wine. Calming down. Rachel is on her second beer; having fun. Laughing with the other interns. Joking with Jess, but getting tired. She has a theatre company, Jess does. I learn today she might need a dramaturg for a play going up next March. She sent me the script.

Accidental networking. I can stomach that.

Pete has to get up at 4am to work at Starbucks, but he is staying "until the beer and wine runs out" but I'm tired. Rachel's eyes are glassy. She's a good sport.

Dance towards the 151.

Never said goodbye to Kristin. I should call her. I wonder if she said anything to Paula Vogel.