the moments i live for

tonight was full of moments i live for. kristina called me to talk grad school and life and to excitedly discuss my upcoming boston/nyc visit. she’s been a pretty important friend and advisor lately, especially since i moved. lucky me, for sure.

met up with michelle at spiderhouse to catch up and power up on caffeine. we biked over to the east side to see ariele’s photos on display for B.E.A.S.T. at casa milagros. wonderfully, kirsten was there, and so i drank wine with three creative gals i met while living in boston. sitting in a gorgeous, cozy backyard on the east side, in hoodies, clutching styrofoam cups, in november, nary a chill in the air. such a change from boston. i miss home every day, but i do love being comfortable outdoors in light clothing a week before thanksgiving.

we ladies went our separate ways, and i took a slow cruise through the east side and back uptown, finding myself at epoch, with a cup of peppermint tea, wolfgang bauer’s shakespeare the sadist, and listening to patti smith’s horses on the sound system. (they’ve moved on to en vogue. i’m tickled.)

nights like this are vital. i live and breathe for this stuff, this free feeling – companionship wherever i turn, and a comfortable chair in a cafe. as i frantically get things done for my job and school, i get lifted in the heart when good days tap me on the shoulder, taking me by surprise.

sometimes i get so wrapped up in my own shit, i forget how perfect a few hours can be.

it’s true, the signal implodes

another chaotic week or so. everything is moving too fast, tumbling over itself. i’m overwhelmed. i say it with increasing regularity, but i cannot wait to say goodbye to my job and focus my brain a bit more closely on school (not to mention the fact that i’d love to have time for songwriting, moviewatching, bookreading, bikeriding).

so. last night, hallelujah the hills were in town. hugs all around. i’d started the night feeling pretty deflated, over the usual things, but the moment i located familiar faces from home, i felt warm, filled with breath. stories of run-ins with the law, musician friends from back boston-ways, photographs, cans of beer, and gorgeous songs. the new record, colonial drones, is killer – a few songs really stand out for me, but ryan’s songwriting always leaves me full of thoughts, ideas, dreams, and the band is a joyful, sometimes riotous cacophony. and it always feels nice to have a friend who isn’t utterly bewildered by theater talk.

last weekend was a birthday party for patrick and erin at our house. i managed to dig a fire pit (with p’s help), but my ill-chosen location (under a low-hanging branch) added an unexpected drama to the fire. not to mention the amusing battle for fire-starting supremacy (i am, in this respect, a failure). i made a new friend (hi danny!) and then spent the rest of the weekend at fun fun fun fest. (my highlights? the jesus lizard, mission of burma, and les savy fav. oh, and patrick’s debut with the new movement, in a delightfully bizarre pharoah standup bit.)

i’m still trying to iron out plans for the next eight months. i can’t believe i’m thinking that far ahead, but if grad school has reminded me of anything, it’s that you run the risk of missing out if you don’t plan ahead. that said, i still threaten to drive to marfa, solo, at any moment. just for a week. it’d be all i’d need at this point.

the mummy rises again

quick update:

crewing for terminal last week was a blast. i enjoyed the show, was totally impressed by the cast’s ability to handle strange, physically (and perhaps emotionally) taxing work, and had fun working on a play for the first time in about two years.

i was a mummy for halloween. my makeup was pretty fabulous – to my dismay, i think i managed to make myself look pretty unappealingly dead (e.g. not cute at all!) and though my bandages unravelled almost instantly, in spite of the efforts of my fabulous classmate/partner-in-crime, katie, it was a nice, hilarious metaphor for a whiskey-and-campfire warmed night among friends.

tomorrow i teach my drama research class about copy editing and proofreading. unassisted. no prof in the room. this terrifies me, as it’ll be my first time teaching in this way. but it’s a great opportunity, and if there’s anything i know pretty well, it’s editing.

i’m still waiting to hear on a spring teaching assistantship, but it sounds like it’s down to a logistical/waiting game at this point. so that’s heartening.

i’m planning to submit my final paper for my research course to a conference that runs in dallas in january. apparently it’s a good place to get one’s feet wet as far as reading a conference paper goes, since they have a ‘debut’ competition for student researchers (i’ll call myself a researcher rather than a scholar because i think scholar just sounds so…dorky). i assume probably a few classmates will go, and we’ll spend a weekend in dallas. i mean, when the heck else am i gonna go to dallas?

i’m also going to submit an abstract of the paper i’m writing for my contemporary world drama course to another conference – this is a longer shot, but i figure i might as well try, and if i’m accepted, it’ll be my first (and again, probably only) reason to visit another midwestern state.

i’m planning to be in england for a month this summer, doing coursework and research in modern british drama, and hopefully visiting friends in dublin and london.

lastly, i’m going to apply to intern at my very favorite repertory theater on the planet, so i can spend early summer in boston. failing that, i’m going to try to get a potential directing job offered by a friend set in stone (in which case i’d be on a certain island in maine…man, that sounds like bliss). yeah, that means i’ll potentially be away from austin for three months. i kinda need that.

another of my fantastic friends responded to my recent whinge: ‘i want to find a couch to sleep on so i can spend a week in marfa, writing and riding my bike around’ with an offer to try to match me up with one of his two friends who live out that way. which was a sweet thing to offer, and it reminded me that i am, in fact, very lucky.

p.s. have you ever seen repulsion by roman polanski? am i crazy for thinking this movie is…feminist? i would post the trailer, but…it gives everything away. this movie is brilliant. and with that, good night.

things i thought while driving

Today, as I raced to San Marcos, a bit late for my first class, rain coming down as it often has in Austin this fall, I saw a truck with one of those circular ‘city abbreviation’ stickers. You know what i’m talking about…

As far as I know, the OBX (Outer Banks, North Carolina) one is the original – it’s the first I can recall, for sure.

The sticker stuck to this pickup truck in front of me read:

Pf

That’s all, just Pf. which stands for Pflugerville, I assume.

Now, I thought the point of this sort of sticker was to brag about your chic vacation spot. Hence OBX, MV (Martha’s Vineyard), etc. Or to brag that you live in a swishy, WASPy town like Duxbury (DUX, natch). Then everybody decided to get one. And fine, sure, I get it. Everybody likes to feel like their little corner of the world is a special luxury, even if it’s just a small exurb east of I-35 (the most stressful highway outside California or New York). But Pf? Really? Did the person who created this sticker realize they were about to associate their town with a limp exhalation of breath? Damn, son, add a t to the end and you’ve got yourself a classic CAT FART.

Anyway, the second thing I noticed, as I raced down the road, was that I’m turning into my father. I’d made a full French Press of coffee this morning, and I hadn’t drunk the second cup by the time I had to leave. But as I reached for a travel mug, I ran into a dilemma. For some reason, the cabinet contained a handful of travel mugs that seemed to have a suspect, sticky residue lining the inside (who returns a travel mug to the cabinet unwashed? I have no idea) and the last two travel mugs were clean, but had no covers. So I poured my final cup of liquid crack and walked out the door. I set one of the clean-but-uncovered travel mugs in my car. And as I struggled to make it fit in a cup holder (awkward handle), nervously gauging how much I should drink in order to avoid suffering from coffee lap after braking too hard, I remembered mornings before school with my dad.

Until June 2008, my dad was the manager of a hardware store. Switching companies and locations occasionally, this was dad’s life. He’s had Wednesdays off as long as I can remember, and every other Sunday. He loves coffee, as I do. For some reason (not for lack of 5 bucks), my dad never had a travel mug. Ever. Throughout my childhood, I remember him leaving the house with a mug of coffee. A household mug. The kind of container meant for the breakfast table, or the couch. Not really meant to hover next to the gearshift in a manual transmission Ford Escort. Sometimes I’d get a ride to school, and the floor of the passenger seat would be littered with coffee mugs, the air smelling of old coffee.

Since I was born, my dad hasn’t had a cigarette or an alcoholic drink, as far as I know. But he loves coffee, and he would drive to work this way every day. Eventually, he ran a hardware store next to a Dunkin’ Donuts, so he started passing through the drive-through. But that was when I was in high school. I just remember being a little kid – backpack age – and watching that precarious coffee cup as we listened to the classic rock station in the morning. And I guess it struck me that my dad was a little bit rushed – he had a lot to do, taking care of three daughters and dealing with people all day. I guess my life feels the same way right now – rushed, hectic, long days – and I hope it makes him proud to see me doing things I love.

Sprechen Sie Deutsches?

I decided I wanted to study German. I love language study, but I find myself always trying to get back into it (usually attempting to brush up on my French, but occasionally dallying with Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian) and failing, because I haven’t a concrete motivation. But this time I do: I’m in grad school, and if I want to enter a PhD program in drama, I’ll need reading knowledge of at least one language beyond English. My advisor, herself a theatre history PhD, supported my decision, because apparently German is “the language of drama” – meaning that, other than English, it’s the go-to tongue for theatrical scholarship (not to mention the native language of one of my favorite playwright-theorists, Bertolt Brecht).

That said, Texas State does not offer a German for Reading/Translation course at the graduate level. And since I’m going to be on campus five days a week next semester, I decided to turn to my friend Niki. Niki works for a German language and cultural institute, and has been studying German for more than fifteen years. She’s the most fluent non-native German speaker I know. I’d been considering taking a distance language course through her employer, but she recommended I just pick up copies of some of the books they use for reading/translation courses. So I did. I’m sitting with a copy of German for Reading Knowledge right now.

Once nice thing about self-study, other than the fact that I can obviously set my own pace, is that I can take the time to look up every last thing that confuses me. I’m a pretty good writer, but I admit that I’m not very good at talking about grammar. I know why things are the way they are, in English, but the second I cracked this book and saw the word “case,” I drew a blank. Aside from turning to good ol’ Wikipedia (while useless for some research, it’s a fantastic source of relatively detailed general knowledge info like this), I found an amazing, new-to-me Web site: Forvo. This site contains audio files of “every word, in every language” – or, at least, that’s what they’re working towards. And major languages, like German, are really well covered. So I can satisfy my need to learn to read in German, while also fulfilling my desire to speak German well enough to get by. So cool!

Now to go read up on “synthetic language.”

every day

this past month, every day has been some sort of weird adventure. i was offered a really interesting opportunity at school today. i can’t discuss it here until i’m sure i’ll be doing it, but for now i’ll just say it was utterly unexpected, and it would neatly bridge the work i’m about to leave with the work i’ve just begun.

school has been so interesting. we’re wrapping up the ninth week of the fall semester, and it astonishes me to consider everything i’ve learned about myself. of everything i’ve tried for since september 1, only one thing has turned me down (i never heard from the new director’s thing – but after all, i was late with my application, and i have absolutely no directing credits on my resume). other than that, stuff just keeps popping up left and right. i’m doing really well in school, i feel like i’m forming good friend/colleague relationships with other grad students, and i haven’t been forced to utterly abandon my friends. my directing course has been a huge challenge – a blind leap into unfamiliar territory. but it has gone alright, and i’m learning new things, building upon each rehearsal, starting to shape a rehearsal style, if not a directorial vision. i feel excited enough about this that i decided to sign on for the spring directing styles course.

i’m having success with my drama research course – i’ve always been a good researcher, and a decent writer, but it has been so long since i’ve had to do any formal writing that i worried i’d fail. but quite the opposite – i think i have a strong topic for my final paper, and i’m getting positive feedback from my prof. after spending the past few years in a frustrating corporate job, where my ideas and opinions have no audience beyond my direct supervisor, it’s nice to feel confident and intelligent in front of peers and mentors alike. i feel like this is where i want to be – studying, learning, preparing for the next step.

and gosh, have i mentioned how much i love reading plays? i feel like i haven’t read enough, you know? so taking a contemporary drama course is like eating a great meal – nourishing, fulfilling, comforting, but also fascinating. i wrap my mind around the stories people have tried to convey via the stage.

stupid as this might sound, especially if you, reader, are a friend – it’s like i woke up from a fog and remembered i was intelligent and excited and ready. i’m 28, and i’m not going to bother wondering whether i’ve wasted time, because i’m doing it now – that’s what matters.

there are lots of potentials in the works, and i shouldn’t discuss them yet…but expect interesting developments in the next few weeks. not to mention the fact that i am this close to pitching a whole weekend out the window and just driving myself to marfa with my roommate or something. i mean, why not, right? don’t remind me about my daunting to-do list, thanks. good thing i’m saving my nyc/boston(/maine?) trip for winter break.

weddings and things

i went to a killer wedding this weekend. it lifted my spirits for a zillion reasons. the first being that dear danielle was in town. it still amazes me to consider my friends, like, to really look at our relationships. i remember meeting danielle in a totally bizarre manner. ny, who i replaced as a member of the VKs back in 2004, knew that i was sewing a lot at the time and sent her friend my way. that friend was danielle, and she was looking for the perfect skirt (corduroy or denim, i think). i didn’t end up making anything for her, and it wasn’t until late 2007 that we really became friends. we had a hilarious run of girlfriend bonding over various foolish dating attempts – i met a sweet-but-so-utterly-wrong-for-me guy at a little christmastime brunch at her house (gretchen will remember a particular point-and-laugh moment regarding this person). we roadtripped to austin for sxsw 2008, she in pursuit of her occasionally elusive paramour, i in pursuit of frigging anything that got me out of boston in march. she taught me to drive a stick and tolerated my whining in the cold. we listened to coast-to-coast with art bell, and lots of beatles songs, and i think we listened to ‘wagon wheel’ by old crow medicine show a dozen times. 2,000 miles in two days – my first adventure post-breakup with james the previous june. and here she was this weekend, two years later, giving me the biggest hug when i needed it most, in line with friends to see ‘where the wild things are.’ it’s funny how, from a distance, it becomes clear that friends can totally irritate each other and still be perfectly matched (i say this not about danielle, but about friendships in general – i generally assume that there are PLENTY of annoying things about me…). i feel lucky to have some good friends. it makes me miss boston.

anyway, seeing two people who, honestly, have got to be more in love than anybody i’ve known in a while, get married, is the most wonderful thing. ryan and julie are newish friends, and i’m happy to have them. and i love unexpectedly finding common interests with new people. and cake. and dancing to a pretty solid soul band. and wearing pretty dresses and killer boots. and giddy side-stories.

now, i’m back in austin, immersed in my current reality: so busy with school and my job. busting my butt to get myself in a financial position where being more student and less well-paid production manager will be less than terrifying. deciding my next move – do i go to boston, new york? CAN i? should i put in my time here a bit longer? will all this studying and writing and brain-connection-ing amount to anything at all? will running eventually feel more awesome? i should do yoga again. i miss the flexibility and the weird energy i get afterward. miss how cool-down after yoga inevitably makes me tear up, like some huge anvil has been lifted right off me. back to flying solo pretty much all the time. paring down my possessions in advance of the next inevitable move. eventually i’ll feel settled in the heart – that’s more important to me than buying a house. just finding contentment with what i have, whether that’s constant motion or a little house with a garden and a family.

at any rate. enough borderline stream-of-consciousness for one day.

this is the dress i wore to the wedding:

out of all those kinds of people
you got a face with a view
i’m just an animal looking for a home
share the same space for a minute or two
- this must be the place (naive melody) / talking heads

human nature

i was driving in the dark and rain tonight, and my mind drifted to the nature of evil. i’d just seen a horror movie – a brief distraction from homework assignments and job stresses – and was so spooked that i carefully checked the back seat of my car before turning the key in the ignition. i was reminded that horror movies have roots in real fears, and sometimes in real violence. after all, the world has seen some truly horrific serial killers (not to mention the atrocities of war…) and while we can laugh it off most of the time, there’s always the tiniest possibility that we’re about to encounter something truly terrifying.

i’ve always had an overactive imagination – most of the time it thrills me, though occasionally i feel silly being a 28-year-old woman who is still a little nervous in the dark sometimes. mostly i love being this way – i love the ability to suspend my disbelief, to accept a work of art that, approached rationally, probably isn’t scary at all. poltergeists? get real, right? but to let go for a few hours is one of my greatest pleasures – i love feeling pure terror in a safe environment. i’ve even learned from scary moments in my real life – like the night my last car (a heap i bought off a well-meaning friend) caught on fire on the highway, as i drove alone at night (i have horrid night vision). i’d never felt so close to death – nevermind the fact that i’ve probably unknowingly been in situations that were more deadly. the feeling of being trapped alone in a small box, hurtling over 60 mph, with other fast-moving, steel objects around me, preventing me from just stopping to get out and run – it was horrifying. i really had never felt so panicked in my life, had never before had to contemplate whether it would be safer for me to tuck and roll in the middle of the freeway, or to risk spending another 45 seconds in the car while i got to a place where it’d be safer for me to get out and away. but as i watched my car’s interior go up in flames, part of me was fascinated – by the smell of burning fabric and plastic, the sight of the flames and smoke, and by my own sudden distance and safety from the situation.

then i started to think about loneliness, jealousy, anger. how these emotions can feed our goodness, or fuel our darker side. in school, i’ve encountered a few classmates who seem to dislike plays that explore the darker side of humanity – work that sometimes seems to take a purely negative attitude toward our behaviors and our fate. but i don’t see most of that work – often not realistic theater – as purely negative. i see it as an exploration of an unavoidable part of what we are as humans. and i suppose some people are either lucky enough to feel happy most of the time, or would just rather avoid the negative. but i like to know this stuff – i like to understand hurt, sadness, fear, self-doubt, jealousy, anger. hopefully a better understanding of such feelings helps me weather through them, emerge happier and more myself.

i need that understanding right now – i’ve been pretty stressed out by school and sad about the end of the relationship i’d been in for most of the year. it’s hard to manage so many demands on my mental energy and also to process my heart’s loss. i find myself being cynical and bitter – some acquaintances got engaged a few days ago, and i couldn’t muster any enthusiasm when i heard, even though later, i realized it was good news and that i was happy for them. but as overwhelming as my work has been, the big assignment i’ve worked on this past week has been pretty thrilling at times – reading the work of intelligent people is fun, when it’s something you care about. the more time i spend in school, the more i feel like i might be part of a world of scholarship and creative work. and the more i go out, live my life, push myself to exercise, and cook, and make art, the more i’m able to experience my sadness and frustration, and then to move beyond it.

i’m working on a piece that i’m hoping to be able to stage as part of a festival here this winter, and i’ve had to think very hard about the motivations behind the main characters. one is an old man, driven by a loneliness, a longing that overwhelms his desire to preserve his power and wealth. one is a young woman, pushed by fear and the desire for independence. i hope to be able to discuss it here as i get down to writing. and i hope my reading and observing on humanity’s darker nature helps inform a dark, sad, strange, but hopefully cathartic work.

that click

here’s another thing i love: telling the internet social networking site du jour that i’m headed out for a drink, unexpectedly hearing from a friend, “i’m bringing an old theater friend who you will probably think is cool,” and discovering that yes, they’re totally cool. that was my wednesday night: biking to sidebar, settling in at a small table with a whiskey and a lone star, fiddling with my next script for directing class, chatting with job-hunting boston-transplanted friends, and remembering that one of my favorite (and woefully rarely-seen) people in austin gets the whole theater thing, its silliness and also its passion. his out-of-town friend is a playwright from portland – we talked about the greeks (fuzzily, remember, there was beer involved) and about trying to push limits in a world where theater is mostly perceived as light entertainment. i need to meet more people who share my interests in cities all over – that way, when i inevitably leave austin, i’ll feel like i have places to go.

blocking in a tiny space

in the few minutes before i dash off to my final rehearsal for my first-ever directing excursion (for class), i want to think/write a little more about directing.

so, i’ve had to master a few things:

encouraging people for their good work, while nudging them toward better work (be that: learning their lines more carefully, easing up on their acting so that they seem more natural, helping them feel more comfortable and real in their character)

blocking in a way that’s effective, engaging, and clear for both actor and audience member

finding a rhythm in units, scenes, unity across the piece and across a character’s arc

so here i am, fumbling my way across all this. but it’s exciting. probably more later.