Labors

"Were it not for the fact that we're blind this mix-up would never have happened, You're right, our problem is that we're blind. The doctor's wife said to her husband, The whole world is right here."

-- Jose Saramago, Blindness

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Back in the library after a holiday weekend hiatus. Tried to be prolific, pounding out a few pages of what could be a new play. It's pretentious and I love it, which probably means it's bad. More updates in time, assuming the project continues.

Had a full movie weekend, too: The Squid and the Whale, Wit, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, There Will Be Blood, and Little Children.

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My air mattress is deflating in the nights, and the hard floor against my tailbone wakes me up at odd morning hours. My window stays open to ventilate, and the hot air flows in and the fan beside me fights back. Sleep has felt like a chore lately.

Had a three-hour photo session this morning for the theatre's 2009-10 season. They photo-cast me as Hansel and a Toymaker, and I got to make faces and freeze. I'm told we were paid extra for it, so all's well. His studio, in a humble corner on the third floor, has Reds adornments and pictures everywhere (there's a rumor that he's an official photographer for the team) and stacks of picture-savvy mags. Getting there, we lost ourselves in the southwest industry yards, looking for the photog's warehouse-turned-studio, and at the end of it all, we got stuck in the freight elevator for about 15 minutes. We stood there and cursed and sweated with a giant cartoon tree made of wood, boxes of animal costumes and a drab magic mirror, trying to unbolt the rusty lock and breathe the free air of the heated southern ghetto. The color of bricks comes to mind, a lazy, baked maroon, a kind of clay border to the morning. But, as I say, we were paid extra, and the streets ain't so mean in the broad daylight, much like Ichabod's church bridge.

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I've stopped using my crude GoogleMaps printouts to get around. Tiny victories.