Seconds

"and when the coyotes they sing at the park
till the city lights starts falling
ride them rodes they winding down till the flame hits the ground
every motion is closer to touching the coyotes sing when they call
in the middle of it."

-- Jason Mraz, "Coyotes"

--

Parking meters are stealing my quarters, and the cash in my wallet is like liquid paper, erasing and updating the money I lose, bills trickling out like they're trying to escape. It's the big drawback to spending time downtown--time equals money, hey hey. When I leave my car parked by a meter, I feel tethered to it, doomed to return every hour (on some streets, every half hour) to replenish my free time. There's about four competing parking charge systems, too, all of them with different protocols and rates. The large gray box with "PAY HERE" printed on the side is best for quick trips to, say, drop off books, and the lots with the yellow huts are best for long-term, and the good old silver stick works if you can find a spot on the curb. I don't know why I still have trouble parallel parking.

Tried to do some research on the Mi'kmaq tribe, of the Algonquin peoples, in preparation for the show we start tomorrow. The director has asked us to do some pre-reading, brushing up on Native Am. customs and history. But I can't see how cultural accuracy can be so huge when half of our four-person cast is African-American, and one-fourth is Asian. Indians...[question mark]...

So...some tidbits about the Mi'kmaqs (a.k.a. Micmacs):

- They were the first tribe to embrace the French settlers.
- They were not surprised to see European flagships, since an ancient Mi'kmaq guru told of a blue-eyed race which would float to shore on a giant island with big white trees.
- Their name comes from their word for "ally," which is directly related to their word for "people." People, by linguistic default, are your friends.
- They signed a religious treaty with French priests which allowed Mi'kmaq individuals to choose to believe in their blend of nature-worship, or Catholicism, or a mystic blend of the two. The Mi'kmaq flag often includes a red cross lying on its side.

--

Call is in twelve minutes for our final (?) dress rehearsal for Sleepy Hollow. It'll be in the basement, where it lives for the moment. Our set sits still, assembled and upright, its own little world in the corner with the huge windows.

Through those windows, we see many random Kentuckians walking around, maybe a dozen a day, always with children, always with dogs, never with dignity. Marva, Teresa and I explored the area today, found a creek with unsteady rock bridges, dead grass pathes with doggy doo and human litter, and the most boring park on earth: Four benches, one of them under a tree, a lot-sized carpet of overheated grass, and two waste barrels, and a lot of boredom. There was a mysterious pile of cigarette butts near a pine tree. The sun was awful. One of the benches had an interesting bronze plate on it, but other than that, what we saw was what we got. It would make an ideal paint-ball hill if the highway weren't twenty feet to the west.

Also, the highway is on concrete stilts around which hobos commune at night. There's a random ramp that comes from nowhere on our side of the overpass. It just starts. We think maybe they wanted a two-and-a-half lane highway.

Down the block is a snazzy Italian bistro where they filmed the toothpicks scene from Rain Man.