Doggy

"I am the dog you put to sleep..."

-- Billy Collins, "The Remenant"

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You'd think auditioning for the people who hired you once already would take some of the mass, the weight, the density out of your preparations. Make it fluffy, drawn-out, like a dog spread sleeping on a mat. No speed-through of old monologues, no coaching session with actor friends. The whole thing, you'd think, would be a trip into a sort of cocky reluctance: "Now, cut the BS, folks; do we really have to do this?" kind of stuff. Your attitude would be smoother, like a mirror reflecting upon rather than a corkboard stuck into. As opposed to other auditions, you would take your time learning your format, smiling at mess-ups because, hey, baby--it don't matter anyhow.

Yes and no.

Sure, it matters. You can't climb the stairs but one step at a time, and you can't trip in your ascent.

But on the other hand, they already hired you once. Not hiring you again would be an insult to you, and a gesture of regret from them. If they don't feel bad about the work you've done, they should ask you back.

Not that they have to. I've seen actors rise and fall with the flub of a line, the accidental outburst, the overnight escapade gone wrong. So throwing an audition is the inverse of them not hiring you: It's an insult to them, and a token of regret on your part. For your parts. ("To-day we have naming of parts...")

"Yesterday, we decided which parts went to whom. And you, tiny Asian squirrel, you threw the audition. So go to war, out in the wide, wide world; we have no parts listed under your name."

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The temperature is rising outside. It's five degrees warmer today than yesterday, and tomorrow looks to go higher.

Just had a thought: Maybe the earth's rotation is a cooking method. Global warming is the natural cooking of the earth, and we are being swirled slowly to our consumption. Like a pancake being cooked on both sides, or an English goose twirling laterally on a spit, the earth is getting an even roasting. The poles will go, yes, but after the crust--(!)--has grown crispy around the middle, and the oils inside bubble with excreting excitement. We are bacteria, living in and on the meaty surface of this globe, Homo sapiens Escherichia coli, borne of dust, grown in guts, broiled in ruts. We scramble as we colonize, eager for rich depths and Vitamin D, but the oven is only coaxing us onward, upward, inward. For what strange, magnificent feast are we bound? Who are we, coming to the sacrifice, and to what green altar do we plod? And as we are hewn, served and digested, will we, this race of bacterium man, survive in the lower intestine of some galactic mammal?

Probably not. Thank God for reproduction, eh?

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I have accumulated so much shit since August. Unless I can sell half of it, moving's gonna be a bitch.