Flexors

"You watch the television.
It tell you that you should."

-- Supertramp, "Child of Vision"

--

Aside from watching Rikki Tikki Tavi as a child and then checking it against the story in an old, dimpled green paperback copy of The Jungle Book, I've never really read any Rudyard Kipling. But for ten cents at a library book sale, I picked up The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories, mostly out of regret at having never read Kipling. I've missed out; the stories are wonderful.

Not a huge fan of his prose style (it's a bit, well, British for me), but his descriptions and especially his attention to Indian culture are fascinating. So far, I've read "The Man Who Would Be King" and "The Mark of the Beast." The first, naturally, is a textbook example of mimetic theory: An outsider arrives, solves tribal warfare, then gets sacrificed by his own followers. And the second, a horror classic, delivers the chummiest werewolf story I've yet encountered.

And I haven't yet read up on Kipling, which is maybe a good thing. I feel like I'm getting to know him on his own terms, walking in his country without (as King would say) a map. It seems to me he's aware of colonialism and gently, tactfully, tries to pull out the threads. In these two stories he has shown how British outsiders who misunderstand or underestimate Eastern societies get what's coming.

I like Kipling so far. I'm halfway through "'Them'" and am getting chills. That's always a good sign.

--

And I've been reading in the van, fighting carsickness as Kentucky landscapes shift around me. Tonight, in a motel in Franklin, KY, the paperback collection of Kipling stories, its pages dog-eared because of my halting progress, sits on the edge of the bed. The spine shows water damage, distorted colors and warped paper. It's an old, worn book. In its pages lurk monsters and mysteries long overlooked.

Reading is not just feeling like an escape from my job; in time, it has become a pleasure again.

Taking in these large chunks at a stretch, for me, is a lot like eating grilled cheese sandwiches. I forget how much I love it, and then when I indulge for the first time in weeks, I think, Why don't I do this all the time?

--

Hurt my left hip flexor today while doing the hoedown in the bunny suit. My hip throbs.

In two more months to the day, I won't have to do this touring thing any longer. And I'll be able to flex these reading muscles again, and more often, too.

Taste

"I ain't the one whose gonna be missing the feast,
Just like you ain't the one who seems to be calming the beast."

-- Jason Mraz, "Too Much Food"

--

As I sat in the back seat of the van today, halfway through the three-hour drive back north, listening to Josh Groban and Charlotte Church, wondering why I couldn't sleep, I had a sort of epiphany. And when I say "epiphany," I really mean that a metaphor occurred to me.

It's how I think about pop culture. I know that just because something is popular doesn't make it good, and by the same token, being unpopular is not the same as being bad.

And when people think about good and bad art, what they really think about is its popularity. "Good" movies sell well at box offices and star "good" actors, who have been in tons of films. "Good" songs get played most often. And "good" plays not only run for a long time, they get seen by a lot of people, and then (once the rights are up for grabs), they get produced by a bunch of companies.

Such thinking is dangerous to the person who cares about art. Quantity is not quality. The danger is that by thinking about goodness in terms of popularity, you ascribe a value (usually some sort of number) to something that is invaluable. You think about the difference between "good" and "bad" in terms of a spectrum, or worse, a ladder. The idea is that bad art is on the bottommost rung, and good art is at the top; in other words, a bad artist starts at the bottom and works his/her way to the top. And once you're at the top, you can stay at the top.

But Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. And Shakespeare was ignored for two centuries before wacked-out Romanticists cracked open the folios again. As Billy Joel sang, "I won't be here / In another year / If I don't stay on the charts."

The span of art is not a spectrum, spanning left to right, nor is it a ladder, starting low and reaching high. It is, in my opinion, a merry-go-round, the old, squeaky, rusted-iron kind we knew as kids.

--

You start as a runner on the outermost edge, just barely hanging on, trying to keep up. Then, you leap--and this is graduating, this is making your livelihood your art. Your legs leave the ground, and you're on your stomach, literally crawling to the center. Your shoulders strain with the weight of your body, multiplied by centrifugal forces. You hang on, or you eat dust.

You make your way inward, closer and closer to the spindle point, the rotating axis of the wheel, the hub. Your focus narrows, your concentration and skills keeping you upright, balanced. You press to the center. And this is the sweet spot, the hardest goal: Reaching that spot, and staying there, spinning in place like a figure skater, getting dizzy the moment you stop looking at what is right next to you.

This is the place of good art, the region artists rarely (if ever) visit. Moments of genius are scampers across the center, brief encounters with the one point on the wheel that doesn't move. It is hard to stay there, and so most artists stop trying after a while. They linger on the bars, elbows wrenching against the metal, watching the world whiz by on the outside. Or, sadly, they fall or jump off the wheel completely. Most artists crowd around the bars or outside the circle, and because they are nearer to everyone else on the playground, they become popular.

The best place for the artist, it seems to me, is near the center, within touching distance of the circular iron grate in the middle. There is the security of the bar without the danger of losing balance. There is always hope, too, of someday standing in the center.

And there, too, is the patient, uninhabited space of the unpopular.

Stances

"If I stand
Let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through
And if I can't
Let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to you."

-- Rich Mullins, "If I Stand"

--

Talked to my dad tonight about future things. Lots of recommendations. I understand where he's coming from, so while I don't agree with everything he says, I agree with him saying it to me. His father never talked to him about basic "being a man" things.

No one told him, "While conflict for conflict's sake is dumb, sometimes people will push your buttons just to find out what mettle you're made of. Are you a man? They want to know. They'll act like you shouldn't. But they really want you to. There's a chance that if you never stand up to them, they will never truly respect you." No father figure told him that. So he tells me.

And I'm glad for it.

Ads

"Man is an experiment, the other animals are another experiment. Time will show whether they were worth the trouble."

-- The Creator in Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth

--

I am trying to adapt sections of Letters from the Earth into a play. In the spirit of adaptation and respect, I am keeping Twain's original words wherever possible, converting narration to dialogue among the angels, and only occasionally inserting my own contributions (these are minor and few). I have seven pages so far, and will continue the project until I get bored or disillusioned with it, whichever comes first.

The play I wrote a few mornings ago is awful, absolutely dreadful. I read through it with my girlfriend and wanted to stop immediately.

It's amazing what makes sense when you first type it. The craziest thoughts, unrestrained, break like unbridled horses and stampede into unknown, inexplicable territory. There is no heat of inspiration that should not be allowed to cool.

--

Facebook and Gmail both have ad services that scan the text on a given page for buzz words and then load a series of links that seem relevant. However cutting-edge the technology is (I can't imagine it's that advanced), the service can only gather as much information as is provided, in the form of text, on the page.

So how is it, I wonder, that right now, both Gmail and Facebook have loaded ads telling me to work out, get a six-pack, and discover the secret to getting ripped? Who told them I ate three large plates-full of Chinese food for lunch?

--

I thought my girlfriend's roommate had gotten us tickets to see a show tonight, but in fact we're going in one week. So I don't know what I'll do tonight, except perhaps catch up on reading and writing. (Starting with this entry, then moving on to the adaptation, or what have you.)

--

The Children's Theatre of Cincinnati has offered me my boss's job as touring coordinator of the division I am currently acting for, which basically means I'm going to be on the other side of the desk come June. I'll be running a large portion of the tour, as well as acting in the mainstage productions. And since the office job is part-time, I can get other work during the day; since the mainstage shows only occupy about four months of the year, I can get other work at night; and since I'll be on staff at TCTC, I'll get something I've never gotten from my job: Fully paid health care.

That's the job; that's the reason I'm staying in Cincinnati another year.

Beckoned

"Put your skeletons in jail."

-- Beck, "Lord Only Knows"

--

The rain is funny this morning. It comes and leaves every ten minutes or so, as if there is a sort of queue of clouds in the sky, each getting their chance to drip on us. It makes me think of shows at the Fringe, where a single room could house as many as twenty shows a day. As soon as the first show finishes, they have five to ten minutes to clean up and get out, while the next show is setting up. And so on. Like clockwork: you tick, then you tock, then you take a hike. That's what this rain is like, and it's supposed to linger into tomorrow, as well.

It's probably great for the soil. I don't think we've had a major rain in a few weeks.

--

I'm trying to find an apartment in northern Kentucky (a term that, strangely enough, only applies to Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati). I have to move out of this house in June, hopefully right into the new digs. But trying to find a place for under $500/month is proving a little difficult. I don't want to swap the ghetto of the big city for the ghetto of a suburb. I want a cool place in summer, a warm place in winter, and I don't want to hear gunshots or teenagers having street jam sessions at 11pm. (Does this mean I'm getting old?)

Anyway, the search has been a bit fruitless. I figure, with all the students leaving at the end of the spring term, options should sprout in a few months.

And I've decided that I'm officially done with living in the same space as people I don't know. I'm either moving in with someone I know, like and trust, or I'm going onesies. It's a little extra a month, but yeah, it's worth that little extra. I'm not a misanthrope. I'll chat with you about movies, I'll come over on Mondays for poker, and maybe I'll even pet your dog if it looks nice; but I do not want to discuss, "Who took my milk?" or, "Okay, everyone, where are all the spoons?"

All that goes to say, I'm on the market for a new place.

Meanwhile, I keep getting harangued by the Craigslist headlines, written by people whose caps-lock and punctuation keys seem to have malfunctioned: 1BR-2BR/1BATH/$475MO: ALL UTLS PD REFRIG DSH LNDRY ONSITE LOVELY COMMUNITY W/ FRIENDLY NEIGHBOR WHO SOMETIMES MOWS LAWN DOGS ALLOWED WOOOOF!

--

Work is not so early today. We rehearse in the office now, because the library space was ridiculously cramped. Which is nice, because we not only get more space, but we also get to hang out with the office people (other actors, directors, producers) on our spare time. However, the office is upstairs from a computer-parts company, and they complain regularly about the noise. And because we are technically renting the space from them, we have to cow and bow. So we're only allowed to make noise during their lunch hours. Which is why work is not so early today.

On the one hand, it irks me that we have to bend to the whim of the office workers downstairs. But on the other, it is a sort of metaphor that I like. Theatre is an art, and as with all art, there is the temptation to think that it is a service rather than a luxury, that it is "so much more" than entertainment. (By the way, it is "so much more.") But in order for it to be "so much more," it has to be humble. And if we're making too much noise for the folks downstairs, well then, we should be quieter.

It reminds me of the Edinburgh graffiti initiative a few years back. To curb graffiti artists from defaming city property, Edinburgh officials extended a hand and created a program that lets businesses pay the artists for advertising space on the sides of buildings and public walls. So graffiti, which is a sort of middle finger to the establishment, shook hands with the establishment instead. Which angered graffiti artists everywhere else. They said that once graffiti was once it was paid for, once it was commercialized, it ceased to be graffiti. It became a scourge, a harsh parody of graffiti.

The art itself didn't make it art. It was the method by which it was allowed (or not allowed) to exist that made it art.

Early

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

-- common proverb, notably quoted in The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Shining, and Vonnegut's Jailbird

--

Three things have happened to me so far this morning:

1.) I awoke from a very disturbing dream involving my sister, Jason Mraz, southern estates, a Chevrolet SUV, a murder-suicide, and myself.

2.) Because that weird dream woke me up at 5:30am and I couldn't get back to sleep, I wrote a play.

3.) I received Spam in my Gmail inbox: "Teen lesbians play with a dog's dick."

Masons

"Know the secret?"

-- billboards all around southern Ohio, advertising the Free Masons

--

Had an odd dream last night. Here's what I remember.

We were all walking in the city, on sidewalks, and our feet were crammed into Mason jars. Like, the kind that preserves fruits and grains. Full-grown adults walked around, sort of on crumpled tip-toe, the digits on their feet useless after a lifetime of being crushed. Even toddlers, just learning to walk, had their tiny feet in Gerber jars or small jars for jam. When we walked, there was the grating noise of glass on concrete, glass on sidewalk. We all looked unhappy. None of us could remember why our feet were in Mason jars.

Until one day, I was out walking, and I saw a man, a crazy, homeless-looking man, who had insects in the jar with his feet, kicking his Mason jars against a brick wall. The grating sound of glass on brick, over and over. He kicked with his right, then with his left, then with his right again, like a Thai fighter in training. He didn't make any noise with his throat except grunting. He took breaks every few minutes, and we all watched him.

Finally, the jars broke from his feet, and broken glass tinkled all around him like fairy dust. The insects in his feet buzzed away, freed. The man exclaimed to all of us that we could all be free like he, if we would only kick our glassed feet against the jar. He said he had kicked for years, but every agonizing kick was worth feeling the way he felt now.

We looked at him strangely, and then a little girl started kicking the brick wall. Her mother tried to stop her, then, embarrassed, joined her daughter. Then another group joined. Then I joined. Eventually, the whole group of us were crowded against each other in a bizarre mob, all vying for a spot of wall.

The sounds of glass on bricks were like bells. Somewhere in the crowd, someone's jar would burst, the glass shattering and singing on the sidewalk, and they would cheer and urge us on. We kicked and kicked for days and nights. When anyone seemed just about ready to give up, someone nearby would break the glass and rejoice, massage their ankles, and despair turned to joy.

When my jars finally broke, it was nighttime. The air was cool on my ankles, the pads of my feet. I kicked the brick once with my bare toes, just to see what it felt like, and it hurt like hell. I started hopping on the other foot, and I hopped onto broken glass. I had never stepped on anything, nothing had ever punctured the skin of my feet. It cut me deeply, and when I asked the person next to me for help, I saw that I was the last person to free my feet, because everyone else was lying on the ground, weeping, crying out in pain from the broken glass. Whenever one person would try to pick himself or herself up off the ground, gingerly sending limbs to safe spaces of pavement, they would either fall from pity for everyone else, or they would be pulled down.

We stayed that way for days, and nights. It seemed no one slept.

Until one day, the same crazy, homeless-looking man appeared in our midst, but this time, he was dressed in a suit and had gotten a haircut. He looked like one of us. He told us that he had escaped our hobbling mob and had walked around the rest of the city, showing everyone his beautiful ankles, and he had had this experience and had to come back to us. We showed him our bruised elbows, our crushed toes now bleeding with cuts. He nodded, and showed us the bag he had brought with him. Inside the bag, he told us, are a thousand pairs of Mason jars, and if we wanted to, we could put our feet back inside.

And we did.

We then resumed walking around the city, and our new jars crushed the broken glass unto a fine dust, a shimmering powder, and it blew away in a gentle breeze. It looked like light particles, flying like scarves blown in the wind, dissipating into the sunshine.

We never saw the crazy man again.

League

"6.08."

-- online download calculator's estimate of how much longer it will take for my files to transfer from the old laptop to the new, in days

--

Tomorrow, I audition for the League of Cincinnati Theatres at 10:30am. My intent at the start of this month was to memorize and perfect a new audition monologue in time for this "unified" (after all, what else would I do with three weeks?), but that has fallen to the wayside. Somewhere between rehearsing two shows and buying a laptop, I forgot to think about my future. Go me.

So I'm sticking to the old song, the one I've used for nearly a year. And the monologue is sort of new; at the unifieds in Chicago two months back, I debuted a Bosola 'logue from The Duchess of Malfi. (And classicists and English majors rejoiced.) It's coming back tomorrow.

I tried to work a monologue I found in a short comic play called "Your Mother's Butt." But I think the main reason I wanted to use it was so I could say in my intro, "And my monologue is from your mother's butt." [beat] "By Alan Ball."

But it's just not that good of a monologue.

--

I'm not thrilled to use material that is not as fresh as it could be. Having begun my acting career with the deplorable habit of winging auditions (i.e., rationalizing rather than memorizing), I feel like I perhaps ought to be ashamed of myself. At the same time, I got my current job by recycling a song I learned in a high school musical and a monologue from a scene I used at ACTF. Like Girard's pharmakon, it is the poison and the cure.

My girlfriend is using the same monologue from her audition last year for the same group. I see nothing wrong with that. If it works, it works. It's better to be confident in stuff that works than queasy about stuff that might work. And anyway, her song is different.

(That being said, if anyone knows of a character in a play that seems like "my type," please recommend it. I've been reading a lot of plays lately, and I feel like I'm finding none that work for me.)

--

Yet all things work together for Good: Yesterday, a job opportunity fell into my lap. And I'm taking it.

While nothing is official now (hence the sketchy, coy hints in this post), there is a decent chance that I will be moving on up within the next few months. At least, moving up in position and authority. Let's just say I will be looking at things from the other side of the desk, if all goes well.

Who's stoked and has two thumbs? This guy.

--

On a side note, I tried to explain Girardian mimetic theory to my co-workers today. It did not go well. I need to brush up on my Satan, reread segments of Scapegoat.

Specs

"Nobody! Nobody!"

-- Polyphemus, shortly after being blinded, when the other Cyclops giants ask who has harmed him

--

Today, the digital camera came in a box within a box. I unwrapped only the camera, batteries, and memory card, and played for an hour while my laptops swapped data. I left them that way, streaming gigabytes and estimating minutes through the very air of my ventilated room.

It is seventy-five degrees now in the city, and windows are opening everywhere. The black folks on my block have resumed their porch parties, which begin every evening as the sun touches the treeline, to the sound of plank-shaking bass and coolly-spoken profanities.

--

The artistic director of the Children's Theatre stopped me as I left the office today. We went into the firing/hiring/break room. He asked me if I write. I told him that I blog, and that I sometimes write creatively in private, too. I also mentioned a few satire articles from my college's newspaper. He asked if I write anything dramatic, and I told him that I wrote a few plays and scenes for some theatre classes, and that none of my plays have ever reached production. I got the impression he was about to ask me to try my hand at writing a children's play, when suddenly he turned, left the room, and called "Okay" back to me over his shoulder.

I don't know what that means.

--

My girlfriend made porkchops for herself, her roommate and me. I have rice cooking in a pot, and I assume some steamed veggies are on the way (probably peas, maybe corn, possibly both). My evening meals have been various and healthy lately, and I submit no complaints. Good food is good.

Bad television, though, will remain bad. However many half-episodes of "Sex and the City" I swindle myself into watching, I don't think I'll ever approve. I always feel kinda stupid just for being a guy--and a straight guy, at that--whenever I watch it. Or at least ostricized. Or maybe just confused.

I felt the same way when I watched The Hours (though that is a good movie).

--

Speaking of swindling, this online pop-culture mag seems swanky at first glance--but is it just a swindle?

--

The plan with the old laptop is to finish the file transfer (13GB of music, 3GB of other stuff) and then scrap it to a tech dealer near the university. I figure I can get about $50 for it and all its parts. If not, well, I'll take what I can get. Even twenty dollars would be nice: that's eighty gumballs.

Vaio

"We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

--

This is my first post from the new laptop. It is nice. I like it a lot.

And one time, I got on a plane and we went really fast and then took off but then we landed. So it was really exciting when I spent all that money to do it, and then once I got it, it was still exciting, but then when it had already happened it started to lose its luster.

But this time, it's not a plane ticket. It's a laptop, and it is seriously really nice. Fired right up and all that. It boots in thirty seconds--what?

--

Took a short (20 min.) walk around the pond in Eden Park this morning before rehearsal. A short walk to start a long day. But it was peaceful and gray and wet, like mornings when we went camping and my dad would wake me up early because the fish were starting to bite. I used to think that it was Mother Nature's way of waking up the woods, pulling the insects to the still surface of the water, boiling the hungry fish to the top, their gaping maws and startled, crazy eyes testament to the earth's mystery: The appalled swimmers splashing, sounding, feeding.

And it brought us and our poles and our lines, inadvertent Thoreaus, casting out and low, but thinking in and high.

--

I talked to my dad for a long time tonight, probably over an hour. He tells me that my family's plans to visit Cincinnati (and their son, who lives there) are in danger of being canceled, not because of finances, not because of cataclysm, but because of high school sports.

My little sister is a whiz at sports. As a freshman, she has made it onto both the varsity volleyball and soccer teams. Which is fantastic. I support all her endeavors, not just because she is my little sister, but because she is good at what she does.

However.

The varsity soccer regional competition will take place during the weekend my mom, dad, sisters and dog were going to come to Cinci. Not only are the games scheduled for that inconvenient weekend, but it is also Easter weekend; and beyond that, it is the high school's spring break. Those seem like three great reasons not to play at regionals, which seems to contradict my earlier claim to support my sister's sports-related endeavors.

My family, naturally, still wants to make the trip. I do, too, though I understand the conflict. But my dad is more vehement about things. He tells me that high school sports have changed, that when he was a teenager, the priority was not the team or the game, but first your family, then your schoolwork. Then, and only then, did activities and sports begin to matter.

If my dad had needed to skip a tournament to go on a family trip, there would have been no opposition. But my sister has already dealt with stickler coaches: In the fall, the varsity volleyball coach refused to let her play in the state soccer tournament because it conflicted with a regular-season v-ball game; trouble is, while her soccer teammates were suffering at state without her, my sister watched the other players from the bench and never even got so much as the chance to serve.

(On a side note, when I was in high school, my JROTC instructor kicked me off the drill team because I decided not to march one weekend during the season because I wanted to judge a novice forensics tournament. It was one competition, and I was cut for missing it, even though I gave two weeks' notice so they could get someone else to march. I dropped JROTC the next semester.)

I wonder why high-school activities matter so much now. It seems a lot of commitment to ask of people who are not yet five years out of puberty.

--

I finally succumbed and got a Skype account, too. And I posted a resume on USAJobs.gov.

And did I mention I have this brand-new laptop?

(Okay, time to stop being obnoxious to the Internet and go to sleep. Another long day of rehearsals tomorrow.)

Town

"It's not awful, just not my taste. Too much running around, and noise and too many choices of things to do. Oh and the folks in town just seem to talk and talk and talk. No one ever just calms down and enjoys the sights quietly. Seems like some of them just want to hear themselves talk. You know what I mean?"

-- the Brooklyn Bunny, in Town Mouse, Country Mouse

--

We'll start rehearsing the next show on Monday. I will play the Brooklyn Bunny (excerpt from one monologue above) and the Country Turtle. The yin and the yang, my next trick.

--

The apartment is cold again in Cincinnati; after a full week of warming weather, the temperature has dropped again. A few nights ago, it snowed an hour south of here. Today, at fifty degrees, the middle of March is feeling a lot like the beginning of January.

Ate a bagel sandwich this morning with egg, cheese and ham. Teresa made it, and I ate it. That's a poem waiting to be written.

--

Watched the first two episodes of HBO's Carnivale last night, and I think I may keep watching. That's something I don't always do when a friend or co-worker suggests a TV show and lends me the box set. I find that often they believe you will like it because they like it, and they also happen to like you, and so you and this show they like are lumped together in the same category of "things I like." Maybe they even like you both for the same reason. So-and-so is quirky, therefore they will enjoy this quirky show; So-and-so likes poop jokes, therefore they should watch "Family Guy."

But the sad reality, in many cases, is that your friends sometimes (and co-workers especially) do not really know you. They know a version of you, the peeled sliver slice you leave on the plate. It's artistic, it's inviting, yes, and it's also not your purest self. Agreed?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just the way it is. A professor once told me, "If everyone acted the way they wanted, and said what they wanted, right now, civilization would collapse." In the arts, especially theatre (the art in which drama is its greatest plus and its greatest minus, the agent of multiplication as well as division), being honest and vulnerable and completely uncorked--a spewing, flowing, unpolluted river of Yourself--is a little unsettling, and a bit annoying. The empty space is a place for masks, a hovel of safe extroversion. There is room for you, just not all of you. This is work; this is not you. This is you inside a giant box with a stage and seats and a curtain and lights, a metaphorical box created by walls of script pages, a roof of sales, a floor of blocking.

Some people may disagree. Scholars debate. Theatre is a tricky setting in which business takes place, because it is at once a liberating environment and a restricting one. It says, You may run and play as much as you please, but stay in the fence, remain in your pen, do not be so brash as to assume this sort of thing is Okay in the Real World.

Still, it remains one of the only places where whatever slice you peel off yourself and show to your co-workers, it will be observed, understood, savored, and mostly accepted.

(Unless, perhaps, you are a conservative.)

Anyways. I dig Carnivale; I'll keep watching it. Just for the record.

Top

"I want to build a house upon this mountain
Way up high
Where the peaceful waters flow
To quench my thirsty soul
Up on the mountain..."

-- Steven Curtis Chapman, "The Mountain"

--

Just bought a laptop, the Sony Vaio NS290J/S.

And the Canon PowerShot A590IS.

It's my first over-$1000 purchase since I last paid tuition.

--

Last night, tripped down to Lexington, KY, to see McMullen and the show he's working on, "100 Years of Disney on Ice." Of course, the show was a treat. Afterward, we hit the Horse and Barrel Pub and caught the hell up--it was our first chance to do so since August. When they flashed the lights at us (at half-past ten on a Thursday night, bars are closed in Lexington) we walked through odd Kentucky snow back to the Hilton's magnificent lobby, where we chatted until the morning.

I drove home, battling wind, fighting urination urges.

Forms

"The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Form has nothing to do with it."

-- Kostya, in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull

--

Back to the rehearsal grind, hopping, belting, prancing and dancing through runs of Tom Sawyer. An acting coach once told me that if I wasn't feeling exhausted at the end of the show, I wasn't quite reaching the level of commitment I needed to reach. If that's so, I'm committed to these rehearsals, because at the end of the day (or in the case of this bleary, dreary Sunday, at four o'clock) I am plum tuckered out.

There is a form to rehearsal, a set code of expectations, a kind of protocol, a series of deadlines. It is perhaps an odd thing that respect for those expectations translates to co-actors as respect for each other. You go off-book, I go off-book; you grab the bucket, I grab the bucket; you press play, I press pause.

What a relief, though, to fall from that grace and have the obligations naturally fall to you, rather than all of us striving for it. This rehearsal process, I mean, feels right, like boxer briefs: Just enough support, but plenty of freedom. And few--if any-wedgies.

--

Been realizing lately that I get far more upset about politics than I ought to. I guess liberals had more to be upset about when Dubya was in office, and now that I'm on the shit-side of the toilet paper, it's my turn to gripe and get sarcastic. But my prior gospel ought to hold, I think: That ambivalence almost like acceptance, like floating on a lake and waiting for the weather to change. The fact that Obama plans to include free tattoo-removals in the stimulus package (thanks again, California) bothers me, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter--insert Queen guitar solo here--and it's not worth it to make car rides awkward.

Because when you're pulled onto the side, the shoulder, halfway home with your headlights on in the night, tires stopped on gravel and wisps of grass; even then, the semis pass within twenty feet of you and the wind rattles your aluminum cage, buffets the tempered glass, and the storm passes, that artificial storm moves on and you stay in the car, because outside the wind resistance is harder to resist, and the spring replaces any storm eventually, yes it does, yes it does: As Krippayne sang, "Sometimes he calms the storm; Other times, he calms his child."

Don't worry; be happy; use semi-colons; don't hate, appreciate; and be glad you never got a tattoo. Some people won't cast a kid with ink on his chest, or his back.

There is a way to usurp every form. Even the persuasive essay can mutiny itself.

--

"I don't need to fight / To prove I'm right."

-- The Who, "Bubba O'Reilly"

--

Last tidbit: I watched the first two minutes of an "Ace of Cakes" episode, and I learned that the American Dialect Society has immortalized the former planet by verbing it. English, as Dr. Jackson taught us, is great for several reasons, but one of the greatest is that it is now possible to verb any word, including the noun "verb."

Here's to my beliefs, and my narrow-mindedness: May we all be plutoed justly.

Presence

"This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I've lost it, I also realize the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him."

-- Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

--

I hope I am a cautious reader. I try to keep one eye on the text and one on the whole. While I read, I am simultaneously thinking about what is happening now, and how it fits into the work as a whole. It is like enjoying an entree and thinking about dessert.

The above passage from Dillard surprised me. There is a passage in Bradbury's Dandelion Wine that deals with the same sort of awareness of Now; it occurs when the main character, a boy anxious for summer vacation, runs into a field and feels summer coming. He cannot explain it, he cannot pinpoint it, but at the same time, he knows it is there.

When I read, I am always skeptical of the book, especially if it was recommended to me. I repeatedly take stock in what's happened, estimating what the future holds, gauging, appraising. I am like an accountant working on a ledger, reworking the balance every few lines. I don't want any mistakes. I want to be sure I am not taken by surprise, because then I may as well read thrillers just for thrills. I may as well watch Saw movies. I want to see the work in my hands evolve in words, as species evolve in populations; to feel the story or narrative growing, referencing itself, like a living thing; to match wits with the author, ten thousand miles away, a century apart, and see what's coming.

And so, when I am surprised, the fact itself surprises me, and the double-decker is better than the single pattied burger.

--

I look back into the text I am reading, and I find that it has not changed, that the words are still in order, the paragraphs are still indented. The content remains; my awareness is heightened. So now I cannot breeze through the language. I must chew it. I must reread a single word, marveling at the connection of syllables, the arrangement of symbols. I get stuck on a sentence, realizing the rhythm, bobbing with it. It is jazz in prose, improvised description. It is dancing on a floor with a million words, scanning and jigging, waltzing with English. It leads me and it follows me.

--

I write these words with only shadows of meaning in my head. The letters in the text box, the unindented paragraphs, the temptation to save and view the blog--to rewrite already--and the doubt that I have expressed myself clearly, all conspire to kill that jazz, that living from line to line. This is it, I think, this is the present, and what a simple joy to stop, see, try to conquer, to capture. It is the essence of photography and psychology and prose, wrapped up in pretension, presented online.

It is blogging.

Returns

"Except for death and paying taxes
Everything in life
Is only for now."

-- Avenue Q, "For Now"

--

Hit up a Hipster party last night, on account of my girlfriend's favorite band playing a house-party gig in Clifton. I've read a little on the Hipster movement, the subculture that has gripped most of the liberally-minded, white, affluent, disappointed adolescents in this part of Cincinnati. Most of what I knew of them came from online mag articles posted by the Sad Bear bloggers, but after last night, I have my own contribution, this one from direct, unadulterated first-hand experience.

They stink. I'm serious. They stink so badly. I've never smelled such sweat, such grease, such cigarette-stained rancor. There's something about dirt that is honorable, that speaks of suffering and work and devotion to the raw experience of life, but there is also something about dirt that is, well, dirty. Poor hygiene. The gnawing, churning sensation of a lot of people who never really learned to curb the secretions of their bodies. The general impression that the house, the folks bobbing heads to too-fast boom-TICK-boom-TICK drumbeats in the cold, drafty, crowded basement, on the charred cement floor between spray-painted walls,--all of this, these images and odors, it all combines to tell you one thing about the Hipsters: They want to stink. They smell bad on purpose.

No, thank you. Thanks for the music (actually, I really only liked song #4 in the set, but then, I was too tired to get really into it), and thanks for the perspective.

--

There was, however, a crayon party happening in the dining room, on the main floor. Some art majors had donated 120 crayons and some thirty or so wax pastels, and the sheets from three oversize sketchbooks, and people sat and scribbled whatever they wanted, for as long as they wanted. Teresa and I created a Dali-esque landscape, complete with a stone bridge, a hand growing out of the earth and flinging a yo-yo sun into the sky, and a robot in the corner wondering whether he was in love. The kid across from us said that he was gifted by God with the ability to draw anyone's name in the shape of an AK-47; from what I saw, he was right. And the guy to our left said he was from a town halfway to Columbus called Washington Court House, Ohio.

--

Today, I just finished e-filing my taxes. Assuming the Internet was right, and I didn't overlook some numbered box with extra income, I should be getting about two months' rent back in about two weeks' time. With that money, I hope to buy either a computer or a car. My laptop's almost on the full-out fritz (one in every five boot-up attempts freezes), and I can only continue to survive on my girlfriend's auto (-matic? -mobile?) charity for so much longer. With the weather warming, I may not need the vehicle just yet.

I'd settle for a bike and a new hard drive, really. But there's a cool wind blowing today, a rough wind, full of wonder and verve. The trees are wondering where it came from, rocking back and forth like amateur public speakers, confused by March's opening hymn. We are leaving winter rapidly behind us. It's time to make some more purchases, to boost the quality of life just so.

So again, with this keeping me awake, I did my taxes--all of the damned things--with the quick and ample help of an online agency. Uncle Sam owes me some dough.

--

Tomorrow has in its itinerary the final performance of this history show, a morning (mourning?) class act, followed by an afternoon rehearsal for Tom Sawyer, an original musical. The script is a work in progress, a fledgling adaptation birthed from a stillborn play, but we seek to incubate it, to nurture it, with some careful attention to text, voice and pace. Or at the very least, with some good old-fashioned fun. And with a director who says to us, on the sly of course, that her method requires post-rehearsal drinks, fun is spelled B-E-E-R.

We meet the new actors tomorrow, too. One half of our troupe is leaving, one for the West Coast, the other for a career in customer-service representative training. One goes to the big city, the other back home. And Cincinnati remains for me a phantom town, not quite the big city, not quite home; not quite Chicago, not quite Omaha. In this hybrid city of confusing highways swooping through town in cartoon grins, in this vast array of the poor and the art-less, I will continue to act, to prepare faces to meet the faces that I meet.

Or something like that.