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

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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.

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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.

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

-- The Who, "Bubba O'Reilly"

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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.