life and cleaning.
in I Lift My Eyes Up, there are pictures here, Thoughts and Feelings
as battering ram, Cause, fashion, fashion show, hamstrings, honest to goodness, kind, knight in shining armor, life priorities, mess, middle, moment, organization, proud cause, purple belt, rain boots, reading, reason, show, Tim Gunn
Does this kind of thing ever happen to you?
You’re cleaning your room. Or, honest to goodness, really trying to. But then you find a dress your friend gave you that you’d completely forgotten about and it’s yellow (yellow!), so you decide to pair it with a purple belt and your rain boots and then you take a picture so you can really see what it looks like and pretty soon you’ve forgotten all about how you were trying to clean your room in the first place.
Because now there’s a fashion show in the basement and Tim Gunn would be so very proud cause there you are, making it work.
And there’s the mess, too, still persisting. Or just altogether ignored now, actually. Because now you’ve found one of your umpteenth journals from The Great Past and you’re reading right in the middle of the book and it hurts a little to read about what you thought then and compare it with what you know now, but maybe it heals a little, too. But, anyway, you’re a lost cause in terms of organization because what you’re trying to do is process your life. And for some reason, your room is mightily dwarfed by your life.
Priorities, I know.
“You’re one of those people who are unbelievably present, aren’t you? Like, you can’t get out of the moment if you try, huh?” observed a friend today as we were stretching each other.
Yes, stretching each other. This is what we do. I stretch out his hamstrings or he sits on my back as I do a straddle and we tell each other stories about our lives that make each of us groan and laugh, respectively.
“Yeah, I think I get pretty stuck in the moment, actually; like, it’s hard for me to remember that anything else even exists sometimes,” I agreed.
But it does. Time moves forward, graciously revealing those things other than NOW. Sometimes like a battering ram and sometimes like a knight in shining armor, but no matter what, time comes for you. I wrote an essay in school called, Ready or Not, Here Time Comes! and thank God it does. I don’t always feel this way, but now–well, now, I definitely have cause to call Time kind.
But still, it can be so strange. Like when I went to a friend’s party tonight. That sounds normal enough for a Friday night, but the thing that was strange was that it was at an apartment where my ex used to live. So it was weird to know exactly how to turn on the unconventional light in the bathroom; unsettling to see the old wood paneling that I used to see a lot. There were reminders everywhere. Ghosts around the corner who acted like enchanted mirrors, only too happy to reveal reflections of who I was.
And all this was going on while I was making small talk and listening to stories and eating cucumbers.
Finally, we climbed out a window onto the roof and I don’t think the ghosts knew how to get there. Probably because I had never been there before. I felt free and light and like I blended in with the universe up there; I knew the stars could see me, but their gaze is generally kind and they have this wink that seems to say, “Head up, kiddo; great things are in front of you, you know, but even greater things are within you.” And then they laugh a sparkling kind of laugh that makes you scratch your head in wonder at the thought of trouble and what it could possibly have to do with you.
So yes, thank God for windows that lead to roofs that are too high for the ghosts to climb. Thank God for Time and how it comes again and again, making life bearable and then even good and then so lovely that you’re starry eyed just thinking about it.
And tonight my room is messy, but I am processing life, see; because life just feels so much more imminent than a room, I guess.
oh, man.
in Funny Stuff, Performance, Thoughts and Feelings
as american idioms, brother jonathan, chicken, cut, Delaware, dress rehearsal, Esther, fancy footwork, head, Henry VIII, jonathan, king henry viii, Pat, rehearsal, Shane, Tim Gunn, week
One time I overheard my mom trying to use that old expression, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
And I know. It’s not the most poetic of our American idioms.
But my mom failed to mention the chicken, and so she simply told someone that she was “running around with HER head cut off.”
Which she wasn’t, thankfully.
And considering the fact that she never did marry King Henry VIII, that’s probably not gonna happen anytime soon.
But the thing is, I’ve been feeling like that chicken lately. The one with its head cut off, I mean.
And it’s funny how when it rains, it seems to pour.
( Yes, let’s see just how many cliches I can fit in this one post!).
Because I, along with my brother Jonathan, have been busy putting a musical–The Story of Esther–on its feet, and well, it’s the day of the show, y’all (which sadly, is NOT a cliche, but it is a quote from Waiting for Guffman so should count for something, right?)! But all this to say that this week has been tech week.
No problem.
Except that this week is also when a casting company has decided they want to see me.
Every day since Wednesday.
Now both are awesome–Esther and getting seen by this casting company–but together?
Let’s see what kind of fancy footwork can be done to make it work (as Tim Gunn would say!).
So wednesday I drove to NYC and drove back for rehearsal. Then I recorded with Shane. And “recording with Shane” meant that I plopped down on a pillow and fell asleep while Shane and Pat worked hard.
When I asked Shane if I could hear the tracks later he asked me if I knew the story of the Little Red Hen. He was teasing, but still. Good point.
Thursday I drove back to the city, danced to the point where I could have maybe thrown up, had I been the kind that does that, which I don’t, and then drove back to Delaware. I stopped to sing three songs with Shane at a concert and then made it to help run a cue to cue tech rehearsal into a dress rehearsal.
And then today.
I HAVE to be back by seven. I accompany this show and nobody else even knows the music remotely. So I got myself a real nice little Amtrak ticket and man, does it feel luxurious to be all relaxed and not having to pay attention or worry that I’ll get stuck in traffic or even sit up cause, girl! you’re driving! that ain’t no joke!
Instead, I’m all relaxed on the train. And I’m On my way back from NYC and it takes not even an hour and a half to get there, compliments of the speedy Acela Express.
And I’ll make the show tonight.
And tomorrow I don’t have to get up and go to NYC, which sort of feels like a day off, by this point.
So yes, this chicken has found her head once again.
