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Pre-Wedding Cake, October 2010

This week has been a hard week, and it's not over yet. I am falling apart with physical ailments--also bleeding. How does it all happen at once? My stomach is splotchy, the peel flakes fall onto everything. Crispy snow.

Two nights ago I stayed up very late. I stayed up very late because I had musical rehearsal until nine, and then I went to a longform jam at a seedy pizza bar until eleven, and then I stayed at said seedy place past midnight telling a very patient man about my current quandary: attempt to teach English in the land of seaweed wrapped rice paddies or attempt to be taught more English in the land of cacti and warm winters.

When I arrived home, everything was very still besides my throbbing feet. I wrapped them with socks and tightly-tied sneakers to pull the swelling (like Jay Sean) down, down, down, down, down. I threw a pillow on the ground and elevated the kickers to my bed. The floor was unkind, and I would sleep twenty minutes then wake then sleep then wake. I whined aloud to no one. "This is Gethsemane" I knew.

Today in the acting seminar I am auditing, we had to one by one enter the space in staccato and leave in legato. I walked carefully in one straight line across the theatre. I imagined graduate school at the Exit sign. I was scared and small--fingers jittered STACCATO STACCATO STACCATO. My eyes darted, jerked. Stopped. Then

one
final
JUT
of my forearms. Hands outstretched and
open
waiting for Peace to fall down from the canned lights.
Slowly,
I walked. Oh. So. Full.
In a grand swandive, my right arm swooped around my body and landed on my heart.
L E G A T O.
My legs carried me smoothly forward.

When I was done, there was a faint clapping--an awkward "I shouldn't be clapping at a dumb exercise, but my hands made me clap" clapping. My hopes and fears were in that dumb exercise. My hopes and fears are West.

I will be attending graduate school in Arizona this fall.