When Really It's Closer Than It Is Too Far

I KNOW I put myself here willingly, but I am miserable staring at this stupid script. And I KNOW what I am doing has no real stakes, but it does. It does. It does. If this doesn't then nothing does because this is actually something I care about and love (or at least that's what I thought at one point). I KNOW it's a made-up degree in making things up, but we made up our whole world. Every degree is made-up in making up! And every stupid degree has repercussions for the made-up careers we have! That make up our dumb careening existence!

...Okay, I can't tell if I'm arguing nihilism or the validity of the arts at this point. Whatever. MEANWHILE, there's a meat industry!

Woof. I'm listening to my "Middle Skewl" playlist today. DON'T JUDGE ME. "In Too Deep" indeed.

The faster we're falling, we're stopping and stalling.
We're running in circles again.
Just as things were lookin' up, you said it wasn't good enough,
but still we're tryin' one more time.

Rough

Having a rough day. It happens. It's spring outside, but maybe the sun's distance still makes my brain get winter blues. I don't know what to do. Scratch that--I know a lot of things to do, but I can't make myself do them. I KNOW the hard part isn't doing things, it's just starting to do things. Furthermore, the hardest part is not doing things. I know this. I know this, but still. But still.

I have decided to remind myself of some times I was truly happy:


ACTF 2008.


Tokyo Disney with my abroad group.


Seeing Andy solo.

These yellow lights are turnin' red, turnin' red.

Or Life Is Yours To Miss

There's only now. There's only this.

Yesterday I asked Chelle what she thought the purpose of life was. She said she thought it was to have no regrets. I think that's a pretty darn good answer. It covers all the bases really: treating yourself right, living life to the fullest, being respectful, etc.

I don't consider myself regretful. In fact, someone just asked me what my biggest regret was last week, and I came up dry. But, I suppose I do have mini-regrets (if you will). Teeny little guys, so today was "no regret day." It was pretty easy. I worked hard, I ate well, I was frugal, I was friendly.

And then I got hit with a doozy. I was in Dramaturgy. We had just watched Mouchkine's 1789. And then we had an hour and a half long discussion of theatrical heirarchy, which made me both giddy and disgusted. I literally sat up at one point and asked myself, "How did I get to the place where I consider this the best way to live?"

Literally everything in my whole day revolved around that class, that discussion--that discussion that mattered very much...on an itsy-bitsy level. I went to work at 8:30 to afford the Jamba Juice I would buy at 4:30 to power myself through the heavy class. I TA'd for a class at noon to earn my scholarship to afford the dramaturgy class. I spent the afternoon reading for class...Just about the only thing I did for myself was go to the gym...which I kind of did to align myself with peace before powering through the day.

My whole world is focused on this artistic theory...and part of me sometimes really does just want to scream, "WHY ARE WE ALL TALKING ABOUT THIS? WHO REALLY CARES!? WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE RELATIVELY SOON!" So...that.

But, honestly, no regrets about that. Because whether you're in a playwriting seminar or a practicing dentist, you ARE going to die. So...you know. Who can say if it's not a waste of time/energy to do anything? Who can say it's right to do anything?

I've been mentioning here how I've been killing myself with work, comedy, and being social? Well. I declared an "I'm being cheap, eating healthy, getting sleep, and not being social" week. It's going pretty well. Especially today--the day of no regrets. And then my front door rang a ton of times and we found this on the front porch:





Yup. A pumpkin full of candy with a note reading, "Dear Alice, Be social."

ME: You know what?
ME: I think Russel Stover has a bad rap.
ME: It's not horrible.
POOKIE: hahahahahaha
POOKIE: it is
POOKIE: plastic chocolate
ME: Then why am I enjoying it so much?
POOKIE: there is no polite answer to that question

So...one regret after all. Maybe eating my weight in jack-o-lantern chocolate right before bed wasn't the best.

Forget regret. Or life is yours to miss.

The Big Red Dot

Fishies at Hein Garden. 2008.

Today was mini-Japan day!

-This morning I read in the CS Monitor that Japan is still strugglin' even though the rest of the world has kind of moved on. I said a teeny prayer for my favorite country.
-Read a lot about Noh theatre in preparation for Theatre History today. Was whisked back to seeing Noh with Jamin and Mahji on a crisp fall evening in Kyoto. The show was so good that I did a cartwheel while I waited for the bus to take me home.
-Watched part of Throne of Blood--the Japanesed-up Macbeth directed by Kobayashi.* Instead of three witches, the Macbeth and Banquo characters come across an old man singing in the woods. He is singing about man being as inconsequential as insects. The two warriors stumble upon him and demand information about who he is at bow-point. Yo, weren't you guys listening? He's singing about the pointlessness of existence...How scared do you think he is to lose his life?
-For only one millisecond, when I heard the Japanese music and the Nihongo, did I think, "Oh...I could have been there." But then the millisecond was shot through with a billion samurai arrows as all the perfection of me coming to graduate school right here and right now swam up from the depths of the Pacific.

I'm the sea, and you're Japan.

*SERIOUSLY EMBARRASSING EDIT. THIS IS THE GUY WHO CAN EAT A BILLION HOT DOGS. The film was directed by Kurosawa. I am the worst Japanese lover of all time...

Eating Animals

Veggie lasagna baked by Kay Summer 2010

Last night I got home late from an improv jam. I am so grateful I found this group. It's perfect. They're friendly, flexible with learning curves, but challenging. Last night, for example, I nailed nothing in four hours of working. But, I made progress--which feels SO good. There are definitely times I reflect on an exercise and realize I was the weakest link, but I am sucking it all down and learning so much.

I was beat and tapped on my window. Kay was over, lying in bed and reading Eating Animals. He opened the curtains, slid the glass, and I crawled in. The extra steps to a door are worth a lot when you're sleepy. He showed me something I had written in the margin of the book last year about nihilism. I explained. There are roughly four things that defer existential crisis for me:

1. Continuing my commitment to vegetarianism.
2. Running and exercise.
3. Writing--usually on this blog actually. It's bite-size.
4. Improv.

There's a lot else I love--but it gets tricky. Spiritual literature can be a savior or a jerk in times of pointlessness. Sweets can make you sick. Sleep can make you tired. The Office isn't always funny. You get chapped lips when you kiss too much. So, I thank you God for my four little reasons to get up in the morning.

You have to be the cutest gravedigger I've ever seen.

Never Gonna Get It

Lately I've been feeing sorry for Blanche. She has figured out that the top hatch of her cage is freedom. She now spends 75% of her time climbing the bars, doing a backbend, and waving her paws and/or teeth at the latch. She grabs hold just as she falls back--pomp--into shavings. She may be improving how long she can hang on to the latch, how long she can stand on one foot as she bends, how to swing and grasp the ceiling in one try, but she's still never gunna get out. The hatch opens up, and unless she built some type of cannon, she could not propel herself fast enough to bust out of the cage.

Plus, freedom would be horrible. She'd be sucked up in a vacuum cleaner immediately. I live far from the forest.

I aspire to be the kind of person never pitied for her goals and progress in achieving them. It's possible that her attempts at escape make Blanche's life meaningful, but I sorta doubt it.

They hand you the knife and tell you to cut it up right.