Why So Serious?

Neighbors are trying to kill me.
I run before the sun is up. I pass their orange brick home
Oh! That guy scared me--Wait. What's--?

 OH GOD.

WHY would anyone do this? My heart exploded.
I stopped. Okay, it's a cut-out. It's a cut-out.
Wait...IS it a cut-out? This could totally be like the time that guy stood still in Madame Tusseau's Wax Museum and when I inspected him, he offered a mild, "Boo" so I obviously jumped nineteen feet into the air and darn near knocked wax Will Smith over. If I were a serial killer and was going to dress up as The Joker, I would definitely take the possibility of being mistaken for a piece of cardboard into consideration. The advantages! So I stared at this promotional material/genius murderer for a long time. A. Long. Time. And then I felt stupid, so I ran away.

Maybe it seems stupid to you too, but when when I'm running empty streets at 6 AM, bumping into a tubby child holding cotton candy wearing a Rainbow Bright t-shirt would terrify me. Let alone ol' Heath.

So an interesting thing is happening. I see this creepy image like every other morning. This thing that completely wrecked me last week is now typical scenery. I've grown accustom, maybe even fond, of the lil menace. It means I have a quarter mile left. I imagine his overly-lip sticked face cheering me on. Maybe stabbing future marathon competitors with a pencil.

Is there inspiration here? Like, what really scares us can become routine? I'm still kinda of working on the metaphor. Not that we should learn to be comfortable with our fears, but rather, we should see them as just two-dimensional benign onlookers. Maybe.

Instead

This morning gifted me a particularly beautiful Arizona run. The week is starting. A big week. I was pounding out anxiety and grump and hope. My iPod was on shuffle, and this little gem caught my ear. Perfect. So perfect. It was from a fat playlist of albums Lazz gave me right before I moved far away from the Midwest.

Oh, I wish I had a suntan.
I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine.
I wish I had a beach house.
Then we could make a big fire every night.

Instead I'm just crazy. I'm totally mad.
Yeah, I'm just crazy, and ______ in the head.
And maybe if I really try with all of my heart
then I could make a brand new start in love with you.

Intelligence

My high school theatre classroom was in the far corner of the basement, basically secluded except for our neighbors: the shop department. As a student I felt like I was venturing across the stupid world to get to My Place. And sometimes it seemed our cast of Crimes of the Heart had survived the zombie apocalypse down there alone. But, now, as I sit in bed at 6 AM racking my brains (braiiiiiiiiiins) making high school theatre lesson plans that are noise sensitive, I think the person who designed the drama quarantine is a darn genius.

My improv team winning Regionals Fall 2012. Like, look at Splosian. Do we really need him screaming in the halls of a high school?

Morning Inspiration

Bathed myself in inspiration to prepare for today's demands. Some essays by Brecht and an article by Paul Stark Seeley.

"It is significantly hard to find out anything about what other European writers think. But I take it that where literature, for instance, is concerned they all share more or less the same view, namely that writing is a melancholy business. As usual Shaw, whose views about anything under the sun are far from unknown, differs from his colleagues here...he likes writing. There is no room for a martyr's halo even outside his head. His literary activities have in no sense cut him off from life. On the contrary. I am not sure if it is the right way to measure his gifts, but I can only say that the effect of this inimitable cheerfulness and infectious good mood is quite exceptional."--Brecht, "Three Cheers for Shaw"

"The accomplishment of this demand may be a long-continuing one, but let us remember we cannot find any objective to compare with this one, and the rewards are immediate and continuous."--PSS

Pookie Caught a 6 AM Flight, and I'm Just Up Missin' My Sis

Six hours ago.

She thought it was a kiss. Nope. A lick.

Pride. Disgust.

Revenge.

Disgust. Comeuppance. 

Blobbin'. 

Ruv.

But I think it's best if we both stay, stay, stay, stay.

Sister Has Landed

AM Pookies

Vanilla Cupcake Goldfish Graham Crackers

So, this blog has become a makeshift center for reviewing specialty noms. When I saw vanilla cupcake goldfish at the store there was like a 1% chance I would leave without them. Today:

Goldfish in the AM.

Om nom.

They're not goldfish consistency--just shape. They are a heavy graham cracker texture/taste, and there's nothing cupcake about them. They are graham crackers with some pinkish sprinkles on them.

I mean, I had a good time, but they were not what they advertised to be.

Taste: A

Honesty: D

My Apparent Health Lately As This Was Breakfast: F+

One Nation, Of Individuals (with Liberty and Justice for All)

This semester my Dramatic Writing Workshop is reading Anne Bogart's A Director Prepares. Yesterday we discussed her essay on Memory, which is largely about Americans' lack of memory (recognition) of the shoulders we're standing on when it comes to theatre. A classmate noted that visual artists learn to copy before they can create. They're constantly making art, turning around, revisiting Picasso, Degas, Rembrandt, then mimicking for a while, then facing forward again and marching on.

Playwrights don't much do this. We think it's important to know the basics, but no one holds you to it. The sentiment appears to be "There's too much"--which is kind of true--we definitely don't have as succinct a canon as art history (or maybe I'm just telling myself that because I still haven't read, say, Raisin in the Sun). Not only are we forgiving about neglecting our past, we are absolutely unforgiving when it comes to dragging it along with us. It is not good to be impersonating another writer. If possible, our work should be nothing like anyone's ever seen before. Not only is this basically impossible, if it were possible, approaching the goal of sheer uniqueness in this way is like just deciding to take a running jump off a roof and say we will be the first human to fly. We need to walk before we can run--and absolutely before we can soar.

Why are we this way? Why do we want to be so new? Why can't we stand to repeat classics, to learn from what has come before us? Bogart says it's a matter of not recognizing and using our own culture because American culture is so jumbled and illusive. You can't pin it. Are we religious? Yes and no. Are we helpful? Yes and no. Are we obnoxious? Yes and no. We're not even unanimously rich or talented or polite or impolite. We have almost no common literary background. We have no ritual. I can get behind this theory of not using our culture because we don't have one, but I think a more likely reason we don't go back and reflect what has come before us is because part of our culture...actually probably the only consistent part of our culture is being individual. We were founded because of persecution, we like to protest and riot and be free, and thus...write new new works.

Desert morning. April 2012.

Just some stuff I'm thinking about at 4 AM...which is another story.

The world shines as I cross the Macon County Line.

Mornings with Fathers

This morning I watched an episode of Louie while running at the gym. The episode ended with Louie coming home after a long night, and as soon as he paid the sitter, his little girls woke up. "Good morning!" they cheered! It was 4 AM. "Can we go out for breakfast?!" Cut to the three of them at a tiny diner eating pancakes in the wee hours of the AM.

My heart was touched in this day of hearts. I remembered this time I could not sleep. I was 8, and I eventually just got out of bed. I knew it was the nowhere zone of time. Everything was still. I crept downstairs to find my dad also insominating on the sofa. I think it was winter break. I had just gotten a bat computer game for Christmas. He pulled out the desk chair and let me play. Sometimes kids just get up. No use fighting it. I think I played for hours. I just wasn't tired. And the TV hummed behind me.

Valentine updates tomorrow. Love you all.

Keeping Clean

1. I just re-read last night's post (that karate chopping of keys I did as my eyes were closing) and I was a lot sloppier and more tired than I apparently thought. Sorry for the opinionated, poorly-constructed garble.

2. On Thursday, Pookie, LC, and I went to the midnight Scream 4 opening. We obviously all had late nights, but Pookie had to get up super super early for a special work project. She accidentally missed her alarm and made it to work just in time--but of course without any glamour of morning ritual.


Right after the movie got out. She's still a tad scared.

"I brushed my teeth with Junior Mints this morning. I didn't have time to go to the bathroom, but then I was driving and saw the box laying out from last night and was like, 'Well...'"