Tear Count Arizona 2011-12

First semester, I only cried one time, and that was because my grandfather passed away. For a while it looked like I was going to stick with the one cryfest per semester average. I already spent my crying card in February when my sister visited. We got into an argument during Sunday brunch at one of my favorite restaurants of all places (Cornish Pasty whaddup), and suddenly...waterworks. It was a brief emotional explosion that, in hindsight, we realized was probably due to accidental dehydration and sleep deprivation. Boops.

I was almost home free! One final portfolio due today, final Theory presentation tomorrow, fatty stack of grading, but whatever! I was feelin' stressed, but not freaking out. And next thing I know, it's 7 AM, and my greasy pigtails are sopping up my mucus because I'm bawling outside the library. Why? Oh, I had trouble printing. I mean, it's more traumatic than that, but also not. Luckily I have Pookie, who I texted "Meltdown" to, and despite being in a meeting, she called me immediately. Talked me off the crazy ledge: "No one is going to steal your social security number." (Believe it or not, this was legitimately part of the printing kerfuffle.) I sobbed, "MY FINAL THEORY PRESENTATION IS TOMORROW AND I HAVEN'T STARTED."

She said, "Your Theory presentation on criticism of female characterization in theatre? I don't think it's fair to say you haven't started when, as far as I can tell, you've been preparing for this presentation your whole life?"

This made me laugh, and then I had to go to work, and I worked twelve hours with a smile on face.

Photoboothed myself right now. HELLO, BOYS!

So, yeah, I've cried three times since I moved to Arizona.

Also, since I'm spouting embarrassing truths: While I biked home tonight I listened to B*Witched.

Say you will, say you won't, say you'll do what I don't.
Say you're true, say to me--C'est la vie!

EDIT: Oh, yeah, I cried a lot during Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, but that doesn't really count.

Sweating

Muff in DC. 2012.

I am so close to the end of this year I can smell it. But, in the meantime, I feel like I am in the middle of a swamp, wading through, absolutely icky.

I KNOW there is an end in sight, but why oh why does it feel like it will never come? I also know this stuff is relatively meaningless. No one really cares what my final Theatre for Social Change portfolio will be like, but, well, I do. So. It's almost 1 AM and I have work at 7:30 and at some point during my twelve hour shift I need to dash to the library and print these finals and that scholarship app and research the canon of theatre in reference to feminist criticism and and and...

"I'm not out there sweating for three hours every day just to find out what it feels like to sweat."--Michael Jordan

E.L.A.I.C.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close began with a blue New York sky. I felt as though I were wearing a necklace, maybe a golden timepiece, and the screen had scooped it up and was tugging it slowly--comforting on the edge of a choke.

I felt moved up and out from the first moments because I experienced the whole book again and then the experiences with the experiences and the experience of today with the experiences.

A boy from Alabama played Oskar Schell in his Dramatic Interpretation piece in my speech national final round in 2006. I met him while I was looking for my skirt which had fallen out of my bag.

Two months later my friend Claw told me to visit her at work the day before I left for college. I drove to the pizza place and found her extremely high. She left her post, went to her car, and emerged with her copy--incredibly marked up. She said I'd need it and told me I looked like I was going to a tea party. I looked to my right today. Henne was next to me, high school.

I kept the book on my dresser throughout my entire first term of college and read it over winter break. I read pieces of it to Vince in my St. Louis bedroom after Thanksgiving, I kept it in the back room at the ice cream store, and I sat on a tub of strawberries reading it.

A year later I bought a second copy for Kay, and we both read it in our first December together. The weeks leading up to my visit to his home when he was still back in Illinois at swim camp and I was nannying my baby cousin in San Diego. Kay and I brought our copies to the dunes of Monterey and could not speak. We stayed silent for hours watching the waves and climbing the sand. Now, I haven't spoken to him in a year. I can't remember what kind of hair he had. This bothers me. How did he look? We read what he called "the red hand book" together and now I don't remember if he hair was long enough to be curly last we spoke. I know he smelled faintly like burnt muffins from working at the bakery.

I'm sitting in the theatre though. Oh, I love this story. And while the movie encapsulates about 8% of the novel's goodness, I cry several times.

Henne sits across from me at the sweets shop. He takes his stubs out of his pockets and rips them in halves. I ask why. He says I probably keep everything, which is slightly true--at least until I decide if its worth scrapbooking. He asks if this night is worth remembering. And maybe that's it--I think everything is worth remembering.

I will always remember seeing my favorite book as a film with my high school friend and Hill and Hill's boyfriend and his roommate because we were a microscopic community and everything pieced together for me to feel this way and be this way and live this way. And it doesn't make any sense but that's why it does.

Bright Copper Kettles

You guys, my favorite things are really embarrassing. Like, really. Especially considering I'm supposedly an artist OR SOMETHING.

I know I am getting an MFA in theatre, and I really should be more quirky, but Hamlet really is my favorite Shakespeare play. And, I'M SORRY, IT JUST IS. I really do "get" cool music, but I still love Andrew McMahon more than anything ever, and that's...just the way it goes.

But, really, as an educated person with a degree in English, I should have a cool favorite book, and, honestly, I do not. I read my favorite book when I was 13. It's a young adult novel, but it's my favorite. Then, Bearclaw gave me her copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and I read it one Christmas, and it tied my old fave. I know that book isn't exactly hip and cool. It was on the New York Times bestseller list and all, but a lot of people still hadn't read it or heard of it. It's a great book that people didn't really fuss about. So, I was able to pretend I was a gritty literate, but, no. NO. I JUST SAW A STUPID PICTURE OF TOM HANKS IN THE STUPID FILM ADAPTATION, SO NOW MY ONLY EVEN REMOTELY COOL FAVORITE THING IS EL TOAST.

Ugh. I'm the lamest.

Other Lame Favorites I Am Willing to Admit:

Favorite Play: Death of a Salesman
Favorite TV Show: Boy Meets World, One Tree Hill, Mad Men*
Favorite Radiohead Song: "Fake Plastic Trees"
Favorite Mexican: Chipotle
Favorite Coffee: Starbucks


Mocha from Bread Co--not as good at the Bux. Also, my sister eatin' a brownie. January 2011.

Do you SEE? UGH! I'M SO ANNOYING. But, you know what, at least I own this stuff. Because I bet A LOT of people's fave coffee is Starbucks. Duh. That's why they're so popular. It's good stuff, the Bux. But, at least I say, "Yeah, my favorite drink isn't from the arty little joint in the school of design. I love love mocha frappachinos--what of it?" At least that's what I tell myself.

*This is cool, but it's kind of so cool that it's not anymore.