Happy Is What Happens

Yesterday I sat in the big fancy conference room with my coffee mug filled with the last of my Starbucks birthday card Macchiato and signed my name to contracts to literally work my dream job. And then, we rehearsed. Dreams come true are curious creatures. Is this the dream? The closer it gets in the first place, the less glowing it seems until for lunch you are eating a cold piece of avocado toast and highlighting haphazardly.

But I DO still feel full of something--zip or zest--that tightens around me. This was day two of rehearsal. I woke up early to run lines on the gym elliptical. I ate a spinach bowl. I answer emails furiously on the train. I laugh a lot. I think a lot. I try a lot. I wonder a lot. Everything you get you once wanted very much, and that is strange.

There's a kind of a sort of cost--

There's a couple of things get lost.

Your GD Mouth

Jamin with his Mama at my Bday Bfast. May 2010.

"The Attack" is what we called the penultimate beat of Act I in Summer Brave. Fall of my senior year. The attacker was Rosemary Sydney, played by me, attacking Hal, played by Rex. In essence, I basically went berserk on the kid for about two full pages of angry monologue. Meanwhile, Howard, played by Jamin, tried in vain to calm me down. The attack climaxes in me/Rosemary screaming a string of insults, and Howard finally grabbing me/her, covering my/her face and yelling, "ROSEMARY, SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!"

Before one of our first shows, the cast of thirteen was standing in the foyer of the academic building which houses the black box. We stood in a circle, and one by one we were to announce a significant line of ours, and everyone would repeat it, thus connecting with the individuality of each character in the ensemble. So we're all doing that. Millie says, "Madge is the pretty one." And we all copy: "Madge is the pretty one." I say, "What do you mean young?" and everyone repeats, and so on, and so on. And faster and faster. And we're getting energized, and very connected to each hushed repetition, and then we get to Jamin, and he yells, "ROSEMARY, SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!" And the entire ensemble turns to me and screams, "ROSEMARY, SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH!"

And what no one else saw was a mass comm student heading down to the editing suites behind the ensemble circle. He concernedly held my gaze as if to say, "Rosemary, you've gotta get some nicer friends."