It Is the End of Days and I Have Chosen to Write

We could be nuke dust any day. I have no pretenses about avoiding desserts in this vacation wonderland. If I die, it will be with a cinnamon roll in my belly.

As things collapse and teeter I imagine myself dirty in a roving commune. My last job won't matter, but the skills I learned at it will.

Looking ahead I wonder what I will finish. What are the last words I want to speak on a stage or send to a reader? I thought about canning my book until I feel more than 50% certain I will see October, but once I have journaled, read a chapter of Ghost Story, drank my amaretto coffee, watched Big Brother, and even fallen down the Twitter void, my computer shines like a Zelda treasure chest. I sit at the desk and kick it open. A four note victory plays.

On Offense

We opened the show with "Option" last night. It's essentially a typical short form improv scene that morphs into genre switching at the audience's whim. I played a girl on a date and then at the suggestion of "horror" a cast member said he had slipped a serum into our blood. I did the first thing I could think of (pretend my face was melting off) and then the audience had us switch genres to rom-com. I kept my face distorted and said, "I look like this, but I know you love me for what's on the inside." (Laugh, laugh.)

As soon as I said it I had a little shiver up my spine. Some people really do have distorted voices. I wasn't aiming to make fun of them. I was just...acting like I was in a horror movie. As the game ended and I sat on the sidelines during the next piece, I really thought hard about how someone in the audience with a disfigured cousin might have taken that twenty seconds. Then I tried very hard to think of other options I had in the moment. I could have pretended to be a horror-trope ditz, which would have been satire (or problematic?). Or maybe I could have been the killer. I shook it off and sang a mini-musical about a purple alligator (lol comedy).

When we returned from intermission I started an intro for the next game and for the first time looked into the front row. Dead center. Staring up at me. A burn victim with missing fingers and a disfigured face. I flubbed a word. Ultimate universal irony. Then I made a point to finish my speech and give a winning smile to the dude. I creeped on him for the rest of the show. He was having an excellent time, clapping and hooting.

Earlier this summer I taught a "song parody" camp to middle schoolers. I played Weird Al's parody of "Complicated" "Constipated." The song ended and I asked the group why it was funny. A blonde 12 yo's practically screamed, "It's not! It's not FUNNY." CoMeDy Iz HaRd, u gUyz!

Five Awesome Things That Happened on August 3rd!

1. Two mile walk while listening to This American Life!
2. I worked on my new screenplay fueled by a snickerdoodle iced coffee and a s'more muffin from a hut called "Deja Brew." The treats were a total of $3! Maine prices!
3. Met up with a woman I met on the cruise ship who happens to live in Maine and happens to be a high school theatre teacher and also happens to have been trained in Michael Chekhov which no one is ever trained in but I was!
4. Did two short form improv shows and entered the musical game as a Taco Fairy and sang a song called "With Great Tacos Come Great Responsibility"!
5. Dollar made us all go to a little beach on the way home, and I was annoyed, but then "Love Story" by T Swift played while we were lost in the woods and when we finally got to the beach the stars were incredible and I could see so much Milky Way and Jams kept seeing shooting stars and apologizing since we didn't see them so we all decided to look the same direction and the brightest shooting star ever flew down and turned GREEN AND EXPLODED and we squealed with delight!

All In

Go all in or don't go at all.

HOLD UP. I just wrote that, but I don't believe that. I wouldn't do any dang thing if I asked myself "Am I all in right now?" and if the answer was "no" I didn't go. WHAT. Stupid advice, Alice. What about--

"Go all in or keep going until you are"?

Friday I won an award! I submitted to a sketch festival and felt luke warm about what I wrote. I tried a new vibe. (Read: fewer vegetarian rants, more hugs.) Sometimes I was like "Hey, this is pretty good." Other times I was like, "This is schmaltz barf."So during the festival, I didn't go all in. I think I gave a solid B+, but I was so busy questioning the lines, I was never fully invested. Bisque says he didn't notice, but I did. I took away a little piece of something great for myself. And then I won. I mean, huge happy success for sure, but why did I hold an umbrella over it? It was too late to do anything but enjoy the dang show, so why didn't I?

When I worked as a summer camp counselor in Maine before my junior year of college, there was this adorable, spunky, wonderful head counselor named Jooj who loved every minute of her job. She gave this super irresponsible but hugely important advice to me. I give it to the teaching artists I manage now. She said, "Follow the class. If it's hot and no one wants to learn, go have a water ballon fight." I took this to heart, and I really try to remember it in the stressful bursts of life. At a certain point, the bed is made, you know? All in.

Questions Surrounding the Trash Dress

Dollar told us last summer he discovered the local DJ in town was someone named DJ Jeff Buffington. I literally laughed just typing that. I love dancing, and I don't do it that often, so I was on board. So was Tulsa. Even the theatre bartender.

I packed two huge bags for this trip: show clothes, hiking clothes, exercise clothes, casual summer clothes...no club clothes. It's so hard to be a girl. I fairly consistently don't know what to wear. What does one wear to any given bar? I decided what I'd really like to wear is a trashy dress. The kind all the girls on MTV Real World slither on every Friday. I tell Tulsa at heart, I am a trash person. If I had it my way, I'd be eating daily Taco Bell and listening to Kelly Clarkson on repeat. He didn't seem to believe me. "No I am!" Later I mentioned how much tanning beds appeal to me. He blinked, "Wow. You are a trash person."

There's a huge wreckage store in Maine--a warehouse of granola bars that have fallen off trucks and sport socks for fifty cents. That's where my trashy dress is, I knew. I asked the guys if we could stop there before the show. In the dressing room I tried on two leopard print minis and a hot pink thing with fake jewels for 9.99. Bingo.

Oh, the dance floor was hot and sticky. We had just finished two shows. Time to cut loose. And after lots of sweat and bumping and jumping we were propelled out of the bar by way of "Hit the Road Jack" via DJ Jeff. I liked the Maine air on my legs under a synthetic pinched cape. The one strap and the tight chest piece. It's comfortable for me.

We wound down in Tulsa's room. I thought about the dress, how I kind of wish I could wear it every day. "Tomorrow," I said. "Why shouldn't I wear it tomorrow?" Dollar said I'd look like a freak. "But who cares?" I asked, "You guys know me, and everyone else will never see me again." He shrugged. He was sitting on the floor in the doorway. I am still thinking about this puzzle. Of course I wouldn't dress like a Jersey mouse for a job interview, but why not today? Why would I still be embarrassed. Tulsa says perhaps the mental energy of knowing people are judging you is a time-suck, but who says we would need to pay that mind?

Faith

1. If you think you are incapable of not screwing something up, the news is, you will screw it up. One of my friends dated a very nice, very committed girl and said he only thought it was "fair" to tell her he would ruin things "with bad communication." What do you think happened?

2. If someone thinks you are incapable of a job well done, and perhaps they don't tell you, but they send the brainwaves out into the abyss, what do you think will happen?

3. Beyond belief. Knowing.

4. Because someone told us there would be a meteor shower we stood on a beach at 1 AM watching the sky fall to pieces, waves lapping up footsteps away from us. But last night on the ride home, "Only the Good Die Young" blasting one more rocket shot down across the horizon of chain stores and fir trees. All three people in the car saw it, and I squealed, like "What are the odds we all hit the jackpot together?"

Lighthouse at sunset with my mom and aunt. Maine!

And I don't know what's the right way
to make them see that, see that. 
Cause in this maze, yeah, we're all flames, we're all flames.

Say there is a fire in the dark when I close my eyes 
And it's keeping me up at night and it's making me feel alive
I got a flashlight summoning up the stars 
And it's showing them where we are.
We'll be lighting up the dark. 
Oh oh oh flames. 

Grapefruit Body Wash

Was only going to be in Boston for two days, so I used the grapefruit body wash in Bex shower, assuming two squirts would not be missed. I rarely eat grapefruit because it's so obnoxious, but if it's on a brunch menu? Some brown sugar-crusted magic? Sigh, sigh, I have the luck of remembering the first time I ever ate grapefruit. I was 3 or 4 and up tootling around the house as my childhood insomnia had me to do. First stop was usually my grandmother's recliner. Sometimes I could shake her awake and ask for a story. One this night, I'd like to think it was summer, but who knows, she grogged awake and asked if I'd like to try grapefruit. I did because what is that. She took me to the kitchen and explained the two halves, the special spoon, the tartness. I slurped it up. From then on every time I visited her I asked for some, but it was never in the kitchen again.

I liked the body wash so much the day I got lost walking through the city (making a 2 mile journey into 5) I stopped in a CVS to alleviate some of my back sweat and bought some. It's what I have been using here in Maine. A happy, fresh way to start my day. The new cast member Dollar arrived Sunday. I started noticing something in the tub--sometimes my pink bottle was suddenly open. I had left it closed. But then I started noticing sometimes I would walk into the bathroom to find the cap open, then closed, but I hadn't showered. Last night while brushing my teeth I asked both the guys to come into the hall. I asked, "Who has been using my grapefruit body wash?" Dollar admitted it. He seemed embarrassed (?) to be caught in a way that made me wonder if I should have said anything at all. "I don't care!" I said. I just wanted to know. Then, Tulsa: "Wait, what does it look like? Pink? Yeah, I've been using it too." It was like the time Hill and I were hanging out at our guys' house and we realized on the way to lunch we were all wearing the same deodorant. It made me feel gushy, honestly, that my castmates and I all pump the beady syrup into our palms once a day. I shouldn't have said anything, I thought. This doesn't matter. "You can use as much of my body wash as you want!" I exclaimed between spitting my toothpaste out. Dollar walked into the bathroom, picked up the soap, said, "excuse me for a moment," and opened it over the toilet. "No!" I whisper-yelled at 2 in the morning. He put it back. This morning I got the third shower. The pink line was lower.

Last Blueberry Days

TQ texts a text I have been getting a lot lately: “How’s Maine?” I tell her I’m loving it and I am sad to leave. She tells me she’s glad I have liked it, bummer I’m sad, but it’s “good you’re coming home.” I respond, “It’s magic and I get a free brownie sundae every night.” (Everyone on cast gets a free menu item after each show. Most get a beer, or some whiskey. But, oh, not I.) I see the three dots. “Whoa whoa whoa. I did not know about that.”

I learned a lot when I read the memoir of a woman sentenced to life in prison—terrible details,  but the thing that has stuck more than any other scrap is how adverse to change the writer was. Of course she didn’t want to move to a new prison or switch jobs, but she also didn’t like happy change. She didn’t want to celebrate a holiday and have a differently scheduled afternoon. She didn’t want the food schedule to change—even though it’s all disgusting.

My friend Bug doesn’t seem satisfied unless things are changing. Rapidly and harshly even. She starts to get restless three months into relationships ("Can we get married yet?") and can't watch twenty minutes of a movie without also watching YouTube videos. But so many of us, I think, are like the penitentiary’s leading lady. When I first arrived on this lobster island, it’s not that I didn’t like it, I just had to adjust, and that felt uncomfortable. But, I’m a morning person, but these strangers (they seem nice, and yet), but this style of play, and the air tastes much too fresh.

Snail friend on my morning run.

When I took the job I started saying this granola thing about leaving Chicago and clearing my head, kind of knowing it was just one of those things to say--akin to "can't complain" or some trite slop. But low and behold, if you build it, they will come. I feel better at improv (a bit), more centered, special, focused, ready to snip away fat and be. It was a thing I said until it was a thing that happened.

I am not ready to leave. Two weeks from today I will be lecturing, probably about thesis statements, and that image plus the image of me on an island waking up to gull caws and whoopee pie signs is not computing. We performed an improvised musical last night called “Why is my cucumber purple?” and then I thought on the sidelines about those emails I have been meaning to send. I accidentally opened my Bus Tracker app today and almost threw up.

Two Weeks In, Three Week Contract

The green digits square out a 3:40. If this were any other home, in any other profession, we would only be awake because of a terrible emergency. But. Tulsa quotes a Billy Collins poem--the one about angels. The one that ends, "and now it is very late, even for musicians." He gives a resigned smile: "it is very late, even for actors."

The men who have passed through these nail-up halls are all so physically fit. I see a lot of squats happening. In the yard, in the living room, on the deck outside the theatre. They drink ice cube blue liquor on lit patios but somehow eat chard in the morning.

Everyone is working on "projects" that are loosely named and lightly described because it all sounds moronic, but we dare not judge lest we be judged. And sometimes I stare for thirty minutes at this screenplay while the jack and jill door is the only thing between another tortured soul scribbling madly on a pad sketch ideas for a podcast. What possible words in the English language are more embarrassing than "podcast" and "sketch." We all toss up and serve the worst offender of all. "Comedy" we say. And we do bits in the parking lot. Writing that it sounds like a euphemism for drugs, and to some extent we have numbed ourselves and simultaneously depressed. Or upped.

I hope the fences we mended,

fall down beneath their won weight.

And I hope we hang on past the last exit,

I hope its already too late.

Lesson of the Maine Grasshopper

My morning run is full of grasshoppers. They sense me coming. They leap aside. Today one little guy jumped a few feet in front of me when he sensed my impending jog. Of course in five seconds, I was still headed right for him. He jumped forward again, even further. But, I was still on the same path, so he had to jump a third time. The little goober went through this vaudeville act like six times before finally, finally--he jumped backwards when he sensed me approaching.

I'm sure it didn't make sense to him at the time. But it was going to be long, tiring road with no rest if he tried to keep up with me moving ahead. A backwards step (or bounce) was actually the best option. And, honestly, from my perspective, it didn't matter which way this bug skittered. What is "ahead" to a grasshopper? To us?

Blue Lobster Files

And then I was stuck. Snack to stuck just like that. Twigs that I can't break with my claws? What was it? Tough. Too tough. I waited. Then. Pulled up, up, up out. Sky, air, cloud, peach blob holds this box I am in. Peach blob whistles. Peach blob calls to other peach blob. Peach blogs look at me. I am not afraid. They seem like predators, but I feel, they will not be. Something is out of the ordinary.

Lot of other guys here. Our pinchers magically unworkable. What is this? What is this?

We arrive. I sense arriving. The other dudes are off, slopped together. My legs twinge. I don't feel good about where they're going. The pack of them. We're not meant to be in packs. But not me. Peach blobs get closer, more peach blobs. There is something special happening. I hope I find out soon. Something worth celebrating.

I travel with one peach blob in a mystic cave. A moving mystic cave. I understand light now. For the first time I really see it. In a way I didn't know it could be, without the come and go of wave haze.

Turns out the mystic cave is it for me. Lots of peach blobs. New peach blobs. Every day. And I see them change when they're with me. Something really big is about to happen, this I have known, but I cannot figure it out. I am also very bored. I don't have to look for food anymore, which was nice at first. But now, I'm not so sure. Perhaps in in preparation for The Thing Happening. That buzz of excitement.

And sometimes I am held on my back, and I can't breath, and the blobs--smaller blobs, bigger groups of them--are touching me. This used to concern me, but now anything out of the cave is at least interesting. I'm lonely.

Maybe The Thing will mean more companions. I like one blob. It has whiskers like mine. He holds me the most. I feel comfortable in his blob blobs. He shines with pride about The Thing, it seems. When will this thing happen? This very special thing in the air. What is it? Where is it? A huge guy stares at me all day. We have caves across from each other. "Hey," we wave, but we'll never even see each other without the glassy haze between us. Is he part of the special Thing? Does he know?

How long will I live this way? It's been longer than my life at this point. I don't remember the old home. No matter how many times I lose this clink clank on my back, it comes back. Nothing changes, forever on the precipice of The Thing. That happiness, giddiness, but what, what, what could it be, and when will I know? I'm starting to wonder if I will ever know. What a world! I'll probably never be let in on the secret.

Never knowing,

shocking, but we're guessing.

We're just moments.

We're clever, but we're clueless.