Happier Post

I’m not sure how to pretend everything is normal? I keep having these meetings at very cool studios and then waking up in the middle of the night reading articles about climate change. It’s incredible to be in the middle of a problem that’s never existed before. For so many complications of my one life I walked through knowing it’s all been done. But this hasn’t actually been done. They didn’t do this in the 16 or 1900s--plan vacations partially for relaxation and partially because perhaps in fifteen years it will be gone, or we will all be poor, so live it up but at the same time feel guilty I’m not using that vacation fund to protest in Flint?

I worked on a non-political TV show for 8 months. At first it felt ignorant but then it felt like an important respite. And I do believe the solutions aren’t all from (are rarely from) addressing the dearth of problems head-on and often answers come inside out from healing the sadness inside of people. (But also healing the sadness hasn't been cutting it for polar bears?)

The solution/resolution cannot be that we simply exist. We weren’t always here and we won’t always be. Everyone knew that too. The heat death of the universe was never a secret. We just thought we wouldn’t see it. The more I question what it is all for the less motivation I have, but somehow the more clear the present becomes. A horrifying stoop for a progress-oriented person. I come home and go to the balcony, the moon is bright as a theatre spot. Puhg points at it. “Moontime,” he says.

Despite these previous three paragraphs, I’m looking fancy on the outside and feeling special on the inside. I bought brand new white Vans only to be worn in meetings. I drive around LA like I own the stupid place and believe in myself. I am unsure of what flower to nurture, but I am certain there is a prized petunia in there. In practicality I don’t know anything, but, well, I can’t describe it, I know something.

Eclipse

I am still trying to figure out why I thought the eclipse was so incredible. I didn't initially care. My mom lives 45 minutes away from totality, so she wanted to make a thing of it. There were cucumber sandwiches and brownie piles and eclipse pop in coolers. We went to a football field with 2,000 other people. I imagined sweating in a mob, but actually, 2,000 people on a huge field is not crowded at all. The dogs ran around, sometimes standing in front of an icy fan. I put on my glasses to see the crescent. Lenses up, lenses down.

It got cooler. Gradually I didn't need my sunglasses anymore. "It feels like evening." Globs showed up in my hand's shadow. At 1:13 I felt giddy. At 16 shadowy waves splashed on white ground. The crickets were a full orchestra. I held Puhg's hand. My mom said, "It's like that scene in Independence Day when they're all on the roof." She wasn't wrong. Everyone laughed at the idea that birds fly to their roosts and fall asleep, but I am certain something primal was itching at me too. Foreboding and magical. The moon covered the sun for less than two minutes. I screamed when I took my glasses off. The eye looked at me curiously. It sparkled. There was a pink sunset on every side of us. Jupiter was perched nearby. Tears welled in my eyes and over the loudspeaker the physicist began a count-down from 10. My mom gripped my hand and said, "I don't want it to go away." Me neither.

The day went on. I felt messed up. I fell asleep at 6 PM. My mom was on the couch accidentally watching Dirty Dancing twice.

When I got my tattoo I thought it hurt so awfully. I didn't know if I could stand having it finished, and I never thought I would get a second. But now I do not remember. I couldn't put words to it. I can't again now. I have seen every CGI tsunami and dragon under the sun but the real sun escapes me.

Alice in Shipland: Sick Slug 1.0

When we last left our heroine she was lonely and sad about to start yet another Caribbean tour—the ultimate impossible conundrum. Would she make it?! Guess what? She did.

-Sunday night involved waking up for dinner, eating a baked potato at molasses pace on the pool deck (fresh air) while everyone around me did the hustle, buying a ton of water and Gatorade, and curling up to watch the Katy Perry documentary, which I cried several times during.

-I have been supremely productive onboard. I write every day and have revised my musical, written the first draft of a solo show, published a theatre ed essay, and am still chugging. I hadn’t yet watched a movie. Oh, did that change. This week was about rest and survival. I pounded through episode after episode of Better Call Saul and watched both Magic Mikes.* For most of the week, a huge majority of all food looked scary and/or gross. For some reason French fries looked okay. I hadn’t eaten literally one fry since coming aboard, and suddenly, with no other options, I was plowing through multiple plates a day. Yolo.

-Major moment of hatred in Cozumel. There is a long walk from gangway to port, so middle-aged men pedal bike taxis up and down for interested cruisers. They work for tips only. As I walked slowly down the strip I heard a voice screaming behind me, “Out of the way, out of the way! He gets a bigger tip if he wins!” A woman riding a bike taxi was yelling at her driver to “giddyup” and beat the three taxis far far ahead of them. She hollered at everyone passing about how she wanted to win. She laughed joyfully. What was worse: the driver totally bought in and pedaled his brains out. He was huffing and puffing, leaning full into his handlebars, sweating madly. I was horrified and legitimately wanted to smack the woman in the face. I watched as the driver miraculously beat two of the three other taxis. A woman in the third-fastest taxi patted her biker’s shoulder in a demeaning sweetness, “You tried.” The Devil Tourist meanwhile jumped out with glee and put four crumpled dollars in her driver’s hand. In any other situation I would certainly accost her. These. Are. Humans. Not. Horses. But, I work for a cruise ship, and I can never be even remotely confrontational to a passenger. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.

-In Honduras in lieu of a beach day I went to an animal sanctuary. It was only a few minutes away and cost ten dollars to get in. I walked through the butterfly garden and learned the park mashes up papaya and beer to get the insects drunk so they will mate more. I saw a huge-winged blue morpho butterfly! I learned about those in 4^th grade through my avid playing of Amazon Trail the computer game! I saw agouti, held a kinkajou, and monkeys jumped on my head. And then I went back to the crew lounge to send a few business emails. MY LIFE.

Kinkajou!

-An hour before curtain it was decided it was my turn to host the big show. I rehearsed a couple times and halfway through standing in a spotlight giving a spiel to 1,000 people I don’t know I realized how incredible it is that that feels like nothing. I still love my job, but the magic “omg I am performing for SC!” has worn. Like how I now spend ZPill and MB’s scene backstage trying to balance a tennis ball on my hand instead of, like, soaking in how amazing the history of this theatre is/how lucky I am etc. etc. whatever and ever amen. I don’t mourn this. It’s necessary. If people were always in childlike awe, we’d just be slack-jawed tubs of blood.

-So, there were eleven Elvis impersonators on this cruise. There’s an annual “celebration” of Elvis impersonators? And this year the 300 Elvis fans gathered on a cruise ship going to the Caribbean? And I snuck into a balcony seat for the private showcase on Friday where EACH ELVIS PERFORMED TWO NUMBERS. Literal hundreds of old ladies recording a buncha fat dudes shake their hips around. Several Elvii repeated the phrase, “The more noise you make, the more I shake” and bitties would shriek. Saturday morning an Elvis stood next to me at the omlette bar. My heart quickened. He was wearing typical schlub clothes and sneakers but his hair was quaffed and he really did look like Elvis. I was actually star struck. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

-Walking forward to aft of the ship I often take the outside promenade—an opportunity for fresh air. Strangely, one can go several hours in the middle of the ocean without fresh air. I was doing a quick trot to my call on Friday and was stopped dead. The moon was brilliant. It was perfectly circle and shining like a pearl in the sky. A hundred clouds—decades deep—surrounded it. The beauty stunned me. I soaked in the light as if it were a shower.

-During the family friendly show MB and I played awkward teenagers whose parents had just married. It was New Choice, so she said she admired me for my fashion DING the amount of smores I could eat DING the fact that I could do two cartwheels in a row. I practiced cartwheels religiously during the Georgia Olympics. I was sad to learn I would never be a gymnast because I was too old when I became interested. But, guess what, years and years later I cartwheeled in front of a clapping audience, so dreams, when given enough time and sleep, do come true.

-Blue Eyes moved to Mobile after grad school—less than two hours away from New Orleans. “Sure, we’ll come out to visit,” he emailed me a couple weeks ago. What a sight for cruise life eyes! These friends from another planet! We ate chubby hipster donuts (flavors: cereal and milk and seven-layer). We walked down Magazine Street’s dozens of boutiques. I closed my eyes to suck in the honeysuckle perfuming every corner. I felt the hugeness of the world beyond not only the ship but comedy in general for the first time in a long time, and I sat in that feeling like a real cozy lawn chair.

Blue Eyes and wifey! And donuts.

*The original was excellent. The sequel unentertaining, poorly-written, and marginally offensive. Channing Tatum tho.

Time Traveling Moon: Pt Two

"But you CAN get too caught up in Love! You can, and then you've done nothing for anyone! You must do the work!" Stripes was practically screaming int he middle of Maggie Daley Park. That happens sometimes. She gets overwhelmed with ideas and starts whooping without knowing it.
"But," I barely interrupted. "But, on the other hand--"
Stripes' huge eyes spun on me. "BUT, you can become engulfed in the structure, and then you're devoid of anything real! Your heart is gone! Your purpose is squat!"
We hoof on the silver brick road.
"So how do you balance the two?" I ask.
It's warm for November. I didn't even wear a coat. People are playing frisbee in shorts.

Later Bisque shows us photos of the universe. Galaxies, black holes, all of it. My brain starts shutting off because it's all so unbelievable. We talk about the moon. It's so bright, but it's a rock. We say there is moonlight, but there isn't. There is only sunlight, and the moon filters the good stuff to us who need it. The sun is sending light all over the place, but the moon's structure shows us the shine.

Time Traveling Moon: Pt One

My freshman year of high school there was a lot of to-do around the phrase "Get it." It's hard to know if that particular slang was a widespread phenomenon or if it was akin to other phrases particular to my southside Chicago experience. IE "Salt yourself" means you were acting stupid. Usually the phrase would be accompanied by a faux-brush of salt off one's shoulders. "Treated" I still say, which means kind of, "OH SHE TOLD YOU!"

Anyway, people on the Speech team were always telling each other to get it. Broke to finals? "Get it, Erin!" Made cookies for everyone? "Get it, Mary!" You get it (ha, no pun intended). One night Henne was driving me home from something and it was one of those special "we're young and happy" nights. Perhaps spring was just springing. The moon was big and glowing out the car window. He said, "Get it, moon."

Last night I was taking the brown line from downtown to Old Town. I love when I get to do that because I cross over the Chicago River and generally enjoy watching the city whir by. Henne happened to be texting me about our writing processes, the future, etc. when I noticed the moon. Giant, vibrant. I thought to myself, as I often do, "Get it, moon." Then I told him about this that I have kept in my brain for a decade. I took a picture of the white orb over the skyline and sent it to him. You know what he said? He said, "Get it, moon." And sometimes time has barely passed.

That Magic Moon: E-mail from my Dad

Hello Alice!

I read your blog this morning.

I was looking at the moon too, last night. The same one as you, I believe. I was coming out of the library and there it was, a crescent hanging over the treeline across the street in the western sky. To the upper right of it there was another bright light in the sky. I wondered what it was. It wasn't moving and I thought maybe it was a planet. So, I fired up the iPhone Star Walk app, got a fix on the moon and tried to figure it out. It was overcast. All I could see was the moon and the bright light. But of course the app showed all the stars. I guess that was a reminder that the stars, like so many things, are in their places even when you cannot see them. Other people were coming out of the library and no doubt saw me on the steps holding my cell phone skyward with both hands while the screen twinkled and spooky music played. Oh my.

Love you,

Dad

My dad in Germany. June 2011.


I see the moon and the moon sees me. The moon sees somebody I'd like to see. So God bless the moon, and God bless me, and God bless the somebody I'd like to see.

Can't Complain

The moon looks like the moons I drew in elementary school. A thick "C" next to one extremely bright dot of light. A planet. I was on my back in the pool after a full day.

I woke up at 6 to review my Theory notes. I also jumped with Jillian Michaels and made two mugs of soy hot cocoa with honey.

At 11:45 my hardest final was over, and I felt like taking a long walk. And also like grabbing my professor by the collar and saying, "Look. I studied Worthen's concept of producing an audience via realism really hard, and I had some pretty great applications to Marsha Norman's work, so even though the essay questions you ended up giving me weren't about that, you're gonna sit here and LISTEN TO MY IDEAS, BUDDY." But, I had to TA. Which I did.

And then I went to work for hours, and I still could not focus from final nerves. So, I biked home knowing I was destined for the water in the darkness. And after, with a slick bun and smeared eye makeup, I made a bowl of pasta, and I watched Girls, and I ate a Reese's rabbit*, and I'm thinking this is a pretty good life, you guys. I spend all my time thinking about things I find interesting and trying to help other people and trying to make stuff and listening to good music and moving my body in cool ways and consuming delicious things. I really can't complain. That's not a euphemism for, "Things are okay, but--" No. I really can't complain. To complain from my top story room in my white condo in the most beautiful climate in the world as I drink fresh water from my pink Camelback would be absurd. I can't. I can't complain.


Truck stop on the way home from LA/Fracus last week. Shellzor.

*I have been a successful vegan this month**, but I made a deal with myself that I would eat that Reese rabbit my mom sent me for Easter the day of my Theory final, which was supposed to be May 1st, but it was pushed back to today. So. Boop.
**Only one week left y'all!

Or What About Flying Into the Blue Sky?

Most of the time, I am actively trying to ignore life as I drive. I use driving time to sing and ponder. I don't know where this habit came from, but I don't care about anything around me when I'm behind the wheel.

But, sometimes, on particularly beautiful days, I am suddenly keenly aware that I am driving on a twisting concrete bridge overpass, and it looks like I am jetting into the sky! Driving directly into clouds! This is the stuff 18th Century dreams are made of! Isn't that nuts? I soar in my whizzing metallic box closer and closer to the moon!