We now return to your regularly scheduled blog

Today's topic: college griping.

Why do I gripe? I do not like writing these college essays. Not just on principle, but because it feels as though with every college I end up writing the same paragraphs on acting, poetry, acting, Shakespeare, acting, and acting, sometimes two or three times in one app. I can only hope it doesn't look as boring on that end as it feels on this end.

(later)

AT LAST! Every single college application about which I must worry is FINISHED!

[Editor's Note: Barring unforseen or unrecalled circumstaces, you mean.]

[Author's Note: Shut up. *hits editor with frying pan*]

Such classic themes

Semester grades arrived the other day. All things considered, I came through all right, and I'm still on the Dean's List *wipes brow*. But the reason I am posting is one of the comments that came with my grade in Poetry:

"His poems are honest, but deeply personal on the universal themes of love, loneliness, technology, angst of teenage life, repressed emotions, darkness of human nature, and even romantic style gothic ballades."

Wait, back up. Technology? The only poems I can remember writing with any sort of technological bent are The Black Machine, which is symbolic and a reference to Cuckoo's Nest, and my second slam poem, which targets the culture of the Internet. I can't say either of those poems are particularly personal. And since when is technology a universal theme? At any rate, it seems a bit incongruous with its neighbors. *shrug, smile*

grumble, grumble

Three and a half weeks ago did I apply to St. John's. They promised a two-week decision frame. Where is my encouragingly thick package or miserably thin letter, whichever may be the case?

Swing your razor high, Sweeney!

*spoilers ahead*

Sweeney Todd was very good. The following is a rundown of points that caught my eye/ear, for better or for worse.

• It always pleases me when a film does something interesting with the opening credits. They had a thin trail of blood following the path of one of Sweeney's victims while the music to the Ballad of Sweeney Todd played. There were no lyrics in the film version, but one generally wouldn't expect lyrics during the credits.
• Come to think of it, the chorus was done away with in general. Too bad.
• Alan Rickman as the judge (well cast and well played) didn't have his first song about lusting after Johanna. Can't say I was wedded to the song, but I didn't see any reason to cut it. On the other hand, Burton added some dialogue between Turpin and Antony that I though fit quite well.
• Toby has a nice voice for a kid his age when he's not trying to belt.
• You could tell this already from the R rating, but Burton didn't shy away from the throat-slitting. The blood was a little too bright red to be entirely believeable, but it worked very well for Lucy and Todd's deaths, which were more stylized in their flow (in both senses of the word).
• They cut Todd's last line to the beadle: "I am entirely at your disposal." Important? No, but it was a nice line.
• Uh...yow. Sweeney really doesn't like Turpin. You'll see what I mean.
• Applause to Helena Bonham Carter for her performance, particularly when it comes to the deadpan humor.
• Oh, come on. There is no way that Turpin would still be alive after the slashity-slash and a twenty-foot drop on his head.
• Todd's bleeding onto the face of his wife reminded me of a bit from Antigone. I'll have to point that out to my Classical Worlds teacher.

Being lazy

I haven't blogged for the last few days, so here's the lowdown of my life:

• Met up with some friends of friends for an ongoing reading of Hamlet last Friday. It was quite fun.
• That monstrous Sparta essay is finally finished! You know your head has been buried in ancient Greece for too long when you start making jokes about Damocles.
• My body is taking its revenge on me for all those late nights. I couldn't drag myself out of bed untill eleven this morning.
• I've FINALLY organized a reunion with...forgot his pseudonym...with Sheik. It's been about seven and a half months since I saw him last.
• Watched a BBC special titled House of Cards last night. Francis Urquhart is a delicious modern-day Richard III. Next on the viewing list is I, Claudius.
• Started learning my songs for Urinetown.
• Seeing Sweeney Todd with family tomorrow morning.
• Potentially massive Cal Shakes reunion on Sunday.
• Speaking/typing in sentence fragments.

Not that vacation will be entirely carefree. I still need to...

• Write some college essays. More essays...*facewall*
• Memorize my lines for Urinetown.
• Rent and watch The Hudsucker Proxy as character homework for Urinetown.
• Meet with Red and Gerst to finish a project of sorts. That ought to be fun. On the other hand, I don't need to finish it over vacation.
• Start earning money. Turns out my dad needs work done over a long enough timeframe that hell pay me for it. Certainly wins for ease of commute.

*wince*

Well, a family friend has returned from service in Iraq, and he is now married. So why am I wincing? He's...uh...he's nineteen.

He's a nice guy, and I wish both of them the best of luck, but I just don't see this ending well. Married at nineteen...in a year and a few months I'll be nineteen! *winces again*

V, v, 20-31

She should have died hereafter.
There would have been time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

--Macbeth

One of the teachers in the Spanish department died of a stroke last night. She will be missed.

Waaa ha ha ha haaa!

My last essay for Zeus is finished! Bleah...nine pages in an evening aren't pleasant.

Must escape crucifixion

Twenty-four more hours and hell--I mean finals--will be over.

Stats wasn't too intimidating, although one question was so misleadingly worded that it took several minutes of bickering with John to understand what it wanted (and then took all of five seconds to finish). Humanitas...the discussion went okay. Otherwise, the less said the better.

Shakespeare and Poetry were yesterday, and both went well (Poetry especially. I will be shocked if I don't get an A in that class). Tomorrow I've got Classical Worlds and Divine Comedy. Speaking of which...*opens up yet another Word document*

Ironic quote of the day, part 2

"So which atheist book would make the best Christmas present?"

Speculations

Over dinner my parents challenged me with using the Venetians/Riotous Knights to cast One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Here's my list:

McMurphy: Sexmeister.

Ratched: Sunshine.

Chief: Loyal.

Harding: Gift.

Bibbit: Bedlam.

Cheswick: Knight.

Scanlon: Loquacious.

Ruckley: Gentleman.

Spivey: Atlas.

Warren: Slasher.

Williams: Rose.

Candy: Seductress.

Sandy: Pixar.

Turkle: Song.

Contrasts

Last night: Sweeney Todd. Tonight: Handel's Messiah.

When I was a Lad

Greed has overpowered sloth, and the hunt for holiday employment is on. Not much success so far.

Ode to my Braces

So long, suckers!

On the subject of poetry, the contest results were released today. I came in first in form (woot!) and second in haiku. This surprised me a little, as I thought my free-form was a lot better than my haiku. Still, no complaints about twenty-five dollars.

What can I say?

Always wondering. Wondering if I'm wrong for thinking something. Wondering if I'm wrong about what I think of what I think. Wondering if I'm telling myself what to think when I try to let go. Wondering if I'm wrong for what I feel. Wondering if I'm wrong for what I don't feel. Wondering if I'm wrong for what I dream. Wondering if I'm too eager to attach meaning to things. Wondering if I'm too reluctant to attach meaning to other things. Wondering if I overthink. Wondering if I think about the wrong things. Wondering if I sabotage myself. Wondering if I'm really sane.

I've been looking at the description of the schizoid personality disorder. I see a fair few matches in the clinical features, but unlike the described typical sufferer I have no interest whatsoever in drugs, alchohol, or other mind-altering substances. "Oh, that way madness lies! Let me shun that!" So why didn't I mind being given nitrous oxide when I had my wisdom teeth removed? It certainly altered my consciousness. But I could tell exactly when it started up and when it ebbed briefly an comment on it. Lucid madness. Heh. I wasn't worried before the mask went on because I didn't know exactly what to expect; that's clear enough.

I ought to go.

More sound bites

Apparently my Black Machine poem is not merely blues, but "punk rock postmodernist blues." *shrug*

I got a 100% on my Taming of the Shrew test. Woohoo!

Either tomorrow or Friday I give a PowerPoint presentation on Shakespeare's applications of meter versus prose.

Hahaha

First read-through for Urinetown was today, and I can tell that I will enjoy playing Caldwell VERY much. I get to sing a song about killing bunnies, for crying out loud!

Finally we have returned to meditations in Humanitas. Today was more disturbing than previous days. From when I entered the meditation to when I opened my eyes I felt a bit scared for no discernible reason. It was similar to the meditation I tried just before the Friday performance of Cuckoo's Nest. I have identified two recurring figures in these exercises: the zombies and the Black Cloud. I haven't yet figured out what the Black Cloud is, but it's connected to the zombies and I think it has something to do with guilt. I'll have to keep an eye on where I go in upcoming exercises.

The following poem is the result of an exercise during a Shel Silverstein presentation in Poetry:

I'm back, little kid--don't you remember?
I'm the snowman you made and forgot last December.
I started to melt the very next day,
So I hopped on the train to Canada. Eh?
Some older kids wanted to play a mean joke,
So they gave me a beer and taught me to smoke.
My top hat is ragged; my eyes are not coal,
But rather some Agent Smith glasses they stole.
My poor Christmas spirit is as dead as an ember,
So take better care of what you make in December.

If only all colleges were this eager...

Willamette had been placed low enough on my list to drop altogether, but despite my lack of response to their emails they are practically foaming at the mouth to see my application, and now that it's reached the point of waiving both the application fee AND the essay...might as well play the system.

Finished. See post title, please.

And now for something completely different: I got cast as Mr. Caldwell! Yahoo!

And now for something completely the same: Cheswick got cast as a horny guy. This is her fourth consecutive production as a horny guy. What gives?

Cleaning leaves off the roof

*puts of high-traction shoes* "I'll head up now." *goes outside*

"Forgot the ladder."

*goes back to the door, which is locked* "Hello?"

*is let in* "Thanks." *gets a ladder, goes back outside*

*sets up ladder* "Forgot a rake."

*goes back inside, gets rake* "Now I have everything!" *goes back outside*

*climbs onto roof* "Forgot gloves."

For a Mr. Photographic Memory, I can be awfully absent-minded.

Auditions Round 2

The callback list is up, and I am in the musical! I know I have a speaking role, but the cast list won't be posted until Monday. Today we ran specific scenes from Urinetown to give people a shot a various roles. I read for Cladwell and (for diversity's sake) Officer Lockstock. We also had to sing in front of the other cast members. I didn't expect this, so I had left my music at home, but I still felt very good about my performance. Emily asked me to go for character over technical quality, which is quite fun with MotH.

Drama catchup

This week has been dominated by theater. Tuesday through today were the auditions for Urinetown. Tuesday was the acting audition, wherein I recited a monologue educating kindergartners about the multinational conspiracy to turn us all into alien chow. I noticed that four or five guys came out of the underclass woodwork, which is encouraging. Wednesday my Classical Worlds class went to see Argonautika. It was extremely good, and it included Andy Murray, although Athena, we all agreed, stole the show. I was particularly impressed with their creative uses of a very minimalist stage. On the ride back I was appalled to learn that Vince and Ratched, both huge musical aficionados, have never seen Les Miz! This will be remedied anon. Anyway, when we got back we had our dance auditions. *sweatdrop* Give me some choreography and I will do my best, but I am neither flexible nor experienced. I pray that Mr. Cladwell does not dance much. Today held a Taming of the Shrew recitation in the morning. Between Red (who cross-dressed as the Kate to my Petruchio) and me, we recited 104 lines of dialogue with no mistakes (none on which we were called, anyway). After Shakespeare we saw a number of scenes performed by representatives from the Oregon Shakespeare festival. The only Shakespeare in the show was an excerpt from Two Noble Kinsmen, but Who's On First was VERY funny. As it is wont to be. Singing auditions were in the afternoon. I think I didn't perform as well as I did at my voice lesson on Monday, but it was clearly better than last year *shudders*, and Emily remarked on that. Callbacks will be posted tomorrow at lunch. *crosses fingers*

On another note. I spent most of my time in line for auditions today talking with Cheswick (who is a girl), and we came to a somewhat depressing realization: I have more experience playing a female on stage than she does. And before you ask, she has been in multiple plays here.

Finally, I have thrown a new hat into the ring for the spring play by...on second thought, I'll keep that a secret for now. You can wait a few months. *tease*

chilled fingertips

Zeus went home sick after Humanitas, so now I have over an hour of schadenfreude.

On the other hand, this being so early in the day, I have nothing of significance to blog about.

I could spend this time reviewing lines for my audition and my Shakespeare recitation, or I could search for better costume elements for said recitation.

I choose the latter. See y'all, whoever y'all may be. *waves over head while walking away*

Life update

So how are things going nowawdays? I'm not sick anymore. That's a good thing, right?

Saturday was a pretty full day. The morning and afternoon were taken up by prep for and the event of a memorial for my grandmother (read: a mass family reunion with hors d'ouvres), and in the evening I met Loyal, Seductress, Rose, Knight, Slasher, Sunshine, Loquacious, Gentleman, and Song (hooray for huge RK gatherings!) at Loyal's house where we watched Youtube clips of Eddie Izzard and the upcoming Sweeney Todd movie--and, of course, the DVD of our King Lear performance. Semi-competent cameraman aside, we actually looked pretty good. Many of us took BART home, and we passed the time singing various songs, most of them Disney. Riotous Knights, it cannot be said how much I love you all! *hugs*

My parents and I were planning to see the remake of Sleuth on Sunday, but it's out of theaters already--a minute at Rotten Tomatoes explained why--so we saw Enchanted instead. I am pleasantly surprised to say that Disney's still got it. It's simultaneously a Disney movie and a parody thereof, and it was done VERY well and humorously. This is a little personal bias sneaking in, but I'm glad that old-fashioned 2-D animation has not been discarded. Er...coincidentally, my required nitpick did involve the CG: Narissa needed to take a few cues from Maleficent in terms of making her draconic form look more threatening and less...Eragon.

In school news, auditions begin tomorrow! Yow! That means I have the rest of this evening to get my monologue memorized (it's about 70% there right now) and until Thursday to polish Master of the House. I will also finish my application for St. John's by Thursday if I know what's good for me.

Surrender Poems

The first one was a blues assignment for Poetry inspired by One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Bred to fit the mould
This is how to exist
Bred to fit the mould
Comply if you want to exist
The system’s so successful and old
It’s pointless to resist

Nail sticks up gets pounded down
Rebel locked up in a cage
Nails everywhere pounded down
Mistakes kept in a cage
Don’t even bother to frown
You’ll be here for an age

Some of us could leave
If we weren’t afraid
So many of us could leave
But they keep us all afraid
Thrash, buck, and heave
All you like but watch your spirit fade

You can’t make them stop
They control you hand and foot
You’ll never make them stop
When they control you hand and foot
You can’t scream in the Shock Shop
When you’re choking on rust and soot

Magnets control us now we’re machines
Hooked up to the combine
We’re just a group of faulty machines
Reforming for the combine
Some of us locked up since our teens
The moment we stepped out of line

Open up my arm
And see the gears inside
Open up my other arm
And see the wires inside
They say they mean no harm
So I thought until I died

***

My mind’s ears dance with fevered violins
And any hope of concentration twists,
Snaps, splits apart, and scatters ‘cross the winds
To disappear into distraction’s mists.
It’s funny just how fragile order may
Become at what small provocation makes
Its presence known: one violent melody
In full my contemplation overtakes.
At times when we need clearest thinking most
The strangest images may circles trace
Within our skulls, which play unwilling hosts
To useless antics of this mental chase.
But since diversions such I cannot fight
I may as well enjoy the sound and light.

College

UC apps are out of the way. I smile.

Prep

The musical has finally been decided, and it will be Urinetown. This means preparing for auditions (hopefully my cough will be gone by next week!) and looking over the parts. I'm not interested in Bobby Strong: I've done the romantic male lead already, and I couldn't sing high tenor with belt anyway. Officer Lockstock is a bass while I'm more strictly baritone, but he looks like a fun role. Caldwell B. Cladwell, on the other hand, looks like the best choice of all. A powerful character and the bad guy, and baritone range on top of that? Sign me up!

Next on the agenda are my audition pieces. Dance is all covered at the audition itself, so nothing to do there. Picking out a song to audition with is a cinch: Thenardier fits the character I want (sort of), and he's in my range. Beggar at the Feast if Emily wants something short, or Master of the House if not.

I found a good monologue, but I don't know how character-appropriate it is. On the other hand, it feels as though it fits the mood of Urinetown in general, so I'll stick with it anyway.

Now I just need the audition fine print due being out of the loop due to missing school due to this virus.

I hate bronchitis.

Or whatever malaise infests my chest cavity. The coughing has become less frequent, but more painful when it does show up. I didn't see Argonautika on Friday, and I didn't see Pleasanton today (bringing the counter to 6.5 months). I still attended Softy's class, but I tried to avoid physical contact. Most likely I'll take school off tomorrow to recover.

Here's a slam poem I wrote a few days ago for Poetry class. It won't make much sense unless you keep up with Internet fads.

who needs a microscope to examine viruses
when you can examine the internet and find
a teeming mass of memes and message board fads
more than you can fit into a container which you don’t even have because
NOOO THEY BE STEALIN MY BUCKET
you can’t insinuate yourself into that social network without
strapping on your armor of insulation against illiteracy
and running the gauntlet of repetition like
LEEEEROYYYY JENNNNKINNSSSSSSS!!!!!
and once you’ve battled your way through three hundred
jpegs and youtubes
of gerard butler screaming, “THIS! IS! SPARTA!!!”
and that weird little face intent if not hell-bent on-a FIRIN HIS LAZAH
you may be able to locate those rebellious snippets of intelligent conversation
half-buried in hairballs the lolcats coughed up
now I’m not saying the serious threads are any good
most likely they could be spiced up with a little ASCII or
moar Mudkipz which I heard u liek
no argument on the boards is complete without its counter-argument delivered
in the form of a deafening
OBJECTION!!!
by Phoenix Wright pointing his finger so ferociously it may be mistaken for a
FAL-CONE PAUNCH!
which inevitably incites a flame war over the relative manliness of
Captain Falcon to Chuck Norris
who roundhouse kicked the world into existence and don’t you forget it
who WANTS TO BE THE VERY BEST, LIKE NO ONE EVER WAS
then before you can say “you have no chance to survive, make your time”
you are buried in the brawl
between n00bs and trolls
between Star Wars Kid and Potter Puppet Pals
between Captain Planet and an unexpected Jinjo
between Rick Roll and the L-block from Tetris
between the O RLY? owl and badgerbadgerbader
and Gandalf the Grey and Gandalf the White
and Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Black Knight
all presided over by the prairie dog’s DRAMATIC LOOK
until the sum of banned posters reaches
OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAND!!!
at which point
your computer crashes
your frontal lobes liquefy
and
all your base are belong to us

And I close with another homespun verse to "You Are a Pirate:"

Yo ho, anchors aweigh!
We will find mountains of treasure today.
Drink up the rum till your liver is grey;
You are a pirate!

Nurrrr....

Pirates are bursting with glee
For they have a lifetime to plunder the sea
Strap on yer eyepatch and sign up with me
You are a pirate!

Ninjas may be cooler, but pirates get the best songs.

Anyhoo, as you can see, I have returned to my blog now that my life is slightly less hectic and hellish. It's still not great: I have developed a nasty cough and I am massively sleep-deprived. Oh, that way madness lies! Let me shun that. No more of that.

We are now reading The Taming of the Shrew in Shakespeare class, and recitations are being picked out. Red and I will be doing the first round of Petruchio (that's me) vs Kate. I confess the block of text is a little ambitious, considering the minimum is 14 lines: between the two of us we have 104. What can I say? I like the wordplay, and I'm willing to take on the majority of that chunk. Regarding costumes, I had an idea this afternoon of Petruchio in full lion-tamer circus getup (complete with curly moustache if I can obtain one). Red seems to like it.

Speaking of 'staches, I will be growing mine back now that we've finished the play. Saturday night, I believe, was our strongest performance. There were no noticeable line or tech gaffes, and I think the acting overall was best tonight. Loyal, Song, and Gentleman came to see it. Yayyy! *hugs* Oh, right. I'm sick. *sterilizes hugged parties* Tonight I changed up the curtain call a little. Normally I just come on in my patient's outfit, but this time I entered as end-of-play Bibbit, i.e. shirtless and with my throat covered in blood.

I hope we get back to meditations in Humanitas soon.

I'm seeing Argonautika at Berkely Rep this evening, physical condition permitting. Our Classical Worlds teacher came back with rave reviews, and we have a field trip scheduled in two Wednesdays, so I will definitely see it at least once.

Urinetown and Pajama game remain locked in battle to be This Year's Musical. We will find out on Monday which it is.

Signing off.

Zombie boy needs donuts.

What's with the title? I'll explain later.

Night 2 of OFotCN hath been nailed. In my opinion, tonight was even better than last. In particular, I felt that I did a better job in my suicide scene with Ratched. T met with us earlier for character work, which helped us synch up in terms of subtext, but I think that my pre-show meditation attempt was helpful as well.

We've been working on meditation for the last couple of weeks in Humanitas, and in the last two days things have finally started to get interesting. On Thursday I experienced the feeling of my equilibrium going haywire: it was as if I were lying on a platform which kept tilitng and spinning. Aside from the initial shock of what I felt, it was great. Today I was the guinea pig for a dream interpretation. I entered meditation again while Bruce asked me questions about what was in the dream (starting with a recurring dream I had last year) and prompting me to delve deeper into it. I felt some of the spinning again, but also a heaviness and thickness in my body, and I lost track of the location of my arms. I still knew where they were logically, but they felt as though they were in a diferent position. I was still a bit spaced out when I reached advisory, and somebody had brought donuts. The titular quote then escaped my lips.

During some downtime in rehearsal I tried to re-enter the meditative state. My cell phone rang and snapped me out of it, but I could tell that I had dipped a toe into a dark place in my mind. It's an odd mix of the negative emotions you've triggered and the excitement of such delving. I tried to draw upon that place in the performance and I believe it strengthened me.

Tomorrow I will meditate again if I have an opportunity and dive as far as I can. If it gives me tools to push myself to greater emotional extremes, then let my casements be unstopped!

Oh. Here are the notes taken during the dream exercise:

"Forest Cave"

• sky is dark--either evening or early morning
• evergreens
• pine needles--brown on ground, green on trees
• fog but clear where he is
• can see mountain in the distance
• rocks scattered, 1/2 the ize of his body
• stone archway--cave
• more than 30 ft, less than 100 ft away from cave
• only can see 3 ft into cave
• no one around
• water dripping from the roof of the cave
• pebbles on the ground, air clammy, smells like it has been raining in the cave
• 50 ft into the cave, moving slowly
• a lot brighter outside--10 a.m. maybe?
• turning downhill, and narrower
• usually would have noticed zombies by now, but not this time
• some branches off to the sides--a good distance ahead
• the wal of the cave feels smooth, but not flat
• call out: someone responded, "Come on!" in a higher voice.
• Who is it? No voice, but metal banging on stone--follow the sound...
• Taking first branch on the right--cave becoming even narrower
• hole in the ground, otherwise a dead end
• sound coming from the wall behind the hole
• call out..."Come on in; the water's nice."
• dropped a rock in the hole, made a splash
• jumped--water fairly cool, mid-thigh--larger chamber, dry ground a short distance away
• two bodies floating on either side
• face almost as if half done
• hair-black
• corpse
• other body--face down, brown hair, Tshirt and shorts, heavy boots but still floating
• push the one w/ the boots to shore, but very heavy
• anyone else in cave? --> some insects, possibly beetles, but none on or near the ground
• call out...noise comes from straight ahead
• an outline suggesting a door
• arms feels heavier and wider
• ask for person to come out
• door shattered & disappeared
• someone coming out: skinny as a straw, wearing a hat, name given as Sarah but voice like a boy's, in dream because it got lost
• Why calling Peter? ...heard me in cave and hoping to get a ride out
• "Put me in a bottle"--but I don't have a bottle
• About to say something but noticed something, ran off, & jumped up the hole
• blob of orange/yellow light in the next room--> going inside
• Room bigger than the last, 4 pillars, covered in vines, waer ankle deep
• walls retreated & disappeared
• now sees the zombies
• walk over, ask who they are? "Nobody" fell over & began to twitch
• "You dealt with us on the hill before"
• Want me to apoligize for killing them
• Are you willing?
• Have themselves confused with someone else--so "no" I won't apologize
• Ask them for a gift...
• They started screaming
• Tell them they must give you a gift...
• Holding out its hands--growing, extendng from bright blue bulb, no idea what it is--one part hollow
• zombies quiet
• dismiss them--white and frozen, faded away...they're gone

It ended there for class, although Bruce thought there was quite a bit of material we could have uncovered with time. I hope we get back to it next week.

McMurphy!

We've made it through opening night! WOOOOOOOOOO!

***CUCKOO'S NEST SPOILERS AHEAD***

That was a fantastic opening night. It was a large audience for a Thursday and we really got through to them. Vince said that both of his parents were crying by the end. On the note of Vince, he...well...sort of destroyed the electrical box. Save that energy for Saturday, big guy. Ratched and I each seem to have a really strong sense of where the other is: when I stand up to Ratched near the end and move to block her from reaching Candy, we came within a couple finger-widths of each other. Not to say that the show was perfect; Harding skipped about half a page of dialogue in Act I (very good covering, though), and we had a momentary blackout just before the pary scene (I'm glaring at youuuuuu, Kenzi!). Still. Fantastic. Harding's dad came up to me afterward and said that I was portraying a spot-on anxiety disorder, and this guy worked in a psychiatric hospital for ten years!

Acting is more than just my passion or expected profession. It's what keeps me human. I can say that without theater I would be a lot less like me and a lot more like Billy. Each play seems to improve my life or my identity in some way. For example, going through Cuckoo's Nest has made me more comfortable about exposing myself physically.

Oh, yes: When I located T after the performance I promptly asked him for notes. My favorite note that he wrote down for anyone was as follows,

"Shock therapy scene: fucking awesome."

I have no doubt that our next two nights will fare just as well.

Three days till Cuckoo's Nest!

Tonight we FINALLY got a full runthrough with tech! This play is at last coming together, although we still need to work on keeping straight faces in a couple of areas. Vince and Nixon--or should I say Chief and Ratched--are awesome, and Scanlon is doing quite well for his first performance here. I'll be meeting with T at lunch tomorrow for some more character work; I haven't yet felt Commitment Fatigue during my last scene, and it needs to be 100% believable.

I come from a place.

I wrote this poem a couple of weeks ago and forgot to post it. Rehearsal today reminded me.

I don’t come from three California towns.
I don’t come from Altadena.
I don’t come from just north of the Los Angeles smoke and lights,
Where certain people can make a half million dollars a day
For having a fashionably unkempt hairstyle.
I don’t come from the yellowed hills of the Bay Area.
I don’t come from Pleasanton.
I don’t come from a blacktopped elementary school
With a buzzer
And buildings like abandoned wagon wheels.
I don’t come from the house that leaves
Nine years’ worth of memories to clog my cortex.
I don’t come from Alamo.
I don’t come from a one-story house
Built in the fifties
Where I still can’t remember where to lock the gate after
Six years.
I come from an isolated black box,
A high school I’ve never attended,
And an auditorium in Orinda.
I come from pages crisscrossed with a highlighter
And framed with notes on blocking.
I come from a mountain climber’s axe.
I come from Venice, 1941.
I come from a broken belt tied around my head.
I come from a trampoline.
I come from iambic pentameter.

Yee!

Composition class with Softy has begun again! Whee! *runs around hugging random people*

Loyal and Slasher returned as well (as has Sunshine, but she had to miss today for work on Twelfth Night, which is really ironic when you consider that the play we are working on in class is Twelfth Night), and we got Knight, Song, and Gift, Lantern's younger sister, and a new girl. Apparently another guy signed up for the class, but as he was also absent I am currently the sole source of testosterone. Not that it matters; when I'm with the Venetians (it's easier to say "Venetians" than "Venetians and/or Riotous Knights," so that's what I'm sticking with) I don't even pay attention to gender categories. I just become smiley with the knowledge that I'm around such incredible people again.

Today's class included warmups Softy-style (oh, how I miss those warmups!), five minutes of automatic writing (either I'm a really slow writer or everyone else is really fast) and soundscapes using Orsino's opening monologue. A bit of angelic chorus may have snuck into ours. *shifty eyes*

No more class until Saturday, but until then it's all theater all the time (Cuckoo's Nest performs this week!), so I may be able to survive. Then again, I may not (see yesterday).

On the notes of theater and survival, I am sharpening my knife for immediate post-performance use on our line-shoddy Harding and McMurphy (mostly Harding). Ooh, that reminds me: Vein #11 from yesterday was that Ruckley dropped the play outright. LESS THAN A WEEK BEFORE OPENING NIGHT! Sure, he has very little blocking, and the only thing he ever says is, "Fuck 'em all!", but it's the principle! This is why one maps out one's conflicts BEFORE getting cast!

Enough angry posting. I want to smile some.

But I don't have time. Shakespeare Honors work needs to be finished, and then shower. Mister Emoticon will smile for me.

^_^

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!

Why are all these veins in my neck standing out? Don't get me started (too late).

Vein #1. No meditation today, so that much less time to simply relax.

Vein #2. I had to turn in some ten sheets of college paperwork.

Vein #3. A schoolwide (hum!) conspiracy has led to FOUR essays being assigned in the same time frame.

Vein #4. That time frame is PERFORMANCE WEEK, where I stay at school until ten o'clock every night.

Vein #5. Therefore I had to run around begging teachers for extensions, one of whom I had to simultanteously ask for a letter of recommendation that I had assumed on other paperwork she would write.

Vein #6. We had a quiz in Statistics.

Vein #7. We had a test in Shakespeare.

Vein #8. Rehearsal ended nearly half an hour before I had projected.

Vein #9. While running Lear monologues in an attempt to blow off steam I blanked on a word in one of the lines I've run the most for at least ten minutes. (She hath...she hath...ABATED! SHE HATH ABATED ME OF HALF MY TRAIN!!!)

Vein #10. At the last minute I realized that I still had not given T the last piece of paperwork, which meant sprinting back up to our remote theater.

By 4:00 I was foaming at the mouth. Literally.

Disintegrations

During meditations today I had some more images of my body coming apart, and Bruce suggested I start keeping a journal of them. Here's what I've seen so far:

1. The aforementioned "sand crumbling."
2. Cracks radiating from my face across my body with black syrup flowing from the cracks.
3. My body slowly being vanished by fire from the feet up. Okay, at least I know where this one came from. It was the image in my head during the "blow, wind, and crack your cheeks" monologue.
4. A small grey whirlpool appearing at my center and growing.
5. My body tightening and contracting until it shattered like a block of ice.
6. Expanding and widening, but losing its substance simultaneously until it faded away completely, revealing a shriveled, spaghetti-thin version of my body as what might have been the frame.
7. A tiny hole opening in my forehead from which reality fountained.
8. Collapsing into a pile of children's blocks.

'Tis strange. Now to sing, take a shower, and see what the night has in store.

Halloween events

I dressed up as Skull Kid today. Not that elaborate, given my rock-bottom budget. Really, it was just the mask and some red-and-yellow clothing, but whatever. Vince, being a Legend of Zelda fan, liked it a lot. Other notable costumes included Captain Jack Sparrow, Yoshi, Indiana Jones, and two separate ninjas. Backflip even brought a real sword, although he had to put it back in his car.

Zeus spent the first half of class giving us a lecture on the origins of Halloween before returning to Dante.

The junior class put up a haunted house in the Commons. Theme: The Devil's Dollhouse. I went through, and they had some very nice ideas. I came up with a few more, though. One involved a doll, a noose, and a looping tape of "Jesus Loves Me." Yeah, I'm sick.

Cuckoo's Nest opens in a week and a day, and I swear I will murder McMurphy and Harding if they don't have that "pecking party" dialogue memorized by Friday! Memo tests were weeks ago!

Humanitas wasn't today, but this week is notable was we have begun the meditation exercises that were half the reason I signed up for Humanitas in the first place. Shutting off the flow of words was easier than expected. Shutting off the flow of images was less so. The most common one was a supine, hollow replica of myself made of sand. When I exhaled, a crevice would open down the torso and the sand would waterfall inward.

Back to reflection

Lately I've been thinking about my identity. Who I am, who I've been, and who I may not want to be anymore. For instance, the Behind-the-Commons Crew. Now that Bedlam, Musical, and Spade have graduated, it's a very different place. We've lost the "intellectual hippie" side and gone over to the "computer geek sophomores" side. I've spent the first two months of school there still, but I can't ignore that it's no longer...for lack of a better adjective, it's no longer Venetian. And it's not just the others. When I'm with the Venetians/Riotous Knights, I'm Peter the Progress, but behind the Commons I feel as though I'm still Peter the Disconcerting. It's not a good feeling. Which is the more "real" me? Have I tried to move on while remaining hooked in my old self through force of habit, or am I still the same person as I've been for ages and only pretend to have changed?

Who am I!? A couple of weeks ago, Spivey arrived just behind me at rehearsal. Our conversation was as follows:

Me: Hello.
Spivey: Oh, shoot, are we supposed to be in character already?
Me: No. Did I convey that impression?
Spivey: Yes.
Me: How? I didn't even stutter.
Spivey: Oh, sorry. I think it has something to do with the fact that even when you're not on stage, half the time you're acting anyway.

This has been gnawing at me since.

Even before this exchange, the possibility has crossed my mind that I'm acting more often than I want. So I deny it. My emotions do seem to have freer rein when the stage is involved. If I do wear the theatre mask too much in real life, it becomes a simple matter to jump to the possibility that I use people. (Lantern: ...and that doesn't mean riding roughshod over other people. You're not Richard III.) Was that what she was talking about?

Oh, let me not be mad.

Which reminds me: impulses. When you see something, you you're doing something, your brain will inevitably point out a potential course of action which is absurd at best (You know, you could stand up and shout, "Hey, Romeo! DIE ALREADY!" Nobody would be able to stop you.) and psychotic at worst (The way his leg is stretched out right now, I bet you could stomp on it hard enough to break it). This happens to everyone, I'm sure, but the part of my brain that comes up with these seems to be on overdrive. Time and time again I have to respond, "I could, but I have no cause!" Or find a way to shut it up for as long as I can. There certainly remains a line between thinking and doing, but it can be tempting to feel out that line. To get as clooooose to it as possible without crossing.

*exits DSR*

I've said it before...

...and I'll say it again.

I.

Hate.

Writing.

Consclusions.

I've made my point. I've explained how and why the ninth circle of Hell should be reorganized. Why can't I just end my essay here?

Braces off in five weeks

So spake the orthodontist today.

Poetry contest: round 2

The school creative writing contest is back this year. This time it appears to be poetry specific, with three categories for haiku, form (excluding haiku, obviously), and free-form. I plan to submit to all three. I'm not sure what I'll send in for form, but here are my haiku and free-form submissions.

Bright enough for shade
Cities never get this chance
To read by the moon

I wouldn't want to be one of the haiku judges: It feels odd to know that a branch of the contest is between poems of no more than seventeen syllables.

This one loses something in reading, since I wrote it with performance in mind, but I like it anyway. It was very fun to write.

I’m an action star.
I am Keanu Reeves, Jackie Chan, and Harrison Ford all
Bundled into one thunderous package of property damage.
I am Ahnold. I am Bruce Willis. I am Clint Eastwood.
I am Bond, James Bond.
That’s Sean Connery, Roger Moore, AND Daniel Craig
For you smart-alecks out there,
But Pierce Brosnan only wishes he was part of me.
Oh, yes:
I am even Chuck Norris.
I can kick through a brick wall,
Wrap the bad guys in a lamp post,
And bag twenty buxom babes, all before breakfast.
I am so badass
I can’t even SPIT without the world going into bullet time.
I have more guns than fingers,
And if I think for an instant
You might be a mook
I’ll empty instantaneously half my infinite ammunition into your abdomen
EXCEPT on Sundays.
On Sundays I use a katana.
I consider myself a failure if I don’t
Blast a half dozen homes daily to smithereens, and
The more expensive
The better.
No insurance company will take me,
And the rental car agencies soil themselves when they see me coming.
They think,
“Oh no here comes the action star
There goes a car
There goes our stock
SWEET JESUS WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO
Oh what luck he’s riding a motorcycle today”
But I don’t care about what they think,
Because I’m an action star
And I WILL save the world
No matter how many Nazis,
No matter how many explosions,
No matter how many innocent bystanders,
No matter how many scantily clad double agents, and
No matter how many millions of dollars in checks to Industrial Light and Magic stand in my way!

Dreams and prophecies

"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say?"
I hear the judge inquire at trial upon the break of day.
But he knows my case already, for the gavel man is me,
And jury, and, in time, my executioner I'll be.
In vain do I protest I had no power o'er my crime,
For few can rule the happenings within the dreaming time.
"The crime is yours, and no one else could ever take the blame;
I must condemn the perpetrator: you and he the same.
And yet your crime do you regret and fully understand:
I therefore choose to sentence you to death by your own hand."
I leave the court condemned, but I wear no chains because
Without them I'm a prisoner as much as e'er I was.

*****

When nature lovers drown in leaves
And every dog its master grieves
When artists from their scaffolds fall
And birthday cakes are poisoned all
When models' throats are slit by mirrors
And laughing children choke on tears
Then shall knowledge of a smile
Turn to something dim and vile
When families burn on Christmas morn
And flowers have their petals shorn
When houses all are made of smoke
And every book a fire doth stoke
When words of love live not in tongues
And judges blind themselves to wrongs
Then ends the time when, if in pain
The world could have begun again

Ironic quote of the day

"You wouldn't know subtlety if it punched you in the face."

Anniversaries

As of today I have maintained this blog for exactly one year. *tosses confetti*

As of Saturday I will have lived in this house for exactly six years. *sets timer on confetti bomb*

(insert topic title here)

I returned from college visits last night, including Reed (spent the night there), Sarah Lawrence (didn't see Bedlam or Atlas there, sadly), Lewis & Clark, and Occidental. All of them continue to look superb from the educational standpoint, so where I go will most likely come down to where I can most easily live. SL takes a hit for the food quality.

On a downward note, on Sunday I came down with the Mordor Mystery Malady that has plagued me twice before. This time may have been the worst ever; it took a long time for the shot to kick in, and at one point I started shaking uncontrollably. Fortunately I had recovered by the next morning, and Sunday was the only day we had no obligations. So it could have gone a lot worse.

It rained lightly today. Vince, seeing me in a T-shirt and exhibiting no sings of freezing, maintains his theory that I can feel no discomfort, in support of which he cites a day in Physics I have forgotten wherein I spent notable amounts of time conducting electrical current without bothing to ground myself. I do not remember this, but I do remember hogging the mini-Tesla coil. One of my classmates asked me to step away so he could have a turn at it, and as he did so, he reached for my arm. *BZZT...smolder*

Lesson learned: You don't touch anyone who has been gathering electricity for more than a minute running.

I have homework to do, poems to finish.

1-minute post

My life over the last couple days in sound bites.

College visits. Reed. Excellent. Fire dancing. Lewis & Clark. Applying to both. Seeing relatives in mere seconds. Computer about to restart. Bye.

*head scratch*

Why do I always seems to wear my tuna-papaya shirt on a Tuesday?

*forehead wipe*

Five essays turned in over two school days. YEESH.

Oh, and why do we still celebrate Colombus Day? I thought genocidals were generally frowned upon. Is there a good reason to celebrate Colombus over Leif Erikson or Sir Francis Drake?

I didn't think so.

Class dismissed.

Excerpt from Divine Comedy

Zeus: ...so it appears that the universal inclination is "to be."

Me: What about the suicidal?

Zeus: Consider the language used by the suicidal: "I'd be better off dead." In this case, death is a means, not an end.

Me: To be or not to be.

Zeus: That is the question.

Student: Damn you both.

Line blanking makes me feel like this:

Apparently it also makes me look like that. "Your neck had a vein standing out that I didn't even know was there."

Charlie said I still got an A on the memo test, but I don't--like--forgetting my lines, especially when I was running them through my head TWO MINUTES AGO! *heavy breathing*

Okay, I'm calm.

Yum.

Peaches are good. Everybody should eat peaches. Barbossa wasted who-knows-how-many years of his life on them apples when he could have been stuffing his face with peaches.

I have returned.

The Ashland field trip was very enjoyable, as Ashland is wont to be. We saw a Depression-set As You Like It the first afternoon, although I didn't get much out of the first act due to fighting of sleep. That night we saw Taming of the Shrew, which was very well done, in the outdoor theater. Over dinner Red, Tech, and I developed a preposition-scrambling language which eventually mutated into an intelligible monstrosity to all around us (and even ourselves in the last few minutes). The next day we took sometime to stroll about Ashland and swap riddles, and I ran into Song! What are the odds, I ask you!?

It was raining during Romeo and Juliet, but I was in the last row to receive full shelter. Juliet must have been freezing. I believe R&J was my favorite of the three plays (this may have changed had I better remained alert during AYLI).

The van rides each way were very long, as rides to Oregon are wont to be. I wrote a couple of poems during the field trip, one of which I'll share below, and Red and Tech agreed with me that my classical element is Earth.

I returned to school just in time for part 1 of Cuckoo's Nest memo tests. Methinks I got a A.

And here I digitally stand before you.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I plan to see Cal Shakes' version of King Lear this Friday. PLEEEASE be better than last year's The Travesty of Venice!

Oh, right: poem. This one I wrote on the ride north. It got started and then wandered where it would. Morbid and strange.

Shadows spin
Crack a grin
Sun is shining red
Opal steam
Broken beam
Masks of newly dead
Clouds are low
Charcoal glow
Ripples cross the land
Suicide
Side by side
Lying hand in hand
No more fears
No more tears
No more worldly mess
Now we laugh
Half and half
Damning as we bless
Mirror souls
Cooling coals
Land embraces sky
Blooming pain
No one slain
Only we could die

Stupid.

As if I weren't getting up early enough already, I set my alarm a half hour earlier than intended.

Shutting up.

Well, it's off to Ashland in...8.5 hours. Yeah, to get there in time for the first play we have to leave at 5:30 in the morning. Whee...

I am going to have to work hard on Billy's last scene in Cuckoo's Nest. He runs off stage to commit suicide, after all, and today didn't feel remotely believable. Finding something to put myself in the right mindset (that being, "as close to total breakdown as possible") will prove quite the challenge.

*cackle*

I just finished my AP Stats quiz. Methinks the teacher should have payed a little more attention when he wrote up that quiz, as one of the questions ended up testing my almighty powers of simple subtraction! It was literally a more wordy version of, "What is 100%-10%?" Not that I'm complaining.

Blech.

Hopefully that name poem will fulfill the assignment reqs, but it's probably the worst I've written in a few years.

The horizon's on fire, and the moon, seeing, has come to smother it.
Some people run, but they'll all float in the same darkness during the last seconds.
Does he even know what he's doing anymore?
C, B, G, Bb, A

Moon shadow

If you read this in the next couple of nights, when it is night if it isn't already, take a moment, go outside, and appreciate the shadows cast by such a bright moon.

This takes me back to the full moon that shone when we were crossing the Saline Valley. What is that line of Iona's? "Nights so clear and bright you could read a book by the moon?"

*smack*

The following message was on the answering machine when I got home (for a bit of background, my grandmother is 96 and has been in the hospital for a few weeks)

*click* Hello, this is the chaplain from Kaiser. I'm making a call about...oh, I think I have the wrong...wrong patient, sorry. *click*

It's like something out of a comedy sketch (and I'm sure you can find it in one), but I swear I am not making this up!

In other news, I delivered my Richard III monologue this afternoon. One of my props was a cane, so I decided to work on my limp between periods. It was apparently convincing, but that cane is murder on the palm when used for extended periods. In Poetry class I got my sonnets back with positive remarks, so if I ever need a tertiary title I may suggest Peter the Pentameter.

Let's talk.

We wrote "word salad" poems in Poetry today. Mine is in my journal, which I turned in, but I'll post it when I get it back. The three words I submitted to the pool were "thunder," "rotundity," and "crack." Not that I had anything on my mind at the time, oh no.

I recite my Richard III monologue in two days. T has allowed me access to the costume barn, so I found a nice black jacket, a red flower for the lapel, and a cane-stick. I would have preferred a real cane, but there's only one in the theater, and it's splitting apart.

Oh, yes: I finally saw Psycho a couple of nights ago. I can definitely understand why Norman Bates ranked #2 on the list of the top 50 film villains.

Turning, turning, turning through the years...

I repeat myself a lot. Not merely in conversation (though I do tend to forget what I have said to whom), but certain life events see themselves used a fodder for multiple pieces of writing. The night on the trampoline, for instance, is now making its third appearance in a school assignment.

Life goes on

Hm. it's been a while since I updated.

Loyal, Gentleman, and I saw Song for the first time since the cast party on Friday. She was in a very enjoyable production of Oklahoma!

Also on Friday I had a college interview with a representative from St. John's, and yesterday with Reed.

I have also been grappling with a poem for the last few days. I know exactly where to go with it, but I haven't been able to put it into verse yet. Perhaps I can do so now.

...

Eh. It's not one of my better ones. I'll think about posting it.

Sure.

For a long time did I stare at the cliff
That claimed so many before.
Never to fall did I expect
If I not outright so swore.

Then strolling along one day
The edge beneath crumbled away.

In the first few moments I was not sure
What exactly had happened here,
And I asked myself and whoever else heard
How much I had to fear.

(Though at times I'd dreamed while awake
That my ledge might one day break.)

The face of the cliff rushed up and away
I may have caught it to slow my pace
But instead I took a moment to feel
The rush of the wind on my face.

The act was as foolish as brave
When I had myself to save.

In that moment empty of caution
The plummet became my friend,
And I promised myself and the air about me
Never the fall to end.

Then the wind nipped me with its chill
And revealed the potential for ill.

I returned my gaze to the edge above
Now well beyond my reach
And asked myself if I had erred;
Would a hard lesson life to me teach?

Now pondering this is where
You will find me high in the air.

Even so, in my current predicament
With no sign of change for miles around,
I would not wish to end my fall
Lest I may hard hit the ground.

And would the impact bear half as much pain
As tumbling over a cliff again?

Blurbs 1 and 2

1. Musical hasn't started college yet (no fair!), so she was visiting campus today. It was great to see her again.

2. You can make just about anything funny by sticking Gerard Butler's bearded, screaming head onto it. I haven't even seen 300 and these pictures crack me up. I think my favorite is "This is OPERAAAAA!!!" Either that or Chibi Leonidas.

Is this what the school head feels like at the end of the year?

‘Twas only this year in the fine month of May
That America’s abridged history was the school spring play.
The laughs kept on coming, as did the stereotypes
Italian, Indian, and cowboy, but no gripes.
We mangled the national anthem, and could you blame me
When I mangled the letter of obnoxious little Amy?
Early on was crafted a balloon dog sublime
By your own tribal elder, Wears-Sweatpants-all-the-Time.
Then lickety-split, just as quick as you please,
Vince rapped on about the thirteen colonies.
We made a mockery of the Revolutionary War
By filling it with stoners, munchkins, and cross-dressers galore.
We hastily posed for the War Not So Civil
As the announcers were caught up in their personal drivel.
At the end of act one did conspiracies abound
Backed up by creepy voices and an X-files sound.
Post-intermission we ran World War One
And let the audience in on some Super Soaker fun.
From there we moved on to the Great Depression
And Hitler, two centuries too late to be a Hessian.
(That I struggled for a rhyme there you’re well beyond guessin’.)
At last we entered the dramatic home stretch,
And Caitlin did her film noir outfit fetch
To match pace with the shade-wearing, manic and spry
Mix of Gollum and Joker: the Conspirator Guy!
And just as were assassinated civil rights leaders black
Justin was snuffed out before he could bring sexy back.
Spade Diamond was then confronted by Uncle Sam
With questions about the war in Vietnam.
Some years later our hero had a fixin’
To learn about the Cold War from President Nixon.
From there we jump to Bush Senior beggin’
For recognition from a spaced-out Reagan.
Now finally we trekked to the Berlin Wall
Where Uncle Sam and Conspirator Guy to bullets did fall,
But the feeling of conclusion was marred, oh,
By the sudden reappearance of Lucy Ricardo.
In need of a happy ending, the entire cast ran
The American timeline back to where it began.
The performance was wonderful, but I do confess
Between noodles, confetti, whipped cream (none on my dress),
The Altoids meant to be consumed in quantities less,
And who-knows-how-much water, we made a spectacular mess.

The poetry assignment was to write one alluding to a song or literary work of this generation. It got away from me a little, but no complaints.

My post title is a reference ot the school tradition: at the end of each year the head of the upper school writes a poem commemorating every graduating senoir in a manner much like this one and with similar stretches for rhymes. Every year he tries to get out of writing the poem and every time he fails.

Untitled poem

I wrote a few lines of this poem in Humanitas and then expanded it yestersay afternoon.

To know you sense what isn't there
But not to sense the true:
Edification's mockery
With devious rivals few.

This mural of the mind which does
Obscure the world outside
Ignores the plea to end the chain
Of years for which it lied.

Lunging at the veil which dances
Inches out of reach,
I curse the villain who would my
Hallucinations teach,

Content no longer with the dream
My senses sought to give.
You take my life when you do take
The world in which I live!

I pluck my eyes and think to hear
A hungry raven's caw,
For they could only offer lies.
I stumbled when I saw.

This wakingless dementia doth
Provoke my death to call.
I'll have a life upon my terms
Or have no life at all.

More sonnetry

No rehearsal today: T was sick.

This appears to be Sonnet Week in poetry class. Homework for tomorrow was to write a sonnet on any topic, with love and death as suggestions. Here is my death sonnet:

The disadvantages of death are few,
For corpses have no knowledge of torment,
But this is quite a selfish point of view
If one would leave behind such men as Kent.
‘Tis better dead before senility?
Once there a life cannot be used in full.
Or better to waste no ability
And cowardly to flee the senses dull?
Yet what know I the quality of ends
When I and all my relatives yet live?
And when I pass I cannot make amends
With those who sought my misdeeds to forgive.
And yet I can’t ignore that when I fall
I forfeit joys, potential, mind, and all.

Meh.

I wasn't planning for the Shakespeare allusion, but I wanted the first quatrain to touch on leaving others behind, and torment/Kent was the first rhyming match I could think of.

Snippets of Bat Boy began playing through my head while I was doing my Stats homework. It's been a while since that production: nearly four years. I recall that, after the last song, we added a Jamaican reprise. I never did understand why.

Nostalgia...rising...

Casting

The results for Cuckoo's Nest are in. I will be playing Bibbit. *smiles* I was quite surprised to see McMurphy go to Uncle Sam and not Vince, but I can't deny that he is appropriate for the role. I agree with the other actors that Bibbit is a good match for me, but I was hoping for more of a character stretch: he is basically a stuttering Oscar on steroids, and I think Oscar is the closest of my roles to what I'm like in real life. Still, there is one area in particular that will be quite a dramatic and emotional challenge (no spoilers in case you haven't seen/read OFotCN). In the meantime, I've gotten rid of my 'stache to play up Bibbit's relative youth, and T is arranging for me to meet with somebody he knows who actually has a stutter. One of her suggestions that he passed on, which makes a lot of sense, is less for the impediment itself than for understanding the psychological baggage that comes with having to interact with others: to use a stutter the next time I talk with people who don't already know me. I'll be meeting a representative of Reed college a couple of weekends from now, but something--I can't put my finger on it--is telling me to speak normally then. Oh, right: common sense.

Hopefully this sore throat will go away soon. It is very annoying, as sore throats are wont to be.

fat lady's warming up

Callbacks Round 2 finished just now, and the cast list will be posted tomorrow afternoon. There were no script readings today; instead we had a series of character improvs, mostly for McMurphy. For the first set, each potential McMurphy present was paired up with a girl from the cast whom he had to try to charm in McMurphy fashion. I don't have much experience in that area, but I tried to channel my performance as Duane Wilson and I believe I did pretty well. The second round was that of McMurphys threatening staff members at the institute. This exercise was necessary for establishing potential to display McMurphy's fighting side, but T's goal of scaring the other actor was not as effective as one would hope, seeing as we were (obviously) forbidden from inflicting bodily harm on our scene partners. I ended my own improv for just that reason: McMurphy would at that point give up with words and beat the attendant to a pulp if he hadn't started already. The table was a popular prop: the other two guys running the scene eachoverturned it, and I picked it up as if to wield as a weapon. Once those were finished we had a couple of group therapy improvs to give the prospective Nurse Ratcheds some practice in addition to the other patients such as Bibbit, Cheswick, and Harding. Vince was a no-show. I'm guessing he had dance.

Was ever woman in this humor memorized?

All right. Now I have a couple of weeks to work it for quality and entertain a score or two of tailors to study fashions to adorn my body. Our school has a fairly ample costume barn of which I cannot imagine T raising an objection to my ransacking.

Upon its head

The rainy season doth begin anew,
And as a wetness seeks to court the land
A firmament-shed patch of solid blue
Drops from above and ambushes my hand
I cast my vision skyward and I see
That heaven bleeds away its azure face,
Displaying stony vaults while land below
Is covered by this rain without a trace.
Where ground is gone for good some victims fall
Upwards--or is it down?--into the void
While trees of lightning flay their forebears all
As madness with its patient may have toyed.
In vain I pose myself the question, "Why
Does sky become the earth and Earth the sky?"

Veg bad

I really need to get out more.

Gah. I appear to be developing a sore throat.

Let's discuss some topics in a slightly more positive vein, hmm?

I'll come back to this post when I have something interesting on my mind.

So what was the point of clicking the New Post button in the first place?

Sometimes you just need to talk, and hearing the words bounce off the walls of your room isn't sufficient. Broadcasting in some form or another becomes necessary or else you go stir-crazy. Was it really only yesterday I was at school? I even slept in this morning, and yet the weekend feels as though it has dragged on since Wednesday.

Do you ever have trouble recalling the appearances of people you know well? That is happening to me right now. I remember what they look like, but I can't correctly visualize them for long before the images distort or simplify.

A freewrite would do me some good right now.

The window is open in front. How much attention do passersby pay? Can they hear me talking to myself, and if they looked inside how much would they see? If I knw the answer, would it change how I compose myself in the "privacy" of my own home? At least they cannot take from me the use of mine own house. Ah, here we go: Shakespeare on the brain. I'll be seeing King Lear either next month or at the end of this month with the other Riotous Knights. The old crowd--the Venetians that didn't return this year, that is--has been awfully quiet for the last couple of months. I ought to send them an email. That reminds me that I have a couple of calls to make over the next day or two. But enough about that. Shakespeare is more interesting to think about. So is my style of typing. I never learned how to type properly, but this method seems to work fine. I don't know what my words-per-minute rate is. I don't know what to write. I don't know what to write. Don't get stuck here. Uncertainty leads to grounding. That seems to be the case in most if not all facets of my life, as opposed merely to acting. Ask me a question that I can't immediately answer, and it's likely that I'll freeze. This can be quite embarassing, which only exacerabtes the situation. I don't know what to write. Freewrites remind me of Softy's upcoming class. All the students who took it last year, were Venetians, and have not gone on to college--all four of us, that is--are returning. Song and Knight have also voiced their interest. I spread news of it to Nixon and Vince as well. Might they be interested? I have no idea. Vince might not, as he'll be performing in Fiddler on the Roof around that same time as the class begins.

Whee.

Are directors normally this candid pre-casting?

I made the callback list, so I'm cast for sure. Yippee!

This afternoon we had various cold readings from Cuckoo's Nest. I read as McMurphy, as Harding, and as a little bit of Billy. I requested to read another Billy piece on Monday, as I felt that two lines did not make for a full respresentation of me as the character, although T said that he saw what he needed to in that respect. Speaking of what T said, afterward he talked pretty openly with me about his thoughts: if from them I could assign percentages to my likelihood of getting cast in this role or that, I would assign them like so: 50% Billy, 45% Harding (that surprised me; I didn't see myself as quite the Harding sort), 5% McMurphy. He's all but cast me already in one of the first two, but McMurphy would be a bit of a stretch from what he's seen of me (and Lear wasn't a stretch!? But I digress.) in terms of the character's physicality. McMurphy's a fighter, and if I really want the part I ought to join the fight club so that I can get it into my body. I'm willing to do that, but my worry is that it could strangle the schedule I've worked to keep wide open this year (and scheduling conflicts--that and our shoo-in for Bromden going AWOL--are the only reason, as far as I can tell, that Vince might not land the role).

Regardless of how the roles are sorted out, I repose my opening question: are directors normally this candid pre-casting?

Just for the record...

I do not like evaluation forms.

Have a night that is good in nature.

Dummyman

An act that went off without a hitch
An audience all too eager to laugh
A new dummy with a perfect voice
My best night all month
Titles dancing through my head
Chase Philips, World's Most Renowned Ventriloquist!
Departing with elation
A cry of "Encore!"
The manager eagerly waving me back onto the stage
The show's not over while the audience laughs
Repositioning my partner on my knee
The prelude to a second deluge of hilarity
Silence
A prick of embarrassment
Valiantly continuing on
Silence
Beading sweat
A hand feeling cramped inside the dummy
A voice not mine
Confusion
Catcalls from the audience
Eyes drawn downward
A wooden jaw dropping open
"Why so stiff? The show's not over, my man."
Yanking my hand out in horror
Bits of wood clenching tight
Another question bouncing off my eardrums
Standing to flee
Pinned down by so much weight
Gabbling the first words that enter my brain
A wisecrack from two feet above my knee
Laughter
Blank faces above gaping mouths of mirth
"Thank you, thank you."
My unliving partner bows and rambles on
Unable to leave
Crying for help
The audience points and laughs
A hundred faces of painted wood
The jokes run on all night
Punctuated by the occasional call for an encore
Lost count hours ago
The show's not over while the audience laughs

I wanted to make this a structured poem, but it wasn't working out.

Bah!

I just returned from the orthodontist, and it sounds like my braces won't come off until mid-December! I was supposed to be rid of them over a year and a half ago!

Fallen celestials

This poem was inspired by the appearance of the sun through the smoke this morning.

The world looks up at the sun
Bleeding its life away
Masses wonder if this
May be their last crimson day

The blood of the sun washes out
All that we used to believe
Row upon row falls to its knees
Even the madmen grieve

The moon grins in the veil of night
At what its rival became
And now as glory bleeds away
It sets itself aflame

A bleeding sun and a burning moon
Overlook the dying earth
And some newborn babe will know
Nothing but pain from birth

Huh. I didn't envision the poem to go in quite that direction. Other than the break after the second stanza, I rather like it.

Now is the winter of...no, it isn't.

Reading of Richard III has begun. Let it never be said that I do not LOVE this guy! I am absolutely learning "was ever woman in this humor wooed?" for my memo requirement.

Must write poems

Staring through the window screen
Shadows swallow day
Twenty-four more empty hours
Life is drained away

Shutting up the house's ears
Fleeing to the mind
But unable to forget
The world left beind

Opening my house's door
Creeping into night
Eager to go out and live
Bring my world some light

Wand'ring through the city streets
Learning what I lack
Promising upon my life
Never to go back

Fleeing from the raging storm
Of truth that seeks to burn
Poor fools who are unprepared
Home I must return

Tracing back my winding path
Again a living ghost
Up ahead the place I know
And now abhore the most

Staring through the window screen
Haunted by the power
Borne by that one memory
Of living but an hour

My poems seem to have been following a dully dismal trend for a while now. Come on, Peter! You were titled Disconcerting for a reason! Where's the death and gore?

I'll tell you what there is about me.

Divine Comedy: The pholosophical lectures continue. Zeus is giving us a terms quiz on Friday, which shouldn't be an issue.

Classical Worlds: Upcoming quiz here too, although Bloom has said that it will be quite easy.

Stats: Got a head start on homework in class. Problem fourteen was to identify the errors with the above pie chart. Gee, where to begin? The numbers have no context, the pie is not shown head-on, the sections are completely disproportionate to their respective percentages, and the total % is far more than 100.

Lunch: I acquired an audition form from T and worked on filling it out.

Shakespeare: My ears were particularly attuned to whenever somebody spoke in iambic pentameter. Prob'ly because of all the sonnet work we have been doing. I was on a bit of a high as I climbed the hill departing.

Poetry: We've begun watching Journey of Man (a surreal Cirque de Soleil film) and taking notes on what metaphors we see. Charlie was there! Yay! I guess his college schedule is flexible.

PE: Yoga today was only a fifteen-minute orientation, so the instant we were done I set my sights on the theatre.

Audition: Philly gave me a vote of confidence as we passed each other. I didn't see anybody else's audition; I just entered, learned that Charlie will probably help with the production, turned in my audition form, and let rip. I'm a little leery about my audition quality: I took all the notes that Loyal gave me, but I also felt less grounded. I do know that when I was finished, my legs weren't nearly as shaky as on Saturday. T and I talked a little about scheduling, wherein I learned that I'm doing considerably better than those who had come before in that regard--I deliberately eschewed a separate performing art for the sake of the drama curriculum, so I would hope I'm looking good!), and I was on my way. Iona auditioned later, and we seem to have a decent crop of freshmen, as well as a senior who hasn't been in any plays yet but would physically make a good Chief Bromden.

Bring on the iambic pentameter!

My homework for Shakespeare is to write the opening quatrain of a sonnet (can't remember if you get extra points for a full sonnet) that 1) concerns itself with a feeling and 2) contains a simile or metaphor. There are a few ABABs I've written before that would fit perfectly, but I may as well go with a new one for the sake of further experience. Think, Peter.

Kent's last lines in 1.1 have been floating around in my head for some time.

We had a freewrite in poetry today. Apparently, "My wrist has a scar. I knew that already." is funny.

*seven score syllables later*

I got a full sonnet out of it, but the first quatrain ends in mid-sentence. The last quatrain, on the other hand, works fine. It's sufficient to turn in, but I doubt I'll post it.

Freewriting snippets

Where, my children, have you gone?
Papa's lonely, hungry, too.
But all will be well if you
Come back with your prey by dawn.

The above is the result of my twisted little mind at nine in the evening.

Funny how nitrous oxide lets you realize that your mind is being tampered with even as it happens. That makes it not so bad, I suppose. At least you don't hallucinate.

The fourth wall is the most fragile thing in existence. You can't even notice it without breaking it. Or is it the most fragile thing in nonexistence?

When packing for school, my instincts are terrible. If I think I've forgotten something, I never have. The reverse is often true.

How much would you pay for a mobius pretzel? And is that with or without extra salt?

If moths shot arrows, the pantry would be the Battle of Thermopylae. Could a moth-sized arrow kill me?

The numbers don't matter. What the numbers count for matters.

Tomorrow is philosophy all morning. But I won't go to bed at noon.

Shakespeare. Ha. I love it when people use Shakespeare off the stage. Not that I object to Shakespeare onstage.

NO, I DON'T HAVE A QUARTER!

Your guess is as good as mine where I got the above. Sort of like Song's "Nemo, where the fuck are you!?" in acting class.

Miss them all! Lear in September or October?

I wish I were evil. Then belly laughing would be easy.

What was that plum doing on my bed, anyway?

If people could tinker with their emotions and memories at will, how many would better themselves, and how many would destroy themselves?

I don't know kung fu. But my click-pen does.

That's it...you're almost there...just climb over one more body and...Whoops. I got there first. All because I said "please."

Temporal inconstancy

Today went by WAY too quickly. I was waking up at 6:30 but not climbing out of bed, and suddenly it was 9:30! A few minutes later it was noon, then 1, then 4:30, and now it's almost eight. I think Friday stole some of today's hours.

Ah, weekends, how I miss thee.

Spent the afternoon hanging out with Loyal. She made good on her promise to enlighten me in the ways of Star Trek, and I still can't get over Patrick Stewart actually having hair! Data is awesome. We later watched the Ian Holme version of King Lear. Just watching it tired me out. Yeah. Lear is intense. Loyal was also kind enough to give me some tips on my audition monologue. Main points to work on now are allowing myself to become more vulnerable around the middle and letting my anger escalate to a ten by the end (right now it's topping out around an eight). The monologue as a whole is three minutes, which is a tad on the long side, but there's not much that can be done about that. It's still a great monologue. Draining, though. She asked to see it just after we had finished King Lear, and after running it twice I was quite wobbly in the knees. I will interpret that as a good sign, that I'm really committing to the words.

I finally went to Kinko's the other day and had made the Reindeer Soup shirt that the cast had been imagining.

Long weekend for Labor Day. Yee-hee.

Remember, remember the 3rd of November.

Yahoo! Softy's class has finally appeared on the Cal Shakes website! Registration is possible!

Poetry

Getting back into the writing classroom means I'll be putting up some poems again.

Poetry work today--well, yesterday; it was homework--involved composing respresentations of more abstract ideas and vice versa. I rather liked some of what I came up with, so I'll put them here.

Exercise: A salesman of the body for the price of sweat
Amusement: A capering buffoon
Wretchedness: The cowering of the leper beneath a thousand glares
Locality: The province [eh...got stuck on this one]
Velocity: Overtaking the world
Attraction: The strings that pull the eyes and the hand that beckons the body to follow
Dryness: A tongue’s desert
Spiciness: Arcs of lightning popping the taste buds one by one
Agitation: A taut neck below wide, unfocused eyes
Deception: The dagger in the comforting hand
Insufficiency: The withered sum in a debtor’s palm
Authority: A gavel-pounder on high
Success: A ribbon whose ends flutter in the runner’s wake

//

Puppet: Manipulation
Hummingbird: Agility
Lightbulb: Alertness
Brick: Inertia
Playing card: Risk
Newspaper: Information
Wastebasket: Rejection
Padlock: Security
Mailbox: Expectation
Dust: Neglect

//

A world retreated quicker than a thought
Although I heard no whistle of the wind
And in an instant every speck forgot:
The actions spent, the earthly portrait dimmed.
I ope’d my mouth the passage to recall
But caught not even dust to savor well,
For in departing hence in part and all
The world left not a breeze behind to tell.
I clasped my temples, and in vain I strove
To wring from them a poor, delaying trace
Of what had been; my fruitless efforts drove
The tang of sweat to bead upon my face.
But even if I wait until my last
I’ll ne’er return to nor restore the past.

We also had to write poems about a "disappearing world." The first interpretation that came to mind for me was the present disappearing into the past.

Time to tuck in.

Convocation

Sitting in the bleachers. The same as last year, but one grade up. Another flag to sign. Walking over, thinking, Okay, I signed as Trotsky last year. How shall I sign this year? Disconcerting? Progress?

No. No more shells. This year I can sign as myself.

--Peter

Old quote

"I could see V relaxing in sweatpants after a long day of killing people, but the Phantom would never be in anything less casual than a smoking jacket."

Lantern said this (the last bit is paraphrased) whilst we walked to BART from the two-week camp one day. I don't know why it came to mind right now.

Matter, form, and two wrongs do not make a right

You know you'll be engaging in a lot of philosophy when your homework consists of watching the sky.

I've picked my audition monologue. The only plays to which I have easy access are Shakespeare, TLI, and The Pillowman. A Pillowman monologue is most appropriate for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and T said that he wanted to hear something from me on the dramatic (vs comedic) side. I believe he mentioned he wanted to hear something that leads to some sort of release at the end. Looking through the play, it appears that the best monologue for this audition is Ariel's monologue in the third act when he prepares to torture Katurian and talks about his hatred of anybody who would even think about laying a finger on a child. It stands alone well, and it has a lot of emotional potential, just so long as I leave out the last line. It's a dark laugh, but it's a laugh line nonetheless.

I have just over a week to prepare.

Desire

We discussed desire in Humanitas: why we desire, what we desire, how Eastern schools of thought seek to eradicate desire differently from Western thought. Desire basically comes from a realization of what you do not possess, yes? Either you realize that there is no "you," that there is effectively no difference between you and what you desire, you attain literally everything you desire, or you understand that that you cannot reach the end of the road and become content with your position.

I believe that one cannot eradicate desire. At least, one cannot eradicate desire fully and live for more than a few days. Unless you desire, you may as well be a rock. Nikhil described true happiness as enlightenment, as the absence of desire, but then you may as well die, unless the happiness is its own desire. Then desire becomes something you maintain every instant. If people attempt to eradicate desire, that itself is desire. On the other hand, sometimes desire itself can be the object of desire. Thoughts like this lead one to believe that the first-degree desire is "real," whatever that means, and before long will arise a desire for the desire of desire. Confused yet? I am.

Homework for Thursday, unsurprisingly, is to make note of what I desire and understand why.

Obviously, you cannot attain everything you desire and continue to live. If you engange in the most basic of activities--eating, drinking--than you indicate a desire for future life. The only ways to escape such would be immortality or somehow existing at every point in time at once.

I desire a trip to the drinking fountain.

It begins: the sequel

First day as a senior. All of my classes, including Stats, are shaping themselves up to be interesting.

I have the same teacher for Poetry as I did for creative writing last semester. She's already thrown out to the class the possibility of taking the seminar for Honors credit. I may do so. Our first project was to write name poems. We could pick a single adjective for each letter or work them into a sentence. I chose to take the latter route:

Progressing
Every day
Till I have
Experienced the
Right life for me.

Shakespeare I will definitely be taking for Honors. I already talked about which plays we're reading. We'll also go to Ashland in late September to see Romeo & Juliet, As You Like It, and The Taming of the Shrew. I noticed throughout the day that all my classes are slightly on the large side and that I have a lot of repeating classmates.

The AP Statistics teacher is new this year, but he seems like a good find. No homework yet, but today he introduced us to a logic game called Nim (Nihm? Nym?). I was surprised that he lost one round; it looks like the sort of game where you can win every time if you know the proper trick.

Someone in Humanitas is taking it as a schedule filler. *knuckle crack* You could be denying another person who really wanted the class! Interestingly, this class appears to have two teachers aside from...I'll call him Zeus, as he rivals L. Peter Callender as a status elemental. I'm really looking forward to the meditation exercises; Bedlam's descriptions of them were highly interesting and curiosity-piquing.

Vince and Nixon are both in Classical Worlds with me. Ya-harr. As a matter of fact, eleven or so of us are returning students from his seventh-grade class. We have only one junior among us out of seventeen. This class has the largest non-text book.

Zeus is teaching The Divine Comedy as well.

The fall play was confirmed as Cuckoo's Nest. I'll audition for McMurphy (who isn't?) with Billy as my second choice. Tech Girl seems to think that role would fit me well. Better start looking for good monologues. The musical is still up in the air, but it definitely will not be Guys & Dolls.

Bedlam was visiting today! Yayyy! *Internet hug* I thought she would be at college by now, but she doesn't leave town until Friday. Come to think of it, there were several graduated seniors sighted on campus.

I switched out of T's advisory this year. Nothing personal; I'll be seeing plenty of him anyway, and I wanted to see more of Pillar before I graduated.

I have homework to do. Unorthodox homework, but homework nonetheless.

P.S. Odd dream last night: I was fitting "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to a 3/4 meter. Not too hard, but I would like to know why?

I hope that another creative writing contest is staged this year. I have a couple of pieces in mind, and I would like an excuse to polish the end of my Lucid story.

School tomorrow...associations.

What to say?

What has been at my fingertips for these last few days? Everything or nothing?

Either way, it's about to get very specific again.

I should get to bed soon. It's relatively early, but I don't want to risk sleeping in.

Then again, isn't that what alarms are for?

I suppose I'll learn the play tomorrow. Please be TLI.

Cuckoo's Nest would be fine, but I'm really hoping for a chance to play Wargrave.

Can with blue people on it.

Pig's head on a stick.

Rolling rock.

Indiana Jones.

Harrison Ford.

How to save your marriage in seven easy steps.

Dramatic reading.

Dramatic writing.

F.

Fun and failure.

Arrested Development.

Bygone.

Graduation.

One Year.

Looking back.

Uneasy.

Snap out of it.

Glass of water.

Ice.

Liquid nitrogen.

Hasta la vista, baby.

Governator.

Eh.

Shrugging.

Gestures.

Vocal gestures.

Voice and Movement.

Omnipotent. Softy.

Goddess.

Greek Mythology.

Classical.

Beethoven.

Amadeus.

Zombies!

Survival.

Survive the coming year.

I'm a senior.

I still don't feel like it.

No choice.

I have a journey, sir, shortly to go.
My master calls me; I must not say no.

Glad

"Are you glad that X is happening?"

"Are you excited about Y?"

These are questions I'm rarely sure how to answer. Given the choices of yes and no, the most accurate answer is no, but to say so is misleading. I am not averse to the suject, but I would not go so far as to say that I'm excited about it.

Slow day.

Home. Bored. Potluck this evening. Old friend. Months since last seen. Maybe be there. School in two days. Ready? Don't know. Everybody quiet. Dreams. Vague. Shakespeare. Monologue or sonnet? Can't remember much. What's this? Cal Shakes newsletter. Old. Goodbye.

Rites of passage

Today was senior registration. I acquired my photo ID for this year, which looks pretty good despite the Sparkly Blue Pustule on my head. Everything else went off without a hitch. My selection of books this year is pretty interesting: I only have one full-size textbook (for Stats), but they make up for size with numbers! I have copies of Romeo & Juliet, Richard III, The Taming of the Shrew, Dante's Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso, and four other books for my various and sundry seminars of the Humanities.

I also learned the requirements for those students who take Shakespeare for honors credit: aside from the usual (an extra [take-home] question per test, etcetera), an honors student has to memorize fourteen lines! And (mark this) emote them in costume! Gee, I may have to rethink going for Honors! *giggle*

Heard good things about Occidental College. It's going on my list.

...goes clomping around wearing boots like Gaston!

I have new shoes.

That is the most interesting part of my day.

At last.

Day 18. Boy, am I stuffed. When we got off solo today I put away two thirds of my cheese block, my orange, all my cliff bars, a bowl of mashed potatoes, my chocloate, and a cinnamon bun. One of the bars was peanut butter, but I liked it anyway. I don't know whether my tastes are changing or I just didn't care. After lunch we backtracked to resupply and then hiked about a mile into Grapevine Canyon to our campsite. We'll be staying here for two days, as tomorrow is rock climbing.

Day 19. Whoa! First things first: M2 discovered the mangled--no, the shredded carcass of a coyote right behind our campsite. Reactions ranged from running off shrieking to nodding and saying, "cool" to me: I crouched over the carcass in my super-bloody shirt with my blood bandana tucked in as a napkin while N2 took a picture. He'll be sending it to me when we get back...That quesadilla was so wonderful! Felt like I was eating real food again. Climbing and rapelling were also enjoyable. My hands are grey from the rope.

Day 20. After a few hours of steep hiking, we've stopped for lunch. I am not very perky at the moment: while I was setting down my backpack my kneecap went out again. It popped back in on its own, but I could tell from the pain that this was the worst yet of the trip. It always happens when I'm putting my pack down. P2 says that if she catches me moving my pack on my own she'll beat me up. Fair enough; I have no desire to have my knee deteriorate into evac condition. But it still frustrates me, as I know I'm strong enough to handle my pack and I'm otherwise in great condition. I'll have some ineresting knuckle scars, however, and I stabbed myself on a joshua tree on the way up here. In other news, we are now on independence (read: the home stretch of AWE). After today it's just another day and a half of hiking.

Day 21. Ugh. Last night was one of the worst nights of my life. A too-tight knee wrap kept me awake and in pain well past midnight until I could remove it, and I couldn't get to sleep until almost three because it was freezing! I estimate I'm operating on three to four hours of sleep right now. We've hiked three and a half miles this morning, and there are sill several to go. The terrain should be easy, so we'll make good time. As predicted, the high/low pack contained chocolate. I ate mine this morning...Now I appear to be developing an ankle condition. Fortunately it isn't too serious, and N & K recommended just making sure my boot is tight. We've broken for lunch. Bored...Now it's evening and we are at our water refill area. We're about an hour behind schedule, and we still have two miles to hike before we reach camp. Tomorrow we have to hike eight miles to reach base camp by two-thirty. To think that AWE is almost over. I confess myself disappointed; I expected AWE to be deeply meaningful or impact my life somehow, since the seniors made it out to e that way, but all I'm taking away from this are a slightly improved physique, a dozen or two pages of journaling, and some new scars. E just suggested we skip dinner tonight to save time. I could go along with that. I just polished off my gorp and I still have food to spare.

Day 22. Independence is over. In another half hour we'll hike the last mile or so to base camp. During the morning we hiked through a narrow, smooth-walled canyon that just had to have been used in a movie at some point. At the end of this break I plan to get out my old, blood-spattered clothes with which to hike in. Here's a funny note: as we packed up this morning, for whatever reason I was thinking about how to meld Pokemon with the Mutants & Masterminds RPG system. I may have to get out my old Pokemon games when I get home. I stil remember huge amounts. It's actually a bit scary how much I remember from the old games (I stopped keeping up with Pokemon before the third generation was released).

...And that does it for my Death Valley journal. If you want to read the rest, search through my blog history. I'm too lazy to go hunting myself.

Keeps going...and going...

Solo, Day 3. WAFFLES. Right now I am terribly missing waffles. I don't even eat them that often and I miss them. Anyway, it's morning of Day 3. Some 48 hours since I last ate and I'm barely even hungry. I ought to give Survivor a shot if it's still around in five or six years. Cold. Actually, I currentlym iss all sorts of breakfast foods. Except cereal. Cereal has come in abundance over the last two weeks. I've also had oatmeal a couple of days and cream of wheat for the first time. It's pretty good once you add brown sugar. I wonder what I look like at this point. P2 said that I was getting a bit of a tan. That plus dirt plus facial hair will be interesting to see when I get back. Bit by bit the sun is creeping its way toward my position. Too slow! I need chapstick. That's better. Too cold. I'm getting back into my sleeping bag until the sun reaches me. Goodbye...Hello again. Tunes from a Maurice Sendak children's video have been playing through my head on and off for the last few days. They are highly annoying, and it must have been at least a decade since I last heard them. The human brain is a funny thing...The wind seems to be clearer today. If I recall correctly, we're supposed to arrive at base camp on Day 22. It's be Day 21 by my reckoning, as I don't count the all-day prep on March 10th, hence the label of Day 0. Today is Day 17, and I come off solo tomorrow morning, which will be Day 18. The rest of that day is rock climbing, so we have three days left of hiking. Our instructors will be staying out of the way for those days, letting us run everything. March 10th last year was the day I dislocated my knee. I'm just glad it didn't give an encore performance, as being shifted over to the High Sierras trip would tear my summer plans to pieces. It is still surprisingly cold, so I'm going to put my long underwear on now...Oh, why do I have to be fasting? I checked my mailbox just now and there was chocolate in it! One more thing to look forward to when I get off of solo...Clouds are back and the wind is picking up. The result? It is cold again. I haven't had anything to drink yet today. I shoud probably get on that...Two more things I miss: toffee and (why didn't I think of this before!?) mint. Licorice just came to mind as well. I really ought to be using this time to work on the poems I need for creative writing, but I don't feel particularly poetic at the moment. Snickerdoodles. I miss those too. Potato skins and that delicious potato cheese soup at Marie Callendar's. The potato dish I found at Trader Joe's a while ago. Apricot logs rolled in coconut. Taco Bell. Lean Pockets. Eggnog and skim milk. The dehydrated milk we have here might me skim; I can't tell. I miss the "dragon breath" sandwiches I made for myself fom time to time: the ones with pepperjack, pepperoni, garlic salt, wasabi mustard, and maybe some horseradish, all between two slices of extra sour rye. I miss french toast bread. Smoked salmon in a bagel with cream cheese and capers. I miss sushi and Chinese food. I miss the sandwiches from Subway and Quizno's. I miss that one sandwich (the Italian?) from Garlex. I even miss Togo's, and I haven't eaten there in ages. Oh, how could I forget? Greek cuisine! I miss gyros, spanakopita, and above all I miss stuffed grape leaves!...I see some weather activity on the other side of the valley. Whether it's rain or just low clouds I can't tell. I really hope it's not rain; the day is cold enough already! I miss sauerkraut and habanero cheese hot dogs. I miss California Pizza Kitchen. I miss Sweet Tomatoes and Fresh Choice, particularly their focaccia and herb biscuits, respectively. I promised myself at the beginning that I wouldn't torture myself by fantasizing about food. So much for that...Well, that's just peachy. What looks like rain on the horizon and the main rope keeping my tarp up snaps. I tied it back together, but it if breaks again I'll be out of luck, as the loose end is now used up, and that could lead to a very miserable night. At least my rain gear is--Guess what just happened. I'll give you a hint: Murphy's Law--on hand...By completely retying the ridgeline I managed to secure it again, but now my tarp is sagging almost beyond the point of useability. I am now bundled up in my rain clothing. Even if it doesn't rain I welcome the extra insulation...Things are looking up. No sign of rain and my tarp is holding together. Once again, I have been in my sleeping bag for some time to keep warm. We're into the afternoon, but it can't be very late as I see that my mailbox is still in its unchecked position. Still cold. Grr. Brownies and lemon squares. More foods that I miss. Maccaroons...Evening checkpoint has come and gone. N/K left me another rope. Yay. This one continues to hold, but it's nice to have a backup. I'm guessing that it's now around five in the afternoon. For the last, maybe a hour, bits and pieces of Aladdin have been playing through my head. I remember a surprising amount. This gets me to thinking when I get home my vegging may take the from of a Disney binge. I'll start with Aladdin, of course, and then go through The Lion King, Pocohontas (spelling?), and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in no particular order. Besides being a nostalgia trip, there can be something comforting in seeing old-fashioned cartoon animation. Not everything has to be done with computers. Also, now that I'm older I'll probably get more of the adult jokes they snuck in. The Groucho Marx reference sure went over my head the first few times I saw Aladdin. I'm still amazed K doesn't know the Marx Brothers...Just did fifty jumping jacks. Now I can't be accused of spending ALL of solo loafing around. The sun has sunk behind the mountains. It's still pretty light out, but solo is definitely nearing its end. Just the rest of this evening, sleep through the night, and then N gathers us up tomorrow morning. 72 hours without eating. Twice what I've gone before, and it wasn't hard at all. I'm still around the 60-hour mark right now, but I doubt I'll be getting up o fix any midnight snacks. Naturally, as soon as solo is over I will begin stuffing my face with the ration pack. First the block of cheese, hen the peanut butter and chocolate Cliff bar, then the chocolate my instructors left to drown out he peanut butter, then the orange, then the oatmeal-raisin bars, and I'll make the raisins my gorp for the rest of the trip. Ten and a half pages. Not too bad.