Positive sound bites

Got the play scripts today. Good.

Got the final draft of Lucid back w/ grade. Excellent.

Got little homework tonight. Ten minutes of Spanish writing, one *cheesy* love poem, and find a screenplay that we might like ot film for Drama. I don't have to do that, but if I don't then we film T's screenplay.

Come out, come out, wherever you are! AHAHAHAHA!

More poetry writing today, specifically villanelles. I'll post mine when I get it back.

During play rehearsal today we worked on the "conspiracy" scene, which picked up a side track of thinking of scary things we could do with the scene, such as Charlie walking behind us in a "crucified" pose complete with arms supported by a bar, Vince's head spinning Exorcist-style (we're keeping that), drill noises, etcetera. It's interesting, trying to figure out what is scary without going for a plain adrenalin rush. I get the feeling that clocks could be quite scary if used properly.

Now it's time for bed.

pessimist's sonnet

We were working on sonnets during Creative Writing today, and I wrote this.

Idealistic youths with smiles bright
Believe the best of those who’ve fully grown
Until they age, mature, and see the light
And harden ’neath the gloom the past has sown.
A man dug up a diamond in the rough
And strode away with songs upon his breath
Until he slipped and lost it down a bluff
When, in despair, he chased it to his death.
The avatars of ignorance and bliss
Who never live a moment free of pain
Are well off from their lack of joy to miss
They know not what they have no chance to gain.
Consider this before your life you choose:
The more you have, the more you have to lose.

On a slightly less dreary note, today was scheduling for next year's classes. I moved sideways from Calculus to Statistics and dropped Spanish to free up my schedule for more seminars. If all goes my way, next year I shall be taking such wonderful classes as Humanitas (a high-demand class on what it means to be human; definitely at the top of my list), Shakespeare, The Divine Comedy, Classical Worlds (with an amazing teacher from my seventh-grade days), Poetry, Dramatic Writing, and History of Justice.

One other thing: apparently my PSAT scores made me a National Merit Scholarship canditate. Yippee!

Boo.

Yesterday was not a good day. I had braces put back on and I had to study for the two tests today. Said braces are making my cheeks ache like mad.

The Chinese History test was an in-class essay on China's likelihood of becoming the next economic superpower (very high). The calc test was just more prep for the AP exam.

We've spent the last two Drama periods reading a screenplay that T has written. It's somewhat interesting, but you really know that the writer is a drama teacher when one of the characters talks about "accepting and advancing."

Fortunately, I have very little homework this evening.

Things

Got a haircut today. It's a tad short, but not too bad.

We didn't get to repaint the floor today, but we did clean out the costume barn to the extent that it looks completely organized for the first time in my memory.

Animal balloons are way too hard to inflate! This could complicate the blocking, as we did not take potential need of a pump ino account.

Looking ahead

Tomorrow is all-day community service at school. My advisory group might be repainting the theater floor, and I hope this is the case: that floor REALLY needs repainting!

The official campaign to see one of my plays of choice implemented next fall has begun with my ordering of scripts for The Pillowman and Ten Little Indians. Even if the Drama Advisory Board throws out both, they'll still be nice to have around for reading.

Night owl

Last night I stayed up until midnight to see the faculty production of Bye Bye Birdie. It was hysterical, and I am now determined to see the teacher who played Albert cast as Leopold Bloom!

Tonight I stayed up until midnight to see Lilly in a production of King John. Eloquent, Squeak, Impulse, Presence, and Penguin also came, and afterwards we walked to Squeak's house for some more Venetian socialization.

Tomorrow night I have no theatrical plans.

*moan*

I was wrong about dreaming my alarm went off. That was the alarm on my Death Valley watch. So I sleep through it every single time when I'm WEARING IT on the trip, but when it's lying ten feet away on my desk at home it wakes me up in an instant? *growls*

Not fair

Around 3:45 last night I dreamed my alarm went off. That has got to be a new low for my subconscious.

Today's news

Two tests in consecutive periods. BLEAH. I think I did well on both (I would be shocked if I did porly on the Calc test), but even so.

More rehearsal of America Abridged. Starting yesterday, T owns our souls, and by souls I mean lunch periods, until the performance. Tough, but I'll deal.

I learned from K (the freshman I've talked about a couple of times) today that prom is two Saturdays from now. This confuses me, as I thought prom had come and gone already. Does each class get its own? Anyway, location in San Fransisco + $75 admission + another D&D meeting that day = me, as always, not going.

My dramatic arts class presents our Monty Python scenes at lunch on Thursday, booting out the AA rehearsal that was to take place at that time. T's schedule is a little overbooked. Certain scenes are becoming quite...interesting.

Lucid

I turned in the final draft of my short story today, so now I'll post it. Beware: It's eleven pages in in Word, so I can only imagine how long it'll be here.

*****
Keys clicked in the lock to the apartment and the door swung open. Stefan stepped inside and tossed his backpack on the floor. “Uh, what a day,” he groaned to nobody in particular. “Rainstorm, a quiz, and I swear my humanities teacher hates me.” He stumped wetly upstairs to his room, shucked his raincoat, and ferreted through the clutter for his journal.
“January fourteenth again. I fell asleep during history, so now I have an extra dream to record. It looks like the ninja dream series has ended. Too bad: it was just starting to get really interesting too. This afternoon I dreamt I went into the city and met a couple of people my age. They were nice enough, and the girl was hot. I wish I could meet girls like that in real life.”
That evening Stefan fixed himself a sandwich for dinner, finished his physics assignment, asked himself for the hundredth time why he had bothered to attend college in the first place, and checked his email just before falling asleep.

“Hey, Stefan.”
Stefan blinked. He was stretched across a beige couch in what could be a living room. Rubbing his head was a casually-dressed, red-haired girl. Behind her and to the left stood a lean boy in a Metallica shirt. If he had black hair and glasses he would have resembled Stefan. The college freshman shook his head and sat up. “Oh, you guys again? I saw you yesterday afternoon.”
The girl smiled. “We know. You spent, what, the whole history period chatting with us? You had a nice time, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess it was one of my more enjoyable dreams.” Stretching, Stefan rose from the couch.
The other boy extended a rough hand. “I don’t believe we ever got around to proper introductions. Name’s Eric.”
“Eric. Pleased to meet you.” Stefan took the hand. Eric had a strong, friendly handshake. “And you are…Allison, right?”
“You remember. That’s a good sign,” Allison smiled. “Come on. You’ll be waking up in a few hours. Let’s go have some fun.”
“Yeah, sure,” Stephan started toward the door. Then something struck him. “Wait. You—you know I’m dreaming?”
Eric laughed. “We may be your thoughts, but we can still think for ourselves.” Seeing Stefan’s expression, he laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s find something to do….”

BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!
Stefan was jolted awake. After several seconds of blind flailing he managed to find the off switch on his alarm. “Gah. What good are scientists when they can’t invent a less obnoxious alarm clock?” he moaned. After another minute of slowly waking up he rolled out of bed, threw on a shirt, and grabbed his journal from the floor.
“January fifteenth. Last night’s dream was kind of weird, but boy, did I have fun! Eric and Allison are really great people….” After a few minutes of writing, he recalled how the dream had ended. “Allison said to me, ‘See you soon.’ Am I going to dream about them again? Even if I am, how would she know?”
The next day in the cafeteria, Stefan sat down next to an acquaintance.
“Oh. Hey, Stefan.”
Stefan nodded back. “Hello, uh, what’s-your-face.”
“Dennis, you moron. I’ve been in your class all year.”
“Oh. Right.”
Dennis munched an apple. “What brings you over here? You usually find a deserted corner.”
“I don’t know. I just felt like having some company today.”
“That’s interesting. I can’t remember the last time you actually sought out classmates.”
“Well, any conversation I had would just devolve into an awkward silence. I’m not exactly Mister Charisma.” Stefan sniffed his sandwich and winced. “Bologna. Gross.”
Dennis nodded. “What did you expect? Bring your own lunch.” The two of them spent a few minutes eating in silence. “Listen, I should probably get going.” With that he ambled off.
Stefan sighed, “No difference there.”
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, unless you consider more rain and a C-minus on the quiz to be notable events. Stefan didn’t. No sooner did he get home from school did he jump into bed and don a set of sleepers. As hoped, his friends were waiting….

Allison chuckled. “The chemistry class actually melted the windows? That is impressive.”
Stefan easily replied, “Yeah, and the best part was that I made eighty dollars from it. Some other students and I had a pool on when that classroom would finally suffer some severe damage.”
Eric clapped Stefan on the back while Allison clutched her sides laughing. “Wonderful. Really wonderful.”
“Thanks. You two are great. You know, I’ve never been able to interact with real people as easily as I have with you.”
Eric said, “Come on, Stefan. Don’t make me remind you again: even though you dream us, we are real. You can walk with us, have fun with us, engage in intelligent conversation with us…we’re real.” He took a moment to stretch his arms. “But enough of this heavy philosophy. What else have you done today?”
“Let’s see…I had a calculus assignment due, and…D’oh! I forgot it entirely!” He thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “Well, it’s just one more error. No big deal. It’s not as though I have a set of straight A’s to maintain.” He paused again. “Hey, Allison. Last night you said, ‘See you soon.’ How did you know you would be coming back?”
“You need us,” Allison responded. “Your mind will keep dreaming us up because you need us. Don’t believe me?” She didn’t wait for a response. “The first time we appeared in your dreams, you had already invested so much into us that we gained self-awareness. Don’t worry, Stefan. We won’t be going away anytime soon.”

Stefan woke up still thinking about the promise, “We won’t be going away anytime soon.” Not even bothering to check his backpack for his books, Stefan left his apartment for classes. Two weeks and a failed test later, Eric and Allison were still keeping to their word.
“January twenty-ninth. I hardly know why I bother to keep this dream journal anymore. My serial dreams only persist for a week at most, but this has been going on for two weeks now, and I don’t hope for my mind to move on anytime soon. Allison and Eric are becoming better friends than I ever had in real life. As a matter of fact, the only real purpose of my being awake anymore is to eat.” He sneezed on a cloud of shavings as he emptied his pencil sharpener, and then he had an idea. “Maybe I can do something about that as well. There’s an upperclassman who deals various illegal substances….”
On his way to history the next week he was accosted by Dennis. “Hey, Stefan! I’ve got to talk to you about something!”
“Oh, hi, uh…” Stefan rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry; I’ve forgotten your name again.”
“Dennis! Do you really spend all your time in an isolation chamber?” Stefan reached for the classroom door handle, but Dennis held him back. “Listen. In all seriousness, you need to talk to someone. The professor asked me to be the person because I’m the only one here who even seems to know you anymore.”
“Wha?”
“You barely talk to anyone, you haven’t done anything about the last eight assignments we’ve received, and lately you smell like pot,” Dennis blinked. “Come to think of it, you never struck me as the kind of person who would smoke. Why did you take it up?”
“Because I can’t sleep all the time,” Stefan replied.
Dennis cocked his eyebrow. “You smoke marijuana because you can’t sleep all day? I’ve got to hear this.”
Stefan began to dig through his backpack. “It’s not the sleep per se, it’s what I dream. I dream about the same people every night, and I have a better life asleep than I ever did awake. Ah!” He reemerged holding his dream journal. “Find January fifteenth and start reading.” As Dennis looked over the entries, his brow furrowing, Stefan continued, “My body just won’t allow me to sleep all day, so I tried to bring Eric and Allison into my world instead of the other way around. I thought that I could do that by getting high.”
Dennis handed back the journal. “Stefan. This dream obsession…it doesn’t sound healthy. Have you considered talking to someone about this? I mean, more seriously?”
“More seriously? You mean—wait a minute! You think I need to see a shrink!?”
“Not necessarily…but now that you mention it, yes. I think that could help you.”
Stefan snorted. “I’m all right, Dennis. I don’t think I need any sort of help.”
“I’ve talked to several people who have seen you. They say otherwise. You keep going like this and you’ll destroy yourself. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m not joking! I’ll even pay for your first shrink session. How about that?”
Stefan narrowed his eyes. “This is my problem, if it even is a problem, and you haven’t convinced me of that. It’s not even any of your business. Why do you care?”
Dennis shook his head. “You’re right, Stefan. I only came to talk to you because I was asked. It’s not my business. At least it wasn’t before you explained to me exactly what’s going on. Now…it’s like you came up to me and told me you were planning to slit your wrists. I can’t not do anything about it! If I just stood aside and let you do this I would never be able to forgive myself.”
Stefan sighed. “All right. If it’s that important to you, I’ll go. Just leave me alone from now on, all right?”
Two days later, Stefan was lying down on the sofa in the psychiatrist’s office. “Well, the reason I’m here is that people say that I’m dream-obsessed and that it’s hurting me. Sure, my life is falling apart on some level, but I say that it’s worth it to see my friends.”
The psychiatrist frowned. “I see. I believe you mentioned something about self-awareness earlier?”
“Oh, yeah. That. Eric and Allison seem to know that they’re my dreams. They don’t care; they just remind me from time to time that they’re still real even though they’re not real…Wait, that doesn’t make any sense. I dream about them every night, and it gets to the point that I’m no longer waking up; I’m going back to sleep in an alternate life.”
The psychiatrist inquired, “What was your life like before these dreams began?”
“Kinda lousy. I was averaging a C-plus in my classes. I didn’t talk much. I guess you could say I only had a couple of friends. Not to mention I hate my room—cramped, smelly, you get the idea—and job. I needed some money, so I became a school janitor. I don’t know what the minimum wage is, but it feels like they don’t even know there is one.”
The psychiatrist raised an eyebrow. “Stefan, it sounds as though you have not been putting much effort into your life. If that is the case, then it is understandable that your subconscious would attempt to project an alternate life for you to live. That would explain your tendency to have serial dreams. Now that you have fallen into one of these mental traps, you are destroying your real life. I suggest you attempt to clean up your act. If you do that, your dreams should return to normal.”
“Thanks.” Stefan grabbed his coat from the chair and left.
That night, Stefan found himself being shaken awake.

“Hey! Wake up!”
He opened his eyes to find a read-haired head inches away from his nose. “Whoa! Give me a little personal space, huh?!” Stefan blinked a few times, rubbing his eyes to clear out any accumulated sleeping-grime. “Oh. Hi, Allison. Eric.”
Eric’s mouth was a hard line. “We heard you had a chat with a shrink today.”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
Briefly cracking a smile, Eric lightly smacked Stefan across the head. “We’re your dreams. If you know, we know. Remember?” Eric paused and looked Stefan in the eye. “I trust you didn’t listen to that ‘advice.’”
Stefan rubbed his head. “The psychiatrist did have a point. I really ought to clean my life up, and these dreams don’t seem to be helping. No offense.”
Allison said, “Think! Do you really want to kill us? Just like that?”
“Kill you?”
“We may be dreams, but we are still real! When you go to sleep, we are alive! We can think for ourselves! This shrink wants you to kill us, to exchange a bad life and a good life for a decent life and no life. You can’t do this to us!”
Stefan found himself at a loss for words. “But…you…you’re just my dreams. Don’t I kill you every time I wake up?” Stefan pondered this for a moment, and then blanched. “Oh, god. How many people have I killed?”
“Don’t think about that,” Allison said. “You can’t do anything about waking up, but you don’t have to erase us. Our lives are important, too!”
“Yeah,” Eric added. “You have to think about the good of many over the good of one, and you can still come here when you sleep.”
Stefan shook his head. “No, the more I think about it, the more I realize I’ve been wrong this whole time. When I’m here…I’m only fooling myself.”
“You can’t do this to us!” Allison repeated. “You’ve built a world in your mind over the last few weeks, and you can’t destroy it just like that!”
“I know what this will mean, but I’m still more real than you are. I have to do this, and you can’t guilt me out of it. I’m so sorry.”
Allison slumped down onto the bed, her head in her hands. “This world is going to disappear…I can’t believe it. Our world is going to disappear.”
Suddenly, Eric stood up. “No, it’s not.” He swung a fist at Stefan’s head. Caught off guard, Stefan had no time to dodge. The blow caught him squarely on the temple and he toppled over, lying motionless on the floor.

Allison looked up. “What did you do to him?”
“I saved us,” Eric replied. “As long as we keep him unconscious he can’t possibly wake up. I did not enjoy knocking him out; he’s a nice guy. But I was desperate. I don’t want to die.”
The next day, Stefan did not appear in class in the waking world. So far had he withdrawn from the world that only Dennis noticed, but he thought that Stefan had merely taken some time off to set things in order. When Stefan was absent the next day as well, Dennis started to worry. The professor noticed as well. “Dennis, do you why Stefan is not here?” he asked.
“No. I would check up on him, but he never told me his address.”
Back in the dream world, Eric and Allison had taken it in turns keeping watch over Stefan, applying a light chokehold whenever he started to stir.
“Is it just me, or does Stefan look different today?” Allison asked after one shift. “He seems paler and thinner.”
Eric looked over him. “You’re right. Why would that be?” he wondered.
Unfortunately for all concerned, as beings of dreams, Eric and Allison had forgotten about the needs of the body. Trapped in his coma with nobody to come looking for him, Stefan was starving.
On the last day, as Allison walked away after delivering a particularly forceful knockout, she abruptly stumbled. “That’s odd. Just now I felt disoriented, as if my foot had slipped through the floor.” Looking down at herself, she gasped, “What’s happening? I’m blurred!”
“Me too,” mumbled Eric. He had lain down on the floor. “I’m…for lack of a better phrase, I’m breaking up.” He lifted his head. “So is the room…Something bad is happening.”
Allison cast a bleary-eyed look at Stefan, who was now flickering erratically. “Eric, Stefan is…oh, no.” She and Eric looked at each other. “He’s dying! We have to wake him up!”
Eric slurred, “We can’t wake him up. We can only hope he recovers on his own before he’s gone.”
At that moment, Stefan lifted his head. “What…what’s happening? I feel weak.”
Allison shouted, “Stefan! You have to wake up! If you don’t wake up soon you’ll die, and we’ll die with you!”
“Trying…can’t. I don’t have the energy.” He could barely manage to turn his head to look at Eric. “Did you…break something when you knocked me out?”
“No.” Eric was panicking. “No! I couldn’t have! If you’ve woken up in here, there must be a problem with your body that’s keeping you in a coma! What is it!?”
“…Drugs.”
Eric gabbled, “But marijuana doesn’t do that to you!”
Stefan coughed nervously. “Well…I did begin…experimenting with other…psychedelics just before I went to the shrink’s.”
Overcome with shock and despair, the two dream people couldn’t look at him.

Within half an hour, Stefan’s body had died in its sleep, and with the body went the mind. In their attempt to save their own lives, Eric and Allison had ultimately destroyed themselves.

*munch*

For whatever reason I dreamed I was eating my Death Valley hiking boots last night. (No, I am not from Peru, I did not wake up in a terrible fright, and it was most certainly false). I just stuffed them with cheese and thinly sliced salami and started eating my boots from the toe and working in. Unfortunately, I got halfway before someone reminded me that I was still on Death Valley. The boots were also surprisingly easy to bite into.

Minor injury central

Got back from rehearsal. One of our cast members is dealing with a bruised arm (stabbed with a cane) and a recently-popped shoulder from other rehearsals, and today she got her ankle sliced by a staple, a splinter in her hand, she hit her teeth on my knuckle (not the other way round) and I accidentally smashed my nose into her temple. What's next? Missing a finger?

We've been watching some films about Tank Man in Modern Chinese History and Stranger than Fiction in Creative Writing. We're covering marine biomes in Bio and rehearsing Monty Python in drama. I have five days to find a short story collection (not hard, given the home library), read it (again, not hard), and write four and a half pages' journal reponse to it (goodbye what's left of my weekend).I've also got a D&D meeting on Saturday. First one in about seven months, so it's about bloody time. Now I just need to find an M&M group.

Quick thing

I've noticed that, sometimes, when I come across a tough problem of some kind that I can't solve like that *snaps fingers* it suddenly becomes REALLY tough because my brain, instead of devoting itself to solving the problem, becomes stuck on, "this is so hard I can't do this I have no idea how to do this AUGH I'M STUCK!" Very frustrating when it happens. Does this happen to you?

Self-esteem? What self-esteem?

I got my Despair merchanise today. Ex-cellent.

On another note, the play is really giving the "accents" part of my brain a workover. In total I need a rapper voice, a sexy woman voice, a munchkin voice, a Hitler voice, a Bush Sr voice, a sergeant voice, and a Agent Smith voice. Currently the biggest challenge is Bush.

Info barrage

I got my short story second draft back. Made a couple of changes for plausibility's sake, but I'll probably tweak it even more before I turn in the final on Monday.

Play rehearsal is proving to be quite interesting. In the space of a few minutes I progress from gangsta* to munchkin** to sexy-voice woman.*

*Jen will be giving me lessons on these tomorrow. I find it slightly amusing that I am receiving lessons on both of these from the same person.

**Complete with super high-pitched voice. This is tough. When I send my voice up to the required pitch it usually becomes garbled. Think Smeagol on helium.

Lines for the first act are due tomorrow. No worris, especially now that the Lewis & Clark intro monologue has received the axe.

I had a blood test today on account of my toe, whose affliction has held out beyond the podiatrist's expectations. A bit surprising that the needle only hurts at the moment it breaks the skin. I have no idea when I'll get the rsults, but it shouldn't take long. The podiatrist said that he needs to check for possible bone infection. He doesn't think I have any; it's just the procedure. First step was X-rays, although apparently those only show anything if 30-50% of the bone is gone already. Huh. You would think that missing 30-50% of a bone you walk on would be self-evident, but what do I know?

A lesson to you all out there: Do NOT buy a computer hooked up to the school network. This one has given me nothing but greif as a result for the last year and a half, ranging from the trivial (can't change my home page, can't set screensavers) to the troublesome (Search is disabled, can't install certain programs) to the inexcusable (My Documents is kaput, if I bring my laptop to school files get erased). Finally it's just become too much and I am (read: my dad is doing me a favor by) gutting the computer of school software. Bon voyage! Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Problems

Things are getting awkward at school. Today the freshman girl I talked about two months ago asked me if I wanted to get some ice cream with her during long lunch. I declined, as I had work to do regarding the play and my schedule (which has resulted in my taking up an independent PE for the next few weeks), but apparently news gets around, as various people seemed to have the impression that she and I were going "on a date" today. This worries me. I have no problem with hanging out with her on a friendly level, but what I've heard/gathered indicates, well...today Vince commented, "...a shrine erected to you in her room. I'm not saying she does, but it's on that level." What!? Before Feb 9th we hardly knew each other, and most of our interaction still occurs in passing! And yet I can't help but feel that I have dug myself into a hole by not saying anything to clear up possible misconceptions. I need to be nice, but I also need to be honest. Oh, and she hasn't said much to me directly, so it would be quite easy for me to sound presumptuous. Timing, exact word choice...gah! Life was so much easier as a sophomore, back in my nice, comfortable isolation chamber!

Here is an unrelated thought to close tonight's blog: "Better an enemy you can count on than an ally you can't."

Appearance

This past Friday my Death Valley group gave me a makeover. Imagine me wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and with gelled, slightly spiked hair. It got positive reactions all around, even from my parents. In fact, my mom begged me to put the look back on for a party last night. I agreed to the makeover, but it's not me! I don't do things to my hair (tying it back at its longest doesn't count). I don't wear collared shirts except on formal occasions. I dress for comfort, not looks, which is why I have a few hundred pairs of sweatpants. I don't care about fashion! At the post-Death Valley banquet at school, each of us delivered the Fancy Certificate of Completion [Fanfare] to another member of our group, accompanied by a speech highlighting that person's positive qualities displayed on the trip. The person who presented my certificate particularly noted that I'm "never phony to [my]self and always real to others." I certainly think--I hope--that I'm real, and when I dressed like that I didn't feel like myself. I just felt like an Anyteen.But here's the rub: after seeing the results, I have to agree that it looks better than my normal get-up.

Speaking of looks, Vince continues to maintain that I look like Neil Patrick Harris. I finally remembered to run an Image Google this afternoon, and I don't know what he is thinking.

Poems and more

T split up the roles in America Abridged, so I am one of the three "narrators" plus Minute Man #2, Sergeant, Hitler, and Bush Sr. I think my accents are serviceable. May need to work on Bush a bit more. Memo deadlines are tight (Act 1 is due on Wednesday), but I can handle it.

For Creative Writing I needed to write some poems about defeat/failure/losing. Here they are.

You step onto the stage to deliver
Those famous words, “to be or not to be.”
You know you are ready for this.
You have rehearsed for months on end,
Giving your life to the play
Until you have nothing left.
But now as you open your mouth
Maybe an audience member makes a face,
Or something gets in your eye,
Or one of a million songs revives
And sticks in your brain like a tick.
You lose the words;
The words you knew better than yourself.
Silence stretches for sixty minutes a second.
The audience is waiting;
Any second they will realize what has happened.
Furiously you scramble through your memories
To no avail,
And then you hear the laughter.
First a titter here or there
And then the damning wave of derisive guffaws.
Backstage, Claudius hisses the line furiously,
But it’s too late.
You have ruined the show.
You have ruined yourself.
And you have nothing left.

I stare down the barrel, wondering why this had happened.
What have I done to deserve this? Nothing!
I lived a good life; I made no mistakes.
And now it’s all going to end by the hand of a mugger?
My parents were right when they said, “Life is not fair.”
Did nothing I do matter?
If not, then why him and not myself?
I could have lived as I pleased and ended up the same.
But even as I think these thoughts I realize my failure.
Had I been perfect I would not die like this.
Nobody is perfect, and my imperfection is in the mind
The time has come to pay for my imperfections.

You were always Good, but never The Best.
In such a large world, Good was never enough.
You have practiced this monologue for a week.
You will land the role.
Everyone who has seen it lauds it with cries of,
“Good!” “Nice job!” “Impressive!” “I like it!”
You stride into the theater, a confident grin on your face.
You give your name and the monologue’s title.
You recite, and your practice pays off.
You make no mistakes.
The director can find no fault.
He calls your audition Very Good.
In walks another would-be with the same piece,
And he has practiced for two weeks.
You are Very Good, but he is The Best.
There will always be someone better.

Space out for a measly minute in school
The teacher will see, and you’ll look like a fool
Attend each rehearsal before your debut
But you can be sure that you’ll miss your first cue
Study all night for the big science test
And whatever you read, it covers the rest
The day you forget to look down the road
A car will serve up some roadkill a la mode.
Miss a day of work from your nasty cough
And the boss needs to find a sap to lay off
Struck down by bad fortune sent by the gods
Poor fool, who said you could beat the odds?

When I have the opportunity I will blog the contents of my Death Valley journal. Be ready for a L-O-N-G read when I get it posted.

WOOO HOO HOO!

I'm back! And I got cast in the play!

More info to come later; we're about to head out to dinner.