My son thinks I should reboot with the blog title, "The Crack of Dawn."
Definitely planning on a reboot, because Facebook just doesn't do what I need. Sometimes, I just need to ramble, and the layout of Facebook gives a good, long ramble a thick coating of TL:DR.
I'll be tucking away some posts here. Things that worked for a school blog are not going to work here. And by that, I mean confessional things that don't need sharing with the entire world. This page has only had 171 views as of today--I'm not burning down the internet with what I have, by any means.
It's about time I got back into navel-gazing, and perhaps a little show and tell. I don't know what I'll show or tell yet, but I imagine it will be the random neural firings I'm known for IRL.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Still playing
I've moved and I don't have internet at the house yet, but I'm still planning on hanging out here, still planning on being my usual sarcastic self.
Is anyone else going to play, too?
Is anyone else going to play, too?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
It's all you, baby
A student does indeed get what she puts into an education, but she often gets a great deal more.
Sometimes, she gets a language barrier she must overcome. She takes a math class taught by a graduate student from China, and she must work very hard to understand what is said. She may have to go so far as to learn Chinese as well as math. What a gift! She has had two educations for the price of one! Of course, she gets an A from this, because look at all she has put into that one class. (Naturally not at the expense of any others.)
Sometimes she gets the benefit of working as well as school. This keeps her and any household members fed, the lights on, and the internet connection intact. This was a gift from the state and the university system, who were both on the edge of bankruptcy and could not afford to give her grants or scholarships. A gift! Now she has work experience in the real world, and that sleep deficit is naturally temporary. It's not like she can make it up, and besides, there are never any repercussions to losing a little sleep to finish those papers or presentation. She can't get sick (there's no time!) or hurt herself on those three hours of sleep some nights.
Sometimes she gets shocking traumas, like when a family member injures himself and has to have major surgery. He can't work for six to eight months, so she gets the benefit of working to cover that deficit--more life experience--and also, for a time, caring for someone who has lost significant mobility and has extreme (broken bones!) pain. That's okay! She has been given the gift of a life experience she can write about! Woo hoo! Instant book.
Occasionally, she is given the gift of a professor who doesn't like women. The law is supposed to protect her, and for the most part, does. She gets a good grade, because no one can prove she didn't do the work, but she gets the subtle edge of discrimination, the professor's disgust, and the feeling that no matter what she does, it will never be as good as what her male classmates do. Another gift! This will toughen her up for the future, because when she gets out into the real world, she will already know that she will run up against white male privilege, that she will be treated like a toy or an inconvenience, and that there are places she will never be allowed to go. (Customs are always stronger than laws, you know.) Besides, if she's a really good girl and a really good student, she can win him over and make him like her.
And best of all, she can work her ass off, graduate with honors, and still be patted on the head and told that it's all her fault if she didn't wring the last drop of wonderfulness from her education. There's no reason to complain about anything--nobody has any effect on her education but her. There is no such thing as injustice or misfortune, and everyone in the world is just as wonderful and hardworking as she is. There is no corruption in the world or particularly in the perfect university system, and no one ever does anything to actively harm anyone else, ever.
Okay, I think my sarcasm is even offending me at this point.
What I'm trying to say here is that students are only part of the equation. The teachers are also a huge part, and so is the administration. It a system, and the system only works if all the pieces of the system work. The student has to do her part. The professor has to do his part. The administration has to do its part. The state and the federal government need to do theirs.
I find it frustrating as a student who has worked very hard and gotten very good grades and learned a lot from some excellent professors, to be patronized and patted on the head and told it is my problem if I didn't get the best education in the world. Actually, no. While my education may be a privilege and not a right, it IS my right to speak up when I see something that is wrong or something that is hindering my education or the education of my classmates. It's not just my right but my duty to speak up when I see injustice and discrimination.
At 42 years old, I've walked a very long road to the end of this degree. I've made mistakes and I've paid for them. I've made achievements, and to be honest, I've paid for those, too. As a woman, my road has been entirely different from a man's road, because there's this little problem of biology that I have to overcome: I brought another man into the world. And I am expected, as a woman, to be a mother first, and then a student. So I am judged for several things. Reproducing at all. Going to school when I should be raising my child. Raising a child when I should be going to school. Sleeping when I should be writing papers. Working when I should be raising a child and going to school. Living on the edge of poverty because I'm working as little as possible.
It is just amazing to me that someone can look me in the face after all that and say, "Well, it's your fault you didn't get the most of your education. You get what you put into it."
Whatever! I'll just write about it. Bestseller!
Sometimes, she gets a language barrier she must overcome. She takes a math class taught by a graduate student from China, and she must work very hard to understand what is said. She may have to go so far as to learn Chinese as well as math. What a gift! She has had two educations for the price of one! Of course, she gets an A from this, because look at all she has put into that one class. (Naturally not at the expense of any others.)
Sometimes she gets the benefit of working as well as school. This keeps her and any household members fed, the lights on, and the internet connection intact. This was a gift from the state and the university system, who were both on the edge of bankruptcy and could not afford to give her grants or scholarships. A gift! Now she has work experience in the real world, and that sleep deficit is naturally temporary. It's not like she can make it up, and besides, there are never any repercussions to losing a little sleep to finish those papers or presentation. She can't get sick (there's no time!) or hurt herself on those three hours of sleep some nights.
Sometimes she gets shocking traumas, like when a family member injures himself and has to have major surgery. He can't work for six to eight months, so she gets the benefit of working to cover that deficit--more life experience--and also, for a time, caring for someone who has lost significant mobility and has extreme (broken bones!) pain. That's okay! She has been given the gift of a life experience she can write about! Woo hoo! Instant book.
Occasionally, she is given the gift of a professor who doesn't like women. The law is supposed to protect her, and for the most part, does. She gets a good grade, because no one can prove she didn't do the work, but she gets the subtle edge of discrimination, the professor's disgust, and the feeling that no matter what she does, it will never be as good as what her male classmates do. Another gift! This will toughen her up for the future, because when she gets out into the real world, she will already know that she will run up against white male privilege, that she will be treated like a toy or an inconvenience, and that there are places she will never be allowed to go. (Customs are always stronger than laws, you know.) Besides, if she's a really good girl and a really good student, she can win him over and make him like her.
And best of all, she can work her ass off, graduate with honors, and still be patted on the head and told that it's all her fault if she didn't wring the last drop of wonderfulness from her education. There's no reason to complain about anything--nobody has any effect on her education but her. There is no such thing as injustice or misfortune, and everyone in the world is just as wonderful and hardworking as she is. There is no corruption in the world or particularly in the perfect university system, and no one ever does anything to actively harm anyone else, ever.
Okay, I think my sarcasm is even offending me at this point.
What I'm trying to say here is that students are only part of the equation. The teachers are also a huge part, and so is the administration. It a system, and the system only works if all the pieces of the system work. The student has to do her part. The professor has to do his part. The administration has to do its part. The state and the federal government need to do theirs.
I find it frustrating as a student who has worked very hard and gotten very good grades and learned a lot from some excellent professors, to be patronized and patted on the head and told it is my problem if I didn't get the best education in the world. Actually, no. While my education may be a privilege and not a right, it IS my right to speak up when I see something that is wrong or something that is hindering my education or the education of my classmates. It's not just my right but my duty to speak up when I see injustice and discrimination.
At 42 years old, I've walked a very long road to the end of this degree. I've made mistakes and I've paid for them. I've made achievements, and to be honest, I've paid for those, too. As a woman, my road has been entirely different from a man's road, because there's this little problem of biology that I have to overcome: I brought another man into the world. And I am expected, as a woman, to be a mother first, and then a student. So I am judged for several things. Reproducing at all. Going to school when I should be raising my child. Raising a child when I should be going to school. Sleeping when I should be writing papers. Working when I should be raising a child and going to school. Living on the edge of poverty because I'm working as little as possible.
It is just amazing to me that someone can look me in the face after all that and say, "Well, it's your fault you didn't get the most of your education. You get what you put into it."
Whatever! I'll just write about it. Bestseller!
Monday, May 31, 2010
Practice and Improvement
I've been thinking about drawing again.
I am not a good artist. My proportions are off, and my line drawings are too light. I don't have confidence in my abilities, so I tend to use too light a pencil, so that I can erase and redraw as often as possible. When I scan my work to show my artist friend J, a lot of what I have drawn is lost because the scanner can't pick up or misrepresents the faint lines.
Every time I think about drawing, though, I shy away from it, because I tend to have a static concept of my abilities. People in general have that idea about any artist, though, I think. We believe that everyone has a set amount of talent and that ability cannot be exceeded. If it is exceeded, we suspect it as forgery or some kind of cheating, particularly with today's tools.
My friend J ran into this problem a few years ago. When she was in college, some thirty years ago, she was an artist, but life and a Ph.D in history intervened, and she put her pencils down. In the late 90s, she picked them up again because she was inspired by different works to try again. She sent me copies of some of the first things she drew, some scenes and character studies from stories I had written, and they were fun, but they weren't at the level we consider art. Some of the proportions were strange, and there were some adaptations of other works of art, changed to represent my characters.
But she never stopped drawing, and she started working in various media, playing, working, getting into practice again. She then got inspired by the Hornblower series, by the character Bush in particular, and her work really took off. Not only were her proportions correct, but she captured levels of emotion in her drawings that just blew me away.
In the mid- to late 2000s, she started sharing some of her work on the internet beyond her friends, to people in the Hornblower fandom and others. She left academia and got work in design. Her drawings got even better, which didn't seem possible, and that's when the trouble started.
Some people began accusing her of simply Photoshopping photographs of the characters with graphic design tools used to approximate hand-drawn works. In fandom, we call this kind of controversy, in which both sides become hugely offended and battle lines are drawn, a kerfuffle. It was an ugly thing and my friend was greatly offended by it.
One of the complaints about her work was that it was too good to be real, as though she, as a member of fandom, was only allowed a certain level of ability and was not to exceed it. Many people in fandom have visited her while she was working on these projects, saw them in various stages of completion, and could vouch for their legitimate creation by hand. The sad thing is, those corroborrations were dismissed because those people were her friends, and it's the nature of the internet community to be both excessively skeptical and naive at the same time.
She did the work, no doubt, and knowing my friend's absolute standard of honesty, I know that it would be impossible for her to even consider faking something like this for approval.
That is not my point. My point is that somewhere in our brains, as humans, we do not allow people the ability to improve their abilities through practice. We think of talent as static, and whatever a person can do at one time is what they can do for all times. A person is not allowed to go from strange proportions to transcendent art. That is suspect.
What I realized this morning, though, as I was working on one of my portfolio pieces for class is that we hold this same standard to ourselves. Think about what Stephen King says in On Writing. A competent writer can become a good writer, but a bad writer cannot become competent, nor can a good writer become great. There is a disconnect here. You can have this much improvement, and no more. You will never really be any better than you are right now. You will not have epiphanies and breakthroughs and great art. Whatever you are at 20 is what you will be forever.
That, my friends, is bullshit. (Sorry, Steve! I call bullshit on you!)
How did my friend get from where she was to where she is? She never put down the pencils (or charcoals or pastels). Her lines improved, her shading improved, her eye improved. She worked and worked and worked, and now her art is amazing.
This can be done with writing as well, but how often do we really do it? My friend's art didn't improve because she kept drawing the same lines over and over. Every time she picked up that pencil and looked at her subject, she made a conscious effort to improve what she did. Yes, the physical skill of linedrawing improves with constant practice, but she was rarely satisfied with a piece.
Once I complained to her that I was having trouble finishing a story, and she said, "You know, I don't get you writers. Why do you have to finish it? I don't finish every piece I start. Sometimes a piece just has a purpose, and when that purpose is complete, you put it aside. Or if it's an experiment that failed, you throw it away. Why do you have to finish everything?"
Maybe she's right. Maybe some pieces are just a tuneup, a problem to be solved. Solve the problem, set it down and walk away. Write the piece and discard it. We don't have to finish everything. We don't have to finish everything. There's only one writer I can think of who's ever had almost everything published in his lifetime, and that's Robert A. Heinlein. And his estate is still trying to pimp that last piece out there, from what I remember. A great many great writers got very little published during their lives but had volumes of genius or near genius published after their deaths. Dickinson and Peirce, to name two.
(To be honest, I'd rather not emulate Heinlein. Thanks.)
In those tuneups, those pieces, those problems to be solved, are the key to development. They are the practice that leads to improvement. There's more to it than that, though. We have to also break through that barrier of ourselves that is comfortable with what we are, and we have to reach for higher than we think we can stretch. I believe that is what those great writers do. They are not the incomprehensible freaks that King tells us they are. They are people who all their lives refuse to be limited by their own minds. They constantly stretch higher than they can reach, and have been doing it since they were in diapers. Naturally they can reach far beyond us--they have been stretching their whole lives.
My friend picked up her pencils again in her late 30s, early 40s. She has grown immensely as an artist. It's not too late for me. I just have to do the work. I have to practice, solve the problems, tune it up....work.
Time to stretch!
I am not a good artist. My proportions are off, and my line drawings are too light. I don't have confidence in my abilities, so I tend to use too light a pencil, so that I can erase and redraw as often as possible. When I scan my work to show my artist friend J, a lot of what I have drawn is lost because the scanner can't pick up or misrepresents the faint lines.
Every time I think about drawing, though, I shy away from it, because I tend to have a static concept of my abilities. People in general have that idea about any artist, though, I think. We believe that everyone has a set amount of talent and that ability cannot be exceeded. If it is exceeded, we suspect it as forgery or some kind of cheating, particularly with today's tools.
My friend J ran into this problem a few years ago. When she was in college, some thirty years ago, she was an artist, but life and a Ph.D in history intervened, and she put her pencils down. In the late 90s, she picked them up again because she was inspired by different works to try again. She sent me copies of some of the first things she drew, some scenes and character studies from stories I had written, and they were fun, but they weren't at the level we consider art. Some of the proportions were strange, and there were some adaptations of other works of art, changed to represent my characters.
But she never stopped drawing, and she started working in various media, playing, working, getting into practice again. She then got inspired by the Hornblower series, by the character Bush in particular, and her work really took off. Not only were her proportions correct, but she captured levels of emotion in her drawings that just blew me away.
In the mid- to late 2000s, she started sharing some of her work on the internet beyond her friends, to people in the Hornblower fandom and others. She left academia and got work in design. Her drawings got even better, which didn't seem possible, and that's when the trouble started.
Some people began accusing her of simply Photoshopping photographs of the characters with graphic design tools used to approximate hand-drawn works. In fandom, we call this kind of controversy, in which both sides become hugely offended and battle lines are drawn, a kerfuffle. It was an ugly thing and my friend was greatly offended by it.
One of the complaints about her work was that it was too good to be real, as though she, as a member of fandom, was only allowed a certain level of ability and was not to exceed it. Many people in fandom have visited her while she was working on these projects, saw them in various stages of completion, and could vouch for their legitimate creation by hand. The sad thing is, those corroborrations were dismissed because those people were her friends, and it's the nature of the internet community to be both excessively skeptical and naive at the same time.
She did the work, no doubt, and knowing my friend's absolute standard of honesty, I know that it would be impossible for her to even consider faking something like this for approval.
That is not my point. My point is that somewhere in our brains, as humans, we do not allow people the ability to improve their abilities through practice. We think of talent as static, and whatever a person can do at one time is what they can do for all times. A person is not allowed to go from strange proportions to transcendent art. That is suspect.
What I realized this morning, though, as I was working on one of my portfolio pieces for class is that we hold this same standard to ourselves. Think about what Stephen King says in On Writing. A competent writer can become a good writer, but a bad writer cannot become competent, nor can a good writer become great. There is a disconnect here. You can have this much improvement, and no more. You will never really be any better than you are right now. You will not have epiphanies and breakthroughs and great art. Whatever you are at 20 is what you will be forever.
That, my friends, is bullshit. (Sorry, Steve! I call bullshit on you!)
How did my friend get from where she was to where she is? She never put down the pencils (or charcoals or pastels). Her lines improved, her shading improved, her eye improved. She worked and worked and worked, and now her art is amazing.
This can be done with writing as well, but how often do we really do it? My friend's art didn't improve because she kept drawing the same lines over and over. Every time she picked up that pencil and looked at her subject, she made a conscious effort to improve what she did. Yes, the physical skill of linedrawing improves with constant practice, but she was rarely satisfied with a piece.
Once I complained to her that I was having trouble finishing a story, and she said, "You know, I don't get you writers. Why do you have to finish it? I don't finish every piece I start. Sometimes a piece just has a purpose, and when that purpose is complete, you put it aside. Or if it's an experiment that failed, you throw it away. Why do you have to finish everything?"
Maybe she's right. Maybe some pieces are just a tuneup, a problem to be solved. Solve the problem, set it down and walk away. Write the piece and discard it. We don't have to finish everything. We don't have to finish everything. There's only one writer I can think of who's ever had almost everything published in his lifetime, and that's Robert A. Heinlein. And his estate is still trying to pimp that last piece out there, from what I remember. A great many great writers got very little published during their lives but had volumes of genius or near genius published after their deaths. Dickinson and Peirce, to name two.
(To be honest, I'd rather not emulate Heinlein. Thanks.)
In those tuneups, those pieces, those problems to be solved, are the key to development. They are the practice that leads to improvement. There's more to it than that, though. We have to also break through that barrier of ourselves that is comfortable with what we are, and we have to reach for higher than we think we can stretch. I believe that is what those great writers do. They are not the incomprehensible freaks that King tells us they are. They are people who all their lives refuse to be limited by their own minds. They constantly stretch higher than they can reach, and have been doing it since they were in diapers. Naturally they can reach far beyond us--they have been stretching their whole lives.
My friend picked up her pencils again in her late 30s, early 40s. She has grown immensely as an artist. It's not too late for me. I just have to do the work. I have to practice, solve the problems, tune it up....work.
Time to stretch!
Friday, May 28, 2010
I am bored, therefore I Sim
I play the Sims whenever I have time, which is not often these days. I had the original version all the way through "Makin' Magic," and I loved the Sims 2 when things moved into 3D and you could have generations that grew up and died off. Now I have the Sims 3 and I love it, with some reservations. It's a bit harder to kill off your Sims now, because they are so much more self-directed. (Plus, they gave them the intelligence and animation to get out of the pool by themselves, so you can't drown your Sims by just taking away the ladder!) You pretty much have to starve them by removing all refrigerators or walling them up in a room with no doors.
Still, this video--more reminiscient of the Sims 2--is hilarious for those of us who have played the game. Yes, the Sims can be just this stupid. It's lying to you--you have to watch it on YouTube. It won't let me embed it. Still, watch it. It's funny.
Another thing that makes me love the Sims 3 a bit less: it's not as easy or intuitive to share pictures and stories of your Sims as it was with Sims 2. There's more work involved. That's why I haven't done it. Otherwise, I'd be inflicting my families on all of you a lot more often.
Gods, I love this stupid game.
Still, this video--more reminiscient of the Sims 2--is hilarious for those of us who have played the game. Yes, the Sims can be just this stupid. It's lying to you--you have to watch it on YouTube. It won't let me embed it. Still, watch it. It's funny.
Another thing that makes me love the Sims 3 a bit less: it's not as easy or intuitive to share pictures and stories of your Sims as it was with Sims 2. There's more work involved. That's why I haven't done it. Otherwise, I'd be inflicting my families on all of you a lot more often.
Gods, I love this stupid game.
A small fandom break
I don't watch TV unless I'm with Jeff. That's it, really--he watches TV and I generally don't. I will, however, watch whole seasons of TV shows on DVD, because I like continuity and I hate commercials. So there are some TV shows that I've watched several seasons of and grown to love.
Tonight, I was cleaning one of the booths and I noticed the last guests had been watching Leverage, a show starring Timothy Hutton. I've been meaning to get to this one, because I've heard it's really good. One of the characters popped up on the screen in the intro. They called him the "Hitter." The show is about a guy (Hutton) who gets together a bunch of very talented criminals and has them help him take revenge on people who do bad things. The Hitter, as far as I can tell, is the muscle guy.
He looked really familiar to me. In fact, I kept thinking, oddly, "I know you. I know you and I love you. Who are you?" It was a really strange feeling. How do you know you love someone you don't recognize? And yet, I looked at that screen and that character and felt that upwelling, that confusing affection, and wondered if I was confusing this actor with another actor somehow. (I do that a lot. Remind me to tell you some of my strange confusions sometime.)
So familiar. So dear.
And then it hit me. I pushed back from the table I was cleaning, sat up straight and yelped, "LINDSAY! Omigod, LINDSAY!"
Lindsay, from Angel! I do love him. I do, very much. I wanted to reach into the screen and scoop him up and say, "Darling! Where have you been! I'm so happy for you, in such a good show! Oh, Lindsay!" And pet him and hug him, smooth his long, unkempt hair.
Christian Kane is his name. I just looked him up on IMdb. I'm just happy for him that he's found something good. He played such a fascinating character on Angel, with so many lovely facets.... Yes, he's one of my intellectual crushes, in a way.
This happens to me all the time. Some of my LiveJournal friends no doubt remember the last time, when Darla showed up on one of the Law and Order shows, I think, and then Dexter. (Julie Benz.)
I know I'm a bit strange. When I love people, even imaginary people on TV, I really love them. It makes me happy to see them again and working, doing well. Maybe it's the theatre background. I love actors that do good work, and I love wonderful characters and good writing. Christian Kane is a delight, and so is Julie Benz, and Seth Green....*happy sigh*
After a not so fun week, this was a delightful surprise.
Tonight, I was cleaning one of the booths and I noticed the last guests had been watching Leverage, a show starring Timothy Hutton. I've been meaning to get to this one, because I've heard it's really good. One of the characters popped up on the screen in the intro. They called him the "Hitter." The show is about a guy (Hutton) who gets together a bunch of very talented criminals and has them help him take revenge on people who do bad things. The Hitter, as far as I can tell, is the muscle guy.
He looked really familiar to me. In fact, I kept thinking, oddly, "I know you. I know you and I love you. Who are you?" It was a really strange feeling. How do you know you love someone you don't recognize? And yet, I looked at that screen and that character and felt that upwelling, that confusing affection, and wondered if I was confusing this actor with another actor somehow. (I do that a lot. Remind me to tell you some of my strange confusions sometime.)
So familiar. So dear.
And then it hit me. I pushed back from the table I was cleaning, sat up straight and yelped, "LINDSAY! Omigod, LINDSAY!"
Lindsay, from Angel! I do love him. I do, very much. I wanted to reach into the screen and scoop him up and say, "Darling! Where have you been! I'm so happy for you, in such a good show! Oh, Lindsay!" And pet him and hug him, smooth his long, unkempt hair.
Christian Kane is his name. I just looked him up on IMdb. I'm just happy for him that he's found something good. He played such a fascinating character on Angel, with so many lovely facets.... Yes, he's one of my intellectual crushes, in a way.
This happens to me all the time. Some of my LiveJournal friends no doubt remember the last time, when Darla showed up on one of the Law and Order shows, I think, and then Dexter. (Julie Benz.)
I know I'm a bit strange. When I love people, even imaginary people on TV, I really love them. It makes me happy to see them again and working, doing well. Maybe it's the theatre background. I love actors that do good work, and I love wonderful characters and good writing. Christian Kane is a delight, and so is Julie Benz, and Seth Green....*happy sigh*
After a not so fun week, this was a delightful surprise.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
End of Term Blues
I spent most of yesterday being sad.
I was worried that it was the depression coming back. Every so often, I get inexplicable bouts of crazy thinking, when I'm just unbearably unhappy and there's no reason for it. The tiniest setback in the day can send me into a death spiral where the most productive thing I can do for the day or even the week is sleep. Being conscious sends the spiral even deeper, and there are places I've been on those turns that I don't ever want to be again. When that happens, I sleep if I can, or write crazy poetry if I can't.
(When the hell did I become a poet? I've never been a poet. I don't understand this. I still don't think I'm a poet. I just write the stuff when I can't take any more of life and it's poetry or the unthinkable.)
But I don't think it's the depression because the death spiral involves self-destructive thinking. Not necessarily actual destruction, though anyone who has been truly depressed has probably had suicide ideation. Someday, let's talk honestly about suicide ideation, because a friend and I have some interesting thoughts on it, but today is not that day. Let's try a day when it isn't raining, I don't have a lot of deadlines looming and I don't feel inexplicably sad.
I think it's just the end of term blues. The end of my last quarter at Eastern is coming up fast. I'm out of money and I'm nearly at the end of my job. I have just a few big tasks left, and then I get to walk onto Woodward Field in a silly gown and pick up the frame for the diploma that should arrive before the beginning of fall quarter.
(Can I brag a second here? Summa cum f'n laude, baby. You know it.)
So I should be happy, right? I'm graduating with honors. I'm leaving the casino. I'm moving out of this apartment. I'm going to fall into Jeff's arms with abject relief, and I'm going to start my new life. I have three job prospects lined up, none of which is fantabulous, but money is money, you know. My new home will have an office set up for me so I can write. I'll be with my family and the man I love, and I'll get to go fishing and camping, and I heard a rumor there's going to be a barbecue in my honor.
I should be ecstatic, right?
What the hell is wrong with my brain? I am not happy. I am scared and sad. I've lost about thirteen pounds of worry weight, and I just don't want to do anything. I feel utterly paralyzed thinking about the papers I need to write, the presentation I need to complete, the portfolio I have to submit.
My entire life, I have had this battle. I was valedictorian in high school, honor society, drama, you name it. Big fish in a tiny pond.
I remember the first play I was cast in my freshman year. I was fourteen years old, and they cast me as the lead--the crazy old lady--in The Curious Savage. You would not have believed the backlash. I don't think there was a cast member in that show who wanted anything to do with me, and the director made it worse by making me an example. The other players kept blowing their lines, but I kept nailing mine. (I was a freshman. They told me to memorize my lines. I did. Silly me.) As the director went on and on about how I was just a lowly freshman, but someone who could manage to memorize the part, the other players killed me with their eyes. Laser beams and hot pokers could not have hurt as much.
Then the morning of dress rehearsal, I woke up and couldn't speak. My voice was gone. My throat was hot, red and prickly, and my vocal cords felt about the size of those styrofoam noodle things you can play with in your pool. I tried. Really. I wanted to speak. This was not me trying to get in good with my castmates by faking vulnerabiliIty. I could not speak. Period.
My director freaked out. The school was small enough that we did not assign understudies. I had to go on that stage and I had to squeak out my role. The show must go on.
Dress rehearsal was a disaster. I could see the director in the audience, clenching her fists and shaking her head. She wandered through the auditorium through the whole performance, listening here, listening there. I couldn't be heard past the second row. On the breaks, she would feed me hot tea, rub my shoulder and give me a one-armed hug. "Just get lots of rest," she said. "Get better."
Opening night, I got to the stage behind the curtain, and croaked out a greeting to the cast, who just shook their heads sadly at me. Some rolled their eyes and walked away. The director shrugged and said, "Do the best you can." They left me to it.
The lights came up. The show went on. I remember that part of what I was supposed to do was circle the stage, pacing very deliberately. I think for my first few lines, I croaked and I could see the audience straining toward me. Then I got the cue for my first big line. "What are you doing?"
"Wearing the carpet out evenly," I said, in a perfectly normal and projected voice. The audience burst out laughing. My castmate and I stared at each other for a second. The laughter gave us a second to recover. Then we gulped, started in and went back to the work of acting.
My voice was perfectly normal for the rest of the show. And every show after that.
Until the winter, when it happened again. This time, the director didn't freak out, but she told me to rest and relax, and when I started the show with a normal voice, she just grinned at me. It became a running joke: Dawn's dress rehearsal laryngitis again.
I was in eight plays, one for every semester of high school, and I lost and regained my voice for each play. It was like a ritual; I would develop laryngitis, step onto the stage opening night, and kill the audience dead. Every single time.
I didn't have a conscious awareness of stage fright, but my body manifested it nonetheless. I just had to force myself through it, and then I was fine.
I think the same thing is happening now, but my body or my stupid brain doesn't know how to try to derail this thing I'm on. This sadness, this possible depression, is my dress rehearsal laryngitis. I think that some part of me believes that I will give up and run away before the end. I've done it before. Oh, I've flamed out spectacularly in school before. I swear you could have watched me and heard the whistling sound of my meteor-like fall and the explosion when I hit the ground.
I just have to get to that big line. I have to get up on stage and speak my line. That's all I have to do, and I will be okay. Maybe not ecstatic--but I will be okay.
That's all.
I was worried that it was the depression coming back. Every so often, I get inexplicable bouts of crazy thinking, when I'm just unbearably unhappy and there's no reason for it. The tiniest setback in the day can send me into a death spiral where the most productive thing I can do for the day or even the week is sleep. Being conscious sends the spiral even deeper, and there are places I've been on those turns that I don't ever want to be again. When that happens, I sleep if I can, or write crazy poetry if I can't.
(When the hell did I become a poet? I've never been a poet. I don't understand this. I still don't think I'm a poet. I just write the stuff when I can't take any more of life and it's poetry or the unthinkable.)
But I don't think it's the depression because the death spiral involves self-destructive thinking. Not necessarily actual destruction, though anyone who has been truly depressed has probably had suicide ideation. Someday, let's talk honestly about suicide ideation, because a friend and I have some interesting thoughts on it, but today is not that day. Let's try a day when it isn't raining, I don't have a lot of deadlines looming and I don't feel inexplicably sad.
I think it's just the end of term blues. The end of my last quarter at Eastern is coming up fast. I'm out of money and I'm nearly at the end of my job. I have just a few big tasks left, and then I get to walk onto Woodward Field in a silly gown and pick up the frame for the diploma that should arrive before the beginning of fall quarter.
(Can I brag a second here? Summa cum f'n laude, baby. You know it.)
So I should be happy, right? I'm graduating with honors. I'm leaving the casino. I'm moving out of this apartment. I'm going to fall into Jeff's arms with abject relief, and I'm going to start my new life. I have three job prospects lined up, none of which is fantabulous, but money is money, you know. My new home will have an office set up for me so I can write. I'll be with my family and the man I love, and I'll get to go fishing and camping, and I heard a rumor there's going to be a barbecue in my honor.
I should be ecstatic, right?
What the hell is wrong with my brain? I am not happy. I am scared and sad. I've lost about thirteen pounds of worry weight, and I just don't want to do anything. I feel utterly paralyzed thinking about the papers I need to write, the presentation I need to complete, the portfolio I have to submit.
My entire life, I have had this battle. I was valedictorian in high school, honor society, drama, you name it. Big fish in a tiny pond.
I remember the first play I was cast in my freshman year. I was fourteen years old, and they cast me as the lead--the crazy old lady--in The Curious Savage. You would not have believed the backlash. I don't think there was a cast member in that show who wanted anything to do with me, and the director made it worse by making me an example. The other players kept blowing their lines, but I kept nailing mine. (I was a freshman. They told me to memorize my lines. I did. Silly me.) As the director went on and on about how I was just a lowly freshman, but someone who could manage to memorize the part, the other players killed me with their eyes. Laser beams and hot pokers could not have hurt as much.
Then the morning of dress rehearsal, I woke up and couldn't speak. My voice was gone. My throat was hot, red and prickly, and my vocal cords felt about the size of those styrofoam noodle things you can play with in your pool. I tried. Really. I wanted to speak. This was not me trying to get in good with my castmates by faking vulnerabiliIty. I could not speak. Period.
My director freaked out. The school was small enough that we did not assign understudies. I had to go on that stage and I had to squeak out my role. The show must go on.
Dress rehearsal was a disaster. I could see the director in the audience, clenching her fists and shaking her head. She wandered through the auditorium through the whole performance, listening here, listening there. I couldn't be heard past the second row. On the breaks, she would feed me hot tea, rub my shoulder and give me a one-armed hug. "Just get lots of rest," she said. "Get better."
Opening night, I got to the stage behind the curtain, and croaked out a greeting to the cast, who just shook their heads sadly at me. Some rolled their eyes and walked away. The director shrugged and said, "Do the best you can." They left me to it.
The lights came up. The show went on. I remember that part of what I was supposed to do was circle the stage, pacing very deliberately. I think for my first few lines, I croaked and I could see the audience straining toward me. Then I got the cue for my first big line. "What are you doing?"
"Wearing the carpet out evenly," I said, in a perfectly normal and projected voice. The audience burst out laughing. My castmate and I stared at each other for a second. The laughter gave us a second to recover. Then we gulped, started in and went back to the work of acting.
My voice was perfectly normal for the rest of the show. And every show after that.
Until the winter, when it happened again. This time, the director didn't freak out, but she told me to rest and relax, and when I started the show with a normal voice, she just grinned at me. It became a running joke: Dawn's dress rehearsal laryngitis again.
I was in eight plays, one for every semester of high school, and I lost and regained my voice for each play. It was like a ritual; I would develop laryngitis, step onto the stage opening night, and kill the audience dead. Every single time.
I didn't have a conscious awareness of stage fright, but my body manifested it nonetheless. I just had to force myself through it, and then I was fine.
I think the same thing is happening now, but my body or my stupid brain doesn't know how to try to derail this thing I'm on. This sadness, this possible depression, is my dress rehearsal laryngitis. I think that some part of me believes that I will give up and run away before the end. I've done it before. Oh, I've flamed out spectacularly in school before. I swear you could have watched me and heard the whistling sound of my meteor-like fall and the explosion when I hit the ground.
I just have to get to that big line. I have to get up on stage and speak my line. That's all I have to do, and I will be okay. Maybe not ecstatic--but I will be okay.
That's all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)