9.6.02 – sunshine

the past two days have been the most heart-breakingly beautiful fall days i can recall. the Poe-esque weather from the in the last post blew away and left behind it long days of golden sunshine, blue skies, and drier air. we keep the windows open in our 4th floor rehearsal studio and a cool, smooth breeze comes in to ruffle papers and the hair at the back of my neck. i’m surprised at how clear the air is in boston; i guess offshore breezes take care of a lot of the pollution. the trees are still green, but here and there i see a bright orange leaf on the street, like a promise of the vivid colors to come. i’ve never seen a new england fall, and i’m looking forward to the tour in october, as we criss-cross back and forth across vermont, new hampshire, massachusetts and the like.

i have a new friend: sunshine, the fat orange cat who lives several houses down on the sleepy, tree-lined street where i’m currently living. coming home from work around twilight, i walk turn into Hastings street and he’s out on the sidewalk waiting to greet me (or anyone else who might happen by at that hour, i imagine). i crouch down to pet him, and he moves around me in clock-wise circles: rub head on my right knee, rub head on my backpack, rub head on my left knee, and plot down and scratch his back on the sideway while i tickle his stomach. nibble at my hand, purr, and repeat. tonight, after 10 or 15 loops i got up to walk him and sunshine followed, leaping beneath me so that he could butt his head against my shin, weaving underneath my tripping feet, and then repeating from the other side. in this ridiculous manner we continue up to my house where he leaves me for the evening. i’m working much harder to win the affections of brownie, the house cat, who, after a week has finally deigned to let me pet him on rare occasions, but still won’t cuddle up or purr.

today’s adventure: driving a huge 15-passenger van thru boston rush-hour traffic. it took a while to pull my big-city driving skills out of the dusty closet where i packed them when i left san francisco, and then i realized that those driving skills were honed for a comparatively-tiny Honda accord, not the maroon monster we’d just rented for the tour. other than being paranoid about getting pulled over for a traffic violation and having the cop notice that the van i was driving smelled strongly of pot (i swear, the guys at the rental place must’ve been smoking out in it moments before they handed it over to us), the journey was a success. luckily the munchie-mobile (as it has been so-termed by the cast) is going out with tour III (i’m on tour IV), so it won’t be my problem if the van gets sniffed out by a drug dog or something.

9.3.02 – the House of Usher

boston is mushy. my script and paperwork is soft and damp, bread doesn’t go stale but oreos go soft, my hair curls up in frizzy little ringlets and beverages sweat profusely. the building we’re rehearsing in (the seriously low rent district) is literally crumbling around us. chunks of plaster dissolve and fall off the walls at regular intervals. “did all this come off the wall today?” i asked, while sweeping up a pile of plaster dust. “didn’t you know?” said adam, “we’re rehearsing in the House of Usher.” “oh. that explains the prevading gloom out there.” it’s been so cloudy that it never really gets bright out during the day, and when it’s not actually raining, the sky continues to mist freely, so that everything glistens darkly and night seems to fall early in the afternoon.

9.1.02 – later

i spent today trying to make friends with boston. the results were on the whole pretty good: public transit didn’t let me down or strand me in any weird places, even when i got on the wrong bus, and the cat, brownie, let me scratch his chin for a while before he remembered that he’s still trying to be aloof to the interloper. the weather is cool and grey, which is well suited to my disposition – which isn’t to say that i’m miserable, i’m just in a slow, quiet sort of mood, such that i might find bright sunshine offensive. i spent part of the afternoon sitting on a bench beneath a huge willow tree in the public gardens, and i found the green gloom very charming – the perfect atmosphere if one were, say, reading Tolkien.

the house, a turn-of-the-century farm house on a quiet street lined with big, leafy trees, is full of eccentricities as one might expect from an older place: turning on the light switch in my room while connecting with a screw on the wall fixture will result in a mild shock; i wonder how many times i’ll have to zap myself before i remember this fact. steam from the shower excites the smoke detector; i learned this one the hard way this morning. this place is more crammed with stuff than any place i’ve ever been. it’s not dirty, it’s just full of clutter. being a packrat myself, i have no problem with clutter, it makes me feel comfortable and less fearful of making a mess myself, but this house has one of the most impressive collections of clutter that i’ve ever seen. the people i’m staying with are both incredibly nice, absent-minded professor types. when my brother was recommending them to me, he described them as “weird.” “scary-weird?” i asked. “no, more like smart-weird,” chris assured me, and his description was dead-on. having spent a fair amount of my time with scary-smart people in the past, i feel at home here amongst the piles of books and papers and academic paraphernalia. the selection of books on the shelf in my room include: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0, The Illiad, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Understanding Biology, A Brief History of Time, and Pride and Prejudice.

the neighborhood seriously lacks cheap take-out restaurants, however. my ideal neighborhood is one, like the lower haight in sf, or sunnyside in nyc, where i can eat my fill of japanese or indian take-out for under $10. i may have to venture further in the city for dinner more often, because i’m not terribly impressed with my own pasta-making skills. take-out is the perfect answer for the single – being alone in this city, i don’t really expect to spend much time eating by myself in restaurants, but there’s a lot to be said for eating chinese food out of a steaming cardboard box in front of a rerun of the simpsons.

9.1.02 – the first day of school

and so i’ve arrived on the east coast. i am renting a room in a neat turn-of-the-century farmhouse in west roxbury, a suburb south of boston. the people who live here, the parents-of-my-brother’s-former-fraternity-brother, are very sweet, and the house is comfortably cluttered, with creaky old staircases and slating hallways and a black(ish) cat, brownie, whom i am trying to win over with love and bits of food. outside my window there are great big leafy trees, creating the sense of cool, green calm in my bedroom – i have arrived just in time to enjoy the fall weather. today i will go out and explore the city, and tomorrow i go into rehearsal at the chamber repertory theatre. gulp. i feel like it’s the first day of school. i pack my peanut butter and jelly sandwich and wonder, what if the other kids don’t like me? what if i get beat up while waiting for the bus?

8.31.02 – i have always depended on the kindness of strangers

reader marymary writes in to note that i sound sad and harried the past few days, and to offer recommendations for sushi in boston. sad and harried is an accurate description of the past few weeks. now that i’ve landed in boston the harried part is over, but i am still a bit sad, and lonely for my other half, my soul mate, whom i last saw thru a blur of tears waving behind the security checkpoint at the boise airport. i will investigate the promise of good sushi, however, and so thank you in my best tennessee williams accent: “ah have always depended on the kindness of strangers…”

8.30.02 – now you see it, now you don’t

Twelfth Night closed last night. from my seat in the stage manager’s booth i can see over the set to the desert hills beyond the theatre. at dusk most nights i can see deer – sometimes a dozen or more, with half-grown fawns – frolic in the little dry glen behind the dressing rooms (in this picture, it’s just over the top of the blue backdrop).

while watching the final performance of any show, i always have a moment where i stop and catch my breath and wonder at the temporal existence of this art form. thinking, right now, at this moment, this work of art exists, but it has no physical body – it exists thru the bodies and voices and thoughts and emotions of actor and playwright and designer and director and audience member, and later tonight, it will no longer exist except as something that each of us experienced, took part in, created, were a part of for a couple of months, maybe only a couple of hours.

perhaps an obvious conclusion, but i always marvel at it just a bit. what was twelfth night is now bits of broken up blue plywood in sticking out of the dumpster, it’s lighting instruments neatly stacked and gels filed away in folders sorted by color, it’s satin doublets and feathery wedding dresses that, out of context, have no significance. it’s like a body when the life has gone out of it – it’s still made up of cells and blood and bone, but without life its an empty shell. twelfth night now exist only in my memory. but i experienced it. i was there. i was in that moment. and everyone of the thousands of people that saw or helped create this show, they carry that moment in them, too.

8.26.02 – these things happen to me

me: “i have to buy some bleach because i washed my red tank top with my whites and now everything’s pink.”

andy: “really? i thought that sort of thing only happened to people in sit-coms.”

me: “what, and you always sort your laundy by color?”

andy: “of course. you don’t?”

foiled by blockbuster again: we rented donnie darko last night, and when we got home discovered that the tape had been swapped with corky romano. we tried to watch tv, but i have the 3-channel-All-Star-Trek-All-The-Time tv package, so we were forced to watch corky romano. and it is an awful, awful movie. almost awful enough to be funny again, but not quite.

i move to boston in four days, so i’m a little frazzeled right now. posts will likely pick up with much greater regularity as soon as i isolate myself in a city where i have no friends. until then, it’s packing and bowling parties and sushi and theatre and getting my nose pierced with hannah. if i don’t chicken out.

8.21.02 – good day, sunshine

we rocked the crossword and the daily jumble over fried eggs and hashbrowns at our favorite table of our favorite diner, and it was an excellent start to the day.

andy says my new haircut is very “continental”, which i think he means as compliment, altho it’s hard to tell – after all, sexy skinny french women live on the continent, but then, so do great big german beer maids with hairy upper lips. i’m just pleased that i no longer have a mullet.

8.20.02

mari’s been here visiting, so i’ve been playing host and getting to show off my hometown. there was swimming in the shockingly brisk payette lake, having our hair cut at the foofy salon that insisted on putting lipstick on me before releasing me out the door, shopping for my bridesmaid dress,feasting on mexican food, drinking kalimotxos at the basque center, picnicking while watching Macbeth at ISF, and there was much reading-of-harry-potter-and-drinking-coffee for mari while i was in rehearsal for Charlie Brown.

i keep hearing my new roommate, kevin, tell his friends in new york how stunningly beautiful idaho is, which pleases me. some pics that mari and i took while in mccall:

8.12.02 – from bohemian artist to residence motel in just one day: a packrat’s guide to redecorating

i have a new roommate. it’s been nice, zeke getting his own bathroom and bedroom for the whole summer, but not totally unreasonable that the theatre would want to move another actor in here with me for the remaining few weeks that i’m here. i warned the company manager that i was going to take all the common area furniture and kitchen utensils with me, and she assured me that she’d contracted with a company to equip the apartment with furniture, etc, for the guy moving in (kevin).

furniture guys arrived at seven this morning with two sofas, end tables, dining room table and chairs, cooking tools, coffee maker, broom, vacuum, bed and dresser, shower curtain, you name it. 30 minutes and they were gone, leaving a fully furnished apartment behind them. i hauled most of my stuff out of the kitchen/living room last night, and this morning i got up, looked around, and my lovely bohemian pad had turned into a residence motel.

the chinese lantern looks awkward hanging directly over the table lamp, and the japanese wall hangings are out of place next to the bland-colored geometric-pattern sofa and love seat. i suddenly feel better about the chipped blue china dishes i got after my grandmother died, this mismatched towels, a bean bag chair from my college days hanging beneath a pink chinese lantern, an armchair that’s more holes than upholstery, filched from my parents’ garage. the toy collection (Nunzilla the wind-up nun who spits sparks, my freud doll, my power puff girl that says “i think they’re asking for a hiney-whoopin!”, the yoda doll that came to my S.A.T.s with me, my beanie babie chameleon…)

i guess i’m not ready for grown up furniture, even if it is nicer than my stuff. my furnishings have character. they have stories. the armchair (zeke’s favorite) was the first piece of furniture that my grandparents bought after they were married. the 13″ tv tucked into the fireplace i won in a bet with my younger brother. the toy collection that sat on the trunk-draped-with-tie-dye-tapestry-coffee-table look out of place on the new oak end table.

i wish i’d thought to take before and after photos.

it makes me realize that i’m more stuff-oriented than i try to be. not that i need expensive, or impressive stuff. but i cling to the stuff that is imbued with emotional content. i used to always flinch at how much stuff i had whenever i’d pack up and move – flinch because some part of me was saying “ha! see how materialistic you really are? you need all this STUFF!” but now i realize that it’s insecurity. it’s hard for me to carry everyone and everything i love inside my heart, without physical reminders of them. i like the idea of being totally free of these emotional bonds to physical items, but it seems like a less lofty goal to me now. this stuff represents the people i love, and since i can’t cram them all into my life at the same time, i cram their stuff into the same room.