ctmzeus

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It is a remarkably clear night in Los Angeles. The moon and the constellations have incredible contrast with the darkness of the sky, which, combined with the faint cold in the air, leads me to believe that it actually is October, and that we have indeed managed not to completely destroy our connection with the universe. I stood there, smoking a stolen cigarette, breathing in death and breathing out pollution, slowly destroying the very clarity I was appreciating. The cigarette, like most of its kind, brought me very little pleasure; rarely do they generate a buzz, rarely do they improve my focus, rarely are they more than an incomprehensibly comforting ritual.

I have been aware of my unhappiness and my fading hopes over the last few days. I have tried to share my troubles with two of my dearest friends; nay, my family, my cuirass, if you will. But I have found those conversations unsatisfying - perhaps I was getting comfort when I needed understanding and vice versa, perhaps I was looking for answers when I really just needed to be coherently forming the thoughts at the core of my feelings. Perhaps fear really has no answers. I found myself again attacking others' faith; I still don't know fully why I do that. Partial answers abound: intellectual stimulation, jealousy, a desire to understand how people I understand so well can have such an important piece of themselves to which I can't relate at all. A desire to know that I am not alone in my confusion, even if I have to cause it in others so that they will suffer along with me.

I haven't posted in a while, which only serves to remind me how aware I am of the audience in this medium. One of my key readers, I imagine, no longer much cares; I am slowly losing respect or interest for the opinion of another; yet another has actually had enough of my ear to not need these glimpses of my life to be caught up. Tonight, oddly, I write for myself, inspired in part by C.S. Lewis' musings on grief, and also in part by having come up short in trying to talk to people.

I envy those with a firm connection to the meaning in their lives, since mine seems to be, at best, tenuous. The results of my audition this week neither surprised nor, really, disappointed - but I begin to smell the first whiffs of abject failure, the same almost-gratifying release, the same slump of the spine, that came with the abandonment of physics, the sabotage of soul-crushing jobs, the emotional tragedy that was the love of my life. But now I find myself with nothing to fall back on, or at least nothing of which I am aware. The grueling competition of the performance world, the ever-looming spectres of age, disease, depression... I feel that I have run out of second chances. When theater fails, as physics and programming both have, what then? When my latest cautious relationship fails to click, where do I turn, having either driven away or converted permanently into "friends" all the women in my life, and with an ever-increasing pile of reasons not to seek out new contact? When the diversions with which I fill my hours are revealed to be as empty as the ones I have already abandoned, where will I seek out happiness? How will any of it ever work right again?

These are not new questions, granted. I (and others) have struggled with them time and again. I don't know why this particular wave of doubt seems so much stronger than in the past, why the fears have so much more finality to them than ones with which I have grappled before, but they do. The piece of hope to which I cling is that I am approaching some kind of bottoming out, that I may be entering, finally, a new, hotter, crucible in which another facet of my core will reveal itself, as they occasionally have in the past. Or maybe this time the flames will consume me, and all that remains as testament to my existence will be ash. I suppose time will tell.

I yearn for things I have let go. I question decisions that I knew to be right when I made them. I hope that the people I meet are suffering in the same ways that I am, are afflicted with the same weaknesses of body and of mind, so that I can connect with them in all the ways I wish to without fear that I will damage them. I rejoice when relationships fail, when social circles and political entities and the structures that maintain my friends fail them as they have failed me. I don't know how to be happy and I don't know how to be alone, and I can avoid the latter if my friends can fail at the former along with me. There is a better way to live than this, and I don't see it. I have been peering into the mists looking for it, hoping that it would reveal itself, and am slowly settling into the realization that I have to start walking about looking for it, however aimlessly. This, I imagine, is where faith comes into play, which is why (among other reasons) I find myself awake during the hour of the wolf with a stack of philosophical reading material beside me on the couch.

Also, the Mets won. This seems at first blush like a humorous interjection, intended to half-invalidate the gravity of everything that precedes it, but it actually ties in rather well. I watched the game tonight and longed to be there, in New York, in Shea Stadium, with thousands of people, united by nothing but a desire for the home team to win. The shots of the crowd made me, in a small way, happy - every face had a story, every variety of colors on the Mets caps, the occasional Michigan or Texas hat in the sea of black and orange and blue, every borough obvious in the set of their shoulders and the shape of their face... it was, strangely, my community.

As is this, I suppose.

I think, or I feel, that somewhere in these musings a seed has been planted. Now if only it would rain...

By 10:30 this morning, I had:

Performed a scene from my show for a great class audience.
Earned a new high score on Ms. Pac-Man.
Procured a ticket to my friend's show.
Washed my car.
Given my email address to a really cute aspiring actress.
Consumed a smoothie and two hostess cupcakes.
Figured out my schedule for the next week.
Cleaned out the trash from my car.
Scheduled an audition for a paying caroling group.

Most days, I am not awake by 10:30. =) So far so good.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Eve 6

My world was just, very quietly, rocked.

I've been devouring a magnificent book all night, named "The Rule of Four", that I received unexpectedly in the mail from my mother yesterday. And I was stopped dead in my tracks mere moments ago by an amazing realization: this book is, somehow, disturbingly intertwined with my life. The volume of text that it's going to require to explain why the one sentence at hand is so eerie to me just reflects how intensely personal the series of coincidences are - any number of you dear readers will immediately grasp one or two of the references, but the rest will probably elude.

First, background: the acknowledgments at the back of the book, as my mother kindly pointed out via post-it and highlighter, contains the following text:

"At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Mary O'Brien and Bettie Stegall gave literature and creative writing a voice in the wilderness."

Profound coincidence #1: These authors went to TJ and had Ms. Stegall, who was probably my most influential non-physics teacher and also my Cross-Country coach.

Random coincidence #1: My recent focus on wildernesses, and being lost therein, what with "Lost in the Wilderness" being my audition song, from a show my mother and sister did together earlier this year, and which was playing in my car non-stop as my most recent work situation began its decline.

Then we traipse through a delightful book littered with references to a cappella, Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, in particular), "Arcadia" (source of my first audition monologue), and illicit steam tunneling (apparently as popular at Princeton as it is at Caltech) (R.C.'s #2-5), only to land on page 279, where our protagonist's friends drop this bomb:

"'We're going to the arch sing at Blair', Gil said, meaning the Friday a cappella concert held outdoors."

R.C. #6: The name of Blair Arch, which followers of my recent personal life will recognize with some amusement.

But then we flip back a page, notice that this is occuring in March, remember that these characters are seniors of the Class of '99, and realize that, give or take a week or so,

P.C. #2: The Blair Arch a cappella concert that our protagonist is about to forgo attending more than likely features Ecphonema.

Yes. My Caltech a cappella group is performing on spring break tour at Princeton (courtesy of Stephanie Davis, if I recall) for characters off in the wings of a book written by people who shared my Writing Seminar teacher at a high school in Virginia.

Just, wow.

Current Mood: enthralled

Today I:

- handled a substantial interpersonal disappointment with what I consider to be comparative grace.

- believed I had missed my extension deadline to file my taxes, but rather than resigning myself to self-punishment and despair, went ahead and finally filed them anyway, after which I realized that I had in fact squeaked by the deadline, which was tomorrow.

- went to a callback for a comedy, and actually did my own thing rather than trying to out-funny my fellow auditioners, for which efforts I was rewarded with sincere praise from one of my most respected colleagues.

- handled a complicated and high-stakes Warcraft loot situation (now don't laugh) with aplomb, passing a marvelous item that I deeply desired and to which I was technically entitled to a raid-mate for whom it would be a much more dramatic upgrade.

- spent comfortable time watching Comedy Central over wine with an until-recently-neglected friend.

- finished an insightful book on philosophy that I've been limping through since Christmas.

- capped it all off by patting myself on the back for it all in LJ. =)

Current Mood: proud
Current Music: "Angry", matchbox twenty

Just wow.

I just got home from my first read-through of my new play. This project is pretty crazy. There was a guy working on his Ph.D. thesis in Communications who ended up recording all his phone conversations as his family was going through his mom's battle with cancer. These recordings were transcribed using conversational analysis (stress marks, intonation symbols, etc.) into about 500 pages of real-life conversation, that has now been cut down into a play-like form. So we have these completely real conversations, right down to the nuances of pronounciation, about this incredibly powerful yet simple material - it's really neat.

Anyway.

The first read-through, where they tell you not to bother putting much emotion into it and we really just are supposed to be seeing the shape of it, was tonight. And towards the end of it a couple of us (myself naturally included) were choking back tears, with varying degrees of success. And there's a scene in the second half between me and the dad where we both got caught up in the desperate hilarity of the conversation and could barely talk past our laughter. It was amazingly organic, and incredibly powerful. Just about everyone in the cast had a personal connection with at least something in the material.

OK, I'm doing a crappy job explaining this. I'm not gonna say I've never cried at a first read-through before *cough*Crucible*cough*, but this was something different. There were a couple of scenes in particular with Kym that were just... devastating. I swear I've had those exact conversations, and the stuff with the dad is so exactly the emotional content of what happened whem my Aunt Judi died, it's just... Wow. This is going to be an amazing amazing experience, and I think all of our audiences will come away moved. As will I.

SDSU, first week in October. It's called "listen".

Current Mood: touched

Feels like I have something to say, but I don't know what it is. Lost a friend this weekend, one who probably should have been let go long before. Part of me keeps trying to feel guilty, but the saner parts recognize that it's for the proverbial best. Feel like a couple of other people are slipping away as well - some in more obvious ways than others, some hopefully just in my imagination. I'm in kind of a sadly serene place, like I've finally given up trying to control everything.

Most of my weekend kinda just got away from me - had a whole lot of lazy time. Although I did actually get out and get a little exercise, amazingly enough. And I landed a really interesting acting gig that I'll explain some other time when I can muster more enthusiasm. *weak grin* Mostly I'm just tired, more emotionally than physically but a little of both.

Take care of yourselves, dear readers.

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Hurt". Johnny Cash. Yeah man.

How to explain this.

I guess I feel silly, or embarrassed. There have just been a number of things recently that I've let myself get excited about, and none of them really seemed to pan out. And I don't want to become that person who's "over" optimism, but at the same time there's only so many ways to get jerked around before it gets tiring. Or of jerking myself around, perhaps. Between women and jobs and auditions and recording projects and music projects and meditation and SDSU and everything else, I'm starting to feel like the hero in the bait & switch story. I really wonder where to draw the line between having enough hope to keep looking for opportunities and having enough sense to keep myself from feeling so disappointed.

An incredibly perceptive friend of mine was surprised to hear the other day that I was probably as depressed as she'd ever seen me; she had actually just commented that I seemed as mellow and calm as she'd ever seen me. Ah, perspective. And I suppose I at least am that, mellow - give or take a couple of bad days, I do seem to be taking things (at least outwardly) in stride. I just wish I could stop striding for a little bit sometimes.

OK now this feels self-indulgent. It's been really interesting to me as I've been getting back into blogging to observe how different people use this tool. Some preach, some report, some bounce things into space, some expect chat-like responses... I've been accused of being cryptic in these writings, which I suppose is true, and I suppose is intentional. I mean, if my post were something like "GOD I'm so pissed off at fdmts that I want to punch him in the FACE for stealing my favorite drum riff and making millions off it", that seems a little P-A, and I imagine it making people uncomfortable unnecessarily. *shrug*

OK, time to trickle into bed. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Oh, and "Battlestar Galactica" is awesome, for the record.

Also for the record, I NAILED the piano part to "Christmas Lullaby" on a first take, which I don't think has happened before. Maybe once. Hooray progress.

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: "The World Was Dancing"

Your Inner Pop Princess Is Kelly Clarkson

"Grew up in a small town And when the rain would fall down I'd just stare out my window Dreaming of what could be" No doubt about it, you have star quality. Might just take a while to get there.

Your Love Song Is

Thankyou by Dido "And I want to thank you for giving me The best day of my life Oh, just to be with you is having The best day of my life." It's all good, as long as you're in love.

Current Music: "Thank You", apparently