Outdoors

I just returned home from an excursion to Menemsha. I took my book (Charlie Chaplin's autobiography... he's 8 and still poor right now) and my camera to the beach. I took some beautiful photos of the sunset, which I will post up on this blurb later. And when I was waiting for the sunset to increase in color, I read my book. I believe I looked very picturesque, a girl in a black and green skirt, sitting with legs folded to the side and a book balanced on my thigh, with a camera standing poised to photograph a miracle. Baby miracles came and went, but the big top show comes tomorrow. So I went and bought a Twist, vanilla and chocolate swirl ice cream, in a line with unnumbered small children, and came home.

I showered outside, with only one fence as a barrier to the outside world. I felt exposed and exhilarated. It seemed so exotic and oriental to me. The yellow light from my bedroom flittered from a paper lantern onto the slim, sparse tree just next to me on the other side of the fence. The glinting tree was my foreign bonsai shrubbery. And I felt like a beautiful geisha, washing my hair with expensive oils in a bamboo waterfall.

Oak Bluffs Observations

A black man crossing the street looked directly at me, held his arm out in front of him and waved his fingers at me, with a huge grin on his face. I don't know if he knew me, or just felt like saying hello, or mistook me for someone else, but he reached out and said hello to me. Twice in three days, complete strangers smiled hello at me, and twice I've been completely elated by the small act. I'm going to initiate smiling in people now, by smiling.

What The Yard looks like

Liz

Liz is the Future, calling to me, and telling me to change. She's 60 years old, and in so many ways like me. She mumbles in rants, expecting people to hear her. She has an odd sense of humor because she always sounds serious, so you have to be tuned in to tell whether she's joking or not. And she often sounds like she's angry when she really isn't, she just says things sternly. She proclaims the horrors of things that mean a lot to her, even though it isn't a crisis to anyone else. And she mentions things that are of no interest to anyone, she just points them out. She's a tekkie, like me, and a brilliant light designer. But the thing that she has mastered that I haven't yet is temper. Whenever I begin to get frustrated or angry, she just says that a temper won't solve anything.

I don't want to end up 60, heavy, alone with my dog, stern and mumbling, sometimes interesting but oftentimes not. I don't want to sound angry half of the time, and I don't want to lose my sense of humor. I love Liz, but she is a sign, "Look Out"

Hutker presentation

At the party last night, I witnessed this Oh so cute display of adorableness.
And I also realized how Extremely cool these dancers are, and so creative.
And when I saw this, all I could think was, "She's Brave."
Here's the view from the Booth.

And here's a glimpse of what the performance pieces looked like:

Warrior 2 pose (in Yoga)
Balance is key
SHE CAN FLY!!!
Stretch
Teamwork

Miracles do happen

I pulled off a minor miracle tonight. The run-through was at 5:30, and the performance was at 7. Everything that could go wrong with sound, went wrong. And while we were dealing with sound, I missed the light cues. God was sticking his damn big thumb in the light socket or something just to get a giggle. But thankfully at showtime, everything went perfectly.

The sound cues were perfect, the lighting was perfect, the actors were flawless, everyone was thrilled and surprised by the quality... Perfect. And then at the party afterwards, Wendy sang my praises to all the important people, and Linda introduced me as the "All-Purpose Intern." I felt celebrated, and rightly so. I'm mostly proud of myself because I didn't cry, even under all of the stress and the pressure from all the actors and especially Wendy. I didn't cry. So at the party I drank champagne, ate lamb chops and biscuit/steak/horseradish things that were delicious, and got Chilmark Chocolates in the Hutker Architecture Associates (the people we were doing this for/with) Goody Bags. :D All around, a remarkable evening.

It is incredibly prophetic, that old saying - and I never believed it was true until tonight - "Bad dress, Good run."

Garbage

Stink. Old cardboard. Rotted food and paper. Feces. Squishy muck. Things animals don't eat. Things animals won't touch anymore. Piles of it. Sat out for two years. 2 YEARS! Chucked outside to decay in Time's crushing, dissolving grip.

Sand

The other day, I was thrilled to build a sand castle. I dumped and thumped that sand into Castle Macbeth. There stood the wood of the walls. The fat rock mocked the pitiful size and disfigured shape of the turrets. Two crab legs beg to be flags. The battlements had vents where sand had fallen out.

I haven't built a sand castle in years. A beautiful, very photographic, metal pail with rocketships on it was being sloshed around on the rocks. So I rescued it and put it to use, creating something imaginative. And then, just as I'd finished putting water and seaweed (moat monsters) in the deep little moat around the castle, a small blonde haired/blue eyed child came up and blurted, "Is that yours?" To which I replied, "No, I found it. Did you lose one just like it?" "Yeah." "Here you go." "Thanks." So all is now right in the world.

Eva

I sit with a sore head, looking numbingly out of the window at the lovely passing clouds, that just don't seem that lovely with a headache. Similarly, the light bouncing off of the leaves outside would appear magical at any other time. But my temples at the moment feel dull. I look to my right, and through the mesh window screen I notice the faded yellow and gray shingles in rows, along the wall of the theatre. Very New England, thank you very much. And through the window next to it, one can observe the beauty of the studio. The dancers are there.

Long, thin and beautiful. They are completely engaged in every part of themselves. They are aware of every bit of them. They move like fluid animals; with passion, but with more beauty and elegance. They are balanced and poised, but in no way like aristocratic statues. They flow; carry rhythm; prance; fly; hypnotize. They dance.

We carry a rigidness in our bodies, that accumulates with time. We carry a norm. The norm is that we do not jump and tumble and spring into prophetic motion as we walk down the street. We are discouraged from acting differently than others; walking with expression; hell, we get odd looks for walking backwards! And since we don't express ourselves through our bodies, our muscles become useless, soft. We go tender, like expensive steak.

But they, oh, they can move in ways that others can't! They can move from the floor to a 4-foot leap in the air with their feet lifting even with their shoulders. Oh I would feel exhilarated to be a dancer. Her. Her name, is Eva.