Renaissance Girl

Yesterday I went to Smile Off Your Face, a production at Giant Magnet (formerly Seattle International Children's Festival) by a Belgian group called ONTROEREND GOED.

I'm not even sure I can explain the experience. I can describe what happened to me, but I'm still parsing it. I know it was incredible. I was made totally vulnerable--blindfolded and in a wheelchair and completely at the mercy of the person pushing me around in the dark--but for the most part I wasn't afraid--or I wasn't afraid of what they were doing, I was nervous because I didn't know what was happening; but it was a good kind of nervous. It was intimacy by necessity. It was good to be reminded how open it's possible to be--which is the hardest part of theater, and the best part. I felt alone and taken care of at the same time, like I was special and also similar to everyone else. Because the people that do this--I didn't think about this until afterwards, but they do this with everyone who comes through, & that's part of why it's so amazing.

I'm still working through it--or maybe I won't...but it was really good.

Acting is really, really strange, & I'm beginning to think it might be dangerous. I already knew it was addictive; I have been living & breathing it for years & have known for that long that it will always be my first love, with apologies to everyone else I love.
Recently I've started to think about process more, & the other day I realized--while Andrew & I were having a conversation about some of this--that I don't actually talk to other people about acting, not about what it means or how they do it or how it makes them feel or what kind of living they go through to make characters.
& I think of this now, because this play is really starting to get under my skin, in the way intense theater does, where it slowly winds its vines around you until you're beginning to be your character on stage & off, & I'm not sure where Adele & myself intersect anymore.
It was like this with Irina, I remember--this below-surface simmering. It was like this with Thomasina, too, though since she was a far happier character it wasn't quite the same; but both of them, & Adele, are getting to me.
I need to talk to other actors now, just to satisfy my curiosity. What happens with that process? Do you get stolen, briefly? And when you're in thrall of the play, of your character, what happens to all those feelings? Are they real? Is it possible to separate myself & my character, ever, or am I just fated to be like this for the rest of my life? And even if I could escape it...should I?

I just finished a book titled Master of Verona, which is written by a Shakespearian actor/director, & is a backstory of sorts to Romeo and Juliet. It's also impossible to stop reading; I had read about fifty pages before, & read the entire rest of it (a few hundred pages more) tonight. It's wonderful--all full of plots & twists, settings that were evocative and confusing at the same time, characters with Italian names that I want to say all day, just the right amount of suspense and mystery without it being frustrating. (Also, apparently, two Shakespeare-related anagrams; I haven't found them yet.)

A few weeks ago I got all my old files back from Kristen, and some days ago I spent a couple hours before bed reading through a bunch of my fiction files. I feel ridiculously disconnected from them. The hundreds of megabytes of story based on the NCPS that Allie & I created feel so entirely connected to my two years at Northwest that I don't rightly know how to keep going on them. I have what feels like millions of fits and starts--files that number between one and five pages, no more--that are none of them bad, just lonely & unfinished. I rarely hate my writing; I just never finish anything. At the moment, I'm not annoyed, I'm just thinking. But sometimes that drives me crazy. How can I ever expect to be an author proper when the only things I finish a full draft of are poems, & them only rarely? I have a story (silly, but not bad), which I began in senior year of highschool. In three weeks I will begin my senior year of college. And is it finished? Of course not.

I have always wanted to do NaNoWriMo, although November is a terrible month for me. Mostly what I want is a reason to finish a draft, however botched & ridiculous it might be. If it's full, I can shape it. I can't shape bits & pieces of millions of puzzles that aren't the same picture. They all fall apart in my hands. Someday, at some point--sooner rather than later--I just want something done. Is that possible?

I leave in twenty days. I am going toward an adventure. It's my turn. It's time. There's just plenty that I'm going to hate leaving behind.

I am sitting on the couch in my apartment, soon to be no longer mine. Tonight is the last official night that I'll spend here. A load of things went home tonight; the rest of it (save the kitchen things) goes home tomorrow. I've been cleaning my old room at my parents' house to get ready--it's severely dusty in several places, & I found a spider about an inch and a half across living behind my bookshelf (as long as it stays there, I'm fine, but if it ventures toward my bed there Will Be Words, & also A Jar).

I'm not sure how I feel about leaving, actually. I stepped out on the balcony today to shake out a scarf and realized that I spent very little time on the balcony, which is silly, really. But it was awfully cold for most of the year. I'll miss living with Nikki & Erin; it's fun. I won't miss being downtown, though, for all it's convenient & urban & sophisticated; there's also loads of light pollution, noise, & garbage trucks at six am twenty feet below me.
On the other hand, I feel sort of stagnant moving back into my old room. Probably what I need to do is properly clear everything out, clean it, & put things back in different places. Or at least wash the windows. I've got stuck again--I think this is typical of this age, although it makes me feel silly & angsty to say so--stuck between wanting to stay young & childlike & unworried about things (or at least worried in a naive, unresponsible way), & wanting to jettison everything having to do with childhood, move out entirely, find my own place & be grownup, independent & the only one responsible for me.
The reality I suppose is somewhere in the middle, as it probably is for most people. I won't get rid of childhood things--some of them are still useful, some too sentimentally attached to get rid of; & even when I do move out of my parents' house entirely, I won't take everything with me, & it's not as if I can't go back to visit, & it's not as if I won't have other people taking care of me in various ways. Still. I never like being caught in the middle of anything.

On a far less introspective note, Erin & I are watching Chamber of Secrets on the telly, & after every commercial break there's a short snippet of behind-the-scenes what-have-you for Order of the Pheonix, & we're getting awfully excited for the movie. Tuesday at midnight! This week is going to start out fabulous (Joel's birthday, movie with Erin) & go rapidly downhill (wisdom teeth out on Thursday) but if all goes well & my teeth heal themselves, pick up again (Hitchhiker's opening on Friday, outdoor theater all weekend...). Come to that, as long as I don't feel ill or have really painful teeth, there's nothing bad about lounging on a couch eating sorbet & pudding & listening to books on tape. Kinda like being sick without having to feel sick.