Happiness is...

... a sunny day at the end of September and the way Ev twists around her front pack to look up at me. 

Biking II

The Playlist
While battling the hills in SE: "I Need a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler at the beginning and  "The Killing Floor" by Jimi Hendrix at the end.
Once I hit the top of the those hills: "If You Want to Sing Out" by Cat Stevens (I almost wept, it was so perfect).
Turning on to Duke St and then pulling into my own driveway: "Sostenuto" from Mahagonny Songspiel by Kurt Weill.

The Time
Driving home from the theater usually takes me twenty to twenty-five min. Last week this ride took me an hour, tonight it took me forty min. I think this is totally due to the fact that my bike has gears and Alyssa's doesn't, not due to me becoming Olivias, the Greek God of Biking.

The Ride
Was a pain in the ass. It was long and difficult and there were four big hills. I didn't like it. I don't. But when I get home, I know that I have taken myself there. I take these tiny back streets and there are lots of other bikers on them and relatively few cars and sometimes I go really slow and sometimes I stop. But this time! This time I never got off the bike. I did not push it up any hills and I did not sit down. Sure, I stood there and panted but there was no walking. All biking.

The Name
While riding home tonight I decided on the name of my bike. I wanted to name it after Sons but I knew that my bike was a girl. Not a ton of lady characters on that show. I mulled it over tonight and there was one that, as soon as it popped in my brain, felt immediately right. Just clicked. Made me smile, even though I felt like I was dying.  So: in memoriam, my bike will be named Donna.

Alone

Guys - I'm actually enjoying having the house to myself.

Since college I have lived with six different people in a variety of different configurations and I have, on multiple occasions, been left with my abode empty. And I usually hate it. I mean: HATE it.

The first time Mona left me alone at the Manor I made Nils (Nils!) come stay with me so I wouldn't be alone.

The second time I made Jack come over and watch a movie every night until I was half asleep.

The third time I had Daniel come over.

When I lived with Chelsea and Maria, I was left alone once: I made Alan come over for both days.

When Charlie moved in everyone left at Christmas time and I got strep throat/scarlet fever and locked myself in my room for the entire time I was there.Before I got sick I made Andrew come and stay with me the night before he drove to CA, so I wouldn't be alone. And once I was sick, I stayed with Cameron and Kailyn for my last night in town, to have someone drive me to the airport and to take care of me.

And now here I am, nine months later, and I am at night two alone at Albert Hall and I am LOVING it. I really am! Last night I stayed up until 2am cleaning the house and fixing the oven and the kitchen chairs. I listened to the Weepies and drank tea and didn't wear any pants. Tonight I had some friends over for dinner and no one bothered us and now I am curled up on my couch, ready to watch some Sons of Anarchy. The house is clean, quiet, and empty. But peaceful empty, not menacing empty. I'm not afraid or uncomfortable or anxious this time. It's just me. In my house. Doing my own thing. With no one else around. And it's lovely.

Guys - does this mean I'm becoming a grown up?

Wilde Tales: A Photo Essay

Yes, selfies are awful and vain and awful and silly and awful.

Now that we have that out of the way: I opened my webcam during rehearsal in order to take an awful vain awful silly awful selfie. What happened is that I went to click the "snapshot" button and hit the "burst" button instead. I assumed one picture was taken and then I went back to watching what was happening in rehearsal. The end was result was 30 something photos of me watching rehearsal, which is pretty hysterical all by itself. Here are some of the best ones, and they will maybe give you an idea of the play I'm working on now (and how much I love this stupid job).

This one was the on purpose selfie.

I actually make this face?

Oh jeez.

Only the most professional

The White Woman Overbite

<3

That last picture reminds me of the end of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WKbzq3wqWo

Biking

I bought a bike! And I have begun to bike! Like a Portlander! With my legs! Carrying my own body! And my own stuff! Place to place! Panic! Excitement!

Elephant-a-topia

Here is a dream I had on Sunday night, the night that Two Gentlemen of Verona closed.

In this dream, my cast from Two Gents and I have been through some kind of accident/trauma/wreck and have washed ashore on a lost island. This island is very Dinotopia-esque, in that it is another world that is cut off from our world. This island was, centuries ago, originally populated by a group of people who were escaping a natural disaster of some sort by riding on the backs of elephants. The elephants swam and swam and eventually reached this island. In the time that passed between then and my dream the elephants evolved into animals different from our image of elephants and were much more like the oliphonts in Lord of the Rings: fearsome and war-like.  There are skulls of mammoth sized elephants everywhere as markers, sculptures, warning, or tokens. They're all chilling, just expansive forehead and terrifying tusks. I can see them up and down the beach from the moment we land.

My memory of the dream picks up with my cast and I trying to find a way back to our world. We are unable to simply leave by taking to the sea, due to some kind of treacherous block (like in Dinotopia). Instead we have to take a boat through a complicated series of caverns and find a way out to the open ocean (also like in Dinotopia). We all gather together and try to make a map of these caverns from our memories of the crash/wreck/accident that brought us here. We hash out what we can and come up with a rough idea of how we want to try navigate through these underground rivers, all the while very much aware of the fact that we could easily get lost and die lost in those caverns.

We finish the map and begin to pack our multi-room-ed boat/submarine/machine. As we do so, a native of Elephant-a-topia comes to me. This is odd because none of them have talked to us or helped us the whole time we've been here. This person is dressed in the clothes of their world but carrying a modern day baby carrier - the kind for very small infants with a plastic handle. This person makes it clear that this baby is of our world, not theirs, and that I must bring it with me when we leave. In exchange for taking the baby, this person gives a map of the caverns. The map only appears on the carrier when I am actively caring for the baby, and is written in their language, covered in signs I can't understand.

We all board the boat/submarine and Zach, on of my cast,  takes the helm. He has our rough map beside him and has made me the navigator. I hold the infant to my chest and try to consult both maps at once, while talking to Zach and keeping the baby quiet. Eventually we come to a discrepancy between our map and theirs and Zach and I disagree about which way to go. Kate, another cast member, leaps to my defense. She points out that the map I was given was made by people who actually knew what they were doing. Zach refuses to listen, saying that the fact we can't read it makes it useless. I try to explain what shapes I think are rocks and which are currents, but Zach ignores me. Kate becomes infuriated and storms out. I place the baby into the carrier and bring it with me as I follow her.

I find her in another room of the boat/submarine and I sit beside her, trying to calm her down. She is, obviously, upset because all our lives are at stake. After a while of talking we are interrupted by a huge crash our boat/submarine hits something. We both leap up, I grab the baby, and we run back to the control room. There is water pouring in from a huge hole in the wall. I place the baby safely out of the way and run to the hole. As I do so there is terrible tearing sound and Tony, another of cast members, tackles me just tin time to save me from being crushed to death by a piece of the structure of the boat. At this point we are laying on the floor, with him pinning me down. There is chaos everywhere and I am frantically trying to get up, panicking about the baby. He is yelling at me, trying to get his point across: "If it had gone differently, I would have kissed you gently. We could have been Julie Andrews and Captain Von Trapp." And that is where my dream ended.

***

The day after I had this dream, I had lunch with Maria and the Kate from the dream. I sat down and said, "Oh! Kate! I had a dream with you in it." She immediately perked up, "I had one with you in it!" I gasped. I've only ever co-dreamed with one other person (my magical mother) and while our dreams were a.) on the same night and b.) eerily similar, we were not in fact in each other's dreams. The idea that Kate and I both dreamt of Elephant-a-topia was so exciting. Exciting because it would be so eerie and so rare, but also because I was so confused about the dream. If she had had the same dream, maybe she could illuminate more for me(especially about the baby). Before I told her about mine I said, "Stop me if it sounds like your dream at all. And if it does, we have to call Tony and Zach immediately." Then I launched in and both Maria and Kate sat there, slack-jawed. I'm sure you all have already guessed this, but no, Kate did not dream of Elephant-a-topia. She dreamt about going to lunch or something equally banal. She didn't really remember.

I keep on remembering mine, especially that baby. I didn't gender it in this retelling because I don't what it was. It had dark hair and a lot of it. It slept so quietly and felt so natural, breathing with me as it lay on my chest. It reminded me of a dream I had last week in which I'd had my first child and was introducing him to my parents. Both babies were very similar - less than three months old with dark hair, sleeping soundly against me. I want to know where it came from, what happened to it, if I'll see it again.

Long Vs. Short

This morning I remembered why I chopped off all my hair six years ago.
 TWENTY MINUTES OF BRUSHING OUT TANGLES EVERY DAMN DAY.

Sick

I have a pretty full day tomorrow, so I should be going to bed. I'm going to write this post instead because today has been not the greatest and I think that if I can let some of this go then I will probably sleep better tonight. Because right now I feel a little sick and maybe it's physical but my bet is this is emotional sick.

I had a cast party at my house last night where, for a variety of silly and fun reasons, an actor in my cast (male) and I decided to do a drink for drink. Silly! Fun! We decided on the rules (a shot of whiskey and half a beer ever half hour for three hours) and followed them strictly. People were putting money on who they thought would last all three hours. It was competitive. Silly! Fun! And guess what? We both made it all the way through and we both got drunk. And I mean: DRUNK. We both blacked out, we both vomitted. There were no winners last night, just a pair of ridiculous losers.

I have blacked out exactly five times in my life: once in Buenos Aires, twice in college, my birthday this past June, and last night. And this will be the last time, barring some extreme circumstance. Because this morning I woke up with the buzz of a hangover and something a lot worse: shame. A friend of mine who was there talked to me for an hour this morning while I cleaned my kitchen in my underwear, filling me in on the loud, stupid, belligerent way I acted. I hit on one of my cast members in a way that made him uncomfortable. I ran off down the street and two of my friends had to go get me. I demanded things from people, I shouted. And I did all of this stupid behavior in front of my cast. The cast that is supposed to trust me, feel supported by me, and respect me.

I've fucked up and it feels awful. I've been carrying the knowledge of this around in me all day. I ate french fries for dinner, hoping that fried/greasy food would make the sick feeling go away. It didn't. It hasn't. Because I know that I have to go to the show on Saturday, look at them all, and know that the way they see me has been irrevocably changed. I'm reminded of something Claire told me during my second summer at SSC as her ASM. I mentioned how sad it was the stage managers worked so late that we always missed the post-rehearsal drinks at the bar. "I feel less bonded with the cast then I would, you know?" She smiled and said, "It's the way it's got to be. Yes, we have to work but also, we can't let loose with them, Olivia. They need to respect us, they need to take our notes and listen to us. That will be harder to do if they see us drunk every night after rehearsal." As usual, Claire was right. (Claire is always right.)

So, writing this post hasn't made me feel any better. I'm not sure much will. I've let myself down and that is a hard thing to look in the face.