yes. this is just how i

remember it: the exact moment in the process where you start seeing texture. it's a little oasis of feel-good in a gruelling desert of repetitious work and logistical torture.

do you know what i mean? someone out there surely does. putting together a show is such an emotional rollercoaster - from the first wave of excitement over the gorgeous unfamiliarity of a new script, straight through to opening night anxiety attacks. here's the basic structure i have found is rarely deviated from:

stage 1 - unbridled enthusiasm
stage 2 - terrifying chaos
stage 3 - hard fucking work
stage 4 - TEXTURE! hooray.
stage 5 - more hard fucking work
stage 6 - sudden paralyzing fear over timeframe; second-guessing choices made thus far; second-guessing entire vocation
stage 7 - annoying, obsessive nitpickery
stage 8 - mad scramble
stage 9 - pre-opening nerves/excitement
stage 10 - opening night; happiest moment of life; desire to drink all the booze in the entire world.

and today, today today, i realized i've hit stage 4 and there was something so great about that. so reassuring, especially in anticipation of the scary territory from here on in. it just helps remind me that these are all perfectly natural phases of what i do. and that, when i do start losing my mind over deadlines not met and props not procured, that will be natural, too.

but perhaps the most gratifying part is actually watching that texture emerge for the very first time, in a very physical sense. you're never prepared for it. everything takes on a new quality of life and the artificial reality you've been so painstakingly constructing is suddenly so complete, so overwhelming... it sent chills down my spine and made my eyes water. and i was dumbstruck for an entire five seconds, searching for something i could say that was useful direction.

it feels like. well, it feels like. staring at a garden-variety road map and it turning topographic right before your eyes. or something.

at the same time,

it's really not all bad. what am i even saying - i love it, most of the time.

i went for a long walk around the north end tonight. and while there was nothing particularly special about the night or the walk, on some level it was profoundly memorable. i know i will miss it. i know i will never have it again, not like this. i can already sense the impeding shadows of stress that are just around the corner - stress about the show, stress about money, stress... about other things, bigger things, scarier things.

but right now and right here, there is a calmness unlike anything i've felt before. or perhaps i have, but not since i was a child. nothing can touch me here; i'm surrounded by some kind of golden shroud of peace, and i walk at an extremely even pace, and all my thoughts are so wonderfully lucid. i had a dream last night that they offered me my job back at the restaurant - "it was just a test, you're back on the schedule now" - and i just stood there, watching the boiling bubbling chaos of service industry hell around me, wondering what i could do to make them fire me for good.
i woke up laughing with relief. oh, it's so good to know it was a dream! i wouldn't go back to that life if they offered me twice what i was making. i'd rather eat nothing but kraft dinner for months.

i really would, you know. this is something i was thinking about while wandering around tonight: how it was all too easy to forget that living on a tiny budget can be more rewarding; how fully i had myself convinced in no time that i couldn't do without a serving job i hated, under a boss i didn't get along with. there is literally not a thing about it i look back at fondly. time slid away from under me like quicksand in that job, and so did all that glorified cash i was making. jesus, how much money did i throw right back into that bar? all i ever had there that's worth remembering was fun, but fun and being happy are so fucking far from being the same thing.
besides, come on - even the fun wasn't usually much to write home about. all my best stories come from other places.

i'm realistic. i know i probably won't love the next "real" job i get, either. but i'll be cautious this time, and mindful of what chances i take. it's far scarier to be owned by a shit job than to have to cook your own dinner. i chose the career path i did far from naively: i knew i would end up living in houses that look like junkyards, and that i'd have to budget for things that are bare necessities. i knew and i didn't care. i know how to function under dire financial conditions, it's what i know. i came from that. how to put money away and invest in the future? not so much. i chose a moment-to-moment kind of life, and when that moment-to-moment yielded more funds than i was used to, i spent it just as lightly as i had come by it. and then that's what i became used to.

concentric circles, though, right? i'm here right now, happy to have reclaimed a peace of mind that's been lacking from me for entirely too long. also happy to be in better control of how i'm living and what i'm spending. it will get old, of course, as being broke tends to. in a year i'll likely be making more than i was leading up to all this.
well, either i'll be making more or at the very least i'll be much happier. maybe both. but definitely one.

right this minute, i'm feeling pretty optimistic about everything.

'what not to wear' for the newly unemployed

"yeah, i suppose black jeans are okay if you dress them up with a conservative shirt and heels. take off the leather cuff, though. and the necklace."
"really?! i can't wear this necklace? but it's so small and inoffensive."
"tuck it into your shirt, then. you don't want to look rock'n'roll. you want streamlined and professional."

i grumble, but i do as she says. sigh. i don't even want another dining job.

"can i wear my jean jacket? or does that have too much personality for the prospective employer, too."

she ponders a moment.

"no, you can wear it. it looks clean and preppy, with the rest of your outfit... you look like a gap ad."
eyeroll. "it's a sad state of affairs when the gap ad image is what's considered the epitome of hireable."
"look, you need a job, right??"

my roommate can be a hardass, but she's right, of course. i put on my jean jacket and study the results in our full-length mirror. "i suppose i should probably remove the north end, i love you button from the breast pocket."
"yes. you really should."
i do it, with what i hope is an endearing pout. i feel like a store mannequin.

candice laughs, in her carefree look-at-me-i-have-a-job-and-can-wear-what-i-feel-like ruffled skirt.
"relax. you can go back to squatting abandoned houses, after you do your interview."

"down here, we all float"

i look at my last post and i'm like, eye-ruh-neeee.

maybe i'm a low-level psychic or something. things have happened this way before - little echoes of the future, causing a stir in my mind that i can't understand or place. it's confusing, but also comforting somehow. almost like i already dealt with the fallout of this, before "this" became a fact.

stephen called to see how i was doing, for the fourth time. this was directly after i had summoned the courage to face my account balances. it had been a very grave and gruelling fifteen minutes.
"i don't have any money. none at all. i have negative-money. i don't own a cent."
"it's a good thing you have a me, then."
"i suppose i'm not going to die, am i."
"nope. you're not going to die."

then he said he was taking me out for dinner and i said, maybe i should lose my job more often. then i laughed the laugh of the temporarily insane.

well, hopefully the temporarily insane.

imagery:
i'm alone in the middle of a winter landscape which suddenly turns out to be a gigantic sno-globe. i only know it's not real because someone on the outside is shaking it. i'm weightless and tiny and bouncing off the glass, and the world is a flurry of plastic snow.

but sometimes, like say

right now, i just want a real life. a real job, with real people. who read real books. this false glamour of living in a world entirely made up of concepts and ideas gets so old.

i look at my hands, they've aged; they're these strange foreign objects now. my fingers scream of years spent in the service industry. not that there's anything wrong with that. my hands are so unpretentious, they've never even heard of nail polish or any of that cuticle cream jazz. i don't mind that. who gives a shit about cuticle cream??

i don't mind my hands, but i'd like to get to know them again. there has to be a new chapter around the corner somewhere, there has to... these days, my mind is always either on hold or in overdrive, and it can't be healthy and it doesn't feel good. it hurts, actually. all the time.

how did this take me so long to realize? i think some part of me honestly believed that i was living the dream. or a dream, anyway. well, i don't want it anymore. i want things to start being real.

i want that so bad it makes me cry.

"how i spent my summer vacation", or

the remarkable feats i accomplished on my day off:

1a) bought what passes for 'groceries', correctly assuming i would have time neither to order in nor to eat out, AND
1b) bought them at the gas station, to save time and effort on navigating the plethora of choices the supermarket offers;

2a) moved a gigantic couch and belonging love seat down a flight of stairs, into and on top of a van, and across town
2b) was stuck waiting in said van with said couch on top outside the library, in the piss weather, watching twenty minutes of scheduled rehearsal time trickle away like so many raindrops;

3a) got to burlesque rehearsal awfully late
3b) ate a fenomenal muffin and did cheesy things for a couple of hours (this may have been the high point of my day);

4) made a quick stop at home to check e-mail and find out the aforementioned couch was too gigantic to even make it into the house, much less up the stairs;

5) [sigh]

6a) failed repeatedly to find my copy of a doll's house (seriously??...)
6b) went to cafe dapopo rehearsal completely and utterly unprepared
6c) did a stumblethrough of scenes from two plays i've never worked on before, script in hand;

7) scheduled rehearsal #3 on my next day off;

8) [sigh squared]

9a) came home and read a gazillion pages of yet another script
9b) took notes and drew set diagrams for hours
9c) freaked out about everything at least once;

10) decided that i need, in no particular order:
- a personal secretary
- a live-in dietetician who prevents me from existing on orange juice and hot dogs for the next who knows how long
- a professional motivator
- a job where i actually get paid to do all this stuff, thus enabling me to hire all of the above

holy shit i need sleep

this is going to be THE summer hit of 2008, i just know it.

(to the tune of "little boxes" by malvina reynolds)

little bitches at the fireside,
little bitches made of ticky-tacky,
little bitches, little bitches,
little bitches, all the same.
there's a green one and a pink one
and a blue one and a yellow one
and they're all made out of ticky-tacky
and they all look just the same.

and the bitches order bitch drinks
and they all go to university,
so they know all kinds of nonsense
but they don't know how to tip.
and they all have jocky boyfriends
who'll be business executives,
and they're all made out of ticky-tacky
and they all look just the same.

and the dudes wear stripy golf shirts
and get shitfaced on three melon balls
and they end up at the palace
or in faces magazine.
and i watch them and i think that
god i hope they never procreate
but they tend to do eventually
and they all come out the same.