Tuesday, April 27, 2010

a message from the wildlife.

it is three a.m.
the birds of westchester county, new york want you to know they are awake and in a much more functional state than you are, even though you are the one who should write maybe five more pages in the next couple hours. not to rub it in.



day one, point five.

today i tried to be a leader.
i sat with my shoulders slumped.
uh.... um.....um... stop. sigh, begin again.

it is hard to lead alone.
why am i scared of being called a bitch?
why did half of everybody look like i was insulting their life?
why was i not smiling enough.
.
.
.
why is it so hard to verbalize your hopes and dreams.
the audience is unreceptive
i want to help you all so bad
but you are used to this being a fey democracy,
and i think we need to go a little communist russia and
use a dictator for a while, but shit, i swear i will be benevolent.
and when you can run on your own two legs i will set you by the river an watch you run for the fishes, and i will collapse on the river bed and work on my tan.



Sunday, April 25, 2010

act four.

dear sonya and vanya,

thank you for letting me in tonight. tonight. i don't know where to begin except to say thank you, and that after i left your estate, your home now so devoid of ...of ....hope, i wept. all the way back to my apartment and the mine-all-mine (just this weekend) bedroom, not such a rampant mess as it was last night (this morning) but equally without love or order or hands to hold. it was really the right time to pay a visit to your russian country home - twenty-six rooms! - this, the night after stumbling into my room and collapsing into my floor covered in cast off garments and littered with sewing pins, face down with dry sobs after listening to two drunken young men pour their hearts out for a few hours. i so wish i could have helped one of them. or that one of them could have helped me. one did for a minute. when we laid on our backs as sweet as though in a field, but only in an apartment (five floors above my own), and i asked if he could see the stars and he said yes, and then said that the ceiling was painted oddly. later he was close enough to need to ask about my shampoo. head & shoulders and the finest chlorinated pool water in all of westchester county of course.

dear sonya, dear vanya, what if i am like you my whole life? "i put up with things patiently and that's how i mean to go on till my life comes to its natural end. you must be patient as well." patience will get us nowhere, and it will get us everywhere maybe too? so it's action that breaks hearts, but patience that hardens them, i suppose.
it's beautiful to think that if we suffer in this life, our next life will be radiant. but what does that matter, because our next life is not now. because that one who just walked out of your home for the last time is/was your true love. could have been. that next life doesn't matter.

"we shall bear patiently the trials fate has in store for us. we shall work for others - now and in our old age - never knowing any peace. and when our time comes we shall die without complaining. in the world beyond the grave we shall say that we have wept and suffered, that our lot was harsh and bitter, and God will have pity on us. and you and i, Uncle dear, shall behold a life which is bright and beautiful and splendid. we shall rejoice and look back on our present misfortune with feelings of tenderness, with a smile. and we shall find peace."
gosh, i believe that's called tragedy.
we shall find peace.
______________

sincerely, with windfall,
emma.


Saturday, April 17, 2010

death valley '10.



my sweet. both of the e-mails you sent me finished with "lol." i will look past this. because
we should totally live together next year!!!,
you said with enthusiasm in your eyes, and a vodka drink in your hand.
you would be, like, my #1 with a cherry on top pick for roommate, with out a doubt, hands down, lights off, best friends, cold shower, root beer float, hamlet minus hamlet
#1 pick.
i just didn't know you wanted me.

************

"hey what's up?"
hey nice haircut, babe. you're always running away. and my lust always follows you right into your kiss that would inevitably taste like cigarettes. if i don't burn down this whole campus five minutes ago, our paths will cross someday. you will spend the night in my room and and we will listen to music until we can't sit up anymore when we will fall asleep on the floor in the clothes that we have neglected to change for days. and still one more. i've barely taken off my newoldimpulsebuyonanimpulsetriptobrooklyn wrinkled blouse and my one only one image of you lately is that red-with-the-green plaid button down.


depending on how you look at it, i am much better off than i was this time a week ago. i am causing less chaos for my poor sweet suitemates and i can remember everything that happened tonight. but i am also wedging sugar in between my teeth and the important parts of my arteries. you win some,,,,,,you lose. sum. i'm not trying to start anything here, except a theatrical revolution, but i lack the perspective at present. and the free time.
but not the whimsy. that flows through my immature swim legs in spades, in the places where the cartilage packs into the bones. whimsy is not my revolution.

why are there still plastic easter eggs populating my desk?

could someone get me out of this self-centered tunnel vision please?
could i have a best friend. dear future roommate, do we want to make this work. dear future co-chair, it's for the best that you have a girlfriend, let's save the world and blow some minds. dear fellow Melancholic, it's official and thrilling, hold my hand, we'll dive first into surreal female love experience.

next year i'm inheriting TWO student-run theatre companies on campus. TWO. one has an awesome reputation, one has a cult and the kind of reputation and disdain that comes with a cult.
TWO.
i don't even know why i like theatre. i don't know why i want to make it. i don't know why people do make it. i don't know why theatre is so dorky and exclusive. why the punks don't make theatre. I SHOULD NOT BE INHERITING THEATRE COMPANIES BECAUSE ALL THEY GIVE ME ARE IDENTITY CRISES. i want them. i love them. i hate them a little bit.

next year is drawing closer and closer. i want the summer so bad i could pull my hair out. but at the same time, i just want to plow on through, non stop, keep going, no summer, in and out, sophomore year
and then i can leave.
for some reason, my mind can't comprehend past sophomore year,
figuring that, after that,
i'll just be done. i'll just leave. twenty is old enough to not be in college anymore.
hell, any age is old enough to not be in college.
i just want to start building a world already.

okay, someone crush my idealism and do my laundry.
it's makin' me sick.


Thursday, April 8, 2010

need a house?

we're all about newloudfast,
i'm in college and all i want is new experience from the mundane to the classic.
from the bee stings.......
bee stings???
baking soda paste inactive
fuck you bees and mosquitoes and acne.
fuck you weather change. i've never felt such an internal shift with the weather. or any internal shift with the weather.
when you reach a certain age and dignity people give you wine as a gift. i like this.
when you are a costumer, you walk home with a bag of sweaty boy clothes. i am not such a fan of this.

i guess i am narcissistic. that's all this is. is online narcissism. i'm not old enough or mature enough to write in universal truth. there is nothing here for you. and the only reason i keep going is because it's your choice to







stop reading. did you stop? fuck you why not.


Wednesday, April 7, 2010

kitsch.


last week was the birthday of a girl in my acting class.
i made her a delightfully kitschy cake.



i figure that it is some sort of psychedelic night sky representation. the yellow panther is maybe a three dimensional representation of leo the lion constellation, because the birthday girl called it a lion, though i have been calling it a panther. i haven't been to the zoo in a long time. or thought about big cats. i could be very wrong. but then again it could be a plastic toy.

don't even know ...

elected
chosen
hand-picked
prayed for
popular vote
appointed
applied
paired up
singled out
single
alone
pin pricks
miss julie's throat
that canary
bleeding never
never engaged
daydream overhaul
gushing
leadership position
sly sentence
change slipped in
semantics
...(ellipses)...
really.
throat punch.
really.
half question
really?
half shrieked
really?
trained ear
catch differ
too much power
hold me up
expect
ing
SHIFT.

expected desired perfect unknown/known/who knows me?/people know me?/how?/aren't i the one sits in the corner?/oh, yeah, except when i'm an attention whore.

in theory
theatre
theory.
absurd
oppressed
clown
school
cabaret
retreat
revamp
ground up
building

i've had my eye on the anatomy of a revolution at the local thrift store for ages and i finally dropped the thirty-five cents to make it mine today. if nothing else that title is brilliant.

best yet. better best
promotion
brave new hope
brave new world
miranda my homegrrrl
so not.
batshit crazy
performance
collective
in a perfect world.....
and

"you want more people dancing at the end of the show than at the beginning."

i don't wanna make you regret this.

new jobs
today
and
yesterday
for
next year
and
saturday,
respectively.
now won't somebody hire me for the summer please?!

my whole fucking apartment smells like trash. and not in the good way. in the damp rot way.
i just took the trash out. this is not my fault. this is my fault. this is weather change.

Monday, April 5, 2010

number 50.

today i was talking (like i do sometimes) and mid sentence, one of the girls i was talking to stopped me to ask, where are you from?
chicago.
and she said something about me having an accent. REALLY???!!!!!!!! i said, like, a chicago accent?!, and both of the girls i was talking to nodded, oh yes, yeah. i don't know the last time i smiled so big. i crave regionalism.
we've talked just a little bit about modern language in one of my classes and each time i come away wishing that everyone sounded more like where they cam from. 'cause with today's generation being so verbally connected (internet, tv, etc.), our modern english is changing and people from all over the country are sounding more like each other. we're making one big region-less language. and i think that's sad. i adore the los angeles kids who display their accents like designer bags, uttering "shut up!" with the perfect inflection and cluelessness, or an inimitably nuanced "hello" when they answer their cell phones. or the vaguely nasal/throaty drawl that bubbles out of pacific-northwesterners mouths. and don't even get me started on a good new york/east coast accent or the delightful twang of a transplant from the south.

and i find that in times (like now) that i have simply too much work, too much to do, i want the hometown more than at times when work is light. i make up chicago to be this haven of safety and calm. no doubt, this is naive. but so is college. so whatever.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

sprung.

i got my scalp sun-reddened.
the watch tan has started.
and so it begins.