Tuesday, September 19, 2006
six of one.
1. i'm worried that the wedding will be too short. we only have the space for five hours. i didn't really think about it when we were deciding; it was all about the where and not the how-long. five hours doesn't even seem like a normal party, much less an adequate celebration for an occasion of this magnitude. we may not be having a lot of traditional trappings, but make no mistake: the magnitude is large. it's important to me that this is a big deal. i know it's a big deal no matter what, but i need to know there'll be some time to live in it while it's happening. i'm starting to have that feeling about maybe we just should have picked a nice spot in the woods and set up chairs and had a big sweet hippie wedding. also, i occasionally remember that people are dying in darfur and i'm thinking about a ridiculously expensive party.
2. i am not worried about the wedding, because i am worried about school. i am taking this one class that makes no sense. i have talked to the most savvy of my classmates, and it makes no sense to them, either. we agree: we feel dumb. the teacher is a great guy, and extremely knowledgeable, famous in his field, and a great lecturer. why are we not getting it? the theory is just too dense and we don't have enough time or enough clues and handholds. pro: we are all in the same boat and it is not just me. con: i leave the room crying because the Ph.D.s all seem very comfortable and in a year, i am supposed to be like them. i am not like them.
3. i really want to move back to seattle. let's be honest, i've wanted this since my sixth month here. i am trying to be open about where we might move--it was enough of a compromise for the monkey to decide not to stay here--but i can tell i really really have my heart set on going home. when i get there, *if* we get there, it will not be the place i remember. i will have lived here as long as i lived there (how is this possible?). i am sort of not an actor anymore. who would i be in seattle if i wasn't an actor? can i even do anything with this master's degree? scariest: what if i would rather move back than do the Ph.D., which, even if i get in might make me feel like a birdbrain all the time and mean another four years in a city i don't necessarily love that does not contain my family. this choice is open to me, but if i move back without a terminal degree, nothing will really have changed since when i lived there and hated my dayjob. except i joined a union and am now relatively uncastable in the circles i used to frequent.
4. when is the monkey going to learn about money? when is he going to understand that saving for the future is not something you do when there is money left over but something you do at the beginning of the month? if there is only so much money coming in, and you don't end up with enough to save, you need to stop taking cabs and eating expensive salads. this is how it works. i am marrying a two year old. i love him, but i do not want our retirement to be compromised because one of us was the ant and one of us was the grasshopper. we keep having this conversation, and i keep thinking it's handled, and then it's not handled. i feel like my choices are: constant harping (doesn't work), or relax-and-have-faith (doesn't work). i would like to say it's his life and he's going to have to live with the consequences, and in the end that's true--it certainly isn't anyone else's--but it will be our lives together in which we eat ramen at sixty and the monkey is still bartending and we don't get to travel.
5. i took this amazing dance class. ADS was out at ann richards's funeral and so another of her pals, elizabeth r0xas came in to teach. i kicked a little bit of ass. not much to brag about in a class full of people who are clearly on the movement short bus, but it felt good to be good at something. and now my butt hurts.
6. i won an award. or rather, the company i've worked with on and off for the last three years did. it's the sort of ridiculous 0ff-0ff-broadway equivalent of the obies. it was an awkward evening; the presenters (who were surprisingly famous) did a good job of navigating the tricky space between admitting that most of us participating new york fringe theatre are doing so only because we're not getting hired somewhere "better," and praising the spirit that keeps people working at theatre even when it's a difficult pain in the ass and the chances it sucks are high. it's an easy scene to disdain, but i left the evening thinking that it really is in the poor theatre and the small theatre that you can see why the art is necessary. and with an even-bigger crush on lisa kron.
2. i am not worried about the wedding, because i am worried about school. i am taking this one class that makes no sense. i have talked to the most savvy of my classmates, and it makes no sense to them, either. we agree: we feel dumb. the teacher is a great guy, and extremely knowledgeable, famous in his field, and a great lecturer. why are we not getting it? the theory is just too dense and we don't have enough time or enough clues and handholds. pro: we are all in the same boat and it is not just me. con: i leave the room crying because the Ph.D.s all seem very comfortable and in a year, i am supposed to be like them. i am not like them.
3. i really want to move back to seattle. let's be honest, i've wanted this since my sixth month here. i am trying to be open about where we might move--it was enough of a compromise for the monkey to decide not to stay here--but i can tell i really really have my heart set on going home. when i get there, *if* we get there, it will not be the place i remember. i will have lived here as long as i lived there (how is this possible?). i am sort of not an actor anymore. who would i be in seattle if i wasn't an actor? can i even do anything with this master's degree? scariest: what if i would rather move back than do the Ph.D., which, even if i get in might make me feel like a birdbrain all the time and mean another four years in a city i don't necessarily love that does not contain my family. this choice is open to me, but if i move back without a terminal degree, nothing will really have changed since when i lived there and hated my dayjob. except i joined a union and am now relatively uncastable in the circles i used to frequent.
4. when is the monkey going to learn about money? when is he going to understand that saving for the future is not something you do when there is money left over but something you do at the beginning of the month? if there is only so much money coming in, and you don't end up with enough to save, you need to stop taking cabs and eating expensive salads. this is how it works. i am marrying a two year old. i love him, but i do not want our retirement to be compromised because one of us was the ant and one of us was the grasshopper. we keep having this conversation, and i keep thinking it's handled, and then it's not handled. i feel like my choices are: constant harping (doesn't work), or relax-and-have-faith (doesn't work). i would like to say it's his life and he's going to have to live with the consequences, and in the end that's true--it certainly isn't anyone else's--but it will be our lives together in which we eat ramen at sixty and the monkey is still bartending and we don't get to travel.
5. i took this amazing dance class. ADS was out at ann richards's funeral and so another of her pals, elizabeth r0xas came in to teach. i kicked a little bit of ass. not much to brag about in a class full of people who are clearly on the movement short bus, but it felt good to be good at something. and now my butt hurts.
6. i won an award. or rather, the company i've worked with on and off for the last three years did. it's the sort of ridiculous 0ff-0ff-broadway equivalent of the obies. it was an awkward evening; the presenters (who were surprisingly famous) did a good job of navigating the tricky space between admitting that most of us participating new york fringe theatre are doing so only because we're not getting hired somewhere "better," and praising the spirit that keeps people working at theatre even when it's a difficult pain in the ass and the chances it sucks are high. it's an easy scene to disdain, but i left the evening thinking that it really is in the poor theatre and the small theatre that you can see why the art is necessary. and with an even-bigger crush on lisa kron.
