Transcending or Missing Reality

Something I started in my notebook that I carry around in my purse:

We watched Tootsie in Grant Park tonight. As we were leaving, I stopped to use the bathroom, and so walked back to the car on my own, past Buckingham Fountain, along Columbus, looking at the skyline. And I realized I feel the same way now about Chicago as I did about New York right before I came home for the summer. I really love Chicago. I miss the skyline when I'm gone.

This summer feels like a dream. Like it seems totally separate from the rest of my life, stuck in a time by itself. This is strange, because New York seems like a dream too, or a movie I watched, but not actually something I lived, no my life. So I'm wondering what my reality is, if everything that's supposed to be real seems surreal, or fictional, or outside myself. If reality is our perception of our experiences, and I perceive the recent periods of my past as theatre, that I watched but didn't experience, then what is my reality then, but a fiction?

As I was walking tonight, I was blowing my own mind by thinking about how quickly things change. In 3 days I'll be in New York, in 5 days I'll be living in my new apartment for the year. I've got 3 more nights here in my bed, in my room that I grew up in, until I come home, maybe at Thanksgiving, maybe in December. This is identical to the feeling I had right before coming home for the summer, as I was spending my last few days in my dorm. Temporality always gets my mind spinning in circles until I feel like I can't see straight even when I'm just watching my feet moving forward on the sidewalk.

I desperately need to get back to school; I need to see the beautiful group of people that inspire me to do my best work and try new things and be ridiculous and serious and inquisitive. I haven't seen some of my best friends in essentially four months now. This whole situation is absurd. Either I'm in New York, with one group of friends, and loving all of that, but missing my Chicago life and people here, or I'm here and loving home, but missing New York. I thought maybe after I'd settled in at NYU, the feeling of being torn between two worlds would go away, but it doesn't really seem like that's changed, yet, at least.

I miss Nic. And I don't want to be 1000 miles away from him. And I can't wait to get back to school. I don't know how to deal with the things I'm feeling right now. I think things will be better once I get back into the routine of the city, and I can glean energy from the pulse of the streets that I'm itching to walk. I need to get away from here, at least for a while. And I suppose it's going to be longer than a while, but I can deal with that. It's just that right now I don't want to be tied up in the emotions of this place.

I think that's it for tonight. I'm trying to finish up my play reading for the summer so that I can read my last couple books of the summer, The Gospel of Inclusion and The Schwa Was Here (which is sort of the inspiration for my COW). Goodnight, blogosphere. Wow. My computer recognizes that as a word. I didn't expect that one. One more surprise for the day.

Inspir-Expir-Ation

It's turing out to be a truly productive and creative night. I've been knocking plays off my reading list (by reading them, of course), and I came up with an awesome idea for my COW project for the fall thanks to a conversation with Colleen. I've also been feeling poetically inspired tonight, and I'm composing some poems... they'll get posted on the poetry blog eventually.

The Troubles of Schwa, Angst in Sound

"Syllabic consonants are always trying to take my place!"

Schwa's got a tough life. She's constantly under appreciated by her fellow phonetics - she's barely even a part of the gang! Mostly she's only allowed to be involved when the less important parts of the story happen.

"Everybody knows I'm unstressed. It's just in my nature. But people seem to think unstressed means unimportant! They don't even notice me."

It turns out, Schwa's actually pretty stressed. People are never quite sure if they need her. It's like being a doctor on call, 24/7. How can schwa remain unstressed when she has to be ready to be thrown in any second?

I think I just made up a teaser trailer for my ten minute COW. Let's call that getting ahead. Go schwa, go! I'm kinda excited for this project, which is excellent, because I had just been speculating about what I might do my COW about, and this idea fell into my lap. Life is being good.

Regina Spektor's new album (okay, so it's not that new anymore), "Far", is definitely excellent. I finally got it today, and listened to it straight through. It's definitely cleaner-sounding than some of her earlier stuff, but it's less timid than some of "Begin to Hope" and I really like it.

Also I'm becoming obsessed with Sam Shepard and Joe Chaikin as collaborators. So good.

Clearly I am ready to be back at school and working my butt off. I'm half-manufacturing it for myself already. (Okay, so a reading list, another reading list, and a couple design projects are helping, but still.) Oh, this is gonna be a good year.

PLUS! Oh, plus! I've been working on campus ministry at NYU, because of course UUism is the other passion in my life, especially right now. I've started communication with the minister of lifespan faith development at the UU church in Brooklyn. His name is Jude Geiger and he went to NYU for grad school and was the president of campus ministry at NYU when he was there, so I'm really looking forward to my relationship with him. I'm really invigorated by the idea of creating something at NYU that might last beyond me, and at any rate will certainly have a positive effect on myself and others while I'm here. I'm also in contact with the YA and Campus Ministry consultant for the MNY district, Claire Sexton, who is a great lady really invested in YA work. Between those two and their experience, my experience, and the people I know and am getting in touch with at NYU, things are looking great. I found a grant to apply for through the UUA that would actually give me a budget and a stipend, which means I could be getting paid to do something I love anyway. I hope I'll be able to create community and strengthen faith in my peers this year. Hopefully, if I can do that with the campus ministry group, I will be able to spread my inner passions and faith and strength to the rest of my friends and life.

I'm so excited about this coming year! There are so many possibilities and opportunities coming to me this year, tons of which I don't even know yet. I do know I get to SM for Colleen on "Tongues" by Sam Shepard and Joe Chaikin, which is all about the voice, so we both love it, and I can't wait to see how it develops. I know I could quite possibly be light designing for a show that deals with a lot of issues that interest me, and I'm looking forward to really getting to work with lights beyond the rudimentary plot in the black box for class. I can't wait to work with color, tone, the transition from one mood to another, the space in between light and dark. My head is swimming with thoughts about the upcoming year.

My thoughts have just returned to the confusion I was experiencing at the beginning of the summer. I keep finding myself thinking more in the mind of a director or designer than as an actor. Perhaps that's because I don't know what my acting opportunities will be yet. I am excited about my acting lab class, because I know it will be intense and hopefully really inspiring. I know I can't know all the answers, but I need to figure some things out this semester to help me decide what I'm doing for the rest of the year and sort of the rest of school.

Time to get back to reading! At least it's a happy end to summer, despite some minor setbacks earlier this week. August is turning out okay after all.