Air

I have not been home for two weeks yet. Well, actually, I suppose tomorrow marks day 14 out of the city. In any case, I am fiending for whatever Playwrights laces their water with that makes me want to be back there already. I have just barely finished the semester of my program that my (Obie-winning!) directing teacher says is harder than grad school, and yet I can't wait to get back to my city, my friends, my work, my life, my home. I love my house and I love my family, but so much of my life is in New York now that it is harder than ever to leave it and harder than ever to be home. Sure, I've lived in this house my whole life and so I've created 18+ years of memories here, but somehow the not-quite 2 years of memories I've made at Playwrights hold just as much significance. I guess the thing about college is once you reach this stage, you're the one making choices about your own life. For the first time, I'm really deciding where to live and who my friends will be and what my environment will be like and what I'm going to do. Maybe that makes it matter more than things have in the past.

Earlier this week I had coffee with a friend from home. With the exception of the play I saw on Friday with my godparents (a couple my parents met through church), this friend is the first person outside of my family that I have spent any significant amount of time with since being home. Part of that is because I have been terrible at keeping in contact with people from home over the last two years. I didn't have all that many friends here in the first place, and I connected so much more deeply with people at Playwrights that I didn't work too hard to maintain friendships at home. Consequently, when I come home there are few people I am looking forward to seeing or who are reaching out to spend time with me. Thus I have spent the last two weeks in my house or running errands, pretty much. I read a 500 page book in four days. I've slept about 1,000 times as much in the last two weeks as I did in the entire month of April and the first week and a half of May combined. I desperately miss my Playwrights friends and the unexpected moments of beauty that happen on the streets of New York.

And on top of it all, I have essentially no "homework" this summer, for the first time in about... seven years. Of course, I have to read plays and figure out what I'm proposing to direct in the fall, but that doesn't feel so much like an assignment as reading with - in theory, this is thus far unconfirmed - a deadline. Once we directors get an e-mail from the third year directing teacher about what she wants from us, I'll feel more like I have a sense of direction. Right now I've got to figure out how to create some structure for myself because I feel like I'm floundering without one. I'm currently focusing on Greek plays, but I should probably expand my focus, and yet I don't want to be wading through piles of plays I'm not interested in. For now I think I'll stick with the Greeks and when I have more information I'll figure out how to branch out. My (hopefully) stage manager, Glen, is doing his best to be support as I get frustrated with the local library for not having what I want, when I want it. The NYPL and the Playwrights library spoil me. As I'm currently waiting for a delivery of plays from the inter-library loan system, I'm working my way through Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, which profoundly challenges my brain. I'm about 40 pages in and still not really sure what, if anything, is happening, and happily my vocabulary is being expanded, but if I can't catch on soon, there's no way I'm going to make it through the remaining 500 or so pages. Not gonna lie, rereading the Harry Potter series is in fact pretty high on my list of things to do in the next month.

--This post took a break for a couple days--

In play proposal-development land, I'm slowly wading through every Greek play I can get my hands on. Those Greeks liked to write long plays with lots of people and few speaking women. I may have to venture outward...

The weather here has been great and my mom and I have been taking my dog for long walks, which is nice because I miss walking. But we go on walks and hardly see any people. I miss the sheer quantity of people I come into contact with every day in New York. There's always a surprise, something to laugh at, some art happening in a subway or in front of the Cube, or a Mariachi band outside Soup 'n' Burger.

I had an interview for a job at the video store earlier this week. And I'm working on a Starbucks application. I need something to do this summer to keep me busy and get me in contact with some people. My hopes for the Tisch job are dwindling; it's now a week past when we were supposed to hear back from the Special Programs guy, though he doesn't seem to be a particularly expeditious sort of fellow. As far as I know, no one has heard yet. In the meantime, I've got to keep busy. I realized yesterday that I thought my depression from April was over, but I've been so apathetic the last two weeks that I think it carried into May in a quieter, more dangerous way. Time for some activity. Some fun. Some something. Whew.