I can see my navel from here.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Chicks before dicks.

Okay, so what I really have to do is spend more time with my girls.

I worked at the theater all this weekend helping Jake get stuff ready for tech week and then I went and hung out with Jinny and her son Storm Saturday night. Jinny and I had drinks in the kitchen and in the morning I came back and made brunch for the three of us. I'm still there right now, just chilling out, Sunday-style.

Life is so much better after having a good long vent with your lady friends. I needed this: I needed to get out of my head, forget about boys, and loosen up a bit. I guess I'm not breaking up with Balagan right now, either. I think we just had a weekend of make-up sex: I made curtains, moved flats, cleaned the Cabaret, put lamps and lumber in storage, stripped wires wearing a hand-knit angora sweater, and got down and dirty and covered in theater filth. And then I had a wonderful night.

The sun has come out today.

I love a good Sunday afternoon.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Simple things less simple.

The day after my interaction with Mr. VNRS I received the loveliest e-mail from a dear friend, who I hope will not mind me publishing an excerpt and will forgive me for not asking first. (I will take it down if you ask me to!) I find his writing -- English is a second language to him -- beautiful and poetic in its simplicity and speaks to me of another time when writing a letter was an art.

I don't even know how to start... Good morning?!

Hopefully you are doing alright. Apologies in advance for the probably messed-up shape or order of thoughts and things in this e-mail... Complete with a few months of intensive English forgetting-by-not-speaking-anymore. I think I just basically want to hear from you... And of course, offer some news also...

I believe that last time we saw each other was very, very brief. ...I must have appeared very rude...because I had to leave as C*** was starting to feel sick.

So I didn't stay...[a]nd I couldn't even have a little chat with you. It was all too short... And then... Time flew.

I have read your post, earlier tonight, about how you (sorry if I'm betraying the idea by re-expressing it) are basically envisaging how seeing someone is seeing them for the last time. It's really insane, it brought (still does bring) tears to my eyes, because when I hugged you goodbye on that night that I described above, I had exactly the same idea in my mind...

...with a different mindset, though. I was probably trying to anticipate for the reverse-culture-clash that I knew was ahead. But basically this kind of self-cynical sadness that lays behind the idea seems to be exactly the same.

I do not really know how or why we initially became (good) acquintances... Besides the fact that we have a connection of geekiness, and maybe art sensitivity (which you're so amazingly good at expressing)... It seems like a great and precious thing, though. Therefore I do not really know or understand why we never developed a stronger bond either... Meaning, we rarely hung out, if at all. It's even more impressive now that some time has passed. Can you believe that we met in 2004? That was more than three years ago. You forever are part of the very significant people of my life in Seattle. Even though I am capable of having the same kind of thoughts about people coming, going, gravitating, I still mean it.

And I have no idea why I am telling you all that in that order. I am starting to wonder if it is making any sense, and if it's not becoming too boring!

...Your health. I wish I could help. I really, really do. I feel terrible that I've missed a few seemingly crucial episodes. And to punctuate this short summary of unsummarizable feelings, I am also really, really glad that you are seemingly in good hands at the right time.

...For months I have had archived e-mails from you that "I really need to reply to". Until it's so far, distance and time-wise, that the words are just rushing out and no matter the order, they are just too many to make all the sense they should.

But hey... I wanted to say hello. Simple things. I hope that you are healing. I really wish I could easily spend some time sharing some physical space with you. I wish I could have seen Space. I wish we'll perform some karaoke together some more time. I miss my roommate of only three months. All that.

Context just makes these simple things less simple to say. For example, I am fearing that they might not appear sincere. But they are.

Have a nice day,

Random, distant E***

How wonderful, and such good timing.

This is what I mean about my life: in my own way, I am mind-blowingly fortunate. I do have people who love me; a long list of them. I understand that I haven't always been deserving of their esteem and that, at times, I know have been a frustratingly absent friend. I've been trying to change, but, of course, not fast enough for my own tastes.

I find that the moments of the greatest craving for my own death are characterized by a longing, an overwhelming feeling of love for my people accompanied by a feeling of insurmountable distance. It's almost a sweet feeling, and I feel unafraid of whatever may come next. It's a high, and infinitely preferable to a deep and miserable depression.

But I remember what it's like to be happy, too, happy all the time and so much so that you think you'll burn away from the feeling. Clean, simple, uncomplicated.

I think, from now on, I must search for these times of an unburdened heart.

I expect to be very bad at it. Maybe I'll get better in time.

Re: "Gender Stereotypes Trump Racial Stereotypes in Every Social Science Test."

I'm too sick to comment except, as a professional woman, DUH.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Because he thinks he should be consistant.


I'm trying to figure out how to value a human life.

And not just how one values a human life, in theory, but how I and the people I want close to me value life though action, word and deed.

But first, a selection from bobrauchenbergamerica by Chuck Mee:

19 Dessert

Bob's Mom brings out a cake and
sets it down on the picnic table.
As this next scene goes along,
Susan starts to eat compulsively,
taking pieces of cake or cupcakes from the table--
at first absentmindedly, at a normal cake-eating pace,
and then more and more compulsively,
until she is stuffing it into her mouth.

BECKER
I think I know how he feels myself.
I thought you cared for me, too.

SUSAN
I did care for you.
There was something about you
I don't even know what it was that just hit me
I couldn't help myself
but then it turns out
it was like a summer storm
it passed as quickly as it came
and then it was over.

BECKER
Maybe it wasn't over for me.

SUSAN
I'm sorry.

BECKER
I don't think you can just drop someone like that
and just say I'm sorry.

SUSAN
I didn't just say I'm sorry
I am sorry.

BECKER
This is why some people call women fickle.

SUSAN
I don't think it has anything to do with being fickle.
How it is for women:
Women feel what they feel when they feel it
and then when they don't feel it any more they don't feel it.
Unlike a man
who won't know what he feels when he feels it
and then later on
he'll realize how he felt
and so he'll talk himself into feeling it again
when he doesn't feel it
because he thinks he should be consistent about the positions he takes
and stick to them
so a man always thinks he feels things he doesn't feel
and so he never really knows how he feels at all.

BECKER
That could be true.

SUSAN
Of course it's true.
Pretty soon
you're going to thank god you had such a narrow escape
you're going to feel lucky I dumped you

BECKER
I'm never going to feel that.

SUSAN
Maybe not.

BECKER
I think you must be a sort of a tease
or worse
some kind of seducer and dumper kind of person
who is just a loose cannon
cutting a swath through men
leaving them wrecked all around you
what is that all about?

[She speaks, with a mouth full of cake,
eating as she speaks,
with greater and greater animation as she goes on,
till she is yelling through a mouth full of cake.]

SUSAN
Maybe that would be about something
if it were in any way true
but it is not in any way true
I'm a person who is looking for true love
like anyone else
except the difference is
I am trying not to be afraid of my feelings
and censor things
and lie and lie and lie all the time
pretending I feel like this or that
going with some guy because I couldn't be sure any more
how I felt about him
because he had some things I liked and other things I didn't
and trying to talk myself into not caring about the things I cared about
and caring about the things I didn't care about
because I've done that a lot in the past
so I am trying to let my feelings lead me through life
And
feelings are feelings
they come and go.
So probably I'm just as disoriented as you are
and left in the lurch
suddenly dropped
or thrown down the stairs
it's not as though this is not a struggle for me too
but the one thing you can be sure of is
if ever I am sure of how I feel
in a way that is the kind of feeling that I know will last
then when that time comes
if it so happens that I do tell you I love you
then you can be sure of it.

Not all of this applies, some of it is here out of pure love for the writing.

Long story short, I ran out of meds and went into crisis this weekend. I had to leave work early Monday to go to the ER to get a script written for me. I called Mr. VNRS from my sister's car and very nearly begged for company later that night. I was scared for my life and I finally felt like I could trust this person enough to ask.

"I don't know," he said, cagey. "I'm going roller skating. I've been planning it for a week. Don't you have any other friends you can see?"

I had spent the previous night first being a near-fight-starting wet blanket at our friend Becky's birthday and then sitting in my bathtub trying to calm down enough to sleep and not murder myself.

"Um. No. Whatever. I'll...call you."

We didn't get out of the ER until 10, at which point I was so overwhelmed that I went home and passed out and slept until noon the next day. My old friend Dan came over and helped me get functional enough to get the script filled, later reporting that I seemed "1000% better" post-drug. It's true, I am not currently harboring a desire for my own death, which, all in all, I am going to consider a bonus -- even if it means a return to the hypomania and nausea of re-adjusting to citalopram. (Blogger doesn't recognize that word and suggests I replace it with recitalists or extramarital. See? Hypomanic! Normally I would neither have cared nor shared. Modern pharmaceuticals' gift to you.)

Later, the Rock Star and I spoke briefly about his comment. I asked him not to do it again if I came to him for help since that might cost me my life. He said that scared him. A lot.

I'm trying to understand this exchange, which confuses and upsets me. I also have a cold and audited for Balagan at the TPS generals (more on that front later), so everything is kinda weird, body-wise, and that also limits my critical thinking.

However, and more importantly, I have a personal issue where I minimize disrespect done to me and maximize disrespect done to other people. So, if someone hurts me and my friend the same way, I will usually be more angry on their behalf than my own. Make of that what you will in reference to my character and history.

So, I feel that the Rock Star's behavior is unethical and, more to the point, calls my basic notion of his good character into question. I look at this and think: This is a person who does not make friends. He does not love people: he sees the potentially-dangerous consequences of his actions and behaves discompassionately. This is not love, and, if not, what really are the people he calls friends?

Speaking with him a little did not help, and, instead, the only excuses I can see for his behavior -- fear, or lack of emotional preparedness -- were not there. As far as I could tell, he simply...didn't choose to care. It wasn't important enough to him.

It's extremely challenging for me to ask for help with this, my disease, this irrational chronic existential crisis that I can't help but feel is mind-numbingly cliche and embarrassing. Even my closest friends, my sister, people who, like the Rock Star, were there every day for me in the hospital, I can hardly bring myself to interrupt their lives to save my own out of sheer guilt. I must have felt very ill and a danger to myself to know that I had to ask for help.

But now I feel I don't know this person. I feel nothing less than revulsion for his choice. For my friends, even if it is a person who has boundary issues, I would save their life first, and then have the longer conversation of why this is inappropriate behavior. This is triage: stabilize the acute and then treat the chronic.

But I have a disease, I realize, an illness, wherein I cannot always see my emotions for what they are. When I hear this from my lover, I hear, "Oh, what are you doing tonight? Slitting your throat? Yeah...not feeling that so much. I'm going to spend time with virtual strangers who call themselves our friends, and you can come if you want. No? I guess no one will miss you. You have fun, though. With the throat slitting and all. It's cool that you're into stuff, you know, keeping busy. Bye."

No, really, that's how it sounds. Hell, when people tell me they worry for me I hear, "How unfortunate that your life is hard! If it's convenient then I'll maybe be around. If I'm there. You know." Which, rationally, I know is not what they are saying, they're saying, "I love you! Please, please don't go." It's symptomatic of the disease that I have a different translation.

So, all this beggars the question, how do I react to this? Should I take it at face value, has this person been misrepresenting his nice-guy front? Should I feel dirty that I trusted someone who has no ethics, should I feel suckered? Should I feel sorry for them? Should I forgive them, try to be friends if nothing else? Should I avoid a toxic situation all together? Would I feel more or less upset if I were a spectator and not a participant?

I truly, desperately want this to be a fluke, that Mr. Very Nice Rock Star is as nice as he seems to be. I have for some time been wondering why he has few, if any, close friends or confidants. Maybe it's not that he's uncomfortable with intimate friendships, perhaps he's incapable of it for other reasons: he may be unable, for whatever reason, to give that level of respect that I expect from my other intimates. I don't want that to be the case. But I'm afraid it it may be, and that I will have lost most or all of my respect for him literally over night. Yet at the moment, how do I know what is real? If I don't know my own reality, do my feelings even have a place?

I'm frightened. This makes me feel sick: shunned by someone I love, for the first time since getting out. I want my friend back. I don't know what will happen. I feel like I am clinically unlovable.

Last night I hung out with Jake and told him all this. All he said was, "Well! That's when you call me. Why didn't you call me? Hello, best friend! You should have just come over. I miss you! And don't think about it too much. Everything's going to be okay. I promise."

That's the best lie I've ever heard.

I want to hear it again.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

I went home and did just what he said I'd do.




















I now have three all-time favorite unforgettable best pieces of theater art and a second most timely for me as a person work.

Single-moment-in-time-stretching-away-into-the-distance performances, in chronological order of my seeing them:
  1. My hero Mary Zimmerman's The Secret In The Wings (Seattle Rep). Simply, it was a bridge between two parts of my life and had everything my girl's heart could dream and everything my woman's soul could need.
  2. Elevator Repair Service's 6+ hour word-for-word performance of F. Scott Fitzgerald's grim tragedy of undying love, The Great Gatsby: Gatz. Set in a banal office, there is silence, then chaos, then silence again and I was fully entranced for the entire length.
  3. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
Most Heartbreaking Reflection Of My Life performances:
  1. Rent by Jonathan Larson. I was 20, has just had my first psychiatric hospitalization, and was an acting student living in Manhattan.
  2. How Theater Failed America by Mike Daisey.
Last night I saw Mike Daisey perform his newest show, How Theater Failed America. If you don't know about him you may still have heard or read him, as he is not only an actor, writer, and fat man who sits at a table, he is also a commentator for NPR and writes for several magazines. I had seen him previously in his break-out 21 Dog Years At Amazon.com ten years ago so I knew what to expect: a sweaty fat man sitting at a table that you cannot take your eyes off of. Talking. Just...talking. And drinking water.

The basic premise of the show is the imminent economic failure of regional theater, which is largely uninteresting to anyone outside of theater and a terrifying white elephant to anyone inside of it. It tells nothing new. Most art does not tell a new story.

However, it struck me, and I had, at the end, one of those tunnel vision moments at the end, where he is speaking only to me, looking only at me, as though hundreds of other people were not present and we were alone together in the dark. He had spoken about his suicide attempts and being saved by work, nothing but work. Art, starvation, nothing but ramen for months, but it gave him life. And then he said, Go. Go do this work. Be as luminous as I know you are, as you know you are, because this is not political commentary or a failing industry but the only thing that will give you life. Go, work, and Godspeed.

I have no money. I have ten dollars to live on until the 15th and I have 2/3 of a large container of plain non-fat yoghurt in my fridge, uncooked soba in my cupboard, two large containers of salt, and a jar of honey. No produce, no fruits or veggies or anything unless my wonderful big sister buys me apples and carrots tomorrow at the farmer's market. I barely work and don't know if I can manage more hours. But I can't, literally, live another day like this.

The part of my brain that understands money is fatally broken. Things appear, or they do not. This simply is and is not connected to any other function. (I am not this way when I run a business, however.) I do understand that I am dying, right now, and if do not do something right this very fucking moment that very soon it may be too late for me. I cannot wait, it is an imperative.

So. So I guess that I am going to quit Balagan. They are doing nothing that I want to do; they are the Boston Pops performing an over-produced Copeland and I am Jimi Hendrix. The current season is full of large, ensemble casts of solid, proven works with moderate production values and not enough rehearsal time lead by an already-bloated, squabbling administrative team that I could come back and save (I would be very good at that) but, since it already sent me to the hospital, I feel that would be inadvisable. I want to see a man hang upside down in leather and spikes playing Moliere by candlelight for nine people. I want to have five people in panda suits eat sushi in a five-star sushi restaurant. I want to produce Hamlet in Space and cast rock stars who wear body glitter. I want to make punk rock theater. I want to be happy, not broken-hearted; free, not bound; alive, not dead. I feel cheated and tired and I have only thiiiiiis much left to live for.

So. To work, then.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Gōngxǐ fācái, hóngbāo nálái*.


Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year.

Mr. Very Nice Rock Star is a Rat.

*Mandarin: "Congratulations and be prosperous, now give me a red envelope"**.

**In China, red envelopes with cash money inside are given at the New Year as symbolic wishes for prosperity to the recipient. Personally, I have always felt that giving me money was a very lucky thing to do. Now give me a red envelope.

Radio Silence, or Eleven Days and Twelve Nights In A Stone-White Room.

I'm back.

I feel...

...I don't know. I don't know what I feel.

I read yesterday in this book, a book on why people who commit suicide do so, that two conditions must exist for a person who can and will commit suicide (as opposed to the equally-dangerous if less premeditated accidental suicide by suicidal gesture): they must perceive themselves both as a burden on their loved ones and lacking a community, involvement and belonging, to something, anything.

I guess that's where I am. I do feel a burden, I do feel removed from meaning, from belonging.

On November 30th, 2007, I checked myself into Harborview Medical Center for severe depression and anxiety with suicidal ideation.

It was good for me. Right after I got out, I was feeling a little (okay, a lot) better. But now, almost two months out, my meds have stopped working and all of the wonderful people who came out of the woodwork to support me have gone back to their lives. For the which I can place no blame; they have their own lives which I do not want to interfere with. I haven't been able to see anyone to get my medication adjusted. I can barely go to my day job, I rarely leave the house, I see almost no one. A few months ago I couldn't sleep past 9am; now, when I sleep, I sleep until 1pm, sometimes waking only to stay in bed, quietly and warmly, and wondering what would happen if I didn't leave.

The sole bright point, the only thing to look forward to without the guilt of my own absurd existence marring it, is a writing project that I seem to have fallen into with Mr. ARS. A rock opera. We're writing a rock opera. Which, since that's the most absurd thing I could possibly think of to do, seems right somehow. Good. He saved my life, too: he was the one who talked me down at the crucial moment when I am almost certain few, if any, others could have. He knew what to say. He did not cry, or beg, or coddle, or tell me that I had so much to live for. Rather, he calmly stated that, although not a sin, it would be a waste. He knew he could not stop me; he could only ask.

I understand that what I have is a disease. I do not hold myself to blame. I hold my parents somewhat responsible due to their abhorrent parenting, though not entirely because of the overwhelmingly vast mental illness streaking through my family, running wild like a sophomore on Spring Break in Tijuana.

Neither do I hold anyone else to blame. How could I? I only wish that I were a healthier person in order to be a better friend or family member to them.

I feel? Grateful that I have such a beautiful life, angry at my ungrateful self that I do not or cannot appreciate it in all its beauty. Utterly alone at times, although I know in my head that is a lie I tell myself, like the lie that I feel empty.

I know that I'm going to get up tomorrow, eventually eat, knit for a while, and try to breathe and stay calm.

But I do, oh I do, wish that I had a reason to get up tomorrow.