Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise & haste, & remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly & clearly; and listen to others, even the dull & ignorant; they too have their story. §§ Avoid loud & aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain & bitter; for always there will be greater & lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. §§ Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. §§ Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. §§ Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue & loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. §§ You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees & the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. §§ Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors & aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. §§ With all its sham, drudgery & broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, 1927

A favorite of mine for some twenty years, first seen on a poster at a high-school friend's house. This formatting, as well as the use of "careful" rather than "cheerful" in the final section, is taken from a small framed copy that hung in the back hallway at my grandmother's house. I never noticed it as a child; it was just part of the landscape. It was only when she moved from that house in 1991 that I realized it had been there all along.

Post-Festival-Season Personal Assessment

After a few more months of playing and navel-gazing, and the chance to participate in not one, but two local improv festivals, I'm getting a clearer sense of what I want for myself out of improv, and where I fit into the big picture.

I've heard a couple of people say "Every improviser is an attention whore." Bah, I say, to the idea that all improvisers are alike and have the same goals. This is about me and art and working together and discovery, and I still don't care if anyone watches. This, incidentally, is a very good reason to never put me in charge of publicity. And I'm not immune to disappointment in a low turnout, but it's more for the sake of the troupe as a whole, and realizing that I didn't do everything I could to get butts in the seats.

In both KCiF and ImpFest, I was exactly where I wanted to be. KCiF was a high-profile event that showcased people who have refined their craft and love performing for a crowd. Stage-managing, I didn't have to get out in front of a roomful of strangers, I just did what I do to help it go well for the people who do put themselves out there. I still got off on the show energy, still felt rewarded by the crowd response, because I knew I was part of the big picture. ImpFest was an intimate, performer-oriented event. Every night, a large portion of the audience was other performers. I got to play for the first time in front of some improvisers I really admire, and I don't think I made an ass of myself! But as much fun as I had playing onstage and watching other troupes, the high point for me was being in the booth for Brownies Don't Lie. There's a way I feel connected to a show I tech that isn't like being onstage, and isn't like being in the audience. It's like being part of the environment. I'm one with the theater and the show as a living entity. Thank you, Jill and Trish, for letting me be there with you!

So, I don't see myself striving to land in the top echelon of improv performers. I'm more comfortable in front of audiences now than a year ago, but it still doesn't feel like me. I still ask myself what the hell I'm doing, how I got here when I've never felt that my purpose in life is to personally entertain people. To create art, yes. To help others entertain and create art, yes. To speak directly to spectators, not really. Not in improv, anyway. Writing maybe, if I would ever get my shit together and approach it with dedication (did someone say New Year's Resolution, 2010?).

HOWEVER: performing goals and artistic-growth goals are not the same thing to me. I'm not personally satisfied by "eh, it was okay." I want to keep becoming a better improviser, and I don't believe that is inherently limited by a little dislike of crowds. (Neither does being a crowd-whore make one inherently talented: there are plenty of performers in the world who lip-sync to packed stadiums.) I'm the garage-band musician who rocks a house party now and then. I'm the painter who will never hang in a museum, but gives her friends exquisite figure studies and gorgeous street scenes. I know that shows are part of the package deal - if you'll allow me one more metaphor, a baseball player can't say "I'll play on your team, but only if nobody watches." So, I play the shows to stay with my teams, and to gauge my own growth by audience response, but they aren't my brass ring.


Bonus Rant: Daylight Savings Time is Bullshit!

Extra hour of sleep = nice, but only lasts one day. Farmers who need the extra light in the morning = mostly obsolete. Moving DST later in the year = a serious fucking-up of everyone's circadian rhythms. Two years ago, we went from dark-at-eight to dark-at-seven, and had more time to get used to it before the really short days. Now we're suddenly in the dark before six. This was a stupid, stupid move. We should be eliminating DST altogether, and sucking it up in the darker mornings with the rest of the world (and Arizona). Or adjust work schedules accordingly: don't want to drive to work in the dark? Work 9-6 instead of 8-5. Independent shopkeepers adjust their hours for summer and winter. Why should corporate schedules be so rigid that a whole nation has to pretend it has control over TIME? Who do we think we are?

The Song In My Head

Hi. I'm tapped out on the heavy topics, at least for the time being. More to say, always, but the drafts are tangling up in Notepad, and I don't like to do that "I'll just spill it straight from my brain to the whole world" thing. It's not very good for precision.

So... here. Enjoy!


I'll be your mirror,
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know.
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset,
The light on your door to show that you're home.

When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you're twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands,
'cause I see you.

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty you are.
But if you don't, let me be your eyes,
A hand to your darkness, so you won't be afraid.

When you think the night has seen your mind,
That inside you're twisted and unkind,
Let me stand to show that you are blind.
Please put down your hands,
'cause I see you.

I'll be your mirror.

Happy National Coming Out Day!

Since 1988, October 11 has been recognized as "an internationally-observed civil awareness day for coming out and discussion about gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues." (source: Wikipedia, of course.)

You might already know this, but I'm bisexual. I'm a 2, maybe 2.5, on the Kinsey Scale, slightly more oriented toward the opposite sex than the same. It doesn't matter much: the person I fell in love with and am committed to for the rest of my life is a man. He has always accepted me for who I am (we wouldn't be married if he didn't), and doesn't expect me to find "us" a girlfriend or anything like that.

I'm not looking for myself either, really. I haven't ruled out a significant relationship with a woman at some point in my life (in the manner of historically notable married bi women like Frida Kahlo and Eleanor Roosevelt), but honestly I don't have the time and energy to put into it right now. It's hard enough to carve out time to spend with my husband, as busy as we've been lately!

I don't think of my female friends in romantic/sexual terms. I appreciate your cuteness, but I respect your straightness - it doesn't do anything for me to chase someone whose orientation isn't compatible with mine. There's an element of consent that would be clearly missing from that equation. Ick.

So if I'm not looking for a girlfriend, why am I bothering to come out? Simply put, I do this to honor the fallen. I am extremely lucky in that most people in my life probably won't blink twice at this new information. When I think of people who are outcast, disowned, beaten, murdered, for being who they are and loving who they love, I know that it is my duty to stop hiding.

If you are, in fact, still blinking, and suddenly concerned for my and my husband's emotional welfare or afterlife status, I'd be glad to talk with you, answer your questions, and even listen to why you might disapprove. (Unless you're one of those spammy blog trolls who doesn't know me personally.) Remember: I am the same person you've always known, and this has always been part of me. All that has changed is how much you know.

On the other hand, I'm also here to talk to if you need to sort out your own orientation. It hurts to have to keep yourself a secret, and we're all in this together.

Coming out is not a sudden decision, of course. I've known since I was about 20, and I've told a few people over the years, but I've never considered myself officially "out." I was working on a blog this past January, right after the one in which I said I wanted to be more honest this year. Then Grandma Sophie passed away, and it didn't seem like appropriate timing. I dropped it into a Facebook list meme, and a couple people noticed. I told my improv troupe in rehearsal, while providing the information for a "Day In The Life" musical game, and they sang a really fun song. It felt like a birthday party!

Upcoming: my feelings about gay jokes, queer characters in improv, and that sort of thing. The topic has gotten some press and discussion lately in the KC circles, and it would be remiss of me not to weigh in. For the moment, though, I think this blog is long enough.

Sorting

Two years after closing my little bookshop (which was really a glorified flea market booth - but dammit, I tried!) I'm finally undepressed enough to deal with the store inventory. I've started with the 54 boxes that I catalogued and listed online. They're now divided into three categories. I'm keeping a bunch for myself: important literary titles, information I think I might need in the next fifty years, antique editions with bindings too pretty to pass up. That's a couple hundred books, altogether.

About three hundred more are worth putting the effort into listings that might actually sell. I've sold about a dozen books in the two years I've had the half-assed "full description pending; please inquire" listings up. I can write a killer description, but they take time. Pricing research takes time too, and must be revisited because the market fluctuates. I just sold a 1910 motorcycle repair manual for a pittance, because I didn't keep up and eventually discover that I had the only copy available on the whole internet.

That leaves some 750 titles that aren't worth the space they take up, or the trip to the post office if one actually sells. I can get a little cash (or trade credit!) for some of them at a couple of better-established used bookshops. Half Price Books is out because they lowball insultingly low. Still, I'm left with scads of ex-library, no dustjacket, cocked spine, book club edition, unhelpful self-help, or just plain oversaturated titles, like the ones everyone's great-aunt has on the shelf.

They seemed like interesting stock at the time.

What to do, then, with several hundred unwanted books? Donating is not the easy option one might think: the obvious recipients such as libraries and prisons usually can't keep up with the influx, frequently rejecting donations or even throwing them away. (source: a booksellers' Yahoo group and a phone call to Lansing). Maybe a shelter would take ten books, and a school would take ten more... the law of diminishing return comes into play quickly.

If you (Gentle Reader!) want a chance to sift through the boxes (because you love M*A*S*H enough to need a large-format, slightly worn paperback on the making of the series), I'm open to making arrangements for that. These aren't the scary, dusty, spider-hiding-place boxes of books; they're in neat little Office Depot boxes. You can have a whole bunch. Like, for a cup of coffee or something. Just don't give them back to me.

Ultimately, I'm going for an environmentally friendly angle. Please bear in mind: these are books that have had plenty of opportunities to find homes. Pretty much all they do is take up space. Also remember (she said, pulling out her Snob Card) that I can recognize a book that should be preserved for its scarcity or significance, and I err on the safer side.

There's a recycling center in Pittsburg, KS that takes in books, and has a couple of "last chance" sales per year before turning household hints and religious platitudes into fresh paper products. That's actually where I got a notable percentage of these unmovable books... so back they'll have to go.

I've set aside a bunch of them, though, to eliminate the middleman between me and the brand-new recycled paperstuff. I think it would be really cool to have a little handmade notebook that used to be a coffee-stained, loose-hinged Anna Karenina, or write a grocery list on what was once a potboiler mystery. I've never tried papermaking, but I'll probably get the hang of it after a few gooey attempts. I'll update you on that, and maybe someday you'll get an original Inky Neverwhere bookmark!

I love being married to a mad scientist.

I'll bet you'd like Hans' blog. Here are a couple of highlights:
Kid Power
Guitar Hero Jam

I'll be catching up a few saved blogs and half-blogs in the next couple of weeks. I haven't had decent internet access when/where I've had time to write, and haven't had time to write at home. Like now. Bye!

Improv Boobs

Wait. No. This isn't about improv boobs. Improv boobs are funny, unnaturally large, unnaturally saggy, or unnaturally gravity-resistant. Improv boobs magically appear on players of either gender, and you can do anything to them without being creepy.

This is about real boobs, the ones attached to me, and the protocol of their onstage usage. It's about personal respect.

The boobs are my toys, and when I bring them onstage, I get to control them. I decide when they get to be played with, and by whom. My character might use them to offer comfort, or as a weapon. If your character discovers a reason to physically interact with them, you need to communicate that to me.

It's just like any dangerous physical move: slow it down and/or check in with eye contact first. Make sure I know where you're headed. I won't block you if it's what needs to happen (and if you aren't creepy and inappropriate offstage, which most people in KC improv thankfully are not)- and if I need to block, it'll be funny and the scene can keep going with minimal damage to the fourth wall. Don't sneak up on my boobs. Don't make a fast move from where I can't see you. And for fuck's sake, don't make mouth contact unless we're REALLY cool. There are, like, a dozen funny ways to get any point across without violating my personal boobs (and making me feel like vomiting for the next six weeks).

Being in a troupe or workshop together doesn't implicitly give you permission to maul my boobs. Even previous offstage joking concerning said boobs doesn't give you permission. The only long-term permission is a verbal discussion: "I trust you, and I'm cool with whatever physicality the scene calls for."

Finally, here's a tip for those in troupe leadership positions: if there's a boob violation between two of your players, and the one with the boobs is clearly not okay with it, don't brush her off with "You should have expected it," and then have a good laugh with the boob-mauler. That's like the judge who tells the rape victim, "You shouldn't have worn a short skirt."