"It ends as nothing."

That's the final line of the section I contributed to "Organism," the Festival of piece that I'm involved in. Foreboding, isn't it?

My apologies over the relative silence I've thrown your way past few days. Alongside writing the dissertation, there's been a lot of activity in my personal life (aka: the life I make a conscious effort to keep off this blog), and so while I haven't really had the time to write and reflect what I was doing and what was happening, the material at hand was largely inappropriate to this forum and I just didn't want to write about it--lots and lots of introspection, that would largely be interest and concern only to me. It has always been a strange struggle, attempting to balance a certain reserve here about how I'm doing personally, while still not being totally dishonest about exactly what it is I'm going through. When I don't know how to do that, I go quiet. This is just fact.

Other facts that currently make up my life:

1. I am job seeking. I'm trying to find something essentially full time, because now that I'm out of uni I have to take care of myself, pay my own rent, start paying of my student loan (eventually...I don't actually know when that has to start, but the day approaches like Malcolm's army to Dunsinane--minus the trees), all of this. I also just want to buckle down for the next few months, be a real person, and set up a financial base for myself in this country, which will be necessary for the visa process I've decided to go through. I've done the lot of it before, but as with all new beginnings, the whole thing seems daunting and overwhelming, and I don't like it. To put this reality off a bit longer, I am...
2. ...going to Paris next week. My mother will be there on business, so I'll stay with her and wander the city during the day, reading a copy of Down and Out in Paris and London in different cafes along the boulevard (remember: I am dramatic).
3. I will be staying in the apartment I'm in for one more month, but have no idea where I'll be for November, and this fact (though not quite as harsh as is being interpreted) is vomit inducing to me, in a nerves way. I think about the potential of couch hopping over Thanksgiving and am depressed. (Ah! I've shown you too much sentiment! Quickly, read something here* to distract from the potential of unbridled emotion!)
4. I'm 25 now. Nothing is really different, and I feel the way I have felt since I turned 23. I have continued in my tradition of creating a New Year's Resolution for myself on this day (something I've done since I turned 22, and really needed an active focus/change in my life). This year it's: "Come out of hiding." It's not entirely clear to me what that means, but it seems to make sense on a few levels and I respond to it, so I'll run with it. A few friends took me out to a great NY style martini bar on the day, and then last night a few more who had missed because they were writing their dissertations, met up with me at the Swan (the bar next to the Globe) for a few drinks. It was lovely seeing everyone, and sharing these couple days with people who've become important to me over the past year or so (or in Heidi's case, the past eight+ years). And Jason gave me my coffee for free on the day! Whoo hoo!
   

There must be more things going on that I'm not sharing with you, but they either fall into the category of "too personal for the Internet," or I've clean forgotten them. I'll try to update you in turn, as I remember them, or they become applicable to this arena.

In other news, pertinent to this blog, I've been debating closing it down. I started it so I could talk about going to grad school in England. Now that's over. So what is next? Why bother? Is a reflective blog a good thing to keep going after a certain age, or should one simply stick to creative writing or discussing one's career--subjects that provide release on the part of the blogger, with some veiled sense that that information is being received, that they are being heard. I started these entries as letters to my friends back home, but now I wonder why I don't just do those monthly update e-mails instead (oh, but those bore me to tears--to write, AND to read). I don't know. I'll give it a think, and let you know what happens. Would you bother to keep reading this blog, even after I get my final grade back? And just who are you anyway?

*PS: That blog is amazing. I've been reading it for the past few months and it never fails to make me laugh out loud. My favorite entry shows owls to be the disrespectful creatures that they really are, bastards.

Late night drive by--

Many things, all at once:

1) I am only about 28% done with my dissertation and have three days left to finish it.
2) I will not be back in the states until February 2010.
3) I have to move in twelve days, and I don't know where to, and I don't know how, being unemployed as I am.
4) I am turning twenty-five in this time zone in less than thirty minutes.

Oof.

And now: I am going to bed.

And a Happy Bardday to you!

Not only is today St. George's Day, the celebration of the patron saint of England who is accredited with killing the last dragon (though why one would celebrate the man who is guilty of killing the last dragon is beyond me), it is also the day that people commemorate Shakespeare's birthday.

We don't actually know when Shakespeare was born, just when he was baptised and when he died (the latter also taking place on this date in 1616), but the 23rd is a good estimation, given the date of the recorded baptism, of the date that he may have been born on. So crank your hurdy gurdy, sponsor a bear baiting, and dance a jig in the street with a pint of ale in your hand whilst reciting a sonnet! Huzzah for Shakespeare!

(NOTE: I was kidding about the bear baiting. That stuff's pretty awful. The Elizabethans were hardcore.)

"I'm not that small an actor."

I’ve been bouncing back and forth between New Jersey and New York like a commuter with a mistress I can excuse easily to the wife (if only I was getting reimbursed for transit by my company). I was grounded for a while last week with a four day fever that finally let up the morning of my birthday. The day before the first day of my 24th year, I hopped myself up on Motrin and did a reading of a new play, All is Always Now by Robert Wray, the most acting I’ve done since my little stint as the most helpful of modern tools. It was jarring, but exciting all the same.

My one complaint was that I didn’t have too much to do—in a developing script that only stands at about 38 pages, I was in about the last three. It’s difficult for an actor to know what they’ve done when they have a small part. People mostly connect gripes regarding a mini-sized role directly to an actor’s ego, but it is, in a strictly practical way, difficult. I’ve had leads and parts that were practically walk-ons, and they’re all difficult—acting is hard—but the tough part about the smaller ones is that it’s often hard to see how your character fits in with the action, most of which has been going on without you and independent of what your character wants or needs. This is not always the case and it would be a lie to say so. But it was true in terms of this reading, though I have been told that Margo, the actress that I portrayed for the last three pages, is more developed as the story goes on. So while I think the reading went off well, and I hope Robert got some meaningful feedback to help him finish—and I assure you, my part is supposed to get bigger—I have no idea how I did personally. I can’t even make the usual self- deprecating, humbling assessment of my work, which has become my habit (though secretly or in great moments of inebriation, I do think I am the shit). I truly have no idea. But I do know that it made me hungry and ancy to get back to it—I’ve been in hibernation too long, and I’m ready to play again.

My visa came today! Hooray! One less thing to have a heart attack over.

Other than the visa and the reading, not too much else is going on here, except that I have one week left in the country. And I still haven’t packed my brand new luggage. Not one iota.

Denial, denial, denial…