Tiny Actors--You Could Put Them Almost Anywhere

These are little actors. They are really amazingly small.











Here, they stretch.











Here I have put a penny into the picture so you can see how small they actually are. Nothing in this photo is in focus, but you get the idea. This is a metaphor for early rehearsals. Nothing is focused, but I tell myself they are getting the bigger picture.






Sword play.






Cut. Parry. Move your feet. Now exchange. And again. Now do it in front of the group. No, it's alright, everybody falls apart in front of an audience. Let's do it again.










Today I assigned fight partners. Today we decided who lives and who dies and who will carry the dead from the field named for the castle that stood hard by. Agincourt, they called it.








The French court. The English were excused today after fight training. Only Exeter remained to deliver Henry's message of scorn, defiance, slight regard and contempt. Photo taken by Chorus, who had to hang around to give the French their cues.







Reading. Reading lines. Trying to understand the push, the passion, the movement of this story. Is this before the traitor scene? Am I English in this scene? Is my other character dead? Are we going to do it again?!? Trying to wait for your line. Trying to pay attention. Trying to stay awake.











Good work, tiny, shiny-bright people. Memorize. See you after vacation.

Two Fires

This is the fire pit I built for my bishop in my backyard.
He wanted to have a party for all the new families in our ward— I think this desire took him by surprise— anyway, he didn’t plan it much, he just asked at church on Sunday if we would have it at our house on Friday.
I tried to figure it out. What did he want? How many people were we feeding? He said he thought six or seven families. Probably. He said he didn’t want me to micro-engineer this. (?) I said ok, but does that mean no planning at all? Can we get a firmer idea of how many people? It turned out to be twenty new families and about that many again of the ward officers he wanted the new people to meet.
The party was announced in Priesthood and Relief Society.

I talked to the Relief Society presidency.
We made plans, we discussed them, we discarded them. They asked what I was going to do when it snowed? I told them the bishop checked the weather forecast on his iphone at church and it wasn't supposed to snow.

I decided to make it all desserts, just massive sugar offerings, and fires to stay warm by, since we would be staying outside. The bishop said he didn’t want this to impact my house at all.
Hmm.
I needed to build another fire pit.

On Friday morning the snow forecasts got serious. People started calling me. What are we doing now, since it's going to snow? I asked my bishop what the fallback plan was. He said, no fallback. He said, are you micro-engineering this? (Micro--?) He said the weather will be great. He waved his hand vaguely. Don’t think about it anymore, he said. Great weather, he said.
I called Bri. He texted his friend the bishop to ask what the fallback plan would be.
No fallback plan. Don't think about the weather anymore.
So I built another pit and got wood and made cookies and didn’t think about it. A seasoned friend said, the bishop doesn’t want you to plan this because he didn’t.

I sat for a while on my back steps looking at my firepits and thought about a lot of things. I thought about how I decide something is going to work out well or badly. I thought how it is I begin to worry about a possible future. I realized I had decided to feel that the bishop was going to be right. I would have the party as he had requested and just do whatever I could with whatever happened.



And we had the party and lots of people came. Great weather, as foretold.


It didn’t snow. It was lovely, really; not too cold to be outside, but only just.


Everyone kept right close to the fire to stay warm but no one burst into flame.



This is Saturday morning.


“I think Flexibility should be one of the Young Women’s virtues.”
--Cassandra Barney

Never Lonely When You Have a Blog

Brightly Colored Burdens/ Brian Kershisnik

This blog follows me around. I've only been with it once and already it is bumping into my mind time, reminding me it has needs, making suggestions and nudging me a bit, altering my direction. "You could do this instead of that, it would be good for a blog."
"You should take a photo [I never take a photo unless at the Grand Canyon or the Tower of London a non-English-speaking tourist with a pathetic smile and frantically bobbing head hands me a camera and I simply can't get someone else to do it. Nor have I ever before used brackets. I never got that far in math.] should take a photo and write about this. It would be great for the blog."
"You should take note of this childhood story you happened to remember. Maybe you could connect it to your day today. Maybe there is a passable essay in it. It would be great for the blog."
How did I become so suddenly connected to something with needs and demands? Another being that must be fed? How did I join the world of the blogging? I never join anything. God intended I be a member of His church and had me born into it because He knew there was no way in this world I would ever join. I don't make commitments, I don't even make friends. Ask anybody. I am a lousy committer. I got married this one time, but other than that, all my commitments God gave me. If I try to make a friend, I try and it is this awkward thing. I would simply walk away from this bossy blog except that people have read it. Read it and told me that they did. Read it, told me and asked how often I am going to post. Read, told, asked and suggested a posting schedule. Nudge, nudge.
Here is what I have been thinking about today. Looming blogs shape your thinking.
I read a book called My Grandfather's Blessings. I read it with a book group but really, we didn't have a discussion, more of an homage. Two of the women in the group had already read it and loved it too much for anyone to talk about it, in case they might take some sort of issue with it. So we only got to tell our favorite parts and I never got to say what it made me think about, so I want to say it here.
The author, who works with terminally ill cancer patients, talked about how the dying are often so free, that they really learn to see themselves and what they want from life when they realize they could die. I thought about what I would free myself from if I were dying. Phone calls. I hate making phone calls. I would quit making phone calls. And I did feel as if a great weight rolled from me at the thought. I would start living now. I would be happy now and for the rest of whatever life I have left. No unwanted phone calls. I would not wait till someone told me I had only a short time to live before walking myself away from the phone. I would be as brave as I thought the author of the book was suggesting I be. I would go in the direction my soul was nudging me. No more guilt and avoidance and prevarication. No more manipulation to get Bri to do it. Just no more.
And so how was I going to do this?
How was I going to do this and live?
If I were dying I could say to the bishop that I wasn't going to be the kind of Relief Society secretary who made phone calls because I hate it and if I were dying he would say it was ok. In fact, he would say it was ok and ask me what I wanted to do instead and then probably let me do it. Because I would be dying. What I want is to live but to live like the dying. No more phone calls or okra or old carpet or politness to nasty relatives or whatever. But I can't simply stop making phone calls or eating vegetables or being polite. I have to live with these people. I can't buy new carpet just because we really need it and my life would be so much brighter if the yucky old stuff were gone. That's not the way we live. Someone has got to make phone calls and that person has got to be me.
Just how do you do that?
Just who is going to make the phone calls?
How can I say that it makes my life terrible and I want to stop?
How do I join the living at my time of life?

The first one

The first one is because I am not sleeping at 3am. All of everything I have read about not sleeping says that you shouldn't lie in bed trying to sleep, you should do something else. But I never have, I just try to sleep, and try and try for years and years. Sometimes I feel a little bit ridiculous, like I'm pretending I sleep, like I never will sleep, not really, not ever again. Like I'm a little kid pretending I went to bed when I was supposed to, when my mother told me to before she went out for the evening and left me in charge. Like we didn't spend the last hour before she and my dad got back watching every set of headlights that turned off of main street toward our house looking for-- what? The shape? The headlight profile of our parents' car? I don't know, but whatever it was, we knew it. Pretending we hadn't spent the time it took them to drive two and a half country blocks flying through the house, cleaning up at the speed of light, turning off all the lights on all the floors so that what our parents saw as they came up the street must have looked like a brilliant Chinese lantern with four (sorry, baby sister, you weren't born yet in this story) frenetic blurs rocketing about and then the light in one space after another blinking out till the whole lantern was dark and quiet. All of us in our beds, trying to look like sleeping people, sleeping people who just happened to be completely of breath. My mom came in to look at us. Gentle snores to improve the effect. She bent down close and whispered. "Liars." And that's how I feel, sometimes, lying in the dark trying to sleep. Lying. Trying. Lying to sleep.

So I thought I should try something else and see if it works. Try, try, try. I am trying. I am trying harder. I am trying something new. I am trying blogging. I am not trying to sleep.

How sad this glow must look from outside my bedroom. How sad and tiring. Look, the people say to each other as they walk by my window. Look at that poor person blogging and not sleeping. How pitiful. Yes, yes it is. Why are you people walking by my window in the night? You should be home in bed. Some of you would be sleeping, I know people do it, I've seen a lot of that from my husband and two of my children, but some of you could be blogging. Cozy, to blog in bed, the blankets and the laptop keep you warm. Good thing the battery was charged. What it doesn't do, I think, is make you sleepy. Just tired.

I'm trying this. I'm not lying here, I'm really trying.