Life. Unable to Write at This Time

A Man Refusing to Paint, Brian Kershisnik

When I began this blog I thought I knew me pretty well. Nothing could have prepared me for fairly steady diligence on my part. I could have told you I'd write once, fully intending to be back faithfully the next week but flaking out and only showing up every once in a while, for a month or so, then erratically once a month for about four months and then in a panic of self-loathing and good intentions twice a year, then chuck the blarmed thing on the hoarded heap of failures I aggressively avoid examining. Or even knowing about anymore.
Here are a few things I've learned.

*As my preferred food presentation is saladesque or stir fried and so is my preferred writing style.

*I really like poetry even when that poetry is actually a song lyric. Verse, I suppose I should call that.

*I really really really love to tell stories in which I figure prominently. I really do. A lot.

*I am going to try to be precise, to nail it, even if I need 20,000 words to get there.

*I will edit for a long, long time. I will not get it right.

*Even when I'm talking about my own self in a near-compulsive fashion and spending 20,000 words to get me from A to B, it's surprising how people reading will just go ahead and draw a line sending me on from B on to C (and then phone to tell me so), even if all along I had supposed it perfectly plain if not embarrassingly obvious that I myself would have headed off toward another letter altogether. Or stopped at B.

*Kanosh is not like the rest of the world.

*The rest of the world can be understood by staring at it through memories of my long-gone Kanosh, if I stare long enough. Sometimes people think I'm sleeping during these important times, but I'm really pondering in a staring sort of way.

*If someone tries to interact with me while I'm writing I have to eat them. Regardless of how weak, needy or defenseless they may be. Most especially if they're the painter.

*I misspell the same words over and again and there are more of those than I can rest easy about in my mind.

*Spell check is sort of provincial and needs to get out more into some tougher books.

*And, (brace yourself), life can interfere with writing. Never saw that one coming, did you? I know I didn't. Of course this isn't a surprise, shouldn't be a surprise, but I am SO surprised because I've never regularly, faithfully pursued anything (religion aside) over such a sustained period other than breathing, eating and reading so I sit and gaze in wonder at all the ways I can be prevented and the reasons therefore like I've got a crush on them. I would have bet ready money I'd be prevented simply by the drag of my own laziness and general disinclination to work or to do anything at all hard.
But it turns out that's not what keeps me away. Other stuff, not personal failings, do; and their number is three.
Naturally, I assumed you'd be fascinated, too.

#1 Thing that Makes Me Not Able to Write.
Christmas.
I wrote a Christmas letter, posted it on my blog and envisioned myself taking important me-time thereafter throughout the holidays to post cheery ongoing season's greetings with cute or thoughtful pictures (psyche! early days) and tangy, trenchant but appropriately spiritual observations. I think I do remember excusing myself at the end of the Christmas letter for the rest of December, just to be safe (though I'd have to do dreaded research in order to make sure--so we'll just be content with my guesses) even though I was hyped to tell all ten of you out there what I really think about the tide of Yule and fairly sure you'd want to know. And guess what? Christmas plowed under and chewed up everything that lay before it, leaving plundered chaos sparkling gently under a thin dusting of vintage glitter and tinsel, just as it has every year since I can remember years. That isn't a mixed metaphor, it's what Christmas accomplishes with its varied orifices and appendages, plows, chews and softly dusts with glister.

#2 Thing of Prevention
Vacation
I know, right? Who didn't see that one coming? Me. Duh. Now, you know as well as I do that Manhattan has Internet access. Yeah, we'd be busy all day doing vacation stuff, but we don't do night life so I knew we'd also hang out all evening in our friend Judy's unbelievable apartment and I confidently prognosticated that, as important as I had (recently) decided this blog was to me, I'd for sure be writing about the glories of it all, us all. The City. Us in The City. Or, failing that, the Town. That other one, where I grew up.
But no. I did a little highlights-of-the-day thingy on Facebook and fell over exhausted. From that simple statement we see what actually prevented me from writing. Fatigue. Severe. Also, having to fight for computer time with my middle child who was the only Kershisnik to schlep her laptop to the City. And then acted like she owned it, when in fact I use the word "her," as in "her laptop," in a very broad and inaccurate sense where "her" indicates something that lives in her room but which her parents, in fact, purchased. "Her" room belongs to us, too. Just sayin'. And I'm still thinking about "her" parents.
I will take a tiny moment here (tiny because I'm trying to keep this post short. It's a goal. I make it over and over every time) to share what was for me the highlight of that trip. Whenever we come back from anyplace people say, "What did you like best?" or "What was the highlight?" and we never have an answer. I do think I could tell you if you asked me about every four hours. "So, what stands out since breakfast?" but if the span stretches over two meals that's too much. Overload. However. This time I accidentally spent an afternoon and evening in the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone. It was a high light.
Alone.
I never intended to be alone. I'm not wired that way. I had picked Friday to go to the Met because that night it stays open late and I assumed everyone would be stoked about the extra time (I plan our trips. I don't think this is at all good for anyone but everyone else just lays there and doesn't do it. Also they get lost. Walking across the park. Seriously. Ask the painter about it sometime). We had already had a little private tour in the Met while they were closed on Monday (this is why people are married to the painter) but I assumed no one had had their fill. Also, although the painter had gone on his own two other times while the girls and I went to H&M and Bloomingdale's etc., I knew he'd be up for another visit. Painters are insatiable. But come Friday afternoon, our last hours and, no, the girls were finished, used up, wanted to walk Judy's dogs in Central Park, take pictures of themselves in their new Manhattan clothes and pretend to be somebody. The painter and I went off happy but a little guilty ("You're sure you don't want to spend seven hours looking at (more) art? Really? Do you have a fever? You're OK? Well, alright, then, if you're sure."). Once inside we immediately ran into trouble. I wanted to look worshipfully at the dreamy American Woman clothing exhibit and he felt he had seen it since we had, after all, strolled (rapidly) through on our first trip. He commenced waiting while I looked. Politely. Everyone was being polite.
I (politely) told him he should go ahead and I'd find him later. Convinced him. He went.
And I was alone.
Alone you can spend an hour on Belle Epoque dresses. Alone you can look at Asian sculpture for a super, super long time. You never have to look at armored knights unless you feel driven to it. Alone you can sit for a long time listening to running water in the Moon Garden and you needn't ever listen to the sound of talking people drowning out the sound of running water at the Temple of Dendur. Alone you can look for many minutes at paintings of cherry blossoms and cry over Korean pottery. You can find period rooms in the American Wing you've never seen before and that gorgeous painting of Alexander Hamilton. Alone you can wander in visible storage till they threaten you with closing and turn off lights and then you have to tell the painter, truthfully, that your cell phone doesn't work this deep in visible storage.

#3 Thing
Sickness
Gottcha you again, didn't I? We're all so taken aback we hardly know where to have ourselves.
Here we are at the end of a lovely week in which the Familia Kershisnik has undergone vital and thorough immune system retrofitting. New diseases are available to upgrade your system! Don't show me this again. I thought, oh, good, I'm legitimately lying around, I'll write a hundred essays. Yay! No! I couldn't think. Didn't want to read, couldn't sleep. Did a lot of mending, which, in all honesty, felt sort of good. I believe we are now over most things that people have been telling us, sympathetically, are going around. I see a school year looming off the port bow. All I have to say is, bring it on. Actually, don't. I loathe, I abhor, I abominate school. Not schooling, school.

But that's another story.

While Walking, Brian Kershisnik

Life. Inly Ruminate the Morning's Danger

It's the night before.
They're not ready. I'm not ready. We're never ready. Maybe, maybe you're not coming?
Then again, seeing as you were invited, maybe you are.

But pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dar'd
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object.

I keep stepping on steps that aren't there.
I forgot to ask the janitors to set up the chairs.
I forgot to ask someone to make programs and then when someone offered I forgot to get them the info.
I forgot I've got a pair of boots to make black. And the commissions to make because I lost the other ones somewhere.
I forgot I've got to set up lights or go without them. In the other theater my boy set us up with lights years ago, lights, speakers. I don't know how to do this. I never wanted to learn. I miss the moms who used to already know how to help me, they stepped up to hold me in place quietly, I never had to ask, to say please, only thank you, thank you. I've been spoiled, and I've enjoyed it.
I hate asking.
Hate explaining, hate remaining inflexible while holding to an invisible standard of interior excellence, hate saying no let's not worry about that thing it won't matter in the end, while begging. Hate inconveniencing. But more than, worse than hating to ask, I just forget. Forget how much easier life is with help. (he today that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother) How much more friendly with friends.

Step--nothing--hard down--jarred and teeth on edge.

Step.

Nothing.

This is always the way. I only even get in bed every night before the opening night so I can be prone while I'm thinking how crazy, how misguided, how arrogant, how impossible, how prideful, all night, all night. All around me people whose play this is not, who carried costumes and boxes, made swords, shopped at thrift stores, put up posters, memorized lines, helped in any way I thought to ask, all those people get them to rest. People who are not in charge, not the director. The Corrector, my nephew calls me, you know, the one who bosses us around, tells us what to do. People whose idea this was not, on whom none of this is laid, to whom it matters not, really, if all stand as greyhounds in the slip or sinfully miscarry. They will enjoy the play. (As who wouldn't enjoy listening to a twelve year old inform us Besides, their writers say,/ King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,/Did, as heir general, being descended/Of Blithhild, which was daughter to King Clothair,/ Make claim and title to the crown of France, as if it matters this very moment in real time how those deceptive French worded their slippery dispatches and how chuffed we are at having caught them in duplicity by close examination of twisted bloodlines and their own convoluted history.) But little know what watch is kept to maintain it.

In her bedroom my youngest is going over her lines, dreadful note of preparation. My middle child, no longer young enough to be delicately forced to perform in the family troupe, has appropriated my workroom, sewing madly, making poodle skirts for a dress rehearsal tomorrow, dance concert over the top of Shakespeare. I'm teaching her to copy a skirt, to sew without a pattern, not purposely teaching her to do it the night before yet somehow bequeathing an inheritance of such busyness that doing each thing in its time means doing nothing till it stands shrieking that attention must at last be paid.
But not till the very last.

They're not ready. And they won't be. But they'll be more ready after a performance. Battle-hardened.
This industrial carpet shall be our stage, these unused but oddly full classrooms our tiring house and we will try to do it as we would do it before an audience tougher than this one composed of our parents and our friends.
I miss my funny little theater in Kanosh. Funny, but mine.


There's that lovely line just before the battle, just as Montjoy enters to steal the momentum, the forward way and steam, where Henry says, You know your places. God be with you all! And that's how I wish to feel the night before, how I want it to be. You know what to do, tiny shining actors, God be with you as you do this to the full stature of your spirits, to your full humanity, as I taught you, as you believe in your secret heart you can do this. We have worked all these months to make a shape, to find a story, to learn how best to share it. On, you noblest little soldiers, be strong and of a good courage. That's what I feel I ought to be thinking as I fall peacefully asleep the night before. This should be the reward for the director, true in spirit and intent, filled from the beginning with a parent's heartscoring and unspeakable love for at least one member of this cast.
If I were writing the script, that's how I'd want it to be for the character who is me.
But the writer who is also me wouldn't be allowed to let that happen.

No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose.
I am a king that find thee; and I know

That's not how children's theater works out, at least, not in my productions. It's more like trying to shape the weather. I only know something is going to happen, all right. It always does.
I only know they can do this, not whether they will.

And so our scene must to the battle fly;
Where--O for pity--we shall much disgrace
with four or five most vile and ragged foils
(Right ill dispos'd, in brawl ridiculous)
The name of Agincourt.

There are actually not four or five ragged foils but 25 wooden ones. Pretty deadly and we try to be careful.
Five daggers.
Commissions.
Maps.
Treaty and genealogy.
Banners and standards.
Siege ladder and stretcher.
Bandages, bloody and clean.
Crowns.
Lanterns.
And the tennis balls.
He'll make your Paris Louvre shake for it


There's nothing more I can do, though all that I can do is nothing worth.
I can't show you how hard they worked, those that did. And truthfully, they didn't, all.
I can never show you how far they've come, those that traveled. Not all chose to stir, much, from where they began. But some, O, some have come far. I found out only tonight, in an electronic note from a mother, that two of the girls are terribly frightened but working through it. She's so proud of them, attributes this progress to me, wonders how I managed this.
I thought they weren't much interested, stand-offish and stiff. I treated them just like everyone else.
They made those steps alone, and me not knowing.
Brave soldiers, steely hearts.
They need to pluck comfort from my looks but my breath catches and hurts me; I'm stupid and tear up when I have to welcome their families and friends and say some empty little words about the enormity of what I have, all alone, witnessed; my heart breaks, over and over, every every time.


And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.

We learn some of the ways of the sword. How to stand to shoot with the bow. How to wear large sleeves without fidgeting with them. How to represent one person differently from another. How to pay enough attention to get that line in the battle scene.

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
...For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,

No adults backstage. Props masters, weapons masters, fight captains, all playing lords and foot soldiers. Hang up your own costume. Keep yourselves quiet. Don't miss your entrance or block the exit.

Carry them here and there, jumping o'er times,
Turning th' accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass;

We learn all those words, what they mean, why they were said. What a bow signifies. Cressy battle, the strategic importance of a port town, how armies are raised and the time that takes. Nobles are carried off on shoulders or stretchers. When you drag away the dead commoners, get them all the way off stage. Boys in the luggage, let your heads drop back, lie limp in death.

for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history

Will they change the sets? Sometimes they just don't remember for horrible long minutes of nothing. Will they smile through the tough bits in their swordplay? I keep warning them about that--

The best way first steps compare to marathons is in the miracle of this upright human, bringing all that soul to the forefront, moving and moving forward.

Who, Prologue-like, your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.

O, God of battles, let it be all right.
I think --breathe-- it's going to be ok.
I hope.

Yet sit and see,
Minding true things by what their mock'ries be.

Life. Cleaning up messes

Painting, Brian Kershisnik

Some messes grow over time. Given: that you need costumes for twenty children who will be presenting Twelfth Night; in a fatal distraction you settle on a time period for which you have nothing, not a single greatcoat or corset. After enough weeks of coping with that, mess results. A settled mess, deep, with strata and topography. Excavating later, you come upon that layer where you changed your mind about the fur or, here, unexpectedly ran out of the red satin or here, this knobby and blackened layer where one midnight you realized, wait, twins. Two identical sets of everything.

Other messes seem spontaneous, to defy time. A mess can materialize out of the clear blue sky with a suddenness and style to which freak weather can only hopelessly aspire. A car accident. You misjudge the depth of a refrigerator shelf or are jostled while applying mascara. And illness. Especially. Illness can sweep the pieces off the board, knock the board across the room, tip the table and the chairs, rearrange the players and cast into question the whole point of the game.

I remember very clearly watching one of the little sisters throw up in the kitchen and observing all of everyone's plans change. Instantly. Permanently. One parent at once reached into the charged circle and, straight armed, lifted the shocked, wide-eyed sister out, carrying it away for a drink and a cleaning and a changing. The other parent said "Don't get in that! Hold the baby!" and with no other outward sign of resolution, of drawing together powers or of preparation set to work cleaning up what was a very impressive mess. Of the quick kind. Most of what I could see had become involved and most of that was involved up to almost the level of my eyes (probably not a yard off the ground, but, still). My tiny self was amazed at the speed, duty and courage, the muscle memory and skill sets. This is what it means to be adult, I thought, knowing how to clean up any mess without help. Some day, I will be like them.
Awe.

One day my tiny son filled not only his tiny diaper and tiny clothing but his tiny car seat with yellow baby poop. In the middle of New Mexico he did this, with nary a trading post in sight and who knew how far till the next one. (Brian insists this happened in Colorado but he does NOT know what he is TALKING about. They don't have trading posts is Colorado. Hush, Brian.) Gazing at my happy little son, cooing and purring at me as he wiggled in the stuff he had made for us, I had (and not for the last time) that desperate babysitter feeling. Where the heck are your parents? What could possibly be keeping them? This was the moment my adulthood came upon me, there alone in the wilds of the American Southwest with only Brian and this stinky baby and not enough, oh, nowhere near, nothing like enough wipes or paper napkins or boiling water and clean sheets and towels. This was my mess to clean. It had slammed into my life like a runaway semi truck. The time of preparation was past. Whatever I had with me was all there was going to be.
I was a big girl, now, and I was going to clean up the messes.

That was not fun.

My son is now on his own in Hong Kong and recently wrote that he has learned why you feel so great for a few moments after you are sick. It's so you can clean up your mess.
Hurry.
This is what it means to be an adult.

Illness is no fun.

Fun is what children exist to have, to gain, to get, to spend. The first sort of messes (the organic, slower sort) sprout, root and spring up in the heat and damp of profligate fun. They happen in the thick of the glory of it all and no one quite sees how it was done or why it happened and can therefore, when the fun is over and done, honestly claim total irresponsibility. In an ideal world, fun properly had wouldn't leave so many trails and marks that end in recrimination and retribution.

In an ideal world there would be better planning. Think before you mess. Clean as you go and no one will know.
Plans. Everyone plans not to get sick.
Sick is a mess that wipes out yards and miles of fun.

The other day the youngest of my children sat up suddenly in the car, speaking in that thick voice that comes out of a deep sleep. "I think I might throw up," she said, taken completely by surprise. In the next few moments a lot of people were going to be surprised.
We were at that instant in the middle lane, on the freeway, in heavy, fast-moving end-of-three day weekend traffic. Thinking more clearly than sometimes happens, Brian advised her to roll down the window. At once. She obeyed with alacrity and availed herself of that void.
This is where the surprises begin.

One of the first surprises was that the her window, having become ensorcelled in a child-safety nightmare, failed to go completely down, so that as she rushed toward what should have been an absence and a release, the glass sort of met her halfway. I suppose it was, in an inanimate way, only trying to help and we do comfort ourselves that she wasn't even close to being thrown headlong out of the speeding car and onto the asphalt.
I was driving in dense difficult traffic, trying to help my youngest child, ignore my husband, figure out how to pull over safely (this is where the ignoring is so very important) and unhex the window. Blessedly, I mastered the driver's side window controls before the second assault.

The next difficulty was only truly a surprise for the less experienced passengers in the back seat. The older people riding in front knew, as you do, that at freeway speeds, a liquid ejected from a car window will, upon meeting the airstream outside, be at least partially borne back into the car.

Re-entrance of throw up set off her older sibling. Like a car alarm. This was not at all a surprise. For a good time, put a bit of seaweed on the older sister. Or a bug. Any old bug will do. In fact, you can just say you have a bug, mime a bug. Or come up behind her with something that in no way resembles a bug, say, a piece of paper. Depending on your favorite flavor of humor and ability to withstand extreme noises, these actions can be very enjoyable and quite bracing. I am endlessly diverted in these maneuvers.

After a bit the action inside the car sort of died down. We were no longer producing, um, plot, and except for the new atmospheric conditions, everyone was quite well. Mostly. We were pretty freezing because, chilly day though it was, we found ourselves more comfortable with all the windows all the way down. My poor baby had gotten well and truly plastered, her sister and her little cousin (yes. there was a cousin. they were supposed to go play together. have fun. change of plans) were leaning away as far as they could while the older one of them executed a truly dazzling vocal display. I believe she was performing echo location of all the scattered throw up and at the same time providing color commentary ("Eew! It's in your eyebrows!!!"). The painter, issuing orders right and left, was also stretching his vocal abilities because his wife hadn't yet pulled over. We were nearly home and I didn't see the point. By now I have knowledge borne of long experience and despite frantic, loud advice from husband and older child, I knew there was no way we were going to do any cleaning worth the name on the side of the road with two napkins and no water.

Besides, I was laughing too hard to do more than (barely) drive in a safe and responsible manner.

We dropped off the cousin.
We stopped at a light and I could look back fully at my sweet youngest child. She smiled at me (feeling good for a moment) and said, "I feel so sorry for the car behind us."

Surprises.

The whole time I was remembering the night I had filled the back seat of my parents' car with sickness from horrible, terrible stage fright. On the way to the end-of-the-year program in sixth grade. It was the first ever end-of-the-year program at Fillmore Elementary and our class was to dance the jitterbug. My mom had located for me a bright purple fake-o flapper dress with mmmiles of white fringe. Piles of beads. Feather stuck in the headband in my (waist length) hair. Makeup. I was the real deal. The bee's knees. And I was paralyzed, breathless and witless, squeezed by the terror that slammed into me before every important event in my life up to that minute.

And I told my dad to pull over.
Not quick enough.
You've got to hurry, some messes seem to defy time.

My mom tried to clean me up but we just weren't equipped. For some reason now forgotten I had other clothes with me, church clothes. My mom told me we would have to go home, things being what they were I could never perform. But I was feeling good, now, and I started directing. Maybe for the first time, really. (Hmm. I see we are in an abyss. Well, let's just think a minute.) I told her we would make the best of this, I would perform in my other clothes. After all, I still had my beads (untouched) and my feather.
We got back into the car with my understandably offended family and drove in (chilly) silence and heavy atmosphere to the school. And I joined my class.
Late.
(as did my sisters, I guess, but I don't remember them at all. I suppose they had lives, too, but I was distracted.)
I had the sudden, fixed, whispered attention of all the sixth grade girls. You met these girls in an earlier memory, the ones I once told ghost stories to. They knew I had a costume, they had seen it, but now, now I didn't have it on. They sensed plot. Tragedy? Failure? Disgrace?
I lied.

The jitterbug was so so so much fun. I had no time to get sick again before we went on as I was still floating in that strange, after-disaster euphoria. I danced my heart out, danced in my a line navy blue skirt and button-up white shirt in a sea of lace and fringe, danced not like no one could see me but like everyone could. And sat down afterward and thought about the evening and all the self knowledge it had brought.
I was surprised.
I had Learned a Lesson.
Nothing was as bad as being scared of it.
Nothing was worth getting destroyed by fear.
Performing in front of people was fun.
Getting sick was no fun.
I planned the rest of my life right then.

So well did I plan that I completely lost my stage fright. In order, later, to drum up any approximation of nerves, the lazy performer's shortcut to good energy, I would have to resort to strange techniques like eating only sugar on the day of a performance.
I was never sick again.
I was triumphant. But I was still a child.
My mom cleaned up the mess.

So, here I am, now, looking at my car, my own car and it was stunning. The entire rear was affected, coated and wrapped almost around to the other side.
I sent my small girl directly into the shower. She dropped her clothes in the laundry on the way (and, incidentally, her ipod, which was in a pocket. she informed me later, eyes full of tears, that she had Learned a Lesson). I stood and considered the car. Should have gone to a professional establishment. But, no, I had too long ago become the mother. There was no one to help me. The painter took off at once as he was now almost late for a speaking engagement. The older sister wickedly hotfooted it next door to inflict her innocent sister's tragedy upon the neighbors. Who laughed and guffawed in a most unsportsman like fashion. This was not cricket and created a score that I, in my role as Parent Divine, shall take upon myself to settle. Come to think of it, a cricket would just do it, but I haven't one to hand. What's that little black thing on the floor there? A feather? Hand it over here. Lovely. I'll just tuck it into her bed. Yes. Perfect. Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah. How do you get throw up out of a car door? Out of the inside?
I really should know. I'm the mother. That's what it means to be an adult.
Where are these children's parents? Shouldn't they be here by now?

Noah's installation and photo

Some of These Photos Are From a Paris Vacation to Cheer You Up

Man Refusing to Paint; Brian Kershisnik, 1988

OK.
So I was working at a friend's house. (I love working with this friend. We get together and write. It's groovy. Like the best of my university-library memories. We are industrious and only talk about Very Important Things. Then we eat lunch.) She, like myself, has become suddenly routerless and is internet challenged. No problem, I said. I'll work in Word and paste it in.
And I did. For two hours. Two. Hours. I forged a stupid post for this stupid blog even though I had nothing to say that anyone in their right mind could possibly want to read. I also wrote to Noah. In Word.
OK.
I came home and dutifully copied and pasted up the letter to Noah and off it went to Hong Kong or wherever in the ether those things go.
Then. I didn't put the new post my blog.
I checked my e mail. Hey, it's got to be done.
Checked Facebook. Everyone seems to be fine.

Finally signed in here.
Read the blogs to which I have committed. Y'all are great.
Could no longer avoid the posting.
Select all.
Copy.
(save? no, thanks, it'll be on my blog, no need for it to be there, too)

Paste.
Paste.

So, here's the thing. I really didn't like that post anyway. But two hours!
I had to go eat chocolate.

Paste.
Paste.

Noah's photos.

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.