“Wild Geese”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Hiatus.

I want to start writing here again. 

Highlighters and Borrowed Books

I recently got a copy of White Noise from a friend

(Side note - this is a beautiful book, one of my new favorites)

And she had highlighted it, since it was for a class. Some of the highlights are plot points (characters, etc), but a lot of it are quotes that speak to her.

I almost feel voyeuristic reading this copy, since it is a window into her mind when she was reading the book.

Highlighted quotes tell a lot about a person, and where there mind was when they were reading. I know looking back at my old books, some of the things I highlighted I would highlight again, while some of them I no longer relate to as strongly.

Or I am overthinking all of this, and am simply getting distracted by the green on the pages.

<3

Ack!

So basically there was an un-planned hiatus for this blog.

I am in NY this summer, working 6 days a week as an assistant director with Theater Mitu.

In a few days, I will be heading to Utah to stage manage with Sundance Theater.

Things have been good - chaotic, busy, inspirational, all of those good things.

I hope to be posting musings more regularly when my schedule calms down in a few weeks.

(Also, there are a lot of things that I have neglected to write about during my spring semester, which I might revisit.)

<3

Glass

I would love to sleep with the window open

Just a crack

To get some air that has only been circulated 100 times

Instead of infinitely

But the city is loud

And cars like to honk in the middle of dreams.

GoogleGlass terrifies me.

We are plugged in all the time.

What substance is fire?

It's a Monday.

I'm almost a junior.

<3

May Day in NYC

Protests

Police

Helicopters

Drums

Chants

Shouting

Signs

Peaceful

Protests

<3

What If

What if

I move to Portland after graduation

(Which is still two years away but the last two years passed in a blink

And the common question isn't: Where will you go to college?

It is: What will you do after?)

Get a dog

Make messy theater

- I'm sick of pretty, sanitized theater -

So little girls will know that pretty doesn't have to be their goal

And little boys will feel safe crying

Maybe I want to try to fix our broken society

First

Because we build so many walls

That we've forgotten how to build bridges.

<3

UnLearned

My body has unlearned seasons

I've forgotten what it means for the air to change

From winter to spring

Scent of blossoms and mud and cars

My body has unlearned how to move from seasons gracefully

Now I've forgotten that soap stings a chapped nose

<3

April 24th-30th

Flower petal snow.

Reconciling technology with the strength of live performance.

Crystal balls of the future are beginning to unfog, but are multiplying.

Sidewalk gum like an expressionist dog -

Speaking of dogs, why do so many of us, right now, at the point in life, desperately long for one?

A companion? Unconditional love when everything is moving?

'Tis the season for plays, and play.

<3

You Should Read This

http://electrastreet.net/2013/04/multimex-manifestations-of-mexico/

One of my closest friends created this piece. It is an important read, with powerful images.

<3

Image: Ghana

Fruit Stands 

Fish Market

El Mina Slave Castle

The Point of No Return 

Above the Trees

Bamboo Cathedral 

 Adinkra Dye

<3

Image: Ghana, a Prelude

I didn't take many pictures in Ghana. Most of what I have is from nature preserves and tourist sites - because that is what we saw. There are also a few taken from the bus, in motion.

There are a few reasons I don't have many pictures.

First off, there is such a specific picture of African countries being painted in the media - one that is largely inaccurate and harmful. I don't want to add to that.

Because of this, cameras and photographs hold a very different meaning in Ghana than say, New York City, where 'selfies' are the norm - the country of Ghana, in its collective conscious, is very aware of the images that have been put in the media, and does not want to perpetuate the myths. There is a respect for the power of an image that many have forgotten.

Another reason is that this class was primarily a tour of various nature preserves - there are only so many pictures one can take of trees.

This trip was also hard on me - I had writers block, I think due to the magnitude of the place that I didn't expect. Honestly, I was really angry in some cases on how we presented ourselves - as outsiders, I do not believe we left the best impression.

Which is all to say I was hesitant to do this post - if nothing else, I learned how inadequate photographs can be to capture the essence of a place - a place that I don't know.

But I also think it is important to share impressions and the truth I saw of a place.

<3

Small Town Promises

When I left to travel, to go to college, we made a promise.

An unspoken promise, but it hung in the air, heavy like fog.

I promised to leave, to change, and to come back.

You promised you'd stay the same.

And so far, we have both kept up our ends of the deal.

When I return, I am different, but you are the same.

Not this time though.

You broke your end of the deal.

I came back, changed, and found you had changed too.

I still recognized the storefronts, the sidewalks, and I thought you kept up your promise.

But then I went to Rite-Aid. And it had changed. Which means that you are changing.

And then I realized that this isn't your first changed - the health food store changed too, but more subtly. 

Maybe that was your hint to me - trying to ease me into you changing slowly. 

My dear small town, you have not kept your end of the deal. Don't worry, I will keep my end, and we will both change, until each is unrecognizable to the other.

But please, make the changes slow. I don't need more stores I can't navigate.

<3

(half satire/half serious)

Old Friends

Are the ones you hysterically laugh with, for no real reason, until you are out of breath and nearly crying.

Are the ones who let you crash for a few days in their dorm room, not realizing how awesome it is for you to get away for those days.

Are the ones you can sit comfortably with, not talking, working or spacing out.

Are different than before, but you love them for that growth and change. 

Are the ones who remember you when you were still figuring yourself out - who were there with you when you were unsure, and now, still are, when you are (more) sure.

<3

Sitting Backwards on a Bus

There's something about this place.
Stepping out of the subway,
Seeing the skyline,
Seeing the sky.
Clouds wisping, buildings rising,
McDonald's, tires, air conditioners, street signs,
The energy of humanity.
Pulsing, trying, building, living. 

March 13th

My right knuckle looks like I punched someone. I didn't. It was from shop.

The last Snickers peanut butter. Not as satisfying as a Reeses.

Found a hallway in the basement of Tisch. Color, lightboxes, plexiglass. Reminiscent of Irwin.

Restarting my computer to make the internet work.

Oprah's book club.

Foodlands is our 2 Bros.

<3

Why We Need Theater

Disclaimer - there is some mild swearing further along in this post in a quote from a script.

Recently I have seen two shows, and heard about two companies that reminded me why I believe that theater is important.

The first show was "Laramie: Ten Years Later". The second was "Neva". The companies are Bond Street Theater and Girl Be Heard.

As a theater maker, one of the essential questions I keep returning to is why we need theater - why is it important, why is it relevant, why (and how) can it make a difference.

"Laramie: Ten Years Later" is an epilogue piece to "The Laramie Project", a show which I have written on before. What strikes me in the epilogue is the notion that we haven't done much yet - we have talked about making things better, about changing things, and we are working to change them - but that change is slow, and time distorts more than we realize, even just in its passing - we think that we have forever, and the next thing you now, 10 years have past, with nothing that is markedly different.

This show also juxtaposes the conversations of Matt's mother with the conversations of one of the perpetrators. You see how society hasn't moved, how it has blasphemed the original story - and you also see how society has created a world where this is something that is seen as despicable, but then real, lasting change doesn't happen.

The other night I went to a talk given by Andy Paris, one of the original members of the Tectonic Theater Project - and something he mentioned, that really struck home, is that we don't care anymore - something's gone wrong, on an essential human level.

Theater, while it can be part of the solution, is also part of the problem. This is portrayed in "Neva", a play set in a post-Chekov, revolutionary setting. It is an interesting concept from the beginning, gets a bit heavy-handed with the historicism in the middle, but then all of that is forgotten when the final monologue is delivered.

To (poorly) paraphrase a section:

"Theater is shit. Audiences are shit. People are dying. And you say you suffer onstage - you don't suffer onstage. I don't want your scripted love! I am sick of love. Give me revolution, give me violence, give me what is real - theater is shit!"

And you are sitting in the audience, watching this. For me, I thought about how theater can be really bourgeois, inaccessible, a spectacle - but then I also know that theater can make a positive, lasting impact.

That brings me to the companies I mentioned earlier. Bond Street Theater works internationally in collaboration with local artists to bring theater tools to communities - giving a space to talk about what is important to them - social issues, health issues, their stories. Girl Be Heard is a very similar concept, with multiple prongs - performance, education, and a space to create, this time for the young women of NYC.

Both of these are examples of how theater can go beyond beauty - it can use beauty, and technique, and scripts, to entertain, but more importantly, to go beyond entertainment and to actually make an impact.

And that is the work I want to make. Not the Broadway spectacle - but the theater that creates a space for dialogue and change.

<3

Sam

This is my new ukulele:
















Its name is Sam.

<3

VHS

The library at NYU is no longer going to be stocking or checking out VHS in a normal way - you will have to request it special.

It makes sense - technology is advancing, we no longer need to worry about rewinding tapes, fast forwarding them to a specific point - DVD's, and more recently, Blu-Rays, have taken care of those problems.

But it poses a sad dilemma - this library has over 50,000 VHS tapes. They now need to decide which of those to digitize.

What artistic endeavors will be destroyed by the advent of new technology? Unlike theater, in which work is inherently temporary, I have always believed mediums like film and photography to be more permanent - but they too, fall prey to being transitory arts.

The library cannot digitize all of their collection - they need to decide what is worthy of being saved.

How is that worth decided? Most educational value? Most beautiful? Most historic?

No matter how the worth is decided, it is still a fact that thousands of films are going to fade away from history and access.

And this is only one small example - how many VHS's are already in landfills? How many cassettes?

Technology is making life more convenient, but it comes at a price of loss of history, and of memory.

<3

Feb. 13

I want to tell the man on the subway that he'd make a beautiful drag queen. But you can't just say that.

Another man, settled in for the night with his bags, coughs as though he has no air.

A small child, speaking another language, looks up.

Same night, a man, in skintight black and pink drag, dances to Born This Way on the platform.

<3

NYU NY Day 1

Yesterday,

• Someone asked me how to get to Washington Square Park (which means I look like I know the city)
• I found all of my classes
• Figured out tech crew (721 Broadway will be seeing a lot of me)
• Ran into friends from NYUAD and from the summer
• Realized I managed to get myself into a film class (but I can totally apply it to theater)
• Already have shows that I want to go see
• Made lots of tea
• And ended the night by seeing the Reality Show, written and performed by an amazing cast

Good first day

<3

Going Vegetarian

This semester I am choosing to go vegetarian.

Currently, I already tend to avoid most meat, so this is not a far-fetched change.

I'm going vegetarian, not vegan, so things like cheese and honey are still good.

I am also considering eggs in things ok (not great, but ok). Again, I already don't eat too many things that have egg in them, aside from noodles and baked things.

So technically, the PC term would be a lacto-ovo vegetarian.

There is a gray area though, and that will be on a case-by-case basis. I will most likely still eat marshmallows, I will keep and wear the things I have that are leather, but I would not have a meat-based broth, unless it was the only option.

Reasons for this change:

Cost. Meat is expensive.

Health. Fruit and Vegetables are Good. I will also be more apt to eat in season produce.

Convenience. There is a Trader Joe's on the ground floor of my dorm, and the NYU dining halls are very vegetarian friendly.

Carbon Footprint. It takes a lot more energy to produce 1 kg of meat than it does 1 kg of plant matter. (The numbers for this are actually scary - if there is 100kg of plants, it produces 10kg of herbivores, which would feed 1kg of a carnivore. Rule of 10. Eat on the second level, 10x more effective use of energy and land)

Morals. The meat I would be purchasing, as a college student, would likely be of questionable quality and made of factory animals. Small cages, no room to move - I am not really ok with that.

(Also, just to put this out there, I do not care if you eat meat.)

(What about protein? I already get so little of my protein from actual meat that I don't envision this to be a problem)

I realized I have actually been debating this for a while - I was never much of a red-meat person, and even chicken has started to lose its appeal. Many of my favorite meals and cuisines are already vegetarian or vegetarian friendly. I will be forced to cook creatively. And why not? It will be an experiment - my initial goal will be going vegetarian for the semester. By that point, I will decide if this is something I want to continue.

I am trying to increase my consciousness of my actions and their impact on the world.

<3

What I Learned

I do not like air-conditioned coach buses in a developing country. I do not like what they imply, what they look like.

I do not like the word "developing." It feels like it discounts everything that is already there, the culture, the beauty. It connotes that there is a higher thing to aspire to. In some cases, I get it - better economy, more jobs. In some cases I don't - it implies a Western monoculture - that the only way for a country to succeed is to develop to Western standards.

Travel broadens your mind. But too much travel when you get there hinders your understanding, comfort level, and integration.

This is a friendly country. I need to learn to trust that a bit more - to greet the woman selling plantains, to politely wave off a taxi, instead of ignoring them. I learned to look up and out, and smile.

Once I walk around a bit, I am 100x more comfortable. The other day I walked at noon to get a pineapple for lunch. It was the first time I felt that I was getting the hang of this place.

Being in a class unrelated to the people is perhaps not the best way for me to learn about a culture.

Activities are good, and I saw perspectives and places I wouldn't have otherwise, but nothing beats wandering.

I had very little, if any, homesickness. Either I am getting immune, or I knew it would be for a short time, and so homesickness didn't hit.

There is a reason I don't bring my computer when traveling. It is too easy to use it as a distraction and a crutch.

I failed at staying present through the whole trip.

But I also realized that I have to be kind to myself.

Photographs are perhaps not the best way to portray the feeling of a place. They are static, and inherently very very biased. Here, at least, people are suspicious of cameras because of how they have been portrayed to the world.

I had writers block. More than normal when I travel. That threw me. I accepted the

When I travel, I expect to learn big picture things. But here, I didn't. I began to see how I can be a more engaged visitor, what things I need to work on, what comes easy, what is a challenge. I started to see how I want to interact with the world, as a person, a scholar, and as an artist.

I learned lessons I can bring with me.

<3

Mixed Feelings: Ghana for J-Term

I know I will return.

If not to this country, than to one similar, because I have only just begun to look at the sky like it is the same.

Only begun to walk the brick-dust streets, knowing where I am going.

To smile and greet those I pass.

I learned a lot about biodiversity in this class, and about the country, some about the culture, but not much about the people.

We were constantly in motion, looking at forests, hearing lectures, working on projects. I am not sure that is how I want to interact with a country.

This time was important for me to see that, though. To explore how I want to interact, to explore. I felt as though there was a wall between the class and the culture - we did not do enough to break that wall, not until the end, and even then, it was too little too late.

But I will carry these lessons and this knowledge with me. In that, it was important time well spent.

<3

Harmattan Rain

Rain. Louder than the planes. Crescendo and fade.

Roaring bullets ocean static wind pressing fading lifting screams but not fading growing noise metal awareness pressing engulfing noise sound static ocean waves sheets earth dirt energy movement shouting roaring jumping roaring

Sleep with the ocean waves above my head the thunder cracks roaring lighting sharp

Engulfing, flashing, wall.

Harmattan. Fading leaving arriving attacking. Cleansing. Hiding, purging.

Camera flash accusing surging blanketing dampening stifling sound attacking imploring screaming crying breathing pounding rushing cracking

Godly ungodly human fills my head frustration anger time time forgiven forsaken unyielding relenting final roar drumbeat thunder defiant quiet rumble.

<3

Nietzche and the Horse

"I think what happened in that moment was that Friedrich Nietzsche had a brief instant where he saw all the cruelty of the world, all its pain. The pain that happens to the defenseless. He saw an animal being beaten, and he couldn't handle it. He had one of those brief moments. He saw that animals are beaten, animals suffer, children suffer, that the innocent are punished for no particular reason. He saw all the cruelty of the world, and instead of being cruel back, he took the cruelty inward. And he wept. He felt guilty for the cruelty of the entire world, and he couldn't handle it. And in the end, it destroyed him, broke his mind.

And the moral of the story? Well, there is no moral of the story. But be wary, you. Be wary of the cruelty of the world. But try not to beat yourself up about it any more than you have to. Try not to ruin yourself with guilt. We are all part of the world, and we all feel guilty for it.

We are all the man with the whip, the horse, and the man crying."

via Oliver Miller, ThoughtCatalog

Heart in a Cage

Hearts are fragile. They take in all the good, and all of the bad. All of the pain - the pain you experience, you witness.

The pain injures the heart. Forces it to take time to heal. This time is much longer than the time of the pain - weeks, or months later, and even then, shadows remain with the beauty.

A reaction to the pain is to build a cage around your heart. Build it with barbed wire, build it so the weave is small enough to keep the large pains out, but also large enough to let some of the good in.

But there is an inherent problem to this design, as well constructed as it is. The problem is the cage itself.

If you make the weave too small, you do indeed keep the large bad things out. On the other hand, that also prevents the large good things from reaching the heart - it just gets little doses of bad and good, never the heart-wrenching good and bad.

A better way is to strip away the cage. Let the heart experience the good, and the pain, equally.

Yes, the heart will need time to heal. But I think, just maybe, letting the good and the beauty in makes the healing shorter.

<3 

Ignorance is (Sometimes) Bliss

Since this is a biodiversity class, we are doing a lot of forest walks.

Now, forests in Ghana are different than forests in Vermont due to things like poisonous snakes and monkeys.

Conversations with guides go something like this:

"Are there snakes in the forest?"
"Yep"
"Are they poisonous?"
"Very."

This is after we have already been walking in said forest for a bit.

I have decided that while walking in a forest such as the ones in Ghana, ignorance really is bliss.

Is there a green mamba above me? I don't know - I'm not looking for them.

Will I fall off of this drainage pipe into the mud along with who knows what creatures? Just keep walking.

Are we being quiet for safety or curiosity? Either way, walking quietly. 

If we do see monkeys, will they attack us? Who cares - we are already in the middle of the forest!

Is that the spiderweb of a poisonous spider? Eh, just brush it off.

Denial and ignorance is how I walk through jungles.

<3

Lucky

I had thought I shared this poem here before, but I guess not.

I first encountered it the first time I travelled to India. I forgot about it for a while, then remembered it in a moment. I shared it at Open Mic as my friends were leaving for study away. I think of it now, when I am in Ghana.

It is an incredibly important reminder that much of our lives have to do with chance, and we could so easily have been born somewhere else, someone else. We have no right to entitlement.

Alive Together - Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive
together with you, when I might have been
alive with anyone under the sun,
when I might have been Abelard's woman,
or the whore of a Renaissance pope
or a peasant wife with not enough food
and not enough love, with my children
dead of the plague. I might have slept
in an alcove next to the man
with the golden nose, who poked it
into the business of stars,
or sewn a starry flag
for a general with wooden teeth.
I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas
or a woman without a name
weeping in Master's bed
for my husband, exchanged for a mule,
my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.
I might have been stretched on a totem pole
to appease a vindictive god
or left, a useless girl-child,
to die on a cliff. I like to think
I might have been Mary Shelley
in love with a wrong-headed angel,
or Mary's friend. I might have been you.
This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,
our chance of being alive together
statistically nonexistent;
still we have made it, alive in a time
when rationalists in square hats
and hatless Jehovah's Witnesses
agree it is almost over,
alive with our lively children
who - but for endless ifs -
might have missed out on being alive
together with marvels and follies
and longings and lies and wishes
and error and humor and mercy
and journeys and voices and faces
and colors and summers and mornings
and knowledge and tears and chance.

<3

Creation and Destruction

Creation and destruction are intertwined, especially in art.

Each act of creation is also an act of destruction, on all levels. It isn't just obvious destruction.

To create a painting, an artist must destroy the pristine canvas.

To create theater, the artist must first destroy the essence of a stage - its emptiness.

<3

Home is Where the (Heart?) Is

Again, more musings about home from a wanderer. Because that is what I am, during the college years of my life. I pack up my bags every three months, if not more frequently. Jet lag still hits me, but time zones don't phase me. And in all of that travel, there is the ever-present question of home.

I am at a home now. But it isn't my primary home anymore. Vermont is a place I visit, to return to family.

Abu Dhabi isn't my primary home for a while either - I am studying away in New York for the 2013 calendar year.

The places I am for short times - Nepal, Oman, are never my primary homes.

My J-Term location, Ghana, is a temporary primary home.

Right now though, I am between homes.

Because while home is where the heart is - places your heart ties you to are always home, and you can always return, to some extent - home is also where your life is.

The place where your school is, where your work is, where your friends are, where you buy groceries.

For the next year New York will be my primary home. Living there, I know there is a chance that will still by my primary home after the foggy notion of graduation.

But now, in Vermont, I also know that this is no longer my primary home, and won't be again for a very long time.

<3

That Doesn't Happen Here. Part II.

We finished the Laramie Project (a few weeks ago, now), and I think it went well - of course, in hindsight, there are always things that I wish had gone differently/I'd done differently - but the parts that matter rang true to the audience, and it made an impact, which, as a director, is all I can ask for - that the work I do matters, and does something, changes something, makes people think.

Some of the ideas I wanted to get across with this piece were the notions of community, violence, and healing.

A few days later, the tragedies at Sandy Hook and a Chinese elementary school happened.

Both left children killed.

Both communities said that they were shocked - because they are "nice communities. Things like that don't happen here."

I don't see how saying, "Look, we aren't like this. It was a mistake. Things like that don't happen here - it is a nice community, good people," fixes anything. Changes anything.

I can see it as a method of processing, a method of distancing - but I don't know how that helps, in the long run. The crimes are left unclaimed, and then nothing changes.

But if the crime is claimed - if communities said, "Yes, this did happen here. We raise people like that here. There is something here that allows these things to happen," then a diologe is opened that allowed change.

This claiming doesn't have to happen in the aftermath. That is a time for mourning and healing. But as a community heals, the crime can't drop from the consciousness. The crime needs to stay relevant - needs to be talked about, to prevent future tragedies.

I don't understand people sometimes.

I do understand that we can't distance ourselves from tragedies - it won't change anything.

<3