In high school you work backstage; building, painting, moving sets.  You understand wood; the grain runs in one direction.  Build a platform to hold several actors, they will die on it, and then stand for applause.  Sit underneath that platform to hold a broken brace, feel the shaking on the platform as actors die.  Think about how you would portray their death, slow and drawn out.  Think about the lighting, after looking at the red light everything white seems green.  In the hallway before auditions Ms. Makigam encourages you to try out for a role.  Go home instead; convince yourself that you did not care for it.  Study your advanced biology book.  Recombinant DNA, transfer DNA, messenger DNA.  Read how they work together to create an organism, collaborating.

Apply to a liberal arts school; plan to be a biology major.

As a liberal arts student you must take a freshman seminar.  You are interested in animals.  Sign up for “The Animal Mind”.  Receive your class schedule.  The computers have an error and place you in a theatre seminar.  You go to it, even though there is still space in the animal class.  Walk into class, all girls, two guys.  Say hello, try to be friendly to strangers.  Someone with glasses smiles back.  Stick with the class, you know it all, stay anyway.  Personalities develop in the class, no longer faces with or without glasses.  Discuss artistic vision, difference between script and play.  Go see a production and maneuver your way through writing a paper analyzing the use of scenery.  Notice all the mistakes you would fix, notice the mismatched paint.  Criticize the production, until, until you can not like it.

Conclude you like college.  Meet many new people, some are nice, some are not, some are completely fake.  Fake nice right back to all of them.  Become the person everyone goes to for useless information, you’re the source.  Notice that you’re not the smartest, but not the dumbest.  Resign yourself to view people as characters in your own play.  Create your own subtext for the affairs in your dorm.  Watch the boy across the hall lust after his roommate’s girlfriend, imagine a secret love affair where they call each other by code names and meet in the stairwell near the laundry.  Realize you want that love affair; realize you want someone to meet in a secret stairwell.  Perhaps you can find that.  Go out to a party with people from your dorm; drink a few drinks to many.  Wake up the next morning with no memory of how you got to bed, the obliteration is nice, not the headache.

Over the next year start acting.  One small role, then the next.  No longer the darling innocent character, instead play deep troubled souls.  Switch from sugary to bitter roles, like switching from sugar to black, no risk of shock.  Join the theatre club.  Design lights for the student show, something simple, nothing big.  Notice you spend less time in your biology books and more in the arts center.

Call your mother.  Talk to her about mundane things.  Avoid telling her how much time you spend in the theatre.  Avoid commenting on how much you drank last night or whom you slept with.  She doesn’t need to know his name: John, Paul, or something like that.  You’ve never talked about important details, why start now?  Listen to routine events she hosts.  She believes that genealogy is the new latest craze, and explains your entire heritage, all, back centuries.  Zone out and respond in tones only a computer could emulate.  Casually mention taking another theatre class, dance around the topic.  Do not tell her your advisor tells you to pick a major you are interested in.  Do not tell her about the declaration form, somewhere under empty coffee mugs, that has theatre in bold letters smeared across the page.

Get involved with someone, remember his name.  He tells you to go for it, you switch your major.  Cuddle, kiss, and whisper character tactics to him in your sleep.  Hear him tell you: “I love you” under the haze of smoke he spews from the corners of his mouth.  Pretend you have a coughing fit, avoid his gaze all night.  Tell him the next day you can’t see him for a while, too many rehearsals.  Hang up the phone and reread the note of rejection for your audition.  Your roommate notices your lack of eating, sleeping, and smiling.   She takes you out for a tall drink.  Get drunk, call your boyfriend and tell him things are moving too fast.  Fall asleep with one sock on, no shirt, and no blankets.

Go home for the holidays.  Your mother will leave out articles about successful biologists or psychologists.  Ignore them.  Bake cookies with her like there is nothing different.  She will ask: “Didn’t you want to study ethnology?”

Tell her: “Theatre’s my thing.”

She’ll say:  “For now.  Sure, it’s a good hobby.”

Finish college.  Finish with the papers and speeches.  Four years of listening to teachers lecture the same thing so many times they’ve become record players skipping over the same bit, over and over.  Go to commencement where everyone else is discussing their new office job or what grad school they’ll attend.  When they ask tell them you’re not sure.  Watch as everyone files across the stage.  Wonder how many of them will succeed, how many will sit in their executive chairs wondering whether black or blue ink is better.  That’s one question their private college didn’t provide them with the answer, black or blue.  Examine the thin sheet of paper meant to represent all you have learned over the past four or so years.  Resist the urge to fold the program into an airplane and hurl it at the speaker who explains how much college is worth.  As if the college loans don’t already represent how much you should know.

Get employed as a stage hand.  Move sets.  Watch as the designers fumble with ludicrous plans.  Watch as actors go through the motions; create flat, boring characters.  If people were that flat everyone would blow away in the lightest wind.  Start to wonder why you got into the business.  Ask yourself: Does anyone care?  Does anyone put effort into it?

Quit that job.  Work as a waitress, while you get rejected for television ads.  Make fake friends with the other employees so you aren’t at the bar alone each night.  Finally get employed at a comedy club working as a stage manager.  Run lights and sound as well.  Get a union card, get dental insurance, and get health.

Sooner or later you begin acting again.  Talk to your mother and hear that she has cancer.  They no longer come to see you perform.  Send them flowers; promise to come home soon, when, and if you get enough money.  Get home in time to say goodbye.  Then leave because the house is too quiet.

Withdraw from contact.  Soon the only emotion and personal interactions are your acting roles.  Find yourself too drained to be more than a white blob outside of costume.  Go on a few speed dates, hook up, and forget their names.  Tell one guy you’re an actress.

“Oh,” he responds and continues to scribble incoherent nothing on your card, writing even t

The stairs outside her room squeaked with the weight of Father’s step, but he would not visit her today, she had jammed the door with several spoons.  In her last episode she was visited by a spirit who warned her to read old fairy tales to protect herself.  She was sure that Father was the king from “Donkey Skin” and walked outside her door waiting to ravage her body and wed her.  Mother had insisted this was nonsense, if she only took her pills the visions would stop; the tiny white pills would bring her back to her parent’s reality.

“But I was right, I was right about the attending in the clinic.  He was stealing our pills, and the wind told me.  But no one listened, until he overdosed and Jacqueline found him in a glistening pool of his own feces.”  Kassie clarified to Saint Dymphna who watched her with her metal eyes, glaring out at Kassie from her pendent.  Mother placed her over her bed, plastering her to the wall so that she could not be removed during an episode.

Instead Kassie pulled out the matches she had snuck beneath the folds of her clothes from Father’s nightstand.  Holding one carefully between her fingers she struck it like she had watched Father strike the matches for his cigars.  The first one leapt from her hand, the fire cackling at her as it flew across the room and into the door.  She picked up the smoking stick, allowing the heat of the blackened end to break through the dancing light consuming the room, bringing her back to herself.

She held the next one with more strength, snapping it in half with her force.  Two more and she finally had the successful sizzle and flame dancing at her fingertips.  Kassie stood on her bed, ignoring the protest of the stuffed bunny whose head she stood on.  Leaning into the wall so that her forehead pressed into the wall, willing her to pass through it like she had seen the pale men do last week, she held the match to Saint Dymphna with her left hand.  The metal began to look softer, the match burnt down, began to bite into her skin, but she held it there.

“You can come out, or you can stay, but you are not going to stare at me.”  Kassie shouted, suddenly grabbing the burning match with her other hand.  She could feel both her right palm and left fingers blister, searing with pain that gnawed through her skin.  But Dymphna would not come out, so she pounded the still smoldering right hand into the metal, bending it in its softened form.  The pendant began to cry, molted tears leaking from the sunken face, Dymphna cried out.  She had not asked to be a saint; she had only asked to be left alone.

Feeling abruptly accountable, Kassie slipped down to sit on her bed.  Then slowly she pulled her knees in, so that her cheekbones rested on her knee caps.  The stuffed bunny forgave her for flattening its head; it did not need to think anyways.  The wind began to whistle, the moon reminding her that it was nearly gone, that she was nearly invisible.  When she became invisible, then she could creep past Father’s footsteps on the creaky stairs, slip back into the world, and back into another reality.

Then you burdened me with your legacy, watched me
endure he pain of our race, enduring your sons.
All to provide more for you.  And yet,
when I tried to lessen the strain
and stand strong, you called me Amazon. Accused me
of destroying my own creations, of hating
your kind. When I raised my swords
in your unholy wars, riding bare breasted into battle,
I exposed myself to prove who I was.
You ran in your shame, blaming fear, accusing me
of aberration.

You called my songs false, saying my voice was
temptation. The hazards you failed to steer around
were blamed on me, yet you did not hear my
siren of warning.  You have tried to tame me;
refusing food, sleep, clothing.
Calling me a shrew when I refuse your laws.

We both ate of the fruit, the sweet innocence
turned to sour dogma.
We both caught the scent, drifting
through the wilderness, calling us out.
Yet I am the one that carries the burden,
must always stand behind and to the side.
I ate of the flesh, you ate of the flesh;
it turned to rot within me.

This year I put up a small tree, which the cat promptly knocked over and terrified herself since it fell on her.  We wrapped presents, she helped by sitting on the paper.  And I discovered an elf cat costume and put it on her.  I don’t think she likes the holidays…

Shortly after this photo she pulled the hat off and began attacking it.  My roommate helped me get the booties on, but she would not hold still long enough for photographic evidence of that.

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Since I am attempting to make it home for Christmas with only carry-on that means none of the presents for family will be wrapped until Christmas Day, if they even get wrapped or most likely just pulled from my bag and presented to the recipient.  Presents for friends here however can be wrapped.  River has decided to assist my roommate.

Only ten days… and yet so much to do.

Your outline has been, by far, the most complex.
Not just one sheet of paper, or two,
or five, or ten, but dozens have consumed
by the scrawling drawings of your drawings.
You found the pen with a fresh cartridge, ready
for the long haul, for the epic novel of our relationship.
And the pen hoped it could end with “…ever after.”
In some ways it now has, it is ever after, but
“happily” does no precede. After so many pages
the draft began to fall apart.
It became apparent the basis of the story was
non existent,
perhaps more of a steam of rambling consciousness
the pen obliviously though was going some place.
And then it happened, in the middle of a sentence, in the mid
dle of a word it stopped, the pen gave up.
You tried tapping it against the table, scribbling it in circles,
smashing the tip into the smooth pulpy paper,
but to no avail.
The cartridge had run out, the pen had no more
ink. Perhaps if you had changed it out the rambling
would have found its purpose,
the drawing taken shape. But instead you discarded the pen,
found a new one, fresh from a package
with no bite marks or hand worn out labels.
You discarded the pen into the trash, the same trash
that contained all the other outline that were cast away.
Leaving it, leaving me, with nothing
to keep company but the remains of failed attempts.

by – Dawn Wilfong

River has taken to falling asleep in some of the strangest ways.  This being a more adorable sleeping position I snapped this just as she was waking up.  A few weeks ago I received a text from my roommate with a picture of the kitten asleep cuddling her hind leg, it was captioned “I guess she’s a bit tired.”

Tomorrow’s my day off.  I’ll probably take a cue from the kitten and spend most of it asleep on the window seat, that is if she makes room for me.

My job started back up.  It’s reassuring and frustrating that not much has changes since the spring.  I’m trying to focus on the positive and familiar aspects of work rather than the aggravating, but sometimes it’s hard.  Hard to step back and get the perspective that I’m blessed that I get to do what I love and earn a living (meager though it may be at times) I get to do what I love.  It’s just hard to remember sometimes since it seems to be a love-hate kind of thing.  I love it so much that I hate it when things don’t always go as well as I think they should.

We also adopted a new kitten, my other roommate moved her cat out since she is on tour and he old roommate offered to permanently adopt him.  The new kitten is wonderful, she spends most days lounging about the apartment, often curled in a window or sprawled on the floor.  She gets a bit crazy in the evenings, but she only attacks her toys and occasionally hugs my legs as I walk around the apartment.  In many ways I feel like I have a small child rather than a kitten.  Almost every morning I wake up to her, occassionally before I would have liked to, she’ll meow and rub up against me until I start scratching her chin and get up to feed her.  She cries every now and then, sometimes just because she has wandered into another room and discovers she is all alone.  But once I call to her she’ll come running and start purring.  No matter how my day has been going, she has yet to fail at cheering me up and making everything feel alright.  She allows me to get a glimpse at the fact that as long as I can feed myself, have a safe place to sleep at night and someone to love me, my life is going well.

Hardwood floors and high ceilings, in addition to large windows in each room, make the small apartment feel much larger than our old townhouse.  Being on the fourth floor we get some pleasant breezes blowing through the open windows, ceiling fans assist in keeping the rooms cool.  Carrying everything up three flights of stairs was slightly exhausting, especially since we managed to pick some of the hottest days of the entire week to move in.  Now that we’ve been here a few days the cat is much more relaxed.  He spent most of his first couple of days hidden under my bed or hidden in our linen closet.  Now he’s adjusted enough that he now wants to explore the landing outside our front door, which he has only escaped to once and was promptly brought back inside.  The cat has taken to lounging on the windowsills or peering out them at the people walking by below.

I am very much looking forward to winter in this apartment, awaking and feeling the warmth of sunwarmed floors on my feet and having cool sunlight shine through the large windows.  For now though I am enjoying summer and perhaps tomorrow I will venture back out to the beach to relax in the sun again.

Leaving the coast was hectic, I left much sooner than I anticipated but hit a lot of traffic.  Then I hit the Shenandoah Mountains, all of a sudden I turned a corner and there they were.  Lit with the soft glow of a hazy sunset, purple lilacs popping out of rolling mist covered mountains.  I wanted to just stop and look at them,  sadly all of the turn-offs were for the opposing traffic.  But just driving through them set a tone to my vacation, relaxing and calming.  I arrived in Indiana at an absurd hour of the morning and crashed on a couch for a few hours.  Indiana was really where I found myself and got confirmation I was making the right decision.  I spent hours talking with my best friend, wandering around or just sitting in her room, catching up and discussing future plans.  Visits with college friends and professors confirmed I had made the right decision on both my job and future plans of grad school.  After those few days I feel more confident and satisfied with myself.

After a long drive through the fields of Indiana and Michigan I arrived at my parents.  The past few days have been most relaxing around the house with my family.  I’ve reached the point, like many of my generation, where my parents house is comforting but not quite home, and after a few days I feel like it’s time to go back east and pick up my life again.  All the pieces of myself that had been slowly chipped away over the past few years, the past few months especially, have been put back on or repaired in some way.  I’ve found all the pieces of my soul and now I’m ready for the next adventure life has to throw at me.