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Chautauqua II

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Babbo says it [the sky] looks kinda ominous. But its 5:30, I'm wide awake and desperate to get on a boat, despite the slight burn I got yesterday (damn my pasty, white skin). So instead I'm up, waiting it out, trusting his informed opinion, and writing this. Boat or sleep. Boat or sleep. But I'm afraid if I go back to sleep I'll miss the boat entirely. I'll sleep through the text that will say its a go and all will be lost for a year.

I love the water. To a point. I get spooked knowing that a whole world thrives beneath me, but I can't see it. However, nature has that undeniable pull that rebirths us into childhood each day we're willing to surrender to its beauty. It was Frank Lloyd Wright who said, "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."

Chautauqua I: "Everywhere I Go I Find A Poet Has Been There Before Me" Freud

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How does one describe Chautauqua? I'm not really sure. This is only my third year here whereas most people have been tied to this place since they were children or long before. My first two years I was a member of the theatre conservatory. It was my summer sanctuary following school years long and deep in both time and tilt. Now I'm back as a visitor and I couldn't be happier. Jonathan, my adopt-a-brother, not only let me join his boy's club, he actually gave me a tour of the club house. There's nothing like doing Chekhov and Camus on the Bratton stage, but by the same token there's nothing like wasting an afternoon with your feet dangling off the end of a pier. I'm so lucky that the C's invited me into their lives. Karen spoils me rotten...pink champagne, porch talks that envelop yawning afternoons, and a love of a rare and enviable kind.

Or So I Feel...

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"A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.This may sound easy, but it isn't. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel -- but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling -- not knowing or believing or thinking. Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know,you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.To be nobody-but-yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenver we do it, we are not poets. If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you've written one line of one poem, you'll be very lucky indeed. And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world -- unless you're not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die. Does this sound dismal? It isn't. It's the most wonderful life on earth.Or so I feel."e.e. cummings

This is absolutely one of my most favorite things in the world. Ever. When I heard this I was in my first year at Juilliard. It was the first month of school, I had just moved to New York and life seemed endless. And now its done. It was way too fast and entirely too long. I lived a million different lives in those four years. And if I could do it all over I wouldn't change a thing. But I wouldn't do it all over. Not for anything in the world.

A Little Wonderland in a Not Always Wonderful World...

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"I can't believe that!" said Alice. "Can't you?" the queen said in a pitying tone. "Try again, draw a long breath, and shut your eyes." Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One can't believe impossible things." "I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."