i once heard that an empty stage--or perhaps, it was a silent stage--is death to an actor.
the expression never sat well with me. i always thought it missed the mark.
supposedly sound never dies. a sound once made lives forever. its amplitude or frequency (or some such something that people much smarter than myself understand) changes. and because the amplitude or frequency (or sum-such) changes we cease to hear the sound.
but that doesn't mean it isn't there. charging the space. a currency of air.
it always seemed to me that an empty stage and the shadow of sound was fertile ground for an actor. that sitting on stage, quiet and alone, actively inviting the silence...that there was a magic in the theatre of that. no performance ever ends. the ghosts live on to inform the present. all art is done in the wake of that which has come before. all art is in honor of the past and pathway for the next.
in the first grade i sat in the school auditorium, new clipboard and pale-purple notepad before me. i sat and listened as the second-grade teacher, ms. jackson, gave a small after-school workshop on writing. for a writer a blank page is death, she said. well, maybe not those words exactly. but something close. she said the all the empty space of a blank page is an invitation for mess. for words and scribble and whatever else the hand may create before thought dictates sense.
certainly the sound of those words live on. if only for me, in the deep marrow of the me attempting to forage some sort of life in the wilderness of youth and fear and endless possibility.
there's this thing going round the internet these days. about a teacher attempting to illuminate the lasting affects of bullying for her young students. the story goes she had them each take a blank page of paper, crumple it up, stomp on it, crunch it, get angry with it, and then smooth it out. the idea being you can smooth it out till your blue in the face--you can apologize till the world ceases to spin, and yet, the crinkles remain.
a powerful lesson, no doubt.
undoubtedly important for children to learn.
and yet.
i am a crinkled piece of paper.
i am deeply flawed and dirty and i have been trampled upon more times than i should ever hope to count. by myself. by others with my consent. by the very act of engaging in life.
my white-blank-page is now crumpled and dirty and torn, discolored in places and marked up in others. and i wouldn't have it any other way. my mistakes, my failures, as well as my successes have transformed the original sheet.
sometimes i wish i smoked. just for the hell of it. just for the flagrant imperfection and impropriety the very act signals.
most of the time i wish i'd stop apologizing. for my thoughts and my actions and the pursuit of those things that actually make me happy. for my love of that which rings the fringe.
i wish i was bolder and less afraid. wish i more easily settled into my own skin i am in new situations. which i acclimated faster. wasn't such a late bloomer.
i fell asleep on the subway last night. riding the long R train into brooklyn.
i've lived in new york for going on eight years now and this was a first.
turns out i'm exhausted. in the good kind of way. where life is busy and full and new. but also in the way where you fall asleep on the train and clean laundry eats an entire corner of your room and you wake each morning with no sense of what day it is and where you have to go or even if you've got your head screwed on properly.
so busy that exhaustion takes hold in uncomfortable ways and food choices go to hell.
i had leftover banana bread in my tote bag that i had no intention of touching. but on that R train, engaged in a battle between sleep and sense, losing to the deep, i half-consciously groped for the tupperware and the promise of its leftovers.
if i couldn't sleep i would eat.
and i'm gonna level with you, that choclate-chip banana bread was damn good.
i've been meaning to write about food for a while now. i've certainly sat down to do it several times. and somehow i get distracted or overwhelmed or maybe even a little embarrassed by the prospect of sharing where i am in the life-long fight to eat well, and so i've left half-begun, half-finished drafts littering my desktop.
so here goes.
i want to write food and the value system we attach to it.
i said this to a friend recently and she said, what do values have anything to do with food?
sigh, deep breath, gather my wits.
let's start here:
we certainly attach a value system in this country to fat and thin. do we not?
instead of that, let's redirect. let's focus on what we put in our body and feel good about that, trust that, and then let the pounds fall where they will.
sometimes i have to pull out the really rational (and, i fear, underutilized) part of myself--the part that knows life is just a number's game.
the harder i work, the more i fail, the more i experience, the more growing-pains push me this way and that, the more i come up against what i fear and the more i don't get what i want, the longer it takes to meet this person or that person or get this or do that, well...
the chances of the good happening--of that one thing or one person or one job or one moment that could turn the course, dictate the path, illuminate--the chances get better each day.
it's a number's game. my chance of success increases each day it doesn't happen.
sometimes it's hard to remember that when my head is stuck in the mud of a very busy block of weeks and the universe seems to have just thrown a few things at me that while livable, feel like what-are-the-chances, cruel twists of fate.
a few months ago i was lying in bed, terrified by the idea that i might actually get what i want, and there was this thought: too soon. too soon, it hasn't been hard enough yet.
(hasn't been hard enough, yet?! bite your tongue, ms. fee, not a helpful thought).
dearest universe: i'd like to take that back--that thought, if you might be so kind as to allow me. okay, well, not take it back, but amend it, or just altogether change it. not too soon, it's definitely been hard enough. perhaps that particular story isn't finished yet, and that's okay. but some of the other stuff, not too soon. not too soon.
i think i'm ready. i'm ready.
so i'll do my best to keep showing up, and if you wouldn't mind just fudging the numbers a bit in my favor? well, that would be swell.
okay. deep breath. onto and into the day...
image: brian w. ferry
