life — Page 245

I Really Don’t Know Clouds At All

August 17, 2013 at 7:25 am by Claudia

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I was going to insert a little poetry here, as I have the last two Saturdays, but I cannot look at a cloud without hearing the words of Joni Mitchell and then the voice of Joni Mitchell. Or Judy Collins.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
from up and down, and still somehow,
it’s cloud’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know clouds at all.

And so it goes. The melody, the lyrics, endlessly looping through my brain.

Do you have an ongoing bit of music playing in your head all the time? I do. I hear snatches of melodies, a bit of this, a bit of that, all the time. If not music, it’s dialogue of some sort. It used to be when I had to transcribe lots of text into a dialect using phonetics, I would have a running transcription session endlessly playing in my brain. I would dream transcription. Same with typing on a keyboard. But it’s mostly music that is always there in the background and I’m often unaware of it until I focus for an instant and realize the same tune has been repeating itself over and over like the soundtrack to a movie. Or the soundtrack to my life.

I can’t be the only one this happens to, can I? I bet not.

In other news, I was looking at my hastily pinned up row of strips,

stripsart

and thought how like artwork they are. I pinned them (with sewing pins) to that wall just to see how they might look bordered by white fabric. But I’ve left them there because their bright colors make me happy and enliven a bland corner of the room.

Sort of a neat idea for a graphic splash in your home, don’t you think? Pin some strips of fabric to a wall and presto – you’ve got instant art.

I’m rather liking them here in this temporary living space. Such a wonderful punch of color.

Glory be, I get to go home for two days this afternoon! I have a morning rehearsal for Macbeth, then Don will arrive around 2 pm and we will make our way to the cottage. I have to be back on Monday night for a Tuesday morning rehearsal. That’s okay. I just need 48 hours or so with my little family.

I told Don to bring Scout along on the ride here because I simply cannot wait to see her. My plan is that Don and Scout will arrive, she can briefly come up to the apartment (she stayed here for 3 days in January and she loves the elevator) and we will take her for a walk in the park, which she really loves. Then we’ll pile in the car and head for Mockingbird Hill Cottage, where I will reacquaint myself with the now, I’m quite sure, overgrown garden, immediately decide that I need to weed-wack and, upon entering the cottage, see every surface that needs cleaning.

Happy Saturday.

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Duck, Duck…

August 16, 2013 at 7:41 am by Claudia

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Seven ducks preening and drying off in the sun.

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Nine ducks.

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Ten ducks.

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Eleven ducks.

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Nap time.

After a second allergy-ridden day, I left rehearsal a bit early. I felt yucky. After a couple of hours in the apartment, I strolled across the street to the park, camera in hand, and quickly became entranced by the ducks. They glided upon the water and one by one, they stopped, looked at their friends who had decided to spend some time out of the water, swam to the edge of the pond, checked out which opening in the line-up was best and jumped up and out of the water. I took these photos from across the pond because I didn’t want to scare them or upset their routine.

After all ducks have to rest, you know. They can’t swim endlessly. Who am I to intrude on their downtime?

Still feeling stuffy and eye-itchy. Still trying to figure out when I can make a short visit home. Every time the stage manager and I figure out a possible window of opportunity, the director changes his mind about the schedule. Since he’s directing both plays, it is surely his right to do that. But it keeps throwing a spanner in the works of my need to get home….just for a couple of days, really, that’s not asking too much, is it? The best opportunity would have been over last weekend, but we all know what happened then.

park

Yet another of my former students is in town. She’s acting in a play in a small theater that is literally a half block from my apartment. She’s one of my favorites, though I know I’m not supposed to have favorites. When I moved to San Diego to teach in the graduate program there, my boss and I traveled to NYC, Chicago and San Francisco to audition students for the program. The San Francisco auditions were our last stop on the tour and after two long days of interviews, we waited for our last candidate. She didn’t show up. We knew she was flying down from Seattle, so we waited. And waited. Finally, I took the elevator down to the building lobby thinking she might have been confused as to which floor we were on. Then I tried another floor. As the elevator doors opened, a completely harried redhead stepped into the elevator, a panicked look in her eyes. I’d seen her headshot, so I knew who she was. “Erika?” I said. She made eye contact with me and practically shouted, “Yes!” in relief. I introduced myself and said I’d been looking for her, which prompted a long, breathless explanation of a delayed flight, a long cab ride, of having no way to contact us, though she tried and tried to call our offices (it was a weekend) and absolute fear that she had missed her opportunity to audition for us. I hugged her, told her everything was okay, and instructed her to go off by herself, take some deep breaths and when she felt ready to audition, we’d be there.

Her audition blew us away. She’s incredibly talented. Thank goodness we waited. We knew immediately that she would be in our program. In the 17 years since she graduated, she has worked consistently in the theater, always getting high praise for her acting.

So: the other day, one of the younger actors in Macbeth was telling me that he wanted to see the new play opening at TheaterWorks and he mentioned the title. That night I was on Facebook and saw that Erika had written a status update saying that her current show, with the same title, was having its first preview that night. She didn’t mention where this was taking place, but I thought this was too coincidental not to investigate. Yep. Sure enough, she’s here. We haven’t seen each other yet because we’re awfully busy and on different schedules, but we will.

Hartford seems to be the place to meet up with my former students. Who knew?

Happy Friday.

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I Think. I Worry. I Write.

August 12, 2013 at 8:38 am by Claudia

It’s my day off. I woke up at 5 am. On the one hand, getting too little sleep on my day off isn’t so bad because I don’t have to sustain my energy for a full day of work. On the other hand, it’s my day off.

Here are some of my thoughts on this Monday morning.

purpleconeflower

On ‘Experts’: Heavens, in my trips through the blogisphere or on the web in general, I see a lot of people who have dubbed themselves ‘experts.’And no doubt some of them are, indeed, experts. But everyone? No and no and no. To me, being an expert implies that person has years of training and experience and a wealth of knowledge at his/her fingertips. Experts know a subject matter or have mastered a skill just about better than anyone else. Right? It shouldn’t be a title that is donned as easily as a pair of shoes.

I’ve worked in the theater for over 35 years – as an actress and as a professor and professional coach. I’ve worked with some of the most respected actors and directors in the world, including Oscar, Emmy and Tony Award winners. I’m very good at what I do. I know a lot about my field. But I don’t know everything. I would never use the words ‘field of expertise’ to describe my work because I would never dream of calling myself an expert. It feels more than a bit grandiose.

I realize that this stems from the everyone-for-himself, gotta-get-my-work-out-there, gotta-do-something-to-separate- myself-from-the-pack atmosphere on the internet, where there are simply too many people vying for recognition and employment. The sheer number of bloggers out there is staggering, as are the number of business websites. How do you separate yourself from the rest? Claim to be an expert.

If you truly are, more power to you. You’ve earned it through years of work and research and experience on the job and trial and error and positive feedback from your clientele or your students. But personally, I know very few people who, despite their years of work in a particular field, would ever dream of claiming the title of expert.

Humility is a good thing.

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On intolerance: I have no patience for those who judge others and deem their religion or their lifestyle or their ethnicity or their skin color as something wrong or ‘less than.’ Look, there isn’t one of us who hasn’t judged another. We do it all the time, often unconsciously. It is something that I work on all the time. But all judgment comes from a place of fear; fear of the unknown, fear of those who look different than us, fear of a lifestyle we don’t understand. I find it interesting that a lot of condemnation comes from those who cloak their judgment in their religion. Goodness knows, anyone can cherry pick the Bible or the Koran or the Talmud to ‘substantiate’ their claims of superiority or of being on the absolute right side of an issue. I always find that sort of thing very telling, that selective choice of verses to quote. But I have to believe a loving Supreme Being or Divine Energy or God or Allah or Buddah or whatever name you give it loves all of us. Period.

Now I have to think about judging those who judge. And about being impatient. The struggle continues.

This is all I need to live my daily life in a way that I feel is right and good:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

and

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Oh goodness. I know I’m on my soapbox. “If I ruled the world” – remember that song? I’m sort of kidding but sort of not kidding. If I ruled the world, people would get awards for niceness and kindness, for honesty, for being inclusive rather than exclusive, for compassion, for modesty, even for being too modest, (which is far more attractive than grandiosity) for humility. There would be a healthy level of competition, but only healthy, nothing obsessive or cutthroat. There would be no cliques. And, of course, there would be no bullying, no fighting, no war, no rewarding of bad behavior, no animal abuse, every child would be loved and have a loving home, every animal that’s lost would find a loving home, we would live in peace with our animal friends, we would live in peace with our fellow man – no matter what religion, ethnicity, color, gender or sexuality. We would live by the Golden Rule and, really, if that was the code we truly lived by, these things would be an everyday reality for all of us.

This is what happens when I wake up too early. I think. I worry. I write.

Happy Monday.

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I Really Don’t Know Clouds At All

Duck, Duck…

I Think. I Worry. I Write.

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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