Preparing My Easel

Personal revelation (v.): the act of acknowledging and then coming to terms with an aspect of your personal being that you were unaware of or unwilling to admit

Stage One: Excitement - Characterized by a titillating desire to share the new news. This desire stems from a personal pride in resolving a portion of your identity and then wanting to share that with those who matter to you the most.

Stage Two: Anxiety - This stage occurs when one realizes that they have admitted the existence of this new facet of their live to themselves and/or to others. The anxiety derives from being unable to repress again the conclusion that has been enlightened. Even if it ends up being a false realization, it still has existed in some form in the realm of the personal.

Stage Three: Self-Loathing - The language of this stage focuses on attacking the self for acknowledging and the labeling the revelation that is causing the anxiety. The hatred comes mostly from the realization that there is no way to go back to a place of unknowing. This state is also where, if the personal realization is true, the person will start beating themself up for their shift in identity.

Stage Four: Exile - A shift from the self-loathing stage occurs when the person begins to try and analyze the issue or development on his or her own. The person decides that the only way to get answers on what is true about their identity is to look at themselves aside from everyone else. Coupled with the self-loathing stage, exile tends to have its roots in depression.

Stage Five: Love - Sitting with one’s self long enough and realizing that the world hasn’t collapsed, no one has died and that this revelation will not go away even if you ask it to politely finally leads to an acceptance. This acceptance of a new portion of one’s identity can only lead to a further understanding of one’s personhood and eventually love for that personhood.

E-A-S-E-L - The processs of discovering a more complete picture of one’s identity is laying the foundation and creating the scaffolding for the beautiful masterpiece that is each individual person.

Don't Count the Miles, Count the I Love You's

I’ve decided to not indent my paragraphs

for this entry in honor of Lucy. Why she doesn’t indent her paragraphs, I will never know but I thank God she doesn't because she helped inspire me to write tonight and that is something I haven't done, for sheer enjoyment, in a long time. So thank you, Luce, for your awesome entry and a reminder that it's not about what you write but why you write it. Another lesson I think I am learning is that people leave and it sucks but that doesn’t mean that they are gone forever.

When you leave or when people leave you, you can’t just give up on them and forget everything that ever happened between you. You can’t forget all of the fun times you had and you can’t erase the memories from your encoding. You

can’t repress your feelings of wishing you could be with them again—in the name of love, shenanigans or a never

ending life chat.

You have to be okay with the fact that in this modern world we have the joy of meeting people from everywhere in the world and the burden of being separated from them by landmasses and oceans.

You need to realize that communication is all

together good because it keeps us all intertwined through video messaging, text mess

aging, email, Facebook and all of the technological advances that are making good-byes turn into let’s stay in touch.

Loss, to me, always seemed like some sort of dead end. Once someone was gone, they simply could not remain a part of your heart or mind because it hurt too much to remember their absence. The only way to go from loss was back to where you started—before you met them and before they had a place in you as a person. So throw caution to the wind and allow the loss to come and change you.

Accept the loss—especially if you know its coming—as a challenge, as a testament to your friendship, to your bond, to your memories, to your love. Let the loss deepen your relations and open your heart. Take the pain from the loss and remembering that losing something doesn’t always mean forever and be glad that you even got the chance to have it for a brief moment in time.

Cuntented.

To me, The Vagina Monologues represent everything I love about theater. Originally produced as a one-woman show by the writer, Even Ensler, at the Wow Cafe on the lower East Side in New York City, the show has taken a significant role in bringing female issues into the mainstream. The first rehearsal I had in New York for the production I stage managed there two summers ago was in the Wow Cafe. Being 18 at the time and wide-eyed about being in the Big City, everywhere I went felt like Holy ground. Only after my time in the lower East Side concluded did I learn that the Wow Cafe, La Mama (the burlesque theater across E 4th street) and The Kraine Theater (where was show was) were indeed part of the mecca of theatrical activism.

At theaters like the one's listed and dozens of others in New York, Chicago and Boston, shows that have nearly no budget, not much rehearsal time to speak of and a message are unveiling themselves to small, dedicated, adventurous audiences. The show isn't about the expensive lighting equipment or the ornate scenery, it's about using performance to inspire, to explain and to enlighten. When I first started getting involved with The Vagina Monologues, I wanted to show CCM that they didn't own theater on campus. I wanted to pull off a production wherein reality, we were striving for a staged reading. This relentless drive for theatricality was only abandoned once I had to act in the show.

I've never been one of those stage managers who secretly wanted to be a star on stage but wasn't good enough and receded into the dark wings of the theater. So when I was cast in The Vagina Monologues as Woman #2 I didn't know what to do with myself. The process of rehearsal allowed me to accept my role and appreciate the words I was presenting. I wasn't acting to make a fool of myself (which I inevitably do anyways), I was acting to tell the audience about vaginas and why I love the word cunt. I suddenly felt like a Biblical prophetess, telling my collegiate people to chant cunt and worship the vagina.

If I could write a proverb about my experience, it would be: Cunt you see? Theater is supposed to have a soul. That's how it's meant to be. So whether it be the first staged reading of what is soon to be a revolutionary, international phenomenon in NYC or a college production of The Vagina Monologues in the Engineering building, it's the conviction one has in their words and their dedication to the project on stage that matters.

My Audition Mantra.

I'm jealous of people who have a place to fit in. Lately, I feel like I've been auditioning for a place in the world. I have been walking into all of these different gatherings, with different roles in society, full of a variety of different people and each time I wait to feel the click--the metaphorical click of puzzle pieces into place. Each time, I am playing to a new audience, wearing a carefully thought out and planned out costume to align myself with the show I hope to find myself a part of.

And, yes, I have lived and worked with a slew and a half of actors but I've never understood how much it sucks to audition. You are putting yourself out there in a very vulnerable state after you've worked your ass off and you get rejected. There could be a million reasons why but all you can do is blame yourself and feel like you just aren't good enough.

I've been to the Undergraduate English Society meeting, to Triota (Women's Studies Honors Society), to The Vagina Monologues, to anything and everything and all I want to do is find my people. And maybe that's asking too much so all I want to do is find a place where I click, where I am happy, where I feel like I have purpose.

This state of being lost, in limbo, in pergatory begs too many questions. It leaves me questioning my ability to make real human connection, wondering whether my past has left me utterly defunct to humanity. And as I worry, I recede into myself and my word documents, into my bed and my television, into my own living death. I've been trying to fight it because the tears I've cried have done nothing for me but made me more aware of my underlying sadness. If you've only recently been reading this, you may not believe that once upon a time, I was a happy person.

And thusly, I will continue to audition for my role in life because apparently, no matter what act you come in during, you need to show up and be present. Even if the show is The Vagina Monologues...

Well, I've Been Afraid of Changing...

Sometimes I get scared that in these past few months I've lost my identity. There's something in the combination of losing what was such an integral aspect of who I was before college and the fact that I am so lost in these surroundings that has left me struggling.

It's the puzzle of combining the micro, meso and macro levels of an identity that is leaving me with a 1,500 piece jigsaw of Van Gogh's Starry Night. Who am I according to me? Who am I according to those who are in my life on a personal level? Who am I according to the jock who sits next to me in Bible class wondering which iTouch game I am playing? And with all of these questions come the assumptions you make about what others are think about you based upon your own internal belief system. Your identity is a combination of the different things you believe people feel about you.

Since I stopped stage managing after CLOC this summer, I lost something that was such a structure for who I was. I know it's not gone for long but right now, its absence leaves this awkward unstable aspect of me that invites conjecture about who I am beyond the theater. Suddenly, I am defining myself by my brain and my love for literature and English (which is whittling away as the academic spark in me is fading due to UC classes). And here at UC, those are very hard things to define yourself by because no one gives a flying Fig Newton about any of that.

So what do you do when your identity runs counter to the environment you are in? How do you become comfortable in an identity you are still so insecure about in a place that makes you feel lost? I guess if I knew the answers to these questions, I wouldn't be struggling to pass the few months I have left in Cincinnati. Maybe I would be trying to save myself from drowning rather than waiting out the storm in my bed with my crime dramas and kitten. Maybe I would feel comfortable enough in who I am in this moment to try harder to find my niche.

[A quick shout-out to a friend who loved me enough to remind me that I used to love writing here and for giving me a little incentive to try again.]

That's What She Couldn't Say.

Sometimes, I think I need to just sit down at my computer, stick a pencil up my nose and start banging away at the keys in order to make myself write. I remember a time when the pencil up my nose wasn't necessary and when I would be the utmost relieved to finally have a moment to express myself in words. It was easy back then. The thoughts, the emotions and the stories just seemed to flow from me as I processed them. They never told the truth I was expecting to find when I was done but something that needed to be said was and I could walk away knowing that.

I haven't really sat down to write since I got back to school. I can't really make myself write anymore. This is terrible and even though it sounds like complete and utter discombobulation, I cannot bring myself to close this entry and let it delete itself. I need to have some product for my forced writing exercise.

There doesn't really seem to be anything I have to say anymore. I don't think I really have a belief system strong enough to make claims about anymore. I think that that needs to be reinvented and reinvigorated before I can start believing in the power of words again. I think that the more I embrace being a woman and the feminist perspective I am now just starting to flaunt, the more I will be able to say.

That perhaps the further I recede into myself, the further I will be from the heart of writing: human experience. But that's an entirely different issue for another time. The whole point being that I can't write anymore to save my ever-loving soul. All I want to do is watching television and not move from the peaceful land in which nothing happens and I don't allow anyone around me enough to hurt me.

And that's all she wrote, folks.

La Sotto Voce

This is going to be my forum to make a public apology. So bear with me. This probably applies to you so keep reading.

I am a terrible friend. More accurately, I am terrible at keeping friends. I push everyone away because of one thing or another and then I just run, without giving anyone any word on what my plan will be. Something in me snaps and I am off out of their lives just as quickly as I've managed to remove them from mine. I hate it when other people do that to me, obviously because the things you hate in others are actually the things you do. I mean, I am obsessively checking my phone for a text that will never come because the person I am waiting to make contact has made that decision to remove me without telling me any reason why.

It's a twisted world to live in: constantly seeking love from those who don't want you and leaving the one's who love you because that seems just too good to be true. I constantly feel like I am losing friends because either I am alienating them or they are alienating me.

Here is where an apology is due: I'm sorry if I've managed to do this. I'm sorry if I played God and decided that I didn't need you in my life. And if you felt some pain losing our friendship, then I was absolutely wrong in every way shape and form. Today in Burnham's class, we talked about how my generation is afraid to trust genuineness. I am a horrible offender of this. I only feel compelled to trust you if I am the one making the effort and being honest. However, if you want to reciprocate that then I run like a dog with his tail between his legs.

I don't want to be this person anymore. With transferring on the horizon, I am already severing ties that I don't think will make the cross-state bond. What I should be doing is fostering these connections so they do just that...make the cross. So I am saying to all of you and to myself that this is the first quiet voice speaking out against my own failings as a friend. La sotto voce is screaming to save me from myself.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted.

I've been trying to write in here for a very long time but the task of allowing myself to open up even a small portion of my heart is sure to lead to the damn breaking and an all too sudden release of the pent up anguish I've been trying to subdue. But perhaps, that won't be the case tonight because I am as numb as I am loose. There is a certain place in drinking that I think most writers spent a great portion of their lives. It's this place where you finally set your pen to paper. When you finally abandon all the sadness and tears and worries and fears and just let your words ooze onto the blank expanse. But they ooze in the way you've planned. Your brain still hangs onto the fact that it is telling a certain story and not allowing that story to be colored by the feelings and the emotions that take reality and twist it. No, I am not ready to bear my soul because I have my wits about me still. I am tired of my own whining and self-deprecative feelings so I am going to drown them in alcohol and nicotine and whatever substance I can get to take all of these emotions that are ruining my reality and extinguish them.

I hate feelings so down. I think I understand Sylvia Plath a little better now. I understand depression a lot better now. I think that I need to understand how to confront it and use it in my writing but I cannot write unless I am under this level of sedation. This level of sedation turns off the pumps of chemicals in my brain that tell me that I am worth nothing and that this writing is read by no one because no one cares. And yet, when I am in this state, I am still thinking all of those things but writing seems like maybe this is my paper trail. That when I fall off the face of the map, at least people have this trail of the thought of what I was.

I've been thinking a lot about that lately. When I'm gone, what will people remember? What will people who have completely dropped out of my life in these past few months have to take with them? I want them to remember all of the times I was there for them as much as I want them to remember all of the times that I hated them and that I was mean to them. I want them to remember me for who I was at that moment because I don't want them to know me once I have chosen to lose them from my lives. And then I think about the people who are here with me now, friends who I honestly care about, and I start worrying about losing them and then I wonder if they care if they are losing me.

I want to be transient again. I want to not care about where I am and who I know. I want to lose people like I lose socks. Because like Holden Caufield said, "Don't tell anyone anything, because then you'll start missing them"

Ted Hugh's Poem on Sylvia's Death.

I don't want to die. Die is too strong of a word because then I would cease to exist and that wouldn't work because eventually, I am sure I will want to exist again. But right now, that death feeling is what is living inside of me and eating me from the bottom of the soles of my feet right into my aching brain. I don't want to die but I have this odd desire not to live right now either.

I have no purpose at the moment. I'm just writing this blog that is entirely for my own processing of the world, which is entirely static at this moment. So I am just writing about my inner psychosis which only brings to light things that I would prefer to leave buried in my repression. And then I do some homework which feels like I am just going through the motions, without reason or passion or desire to further my learning. I guess the best analogy I have right now is that I am treading water.

After a while of treading water, you get fucking tired. Fucking tired of doing something so mindless and fucking tired of having nothing to occupy your wandering mind but the fact that your life really fucking sucks at the moment. That's the point I've hit.

I'm not waving but drowning. And actually, I'm not really waving at all. I want to wave but right now, I don't know how because I am just too fucking tired wallowing in my own sorrow to make myself wallow less and get my hands above water.

...I don't know where I am to go from here. I am not sure how plotting my course will save me from myself and the life I've created. I do know, however, that writing all of this has to be inspiration to swim to some floatation device.

Back to December.

The new Taylor Swift single out, Back to December, is all about regret. She loses someone that is important to her, a fact she realizes only after he is no longer a part of her life. That old adage, you don't know what you have until its gone, rings in one's ears as they listen to this ballad.

Most of the time, I know who I need in my life. I don't think it's a sixth sense or anything. I just think that I am so picky about who I really care about that there is no reason should I be trying to hold onto extraneous people or situations. When I first heard the song, it reminded me of someone I had been seeing and where I first felt the heart string tug surprised me. Did I miss what we had or is T.Swift trying to turn me into some sort of sap? The momentary lapse in mental footing passed and I could return to the logic of the situation: we weren't right for one another. The way I handled the whole shindig is beyond inexcusable but at the very crux of my immature behavior was the undeniable notion that, no, that wasn't meant to be.

But then there are other people and I swear to God everyday that if I never saw them again, I would be a much healthier and happier person. So I keep telling myself that, rehearsing the lines when people ask if I've seen them, and try to convince my stubborn self that I really don't need them in my life. There are so many reasons why I shouldn't care and why they shouldn't care about me (another vestige of my immaturity at its finest) but there is nothing I can do to make myself give up having them in my life.

I think having a time line on life here is also impelling me to freak out about the end note, a phenomena I experienced full force this summer post CLOC. And while I know that the friendships that matter in life will actually span states, years, divorces, whatever, it is still hard to come to terms with the fact that next year, this time, this life here will be continuing while I am off starting a new adventure. And maybe, just maybe, I need to figure out who really matters before the time comes to put that to the test.

My Own Craziness.

I watched an episode of House tonight where the patient kept a blog detailing every aspect of her life. The reason she started the blog, she explained, was because it was easier to share her feelings and thoughts when there wasn't a face attached. She asked Dr. Chase what his conversations were like with Cameron before they broke up...Was it just where they would go to dinner or how their days were or was it something meaningful? Later in the episode, her husband accused the blog of becoming like a performance and that his wife was writing to please her audience of readers.

I felt this strange mix of emotions for this fictional dying woman. And then I felt a strange mix of emotions for my dear blog here. I suppose that it is pretty apparent that I don't write about specifics here. You never really get a daily dose in the life or a complete anecdote of an incident. All of this is analysis, the story has been stripped to the morals and the themes and then bolstered with paragraphs of wordy diatribes that further obscure the details of the event that made me sit down and write. This approach to writing is nothing new and is a hallmark of many of my sophomore attempts to write a short story or memoir for creative writing class. I love details and deep thoughts but I cannot bring myself to detail an event or tell a reader what exactly happened. Perhaps I am preventing myself from being my own Holden Caulfield, the unreliable narrator English teachers warned me about in high school.

While some writers reserve their strangely analytical thought processes to remain in print format, I've earned myself the title of "delver". It's a hat I don't think I should wear as proudly as I do. I love to think aloud with people and to ask questions to get them to a revelation or myself to one. I like to think that there is a reason for everything and that that reason is influenced by a multitude of other nitty gritty things that I should be able to piece together. But this exploratory process is only done well with best friends...the kinds that doesn't judge you or look at you like your crazy, they may call you out but never tell you to stop the madness. So, yes, dying fictional patient who writes a blog but didn't die, my last conversation with my ex-nothing was indeed meaningful.

As for the writing for an audience thing, this is my Off Off Off Off Off Broadway in corn pasture Iowa way of sharing my thoughts. If I am writing solely to shed myself of the burden of my pent up psychosis, I type in this word document that is merely a collection of free writes. I pound out a page of thoughts, unfiltered words and cruise through pains and joys and whatever else told me to open that damn file. Speaking of which, I think my subconscious agrees that this should have been a free write because I have accidentally opened Word about five times since I started writing this.

I'm not sure what this entry says about me or what this blog as a whole says about me as a member of the blogging society. I'm also not sure what mind boggling thoughts are keeping me from falling asleep right now but I do know, beyond reasonable doubt that blogging is just boggling with the l moved.

Bangs, Baubles and Bumpers.

The woman who changes her hair is ready to change her life

- Coco Chanel

The night before we all left CLOC, my friend Brynn decided to cut her bangs. Embracing the wonderful state of limbo Brynny was about to find herself in as she reentered reality, measures were taken to show that she was indeed ready to face the changes ahead. Sometimes when we are faced with the possibility of change in our lives, an uncontrollable approaching switch in routine, we decide to change something that we are in control of. It's as if the process we fear the most is less scary if we are in control of some aspect of it. Brynn entered into a world of unknowns and fill in the blanks with positively fierce bangs. On a side note, for all of you non-CLOC kids, Brynn faced this monumental change with total and utter grace. She never once said that she was sure of anything but it never seemed life there was something she couldn't handle if it came her way. Brynn's strength and courage throughout the season and especially on this subject was one that I admired greatly. I hope the best for her and can't imagine anything less for such a wonderful human being.

My version of the hair transformation (I've beaten this mop up over the past months) was to clean the Batmobile inside and out. The thing that takes the most abuse and that I love so much never really gets my tender love and care. Today, impelled by some long dormant inner conscience, I decided to clean my car. If you know me and that janky mobile at all, you know the extent of this process and what a feat it was for me to clean of my own free will. With each cleaning measure it became more clear that if I could clean the Batmobile I could handle anything next year was to bring. The car, coming with me to Cincinnati for the first time, is a clean slate...she's still got all of the dents of my adolescence, the scarpes of my careless summer adventures but now she's all TLC's (with toothbrush cleaned wheels even) and ready for new shenanigans. I have no idea what's to come next year...I have no idea what I want to do as a career...I'm toying with about 800 bad ideas for both scenarios and all I know is that Brynn's bangs, my clean car and Coco Chanel say that anything is possible.

A Number.

I've decided that age is a very transient phenomenon. Our state of mind, our capacity to handle stress and change, our emotional responses to scenarios, all defining markers of a certain age, change drastically in every day life. There are so many times when I feel as though every fiber of my being is trying to be another age. I always feel so defined by my age and yet I hardly ever act 19. I suppose there are moments when I am embodying what it means to be a 19 year old, going off for her sophomore year of college but I hardly ever think to myself "You are being such a 19 year old right now." I can be five years old or twelve or fourty-two or really anywhere in between.

Age is a mental state. When you watch your best friend leave and feel alone, scared, sad and just overall want to throw a tempertantrum to get them back, you are 5 again. You're back to a time when screaming and crying either got you what you wanted or kept you amused until you forgot what hurt you and found somewhere else to focus your attention. When you send text messages to a friend in the room about another friend in the room, you are 14 again. You're back to a time when you are judgy just for the sake of being so and you are insecure enough to pick on everyone to make sure that you weren't the one getting picked on. When you're leaving childhood home and feeling a pang of lose, you are 18 again. You're back to a time when the real world was just some fantastical place that you wanted so desperately to be a part of only to realize that growing up meant leaving things and people behind.

So maybe age is a relapse into former mental states ingrained in you. Maybe its just you, the you now, deciding that the best way to handle what you are facing is to return to some familiar way of dealing. And perhaps, age is an addition formula. Each year adds to you and who you will become.

In each 19 year old, there is a five year old and a twelve year old and all those years in between.

Almost Like Being in Love.

As months and shows come to pass here at CLOC, this delusional way of life sets further into our psyche and habits. What at first seemed like an impossibly hectic schedule has become second nature to us. The friends we've made within the confines of this company have effortlessly become as close to us as those friends we've known exponentially longer. I think that by condensing a process that most of us know to take many more days than what we're given here makes the reality created here consume us far quicker and with an increased emotional intensity unmatched by any I've been a part of. We find ourselves receding deeper and deeper into the realm of CLOCadoon, a mysterious land that exists only for 9 shows, because trying to handle the facts of the real world on top of the stressors here feels impossible in the moment.

But reality has a strange way of rearing its head even in the recluse of CLOCadoon. It's funny how it works. I'm thinking about how much I wish I had a coffeemaker here and then I think about having one in my apartment next year, apartment with no furnishing, classes I need books for, friends who think I am dead...And down comes the carefully built Jenga tower protecting my fictional reality here. CLOC is just a summer and when I get out of here, I'm back in my real life, the life I've been utterly neglecting here in favor of emotional stability.

As the Jenga facade crumbles, one starts to question the newly exposed fantastical reality. The rosy colored CLOC glasses get removed, I don my all too real jade specs and objectively look at CLOCadoon as one would a travel brochure. I see me being unmistakably myself and being friends with people who are really and truly friends I value outside and inside of fictional lands.

I feel confronted with the fact that CLOCadoon will disappear into the mist and fog but the lessons I've learned and the people I've become close to will always be a part of my real world.

Every chapter of life, place you've lived, school you've been to, is its own mysterious land that arises only for a certain period of time. It will disappear and the people involved might fade with it but what matters is that it happened and served to change you and your 'real world'.

Punctuated Thus.

I made a very bold statement today. It went something like, “I am truly myself here” and just as soon as the words fell so effortlessly from my lips I started to weigh the gravity of the sentence. What does it mean to be truly one’s self? What does it feel like to know, entirely, who you are? Is knowing who you are meaning that you feel comfortable with the unknowns of your life and of your personality or is knowing being entirely sure? Do I know when I am truly myself or is that a case made by those around me?

As these questions swirled in my conscience, I started to think about all of the other times I’ve said that phrase. Each time was in a different scenario, in a different time of my life, in a different place entirely and I was almost entirely different every single time but each time I said, with certainty mind you, that I was myself.

I think that admitting that you are truly yourself at certain points in your life is a way to tabulate the portions of yourself that you have become comfortable with and have enough confidence to admit that you appreciate about who you are. Each of the times I said I was myself came as a marked decision that I was comfortable in the skin I was wearing at that moment. This year alone, I’ve said that loaded statement four times. The first time was at the beginning of the school year as I became friends with the CCM girls. That time, I was myself, the artist. The next time was when I became very close to two friends and considered them my best friends. That time, I was myself, feeling, emotional, dramatic. The third time, I was changing my major and accepting the fact that I care too much and am too weak to ever make it in the world of theater or stage management. That time, I was myself, the empathetic and unsure. This time, I am being goofy and five and not trying to hide any of my oddities to please people who are older than me. I am myself, the responsible child.

So each time we make the claim that we are entirely ourselves, we should consider ourselves self confident, if only for even that moment. Because for one small sentence, we are saying that we are proud to be living the life we are, exactly how we are. We human beings change, along with most other things in this world, and therefore the proclamation is saying that in this moment, this me is who I want to be and I am beautiful for it.

I can say the afore said because of the people I have met here at CLOC and how wonderful the entire company has been to work with. There is no reason I feel as though I need to be anyone other than who I am at this very point in my life. That is the greatest gift I can ask for from any group of people and artists.

Accustomed to My Face.

There is something about playing the role of Eliza Doolittle that makes men fall in love with you. Professor Higgins even warns the audience at the beginning of My Fair Lady by saying "by the time I'm finished with you, there will be men falling for you in droves." Little did he know, he would be one of the masses. But is the reason the male sex flips for the actresses who play this character all a by product of Higgins' creation or are there other forces at play with this cockney turned princess?

First and foremost, there is the character Eliza Doolittle herself. A strong-minded low class flower girl, Eliza originally takes speech lessons in order to better herself and her lot in life. But as the lessons continue, Eliza becomes malleable and meek in order to play the role of the Professor's lady. The classic enjenue changing for her leading man in order to illicit his affection. All too soon, however, Eliza realizes that regardless of how much she changes for the Professor, he cannot show her genuine affection. Lady Eliza is now colored by her strong cockney sense of self and independence. There is something very attractive in that transformation from baudy self-assured feminist (in a manner) to a strong-willed by socially attune lady. Overt cries for women's rights and treatment tend to scare men off whereas strong, confident women who believe in a certain moral system are valued by men who are not looking for a Stepford Wife.

Another character plays a vital role in this affinity for Ms. Doolittle because of his stubborn inability to accept his feelings for her. Professor Higgins, modern literature's narcissist, reminds men to treat a woman that matters to you like she matters to you. The male sex can sympathize with Higgins' inability to express emotions and yet feels a desire to protect Eliza from a man who is hurting her. Men wants women who love them and try to do things that please them but they also want women who are sure in themselves...or at least that's what I've observed...

That all explains why I believe men fall in love with the role of Eliza but what I am claiming here is that this affinity goes beyond the character and to the actress playing the part. Acting, to me, involves assuming the plight of your character to some degree. In the case of Eliza, one must be willing to undergo the rollercoaster of emotions toward self-confidence that the audience witnesses on stage every night. The by product of internalizing this transformation often becomes realizing that it is present in one's self. Most little girls want to be princesses and Eliza ends up realizing that she has been a princess all along, a self confident and strongly independent princess.

This analysis fails to address the role money and class play in Eliza's transformation as well as which men are attracted to this type of woman. Someday in a classroom, I'll have my students do a similar investigation but until then, I am missing a very large segment of Guys and Dolls blocking...

Bear Necessities.

Last night, well, this morning if we are acknowledging the passing of days, I finally sat down in my bed and wrote. It was 1am and I had just finished balling my eyes out. I think that part of the reason I cried so desperately was because I had hadn't had the chance to write for over a week while here at CLOC. I had been thinking and allowing my observations and feelings to flood my overtired brain until they finally claimed my sanity and I broke down into tears.

There has to be a million and half reasons why I was balling last night. One of them had to have been how overtired I was. I am running myself into the ground here. I can feel it in my body but most importantly I can feel it in my soul, the little part of me that needs moments of time to herself to type letters or blog entries, to read, to refresh myself. I've been moving at a pace that is so constructive for how I work but so detrimental to me as a human being. I can feel my ability to support all of my actors slipping between my fingers as the hours of work pile up.

Another reason I was crying is because I am so done with stage management because I feel so lonely. I think that that was the indicator during Peter Pan that I should not be in this field. During that production, I felt the weight of what it meant to be ostracized from the group of people you were working with. As CCM and my real world experiences started to build, the gap between me and the companies grew. And now, with all of that behind me and all of this CLOC stuff in front of me, I feel so alone and I cannot imagine doing this for the rest of my life. You have to be in a role of power and a role of respect and yet you need to be reachable by the people you are working with and yet you need to be working hours that doesn’t allow you to foster any social bonds. Here is where stage management fucks you over. I am way too dramatic and way too much of a softy for this theatrical world. I don’t have the fighting spirit that Heidi does. I cannot ever put the needs of a show in front of the needs of my cast members. At the core of my being as a human, I believe that the most important thing is for people to feel loved and respected. I think that theater tends to prize the product whereas teaching certainly prizes the process. I mean, of course, you have all of these schools that need to have acceptable test scores to keep funding and such but if you are a really good teacher you can get those scores through a process that focuses on the child. I know that this is going to be a very hard career choice and I know that I will make no money but I really, honestly, think that this is where I need to be and what I need to be doing. I need to be a teacher because I want to change the lives of children and make them feel this whole person thing. It’s something that isn’t valued when instilled in adults or people my age. That’s why me as a stage manager wouldn’t carry over into the real, professional world. I am built to work with people that I can make feel warm, fuzzy and loved.

Here I toe that line between professional theater and an opportunity for me to make these friends that I can make feel like real people who are loved and cherished for all of their talents. If nothing else, I love them for who they are and what they do and their happiness and well being will always mean more to me than the quality of the show we put on that god damn stage.

Well, dear CLOC and stage management, this writer is not dead yet. Actually, she just needed some material to stock pile and now she will be back full force. Typing in the middle of the night with no restraints, just flying fingers with absolutely no purpose but to empty this giant pit of emotions that is my brain and conscience.

Where Would That Get Me?

"We go days without having a meaningful conversation, and I used to miss you so much when that happened...but it never seemed like you missed me. And I guess, because of it, I stopped missing you"

Okay. This is getting ridiculous. I've been sitting here for a good hour attempting to write this blog entry. I've been burning through metaphors like trees in a California Forest Fire. I even found an old Xanga entry from a friend of mine and tried to tie that, subtly, to what I am feeling right now. But, alas, the attempts to bull shit everything I am feeling are falling short. I think that that marks some serious progress in my development as a human being or, perhaps, it marks a loss of creative steam. Which ever case it may be, I need to write this and I need to write it like Boom, Boom, Pow.

I am coming back to things on my own terms. First of all, stage management. Here I am at CLOC, stage managing 9 productions in a summer with literally no time off. And yet, I am enjoying myself because I am no longer hanging my hat on this career choice. This summer is about making friends, having fun, doing shows and being myself. It's about defining who I am in the theater world aside from CCM and PC and all of my experience up to this point. It is the divorce agreement between me and stage management. This is what you get, this is what I get and that is that.

And then there is the friendship thing. It's weighing on me in a way that I hoped that it wouldn't. I don't feel like I need to change for anyone ever again and if I start to do that, I will not be a happy camper. But, by the same token, I feel so inclined to write things to people and tell them why I can't handle them or why I want them back in my life or on what terms. My issue with that is that I am the one trying again and is it really worth it if they are unwilling to accept that they've hurt me. I have really true, wonderful friends and I don't want to under appreciate them in an attempt to get through to those people who, to some degree, do not deserve my attention or love.

What is worth saving? What is worth returning to with a fresh prospective? Will you listen to what I have to say? Why do I still care? Do I still care?

All of these unanswered questions will have to remain while I spend the rest of my day finishing The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Overdramatize it.

"I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is willfully my own?"

- Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

I am almost frightened by how much I am seeing my writing reflected in the free-writes of a woman who shoved her head into an oven at the age of thirty to commit suicide. She was born in Massachusetts and would be Mimi's age if she were alive today. The first section of journal entries in the book are from Plath's early college years and the things she writes about are so appropo of exactly everything I am feeling at this point in my life. She is so real and so tangible. But at the same time, she is so frightening because I see this girl who is teetering on the edge of living to live and living to write about it.

I recognize that precipice so readily because I know that to be exactly where I am standing. Writing has always been my escape, my outlet, my own entangled world of words and metaphors and untold stories. And now I've started to live there. It's the vacation that is lasting far too long.

It's days like this when I feel the pull to overstay my welcome in my solitude and literature that I most desperately need people. It gets hard to wrench yourself away and accept the world. I consider writing, in its purest form, to be nothing but an aspect of depression: a need to be away from everything and everyone except for your own twisted mind.

I praise God for my writing moments and when I get the inspiration to embrace the depression/feelings but I also praise Him for blessing me with people who have the place in their hearts and minds to know when I need them to rescue me. Tonight alone: I had Caitlin to talk to about boys. I had Taylor to dance with, fall on the floor with and hug. I had Jordan smile at me when I needed it most. I had Ellie (Brisket) to make silly faces at me. I had Nick playing his amazing music that brightens my day every time I get the chance to hear it. I had Serenity to go get dinner with. I had Alex to walk to Jimmy John's with. And now I have Dana to fall asleep in the same room as.

I have all of these reasons, these beautiful people, why I will never become Sylvia Plath. I am far too in love with these human relationships and the way they influence me as a person and as a writer.

Creative Maximus.

Charge on, young, semi-confident writer and see what deep depths you can avoid today while banging on your keys in your Sad Café.

Yesterday in both Fundamental’s of Directing classes, Burnham addressed the idea of a window. It’s kind of this beautiful metaphor for something that I feel like I understand but can’t believe I have a full grasp on. It’s alluding me just that little bit. The world looks like the world you are looking through the window you are looking out of. So we have two realities here: the world, reality, and the reality that your schemata and way of looking at the world have created. Your window is like your personal pair of rose colored glasses through which you can see the world, tinted in a manner that makes it more appealing to you. Things that are important to your mental model stick out and are over dramatized in comparison to the things that are of less importance to you, personally. The beauty of the window metaphor is that it highlights the fact that you can see your reflection in a window. There is nothing that prevents you from taking a moment to examine yourself in that window rather than what you see through it. That’s the beauty of introspection. Some windows are too fascinating to look out of and don’t allow time for one to see how they are perceiving things. Other windows, however, are tailored specifically to showing us who we are in relation to why we do what we do and how that influences our current state of being. For example, the window of relationships in my life is reflective; all I see are the mistakes I am making because of my parents. Each window represents another portion of your schemata: relationships, stress, schoolwork, morals, eating habits, etc. Each one of those is a very important part of your hardwired mental mapping and that individual pattern of yours can be either very apparent to you or very obscured from you.

Another point that Burnham brought up with this was that once you see your own reflection and realize who you are becoming or what you embodying, that you get the rebellion right. I guess that point is one that is more specific to the event that took place or the reflection that you saw. The idea that you can rebel in the right way connects to the reading from last night about the creative maxims. We need to use everything that’s been given to us. If we look in the mirror and we see a crazy mother, we need to find a way to make that crazy mother into a creative thought that can inspire a great work of art. It’s using our windows and the views we see through them and in them to create more things and become deeper, more inspirational artists.