Too bad about her cousin, back in the 80s

I saw Dead City by Sheila Callaghan this evening and then I rode the 1 train home with Olymia Dukakis.

Well, not with her, per se: we were separated by about 4 feet, the space where the car doors open. But it was a largely vacant car. She wore flip flops and dark maroon polish on her toenails.

I spent a little while trying to think of something intelligent and specific to say to her, but the best I could muster was, "You're inspiring to me. I'm an actor who's just moved here from San Francisco. I've seen your work at ACT and elsewhere. So, thank you. [trademark, toothy/gummy D smile]" (I must say it's more her portrayal of Mrs. Madrigal in Tales of the City than her work at ACT that inspires me, but be that as it may...)

She thanked me. Then we rode in silence, reading our programs.

Equity Chorus Calls

I had my first one on Monday. It was for the role of 'young virgin' (I know, I know) in a Pirates of the Caribbean (!) inspired adaptation of The Pirates of Penzance. I was typed out.

I guess I'm insufficiently virginal in my appearance. Or maybe I handed them the wrong resume?

But, come on, doesn't every production need an eccentric/retarded/lesbian/other-automatically-comical-outsider-status-designator/unlikely virgin?

They don't know what they're missing.

Now, I'd like to see the Queer Pirates of Penzance (hello, Theatre Rhino, please rise to the challenge!). Or, really, anything with queer pirates.

Haruki Murakami

First I was blown away by the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. Then I read Bakery Attack and was totally awestruck. I've just finished reading The Kangaroos and I can barely speak!

I wish I had seen the Complicite production:

http://www.complicite.org/productions/detail.html?id=35

(and, as an aside, I like their new website)

my father

just discovered his parents' ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) while cleaning out the apartment and learned the following things:

1) his parents never actually signed their ketubah, thus making my father and aunt bastards (as my mother pronounced with glee)

2) my paternal grandfather, after whom I am named, had a middle initial, J. My father has always believed that the "J" stood for "Jaeger", my grandmother's maiden name. In reality, it stood for "Joseph", my grandfather's middle name.

***

The Cohens, a bunch of meticulous archivists are we.

and the number of blog entries today...

is a testament to my love of and efficiency at decluttering.

Second only to my aptitude for procrastination.

ahem.

archaeology

I'm excavating the drawers in my old bedroom right now in an attempt to reduce clutter in my family's perennially overcluttered apartment.

Among the things I found in a single drawer:

1) a letter of recommendation on my behalf dated 1998 from Austin Mitchell MP (Old
Labour MP for the Yorkshire fishing town of Great Grimsby)
2) numerous letters from my dance teacher written in the late 80s assuring me that
I'd recover from my injuries and dance again soon
3) bumper stickers that read:

"Homophobia is a social disease"
"Feminism is the radical notion that women are people too"
"Hatred is not a family value"
"I'm Pro-Choice and I Vote"

my personal favorites from the collection -

HMO Phobic
Get Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries

and, best of all,

4) a) A "Witness" (Witness being the underground newspaper I edited in
high school) t-shirt with a cartoon drawing of me and several high school classmates
floating in a raft
b) an ancient pink and orange NARAL t-shirt
c) a HUNS t-shirt ("painting our way to a brighter tomorrow" - a reference,
for those other than Rachel, who, I am sure, remembers, to the time someone was
caught cheating and we had to paint classrooms as pennance)
d) that hideous, god-awful Women's Issues club t-shirt with the ethnically ambiguous
women etched in purple on the front

I am definitely holding on to those t-shirts for the ole 10 year reunion next year.

Jack's summer vacation

My dear friend Jack (coincidentally the very same one to whom I addressed that letter 6 years ago) is spending the summer in Sacramento before heading back to Michigan to begin his PhD in anthropology.

He made headlines just in time for Pride:

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A65239

can anyone help me improve my blog?

I'd like to organize it a little better, make the archives more accessible, change the location of the links, etc.

Anyone?

Frank?

Caspar?

;)

allow me to give some context

I am decluttering my parents' place as they prepare to move south and I east. I have found all these journals, photographs, t-shirts, stickers, and letters dating from around 1988 through 2001. I have no idea what to do with some of them.

So I'll probably write about them here.

Stay tuned.

more (less) vintage D

I found this letter in a book containing notes from the "deconstructing masculinites" class I took in college and assorted scribblings from the performance studies conference in Tempe (must have been 2000 or 2001) and my stay in South Africa.

In the same notebook is now nestled an envelope with the following written by my Johannesburg housemate, Lawrence:

"Davina

The big white box on the wall that you have unplugged is the alarm system. It needs to stay on. Old African proverb 'White man with no alarm living in Africa will probably die'.

Wlecome to JHB.

L"

And here's a letter I called "dramatribe" dated March 12, 2000

Dear Eric and Jack,

I was writing iin my gender studies notebook as thouh it had been a journal when I felt, as I often do when writing in a journal, that I would be better off writing a letter. So, I'm transcribing what I've written on one page onto another and beginning this letter. I believe you have both received "stream of consciousness" letters from me before; this one is no different.

First, I must set the scene. I am in a plane (as I often am when these letters erupt) bound for Chicago. I have recently departed Tempe, Arizona where the 6th Annual Performance Studies International Conference has just concluded. It is getting dark as the plane moves east.

At the conference, a grizzly man whom I imagine must be someone's favorite uncle, Philip Auslander, from Georgia Tech, presented a paper on glam rock, focusing specifically on David Bowie. Eric would have loved it.

Anyway, I was at thi conference to try out performance studies, shop for graduate programs, and expand my mind.

As I sit here, the number of topics about which I want to write and the palces I want to go, and the projects I want to start is increasing at a rapid speed. "So," I think, "okay, it's time to pause and reflect."

"My interests are extremely varied." A phrase I once used with pride is now the cause of infinite angst.

I am 20 years old and I have no idea and yet every idea of what I want to do in this world. I realize that I'm not unusual in that respect, but so what?!

1) I must write a proposal tonight for Amnesty International
2) Stop, wait?!

My life is a constant struggle, the kind of struggle that can only result from an extremely privileged life. I am forever doing things and being things that I am told do not belong together. When I attend a performance studies conference, I ask questions about public policy. When I sit in a political science class, do I think about or ask about performances? No. Does that mean I am *really* a political scientist? Maybe. No. Yes. Why would it?

I am stumped by this paper for my masculinities class. First I'm writing about drag kinds and camp critiques of masculinity. Then I think maybe I should write about male strippers. Or male escorts. Or male rape survivors. Or all of them. I have to ask the question, then, why do I want to write about them? What is it that causes me to consider them in the same brain space, at the same time, in the same plane ride, in the same 15 minutes? Does this mean that I am stymied, stilled by the class, the discipline, the intellectual paradigm itself? Maybe. But then what?

How do I explain the fact that I write really well about performance, that I read films, plays, performance, art, music in critical and critically astute ways? What about the fact that I am drawn to the theater, the gallery, the performace space? What about the fact that I try and fail and want to keep trying to make photographs? What about the fact that I miss singing and that my embarrassment about my body is really the only thing that stops me from learning how to dance again? What about the fact that I would like to make installation art and that I can make a "morning after" bed with cumstains, wine bottles, tissues, cigarette butts, handcuffs, and a wastebasket out of a single 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper? What do I do about that when I consider that I also spend 6 hours in a single night researching the juridical definitions of recklessness and spouting my reactions to police brutality, legal procedures, and the need for building grassroots coalitions? How can I go to my political theory advisor and tell her that I'm interested in looking at the shift in violence in South Africa from the state to civil society, but not be writing about that because, instead, I find myself writing about plays? What I'm really hoping for, at the end of the day, is a strategy to end the violence, though, not a brilliant play about it.

Why must I have a calling when I feel like I have 20? What can I do to create a world to match myself instead of creating myself to match this world?

Why do I imagine that the answers to my questions exist?

I love you both.

-Davina

***

I wish I could remember the name of the teacher of that masculinities class. I keep wanting to say "Paul Frank" but, obviously, that's not right. He was great.

I'm back!

and I have a backlog of unanswered e-mails so, those concerned, please accept my blanket apology.

I've had a wonderful welcome home. We took the train back to NYC en masse on Saturday - by the time we boarded the train I had transitioned from inebriated to hung over. I finally ate something at around 8:30 on Saturday and that something was a scrumptious meal from Angelica Kitchen - a tofu ricotta/mixed vegetable pie with spelt crust and beautiful, cleansing, dark greens (and dandelion greens) as well as several glasses of chilled cider and lemonade. Then I meandered over to a bar in the LES, the Magician, to meet the remainder of the SITI program crew still gathered in NY.

Sunday I had a manicure and pedicure (my feet have been reborn), saw the second to last performance of Red Light Winter by Adam Rapp, and then met Frank and Enrico for dinner at Zen Palate. The last time I saw a show at the Barrow Street Theatre was on Halloween, so I've concluded that my personal theatergoing habits are important enough to celebrate with a parade through the West Village full of screaming, drunken, glitter-soaked queers. After dinner the three of us wandered over to a party at the Waverly where I finally met two artists and community organizers Jesse's been telling me I need to meet for years. Frank went home and Jack, Peter, Enrico and I strolled over to the Christopher Street Pier. We danced in the rain, I reunited with friends I haven't seen in years, and then Enrico and I set off on our long northeasterly journey by stinky, crowded subway and swollen feet.

Since leaving Skidmore my diet has been, impossibly, more fucked than it was while I was there. I've grown so accustomed to these huge, carbohydrate-filled meals being heaped upon me at regular intervals that I'm almost forgetting to eat. I made an egg, tomato, and pepper scramble with dill, oregano, basil, and ground pepper last night. That's a start...but I think I need to go on a serious greens and lemon binge to purge my system of the Skidmore cafeteria crap.

Right. So. Time for breakfast.

the morning after the day after

New meaning to the word drunk. Filing it away for future reference.

New meaning also to the words love and gratitude.

What an amazing group of people.

the day after

I got a bravo - several of them - and a hand on the heart from Ellen Lauren...a teacher and performer whom I've come to admire beyond words and by whom I am utterly inspired and moved.

I can think of one section that would have benefited from play in rehearsal (it involved heaping large amounts of dirt on someone's head, so we didn't practice it at all in the rehearsal room and I realize that there were a million other more interesting possibilities for performing that task than the one I chose ... and ones that would have served the jo-ha-kyu of the moment more powerfully...but, oh well, better luck next time).

All in all, it went very well. And I befriended a 5-ish-year-old girl who found herself (rather surprisingly) in the audience and really connected with my performance, despite the fact that it involved me having violent sex in the dirt with a horse-man.

My parents and aunt came to see the performance and sat next to Anne Bogart. During the intermission, my mother introduced herself. They had a brief conversation about San Francisco and then my mother said something like, "Well, you know Davina's moving back east" and Anne said, "It's been great having her here and working with her," to which my mother replied: "Well, make sure you have her phone number and give her a job!"

Excellent. :)

All the SITI Company members were such generous (and by "generous" I mean attentive and supportive, not sycophantic) audience members last night.

And incredible teachers throughout the summer.

One more day of Suzuki and VP, then more composition performances tonight, then we all get trashed, and tomorrow we go home.

Every year the SITI Company watches this ensemble grow before their eyes and vanish in an instant at the end of the month. I have a feeling we may be a particularly energetic and cohesive group (but perhaps every group feels that way)...but, as for the SITI Co members, all I can say right now:

blessed, brilliant bastards

the day before

I've just returned from an eternal rehearsal. We've made a lot of changes to the piece, changed the story in some significant ways, and, I have no perspective on it right now, but we'll have our adrenaline and energy and focus and concentration and fierceness tomorrow night and hopefully it'll all be all right...in fact, more than all right: it'll be something so great my tired brain can't manufacture and appropriate word to describe the magnitude of greatness.

Sleep.

SITI Week 4

Just a quick update:

The Headache of Death is history.

We showed our first round of our final composition yesterday. It was scary to perform, which, I think, is a great sign. I got lots of useful feedback. I'm excited and scared (though not worried, if that makes sense) for the final, public performance on Thursday evening.

I wish you could all be there! I have no idea if anyone will videotape it. My guess is probably not - and these pieces are definitely made for live theater.

Back to NY on Saturday (I think) - we're figuring out the car situation. And then back to SF on July 4.

mwah.

ch-ch-ch-changes

I've experienced a remarkable emotional cycle and, though I must run downstairs to do laundry and prepare for our composition on Monday (this time I'm playing Polina), I need to write something about the past week.

Week 1, pre-Headache of Death, had me feeling challenged, but basically strong and like I was making progress. Week 2 ushered in an array of rather abysmal "you're not good enough" sentiments. Week 3 featured a way out of the pit of despair and into a feeling of "I'm doing the work, I'm not killing myself, I don't suck, *and* I have a million miles to go".

That seems like exactly the right place to be.

I've played around with silent stomp and modifying my neutral position for basic 4. Gradually, the headache disappeared so I returned to full stomp, full neutral, and by that time, we'd moved to marches and the cat (forms that can only be demonstrated - there's no point in my trying to write about them here). We also did two 'dances' to Elvis singing "Don't Be Cruel". One of the 'dances' - I can't remember the name of the walk, but it's the pigeon-toed slide with a weight shift onto your front leg - began as a whimsical, absurd piece of group performance. I held back my chuckles. About half way through the song, it morphed into one of the most horrifying, disturbing things I've seen in, oh, an hour or so (I'd say we have a quota of at least 5 earth-shattering moments of pure struggle per day). People switched from being quirky dance automatons to scary, spastic, psycho warriors. The battle was raging.

Okay. That's all for now. Laundry and lines call.

a little nugget of wisdom from Anne Bogart

The director's job is to direct the story.
The actor's job is to direct the role.

Check out Chekhov (yes, it's a cheesey title)

Our final composition performances are Thursday, June 23 @ 7 pm at Skidmore College (www.skidmore.edu) in the Bernhard Theater Black Box.

They're free.

Please check 'em out if you can make it up here!

SITI Week 3

Our composition was tremendous fun!

A wonderful collaboration and a really inventive and energetic piece. In fact, all the compositions shown yesterday were so much closer to complete works of simultaneous surprise and inevitability than our collective attempt in week two.

We took most of our inspiration from Rocky and a little from Cabaret. I played Konstantin, a boxer, in a bout with Nina (played by a male actor). We had a female Trigorin and a male Arkadina. There were bells, sportscasters, LL Cool J, dances with towels, and surprise lightbulbs. We had feathers, a feather boa, and a burlesque-esque performance in fishnets, a bra, boxing boots, and undies by yours truly. Victory by knockout-kiss.

I'm feeling a little Seagull-ed out right now, but my new composition group had a great discussion last night and I'm excited to see where and how we plunge into the text anew tonight.

I forgot to publish this entry! I'm back! We've plunged!

I'm all wet.

I wet the bed

I went into town for a little while and left my water bottle, apparently somewhat unscrewed, on my bed. Now my sheets and blankets are vexingly moist. Luckily (!), the mattresses in the Skidmore dorms are made of plastic - sort of like sleeping on a giant, rustling diaper - so things should be dry by the time I need to lie down.

Now, it's back to memorizing the Seagull. I'll definitely write about this one when it's over - such a fun and inventive collaboration, yet also an homage to so many unexpected things.

playing with repetition

The Headache of Death returned for a brief while today as we rehearsed and I executed this rather quick head-between-the-legs maneuver during the cabaret section of our composition. I feel like I shouldn't be writing about it because I don't want to give things away, but I don't think anyone from the program reads my blog. So the sensational secrets, the theatrical magic, if you will, is safe out there in the big, bad internet.

I think I'm going to see a doctor on Monday morning. The other fella who had this problem in the past said the doc prescribed some muscle relaxants. And I certainly wouldn't be opposed to taking some, say, before bed, if they would help the situation.

In other, less tedious news, we saw the SITI Co's The War of the Worlds tonight. What a delightful piece of theater! They played a lot with 'hyper realism' - naturalism so extreme that it becomes stylized, but still stays firmly situated in the world of the everyday. Also, some stunning work (of course) and a very exciting story.

I asked a question about sound - particularly sounds not related to speaking (e.g. papers falling to the floor, people walking around the 'studio' without shoes) - and the way Anne answered my question reminded me of something important. She said most of the discoveries about sound in the play were just that: discoveries. They were happy accidents that occurred during rehearsal (and were, of course, later choreographed down to every last muscular twitch) and that they hadn't set out consciously to explore those uncertainties and surprising convergences and remarkable tensions generated by the role of sound in the play (a visible, theatrical performance of an on-air play). She reminded me that, of course, these things must emerge organically and that, by and large, we simply breeze right by them or don't even allow them to emerge when we're so busy 'executing' some grand concept.

I'm too exhausted to be writing. I've got rehearsal in the morning, which should be fascinating since I just put my cohort - so drunk he was rolling around on the floor and caressing the wall - to bed. Then I'm going in to town to have lunch with a former professor of mine and her husband whom I've never met. And then it'll be back to Skidmore for more rehearsal.

And with that:

goodnight
signing off
etc

x

wahey!

I have now gone a full 24 hours without the mysterious, awful headache (and, as it turns out, someone else in the group has had a similar ailment and knew exactly the pain I was describing, so that was some comfort).

I took the day off training yesterday, had a great rehearsal, and now I'm doing some housekeeping stuff before today's rehearsal. I look forward to training again on Monday.

SITI week two

We showed our composition - it was a blast. Deeply problematic from a structural standpoint, but really satisfying in certain ways. One group was just outstanding - truly breathtaking in every way.

I'm stewing a little in a foul mood. My weird headaches have persisted and emerged in circumstances far less strenuous than the one I described in a previous post. I saw a craniosacral therapist yesterday, though, and we figured out some probable causes.

The source of the headaches is my occipital atlas - an area with several small holes through which nerves and various veins, including the jugular, pass - and, specifcally, my sphenobasilar joint. Something may be causing unusual compression in that area, resulting in blood loss and pain. The craniosacral therapist did really subtle and deep adjustments, including work inside my mouth.

So. There's that Sisyphean boulder again. I was reflecting on my fraught history with injuries and a new friend asked me, "What do you get when you're hurt?" I thought for a while and ventured, "care", but I don't think that's it. I always have this feeling of anger, this feeling that I'm being told, "No, you're not good enough or strong enough to do what you're doing. This thing that you find so compelling and rewarding is not for you." What is the lesson here? What is my body saying? I think it may be saying: you have nothing to prove; or: nothing that you need to prove to anyone other than yourself, so listen to me. My body *is* my self. I am, after all, here for myself and, yes, for the future of theater; but, fundamentally, to become a stronger, more vibrant artist. To use my self more dynamically in creating theater.

There we go - now I've got a proper blog going, haven't I? That was a self-indulgent, somewhat self-disgracing sort of revelation. Comments are encouraged.

With much reflection and some wonderful conversations (including one with my inimitable and fanastic PT in SF) behind me, my head feels clearer (and, consequently, I wouldn't be surprised if the headache itself soon disappears). This is the point of the training: to show you what happens in your body that interferes with free and celebratory use of it.

So, here's to more self-love.

Clouds in My Coffee

We are just over a day away from showing our first big composition!

We've got a fabulous space with a lot of built-in obstacles generated by the architecture. We've got lots of music, lots of dramatic text, an aria, an assault by airborn eggs, flamenco dancing, bilingual dialogue, a mad professor, an homage to Carly Simon, a tooting bicycle horn, and more!

Too bad you can't see it. Maybe we can get some photos or a videotape.

You Are My Aneurysm

I've slept through breakfast. I didn't think it would happen - I woke up at the usual time (7) and then went back to much-needed sleep and now it's 9:15. I think I will stroll over to the Case Center (the student center, so unfortunately monikered as to make me feel like I'm at rehab, instead of a college) and see if the pay-your-way cafe is open. I don't want to rehearse on an empty stomach and I don't particularly wish to venture into town right now either. If only I had a bicycle.

Yesterday I had a brush with death while singing "You Are My Sunshine". We did stomping shakuhachi (without the shakuhachi) - for those who don't know, it's essentially three minutes of stomping to this very intense, rhythmic, Japanese, Pulp Fiction-esque soundtrack - and then we got into the basic 4 neutral position (a kind of squat, but with your center still engaged), stomped several times during the ridiculous midi introduction to "You Are My Sunshine", and then sang the first verse of the song in the 'neutral' position. Then we sang the chorus as we rose slowly in a kind of sunburst gesture, eventually to standing with our hands behind our heads, then the first verse again in that position, and then the chorus once more as we descended back into neutral.

The intense nausea and pounding, shooting, throbbing pain I felt in my neck and head is one I recognize only from the moment I tore my ACL and meniscus. I think I must have reached a point of extreme dehydration and somehow released a lot of toxins, because it took me about 45 minutes to recover. My mouth tasted of stomach acid. My head hurt like nothing I've experienced. I moaned in the hallway for a while. When I stepped into the viewpoints class I worked with the group, but I was like a walking ghost. Then, just as there had been a distinct moment where I transformed into an ailing zombie, there was a very clear point at which I recovered. Lots of water, an attempt at vomiting, and much ibuprofen later, I could feel the color return to my face. And then, interestingly, I felt fantastic for the rest of the day.

We practiced Suzuki again in the afternoon and did stomping with shakuhachi (a fall to the ground, rise on 30 count, and slow walk downstage to the sound of this flute [the shakuhachi]). I felt fear for the first time in this work. Not determination. Not excitement. Not hope. Fear. Genuine fear that I would not make it. That I was weak and couldn't do it. That I would be writhing in agony inside and have no external release. And at the end of the second stomping shakuhachi of the day, I felt strong. I wasn't in agony. And I think, then, I may not have pushed myself where I needed to go. Either that, or I really need(ed) that squat and "You Are My Sunshine" to plunge into the 7th level of hell. But, of course, it's possible that where I needed to go at 11 am was different from where I needed to go at 5 pm (with a lot more water and a lot less tea in my body).

Stomping Sunshine (that's what I'm calling it) scares me. I need to do it again.

I feel quite vulnerable, posting this stuff on a blog. I may need to take it down and keep it to myself for a while.

a return to the new (5/18/06)

I just came across an article about Alexandra Beller:

http://www.alexandrabellerdances.org

I really want to see her work.

I think I may have seen her dance with Bill T. Jones when I was in South Africa.

Among the many outstanding quotations from critics is:

"built like a burlesque queen, moves like a goddess" (!)

(to say nothing of:

"a lush and hurtling force of nature with a brain"
and
"strong, deft, emotionally resonant theater", courtesy of the NYT !!)

and, as an entertaining side note, one of the quotations on the press page is from the Columbia (Daily) Spectator - the year after I graduated (and thus resigned as theater editor).

***
Here comes the stream-of-consciousness section of this e-mail:

I've had several conversations over the last week about the meaning of the word "amateur" in French and how that relates to my own experience with expressive movement/dance/gymnastics and artmaking in general. My imminent trip to Skidmore reminds me of my Duncan days (my teacher/choreographer, Jeanne Bresciani is a Skidmore grad and had numerous residencies at the college). Then something about Beller just got my juices flowing (well, not in that way...okay, maybe a little in that way too ;)) more in that direction. In a couple of days I'm going to sing with the HaZamirniks, my singing companions from my teenage years. I've also been in the midst of this kyogen/noh class - a whole new form to me - and relishing the freedom that comes with giving myself permission to be a beginner and not have any expectations...In fact, I had no idea what I was getting into when I started on Monday.

So I have this big sense of returning to a space of openness and joy and eagerness. A space of safety and freedom at the same time.

As I bask in simultaneous nostalgia and forward-looking excitement, I want to share two photos that I've found. They're both on the Isadora Duncan International Institute website.

vintage Davina (circa 1988)






That - what's in those photos, some essence of something (not to mention those calf muscles) - is still inside me and I feel it coming out of hibernation. My time in San Francisco has been a slow, steady alarm clock, sunlight peeking through the window, breakfast in bed, the occasional cold shower, to help me reawaken it. When I look at those pictures, they don't seem to have been taken so long ago. I can remember exactly where I was in the room. I can remember the music (but I don't think I can tell you what it was - I'm going to guess something by Chopin or Shubert). But when I think about the fact that it was almost 20 years ago, I feel sad.

I take comfort in the fact that I energetically launched, and survived the termination of, a previous incarnation as a political scientist (and various things related to the field of political science, at the very least)...but long before that, I had a more joyous and apparently more resilient incarnation as an artist (and as an open, receptive, energetic child!). And with this training this summer and the imminent move and joining Equity, I feel like I've made a commitment to returning to ... the new...or the old in new forms... or some other thing that is perhaps better expressed right now in movement or images or media other than e-mail.

Thanks for reading and, more than that, thanks for supporting me, sharing yourselves, and coming along for the ride. And, for what it's worth, I want to ask you, as my Board of Directors and friends, to think about whether there's something that you used to because you loved it, but that you stopped doing. Did you stop because you felt you weren't good enough? Did you stop because you felt there was something else you *should* be doing? Did you stop because of injury? Economic necessity? The demands or perceived demands of your environment and the people around you? Because, perhaps subconsciously, you didn't believe that you deserved to feel that powerful/beautiful/free/happy/wild?

Do you miss it? Let yourself do it again.

Some more photos, just 'cause:

1)


2) Taro Kaja, the Kyogen Servant and one of the characters I explored Tuesday:




tiger balm

turns white bed linens piss yellow.

nice.

SITI Day 4

We have our site! It's fantastic - terrific architecture, lots of unanticipated bypasser participation possibilities, lots of layers... Very exciting. We also have most of our text...We just have to figure out the story we're telling (no small task). It's definitely about Arkadina, though, whatever it is.

In other news, we did our first few walks across the floor today in Suzuki. The walks are so profoundly informative and, today, I located the most powerful image - the greatest need - to drive my walking. My reason.

foolsFURY: I dedicate today's walks to you.