So I’m in the Pacific Northwest right now, playing a dream role in a Shakespeare play. Sleeping on my college friend’s couch, who is co-directing and also acting in said show. It’s a role I’ve wanted since I was a teenager, and my friend and I shared a tiny 1-bedroom apartment way back in our CSF days, so we made this happen. It’s an adventure, and I’m in a very interesting and not exactly stable emotional state withal.
See, just before I came out here (end of June, in fact), I gave up the Birdhouse, that wee Boulder studio that was such a sanctuary for me through the divorce, but that had become something of a very expensive closet during the plague. I moved all my stuff in to the SO’s place, this time officially. And then, only like 3 weeks or so later, I stuffed most of my clothing into a huge suitcase and now here I am, across the country and getting eaten by mosquitoes through every rehearsal (I mean they should at least help set up and break down the sets if they insist on being there).
So to say the least, I’m a bit… I dunno what a good term is. Liminal? Uprooted twice over? Or, as I said to my friends and colleagues last night over excellent Seattle whisky, “I’m fine. I’m FINE.”
The first week out here was a sort of crashing wave of homesickness and disciplined work, back and forth. I reminded myself of how Bilbo Baggins ran off on his adventure, late, without a hat or walking stick or pocket-handkerchief, and ended up with an incredible experience as well as riches without measure. I am not here to be comfortable; I’m not here to be with my favorite person in the world. I’m here to have new and strange experiences, and to work hard on a special role, a dream role, that I never would have been cast in back home.
Once rehearsals are done and the show opens, I’ll have more wiggle room to do things like visit my very good old highschool friend in Seattle, and my good friend from college in Portland. But I did already have my first Pacific Ocean experience. That was misty and moisty and gray and cool. Strange. Bits of half eaten crab and cleaned out oyster shells drifting amid the spume and the aggressive seagulls, who I imagine shriek with angry New Yorker accents for some reason…
I’ll catch you up after Week 2 is done with, lovely lurkers. In the meantime: “Wit, an’t be thy will, put me into good fooling!”
Daily Cross-Swords 