Saturday, March 31, 2007

Detached

I haven't written for a while, and that's mainly because I've been busy. By day I'm often at Chili's, waiting talbes again. I'm hoping this won't be for three or four more years. At night I've got rehearsals for My Fair Lady, and those are going splendid, thank you. I really don't have much to say about them. As long as you're working with decent people, it's pretty much going to be good. The only change in the good rehearsal pattern comes when you find yourself paired with not so decent human beings. I know the theatre world can be full of those, but I don't think I've met any in this show. It's been great, but like I said, what more can I relaly say about it. We rehearse, and we rehearse, and then we rehearse. Blocking, singing, acting, etc.

Anyway, I was having a stretch of a few days where life was just difficult. I wasn't getting enough sleep, but even when I did, I was still rather ornary, and though I was doing my best to be thankful, to be at peace, and to be basically everything I've wanted to be, I found myself worse for wear. I finally had a serious prayer time the other night, and after that I've been doing a lot better. It's not like I don't pray. When good things happen, I thank God for them joyfully; when I'm in need, I pray for what is on my mind. I do my best to expect the best, to think positive, and to relax under stress. But somehow, I find that there is absolutely no replacement for good strong earnest reliance on God. Maybe it's very much a spiritual thing. I think there's like some kind of oppressive spirit over this whole place. Though I do not like blaming all my hardships and trials on demons around every corner and under my bed too, I nonetheless believe that there are good and evil forces at work, of which we are not physically aware. As the scriptures say, "your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour." And yet Peter says to guard yourself against evil desires, which war against your souls. It seems quite unfair that we should have both our enemy and ourselves to contend with. I suppose, it more than evens out, if we have God and ourselves on our side. But life is hard sometimes. I miss my support network, people I need to see, people I need to talk to, to benefit from their wisdom and be uplifted by their company and creativity. Sometimes I feel starved here. Sometimes I feel detached, like I'm way out of my element, which I guess I am. At the same time, I'm living a life of faith, and it's challenging and adventurous.

So thanks for your prayers, those of you who take the time. Good things are happening all the time, and I have much to be thankful for. So here's to life and to the Spring. It's a very nice day outside today. I think I'll go to a drive-in tonight.

Friday, March 16, 2007

I knew it

I knew it! I totally knew it!

So I'm browsing nbc's website for shows that I may wish to watch, and I decide to check out the new show, Raines, with Jeff Goldblum. First off, I like the actor. He's not like my idol or anything, but I usually like him in whatever he does, and this show is no different. The show has a unique spiin to a detective story. Goldblum is the detective Michael Raines, who sees visions of his victims. The visions are not the victims themselves, coming to haunt him, but they are his own imagination, and they change to fit his understanding of the events as he learns more during the case.

So the victim shows up, and you learn that he has a history of this sort of thing happening, and it seems like he thought it had gone away. When it happens, he goes to a friend of his who knows his situation, meets in some office first, and he meets him several other places throughout the episode, each time talking about the case and talking about his vision of this girl who has been murdered. I got the sneaking suspicion and near the end I was almost certain of it, and I was thinking making some kind of prediction on my blog or something, when they actually come right out with it. As they're talking, Raines reveals that his friend is indeed one of his visions. It is a fact of which he is perfectly aware. It left me laughing, and I just had to brag that "I knew it!" I know it wasn't that difficult to piece together, but I liked being able to catch it, and it made the show very entertaining for me. I really like Jeff Goldblum in this show, and I really like the show itself.

Also, I watched an episode of 30 Rock, and was pleasantly surprised, but not really by the show itself. It was okay, entertaining, fun to watch and everything, but what really made me exuberant was seeing a guest appearance by none other than Brian Murray. For those of you who don't know who Brian Murray is, he's a stage actor who is now in the Theatre Hall of Fame, and he was Pope Pious IX in Edgardo Mine at the Guthrie, the show in which I played an extra. He was a magnificent actor and great to work with. He came in, playing the father of Alec Baldwin's character in a little family spat that was the focus of the episode. I was just delighted to see him, short as his role was, and it brought back memories and made me smile.

Speaking of theatre, rehearsals start for My Fair Lady in a week and a day, and I am really pumped. It'll just be awesome to be on the stage again.

I bought a bike the other day. Found it on Craigslist. It wasn't too much, and I like the bike. And I was talking to the guy I sold it to, and he said he and his wife have season tickets to the Grand Theatre, so they'll be seeing the show. It was cool to be like, "I'm in that show!"

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Paycheck

I'm watching the movie Paycheck right now. It's actually not all that bad. It's about an engineer who builds incredible devices and then gets his memory erased, so that he doesn't know what he's done. On this assignment he ends up building a machine through which people can see the future. Only he sees terrible things, and after his memory is erased he finds himself running from death with only clues and little items that he had the forsight to send himself from when he saw the future. It's kind of cool. But somewhere along the line, they figure out that the future telling machine will actually make the world worse. They see pictures of the future, and they realize that knowledge of the future heightens all the world's dilemmas. Knowledge of war leads to preemptive strikes. Knowledge of economic failure leads to stock market panics. Through knowing the future. the people lose their choices. Take away the mystery, says Ben Affleck, and you take away hope. You take away drive, you take away strength and bring despair. I dont' know that this would be true, but I can imagine. If you knew what kind of failures awaited you, perhaps you wouldn't even try. But where would not trying get you? Absolutely nowhere. But trying and failing, that is not the end. It is merely a step along the path. It reminds me slightly of Minority Report. The attempt to change the future vs. the complacent acceptance of what will be. They're some interesting ideas.

Friday, March 02, 2007

The fountain-head

On the way home from work (We did a store about 2 1/2 hours away, up in Idaho, and we carpooled up there) I was reading Civil Disobedience. It's a small enough book that it fits in my jacket pocket. I was struck by something Thoreau said about truth.

"They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more,and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head."

At first reading, this statement merely strikes me as some pluralistic admonition against bigotry. But I had to reread it a couple of times, and when I did, I did not feel any righteous indignation at people who cannot reach further than the standards and strictures that they know. But I experience conviction for myself. God forgive us for the times that we have replaced him with ideas and creeds, when we have bypassed his presence in favor of definitions and strategies. It is so easy to get into the rut of trying to "figure out" this life, that I often get caught up in the how and the what. After finally coming to understand that this life holds no strict formula, no step by step instructions or three point lecture answers, I yet find myself able to slip into the same old mentality. I somehow convince myself that the "answer" is out there, as if there is some unrevealed "Bible" that we just haven't found. But there isn't. There is only this lake or that pool, and they all come from the ultimate source. You can name any number of great pools of wisdom and spiritual riches, be it the Bible or others, and they are all good places to drink. But they are not the source. I know it is all analogous, all figurative, making it difficult to appropriate. But how else can one come to know the mysterious, the otherworldly, the spiritual, if not by analogy, poetry and song.

Anyway, this is all just to say that I wish to set aside my obsession with figuring it out, and I want to "gird up the loins" and strike out to seek the source of those pools I've been gazing into. I hope that makes sense. But I wish for my faith to rest on the power of God himself and not on human arguments.

Another Civil Disobedience qoute I found quite profound/unsettling:

"We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire."

How true is that of our society today? How true is that of me?

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Jobs

I'm thinking of picking up another waitering job. My current inventory counting job is too sporadic, and it might be worse once I take off for nighttime rehearsals at the Grand. I need something more regular in the morning or afternoon hours, and I realize that the serving schedule I used to have would fit in perfectly with my time frames, and it would still be fairly flexible. I have been trying to avoid going back to that, but it seems like it might be necessary. And now that I'm cast in a play and I've finished my second draft to my novel, I feel like I'm still pursuing my dreams and making them a priority. I just need better money. It's not like the pay is terrible, but the hours are bad, and I won't even be able to do many of the ones that I do now. The thing with serving jobs here is that they don't pay minimum wage. It's one of those states that pays less than that because you're making tips. with means I won't be making five or six bucks an hour. It would be more like two to four. So I wouldn't be making as much as I was in Minnesota, where minimum wage went up a few years ago to 6.15, and servers were entitled to it. But anyway, I think it would still be better than what I'm doing. Especially if I worked a lot. We'll see.

I started working on my sequel some more. I started it a while ago. But the other night I was really fleshing out what was going to happen to whom and where and how, and I was coming up with a whole bunch of ideas and it was really fun. I really hope I can get my first one published, and I hope it sells well enough that they'll want another one from me. Creating the story is exciting.