When the small of one's back

Is contracted to a single point of pain, we know that the Emily is stressed.

Regard the wild Emily in her native habitat: surrounded by pillows, ambiance lighting, and much technology. See her wrestle with the foreign elements known as "test" and "papers" and "red pens" and "grading" - let us discover whether the wild Emily can withstand such captivity! Deep within her jungle of wires, laundry, CD's and entirely too many books, the wild Emily prowls - casting furtive glances upward at her natural prey: the trick-or-treater. Watch her swipe the candy out of the feeding bowl, before loping down into her lair to devour the precious nourishment. Regard the wild Emily multitasking - a feature once only thought to belong to the wild Administrative Assistant. And now, the Emily - with only 20 more student's lives to ruin and torture through the Power That Is The Red Pen - stretches, works out the kinks her abused back, and settles down to gnaw on a blog or two. Yes, another day in the wild has passed - and the cameramen rejoice and demand greater union wages for the next time they are sent on such a harrowing adventure.

Anywho, the stress is slightly reduced with the realization that I only have 20 more students' quarter grades in the balance, and that I was marvelously clever and had graded more already than I had anticipated. And another blessing! The second DVD of Much Ado burned! And - out of the blue - my computer is admitting that I DO have 12 gigabytes of memory free (HA!). And the computer hasn't frozen up yet! And Madre made dinner! (Yum - chicken Marcela [sp?].) And perhaps all the little accumulating annoyances of life are doable after all. And I can only and I must only and I do only praise God, with Whom all things are possible. He reminded me of that this morning at mass, and although I believed Him intellectually, honestly I thought it was just a nice sentiment. Cha. I'm an i-doit. So, praise be to God, who really doesn't give us more than we can handle! Amen!

Peter's wearing this awesome 3/4ths cape that Jules made him yesterday. He's dressed as a highway man and cuts a very dashing figure indeed! Jules, who is dressed in her green moleskin medieval gown, is taking Peter and Tristan about. I'm staying in (and considering watching The Triplets of Bellvue tonight) and grading and grading and writing a test and grading and considering how to do the rest of the DVD's and grading and wondering whether I dare take time out to either (relaxingly - I'm so weird to think other work is relaxing) work on the next section of Brigadoon or to write a bit in The Sable Valentine or The Natural Son. But, in all honesty, I just remembered that if I've any extra time, it ought to go to King of Fools.

And may I just say again how much I LOVE!!! Autumn?!?!?!?! Yesterday, I was going to the mall, hardly cognizant, simply on autopilot, when I passed by a wall of golden leaves. My heart brimmed full and I thought of Lothlorien and Aragorn rushing through the birches to pay homage to Galadriel and I wanted the wall to go on and on and on forever. And today? Today felt just like Gaming, Austria. It sounded like Salzburg - at the Gothic & Romanesque Franciscan Church! - when the choir sang "Ave Verum Corpus" after communion. I expected to be able to step outside and see the white paths and courtyards open before me. I wanted to look up and see painted angels and saints in autumnal hues smiling down upon me. The light shone through the highest glass of the sanctuary and caught blue, green, amber on the statue of Jesus's Sacred Heart. It was lovely.

I wish I had more time to love the beauty of this world. I wish I had more memory to remember to love the beauty of this world. I rush from place to place to place on errands which are timely, which aren't fabricated, upon which others depend (and many of which I had not asked to be a part of, but found myself thrust in charge!) and I have so little time to stop and love. Again, I can see the appeal of a monastic life - although I am not called there, yet - if I am called there.

Life is good. This I must remember. Life is good and God is good and all IS well and all will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

Mood: My back still aches, but otherwise pas mal
Music: Gaelic Storm Tree "New York Girls (Can't You Dance the Polka)"
Thought: Happy Irish Music for Everybody!

Hilarity is Good

The same can't necessarily be said for hysteria but.... The past few rehearsals (specifically yesterday's and today's) have been literally full of my students laughing out loud, rolling on the floor. It's been a bit of an impediment regarding time, but hilarious nonetheless and I'd trade it for nothing. It's good to laugh.

Huge business ahead (when isn't there?). Finished up second of three retreats today. Stiff and tired after running around with the students outside - although it was really good to get exercise, and more importantly it led to fruitful discussion afterwards re: the nature of trust. So, there's that. Now just the Freshmen remain. Friday is the Lion King. Must needs cancel voice so that I have SOME time to get myself together for the play. Rehearsal tomorrow until 4:15 and then back at 6:00 for the next rehearsal. Yeah. Finishing up printing madrigal sheet music for tomorrow. Remembered to fill up tank with gas tonight. Also purchased milk - one gallon, enough to suffice until tomorrow's descent upon Victory supermarkets.

Alles gut. Last night and this the sky was ultramarine. Glorious, deep, rich blue like Mary's mantle spread out across the sky. Contrasting this stands the glorious tree next to our little mobile classrooms that's half brilliant scarlet, fading into gold and green. I felt as though I were in Pisa again, about to reach up at the hostel and grasp grapes off the vine. I felt like I were breathing the free air again. I sang, "Hail Mary" which seemed insufficient. I needed to run through tall grass beneath that sky. I needed to fall into careless piles of crinkled leaves in nature's startling hues. I felt very close to Heaven.

There is simply too much to be done all well. At the beginning of the year, I was certain that this would spell the end of my time in this current position - I simply couldn't go on another year with this pressure. The pressure hasn't lessened - it's only been prolonged: it's stress taffy - but it's become bearable. And more, the message seems to be coming back repeatedly that I am still meant to be where I am, that this is not impossible, that it is achievable, and most importantly my love for it has been renewed.

Today, whilst the kids were being trustwalked (or trust left to stand alone for a bit) I saw one student who had been led to stand in an open shed for a while. Some of the others who were out in the open where they might have spoken and so easily walked one to another (only three actually did) seemed more lost than she, although she was further apart from any of them. Since I had not led her out, and since I had two other students I was leading, I let one of the other leaders decide when to take her out and back into the main room. But as I finished with one group and got the next, I noticed she was still there. Still there, and calm, peaceful, seemingly contented with being led blindly there to stay there. And I was struck with the thought that I was meant to be like that: that, indeed, serenity comes from being where we are placed, even when the world says, "Move move move!"

I feel, in some respects, like I'm stumbling blind, like they were today. But then, we've all been stumbling blind all our lives. As the Jewish view of trusting God goes, we walk backwards to see our past, holding onto His hand, being guided by He who knows the path. So - once more unto the breach, dear friends! St. Paul is quite right to refer to the "armor of God." Every day is a battle - mostly within one's own self. To conquor one's own demons is foremost. Lord, guide me. Lord, my life is in Your hands. Amen.

Mood: Sleepy. But good sleepy.
Music: Flannel Collage. I didn't feel like putting in a new CD. And it suits me well enough.
Thought: "I cannot make my days longer, but I can make them better" ~ Thoreau

The Return of Randominity!

My room is warm
But I am cold
Because I am not in my room
My laptop's hot
My hands are ice
Because I'm using the other XP
My DVD's burning
My nose is freezing
Because my nose cannot record .avi....
Hrm.
~ Metaphors Gone Bad

Daddy wrote this awesome poem that begins "Somewhere in the South of France/Lives a bull who's got my pants" which (hopefully) Julie will be illustrating and then we'll be shopping around.

There's some MAJOR bug on my laptop that is taking up a quarter of my memory!!! What is up with that?!?!?!?!?!? *huff huff huff*

Attempt #29087352 to create Much Ado DVD's is currently taking up my laptop (see above). Please God please God please God! Alas and alack, for some bizarre reason, it refuses to be squished onto a single DVD, so I'm attempting two DVD's now on DVD+R's, which are cheaper than the nicer DVD+RW's and which I REALLY hope work. (Please God please God please God!!!)

Exclamation points and question marks are fun to put together. But why not question points and exclamation marks, one wonders?

Shall We Dance is an utterly charming movie. Despite the yellow monstrosity dress at the end and the omnipresent token gay character (whose part is so negligible as to be an obvious token, and more which counteracts the entire central premise which is that ballroom dancing is not indicative of orientation! Gaaaaah!). However, since they ended the whole thing with "Sway With Me" and everything else was delightful, we give two elbows up.

Must-needs-take-quickstep-lessons...!

Drama party the other night, pas mal. Cheerleading competition tonight. School recommences tomorrow. Retreat Wednesday. Parental units in Quebec this week. On Peter duty to get him to/from classes and do some babysitting inbetween school and double-header rehearsals. May need to move up by a week Talent Show. Must make phone calls. Augh! Where will the madness end? I feel the need to sing a Dwarfish song.

Chocolate chip cookies have been in the house this week. So much for my weight. If the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were chocolate chip cookies, I probably would have eaten, too. Silly, silly Emily. Kicks are for trids.

Christmas Carol coming along well. King of Fools shaping up. Entertained daydream whilst driving to CVS earlier about building a massive theatre complex in this area and creating a sort of Stratford in my backyard. Bwahahahhah. "With rings on her fingers and bell(e)s on her toes, she shall have drama wherever she goes!"

Fr. Jonathan said mass this morning. Loverly on fire for the sermon. Finished off with "Holy God, We Praise Thy Name." Cutest little girl in the pew in front of me - she kept turning around whenever I sang. It's such a beautiful parish. Now...how to convince them to use the confessional for those of us who LIKE the screens?

Red Sox rule. 'Nuff said.

Mood: COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD!
Music: Flannel Collage - in the hopes of warmth? ;P
Thought: Curious that man should alone of all known animals striven to find means whereby we are comfortable to the point of inactivity.

I wish the Autumn

Would stay forever. The trees are glorious this year - ranging from multichromate oaks, fading from light green to rich orange, and miles and miles of sanguininity! And now if only the DVD maker would work! Lord! S'il te plait! Amen!

Mood: Mmmm - chocolate chip cookies
Music: Man of La Mancha "Knight of the Woeful Countenance"
Thought: One more day one more day one more day....

Beauty in the Breakdown

I've been meaning to blog this for the past few days, ever since I finished (more or less) my HCH promo for Open House on Wednesday. (Been an utterly crazy week, with the end result that I didn't see my kids for an entire week. Hrumph.) Anywho, the promo was basically a music video of the various shows that my HCH kids have been involved with in some significant way or another (which left out the first French Butler, Salome, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Pirates of Penzance - which was unfortunate but not unworkaroundable). Consequently, it also acts as a sort of video diary for my work with these particular kids - which means it seems to distill my style into four minutes - which means that I've been attempting to discern threads to my style so that I can add one more neurosis to my ever expanding list. ;P



What I realized was this: in the words of Jill, I'm not happy unless I've put my characters through Hell and back. Or, to put in the Tolkienesque Catholic language, I find beauty in the "long defeat." Or, as Frou-Frou writes, "There's beauty in the breakdown." That moment of freefalling is utterly beautiful, that uncertainty, that necessary nakedness, that moment when one must face the truth or perish beyond all hope of salvation - yes - THAT is beautiful. It's the awful beauty of the cross.

So, all this to encourage me to revise "Thrushbeard" - aherm - King of Fools. Howsomever, if this is the best poetry I can conjure up, I'm in a poor state to revise! Ah ca! Quick random otherness:

Went to Boston on Thursday for Archdiocese thingy. Not bad at all. Went afterwards (in heels - oh, my poor aching ankles!) to St. Anthony's Shrine near the common. Loverly place. Saw Father Jonathan there (in his civvies) on his day off. Got to mass just in time. Torturous walk back due to aforementioned heels. Ah ca.

Received latest orchestrations. Am just settling down to put my brain to work on them, but I love the quintet. Now, here's to hoping I get the voices....

Oh, I was utterly punch drunk (one too many hits with the snake!) silly at rehearsal the other day. The combination of too many late nights trying to get the open house video together, too many futile days out of school, and general emotional fatigue - and no little odd lunch hunger - led to a very silly me at rehearsal. Worsened by the fact that I always forget how stinking COMPLICATED my music seems to be for other people. But I am muchly proud of my students who are picking it up well enough and sound very well indeed. My hopes for the musical (casting, anyway) continue to rise.

Speaking (continuously) of the musical, I'm working one just one more song for Frederick to sing in the marketplace in order to get back at Cassandra for being a jerk. It's an Irish pub-y type song, with a rousing chorus, that goes something like this (thus far):

Oh, I'll sing a song of a husband true -
A saint, if it be known -
Who had the bad taste to marry a shrew
(He'd be better off alone).
But the deed's been done,
So what's there to do?
(Especially when you're poor.)
The bed's for one
But now there are two...
So he's sleeping on the floor!

And it's up, down, spin him around,
She left him on the floor!
Up, down, spin him around,
She left him on the floor!
They might just fit
If she squeezed a bit
Or if they were not poor
But it's up, down, spin him around,
She left him on the floor!

Mood: Sleepyish
Music: My mix CD Flannel Collage
Curiosity it: Julie cajoling me to get material for her to make me a dress a la Ever After! I could only affor the material for the over-dress, though. The underdress will have to be made on another paycheck.

Message in a Bottle

A la Sting via John Mayer is playing on my latest mix CD, "Flannel Collage" - much esoteric collegiate type acoustic grunge stuff. Tra la! (Hmmm, that last sentence doesn't match the ECTAGS image that the CD has...must work on appropriately existential version of "Tra la" in the future.)

To date, have done:

Video promo for the HCH Talent Show to Coldplay's "Clocks," two scenes from "Kiss Me, Kate," the beginning of the HCH Promo (with new titlecards! :) and am working on a "Midsummer Night's Dream" piece.

Managed to get together the retreat center. Felt rather like the time when I nearly fell off a cliff and caught myself by the smallest root before plunging into the Ohio Valley ravine. Yeah. Praise God!

Actually cleaned a bit of my room! Hoopla! (Ooops...better put coverlet in for another round of drying. Why is it that I keep coming back to laundry when I blog? Hrm - perhaps because this is a form of public, spiritual laundry?)

Still have yet to do:

Definitively find a place for "Christmas Carol"

Finish grading *shakes fist at great red pen in the sky*

Do up list of masses, confessions, etc. for the school (can do right now, as I'm waiting for the video files to transfer over to my huge memory drive)

Get myself over to CompUSA to demand that they let me exchange my editing program which ended up being the exact same thing I had before! Ugh. I'll bring my laptop, too, just to prove that I uninstalled the program and really am not ripping them off. I just would like the other $100 program, please.

Considerations:

I like the new title for "Thrushbeard": King of Fools. Works much better. Only sad Sam Shepherd took "Fool for Love" from me before (silly play, too).

Thank God KD has taken over the mission statement presentation for tomorrow. Honestly, I don't think I could have taken one more responsibility. So, yaaay!

I'm not seeing my kids 'til Friday. Weird.

Hopefully, I'll be heading out to Steubie-U for Macbeth! Oh, frabjous day!

My room smells really, really good right now.

I'm afraid of really looking at "King of Fools." Yet, it must be edited. Not this weekend, though.

OK - wazzup with my DVD authoring program?!!??!?!!? AAAAAAAAAAAUGH! [English sanguinity explitive] software!

My annotated The DaVinci Code is *hilarious*. If I weren't loathe to lose the book myself, I'd be tempted to send my annotated version to the publisher. Bwahahahhahahaha.

Mood: One eye on the clock, the other eye on Ireland
Music: Happy, mellow Flannel Collage
Thought: Lord, help me to remember that You're already there.

Note to self:

For future reference, if I am having difficulty getting up the energy for a play, if I am not yet excited about a play, if in fact I am so stressed I can't see the play for the rehearsals, schedule the best scene early. Yes - I am muchly more serene and actually excited and a bit dreamy over today's rehearsal of my favorite scene. I felt finally: "Ah! This bit works! The rest may be eh-ish, or good-ish or bad-ish or whoknowswhat-ish...but this is good."

Given the gift of serenity towards the end of today, praise God. Have secured cell phone for tomorrow so that I can firm up the last of my admin. stuff (gah). Still not enough hours in the day. Praise God - we get through.

Anywho, off to do more work and then to do a bit of editing for the Open House next week. Aie!

Mood: Stressed but mostly sedated
Music: Garden State - but where is "Beauty in the Breakdown"!??!?!
Prayer: Theatre in England, God! Theatre in England!
Far More Important Prayer: God bless Jay and keep him safe, God! Amen!

When in doubt

Bring one's troubles to Mom. And to Mama. Mary, be with me! Looking like it's going to be another tough week or two. What was that about serving two masters? But even more, what were today's reading about the faith of a mustardseed?

Mood: Exhausted
Music: A Winter's Garden
Joy is: Visiting Sh. and discussing all sorts of stuff

We Now Return You

To your regularly scheduled madness.

Some folks have quarterly charity drives. I have quarterly charity drives for my directorial self-esteem. When it comes to my work, my ego is barely hanging onto the ledge. It would love to be inflated - but it's even more concerned with not looking down at the chasm beneath it. So, to help boost my ego's morale, if not actually lend it a helping hand, I find it helpful to review old tapes and say: "See, little ego! It's only a wee drop! It's not so bad! Remember that last time when you fell and landed softly thanks to the millions of vindictive coathangers in your way? Yeah! Or howsabout the time you didn't hit any audience members at all when you fell! Or what about squishing all those inflated-ego actors - yaaay!"

Some folk have homecoming. I have "whereshoming?"

Anywho. Enough of this goobletigook. Applied for Yale's application. Have decided to forego looking at their Playwriting app - only going for directing. Just another thing to make my ego's white-knuckled fingers what are holding onto dear life on the jagged edge of reason just a tad more slippery. Insert your own pun about a bad ego trip here.

Mood: Go to sleep, you nummy!
Music: Has been Loreena McKennit's A Winter's Garden for-evah. Trying to get in the Christmas mood to finish off the final polishes on the script for Monday. AAAAAAAAAAAUGH!
Thought: Monday. Monday! (Hold on, l'il buddy! The skipper'll be here any minute!)
Just Finished: Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett. Aaaaaaaah - bathe in Pratchettisms. Feel the world becoming wonderful through the lens of Vimes....