It's so frustrating

To be all ready to edit but to be still waiting on reverse angles and long shots. And where are my extreme close-ups!?!??!?! Augh! A bit concerned. It'll be fine - it always is but.... Anywho, hardly a garganutan problem in the face of what's really important in America at the moment. T-minus-40-minutes until one prepares onself for tonight's vigil, at which one is doing the first reading (Creation - whoopee). But y'know what? I'm thinking it's time for "I trust I make myself obscure." (What is that from? Shakespeare? Wilde? Some random sitcom?)

I feel rather like some Biblical parable figure - or perhaps a Pinnochio'd Guipetto (sp?) - or perhaps simply like the Beast in Beauty and the in the final moments when everyone's coming at the castle with flaming torches. What a distance from Salome - no more reserve, fear, aloof expressions - and yet, in the final summation, to feel, to become, to cherish, to be in fact human.... I've always known I ought to strive for that: that estrangement was not good, nor even required - yet when at last I appear to achieve the pinnacle of Dante's Purgatorio, it's all stripped from me again. It's a perpetual Jobian cycle - the myth of Sisyphus without the absurdist trappings. And yet, ought I be surprised? I suppose I had counted on missing the job (sans capital J); I hadn't known I'd miss the people. How curious, then - I find I almost detest regarding the final act (no help either that none can be blamed for its origin but myself, hence my own view is hardly objective). Where for other projects I play them on repeat - this one, I almost wish to banish from my sight - merely so that I might not truly purge myself, perhaps? Or to sever with no reserve? I am a monstrous well of self-reflection. And all this leads to naught.

In plainer terms, I find that I don't know how to answer when Joe (or more usually Jane) Schmoe approaches me and asks with all sincerity, "Oh! So you must be relieved it's over, then?" Relieved? Relieved? I suppose if there is any relief it lies in the fact that it occurred - not that it ended. Nor is it really relief, as though it had been a burden I ought not have carried, or that I wish had belonged to another. Relief is so without the tumult of conflicting emotions which are the usual sparring heirs of any production that I cannot hear the word uttered so casually from the casual and unknowing lip but find myself in utter bafflement. Relief?!?!?! Ask me, when I return from a trip to Austria or to England or to some other wonder-land whether I am relieved to have returned. Or ask the mother if she is relieved to have borne and reared and buried a child. There are a thousand other pangs and elations of the heart that tepid relief can find no way within. No, there is no relief - although there is sorrow and joy and pride and confusion and fear and excitement and determination and love and frustration and happiness and a thousand other extremities of the being clamoring within my fragile breast. I somedays feel - indeed, feel - when I have felt too much and let but a fraction of it show which makes the feeling more - I feel as though as insane as each project drives me, as well it's the only thing that holds me together. Pressure, tension, in the architectural sense. But now, for the first time since, honestly, Brigadoon (which began November 2001) I have an honest-to-goodness break - and I find that the loneliest thing of all. It'll take some readjusting to - I can't expect the habits of several years to dissipate in a mere week, much less of fortnight, perhaps the entirety of these five months. But just as I learned to cherish and to be, particularly on this last show, particularly in this particularly trying year - so I suppose I've got to relearn to be without the definition of the procenium arch, the dimmed lights, the masonite and velveteen.

Oh, I am a fool. But, so methinks, we all are.

Music: None - the heater working overtime, my fingers skitter on the black keyboard
Mood: Pensive. Oh, Lord, help me really focus on You this evening, and not my own foolishness! Amen!
Thought: Indecisive pronouns and jumbled antecedents are our friends!