Innocent and Ignorant Are Not the Same Thing

I'm sitting at home, making a roast chicken dinner. This should calm me, but instead I'm sitting here obsessing over the fact that I may have just made a huge fool of myself on this blog.

I've since edited the offending post, but originally in my "Emerging" post I mentioned some people by name, as well as some of my musings or observations of them. I wasn't meaning any of that to be rude or disrespectful, but it also never occurred to me that when I mention people by name, my blog is only a Google-click away.

I feel like such a fool. Nothing that I wrote was a particular secret - I chatted about all of what I wrote with my friends at one point or another, and I knew that most of them could read it anyway - but upon reflection I see how what I wrote could be seen as insulting or just plain rude.

That's the worst of it for me. I have just put myself out there (semi-anonymously) as this completely rude person when I really didn't mean it that way.

I feel like a toddler, too, just learning that my observations and thoughts on people that I genuinely liked when I met them have potential to hurt them and myself. I tell myself that I should have learned this when I was 3. Really, girl, think about what you say before you shake out your writing fingers next time, I scold.

Then I have to take a deep breath and remember to forgive myself and let go. And I realize that my knee-jerk impulse to just never show my face in the theatre scene again is probably a bit of an overreaction. I've done all I can to rectify the situation, there's nothing else I can do.

Let's just hope I've learned something from this and that it never, ever, EVER happens again.

Heart Attack

It never occured to me that people could find my blog if I mentioned them, simply by googling themselves.

A wake up call and a heart attack rolled into one. Thank God the fellow who told me this was kind about it.

Emerging

Emerge. This is an event organized for all of the graduating acting students in Alberta to come and have an emerging audition for all of the artistic directors and freelance directors and theatre companies in Alberta. It’s a whole day of audition after audition, shown in four minute chunks divided by a bell if you go over time. Every student goes to Edmonton and Calgary, to two different groups of AD’s and theatre companies, with the same two pieces.

My class just finished this event. I thought we all did really well in Edmonton and even better in Calgary. Both days were long, though - leaving home at 8:00 and not getting back until late in the evening, all for an audition that flew by and a chance to schmooze with people after the day was over. We sipped glasses of complimentary wine and snacked on cheese and fruit and stood around.

I hate schmoozing. It seems pointless to me. Isn’t it too obvious that what I want from you is a job? Doesn’t this feel like I have an agenda in speaking to you? How can anything sincere come out of this? I feel dirty and gross and it’s an integral part of the career I’ve chosen.

I don't think I did too well in Edmonton, but I think I was better prepared in Calgary. Plus the wine and cheese thing in Calgary was just more friendly in atmosphere and environement, being held in a lovely venue.

At both events S. gets told that he did good work but is probably going to have to take out his piercing. A lady who knows one of my friends comes over and tells us that we all rushed our transitions between pieces but that we kicked ass – “Rosebud always does”. Someone else tells us that we were exceptionally clear. Some people don't talk to us at all.

Nothing gets reinforced to me except that everything is relative and I really can’t take what people say seriously in this career.

This is the stupidest line of work a person can possibly pursue. But I can't deny my heart and so I keep moving forward, which I guess is all I can do.

Tagged

I tagged myself from Hope's blog when I had the flu and almost forgot about it entirely.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. This last one might not happen since I don't think I know five bloggers - so tag yourselves. I'm changing the rules.

1)What was I doing 10 yrs ago?

I was 14, so I was doing some school and spending vast amounts of time outside playing and taking care of animals. It was a good life.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order):

I need to phone my old music teacher and ask about a mini-disc recorder, so that I can record some stuff for my mom who is making a radio documentary for Outfront.

I have to remember to email rehearsal reports before rehearsal this evening for L.'s final project.
Other than that, my day is my own.

3) Snacks I enjoy:

Tostitos with hot, hot salsa; Stoned Wheat Thins with either pickles (Vlasic, the pickles that sound so great) or dark chocolate; chocolate in any form. Sometimes fruit.

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

I would pay all of my friends student loans, and my own, and create a few really great scholarships for this place, and then I think I'd invest in a really good and practical hybrid car. I'd also build wells for every village in Africa that I could find. And, lets face it, I'd go clothes shopping. And I'd build or buy myself a house somewhere, but first I'd have to figure out where I want to live.

5) Three of my bad habits:

Living in the future or the past instead of the present; letting fear be my guide; swearing. I think I swear a little too much.

6) 5 places I have lived:

The Bailey House, where we had a lovely classic barn where the chickens would lay eggs in the floor of the loft and my brothers and I saw a green orb that was watching us with friendly curiosity; The Laverick House, where every spring our animals would double, triple, quadruple in number and we'd go on quiet hunts to find hidden nests of kittens and chicks; The Star House, where I had a room with a tiny window that was too high to jump out of anyway and I learned that I need more than one way out of my bedroom or I feel trapped; The Dahlen House, where I had many, many late night hallway talks with my best friends; This house, where I am happy.

7) 5 jobs I have had:

I've been a librarian, a hostess at a restaurant, a janitor at a welding shop (which was the worst job I've ever had for multiple reasons), a supervisor at A&W, and in a month I'll be working at a coal mine. Should be fun!

8) 5 peeps I wanna know more about:

My love, S.; my friends, R. and L. and T.; my roommate J. And myself, but that makes six.

Just a Quick Note...

...to say that I went to Emerge, which is an audition that graduating acting students go to once in their life to present themselves as they emerge into the acting scene to all the theatre companies in Alberta who care to attend (85 this year), and I not only survived, I feel I did pretty well.

Yeay!

Now I'm off to rehearsal for Craving, a show I'm in that goes up in May at Fire Exit Theatre in Calgary. Hint, hint, plug, plug.

Pancake Theory Part II

I feel a need to explain the “Pancake Theory” post a little bit.

Last year, there was a young man here at the school. In the year that he was here he spent a lot of time with me and my friend R. I spent a lot of time listening to him in the first term, because he was crushing hard-core for R. and needed someone to talk to. After he talked to R. about how he felt (they never did go out) they spent more time together, and the three of us did dinner music together for a few months.

R. and I both counted him as a friend. Then he went home, just for the summer. We both heard from him once or twice. His only email to me did sound a bit strange – too chipper, too insistent that there were no problems between him and his parents which I thought was odd since I hadn’t thought there were problems and thus hadn’t said anything about it in my email to him. There was some scattered muttering about whether we would ever see him again – and then his father and uncle came into Rosebud and cleared out his room, leaving a typed, formal letter with the school that he wouldn’t be coming back to school in the fall.

This came out of the blue to some people and some nodded and said they’d seen it coming.

Since then, however, we haven’t heard a peep from this young man. Not a whisper, not a sign that he’s alive. He’s been deleted from Facebook, he vanished from MSN Messenger, and as far as anyone knew, emails were vanishing into cyber-space. If people phoned, his father would very curtly tell them that he wasn’t there and he wouldn’t offer to take a message. It fuelled the speculation, which went on for months – a long time considering he was only here a year. That should give you an idea of how much people liked this fellow and how odd it seemed that he just suddenly cut us all out of his life. It was very dramatic.

Some people in town (and I might add, these people are extremely sane people, who surprised me greatly with this train of thought) came up with a theory – they decided that this young man was being kept captive in his bedroom by his parents and being fed pancakes under the door.
I didn’t completely buy into the theory, but I did think about tracking him down in person, or phoning the police in his hometown and reporting a missing person, but with some thought I dismissed it as too extreme.

Or was it? [The suspenseful music begins here.]

I continued to email this young man, without expecting a response, just because I cared about him and wanted him to know what was going on in my life. In my last email to him I felt a compulsion to give him my blog address, so I did.

And he left a comment on this very blog! He refers to himself as a dinner music partner, and since only two of my dinner music partners know of my blog (him and R.) and R. didn’t leave that post (I asked her) it must have been him. I was very excited to hear from him, but even so didn’t want to pressure him into correspondence or anything.

(In case that comment gets deleted, I’ve retyped it here:

Your a very interesting person R. I never knew there was so much going on inside of that head of yours. May the Holy Spirit bless you with his riches and may he really make himself known to you. He's still living you know. All of the things written of in Acts still happen today. I love you with the love of the Lord. He loves you with such a love, oh wow it's powerful.
A certain Dinner Music Partner
Beloved Marriage

I have no idea what the "Beloved Marriage" comment means, unless he's being forced into an arranged marriage of some sort and this is his last cry for help.)

Anyway, I waited a little while and then sent him another email.

This was instantly bounced back to me, because his email address is suddenly permanently not available. So I’ve either been super-blocked or he’s deleted his email address.

Or his parents have.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. Why, after almost a year of emailing him, would he suddenly decide to block me now? And why block me after finally contacting me? And why was his message to me so bizarre?

I’m back to the pancake theory, people. I’m back to the pancake theory.


(Although, as S. had great fun pointing out last night, he could also be fed cheese slices, pizza, pitas, peanut butter on a playing card, ice cream mashed under the door – he went on for quite a while, until I explained that “Pancake Theory” has a much better ring than “Pancake/Pita/Pizza/Cheese Slices/Peanut Butter on a Playing Card/Mushy Ice cream Theory”. And it does.)

When I Grow Up I Intend To:

I have been procrastinating on learning monologues for my auditions in April. Today saw a fantastic amount of non-memorizing productivity – the bathroom is clean and so is my room. I actually sorted through a box of letters and cards, the oldest of which dates from my seventh birthday. No kidding.

In there I found a list that I wrote a long time ago. I don’t know when I wrote it, as there is no date, but this is what I wrote, verbatim, except for things in [these] which are my present day comments.

[The handwriting is very similar to my current writing, so I must have been in my teens]

12:36 – I just saw a cow moose outside of DeBolt. It was eating a willow.

[Then, in smaller, neater and more determined printing]

When I grow up I intend to –

take riding lessons and perhaps own a horse.
take violin lessons [at some point I wrote in the margin, ‘started @ 17 yrs’]
speak another language (romantic pref.) (Italian or Spanish)
be a surgeon perhaps.
ski and swim regularly.
own property (house and land)
act
travel
write, paint, sketch, and read classics (and interesting stuff).
go hiking
own a bird
critique movies
be a good cook.
not take things for granted.
maybe work the medical side of crime: i.e forensics or coroner.
hunt or belong to a gun club/shooting range
learn martial arts

[Then, at the bottom…]

Meet in front of M.B. @ 2 or so.


I have no hope of achieving that last note, since I have no idea what it means, but I liked reading the list and seeing the future life I had plotted out for myself. I was a pretty savvy kid – a lot of that list is still completely relevant to what I want today.

I think I’d add:

fall in love [and in the margin I could write, ‘started @ 22yrs’]
publish a book

I put the list back in the box, by the way. In several years, when I next sort through that box, I can remember…and see how many of the margins I can write ‘started @ **yrs’ in then…

Life Lately

Just as an update on my life...

I handed in my portfolio - so I'm done school!
I'm getting ready to go to Emerge, which is a province wide audition in April.
I'm Stage Managing for my friend L.'s final project, which means taking care of a budgie between rehearsals. His name is Barry and he likes men better than women. It really suits the play, in ways I can't begin to explain because I don't have enough time.
I have to decide where I'm going to work this summer but I have some options which make me happy.
I'm in a play in May, in Calgary - Craving by Delphine Brooker, at Fire Exit Theatre - and I'm excited about that!

Life is good.

Especially because I don't have to live on pancakes.

Pancake Theory

Which is to say, I think my old friend from Ontario is locked in his room by his parents and being fed pancakes under the door.

Irritation

I was dreaming that I was higher than I'd ever been because I'd just smoked a joint the size of a cigarette by myself. I walked by my good friend and mentor and they were still accepting of who I am and where I was at. It was a good feeling. In the dream I told him I'd be mortified when I came down but he said, no, don't be. It's okay.

I was woken up by the phone ringing. People wait until the last minute to find replacements for work. I don't understand - you've been sick for three days, why did you think you'd be fine today? But hope springs eternal, I guess.

Then I wrote a long email to my mother in which I ranted about some of the disillusionment I've been feeling lately. When I went to send it, the internet failed. Why anyone would pay for the internet in this town is beyond me - it is the least reliable service I have ever experienced. So I got very angry and slammed my desk tray shut and broke it, which just made me angrier because I couldn't fix it. I shouted, slammed doors and pieces of furniture, and considered taking one of my glasses outside and smashing it on the sidewalk but settled for screaming which didn't have the same effect. A brisk walk with a personal cloud helped a bit. The sun helped a bit. People are friendly in the street, that helped too.

But I'm still grumpy.

Dreams

I’d really like to know what my subconscious has been trying to tell me these last few nights.

I’ve had a lot of strange dreams recently, which actually is quite normal for me. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have vivid dreams that most people would probably label nightmares, but to me have a gleam of fascination to them. However, even I am unsettled by my dreams sometimes and last night I had three very unsettling dreams.

I usually don’t write my dreams down here, for fear that people will read into them and interpret them, correctly or incorrectly, and then have (or think they have) an upper hand by understanding parts of me that I don’t understand myself.

So this is an unprecedented event.

First I dreamt that I was getting married. I never saw the groom, and the wedding actually never happened in my dream. In the dream I was getting the photos taken. We were in Greece (and when I say we, I just mean the people in my dream, not all of whom I know. My friend L. was there, and so was my youngest brother, and perhaps my mother at the beginning, but I think the rest were strangers) and I wanted to get the group photos taken in this bend in the mountainous road where there was a beautiful background of another mountain and a lake. It was 6:00 in the evening, and the sun was setting behind the mountain. The wedding party wasn’t all there yet, because some of them were getting ready and some were on their way but were kind of lost. Youngest Brother was on his cell phone telling them they had to drive through the village and we were just on the other side of it. Finally everyone was there but the sun had set and we took the pictures in the dark, with the stars and moon as a backdrop. I did see some buildings before the sun set, and some people. I was content and completely relaxed, but the buildings and people had a sobering effect on me. They were not good, but not a danger to me in that moment. The groom never materialized, even in the pictures. I’m actually not sure he was ever there.

Then I dreamt of a young pregnant girl. She was blonde and lovely and innocent looking, and about five months along. She was in a prison in this horrible place (perhaps the buildings I had seen in the wedding dream) – she had been imprisoned because she was an unwed mother-to-be. This place was very conservative, cultish almost, and it was like it was the middle ages or something, technologically. It was all dirty and poorly lit. The jailer, a big brutish man, sliced open her belly and took her baby, which died because it was too young to be taken out yet. The girl staggered. He took her baby away, which was wrapped in dirty white swaddling right from the moment it came out. The girl got out of the jail when he went away with the infant but she was weak and she died. She was laid out on a table and her body was packed with cocaine, which you could see from the wound in her belly. She had been laid out with care but I don’t know who did it. The table was rough wood. Some of the people from this place found her and sat around the table and began to eat the cocaine from her womb. It was all over their faces, white powder, and in their mouths, and their eyes were stupid. They were grubby and stuffing their faces with cocaine, feasting like the dwarves in The Last Battle, with no grace or gentility but all crudeness and selfishness and greed, sitting around the table where the dead girl was laid. They didn’t even know what they were eating, they were just stuffing their faces with it. They all died of it, and sat there, slumped with their eyes dead and closed, all sitting dead in their chairs around the dead girl on the table, and it was all very still. Then, from having watched this all unfold without being a part of it, I became embodied in the dream. I was the dead girl’s mother. I was on a horse (brown, I think) and I was dressed in flowing feminine robes with a scarf masking my face like an Arabian harem girl or princess. I was beautiful and older, and filled with grief as I searched and searched for my daughter. I was a demi-goddess and although I knew the previous content of the dream I was still searching for someone to tell me the story, to tell me where I could find my daughter. I was so full of sorrow and grief and pain for my daughter and her dead child! One boy, who was almost a man but not quite yet, told me what he knew and I think he directed me to where he thought she had been buried but I didn’t ever see a grave. I was mourning and my beautiful face was full of sorrow, and it was still somehow very beautiful.

Then I dreamt that I was in a large house, although I only went into a few rooms of it. I was there with my friend R., and maybe L. and S. were there too, and perhaps one of my brothers although I don’t know which one or if they were there at all in the first place. There was a covered deck around three sides of the house but I was only on one side. The deck was screened in. There was a porch that came out onto the deck. It had large windows in the upper half of the walls but the bottom was normal wall, although at times it had the feeling of being a glass room. There was an ill-fitting door between this porch and the rest of the house. The porch jutted out all the way to the edge of the deck, effectively cutting the deck apart. There was another ill-fitting door from the porch to the deck, and on this side of the porch was a huge white dog. It was friendly like all large untrained dogs are – overwhelming and messy and unintentionally rough. I had to make the door stay shut by lifting it and turning the deadbolt into its hole so the dog wouldn’t get in, because we knew that if we were with it, it would turn nasty and bite us and perhaps try to kill us. There was a gun cabinet outside with the big white dog, and I tried to reach the cabinet to get the .22 and bullets so I could shoot the dog, but I couldn’t quite reach. If you went into the house, there was a kitchen and another door that led outside to the other side of the deck, where there was another dog. It was smaller, and a duller white (or perhaps a light dirty blonde) and it was well behaved and trained. It sat quietly and was quite reserved and didn’t send off friendly signals at all – it seemed quite intellectual and reserved, but it was safe. I was put out that I couldn’t get the gun to shoot the big stupid dangerous dog and everyone in the kitchen was playing cards and didn’t really care, even though the doors were rickety and if the dangerous dog stopped being friendly it could break in.

Then I woke up.

I don’t know what these dreams mean. My dad bought me a dream book a while back, and it isn’t very accurate – I think dreams are usually quite specific to the person dreaming them although there are some universal symbols that we all seem to hold in our collective consciousness. I do look up the symbols and read the ‘meanings’, though more for entertainment then for real knowledge, and according to that book, these dreams hold multiple signals that I am going to be betrayed by a friend, someone I least suspect.

I don’t know if I believe that.

I have been told by people I’m more inclined to believe that death in dreams usually means change; children mean new life, or a new creative project; pregnancy means the birth of creativity. Since those are the aspects of these dreams that stick out to me the most, I wonder. A child died. A young woman died too, and people ate death from her womb.

Put that way, no wonder I’m a bit disturbed.

Letting Go

I'm experiencing something new.

I've been hesitant to write or talk about it because it feels like once I do it'll disappear.

Whatever this is, I treasure it, and sometimes when I share a treasure it vanishes - or at the least loses some of it's luster.

So I'm not going to say much.

But letting go feels a lot better than holding on.

A Thought

I think I'm going to try to let go of all my past resentments and just live, and deal with, today.



I'm also curious as to what happens when a blog post title gets repeated. I like one and two word titles - I've got to repeat sometime.

This Resonates

The dust of exploded beliefs may make a fine sunset.
-Geoffrey Madan,writer (1895-1947)

That quote makes a lot of sense to me.

It wouldn't have even 7 months ago, but it does now.

The world isn't black and white, or even grey.

It is the full spectrum of colour, all the shades and hues.

When my beliefs lock me into a narrow range I think sometimes they have to be blown up in order for me to see the rainbow again.

Another Short Post

Well, this is it. I open my show today, and take my second-to-last step towards graduation.

I have had so much help from so many people...it has made the whole project happen and I have so much gratitude that it wells up and almost, almost makes me cry.

I am very humbled.

Later I'll be nervous.

Here goes.

Elusive Balance

There has to be room for being honest, taking care of yourself and not taking responsibility for other people's feelings, and still caring about other people and how your life affects them.

There has to be.

I just wish I knew what that looked like.

Weekend

I had a weekend that had nothing to do with final project land, which was a good break. I went to my first ever hocky game, Swift Current Broncos vs. Calgary Hitmen, and the Broncos won 2-0 (which made for their 10th straight win...I know nothing about hockey but the things I hear I remember...with S. and his friend cheering loudly right beside me it was impossible not to learn something). Then S. and I went and watched "I Am Legend" which was fun.

It was a good weekend.

Surreality

Well, the poster is done.

The set is getting there and so is the sound design.

I have meetings for costumes and basic production mentoring.

And rehearsal.

It's changing from plans on paper to tangible reality.

This is a surreal process - the final project I've thought about for years, ever since I got here, and now I'm actually doing it.

And the town is empty - people off in Israel, Vancouver and New York. But they'll all get back in time to see the finished thing, after all the work is done and over.

Whenever that is.

Final Project City

I'm in the midst of it, people. In the midst.

It feels like I should spell that 'mist' - it certainly seems that way.

But I keep on truckin'.

Pay it Forward...?

The other day I received an email from the parents of a girl I grew up with. It was one of those forwards that reminds me that the people from Saved! aren’t just a stereotype – you know, the ones that say things like, “Support the troops in Iraq who are doing God’s patriotic will by saving the heathen Iraqis and bringing God’s chosen civilization to the savages! Put your name on here to get prayer back into our godless schools! If you don’t, remember that Jesus is watching! Shame and judgement will follow you all the days of your life! Vote for the Christian candidate even though everyone with half an eye can see he’s a complete hypocritical prick!” – those kind of emails. The last one I got was so full of hatred veiled in righteousness that I cried, and then sent an email back requesting that they not send me any more forwards.

It’s been a long time but another one finally made it through. This one was equally angry and bitter. Apparently the Canadian government wants to take the words “Under God” off of our money. I didn’t know those words were on our money, but whatever. Maybe it’s one of those American forwards that is making the Northern Tour, as it were. Either way, it was full of the angry justice that makes me forget what Jesus was about.

“If they [the government] doesn’t want to acknowledge God on our money/in our schools/in our courts, then I [the Christian, presumably] don’t want them taking Christmas or Easter holidays. I want my post delivered over the holidays, I want full government services when the Christian holidays occur. After all, if they don’t want to serve God, why should they get any of the perks?”

That’s not exactly what it said but that’s what I got out of it. (If you want to read the actual email leave a comment and I'll send it to you.) I swore (I was having an angry day anyways) and then wrote them another email. Here it is –

Dear LR,

Do you not get the impression that these kinds of emails are going against several commandments in themselves - namely, Love thy neighbour as thyself and be good to those who persecute you - ? This doesn't seem to be turning the other cheek or any of the things that Jesus spoke to us about.
Yes, it saddens me when a nation turns from God, but really, this country hasn't been a nation 'under God' in years. I doubt God has been a central part of any government in Canada during my entire lifetime. If it matters to you so much to have 'under God' on your money, or to have the 10 Commandments on a government building, or to have prayer in school, then fight the government on that instead of being childish about it and saying, well then fine. If you aren't going to do things the way I want, then you can't have any holidays. Good grief, people. That kind of attitude just makes Christians match the stereotype.
Please stop sending me crap like this. It just makes me mad and I'd like to have as many good days as possible. Thank you.

Rebecca

A few days later, to my immense surprise, I got a response.

Sorry Becky that you are sounding so bitter these days. I’ll pray for you.
LR

I laughed when I got that. Bitter? I’m sounding bitter? Excuse me, did you read the email you sent me first?

Then I shook my head, took a breath and thought about it. My email did have anger in it, and I can see how anger sounds like bitterness.

More interesting to me, though, is that, from opposite sides of this email, we both think the other person is bitter and completely wrong. Deceived, even. We probably think the exact same things about each other and see ourselves in the same boat that we think the other is missing.

That intrigues me extremely. I would like to sit down with LR and have a conversation to see if my interpretation of the forwards is what she actually means. Perhaps it is all a difference of semantics.

I kind of doubt it. But I would like to start some kind of conversation to see.