Spring Omnibus 08

Meta: Not having had regular internet access in four months has curtailed my digital persona. This is massively out of date, and is out of chronology with July’s post, poted below. Just trying to keep the record straight.

So there are pretty big things afoot.

Narratively:

Since we last left off, I’ve gone to NYC for an audition (got it, more on that here), hung out with some crazy asian lawyers, reconnected with some friends from high school and college, gone home for a wedding of one of my best friends, visited my folks, had my tarot cards read, came back to Chicago and booked an understudy gig at Lookingglass, got a raise at the bike shop, quit the pizza shop, went to six flags with my swedish roommate, Ian, and (maybe?) a Girl, and now – just now – got back from a weekly fire spinning practice session in my neighborhood.

So much for the factual narrative.

Thematically:

I’ve been working on relaxation a lot lately – and it has taken a surprising amount of work. My dad once said that the Albuquerque Academy was training us all to be overworked and stressed out adults. Something to that. This last year and a half of my life has been so massively exciting and rewarding that I have a hard time reconciling it to the awful dark times of the summer of 06. In particular, since moving to Chicago I have had an awful lot of fun.

Now fun, see, this is serious stuff. And maybe now, having had so much of it, I know a little more about it. There are, okay, at least two broad categories of fun. One is an adventure, excitement-based fun. This, I think, is my strong suit, generally speaking. And many people, I think, would agree here. A strong and unapologetic enthusiasm for life. (Cut to thevideo.) I understood my move to Chicago as a big adventure when I did it, and it certainly has been. Arriving with a duffel bag and a plan, I have succeeded in all of my turn-of-the-century-young-man-as-immigrant dreams. Adventure. Excitement.

Which is also tiring, I have discovered.

The deep wellsprings of enthusiasm have dried up. Which is not to say that the spending of them wasn’t rewarding, or that I am not richer all the way round – only that I need to read and look at clouds for a while.

Having my tarot cards read was one of the most educational and helpful things I’ve ever had done to me. Very little of it was prediction oriented – it worked much more like a big and loosely narrative rorschach extravaganza. And rorschach tests are pretty useful.

7.08

Change, recycling.

Narratively:

I’ve been playing pool and learning to ride a unicycle.

Lotta, the Swede that lived in my house for four months, is gone, and I don’t even have a picture. Silly, that. Kelley, the original Chicago roommate, has gone on to live with her boyfriend in Minneapolis. Ian, a friend from Albuquerque, is moved in, though I haven’t seen much of the Traveling Man so far. Montana, New York, DC.

I avoided getting involved with a girl who, in hindsight, was a poor match (didn’t see why preplanned housing developments might be horrific), and then bungled (mostly?) involvement with another, who might have been a better. They had the same name, but pronounced it differently. Odd. An old friend from home continues, problematically, to haunt my imaginary lovelife.

I had to go on for one of the actors I’m understudying at Lookingglass. During previews, a week before my contract was originally to even begin. Kaboom.

I built a table and am spending a lot of time at home. My mother says that the clinical term for it is regression in service of the ego. Meaning that I’m staring at the walls and recharging. I’ve also had Ratatat’s “Classics” on repeat for about three days.

My brother is getting married! Congratulations!

I’m thinking of visiting home again before the tour, looming large on the horizon.

Thematically:

The last week or so has seen me in a bit of a funk.

Change in roommates, an accompanying change in furniture and decor, wonderland’s radical upheaval of reality, new music, and a new weekly rhythm all has me forgetting everything past two months. Chicago is new again.

I like to think of my time onstage as an understudy as my time down the rabbit hole. More literally, through the lookingglass. I got six hours of rehearsal. It was crazy, and its memory is precious to me. I don’t think I have ever been much more focused for so long a period in my life than the 48 hours before going on stage, or much more happy than when toasted to by the actors in the lobby after the show.

One day, wonderland, the next, Mitch and his girlfriend: “Yeah, she’s looking for a bike. You know. Just something basic.” …Is she.

In the days after Loookingglass I let the momentum die out on the interesting girl from Six Flags, my brother got engaged, and I received some troubling text messages from my good friend and ghost-lover. A bit of a funk followed. There was much reading of novels, and much drinking of liquor and coffee, both at home and abroad. So I’m drying out for a week or so – trying to reassert at least some kind of chemical / nutritional balance. We are our bodies, after all.

Listening to Ratatat all day in a scrupulously clean apartment, I am reminded of the strange and isolated weeks in my parents’ living room after Ava gave me notice, playing Final Fantasy six hours a day and eating Posole. Not in its heartbreak – not at all – but in the strange feeling that some great finger was taking all week to very slowly push some hidden reset button.

I am excited to see what comes next. I don’t always feel liberated by the neverending newness of life, but I try. And sometimes I do.