My favorite form of punctuation is the ellipse. Because so...much can happen betwixt those three little dots...
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Chapter .573`1709
Then what. Well... Inside was a recording studio, as I'd expected. And there was various acoustic equipment to haul in and I stood there in my little black dress and high heel shoes that I had spilled a gin and tonic in back at the club, and watched the shiny shiny symbols get unpacked, and gazed upon the shelves and shelves covering the wall of amazing, obscure jazz music and I thought this was where he lived, this was his basement apartment that he'd told me about, so I ask where his bed is because I'm looking around and I don't see one and he says, "Oh. I live upstairs. I live with my mom."
Oh.
So then we head upstairs and I see the first gnome and say, where's the bathroom.
And in there are doilies and racoon cartoons and I wash my hands and join him in the kitchen and he says, "Do you want something to drink?" and I think, hell fucking yeah, I do. And he says, "We have juice and water and...milk?" And I think, fuck me what the hell have I gotten myself into.
That's when I spot the first hedgehog. I think it was a part of the napkin holder or paper towel holder or something in his mother's kitchen.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Chapter 3
I've had this thing for the drummer for a while now. Years. I first saw him that night at the jazz club and I about couldn't believe that a single human could openly experience such joy while they did what they loved. He could play those drums. And we would make eye contact while he played and he would smile and I would smile and bite my lip and he would play a while longer and then there would be a break before the last set. And I would hover around that tiny shoe box stage with my camera and take photos of his drums and take photos of his feet and he would talk to me some. Then I talked my director into going to the jazz club with me on a Wednesday or something when he had a jazz session and then...
I'm making this story far too longer than it needs to be.
So, we're there and she's sipping a Shirley Temple and it's a Wednesday night after a rehearsal and we're chatting and he's playing and we have a few moments of eye contact and then they break and he... Walks up to this woman at the bar and hugs her and they don't kiss, but she's looking and she tells me that it definitely looks like they're together and I was sad.
Then a year or so passes.
Last summer-ish I go back in there and we're making eye contact like we used to and I can't believe this guy how he plays and that time we exchanged phone numbers and he was going to come over to my place last year when I lived by the pond and I tried to stay up, but it was so late and I'd had a few to drink and he had to take a few of the guys in the band home and I fell asleep with my cell phone in my hand and woke up to one missed call. From the drummer.
Then a rash of text messaging ensued because, did I mention? This kid is a baby. But he's so hot. But he's in his very early baby 20s. And I'm 30. And I don't date people younger than me.
So, our whole thing is that we want to play a game of Scrabble together.
The text messages fizzle.
Cut to...
A few weeks ago when I was doing my play, my play was at this theatre right down the street from where he plays and opening night my friends ask me if I've ever been there before and I say, yeah. I love that place. That's where I go for my healing. And we go there and on the walk over, I swear to you, I had forgotten about this guy and then I realize as I'm walking up the steps, oh yeah. I wonder if that guy's drumming. And we walk in. And he is. And he remembers me. He remembers me! The life I think this guy has had. He's a hot jazz drummer. I bet he gets all the ladies.
Did I mention to you that he lives with his Mom?
Yeah. He explains it to me like it's a basement apartment with a private entrance and a recording studio.
So, we talk and he plays and our interest is sparked anew and with gusto. With a rash of text messaging. I tell you, this one night... I have never text messaged like that. How preposterous. What sucks is that I've reached my limit for text messaging for the month. At present I'm spending something like 10 cents a msg every time my friends sent me a text. I thought 300 seemed like enough. How could I go over that limit and it's only, what. The 5th of June?
Goodness.
So, we make a plan, a definite solid plan. I'm to go to the club after I go see a play and listen to music and spill an entire gin and tonic in my shoe and then he'll give me directions to his PARENT'S HOUSE and I'm going to go there and he's going to take some guys from the band home and then we're going to play Scrabble.
I mean, I'm thinking I'm going to get laid, right? Right??!!! I pack my toothbrush in my lunchbox. I put on a dress. I'm nervous as hell. I mean, no pressure, right? It's not even a date, it's going straight to his house at 3 in the morning because that is when he is done. I thought about him being a serial killer because he lived way south in this very green and quiet suburb. You could see the stars out there. Such a quiet street. So, I park there under a street light and listen to music and wait.
And wait.
And wait.
I listened to a few songs. Then he calls and he had dropped his cell phone down this grate and there were flashlights involved and he found it and he'll be there in a bit and I park and I should have known something was wrong when I saw all the lawn mowers. I even mentioned the lawn mowers jokingly. Wow. Who needs that many lawnmowers, eh? Ha ha ha. Must mean you guys have a lot of grass. And he just nodded and shuffled me through the garage, heh. No big deal. You mean you notice a collection of something somewhere.
Then I turn and look at the wall of the garage. It's covered with a series of pegs hosting a series of snow shovels. Small snow shovels, large snow shovels, snow shovels with rubber on them, metal snow shovels, red snow shovels, snow shovels for a little small space of wet snow, snow shovels for the enormous mounds that happen, hydroelectric snow shovels that melt your snow like a galvanic ring. So. Many. Snow shovels.
Then we walked into the house.
To be continued...
Monday, May 25, 2009
Random isolated sentence of the day
"i could just pull you over my knee, no warnings at all"
Labels: sentence
Friday, May 22, 2009
And the pitch
Here I go again on my own.
Going down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
But I made up my mind.
I've been having this day where everyone looks at me as though they know me, as though they've seen me before or met me before. I keep making eye contact with these strangers and maybe they're just being nice or friendly? But it has been getting a bit strange. I bet it's just spring and people look each other in the eye on the subway or on the sidewalk or when you're walking down the cubicle aisle. It's nice. It's not too weird. Although that one guy was fairly handsome even though he was in his 60s.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
I have 1633 posts?!
I used to write a lot. What happened? I miss it. Let's see if I can try again.
Ahem.
Soooooooo....
Hi.
This is going pretty well so far, don't you think?
The Red Sox radio announcer's voice just says summer to me. I could sleep to this. We're winning. Stupid Blue Jays. Bock bock.
I was asking Dr. J, who said that I don't write anymore, what it was I used to write about anyhow? She said I wrote about plays and my past which I guess is true.
I know there are stories from my past I haven't shared here just yet and I enjoy this space being a space to capsulate such things... I'm just having a hard time thinking of what I haven't told you yet.
On the back of our farm growing up in Tennessee, we had this creek. That's the great thing about Tennessee, there are creeks everywhere. My grandparents had a creek on the land they owned when we were very little girls and we would run down the big hill and through the trees and play on the little bridges. Our very first house had a little creek running through the back of it in the subdivision before we built our house in the country. Dr. J lost the leg of one of our model horses to that creek. His name was Runner. As it should be. Then there was one more house in between on the golf course that had a creek too that ran through the golf course. We collected so many damn balls. When we would find a fluorescent one, that was great. Oh boy. Look. It's a fluorescent yellow one. Add it to the bucket along with the 17 other yellow ones. Orange ones were more special, fluorescent orange golf balls. Then, of course there were your run-of-the-mill white ones. Of which we had 1703.
But the creek out in the horse field behind our house in the country was truly secluded and magical and magnificent. It was my place. Along with the roof, the roof outside my window was definitely my place too, but we're talking about the creek.
So, there was this turn in the creek and this shelf of warm green mossy rock shelf and you could lie there on your back and listen to the gurbles and look up through the see through green of the trees with all those veins and insects buzzing and the smell of dirt and horse shit and I tell you... I would lie there and I would talk to myself.
Ok, that sounds crazy.
It was my thinking spot. I would go there and think.
Out loud.
To myself.
It's the pretty much same location as years later I would take acid with my best friend and our kind of boyfriends.
But that's a different story.
Base hit!
5-0 Red Sox
I think I would cry there some. About what, I don't know. Things were so DRAMATIC back then. Now? I don't consider myself a DRAMATIC person. I have very usual people relationships most of the time. But then? Childhood was hard.
I wonder if it's still there. If I could just sneak back on those stranger's property. If they'd mind. If they'd notice.
My parents are moving back to Tennessee. It will be home base again. I couldn't be more pleased. A very important part of me is moving back home.
Sweep the Blue Jays, Boys!!! This would make them 16-4 at home.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Celia Plimco on playing a fictional character: Episode Zed
I have to figure out how to want to poison someone and then poison them and kill them dead.
I also have to figure out how to sound more convincing speaking in iambic pentameter. I'm shy of my pentameter, yo. And I have to get comfortable wearing a corset and running around screaming, falling, crying, getting picked up and carried off stage without my organs spontaneously spurting out of my ass and/or passing out and still manage to have enough vocal control so that people can hear me.
But guys? My dagger is really big.
And there are puppets. Puppets make everything better.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Charlatan
I had a dead baby gig yesterday and it was the weirdest day ever. Usually we have the conversation in a room with a live video feed that goes into the conference room, right? So, everyone can watch the conversation as it's going on and then we finish and the doctors leave and go back to the conference room and then we join them and give them our feedback on how things went.
Well, there was no sound for the first conversation yesterday. So, they plopped us right there in the conference room with everyone. It was very odd. I mean, the whole thing is odd anyhow, but staying focused with an enormous table of doctors RIGHT THERE looking at you is particularly disconcerting. It went way better than I thought it would.
The sound was fixed for the last two conversations, thank goodness.
So, all sorts of papers and books have been written about how, as a medical professional, you answer the "What would you do?" question. So, I ask it. I wait until both options have been given about what to do for the baby, either continue all of this aggressive care, keep her on the machines knowing that she's going to grow up to be a vegetable, won't be able to talk, walk, feed herself, etc or we withdraw support and hold her as she dies in our arms. Then I say through my veil of believable sobs, "Do any of you have kids? (Wait for confirmation...) What would you do?" Now, usually this question causes a shift, right? That's what it's supposed to do, bring them to a level of humanity that is necessary to answer it. You're not supposed to actually answer it, that's not what the question is about, it's more a cry for recognition that this is, in fact, the hardest decision a new parent should ever be put in a position to make. In that moment, I want them to be a human, not a doctor. Now, usually the doctors pause... and then say that they don't know what they would do, that they can't imagine how hard that would be, that they would be making the decision out of love as we are and blah blah blah. They usually are prepared for the question and answer it with a level of disassociation that, Christ, you really have to have if you're a NICU doctor or nurse.
Yesterday I asked the question. The doctor said yes, she had two kids. She started to answer... And then she started crying. I made a doctor cry. Oops. It was so crazy! And beautiful. And appropriate. And awkward. In the scenario, it was perfect, it's what I was calling out for, an answer to my humanity and she gave it. It didn't make me not respect her as a doctor or anything. The other two actors started crying too.
But, here's the thing. I felt like a fraud. I mean, I was ACTING! She, the doctor, was genuinely CRYING. I was crying too, but it was acting crying, but then she was crying for real and I just felt so bad! It was maybe the weirdest and most complicated acting experience I have had to date.
I wanted to say, "Oh no no no no, see? I'm just kidding! I've never had a baby! I'm just pretend crying! Shhh... It's ok! CUT!" But of course I couldn't, but I did end up apologizing, as my character and then of course this brought about all sorts of discussion in the conference room after how I comforted her and hooray humanity etc. etc.
But dang. I sure felt bad for making that nice doctor lady cry. She must really love her kids. Me? I just pretend to really love my pretend baby.
I'm a fraud.