Ere of Change

ere

MEANING:

preposition, conjunction: Before (earlier in time).

Throngs of celebrating masses with damp cheeks and revived energy, pumping fists and chanting--"Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!"--and not-so-subtly clad in the primary colors of our American flag, blending seamlessly with those waving the very icon itself that, for the first time in recent memory, represented unity and not armchair patriotism. That moment, there, watching, feeling the carnal reverberations of shared belief, of participation and proximity; there, listening to the static surge, the howls of relief and optimism; there, no longer showered with pundit-fueled barbs, ignorant accusations, advertisements sticky with mud; there, basking in the brief, awesome silence that follows a landslide, the real people finally allowed to speak for themselves in words and action; there, enveloped with imagery of a man, of a black man, of a true orator, of a poet, predicting his emergence; there, lofting hope like autumn leaves, hugging the newly crisp air, smiling.

That--those people in Grant Park, the private celebrations in apartments and homes, next door and across the nation--is change. Celebration. People smiling, screaming in euphoria, giddy with excitement--feelings made foreign by repressive government, Machiavellian tactics, and complacent attitudes. Yesterday our victory was not just electing a president that defies racial barriers and trumpets progressive change. It too was electing hope over fear, in that most personal of ways, when individuals connect to each other and collectively dissolve throes of depression.

Yes. We can.

Where I Am

Here's a quick synopsis, folks.

I quit my job.

I quit my theater company.

It's time to face me, and give me all I got.

I'm writing a screenplay set in the future. Not distant, maybe ten years out. It's bleak by all accounts, but if it works--if what I see in it now, if what I envision can translate onto the page--it's not depressing at all. It's about beauty in grey places. It's about hearts on dirty sleeves.

I'm studying for the GRE (more in theory right now than practice) and plan to win the battle, not the war.

I've been doing a lot of thinking, and this is how it goes: We're not dead yet.

Fending Off Common Diseases

waterloo (WOT-uhr-loo) noun

A crushing or final defeat.

Sometimes life seems like a series of dodged defeats, a long string of minor rejections that, if adequately screened as they filter in, fizzle as plot points instead of epilogues. Regardless, even in the best of environments, tension mounts. And I am the grimacing face of frustration, shaking my fist in the air--half at the gods, half at myself--hoping for change.

But am I pushing for it?

Time. Time is always the issue. So much devoted to this, devoted to that, a responsibility here, a should do, an ought to do, a want to do. Money. (Here it's green for a reason.) Money for rent, for food, for drink, for gas, for internet, for everything. I don't want my life to read as an anecdote to complacence, as someone with a heart that drained simply to stay afloat.

But how do you initiate change? What do you sacrifice? What do you trust?

"Never work. Only fools work. To degrade oneself with labor..."

Shytown, 6 PM

indurate (IN-doo-rayt, -dyoo-) verb tr.

1. To make hardy, inured, accustomed.

2. To make callous or unfeeling.

verb intr.

1. To make hard.

2. To become established.

adjective (IN-doo-rit, -dyoo-)

Hardened; callous; obstinate.

Trains on the el track beams
keep above, stalled in three beeps
(glad it ain't me)

An ambulance
weaves through a one-way
past a blue bus stopped behind
a blue bus--
all full, windows bulging,
people cooking in awful overcoated heat
(glad it ain't me)

All it is:
I walk, see
a shoulderbag-toting trooper
deadright
on my view of life
straight ahead
eyes-glued just past the
shoes and
those blue buses, the ambo sirens shout--
fuck, man, is that a
firetruck
too?--
over mumbles and averting glances
crossing on time with white light
words, routine advances--where,
where is the fire, that emergency
where do they all go in such a hurry?--
(glad it ain't me)

Do you know?
Do you know?

City living's like shit-fearing flies
If you believe all you're told
then all you know is lies

Logging In/Out

pusillanimous (pyoo-suh-LAN-uh-muhs) adjective

Lacking courage; timid.

If you stop, if you just stop for two seconds and close your eyes, you will hear the ghostly buzzes and whirs of our machinery as it ticks and percolates through time. This constant current running to plastic-cased hardware--low-level high-rises, condos full of data memory--pierces the air like phantom whistles. You, your body, responds: this listening to the purrs, the sudden changes of tone and pitch, the fabricated background music of existence, forces a physical, alien, conversation between the hidden eyes of these machines and our over-worked fingertips.

Somehow, during this whole unspoken discussion, a new taste emerges. Your tongue, its tip, soaking in an unknown development--a wetness, a dryness, a familiar consistency--that doubles with each pulse. First: not enough to know. Then: too much to stop. Is it blood? Are you cut? Is it batteries? A leak? Is it metals, or is it cells?

Remember, there's no murder in shutting down.

Another Blog? Seriously?

For the handful of people that check this blog--and handful might be a little over-zealous--I would like to invite you to check out my new blogging endeavor. I'm not ending this blog, merely taking an announced hiatus (as opposed to the myriad of unannounced pauses between posts that exist normally) to focus on rehearsals for Lipstick Traces, an ambitious play Pavement Group (my theatre company) is producing next month.

Too Early to Cause Alarm

I woke up this morning at six AM--two hours before my alarm--and layed there with my eyes shut, feigning the opposite. Clinging, in a bleary-eyed morning daze, to a faith that my body and mind would fall back asleep if I could just overwhelm myself with hope. Sadly, the old rehabbed wooden windows that rattled me awake in the first place continued their arrhythmic drumming and, in a wind of sighs, I eventually whipped off my covers and stormed to the shower in defeat.

This happens from time to time to everyone, I assume, whenever your body awakens before "it's supposed to". Meaning, of course, that the fine-tuned morning regiment of obeying one's alarm occasionally fails in the most unexpected manner: preemptively. There's nothing surprising about sleeping through the calming drone of NPR or, for the true logs among us, even the robotic stomp of the beeps and buzzers. When someone receives more sleep than they apportioned for, that's viewed as a symptom of necessity. But waking up before that preset switch in bedroom volume? Before the weather and traffic together? That's no regular occurrence. That's just purely divine defiance, losing the bet before the deal. No one bolts out of bed early and shrugs, "Well, guess I only needed five hours of sleep last night! What a life!" No way, we all act just as I did and suggest, by mental and/or physical force, that we continue to lay shrouded in our cave of covers until the appropriate pronouncement, until the very right moment when we should--when we normally do--rise from our hibernatory state and get up.

Such a stubborn refusal to accept the morning's arrival only serves as punishment for an immutable, unchangeable course of events. Ultimately, no amount of base-level self-trickery will reverse the early day. I guess such occasions act as reminders that the "it's supposed to"-ness of life follows a lead unhindered by the human invention of calculated time. It's just too bad we can't all take naps at work.

Unplugging the Virtual Torture Machine

blimey (BLY-mee) interjection

An expression of surprise, dismay, etc.

[Contraction of "blind me" or "blame me", from "God blind/blame me";
sometimes heard in the form gorblimey or corblimey.]

It's increasingly difficult to maintain a sense of humor about this waiting game. At this point, based on a fairly recent (probably ill-advised) email correspondence, I'm certain the committee held many sessions of interviews; I simply attended the first round. That being said, I must now begin to accept rejection. From this day forward, I will no longer check the website for an official rebuke, but, in its stead, assume it. If they choose me, I will receive a packet by mail and that--that ghost--would arrive just days after an online decision.

Now I must find a new job before it elicits a psychotic break.

Wait, Wait, PLEASE tell me!

Q: If I meet the required deadlines, when can I expect to receive a decision?

A: Programs have different application review schedules. Some programs wait and rank all of their applications against each other; others make individual determinations on a case-by-case basis. Program decisions are rendered from early January all the way through the middle of April. To reduce your wait time, The Graduate School communicates admission decisions via the online application portal rather than through mail. You may access the online application as many times as you wish to check if a decision has been rendered on your file. If a decision has been rendered on your file a "View Decision" link will appear. If no decision has been rendered, no link will be present.

I had my interview two weeks ago. My twenty minute conversation with three important people in the program (we talked mostly about my past, my travels, my experiences, my writing, all in the broadest of senses). I was nice, they were nice. It was a nice twenty minutes.

Too nice? Forgettable? Not nice enough?

My brain's melting with anxiousness; I check each night when I get home. It interferes with otherwise relaxed moments. "What should I eat for lunch? Grad School."

What will they say? Am I fit to pay them in high-priced loans and my creative soul? Or just, well, nice?

So now I wait. Possibly until May.

Another Bank Holiday

mlk day
on the train
coffee smells
wet jeans and
salt stains

no one speaks
just the track creaks
earbuds buzz
and the reshift of
bags on empty seats

don't look though, just peek
what's yours is yours
and mine is mine
keep all eyes outside
on the floor or
on the time

mlk day, sure
some thirty years since
change occurred
and here we are still
going to work

yes, sir

standing by
duty bound, in line
less for more
unless you're poor
then just survive

but don't worry
there's no racial divide
we've all got the same, basic
human rights

on the train
this mlk day
year of our lord
2008