Melissa Dunphy's Journal

Things more important

2008-08-13T12:28:00.003-04:00

Sometime soon, I'll post a part two to the last entry, replying to people's thoughts (which are really great, thank you -- it's a good discussion). But here's a post to say that sometimes we all need to step back and remember how important life is. Just life. Breathing, eating, sleeping. And sometimes we get carried away with drama and love and ambition, but life is more important than all these things, and if we value it the right way, everything else will probably fall into place.

Cancer is a horrible thing, and my heart goes out to people whose families have been affected by it.

Ambition, or Hating Yourself and Loving It

2008-08-06T23:15:00.018-04:00

am-bi-tion
Pronunciation: \am-'bi-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin ambition-, ambitio, literally, act of soliciting for votes, from ambire
Date: 14th century

a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
b: desire to achieve a particular end
the object of ambition <her ambition is to start her own business>
a desire for activity or exertion <felt sick and had no ambition>

The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious: if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it.

I've been thinking a lot about ambition lately -- about where it comes from, and whether it's a good or bad thing.

I grew up believing that ambition was paramount. Contentment was a dirty word, a state of mind which necessarily breeds stagnation, and which should be left to the inept and the elderly; we should never be content with ourselves and our lot in life, or we won't strive to better ourselves, I thought. Or think. I'm not sure. (That is the question.)

Ambition is a central concept to Chinese (even Asian) culture and outlook. Chinese parents foster ambition in their children in ways which seem brutal to those with a more Western outlook. I understand this, and hold no ill-will towards mine. My mother was ever watchful for and quick to quash laziness and complacency in her daughter. Through my elementary schooling, she rode me hard to achieve academically, and nothing was ever good enough. I remember breaking down in tears in class over test scores as high as 99%. My concerned or incredulous fellow students thought I was exaggerating when I explained how angry my mother would be, but I wasn't paranoid. I held back tears as I met my mother at the school gate, and when I showed her my exam, the first words out of her mouth would be "Only 99%?" I knew the rest of the evening would be spent listening to tirades about how careless I was and how much harder I needed to study. Even if I scored full marks, she'd never show any outward pride or affirmation, instead reminding me of past mistakes and counseling me not to become too confident lest I slip up the next time.

Here's the worst thing my parents ever did. I tell you this not to feel sorry for myself or shock you, but to illustrate how the will to achieve is forced upon kids by the culture in which I was raised. When I was three or four, I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to study. My parents tied me up, stuffed a tea towel into my mouth, and put me in a sack. I remember the smell and taste of the cloth between my teeth, and the tears running down my face and pooling under my cheek. The sack was made of some kind of polyester, which left me stifled and hot as I struggled and tried to scream. While I lay on the floor, they talked within earshot about how useless I was if I didn't work hard, and how they might as well dump me in Musgrave Park to be raised by Aborigines, who would make me drink metho.

This abhorrence, fear almost, of my laziness extended into my adulthood. When I was 24, for example, my mother and I had an enormous fight on the phone because she accused me of being lazy and having fun instead of working hard. At the time, I was working fifteen hours a day at three separate jobs.

I don't think this is particularly unusual for Chinese parents; it's far from the worst story I've heard (I was never kicked across a room, or threatened with amputation, or chained to a toilet). The point is that my parents, like many of their culture, deliberately and systematically undermined my self-esteem to engender ambition. I worked hard because I didn't want to be useless, and they worked hard to make me believe that uselessness was always a possibility. I wanted to make them proud, and they worked hard not to show they were proud so I would keep on working. They did this because, within their culture, doing so is an act of love. They believe that giving a child that unquenchable thirst for achievement is the best thing one can do as a parent, that the result might be the next Einstein or Mozart. It might be hard on your children in the short term, but in the end, they'll thank you, or if they don't, you'll at least know you did what needed to be done.

What makes people do great things? What drives individuals to earn more money than they could ever spend, or practice an instrument until they are the best in the world, or train until they win an Olympic medal, or ignore personal relationships for art, or kill themselves studying radium? It seems common sense to me that many of the most successful people in the world are driven by the same kind of neurosis, stamped upon them by parents or circumstances in the same way. We're never good enough, we have to try to be good enough, we keep trying, sacrificing everything. Some succeed, some don't, but success on that level isn't possible without that abnormal drive. If genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the greater part of genius is the ability to make the effort.

(Not that I'm a genius. Logic - cats - four legs.)

But this affects us in other ways too. We catastrophize. When your whole life is spent imagining the worst in order to avoid it and capitalizing on the intoxicatingly potent power of self-hatred, it can be hard to turn that off. Unfortunately, while such a schema might succeed when you're finding the motivation to improve a test score from 99% to 100% or impress people with your myriad accomplishments, it might mean that you assume the worst in personal relationships, that you're crippled by feelings of inadequacy. The very thing that makes you do the great things you were programmed to do necessitates terrible insecurities that sabotage happiness.

I'm trying to figure out where my priorities lie. What do I want out of life? Is it OK to be content after all? Should there be compromise, and where should the compromise intersect the opposing viewpoints? I'm struggling with that question. There's a large part of me that still holds contentment in contempt and believes in the schema. But another part sees the damage that it causes and wonders if it's worth it. I don't know what the answer is, or what will come of it. We'll see, I guess.

New dresses at dadadress urrr urrrr want want urrrr

On Saturday, I'm seeing Encounters At the End of the World. <3 to Werner Herzog.

Monkey Hat

2008-08-06T01:38:00.005-04:00

About a year ago, I was walking with Matt on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia just as most of the cute little stores on that street were closing. In the window of one store, I spotted the most awesome collection of knitted animal hats ever. I vowed to come back when the store was open and buy one.

Six months later when I began working in Philly full-time, I searched incessantly during my lunch and after hours for that store. Seriously, I spent hours and hours trudging up and down Chestnut, even branching out to Market, Sansom, Walnut and all the cross streets in case I had mistaken the location. Nada. I also searched furiously on eBay, but could never find the enchanting hats I remembered. I gave up.

But! Today, as I was working on South Street ... I saw them! The store that had once been on Chestnut had moved to South! I bought a monkey hat on the spot. Next, I want the frog, and then the rooster.

They are made/imported, incidentally, by Peruvian Trading Company. They're hard to track down online. I love my Monkey Hat.

Oh, and here's a picture from Monday that I also took with my Blackberry. Enjoy.

Village Productions

2008-08-02T21:18:00.006-04:00

Starting this September, I'll be teaching drama classes and private lessons at Village Productions in Pottstown (I know, I've already talked to them about possibly working on the website). The company have found themselves a permanent facility for the first time -- an old furniture warehouse is being transformed into the Tri-County Performing Arts Center, or TriPAC. I visited the site for the first time today, and I'm tremendously excited about it because (a) I'm renovation-nuts and (b) watching a theatre take shape like this is kind of cool.

Here's the main stage, which will be a black box. That's an orchestra loft above the stage, although the set-up will be very flexible so that the stage and audience risers can be configured any which way within the space.

On the second level are offices and three large classrooms, which can be combined by folding away acoustic wall panels to form a second performance area, shown here. (N.B. exposed brick wall at the right is being preserved as-is, aha!) I'll be teaching four classes a week in this space.

This is the fourth wall from the last shot, because metal studs and foil-backed insulation bales look sweet.

In the basement is a fairly extensive backstage area (green room, dressing rooms with sinks, two showers!) and costume/scenic workshops, as well as a couple of private studios where I'll be giving one-on-one coaching. This is a shot from the scenic workshop through exposed studs into the green room. You can see plumbing hookups for the green room kitchenette on the lower left, and on the right is the entrance to one of the dressing rooms.

So, yay. Everyone enroll your kids and your neighbors' kids in classes here, please.

The downside to having to visit the TriPAC today is that I missed seeing John Waters' live show in DE :(

Sub-Lyme news

2008-07-30T16:39:00.002-04:00

I received notification in the mail today that Barry the tick was found to be negative for Lyme disease bacteria! Still, screw him for biting me. Death to all ticks.

I have some nice news on the job front, too: seems I will be playing Ophelia in Philly next year. Stay tuned for more on that. I am incredibly excited but also a little pensive because the last time I played Ophelia, one of my dads died.

If you visit this blog regularly and possess the ability to read, you are aware that I have been experiencing some personal turbulence these past few months. Hopefully that is clearing up. There's a lot of hope going on. It's intense, but also kind of beautiful.

sky sky sky sky sky sky sky

2008-07-25T00:05:00.004-04:00

On another note: Explosions in the Sky ... Lights in the Sky ... Skyhooks ... the universe is evidently trying to tell me something! No idea what. Look up?

I feel really awful tonight, so that may well be it.

Paging theninhotline

2008-07-24T23:19:00.005-04:00

I have lately been getting multiple e-mails per day asking for this, so here it is.

Lights in the Sky (Sibelius file - readable for free with Scorch)
Lights in the Sky (PDF)

I have no idea how to access the Hotline anymore, since the interface changed and nobody has let me know what to do. So I guess I'll just point everyone who's been asking to this blog entry until someone uploads the files to the site and posts a news article.

[Edit] Situation with the Hotline resolved; sheet music for Lights in the Sky is now available here on Know the Score.

Another sketch

2008-07-23T18:45:00.002-04:00

Ain't got a model, so I have to keep drawing myself.

That I, one Snout by name, present a wall.

2008-07-22T23:42:00.003-04:00

FIRST -- BEFORE PICS. Here is the wall when we bought the house -- it's the wall in the back, through the arch, covered in plaster, awful wallpaper, and (shudder) baby blue trim.

Here is the wall after the plaster had been chipped away. As I said in my last post, it was like this for months.

Here is the wall now:

And with the dining set moved out of the way:

I still obviously need to prime and paint the trim, and I need baseboard and crown molding (which I can't put up until I've sorted out threading another wire into that light switch). But there it is. Got me some pride.

The Wall

2008-07-22T02:07:00.004-04:00

To help me get through what has been, to put it mildly, a trying time, I am focusing a lot of my energy on a wall. Months and months ago, Matt and I (with help from Chris and Stefania) exposed a brick wall in our house by painstakingly chiseling away hundreds of pounds of dilapidated horsehair plaster. The bricks were never meant to be seen -- they were chipped and broken and covered in plaster dust, and century-old mortar oozed all over them -- but an exposed brick wall was tantalizing. There's a beautiful exposed brick wall at National Mechanics, for instance. But gee, it seemed like such a lot of work. I often wondered if it would be easier to just paint over it, though that would ruin the effect of the natural brick. Months and months passed.

In the last week, though, I took it on as a kind of therapeutic project. And gee (again), were we ever right about it being a lot of work. I chipped all the extruded mortar away by hand. I painstakingly sanded each brick until it was clear of plaster and cement remnants, covering the interior of my house in dust and probably giving myself cancer in the process. I grouted until my fingers were raw from pushing slop between sharp brick edges. I brushed sealant on the cracked surfaces like a hermit painting delicate watercolors. It has been a labor of love and devotion. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I forced myself to get up and work on the wall. The nervous shake in my fingers and arms became the somewhat more bearable tremor of fatigue. Sometimes working on the wall took the place of eating and sleeping properly (like tonight).

The wall drove me crazy; the wall kept me sane. I told the wall secrets and listened for a response. I made bargains with the wall, convincing myself that it was a kind of talisman that would bring me luck. My mind filled with metaphors about stripping away facades and repairing the substance beneath until it was beautiful.

It's nearing completion, and I think it is going to be beautiful. Not perfect, and it won't solve any of my problems, but beautiful. Tomorrow, if the last of the grout dries properly, I'll finish sealing and put up the trim around the two doorways through it, and then I'll show you pictures. I'm afraid, though, the way I get when I'm nearing the end of a good book. What will I do when my friend the wall doesn't need me anymore?

The Tell-Tale Heart

2008-07-20T00:39:00.007-04:00

Cheesy sketches a la 1995/1996. Call it getting back to my roots, or something. Don't worry, my tongue is jammed with great gusto into my cheek.

Speaking of heart-rending (and at all not of really terrible art), wowwwwwww, everyone should come to see this play I'm reading. Especially anyone in the least bit familiar with my current situation, which is about seven people in the world, most of whom won't attend, but nevertheless. Not only is it a great play, in the tradition of great plays that leave you devastated and unable to speak afterward, but it speaks to my life and my family's life, past and present, in a frightening way. Sections of the revised script were actually uttered by me, in real life, about a week and a half ago. I almost want to start wearing a tinfoil hat to rehearsal in case the playwright is reading my mind. It's kind of like when a good friend of mine was in Spring Awakening. Although, on second thought, maybe nothing could be that intense. But it's bad. In a good way. It's like therapy every day. For pay!

O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

2008-07-18T13:43:00.006-04:00

It's the stuff of nightmares. Well, my nightmares. An hour ago in rehearsal, I was stroking my arm (weird habit during reading rehearsals), when my fingers brushed over something that felt like a piece of grit.

I brushed a little harder, but it didn't fall off.

I looked down. Was it a flea? It was about the size of a small flea. I grabbed it quickly between two fingernails, and was surprised to find I had to pull it out of my skin with a little "pop." I brought it close to my face to take a good look.

That right there is a deer tick, and the one I pulled out of my arm was the first I've seen in person. I am pretty sure he's a boy, and I am naming him Barry. I had the presence of mind to hold onto Barry after making sure he was dead, and I stuck him on the back of a price label peeled off a water bottle until I could secure him properly between strips of plastic during a suitable break in rehearsal.

Luckily for me (not so much for him), my good friend Clark has been going through Lyme disease hell for a couple of months, which has been very educational (and heartbreaking, but he's getting better). Following his instructions, on Monday I'm going to a Lyme literate doctor for a course of doxycycline, because I just called my usual doctor's office; they don't seem to have a clue, and it doesn't sound like it would be easy to convince them of the benefits of getting one. I also found a lab in Jersey who will test a tick for Lyme for $60 (again, after being told by my regular doctor's office that there was no way to test a tick for Lyme). I am sending Barry away to the lab today. I won't miss him, but I hope he gets there safely.

I hope I'm being overly cautious. The last thing I need is Lyme disease. Though, oddly enough, I kind of enjoyed the burst of activity this scare has brought; it's better than the self-pitying drunken moping I've been indulging in lately, or the bouts of constructive self-harm.

(Constructive self-harm is when you, for instance, work on your house with your hands so hard and for such long stretches that it still hurts to type twenty-four hours later. But the house! I made such progress!)

I really need that "illness" tag, don't I?

Explosions in the Sky

2008-07-17T23:23:00.005-04:00

Tonight I started listening to this band because I had Friday Night Lights playing in the background while I worked on the house all day, and I liked the music more than anything else. Sounds like Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's the first music in weeks (months?) I've been able to listen to and ... enjoy may not be the write word. It gives me a kind of sweet pain and sometimes makes my arms break out in hard gooseflesh.

Ten minutes ago, I found their MySpace profile, and played the first track "Yasmin the Light." As the climax approached, I heard a loud crack, and I glanced out the window beside me just in time to see a burst of green and purple in the sky. The chances of a leftover firework from July 4th being ignited at the right time and in the right place, with me seated at the right angle, combined with the fact of the band's name and the nature of their music, had me in tears with completely indescribable emotion. Sometimes I don't know quite what the universe is doing with me, but I think it's giving me a pretty wild ride.

Why does Philly smell so much of piss?

2008-07-16T19:57:00.002-04:00

Heartburn, Ironically* -- or, Am I Having a Midlife Crisis at Age 28?

2008-07-15T22:03:00.008-04:00

Last week, I learned that if I am juuuust stressed enough, I get some crazy digestion problems which involve having no appetite, throwing up half my meals when I force myself to eat, and getting reflux after eating the other half. I've never had that happen before, so I suppose I was more stressed than I've ever been. It certainly felt so. Alternatively, I'm old and don't deal with stress as well as I used to.

I should probably have a tag 'illness' for this blog, because it seems a good proportion of my posts are about medical problems; I recall a stretch a couple of years ago when I mostly discussed the terrorism committed by my urinary tract, which the rest of my body views with Republican-like paranoia to this day. I can't bring myself to create the label, however, because I already feel I'm turning into an old woman.

On the phone this week, my mother informed me matter-of-factly that I am now middle-aged, since I might as well be thirty.

She also received my new headshot in the mail, and her only comment? "You're getting old."
"But do you like the picture?" I pressed, offended hysteria rising like the bile in my acid-etched esophagus.
"Weeell, I guess you look pretty, but you're old. There are so many lines around your eyes. I took it to the tenant in the front flat, and he said, 'She's aging. It's natural.'"

I sent her a spiteful e-mail afterward asking (sarcastically) if she would send me money for plastic surgery so I don't disappoint her in future photographs. I guess I should call her to kiss and make up sometime tonight.

The headshot in question can currently be viewed on my Facebook and MySpace profiles, in case you're curious.

*The irony is that my heartburn is caused by affairs of the heart -- and neither of these ailments has anything to do with the cardiac organ. Suck it, Alanis Morrisette.

Soooo ...

2008-07-13T23:08:00.007-04:00

Life is more complicated than anyone can ever imagine. Enough said about that.

In not-really-life related news: I am excited to be starting work at PlayPenn tomorrow -- I have two weeks of rehearsal for a staged reading of a new play, Another Man's Son. I will be playing Lucine, who is an Armenian, and I will probably have to whip out an American accent. Yes, that's American, not Armenian, which is a relief, but I still think it looks funny written out.

I've been teaching week-long theatre camps, and while they are ludicrously satisfying (personally, not financially), they are also incredibly exhausting. Last week I had to look after twenty campers, nineteen of whom were between the ages of 5 and 8, from nine till four every day without a break -- I sit with them and keep them entertained through lunch as well. There were tears every single day from at least one of the campers, and quite often there were tears from me as soon as I stepped through my front door again. But they did put on a lovely show at the end of it, and even though I feel like I spent half my time disciplining them, they were super-affectionate. The week before, I taught Hamlet to a class of five kids aged seven through eleven, culminating in a performance of the final fight. Srsly. (Most bizarre part: the seven-year-old understood the play better than anyone.) I have two more camps to teach; the last is a musical theatre camp for which I am a little nervous because I don't really have a clue.

The next two weeks are going to be tough for reasons I'm (again) not going to go into. Uh, into which I'm not going to go. Uh. I don't really want to go into the reasons. Suffice to say that I'm going to try focusing on reading, writing, and ... cello-ing in my spare time, which is somehow simultaneously too scarce and not scarce enough. Wish me luck.

joga

2008-07-11T07:50:00.001-04:00

4am crazy

2008-07-10T04:44:00.009-04:00

I refused point blank to have these words said at my wedding because (a) how entirely unoriginal, and (b) it's a Bible quote, and God knows I'm not big on the Bible. But, God help me, I just woke up singing a hymn I remember from primary school based on 1 Corinthians 13. I know: cue mental hives. Not least because my mother sometimes used to wake up singing hymns in the middle of the night right before it was time to put her in the car and pack her off to hospital.

Love is patient and kind,
Love is not jealous or proud,
Never selfish or rude,
Won't demand its own way,
Love will never end.

Love does not take offense
and keeps no score of misdeeds ...

I am sure these are the lyrics. I even remember the chord changes with some degree of accuracy (requires Sibelius Scorch).

Then I searched all over the internet to find the exact wording for the end of the second verse, and the internet could not provide. I'm not sure how that's even possible.

Anyway, the point is, maybe I should have. But I don't think there's anything wrong with aspiration (non-pulmonary).

Metropolis: Key scenes from the famous movie rediscovered

Tom Waits on his cherished albums of all time

I speak like Cate Blanchett

2008-06-14T07:23:00.003-04:00

I've been in the US a while now, and the incidence of accent foibles has decreased over time, but every now and then I still have a good one.

Yesterday I auditioned for a Shakespeare show at a theater where I've never worked. I was late, as usual, but they were running behind anyway, so there wasn't much chitchat before I began. I ran through the first side and stopped for comment. The director and his assistant both gave me a funny look.

"Um ... you ... You've obviously done a lot of vocal work. But you're using RP."

I stared at them blankly wondering if RP was some crazy American vocal technique.

"Received Pronunciation. Can you do it in your normal accent?"

My god. My god! They thought I was one of those annoying wanker Americans who pretend they're British when they do Shakespeare. I hate those actors; I couldn't believe they assumed I was one of them! I wanted to run out of the room screaming and take a shower.

"I'm Australian." I said it slowly in an effort to hide my creeping outrage.

Blank stare again, this time from both of them.

"This IS my normal accent."

"You're Australian?"

"Yes, but I don't sound like Steve Irwin. I sound more like Cate Blanchett." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.

"Oh, uh, well, can you just sound less ... polished? Just be yourself."

So I faked having a lazy Australian accent for Shakespeare. I should have just done it in an American accent. Or, as Sean suggested when he heard the story, I should have gone balls to the wall and done the entire thing sounding exactly like Paul Hogan.

Note to self: always, always find a way to slip my Australian heritage into pre-audition chitchat, no matter how short or clumsy. "It's hot today, isn't it? Oh, but not so hot as it is back home in the outback with kangaroos and shrimp on the barbie. I said as much to my mate Judy Davis when I phoned home to the Land Down Under last weekend." Something like that.

Now We Are Six

2008-06-11T22:22:00.011-04:00

Here's something I've been meaning to do for a while. When I was a wee little kid, I kept a diary. By this, I mean my mother made me keep a diary. Every day, in addition to mathematics homework she would devise for me above my regular schoolwork, I had to write at least a page before I was allowed to play.

I'm kind of grateful for the diaries now, because reading words you wrote before you were a real person is a surreal and wonderful thing. Here are a couple of entries from when I was six.

I am still struggling a little with tense here:

Here is Jim and the Beanstalk, in case you too want to lose an argument with your child regarding the pronunciation of the word 'oculist.'

Also, I was already taking great pleasure in arguing with my parents at age six. How could they not have predicted the household havoc this was to cause a few short years later?

Cf. previous blog entry and Twitter status.

Yes, I must make an admission, which I have hitherto been too ashamed to make publicly. I did not have my own bed until I was six; prior to this age, I slept in the same bed as my mother, while my stepdad had his own bed in another room. The point of posting this entry, however, was to demonstrate that I grew up renovating. The "settled life" part is a bonus crack-up.

A play a day keeps the doctor away.

I love that I thought the prize was going to be a blue ribbon; when it turned out to be a book a week later, I went back to my diary and changed my entry because I couldn't stand to be wrong. (Also: I wanted a blue ribbon!?)

I know, I know, I before E. And 'favorate.' And obviously I was having some trouble capitalizing. Cut me some slack -- where are your childhood journals?

The thing that gets me here is that I was so shy and so determined to get over it. When I looked into teachers' eyes, I would shake like I was having a full-body muscle spasm. I didn't get past this problem for another six or seven years at least.

I don't know if I ever told this story before on this blog. If I did, and you read it, apologies. Here it is again.

My parents were always renovating, and I always wanted to help. When I was six, though, the only jobs I could be trusted with were small, symbolic tasks like sorting screws into boxes. One day, when I was bothering her in a particularly annoying way to give me something to do, my mother decided to try setting me an impossible task, in the hope I would get tired and quit.

"Go drag that roll of wall-to-wall carpet up that flight of stairs."

Alas, Mum forgot that I am my mother's daughter, and somewhere in the top five on the list of our shared character traits is the word 'stubborn.' Actually, it's more like 'STUBBORN,' written in ten-foot-tall letters in still-dripping mule blood. I completed the impossible task. And I ruptured myself in the process and required surgery for an inguinal hernia.

Yeah, ANTS! That is how a child learns about the Circle of Life -- by playing God with ants, not some goddamn cartoon with lions.

("their're"!? Palm -> forehead.)

Sleep is bad for you

2008-06-09T23:08:00.006-04:00

I have been running on four to six hours sleep a night for weeks. Then, on Thursday, I decided to go wild and allow myself twelve whole hours of shut-eye. On Friday, I slept for an additional eight hours.

On Saturday, I got sick.

I should have known better. You know how your immune system somehow knows when you go on a relaxing vacation and lets all the floating viruses and bacteria take hold? "Oh, pressure's off, I see, right you are -- time to collect some new antibodies." I always seemed to be sick for the first two weeks of every holiday as a kid. I guess my immune system, misunderstanding my indulgence, thought I didn't have anything better to do with my time than fight off an infection or two.

This only confirms my theory that sleep is stupid.

On Saturday, I started feeling a sore throat and a fever. On Saturday night, I went to see LunchLady Doris (great stuff!), and then discovered I was dizzy. I napped before driving home and crashing into bed. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom, but the dizziness got the better of me, and I fell down the stairs.

And broke my little toe.

I tried very hard to go without analgesics all weekend, hoping the fever would kill off the infection faster, but this morning I couldn't stand it any more and dragged myself to a doctor. My temperature was at 101.7degF (38.7degC). OK, give me drugs and weepy self-pity, I'm obviously not going to kill this thing on my own.

The gratifying news is that the taping job I did on my toe is all anyone ever does for broken little toes anyway, so the doc advised I just leave it at that and not bother with x-rays. I guess that means I don't really know for sure if the bone is broken. I mean, it hurts like hell, and there's a massive bruise, but it's not really displaced, and the swelling could be worse; at worst, it's fractured. I've never broken a bone before. Does this count? It could just be a bad sprain.

The bad news is that I'm going to be limping about for weeks. I have several promo gigs coming up, all of which require me to be on my feet for hours at a stretch, and I have an audition on Friday for the kind of character you don't really envision as a cripple.

The good news from weeks ago is that I will be performing in Another Man's Son at PlayPenn, a new play development conference at InterAct Theatre this July. My first non-Shakespeare in four and a half years. Can it speak on stage without pentameter or archaic pronouns? Time will tell.

Bananas taste the best and are the best for you.

2008-05-22T09:01:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, I worked as Miss Chiquita Banana at the opening of a Harris Teeter store in southern Delaware. Afterwards, I took a detour east and caught my first look at the Atlantic Ocean from the shore. It's hard to believe, but in the years I've been in the States, I haven't had the chance to see an East Coast beach until now. And what better to do at a deserted windy beach than take a few narcissistic melancholy self-portraits:

And for those of you who want a damn good laugh, here. I have a new-found respect for Carmen Miranda; my hat was filled with fake foam fruit, but it was still incredibly heavy -- and I wasn't even dancing. Carmen must have had a neck of steel.

One more review of the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival season appeared in the Broad Street Review with some nice comments about me and my headshot right at the top.

I installed a new stereo in my car. I screwed something up and blew a fuse, and in the process of replacing the fuse, I did exactly the same thing as this guy. Thank god for the internet -- until I found that thread, I was driving around town setting off my car alarm every time I accidentally tried to turn on my dome light.

I'm OK, You're OK

2008-05-11T20:40:00.011-04:00

I'm finding myself again through copious amounts of reading and cryptic crosswords. Currently, I'm halfway through Foucault's Pendulum*, and my favorite free online cryptic is The Herald's, though the one in the Mirror is a nice ego boost, since it's stupendously easy.

*Wow, check out those reviews. Maybe this makes me some sort of "intelligentsia-wannabe," but ... people think this is a difficult read? I suppose it's because I've been force-feeding myself nothing but Proust on the toilet for months. Eco's plot races along like a Stephen King novel compared with In Search of Lost Time; I feel like I'm on a vacation.

OMG totally drama queen disaster girl jeez

2008-05-06T15:02:00.002-04:00

Will we have rainbows day after day?

2008-04-30T06:28:00.005-04:00