today's epiphany: i hate to write

i do. i hate it. i have fragmented thoughts. i lack cohesion and depth. increasingly, as an occupation hazard, my vocabulary is getting limited.

but i digress.

the point of this post was supposed to be that i got in. what i auditioned for, i mean. i'm in.

it isn't quite clear what the parameters of this production will be, but i am under the impression that we have been given a number of books to go through, and that the monologues we'll perform will be based on these texts.

- Soseki Natsume's "Ten Nights of Dream, Hearing Things, The Heredity of Taste"
- Lorenzino de' Medici's "Apology for a Murder"
- Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"
- Barbara Comyns' "The Vet's Daughter"
- Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet"
- Junichiro Tanizaki's "Diary of a Mad Old Man"

none of which i've read.

plus, today, i got an email from the Kasarinlan people, asking me for my article on East Timor. Aaaaagh!!!!!!

i'm feeling mentally constipated today.
*listening to franz ferdinand*

i wish i had a voice that carried texture and emotion. that came from the depths of my chest instead of the top of my head.

i wish i were a different kind of person.

i wish i had more mental discipline.

i wish that my ambitions for myself were matched by my capacity for action.

inertia is defined as the tendency to do nothing or remain unchanged. a body at rest will stay at rest. a body in motion will continue in a straight line unless a force is exerted on it, to change its direction.

that's what i am. inert. there are voices in my head, screaming at me to act, but i'm oddly silent.

act on what?

the extent of change in direction is directly proportionate to the force impelling the change.

Random thoughts in the middle of today

The Red Army Faction & Cameron Diaz. Coming across this article on the release of Brigitte Mohnhaupt from 24 years of imprisonment for terrorist activities of the Red Army Faction in the 70s, it reminded me of this film called "The Invisible Circus". I bought a copy of the DVD for 6 Euros in Paris. It stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Christopher Eccleston (who incidentally has been introduced in Heroes Season 2; Heroes creator Tim Kring, in another bit of random trivia, was a writer for another of my all-time favorites, the short-lived Misfits of Science--end parenthetical thought). It's about this young girl (Cameron Diaz), who travels through Europe, hooks up with Christopher Eccleston, joins the Red Army Faction, you get the picture...

The Acting Bug! It’s 8:45 in the morning on a Sunday. The phone rings and Gabby wakes up, plaintively yelling, “Mama! Phone! Mama! Phone”. Gabby helpfully hands me my phone and I pick up.

“Hello, this is so and so from Little Red Book or something like that.” And then he goes on relentlessly about how I’m being invited to audition at the Substation for this monologue project that they’re doing.

OK, reality check. A, yes, I submitted a piece just before 11pm the night before; on my way out to meet Natalia and Ira for a drink. B, it was 8:45AM.

Unfortunately, one of my New Year’s resolutions was to be much nicer and less bitchy to all and sundry. So instead of yelling at the motherfrakker to go frak himself and his gay boyfriend, I very nicely suggested that perhaps 8:45AM on a Sunday wasn’t the best time to go around calling people with information that could be emailed or, better yet, left ‘til Monday.

So. Whoooooo! I’m auditioning! I honestly don’t know what the performance is all about and plus, due to the exigency of editing my story into a 500-word monologue, I’ve boxed myself into the role of “I was curious about girl-on-girl action”. I’m not actually sure I can pull this off on stage.

More importantly, what do I wear??????

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind

I see with the unblinking eyes of my mind. Paralyzed and mute.

Car accident. Life moves on outside my hospital window, without me, I guess.

Raphael framed by a dense carpet of stars, on a beach. Stella parading around the room naked, laughing. The bright orange point of Teddy’s cigarette describing the arcs of his emphatic ranting. The darkness. The inhuman scream of tires on asphalt.

The nurse is padding around the room, checking on this and that; my only evidence of this is the swish of fabric on fabric and the occasional metallic resonance of the equipment. She seems to be talking to me—or to herself? My attention has wandered.

I’m back in my apartment with Stella, a year ago.

She likes it best when I fuck her like a man. A subtle irony I never comment on.


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