In Like A Lion And Out Like A Lamb?

Two things this blog proves:

1. I am a liar.
2. My lies tend to be little and white, so that’s okay.

I’m trying not to beat myself up about leaving people in the dark. I started this blog so various individuals (but specifically family members) could keep tabs on my life whilst abroad, and while it all started out all fine and dandy, everything has somewhat deteriorated in my own little part of the blogosphere, at least as of late. This isn’t really an attempt at a half-apology, but more so an attempt at half-explaining what happens when one’s life begins to improve exponentially, not to mention becomes filled with priorities and “things to do.”

A month has gone by since I last wrote anything substantial. Over said month, I visited the Dublin Zoo (one of the oldest in Europe), the coastal suburb of Howth (twice), and continued to spend sunny and lazy days watching the ducks at St. Stephen’s Green. I experienced the most exciting and best week I’ve had abroad so far, which was volunteering for the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival. During this time, I saw the equivalent 10.75 films (I only got to see ¾ of In Bruges), attended several after- and festival-related parties, met tons of amazing people, scouted some celebrities (including, but not limited to, Daniel Day-Lewis, Colin Farrell, Martin McDonagh, and Mike Leigh), ingested loads of free whiskey and many not-so-free pints, found myself on the winning team of the festival’s annual volunteer Film Quiz Night (wherein I was given a free bottle of Jameson, worth, perhaps, 20 Euro), and had a lot of fun ripping tickets, directing human traffic, doing crowd control, folding Audience Award ballots into paper airplanes, and just being involved with the festival, in general. I even found myself a part of this year’s JDIFF volunteers documentary:



There is, of course, still coursework, which is something in and of itself. The first draft of my play is due in two weeks. I won’t divulge myriad details here, but let’s just say it involves the circus, magical realism, mental illness, food graffiti, philosophical questions about art, dualism, memory, unrequited love, and a monologue about duck rape. I’ve been feeling very productive as of late, which is both gratifying and ego-boosting, and it’s my hope to return to the States (and to SLC as a senior) with something substantial under my belt.

As for this very minute (yes, right now), I’m in Oxford, enjoying the tail end of my mighty UK spring holiday. The adventure began in Scotland, where I visited a high school chum in St. Andrews and spent a lovely day to myself in Edinburgh (pictures to come). Then I took the train from Leuchars to London, which, considering our route along the Scottish coast and through the English countryside, with unending hills, farms, greenery, and sheep, was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Spent three days in London just hanging out, seeing Big Ben and Buckingham Palace all lit up at night, walking along the Thames and past the London Eye, wandering around and trying to find Brick Lane during the day, eating a delicious Indian meal, and perusing the Portobello Road Market shops and stalls in Notting Hill with my friend Tracy. And now I’m in Oxford, where I’ve been chilling/relaxing at my friend Gwen’s flat with other SLC students in the program. My first night here, I went to Catweazle, which is an old hippie club located in a community center, and I had the pleasure of not only hearing/seeing my friend Chris play music for the first time since September, but also listening to a tango band of sorts, as well as poetry and the sixty-something-year-old treasurer of Catweazle, who was all about telling stories and sticking it to the Man. Yesterday, I went to a protest against the chopping down of ancient Oxford trees, which was a bust, and then I had high tea, which involved the most delicious finger sandwiches, a scone with jam and clouted cream, a slice of coffee mascarpone cake, and vanilla tea. Later, we all sat around and ate homemade risotto with onions, tomatoes, and red peppers, and chatted about the structure of Sarah Lawrence’s writing courses, before watching a bootleg copy of Vantage Point, which was both horrible and horribly entertaining.

And now we are up-to-date.

Holiday.

For the next twelve days, I'll be partying it up (or chilling out) in the UK. In less than 12 hours, I'll be en route to Scotland.

So much has happened since I last entered the blogosphere. I promise, promise, promise to have a post of sorts whipped up within the next day or two. This whole absence thing has not been intentional or fulfilling at all. Let's just say my life has taken a turn for the immensely better.

Murphy's Law.

I was going to update today, but I just slammed my right index and middle fingers in a door. Nothing was broken (just pain and bruising), but this kind of setback isn't exactly conducive to blogging. So it goes.

Sea Change.

Today, I climbed a mountain.

Up until now, there hasn’t been a single moment in my life that would suggest I’d ever write that, but there it is. I can now officially bow my head, smile knowingly, and cross the task off my list. Me, the coward, the girl who won’t go near fire, who spent hours trying to keep it together this past summer after being left alone in a powerless house during two back-to-back monstrous thunderstorms and a tornado warning. On most days, I can’t even watch horror movies, lights on or off, let alone get talked into doing something that might, in my mind, be dangerous or daring. Elements be damned, I would rather sit with a cup of tea and a good book in my hand! But there is something to be said about being in another country, on another continent, living what feels like an alternate existence. For the past three weeks (and it’s only been three weeks, bizarre in and of itself), I’ve constantly had to remind myself that this is happening, this is real, I am not about to wake up and say, “And you were there! And you! Oh, and you, too!” It’s difficult, though, when I’ve gone from eating pizza bagels to shepherd’s pie, when I’ve gone from friend-specific, iPod-influenced dance parties to kicking it in sweaty spaces with strangers and DJs playing alternative rock songs from my childhood, when I am suddenly going to the gym on a regular basis. I’ve even started reading for fun—something I’ve never been able to do (or pushed myself to do) at Sarah Lawrence—and am currently on a quest to consume as much Philip Roth as possible before returning to the States. I really do feel like I’m becoming a different person, and, what’s more, like I’m changing for the good. And I know, I know everyone says this, that it’s cliché and typical of anyone who spends time abroad, but if you suddenly climbed a mountain, wouldn’t you think the same thing?

Around noon today, I met two fellow playwriting students (and new friends), and we set off to catch a train to Bray, a seaside town just south of Dublin. Another playwright in the program had ventured there about a week-and-a-half ago, and while we didn’t hop any fences (like she did) and get chased by any cows (like she was), we did take her advice and decide to try our luck and hike to the summit of Bray Head, which makes up a fraction of the Wicklow Mountains. Instead of going into detail about the excursion and how it made me feel (amazing, accomplished, alive), here are some photos that sum up the journey:

Even if you've grown up next to a large body of water, seeing the ocean is still exciting.


My first glimpse of Bray.


The mountain in the distance.














We thought there'd be a storm, but it passed.






This inn reminded me a lot of The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. When we went inside to use the bathroom, no one was there. Everything was dark. And yet, it felt so...inhabited.








This photo doesn't do justice to how steep the path was.






























We reached the summit!






A view from the top of the world.








This tree kept threatening to fall. It creaked and everything.


We headed back down.




The ocean at sunset. Unfortunately, the sun set behind the mountain.

Our day concluded with a greasy dinner of fish ‘n’ chips and chance encounters with dogs that kept running out into the road (from his blasé attitude, I gathered their owner didn’t seem to care about this much). Before this, however, we passed many houses, one of which had a cat perched on a window. The feline stared at me for a long while, so I took a picture of it:



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While there were many great things that happened this past week, the greatest, by far (aside from climbing Bray Head, of course), was being tapped to work at the 2008 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival red carpet launch party. Aside from catering mozzarella tortellini kebabs and copious amounts of Jameson whiskey to the glitzy and glamorous members of Ireland’s film industry, I had the pleasure of sitting next to the actress who plays Johanna in Tim Burton’s polarizing Sweeney Todd (Jayne Wisener, for the curious) and watching her date act like a dick to her. I also got two free glasses of whiskey. I’m not one for the brown liquors, but man, they aren’t kidding when they tell you you’ve gotta try Irish whiskey. That stuff is delicious! But the biggest, best perk of all? I am going to be working the gala presentation screening of There Will Be Blood on February 16th…and Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Thomas Anderson are scheduled to be there! After personally introducing myself to the volunteer coordinator, I asked him very nicely if he could use my volunteer services at the event, and he said yes! Given that the screening is now sold out, and that I will be getting in for free, and that I will be in the presence of two artists who have had an immense impact on my life, I reckon that night will probably be one of the best of my life.


Volunteers, or total film geeks? That is the question.

Life Begins At 3 AM.

Tonight, I went to a pub and danced to Radiohead in a room packed full of energetic, rowdy, and happy people.

Then, I went to another pub and danced on a floor covered in the shattered remnants of bottles and pints. The DJ played Paul Simon and everyone got excited. Maybe too excited.

I walked home through streets filled with people pissing. And people attempting to walk in straight lines. And people attempting to piss in straight lines.

It's a regular Saturday night. I can only begin to imagine what St. Patty's Day is like.

Dublin is fucking crazy. And I love it.

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More on this (and other things) to come.

It's been a long week. Please forgive the lapse in writing.

Luck.

For the past two days, it’s been in the mid-to-high fifties, and for the first time during winter since I can remember, the backs of my hands feel as smooth as my face, rather than cracked and dry and screaming for lotion. The sun has shown its pretty little head in Dublin, and since Irish air is clean air, soothing and moist, it feels good to breathe. The usual worry over nosebleeds is absent. My nasal passages are clear and thankful. Anyone with an hour or two to spare and any amount of common sense has spent their time outdoors, and I am no exception.

Yesterday, after meeting my playwriting professor for a late morning tea and a half-hour chat (similar to the Sarah Lawrence-friendly and -familiar conference, but every week), I grabbed a light lunch at Gruel, the soup and sandwich shop we met at, dropped my volunteer application off at Dublin International Film Festival headquarters, and headed to St. Stephen’s Green, the city’s scaled-down answer to Central Park. The early afternoon, it turned out, was a prime time for people-watching, eavesdropping, and doing all the writerly things I love to do, but have had to neglect due to other, more pressing academic commitments. A shame, really, because sometimes, such as on a day like yesterday, I’m reminded of why I love these little excursions into the public domain. Every city, it feels, has a rhythm to it. New York plays that game of hustle and flow, of stop and start, with speed and slow motion constantly tagging one another. Chicago is more at ease, aware of its breath, urban and raw but also consumed by that unmistakable Midwestern hospitality. It’s difficult to say what vibe Dublin gives off; I’ve been here for a little less than two weeks and have no desire to point fingers and ignorantly label. But what it felt like yesterday, at least, was calm. Happy. Resistant to the idea of taking anything for granted. Insert positive adjective or attribute here. The sun was out. Everyone seemed abuzz, with a smile on his or her face.

Everything felt just right, and I jotted down so many thoughts.

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Some St. Stephen’s Green photography, as well as from Trinity College, where I ventured after the park:



























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the old library, home of the Book of Kells










statue of George Salmon, a mathematics professor and a chair in theology who, upon hearing that women were being considered for admittance into the college, said, "over my dead body"; on the day women were admitted, Salmon died of a heart attack




the arts center: kicking the ass of SLC's arts center tenfold

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About halfway through playwriting class, Michael, my professor, decided we needed a change of scenery. We had just finished our discussion of two Stoppard one-acts, After Magritte and Dogg’s Hamlet, as well as acting exercises focusing on the economy of gesture and the idea of stage directions allowing, but also hindering, room for play. I cannot put into words how exciting it is to have a play, in essence, broken down into its barest parts, so that we might understand the how and why of what goes into the writing. It’s philosophical, really, forcing us also to think about things like inherence and representation. Last week, Michael used the example of the Eucharist to talk about the idea of theatre: transubstantiation is either believed on a literal level or on a metaphorical one, but no matter which, the belief leads to the same end of the road. Wanting us to discuss language acquisition, and language itself, and the proximity the playwright has to the control of language versus other elements of the play, but not wanting us to succumb to distraction, Michael led us back to Gruel, where he, once again, treated all six of us to tea, coffee, and, in the case of one of my classmates, hot chocolate.





Sitting in Gruel’s basement, a grotto of sorts, we riffed on just that, language, but also went back to the idea of stage directions, and what they, in the long run, mean. How do you use them to represent? How do you use them to tell the story? Are they guidelines for the people working on the play, or are they merely supplemental sentences to help the reader dissect the writing on a literary level? And then, the conversation shifted, and we began to talk about the danger of being the playwright, about when you lose control and how that affects you. These are all important things, and while I’m familiar with the concepts, I can’t say that up until this point, I’ve used my mind to delve into the meaning of everything. Because I haven’t. To claim so would be a lie. And this is why Michael is currently my new favorite person: he is challenging us to think. He is saying to us, Look, writing dialogue and coming up with plot and carrying that forward is all good and well, but this is a craft, so let’s allow our minds to soak up all the knowledge having to do with it. The craft as a thing to ponder—let’s pick at it until it bleeds.

Given that yesterday’s meeting revealed him as a person familiar with my background (his wife is from Evanston and he’s good friends with Jessica Thebus, thus he knows the ways and workings of the Piven Theatre Workshop, where I was trained and where I learned a good portion of what I now use today), I think Michael is going to be of the utmost help. I also cannot put into words how excited I am about starting something new, and coming home with a revised full-length play in my bag. It’s been a trying past few days (all my friends, most of whom are seniors, are back at school, and I’m not there to catch the last bouts of fun with them before they’re thrust out into the real world; this, I knew, would be hard), but I’m confident this will all have been worth it. The brief moments of melancholy are nothing compared to the prolonged periods of joy. And to even be able to say that is like falling into a fountain, swallowing its water, and inhaling all of the coins plucked from the pockets of the already-lucky.