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Apr. 27th, 2008 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraIt snowed yesterday.
Now--don't get me wrong--I love snow. Earlier in April, I was able to gush about flurries and small accumulations without being untruthful at all.
But after a week of seventy-degree-fahrenheit weather, it just seemed wrong.
Still, there was something beautiful about it. You'd think, having lived here for my whole life, I would be sick of it by now, but I haven't gotten there yet. I hope that I never do.
--
However, I have gotten tired of taking standardized tests, which is too bad because I still have to take a lot of them.
It's an interesting point in the school year: when all one's classes cease to be about Learning and start being about reviewing, and doing nothing. And then the test creeps up on you, and you go and sit in a windowless gym full of other students under similar torture for three hours and fill in bubbles and write essays until your wrists cramp, and then you skip school for the rest of the day and pretend you never have to go back.
You do, of course, but you don't have to tell yourself that.
--
One of my struggles this year has been to figure out how to be a Theatre Person while still being, well, me, along with A Writing Person. (Sometimes Me and A Writing Person intersect. Actually, most of the time. The trick is getting the Theatre Person in there, too.) It seems like all three could be full-time occupations, and I've put the problem off for a while by being a tech person, which doesn't seem to demand as much attention as being an actor, or a director.
Then my theatre class got signed up to show ourselves off to the Theatre Teachers of the Grand State of ---, and it's on Tuesday, and one day I started talking to myself when I was home alone and ended up writing a monologue. (Along with being a Theatre Person, the goal has been to figure out how to write for theatre, so this is a promising step.)
I read it for my class a few days later--which was frightening enough, because some of the people in my class are phenomenal theatre artists. They seemed to like it, but I'm still uncertain of it. And, oh yes, I'm doing it again on Tuesday. For ~40 fine arts teachers from around the state. I don't think I ever do anything by halves.
--
Which ought to be enough for anyone's life, but like everyone's life it isn't, and there are two hundred and seventeen other things that I'm doing right now. Homework for the classes that don't have tests, review for the classes that do, worrying about this and that, trying to write more short stories, edit papers, have time to breathe. Have time to watch the snow, if the world gifts me with it.
One of the reasons that I keep returning to the idea of shaving my head is that I get caught up in the hurry too often. A lot of my fellow students are in it with me, but that's no reason to stay in it. It's worrying about this and that and not taking time to breathe, or watch snow. It's having no time to stop and think about yourself, and your place in the world, and be yourself as you want to be.
Watching your hair grow out isn't usually the best way of reminding yourself of the slow pace at which the world moves along, mostly because if you have long hair, it doesn't look that much different. But starting from nothing--I think it might work.
I'm still not sure, but who's ever sure of anything, these days?
Now--don't get me wrong--I love snow. Earlier in April, I was able to gush about flurries and small accumulations without being untruthful at all.
But after a week of seventy-degree-fahrenheit weather, it just seemed wrong.
Still, there was something beautiful about it. You'd think, having lived here for my whole life, I would be sick of it by now, but I haven't gotten there yet. I hope that I never do.
--
However, I have gotten tired of taking standardized tests, which is too bad because I still have to take a lot of them.
It's an interesting point in the school year: when all one's classes cease to be about Learning and start being about reviewing, and doing nothing. And then the test creeps up on you, and you go and sit in a windowless gym full of other students under similar torture for three hours and fill in bubbles and write essays until your wrists cramp, and then you skip school for the rest of the day and pretend you never have to go back.
You do, of course, but you don't have to tell yourself that.
--
One of my struggles this year has been to figure out how to be a Theatre Person while still being, well, me, along with A Writing Person. (Sometimes Me and A Writing Person intersect. Actually, most of the time. The trick is getting the Theatre Person in there, too.) It seems like all three could be full-time occupations, and I've put the problem off for a while by being a tech person, which doesn't seem to demand as much attention as being an actor, or a director.
Then my theatre class got signed up to show ourselves off to the Theatre Teachers of the Grand State of ---, and it's on Tuesday, and one day I started talking to myself when I was home alone and ended up writing a monologue. (Along with being a Theatre Person, the goal has been to figure out how to write for theatre, so this is a promising step.)
I read it for my class a few days later--which was frightening enough, because some of the people in my class are phenomenal theatre artists. They seemed to like it, but I'm still uncertain of it. And, oh yes, I'm doing it again on Tuesday. For ~40 fine arts teachers from around the state. I don't think I ever do anything by halves.
--
Which ought to be enough for anyone's life, but like everyone's life it isn't, and there are two hundred and seventeen other things that I'm doing right now. Homework for the classes that don't have tests, review for the classes that do, worrying about this and that, trying to write more short stories, edit papers, have time to breathe. Have time to watch the snow, if the world gifts me with it.
One of the reasons that I keep returning to the idea of shaving my head is that I get caught up in the hurry too often. A lot of my fellow students are in it with me, but that's no reason to stay in it. It's worrying about this and that and not taking time to breathe, or watch snow. It's having no time to stop and think about yourself, and your place in the world, and be yourself as you want to be.
Watching your hair grow out isn't usually the best way of reminding yourself of the slow pace at which the world moves along, mostly because if you have long hair, it doesn't look that much different. But starting from nothing--I think it might work.
I'm still not sure, but who's ever sure of anything, these days?