katha pollitt has this charming way of referring to her live-in-[male]-lover as The Last Marxist. or is he her husband? i think not, given that she is openly divorced and she never makes reference to any kind of legal bond between them. well, who am i to assume. anyway, the L.M. (as she often refers to him) is occasionally cited or discussed as an example/exemplar of critical social thought and values. but not adoringly--she doesn't hesitate to criticize and disagree with him. and she enlists him to do research for her! in a column on the movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt," she sends him out into the Upper East Side night to purchase a copy of Hustler.

it's wistful, then, the way i admire her life and their relationship. intellectual, domestic, drawing on the strengths of both. (what newsstand would sell a copy of Hustler to a middle-aged woman? maybe downtown but certainly not uptown.) a true partnership. diane said a few weeks ago that the key to working through present existential angst was to begin envisioning a 'good life' as only i could live it. here is a worthy possibility.

oh, and...
no grant for me. gone are my visions of six calming weeks in sun-drenched, bristling-with-baguettes, hopelessly beautiful france. maybe i'll make it to one workshop if i scrimp and eat ramen for the first half of the summer.

and...
allen says, 'take both directing and playwriting!'
what kind of an advisor is that?

trivial insight: i hate large groups of people having fun because i don't have fun in large groups of people. this explains my twitching/jerking/sabotage-centered reaction to, say, spec week[end], as well as orientation and the like. i always thought it was related to the inherent fake-ness (falsity, fauxity, etc) of the interactions therein observed, but no, i'm just a socially maladjusted grinch.

which is funny, in a way--i'm bitter because other people are having fun and i'm not.

speaking of which, there are 50,000 people in parrish parlors, with food and mehndi and good cheer. a plague on all their houses, says i. ten plagues. with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. yeah, that'll do the trick.

liza asks if i'll costume medea in the amphitheatre next october. at the same time class selection menaces with unresolvable desired-class-conflicts. i am the woman who can't say no. living off campus will not be enough to save me if i start taking this stuff on.
besides, i'd like to be IN medea. i could play an infanticidal mother. yeah.

pirate show night! go pirates go!

1. cast parties are insane. that's all i'll say about that.

2. summer grants are not announced yet. am i going to get my money? will i end up a wage slave as usual? let's hope not. what else is there... hmmm... new york city must have some kind of interesting thing going on someplace. or dc. or san francisco. anywhere really. should i apply to work at shady hill camp? would that suck? maybe.

3. being away for 28 hours was so good. i went to dc, i played frisbee and cooked and chilled with kids and talked with adults and got some QT in with mon pere. if only it lasted longer... i could use some hirshhorn about now.

roger: tonight was good. no problems, eh?
me: i thought it was the worst i've ever done it. it felt terrible.
roger: ...oh. no. it was good.

this after a long dinner conversation with jedd over whether or not i could have a conversation with roger regarding my possible future as an actor. ie should i just give it up? so what does the above mean? a sign, perhaps?

my poor father, though having come to see my show, has a toothache and feels unwell. i vaguely resent this especially because he didn't say anything positive about the show until after he had left for his evenings' lodgings. (he called, good man that he is.) is there much to say about the show? people like it. no one yet has complained. it's a good show. what else is there?

saw 25th hour for the second time tonight and again ended up sobbing. what is it about that end sequence that grips me? people were laughing during the fight scene and i thought, good lord, what is wrong with you people? one of the best written, best acted, best shot scenes in a film that i have seen in years and you're laughing? i think that i cry in the end because of the possibility of hope, of escape, and the deep pain that makes such release possible. [spoiler follows] when he's out in the desert... thinking about being as alone as he is there... drinking that last drink with his dad... it just gets me. the door slam is the worst part.

i thought i was getting more modulated but really i need for the weather to perk up.

then there's boys. arrrr.

okay, we weren't publishing properly for a while there, but now it should be okay.

what will happen if i start writing here again? how long before anyone notices? ross, you'll be the first, no doubt. this will have to serve as the red herring for a time before the print version can be constructed.

i was going to write about sam and how much i envy him but really that's boring for you-out-there. man equals man opened tonight and i felt peripheral and poorly done (for a big fat change, sarcasm sarcasm) and wonder again should i give this whole thing up. marc says i have a director's sensibility. i don't like the sound of that.

testing, testing