Sunday, June 28, 2009

on SITI summer-part nine OR reflections

i'm now back in austin, lying in the bed i've missed for four weeks, petting my dog and remembering the smells of my own house. i've yearned for this. i've missed this. i've needed this.

all is changed, though. my body is very different. i didn't notice it morphing while i was in training, but being around familiar objects now has shown me how i've become denser and faster. and the connection between my body and my mind has become so much clearer. my body tells my mind more things, and my body listens, too.

i am melancholy. i am worried i will forget.

the last few days happened at breakneck pace. i was directing while also training. we were sewing performative "buttons" on all the work we did. it felt like we were all thinking: pack in the last of the information and hope to god it will stick. and now on this side, i'm nervous.

will i lose it? what will happen if i do? how do we integrate our undeniably changed selves back into the life that we worked so hard to forge?

lovely partner had to remind me that rest requires it own rigor. i need to reflect seriously, give space to my transition, recognize that i'm more prepared than i thought for many, many things. and still be gentle with my fears, my insecurities, my obstacles.

today, though, my body is strange. it wants to train. and i am not quite sure how to assuage it. it's 107 degrees and our AC barely works. and then the every day things that i had forgotten about: dishes, sweeping, driving, the post office--they all return. i am a bit confused about who i am, what to do with myself. i still haven't sat down with a good half hour to write out my thoughts for myself. i'm too busy adjusting to actively notice my adjustments.

and i'm also a bit loath to finish this post right now. it's been sitting open on my computer screen for over a day. i'm sure it's no surprise why. because this is my last SITI post. and that gives me profound pains and fears. just as i had to remember to take pieces of my community here to SITI with me--just so i could make it through the solitude, i am remembering to take pieces of people and lessons i learned while training, back into my home, with the fervor and passion i finally learned was always within me.

it's confusing, yes. but i realize that it's more than just my own brow that becomes knit in this process. i am now the suture that connects one space to another, and though those spaces serve different purposes and functions in the larger sense of the world, they are interdependent and woven together. how completely messy. how completely complicated. how completely delightful.

and now, we begin.

1 comment:

Robert said...

It's all the time after that's the hard part.

I can't escape the last moment five years ago when Anne, standing on the thrust stage, challenged all the participants to go out and make theatre with the threat that someday SITI would track us down. And I tried desperately to create whatever theatre I could in my Midwestern city and tried to make a theatre company and ended up moving to NYC, which I'm about to leave for grad school.

My point is: make theatre and, if there's no one to make theatre with, make a one-person show for yourself. You are not alone in your pursuit of theatre. You can do theatre.

I wish you more than luck in pursuing Art.