So, despite my cold -- which has turned into total laryngitis today, hooray! -- I performed well last night. In fact, the whole circus went really well, which was quite a surprise given how, um, "challenging" our rehearsals had been.
I liked my costume, I remembered my lines and to ham it up, all the transitions and other acts went well, and people loved us!
And... a colleague from my department came to see me. Not someone I'm particularly close to, either. Someone with whom I'm cordial, but nothing beyond that.
He was a little drunk, I think, and feeling the love. He gave me a big, sloppy bear-hug and a kiss. He said he'd had a great time.
Hmm. Interesting development.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
summer cold
I managed to get a summer cold. Ugh! I hate summer colds! It's just so unfair that it's 74 degrees outside right now and sunny -- a perfect summer day -- and I'm inside with the shades closed because the sunshine, which I normally love so much, was giving me a headache.
Worse, tonight is the night Cirque Bleu performs. Doubtless I'll go through with it, but I'm worried because (a) I have a sore throat and my performance will involve a lot of recitation in a silly nasal voice that will make my throat hurt even more; and (b) I'm afraid I'll be unable to remember my lines because I think someone snuck into the house last night and carefully packed all the open spaces inside my head with compressed cotton. Bastard. In short, the synapses are not firing at full speed right now.
Squadrato is cranky.
Set-up and rehearsal last night seemed -e-n-d-l-e-s-s-s-. Got to Casablanca at 5; a bunch of other cast members were there with the van full of stuff from storage. We pounded on the stage door, but no one opened it; 20 minutes later, someone from inside finally realized we were out there and let us in. The reason they had no idea we were there? A new DJ was checking out the equipment in the club. So, for the next 90 minutes or so, we had to set up our stuff with music blaring at full club volume. Now, this DJ was very good -- I would have enjoyed his beats at midnight -- but at 5:30 in the afternoon, when the circus was trying to communicate with one another ("Do you have another wingnut?" "I think you need to move the curtain to the right." "Can you come over here and hold this?") and I was starting to become sick? Not so much. There was no possibility of calling a question across the room: we had to shout directly in one another's ears. Also not good for my increasingly sore throat.
The Puppetmaster had told everyone that he'd be unable to get to the rehearsal until 8... though he really arrived at more like 8:30. Then more delays as he adjusted the puppet stages (no one else knew how to do this part of the set-up, so we waited for him... though I had hoped he would wait to do it until today, rather than making us start the rehearsal even later).
FINALLY, at around 9:30, we started rehearsing. I was fading fast. My sore throat was beginning to be joined by the occasional sneeze and nose drip.
Meanwhile, (but of course!) Ancora had decided to more than double the length of the song for the closing charivari, so we had to practice that several times, and choreograph some new stuff for it. Thank heavens Fandango's voice of reason prevailed there, overruling Tango: we did something simple, rather than spending an hour or more at this. Then we practiced the opening charivari several times, teaching it to two cast members who had been unable to attend the last rehearsal. THEN we actually got to the lineup.
I did my piece for the first act in a semi-comatose manner, which is why I'm worried about it for tonight. Not good. Afterward, I went and lay down for a while in a booth in the VIP area, and listened as, seemingly, the others moved through more of the rehearsal at a snail's pace. By 11pm, I surfaced from my mental haze for a moment and went to check where we were in the lineup. I discovered we were about half way through through the first act only: at this pace, we were not likely to be out of there before 1am at the very earliest. I had been hoping for a decent night's sleep in order to mitigate my oncoming cold, and I was feeling pretty out of it already, so SweetCliffie and I left. Today, there will be a rehearsal starting at 7, before the club opens. Sweet Jesus, I hope I can hold it together with my head feeling this way.
The one really fun bright spot of the evening? I leaned a magic trick! For the opening charivari, we all do a little self-presentation, stopping at the front of the stage. For mine, I am going to make a small puff of flame appear on my palm. Swordswallower taught me how. I'm psyched -- it's really cool!
Worse, tonight is the night Cirque Bleu performs. Doubtless I'll go through with it, but I'm worried because (a) I have a sore throat and my performance will involve a lot of recitation in a silly nasal voice that will make my throat hurt even more; and (b) I'm afraid I'll be unable to remember my lines because I think someone snuck into the house last night and carefully packed all the open spaces inside my head with compressed cotton. Bastard. In short, the synapses are not firing at full speed right now.
Squadrato is cranky.
Set-up and rehearsal last night seemed -e-n-d-l-e-s-s-s-. Got to Casablanca at 5; a bunch of other cast members were there with the van full of stuff from storage. We pounded on the stage door, but no one opened it; 20 minutes later, someone from inside finally realized we were out there and let us in. The reason they had no idea we were there? A new DJ was checking out the equipment in the club. So, for the next 90 minutes or so, we had to set up our stuff with music blaring at full club volume. Now, this DJ was very good -- I would have enjoyed his beats at midnight -- but at 5:30 in the afternoon, when the circus was trying to communicate with one another ("Do you have another wingnut?" "I think you need to move the curtain to the right." "Can you come over here and hold this?") and I was starting to become sick? Not so much. There was no possibility of calling a question across the room: we had to shout directly in one another's ears. Also not good for my increasingly sore throat.
The Puppetmaster had told everyone that he'd be unable to get to the rehearsal until 8... though he really arrived at more like 8:30. Then more delays as he adjusted the puppet stages (no one else knew how to do this part of the set-up, so we waited for him... though I had hoped he would wait to do it until today, rather than making us start the rehearsal even later).
FINALLY, at around 9:30, we started rehearsing. I was fading fast. My sore throat was beginning to be joined by the occasional sneeze and nose drip.
Meanwhile, (but of course!) Ancora had decided to more than double the length of the song for the closing charivari, so we had to practice that several times, and choreograph some new stuff for it. Thank heavens Fandango's voice of reason prevailed there, overruling Tango: we did something simple, rather than spending an hour or more at this. Then we practiced the opening charivari several times, teaching it to two cast members who had been unable to attend the last rehearsal. THEN we actually got to the lineup.
I did my piece for the first act in a semi-comatose manner, which is why I'm worried about it for tonight. Not good. Afterward, I went and lay down for a while in a booth in the VIP area, and listened as, seemingly, the others moved through more of the rehearsal at a snail's pace. By 11pm, I surfaced from my mental haze for a moment and went to check where we were in the lineup. I discovered we were about half way through through the first act only: at this pace, we were not likely to be out of there before 1am at the very earliest. I had been hoping for a decent night's sleep in order to mitigate my oncoming cold, and I was feeling pretty out of it already, so SweetCliffie and I left. Today, there will be a rehearsal starting at 7, before the club opens. Sweet Jesus, I hope I can hold it together with my head feeling this way.
The one really fun bright spot of the evening? I leaned a magic trick! For the opening charivari, we all do a little self-presentation, stopping at the front of the stage. For mine, I am going to make a small puff of flame appear on my palm. Swordswallower taught me how. I'm psyched -- it's really cool!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Cirque Bleu's new website ~ yay!
SweetCliffie just finished putting together an entirely new website for Cirque Bleu, using some of the professional photos we had taken and reflecting our new status as an established local phenomenon. It is so beautiful, folks! I can't believe he made such a lovely site! And I can't believe Cirque Bleu looks so awesome on screen!
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
manuscripts: a love story
Although manuscripts can be a bitch to decode, I still love them. Let me tell you why.
The first time I held one in my hands I was, quite simply, transported. I had seen pictures of manuscript text before, of course: grey-toned frontispieces to scholarly books, with arcane codes as captions: Paris: BN Lat. ms. 3695, fo. 31v. These sorts of reproductions function chiefly as iconic pronouncements of the scholarly gravitas of the author’s research: they frame the work at the outset, legitimating the monograph’s authenticity as true, historical medieval scholarship. More rarely, one might find a manuscript folio reproduced inside the body of a monograph and actually interpreted, its condition and terms of production used as material evidence to support the overall argument. An author might point out interesting marginalia, for instance, or edits and censorship or corrections to the text.
Nevertheless, looking at a photograph of a manuscript folio, and being given a bound manuscript to play around with for a number of hours or days, are two quite different things. I recall my first responses to manuscripts, as an ABD conducting dissertation research, very well. The archive I was working at was fairly easy to negotiate: you put in your slip and waited, reading something else or going to the coffee cart, until a worker delivered a bunch of new material to the desk at front, perhaps 40 minutes to an hour later. After noting the delivery, you’d go up to the desk and ask for your materials (Anything new for Magico?) and then bring your booty back to your seat. After examining your new finds, you’d place one on the wooden lectern – three adjustable angles! – open to the desired folio, and hold the binding open with the assistance of two little wooden pegs that fit into the lectern ridge.
I love everything about this process. The anticipation of getting new works, the smell of manuscripts, the wooden lecterns, and (for some reason, especially) the satisfying kinetic feel of sliding the pegs into the holes in the lectern in order to hold open the pages. So lo-tech, yet just.so.good.
I still remember the first manuscript I really worked with. It wasn’t the very first one I’d ordered, but it was the first one I got to know well. It was quite unglamorous: no illuminations, no gold stamping, no fancy handwriting, and no rubrication. It was a pedestrian little book, pragmatically produced. It was small, perhaps six inches high by four inches wide; but relatively thick – two inches, I’d say. There were several different texts sewn together in it, and the end papers had fragments of text on them from some earlier manuscript that had been cut up and re-used. It had a pale cover of thicker parchment binding the whole.
I remember thinking about this... this thing that I was holding, and whose pages I was turning, that it was a book and yet not a book. For starters, the whole object was made out of leather: I could see the coarse fur follicles of the animal on every page, for it was a cheaply produced manuscript made from rough parchment, rather than a luxury, creamy vellum. Some folios had brownish markings, as if the animal (I assume a goat?) had had some brindle patches. (In other manuscripts I consulted, I’ve seen small holes and irregularities in the shape of the parchment leaves – features intrinsic to the animal origin of the folios.) The binding on the manuscript was quite tight, and even with the lectern pegs, it was hard to keep the stiff thing open. It had a faint smell: musty, yes, but also sort of warm – perhaps the smell of wood smoke from a fireplace?
The hand was abbreviated – with all the challenges noted in my earlier post on decoding manuscripts – but on the whole quite neat and legible. There were faint lines marking out margins for the text, to which the scribe adhered rigorously. At the beginning of each paragraph was a mostly-empty square, about ½ inch per side: apparently, the scribe had intended to add in, afterwards, a rubricated or otherwise singular letter for the beginning of each paragraph, but never got around to it.
Working with this thing brought home to me, in a most visceral way, how different the Middle Ages are from the contemporary world (a realization I’ve written about previously here). Here I was, handling something that is one of the most familiar things in my world, a type of object I’ve devoured and fondled and spent sleepless nights with for a long as I can remember: a book. Just another book. And yet, at the same time, it was totally unfamiliar in a deep, unspeakable way. It was a weird, alien book made from tough leather — not unlike like the alien humanoids in sci-fi movies, characters whose limbs and lineaments are recognizably anthropomorphic and vaguely familiar, yet whose leathery skin and odd proportions mark them out as incursions into our world from some other dimension of existence. Likewise, this strange book’s leaves of text were readable, but not at my usual greedy pace: I was used to recklessly taking in whole phrases and metaphors at a glance, ideas and images flashing in unbroken sequences through my mind. When I'm really absorbed in a book, it's almost as if the physical book itself disappears, and I'm lost in the abstract world the words create in my mind. But this text could only be consumed through assiduous, word-by-word deciphering of its multiple codes. It was a complete inversion of my normal interaction with books: the idealist dimension of the experience was entirely subordinated to the materialist aspect; the abstractive delights of meaning, secondary to the slow labor of reading.
The fundamentally material qualities of my encounters with manuscripts is something that stays with me, and that informs my practice as an historian more broadly. It feels like the closest intimacy I ever will get with my research subjects.* But, if the manuscript stands in, metonymically, for its producers and readers; if it is my window onto the lives and mentalities of the people I study, then I must take seriously the alien aspects of my encounter with manuscripts, as well as their more familiar qualities. I like to think that that tension between sameness and difference helps keeps me honest.
*Though once, I opened a manuscript and large quantities of blotting sand fell out – I was, apparently, the very first person to have read the thing since it first was transcribed! Not every medieval manuscript has a history of medieval users.
.
The first time I held one in my hands I was, quite simply, transported. I had seen pictures of manuscript text before, of course: grey-toned frontispieces to scholarly books, with arcane codes as captions: Paris: BN Lat. ms. 3695, fo. 31v. These sorts of reproductions function chiefly as iconic pronouncements of the scholarly gravitas of the author’s research: they frame the work at the outset, legitimating the monograph’s authenticity as true, historical medieval scholarship. More rarely, one might find a manuscript folio reproduced inside the body of a monograph and actually interpreted, its condition and terms of production used as material evidence to support the overall argument. An author might point out interesting marginalia, for instance, or edits and censorship or corrections to the text.
Nevertheless, looking at a photograph of a manuscript folio, and being given a bound manuscript to play around with for a number of hours or days, are two quite different things. I recall my first responses to manuscripts, as an ABD conducting dissertation research, very well. The archive I was working at was fairly easy to negotiate: you put in your slip and waited, reading something else or going to the coffee cart, until a worker delivered a bunch of new material to the desk at front, perhaps 40 minutes to an hour later. After noting the delivery, you’d go up to the desk and ask for your materials (Anything new for Magico?) and then bring your booty back to your seat. After examining your new finds, you’d place one on the wooden lectern – three adjustable angles! – open to the desired folio, and hold the binding open with the assistance of two little wooden pegs that fit into the lectern ridge.
I love everything about this process. The anticipation of getting new works, the smell of manuscripts, the wooden lecterns, and (for some reason, especially) the satisfying kinetic feel of sliding the pegs into the holes in the lectern in order to hold open the pages. So lo-tech, yet just.so.good.
I still remember the first manuscript I really worked with. It wasn’t the very first one I’d ordered, but it was the first one I got to know well. It was quite unglamorous: no illuminations, no gold stamping, no fancy handwriting, and no rubrication. It was a pedestrian little book, pragmatically produced. It was small, perhaps six inches high by four inches wide; but relatively thick – two inches, I’d say. There were several different texts sewn together in it, and the end papers had fragments of text on them from some earlier manuscript that had been cut up and re-used. It had a pale cover of thicker parchment binding the whole.
I remember thinking about this... this thing that I was holding, and whose pages I was turning, that it was a book and yet not a book. For starters, the whole object was made out of leather: I could see the coarse fur follicles of the animal on every page, for it was a cheaply produced manuscript made from rough parchment, rather than a luxury, creamy vellum. Some folios had brownish markings, as if the animal (I assume a goat?) had had some brindle patches. (In other manuscripts I consulted, I’ve seen small holes and irregularities in the shape of the parchment leaves – features intrinsic to the animal origin of the folios.) The binding on the manuscript was quite tight, and even with the lectern pegs, it was hard to keep the stiff thing open. It had a faint smell: musty, yes, but also sort of warm – perhaps the smell of wood smoke from a fireplace?
The hand was abbreviated – with all the challenges noted in my earlier post on decoding manuscripts – but on the whole quite neat and legible. There were faint lines marking out margins for the text, to which the scribe adhered rigorously. At the beginning of each paragraph was a mostly-empty square, about ½ inch per side: apparently, the scribe had intended to add in, afterwards, a rubricated or otherwise singular letter for the beginning of each paragraph, but never got around to it.
Working with this thing brought home to me, in a most visceral way, how different the Middle Ages are from the contemporary world (a realization I’ve written about previously here). Here I was, handling something that is one of the most familiar things in my world, a type of object I’ve devoured and fondled and spent sleepless nights with for a long as I can remember: a book. Just another book. And yet, at the same time, it was totally unfamiliar in a deep, unspeakable way. It was a weird, alien book made from tough leather — not unlike like the alien humanoids in sci-fi movies, characters whose limbs and lineaments are recognizably anthropomorphic and vaguely familiar, yet whose leathery skin and odd proportions mark them out as incursions into our world from some other dimension of existence. Likewise, this strange book’s leaves of text were readable, but not at my usual greedy pace: I was used to recklessly taking in whole phrases and metaphors at a glance, ideas and images flashing in unbroken sequences through my mind. When I'm really absorbed in a book, it's almost as if the physical book itself disappears, and I'm lost in the abstract world the words create in my mind. But this text could only be consumed through assiduous, word-by-word deciphering of its multiple codes. It was a complete inversion of my normal interaction with books: the idealist dimension of the experience was entirely subordinated to the materialist aspect; the abstractive delights of meaning, secondary to the slow labor of reading.
The fundamentally material qualities of my encounters with manuscripts is something that stays with me, and that informs my practice as an historian more broadly. It feels like the closest intimacy I ever will get with my research subjects.* But, if the manuscript stands in, metonymically, for its producers and readers; if it is my window onto the lives and mentalities of the people I study, then I must take seriously the alien aspects of my encounter with manuscripts, as well as their more familiar qualities. I like to think that that tension between sameness and difference helps keeps me honest.
*Though once, I opened a manuscript and large quantities of blotting sand fell out – I was, apparently, the very first person to have read the thing since it first was transcribed! Not every medieval manuscript has a history of medieval users.
.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
costuming fun
Newsflash: Online University Reviews has named Squadratomagico as one of the 100 best blogs composed by liberal arts professors. Go figure! Being a circus freak and a medievalist -- it's a winning combination, folks!
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yesterday, someone whispered, "Cirque Bleu!" to SweetCliffie and myself in the hardware store. We chatted with a pair of fans for a while -- it's nice to be recognized! They were excited to hear about our acts for next week, especially Baba Yaga and the house on chicken feet. We also will appear as the Conjoined Twins, singling "Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch"; and in the charivari. The latter will have mechanistic, clockwork styling -- I will be dressed as Bedlam, acting as a cuckoo clock chiming the hour for the opening of the show.
[Wednesday update: Last night we changed the whole lineup! We now are doing two Baba Yaga /chicken-footed house skits, no Conjoined Twins, and a totally different charivari. Ask me if I'm surprised.]
I am re-making my costume for Baba Yaga. I'll still keep my third eye and three-lensed glasses, of course. But I made her a new corset. Recently, I thrifted a strange, home-sewn shirt which, though hideously ugly, was trimmed with amazing burgundy satin rosettes (left). I cut them off and attached them to a cheapy corset I got on sale, e voila!
Now I just need to figure out the lower half.
Yesterday, I went out and thrifted something I thought might be interesting for this purpose: A huge wedding dress
train. It's about twelve feet of layered tulle, very simple, with eyehooks along the top so it can be attached to a dress. Initially, I had planned to dye it in a burgundy shade to match the rosettes -- I even was thinking of trying an ombre dye (wet the entire garment; dip one end in the dye and let it creep up the wet garment, creating a shaded look). However, I decided it was better to save this piece for our Fall shows which, at Conceptual's suggestion, we are planning to do entirely in a black and white palette.
The moment this idea was raised, I thought of the black and white thing I see most often: print on a page. So, I am planning a look I call my Palimpsest costume. Right now, I foresee a white unitard with this train attached to the back -- possibly at the waist, but maybe also at the shoulder blades. I want to print the whole costume with black lettering based on medieval manuscript hands, and also to incorporate diagrams of various sorts. I'm thinking symbols from grimoires, T-O maps, cosmological schemes, etc. Because the train is multi-layered, diaphanous tulle, it will truly be a palimpsest, with different inscriptions visible at different levels through the layers of fabric. I think it will be a great look for our black and white shows. I suppose the act itself will have to be oriented around recitation of some kind.
Does anyone have any suggestions for cool, archaic-looking symbols, diagrams, or inscriptions? I loved everyone's offerings about Bedlam, as I was developing her... anyone want to get in on the Palimpsest planning?
And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Yesterday, someone whispered, "Cirque Bleu!" to SweetCliffie and myself in the hardware store. We chatted with a pair of fans for a while -- it's nice to be recognized! They were excited to hear about our acts for next week, especially Baba Yaga and the house on chicken feet. We also will appear as the Conjoined Twins, singling "Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch"; and in the charivari. The latter will have mechanistic, clockwork styling -- I will be dressed as Bedlam, acting as a cuckoo clock chiming the hour for the opening of the show.
[Wednesday update: Last night we changed the whole lineup! We now are doing two Baba Yaga /chicken-footed house skits, no Conjoined Twins, and a totally different charivari. Ask me if I'm surprised.]
I am re-making my costume for Baba Yaga. I'll still keep my third eye and three-lensed glasses, of course. But I made her a new corset. Recently, I thrifted a strange, home-sewn shirt which, though hideously ugly, was trimmed with amazing burgundy satin rosettes (left). I cut them off and attached them to a cheapy corset I got on sale, e voila!Now I just need to figure out the lower half.
Yesterday, I went out and thrifted something I thought might be interesting for this purpose: A huge wedding dress
train. It's about twelve feet of layered tulle, very simple, with eyehooks along the top so it can be attached to a dress. Initially, I had planned to dye it in a burgundy shade to match the rosettes -- I even was thinking of trying an ombre dye (wet the entire garment; dip one end in the dye and let it creep up the wet garment, creating a shaded look). However, I decided it was better to save this piece for our Fall shows which, at Conceptual's suggestion, we are planning to do entirely in a black and white palette.The moment this idea was raised, I thought of the black and white thing I see most often: print on a page. So, I am planning a look I call my Palimpsest costume. Right now, I foresee a white unitard with this train attached to the back -- possibly at the waist, but maybe also at the shoulder blades. I want to print the whole costume with black lettering based on medieval manuscript hands, and also to incorporate diagrams of various sorts. I'm thinking symbols from grimoires, T-O maps, cosmological schemes, etc. Because the train is multi-layered, diaphanous tulle, it will truly be a palimpsest, with different inscriptions visible at different levels through the layers of fabric. I think it will be a great look for our black and white shows. I suppose the act itself will have to be oriented around recitation of some kind.
Does anyone have any suggestions for cool, archaic-looking symbols, diagrams, or inscriptions? I loved everyone's offerings about Bedlam, as I was developing her... anyone want to get in on the Palimpsest planning?
Monday, July 7, 2008
plan for the week
Academic:
~Read and write up readers' review of article for European journal. [Check!]
~Read French book - may require thorough annotation. [Oooh -- it's really good!]
~Begin locating quotable passages in Latin chronicle. Translate and add as appropriate to book ms.
~Write detailed email to graduate student about his project.
Boring Administrative Work:
~Design teaching schedule for my department for spring. (This means assigning times to everyone, minimizing scheduling overlaps).
Blog:
~Write at least one substantive post (this one doesn't count!) [Check! Check again!]
Circus:
~Rehearsal, 5-11 pm Tuesday. (Thai takeout for dinner, yum!) [Check. Except there was no Thai takeout -- we all just went hungry. And of course, half the cast was an hour late. ~sigh~]
~Re-memorize Baba Yaga skit (easy).
~Finish new Baba Yaga costume (exciting! I just embellished a corset for her, and I need to thrift a cool skirt.) [I did get an awesome skirt, but decided to save it for the new Palimpsest costume I'm planning for our Fall shows. Will blog about this idea soon.]
Exercise:
~Evening yoga, Monday (with live sitar, yay!) [check!]
~1 mile run, Tuesday [Check!]
~Evening yoga, Wednesday [New washer/dryer now scheduled to be delivered Wednesday afternoon, so one yoga class down; Saturday class instead?]
~1 mile run, Thursday
~Late afternoon into evening yoga, Friday (first series, 2 hours)
~Evening yoga, Sunday (partial second series).
Social:
~Party at Cirque Bleu stalker's house on Friday. (OK, she's not really a stalker, but she's pretty obsessed.)
~Friday evening, check out local cabaret duo (we may someday perform with them).
~Saturday evening, possibility of Cuisine Club at warehouse(??), Brazilian theme.
~Set up a time to meet with favorite ex-student and her boyfriend for lunch.
~Read and write up readers' review of article for European journal. [Check!]
~Read French book - may require thorough annotation. [Oooh -- it's really good!]
~Begin locating quotable passages in Latin chronicle. Translate and add as appropriate to book ms.
~Write detailed email to graduate student about his project.
Boring Administrative Work:
~Design teaching schedule for my department for spring. (This means assigning times to everyone, minimizing scheduling overlaps).
Blog:
~Write at least one substantive post (this one doesn't count!) [Check! Check again!]
Circus:
~Rehearsal, 5-11 pm Tuesday. (Thai takeout for dinner, yum!) [Check. Except there was no Thai takeout -- we all just went hungry. And of course, half the cast was an hour late. ~sigh~]
~Re-memorize Baba Yaga skit (easy).
~Finish new Baba Yaga costume (exciting! I just embellished a corset for her, and I need to thrift a cool skirt.) [I did get an awesome skirt, but decided to save it for the new Palimpsest costume I'm planning for our Fall shows. Will blog about this idea soon.]
Exercise:
~Evening yoga, Monday (with live sitar, yay!) [check!]
~1 mile run, Tuesday [Check!]
~Evening yoga, Wednesday [New washer/dryer now scheduled to be delivered Wednesday afternoon, so one yoga class down; Saturday class instead?]
~1 mile run, Thursday
~Late afternoon into evening yoga, Friday (first series, 2 hours)
~Evening yoga, Sunday (partial second series).
Social:
~Party at Cirque Bleu stalker's house on Friday. (OK, she's not really a stalker, but she's pretty obsessed.)
~Friday evening, check out local cabaret duo (we may someday perform with them).
~Saturday evening, possibility of Cuisine Club at warehouse(??), Brazilian theme.
~Set up a time to meet with favorite ex-student and her boyfriend for lunch.
Friday, July 4, 2008
the plastic flags
Every July a local realtor places small American flags in the front garden of every single house in the approximately three-mile square geography of my neighborhood. The flags are about 18" long, plastic, on thin dowels that the realtor sticks in the ground at the end of each pathway to each front door. On each dowel is a small tag with the realtor's name and business number, lest there be any confusion about the intent of this gift.
For of course, the realtor is hoping for my countergift: that is, my business, should I decide to sell my house. It's a perfect marriage of capitalism and patriotism. Unfortunately for the realtor, the plastic flag is a loss in my case, unlikely to bring in my business. I never have been the flag-waving type: I don't much go in for ideologies that explicitly are based upon an us-versus-them, insiders-and-outsiders kind of ethos. The outward trappings of patriotism strike me as expressing a static, "We're Number One!" mentality that eschews process (e.g., working towards a better, fairer society) in favor of smug self-congratulation. The US is a good country, yes; even better than most -- but I'm not convinced it is superior to all other countries and cultures, and I have significant problems with the way it's being run right now. Having that plastic flag placed at the end of my walkway feels like someone is ventriloquizing for me, assuming my participation in a certain kind of uncritical reverence for nationalist symbols that I do not, in fact, share.
Happy Fourth of July to you all, however you personally choose to honor the day.
For of course, the realtor is hoping for my countergift: that is, my business, should I decide to sell my house. It's a perfect marriage of capitalism and patriotism. Unfortunately for the realtor, the plastic flag is a loss in my case, unlikely to bring in my business. I never have been the flag-waving type: I don't much go in for ideologies that explicitly are based upon an us-versus-them, insiders-and-outsiders kind of ethos. The outward trappings of patriotism strike me as expressing a static, "We're Number One!" mentality that eschews process (e.g., working towards a better, fairer society) in favor of smug self-congratulation. The US is a good country, yes; even better than most -- but I'm not convinced it is superior to all other countries and cultures, and I have significant problems with the way it's being run right now. Having that plastic flag placed at the end of my walkway feels like someone is ventriloquizing for me, assuming my participation in a certain kind of uncritical reverence for nationalist symbols that I do not, in fact, share.
Happy Fourth of July to you all, however you personally choose to honor the day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)