Lightbulb Over Head Blog

Tonight I had a very odd experience. I went to a short form improv comedy show with a friend and wished I were up on stage doing improv. This is strange to me because for most of my life, I’ve enjoyed improv, but been terrified of doing it.

At one time, I took a six week improv intensive at iO. Chicago between my freshman and sophomore years of college. I learned a lot while I was there but I spent most of the summer quaking in my boots. The form was complicated and confusing and I was in awe of the in-the-moment creativity of my peers. They were so smart and so current. I just felt like I was a broken grandfather clock with grinding cogs lumbering around with compact electric alarm clocks all primed to go off at the same time.

Over six weeks, we had six different teachers who were improvisers at iO. Each had their own team and some even directed or created other shows there. The best thing about the program was that all of the students were comped for every show at the theater. Every day I would wake up, work out, walk to class, do improv for about six hours and then I’d stick around all night with my team to watch shows at iO. It was best way to learn the form and all of its variations. It was also the best education in team work that I’ve ever had.

I saw some of the worst improv and some of the best while I was there. I think it’s absolutely true that longform improv can be a horribly derailed train or it can be the most brilliant thing you’ve ever witnessed. Yet, I found even the worst performances were interesting to watch. I was right there with the actors, urging them through some unspoken power- through a primal audience energy, to pick up the pieces and rebuild their scenes. The artform takes such simultaneous awareness of your partner and of yourself. Most importantly you have to concentrate less on what makes you funny, and more on what will make your partner’s job easier.

Agree to go in whatever direction your partner suggests. Don’t waist time arguing. Improvisers call this the rule of “Yes, And.” Always try to give your partner gifts. Don’t ask questions. Just tell them what they’re doing. Tell them who they are. You have to build the scene brick by brick. Establish an environment as quickly as possible. Create a relationship. Stay away from sex or fart jokes in order to keep things interesting. Don’t use women as sex objects so that you’re not tempted to fall into an “easy laugh” situation. It’s all about solving the puzzle of walking on the stage with no lines and using your minds, voices, and bodies in order to build entertainment. When a team assembles the puzzle quickly and accurately, it’s truly one of the most astounding things I’ve ever experienced.

The other great thing about the shows at iO is that many teams have created their own forms and broken away from the traditional “Harold.” One of my favorites was “Armando Diaz.” In this form, a person steps forward to announce themselves as Armando Diaz. He or she takes a suggestion from the audience and uses it to start telling a true story. The story doesn’t have to be funny, it just has to be honest. Then they step back and the other people on the team do scenes using the story as a suggestion. The scenes don’t have to be exactly from they story. They can be based on a word, a different take on a situation in it, anything. Suggestions in improv are just fodder. You don’t have to connect to them exactly. They’re just to help the actors go off of something to get their minds running. Then after about 3-5 scenes, Armando Diaz steps forward and tells another story using the original suggestion as inspiration. Then the other players do more scenes, etc. The best Armando Diaz show I was was when Charna Halpern, one of the founders of iO and a close friend to Del Close who was the creator of long form improvisation, did a guest appearance as Armando Diaz. For every monologue, she gave a small vignette of a moment with Del. It was an incredible performance not just because the improv was good, but because the monologues were a celebration of the man who planted the seeds that blossomed into this entire “movement.” I’ll never forget that night. Everyone who was there knew they had just witnessed something special. By definition, it was a “One Night Only” show, a moment we all shared and had not been shared at any time before and would never be shared again.

Another form I enjoyed was a group that took a suggestion and did a two act play based on it. It was such a selfless experience, each scene having to be built on its own and then the next scene having to be built upon the last in order to form a full story. The best part about it was that it didn’t necessarily have to be funny. It was all about building the story piece by piece. The best example I can think of was a night where they did a murder mystery. The idea in itself is funny because the ending was just as much a mystery to the audience as it was to the actors. However, there were also points that were sad or made you sit on the edge of your seat waiting to find out who the killer was.

My all-time favorite show to see at iO is TJ and Dave. It is also the hardest show to get a ticket to. Every Wednesday night, TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi stand on the stage and say “Trust us. All of this is made up.” Then the lights go dim. When they come up, what ensues is a 45 minute show starring just the two of them. It’s the kind of comedy that percolates slowly and takes as much time as it needs to come into full bloom. It requires such focus and teamwork and this particular pair is a killer combination. They’ve been working together for so long that they can work fluidly and creatively with ease. Again, it’s not always funny. Sometimes it’s sad or poignet, but it is a guaranteed incredible story telling experience.

At the end of my summer at iO, we all got to perform on the Del Close mainstage. I was completely terrified of that “moment of truth.” It was completely “sink or swim” at the end of a really intense training period with no second chances. My team spent so much time together in class and out of it. We had taken adventures on the weekends, going to museums and Cubs games. I even had everyone over for a “sleepover” party so that no one would have to make their way home late at night. We really bonded over the course of the summer. I think I was so self conscious at the time that I never let any of them know how incredibly talented and smart I thought they all were. Stepping out on the stage with them at the end of the summer was just such an honor. I simply wanted to support what they were doing and try not to worry about whether or not I got any laughs.

Our final show was a success. We fired on all pistons and I felt confident that I had given it my all and made my contribution to the end result. When the program was at an end, I knew I had learned a lot but I also was ecstatic to be back in the world of scripted theater. I felt like a sailer who had been lost at sea and was finally returning to dry land. I didn’t think I’d ever in my wildest dreams elect to do improv again.

I guess I didn’t know myself very well, because last night I put my name down on a class sign up list at the National Comedy Theater. The writer inside of me has really inspired me to return to that form as a way of accessing that part of my brain and exercising it. It’s such a great way of making yourself more aware of your surroundings and aware of what it is to listen and respond constructively in a collaborative creative atmosphere.

Until recently, I’d been so dead, so ambivalent about my surroundings and my world. Now, my brain has awakened from its hibernation period and is hungry for more. I intend to feed it.

[I was just looking through my computer and I discovered my chapel speech from my senior year of high school. As I read through it, I was reminded of a part of myself I'd almost forgotten. It's been forever since I felt maternal or even felt like a part of a sisterhood. It's not that I can't live without those things, but it's always interesting to reflect on how I've changed over the years and what parts of me have grown vs. what parts of me have become cloistered away. So, dear readers, I invite you to join me at the gorgeous non-denominational chapel at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts as I give my speech. It is Fall and the wooden pews creak every so often as a student shifts uncomfortably. Light streams through the bright stained glass windows depicting Columbus, Magellan, Shakespeare, and other great learners and explorers.

Up at the front of the chapel, I am standing at the pulpit. I am 18 and I am terrified. I inhale a deep breath, taking in the sea of my teachers and my peers, and then begin.]

“You’re gonna be a camp counselor?” Matt said in disbelief.

“Yup. That’s the way it looks right now.” I shrugged.

“Where?” He asked

“Camp Seafarer. It’s in North Carolina.”

“Camp Sea-WHAT?” Matt asked skeptically.

“Seafarer.” I said.

“Ha. Anne’s gonna work at Camp SEAFAIRY this summer.” He pointed and laughed.

That was the initial reaction I received from my friends last year when I announced that I had just been asked to be the director of the musical at Camp Seafarer, for girls, in Arapahoe, N.C. They were a little doubtful to say the least. They all saw me as a hopeless cynical drama/music geek who limited herself to only black attire. As far as kids went, some of my friends had seen a faculty child use a lacrosse stick to launch a graphing calculator at me. However, from my point of view, it seemed a simple task. I had directed a one act at Tabor and I didn’t think directing a show with kids could be that much harder. I might be an only child, but I had been a babysitter since age 10 and now I lived in a dorm. I figured that taking care of a cabin full of girls and living with them every day couldn’t possibly be that tough. I had no reservations when I signed my contract. What I didn’t know, is that I had just signed away my soul to Satan for two months of the summer.

I spent most of the first two weeks wondering what crime I had committed on God’s green earth that fate chose me to be a camp counselor. Everything seemed to go wrong. Not only was I accidentally welcoming people to “Camp Seafairy” on opening day. Oh no. That was the VERY LEAST of my problems. Southern drawls whirled around me and wafted on every breeze, while my Chicago accent sliced through the air. I was an only child stuck in a world of six hundred little sisters. Out of these six hundred girls, I looked after and lived with twelve thirteen year olds, obsessed with soccer, boys, and the fifth Harry Potter book, the thought of which made me ill. I felt like it would be impossible to make a connection with any of them. No matter how hard I tried to relate to their problems and advise them, it just seemed unnatural.

I was also in charge of directing “The Secret Garden,” a musical which the Camp Director selected because it seemed like a “cute” musical for kids. She had assumed it to be a nice little story about a little girl who plants a few seeds in some forgotten garden and learns how to fit in with her new family. However, the show really turned out to be about a rich hunchback haunted by the ghost of his dead wife and a little girl hardened by the death of her parents in the cholera epidemic who has to leave India and live in his lonely colossal mansion in the middle of nowhere. The show was entirely inappropriate for kids ages seven to sixteen, calling for English and Yorkshire accents and a lyric soprano, not to mention two strong male leads which would now have to be sung by girls. I heard 109 children audition for the show. Out of 109 girls, seventy five percent sang “Tomorrow” from Annie. Suicide was starting to sound like a good option. Things were only complicated further when I was told that I would not be allowed to make cuts.  So now, not only had I ended up with 109 girls that I had to fit into a musical with only 12 roles, oh no, one of them was a 16 year old girl with turrets syndrome and was constantly screaming obscenities during rehearsal. In short, it was musical mayhem, an utter nightmare. My jaw dropped as I realized that I would be spending three hours daily in room with 109 girls trying to sing high “C’s” only to return at the end of the day to a cabin full of thirteen year old girls arguing over something so entirely trivial as speculations on who would die in the next Harry Potter book. I wanted to scream. My co-counselors and I started to replace the word “camper” with “hell-beast.” In otherwords “You look horrible, what happened last night?” “Oh, I had a run in with a hell beast.” Or “I just got a call; The hell-beasts are on the loose in the drama building, I’d better go over there and take care of the situation.”

One day, I was contemplating how bad a life sentence in prison could possibly be, when I unexpectedly had to take one of my girls to the health center. I was walking across a bridge with her and I was trying to make her laugh in an effort to distract her from her discomfort. Judging by the smile creeping across her face, it seemed like I had been relatively successful in humoring her. As we walked, she reached over and put her arm around my waste, and I put my arm around her shoulders. She looked up at me in this picture perfect moment and said, “You are so cool. You’re like a big sister, but a cool one who’s funny and doesn’t mess with my stuff.” She grinned and I laughed as I realized that in her own little thirteen-year-old way she was telling me that I had reached her, that for her, I had made a difference in just two weeks.

It became so vivid to me, then, what I had been doing wrong all this time. I had been so focused on what wasn’t going right for me that I had somehow let myself forget about these kids. Yeah, from time to time, things got hard, smiles weren’t genuine, and the hell beasts annoyed me beyond description. Those things were all distractions. I had forgotten that in signing that contract, I was agreeing to live not for myself, but for six hundred wonderfully individual girls who needed me to help them grow and learn. From that day forward, I dedicated myself to these campers who taught me so much about the importance of selflessness. Before I knew it, I felt like I wasn’t working at all.

It was around that time when I called Matt Linton to fill him in on how things had been going. I told him how the summer had begun horribly but that lately things had been going well. I told him about how my girls thought I was cool. His take on the situation was succinct and simply put. “You’re soooo going soft,” he said. I was totally opposed to that. I most certainly was not going SOFT. I was just getting… sentimental. I…cared.

Ok, Matt. I was going soft.

I hate to admit it, but I cried on the last night of camp during the candle light service. I cried and cried until there were no tears left and then I cried again after the campers left while I was packing my own things to go home as I realized that my most meaningful memories weren’t frustrating rehearsals or trying to avoid teenybopper conversations, but the look on the faces of girls who were bursting with pride as they took their final bow at the end of the play, girls who reached out to each other and supported each other at every turn, and in knowing that I was behind their successes, lessons, and confidence.

Since the end of camp, as my room-mate can attest, I receive atleast two long distance phone calls a week and innumerable instant messages from my campers.

The other day, I received an email from Betsy, one of my campers who was in the musical. She announced that she had just gotten cast in the musical at her middle school and that she couldn’t have done it without me. She called me a hero. And for the first time, I felt like one.  I was a big sister… but a cool one.

Being a huge Johnny Depp fan, I did not question spending thirteen dollars on a ticket to his recently released film, Public Enemies. When I was in Chicago during the summer of 2009, the extras were being put through hair, makeup, and costumes at the theater where I was interning so I felt a sort of loyalty to the film because I was excited about seeing how all the production work I had witnessed every day had turned out.

I always feel swept away by Depp’s performances because it’s undeniably clear to me how much he enjoys what he’s doing, how playful his choices are, and how alive he is when he’s in front of the camera. He drips with passion for his art.

This is the first time I’ve been a bit let down by him in a movie. I enjoyed a few of his “simply frank” moments, such as when he convinces Billie to “be his girl” by roughing up a man who’s giving her trouble at the coat check where she works and then holding her coat out wordlessly as if to say, You know you’re going to come with me. Also of note was the scene where he dangerously risks being discovered at the police station in Chicago where his case is being monitored. He studies his own pictures, the mug shots of his fallen comrades, and asks for the score of the game the cops are watching without them realizing who he is. It is Depp at his classic best; playful, mysterious, and confident. He did have a few great moments of characterization in this film, but I thought perhaps he was bored with this project. It seemed like he lacked inspiration.

Oddly enough, I enjoyed Christian Bale’s performance and I’m usually rather ambivalent about him. I think he’s done some cool action and mystery movies, but I wouldn’t necessarily call him a “fine actor.” There was something a bit deeper about his portrayal of Melvin Purvis. His physicality was fox-like as he ran down his pray, even with a heavy weapon like a rifle. He’s always been good with physical roles, like Batman and John Preston in the cult classic Equillibrium, but he managed to combine his physical prowess with a manifested determination. Perhaps he’s simply more compelling without his bat-mask on.

I hadn’t seen Marion Cotillard’s Academy Award winning turn as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, but I had heard so many good things about it that I was very excited to see her work in this movie. With the exception of the scene in the interrogation room where she is explicitly brutalized by one of the investigators on the Dillinger case, she gave a simply honest performance, but nothing particularly special.

The aforementioned scene was actually the best in the movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where the camera stays focused on a woman as she is beaten. It was hard to watch, but the pay off was so satisfying when Cotillard’s character told off the man who had been hitting her. It was a great movie moment, framed well by specific cinematography. However, the circumstances Cotillard’s character were often more engaging that her uneven performance.

The action sequences were too general to keep track of the story. They began. Lots of machine guns were fired. Then they ended leaving the characters either dead or in different circumstances. Sadly, it was a missed opportunity for story telling. It was easy to lose track of who was shooting and who had been shot. During the climactic action sequence at a woodland farmhouse, the heavy sound of the machine guns and the mass destruction they wrought lost their initial power after a few minutes of the long-winded shoot-out.

Stephen Graham was truly terrifying as Baby Face Nelson. He brought a sorely needed unpredictable element to the movie. When he went down, shooting wildly into the air and pelting the grass with bullets as he took a lethal volley of machine gun fire, I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or to cheer. He was such a dangerous force in the movie that I was happy for Dillinger to be rid of him, but I immediately missed his exciting presence.

I was also shocked at how many cameos there were by established actresses in the film. Leelee Sobieski played Polly Hamilton who appeared near the end of the film and had about five lines in total. I haven’t remembered seeing her in front of the camera since I was in my freshman year of high school. Emilie de Ravin, who plays Claire in the hit television series, Lost, played a random bank teller who is used as a human shield to keep the police from shooting at the men driving and defending a post-bank-robbery getaway car. As long and slightly didactic as this movie was, seeing these actresses made me wonder how much film was lying on the cutting room floor considering the fact that these ladies probably wouldn’t have signed on for the project without a supporting role as opposed to a part with a few spoken lines.

For me, the bank robbing scenes were the highlights of Public Enemies. They were a window into a different age when crime was waged with different tactics than in today’s world, not to mention that Depp’s rock star quality had a chance to shine.

Public Enemies is by no means a horrible film, but I don’t think it makes my “Must See” recommendation list. With with movie ticket prices in New York City at an all time high, this is one where I would wait for the release to DVD.

Sooner or later you will face a brutal reality:

Your high school reunion.

The fear will climb you like a maypole and you will think your are thirty pounds fatter than you actually are. You will check the guest list for your high school crushes or old boyfriends and be warmed by those old flames, followed by an endless panic attack concerning seeing them again. You’ll destroy your closet looking for the perfect ensemble and plan hair and makeup for a week ahead of time. Moreover, you’ll plan how to describe your job so that you don’t sound like a glorified receptionist.

You say to yourself + 30 imaginary pounds in the mirror, “Oh college, how have you failed me so completely?”

Then the day arrives. It’s the moment of truth.

Results may vary after this point. I can only speak for myself.

A certain amount of anticipation and dread accompanied my decision to attend my high school reunion, but I never struggled with whether or not to go. I knew from the moment I got that letter inviting me to “The School by the Sea” for my 5th year reunion that I would be there.

Let me explain. My high school education wasn’t what you would call normal. I went to boarding school one thousand miles away from home. When I tell new acquaintances this, they usually react in the following way.

Wide-eyed with wonderment and a mischievous gleam in their eye they ask, “What did you do?”

This reaction makes me laugh because so many people can’t imagine sending their son or daughter of to school across the country at the tender age of fourteen. They figure you must have done something so horrible that you had be sent away to “learn to respect your limits or your elders” or both.

Let’s set the record straight. I wasn’t packed off and sent to boarding school because I’m some sort of juvenile delinquent. I chose to leave home.

See, I always loved summer camp. I went to Camp Seafarer in North Carolina for 8 years and worked there as a counselor for two. I wouldn’t be who I am today without my experiences there. The first year I went, I was ten. I was a shy girl who barely spoke up except to say incredibly awkward things. I was the kind of child who could play on a playground for hours and not bother to learn the names of the other children I was playing with because I was too terrified to ask. Facing a month away from home was frightening and exciting, but when I got there, I slowly came out of my shell. I blossomed, some might say. I went out to activities every day and set goals for myself, striving every day to achieve them. I learned how to sail, how to tie a bowline knot, and how to jump a hurdle on horseback. It was at Camp Seafarer that I was asked to dance by a boy for the first time. There were a lot of firsts at camp, and the best part of it all was that I was in control of my own destiny.

I’m an only child, you see. Every step of the way up until that point, my parents had been there guiding, supporting, micromanaging, and frogmarching me towards some undisclosed success. There are advantages and disadvantages to being the sole object of your mother and father’s love. I was given every possible opportunity; piano lessons, ice skating lessons, vacations, tutors, and educational trips. Anything I asked for, I got and usually more. Every time I soared I was rewarded and every time I fell, I was supported, analyzed, and talked through how to improve upon or avoid this mistake again. I never had that integral sink or swim moment.

However, at Camp Seafarer, I was in control. I scheduled my activities and I auditioned for plays. When I failed, it was up to me to fix it. When I succeeded, I simply basked in the glow of a job well done. It was enough because it was all mine.

Back in Chicago, I went to a middle school that ended in eighth grade and when I reached that point, I had to apply to high schools. I applied to every private school in the city, including my own personal Jesuit nightmare, St. Ignatius College Preperatory School. When I visited, I hated it. The students seemed dispassionate as they marched to classes in their uniforms. They answered questions when they had to and not because they wanted to. They were smart, make no mistake, but I couldn’t see myself fitting in. As the year forged on, I became restless. I wasn’t particularly happy about any of the choices of schools I had applied to thus far.

One day, I saw a friend of mine looking through a boarding school brochure. Inside its laminated story book pages there were kids on bicycles, grassy quads, blue skies, pine trees, and red track fields. It showed kids making clay bowls on spinning wheels and singing in a capella groups. I knew that I could probably find some of those things at the private schools in Chicago, but an idea had formed in my head. Judging by my success at camp, perhaps I could achieve more away from the loving arms of my parents then I could within their reach.

With my parent’s permission, I applied to boarding schools all over the east coast. The next fall, I found myself at Tabor Academy in a dorm with twenty other girls, most from the area around school, whereas I was 1,000 miles away from home, and completely out of my element.

I had the unique opportunity to decide who I was. No one knew me. I could make first impressions on an entire community. Even knowing this, I was terribly afraid I would make some awful blunder.

The first few nights there, I sat on one of the granite benches on the water front. Even though I had worked so hard to get away from home, I missed it. I knew my mother and father would have had some useful knowledge to impart. All they way to school, my parents had pelted me with so much advice that I couldn’t see straight when we arrived. I couldn’t wait for them to leave me the hell alone. As we hugged goodbye till Thanksgiving, my mother wagged her finger. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” she said with great reverence. Afterward, that piece of Polonius’ advice from Hamlet has served as their final words to me whenever they drop me off at my current place of residence.

The seabreeze tossed my thick bush of brown hair across my face as I looked out over Buzzards Bay. All of their advice was slipping through my fingers. I was here to make my way without them.

Sometimes, I thought, you should be careful what you wish for.

I stayed at Tabor for four years. The first two were hellish and I was unhappy. I wanted to be wonderful at science and sports, but that just wasn’t in the cards. Nothing seemed to come naturally to me, least of all social aptitude. No one enjoyed being friends with a stuck up city girl who loved Star Wars and sang the Moulin Rouge version of  “Lady Marmalade” at least fifty times a day in her dorm room while everyone else was trying to study. It wasn’t until I laid anchor in the theater and music community that I found a foothold for myself at Tabor. Teachers and students started looking at me differently. They knew my name and they didn’t call me out on dress code infractions as much. I did the musical every year and toured with my a capella group every spring. It was a damn fine gig if I do say so myself. My last two years at Tabor were some of the happiest in my life. My friends were like family and theater was a dream. I felt so lucky to be there every day.

And so it was that I entered highschool wanting to be an astronaut and left with a passion for the stage, headed to New  York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, no less. I graduated with awards for contribution to theater and choral music and I left thinking I knew a lot more about myself than I would have if I had gone to school back at home in Chicago. My parents were still extremely proud, and supportive, but I had done this for myself.

I had no idea what awaited me in New York. I knew I would get through it as I had gotten through life at Tabor, but I was in no way prepared for my first year there, let alone the other three. It was filled with art, non-sexual nakedness, dance, shock, and student rush tickets to Broadway shows. I was back in an urban environment, pulsing with energy, buzzing with life. I was filled with passion for what I was doing every single day. Imagine: No more math classes. It was heavenly. I thank my lucky stars every day that my parents let me go and paid for my education at Tisch.

Now, it’s a year after my graduation from NYU and I’m living the life of a starving artist. Like everyone else in America, I have felt the pain of our declining economy, losing my job and not being able to get a new one for four months at a time. In December, I broke up with the man I can’t stop loving. In January, I saved a suicidal room mate’s life when I found her bleeding out in the bathtub. In February, I lost a dear friend and collaborator to a successful suicide attempt. By March, I was still jobless and was feeling the desperate strain of my independent reality weigh on me heavily every second of every single day. This is my life, I thought. I can’t stand my life right now.

It had been almost a year since I had performed in a full scale production. I could feel my life blood and passion begging for attention like a poorly tended hearth living in the pit of my stomach. My skin was going numb.

That’s when I got the letter inviting me back to Tabor Academy for my high school reunion.

How can I face all of these wonderfully smart and successful people? I thought. I’ll be a laughing stock again… or worse, they won’t recognize me at all.

I’m not fearless, but I like to think I have a bit more backbone than to let a few momentary insecurities stop me from going through such an important right of passage.

The truth is, as the day approached, I realized how much I had missed that community. I had spent so much of my life pushing forward and away from anything or anyone that had nurtured me along the way, but now I dearly missed the cradle of support that I got from my parents, teachers, and friends at Tabor. I had been a ship my whole life, struggling to break free from my mooring, but now I was ready to return to port, more ready than I ever thought I would be.

As I arrived back on campus, my heart pounded in my chest. My body felt weak, almost euphoric. Many of my classmates had remained in the same area and saw each other more often, but true to form I had left the nest and sailed into uncharted waters.

The whole weekend was like a glorious out of body experience. People I knew well and people I hadn’t all asked how I’d been and seemed to care about my response. I realized that I cared about theirs and I was proud of their numerous accomplishments. I remembered more first and last names than I thought I would. Seeing my teachers struck such a resonant chord with me. They had spent four years as my surrogate parents, setting me up for success, talking me through rough patches, and inviting me for Sunday afternoon tea. The whole reunion was like a warm celebratory ritual with dancing, drinking, and storytelling.

Near the end of the evening I was laughing with a friend who had gone with me to the Caribbean aboard the school’s tall ship to do an on-site marine studies class. We were resting our feet as the rest of our classmates danced the night away. He asked me what I was up to and I told him about the play I was writing, my novel, my new apartment, and how much i enjoyed the process of developing new musicals.

“You’re living the dream.” He laughed and smiled at me.

Until he said that, I had completely forgotten that I was.

At the end of the weekend, I felt my ship had been thoroughly resuplied. I had collected information and maps, and made plans for new adventures, confident that I could sail across the fated sea with a warm wind at my back.

I have decided that once Odysseus returned to Ithaca, he must have longed for another voyage.

I really am filled with hate right now. I tried to update my iPhone with 3.0 software and AGAIN it went into recovery mode and is in this odd loop hole where the computer tells me to restore it and then says there is an error and it can’t be restored. This happened once before and I took it into the store. They managed to restore the phone so that I could use it, but I’ve never updated it to the new software again for fear of having this very thing happen. I wanted to try to download it today so that I could download the Wordpress App, but it seems I have entered this annoying “You-need-to-restore-but-we-are-unable-to-restore” vortex again.

I made an appointment with the Apple Store, but there’s not an available time until Saturday, two days from now, at 5:50 PM. Even though that’s an inconvenience and it may ruin my plans for the 4th of July weekend, I HAVE to go on that day because my phone has to work. I can’t live without it.

I had forgotten what this is like. I actually feel naked. I’ve grown so accustomed to all of the tools on my phone, not to mention its run of the mill ability to, you know, make phone calls. I have plans to hang out with two people this weekend and without my phone, that may not happen. If it doesn’t, I’ll be a sad panda.

Ugh, who am I kidding? I’m already a sad panda.

I’m also pretty disgusted with how reliant I am on my iPhone. A few posts ago I wrote about how I was addicted to my iPhone and its different bells and whistles. Now I’ve progressed to going through actual withdrawal. I’m not kidding folks. I’m restless and I keep pacing around the apartment and trying to sleep this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach off. I keep wondering how people will contact me.

Would it kill me to be incomunicato for a few days?

Maybe I should just… move to the jungle and live off of fish I catch with my bare hands and water tempered with iodine tablets. I could even fashion a spear out of a branch and hunt boar. Maybe I’ll meet John Locke from ABC’s Lost. Ah, let’s face it. I’d never make it.

I used to be way more outdoorsy. I have taken several “adventure” trips in the course my blessed life. I went horseback riding with my parents in Arizona for two weeks. I’ve camped and rafted in Alaska for three weeks and gone on glacier hikes near Valdez. I went into the Montana mountains for three weeks and stayed out in the woods on solo for one of those weeks. I visited the Galapagos Islands and took naturalist tours. I worked with the National Park Service tagging sea-turtles and living on a boat in the Caribbean. I went white water rafting in the Colorado River and hiked out of the Grand Canyon.

So now I live in New York City. Rewind. What? How did that happen?

When did I become so tirelessly urban? Where has my inner cowgirl gone?

I think she’s still somewhere inside of me. I feel her stir in me whenever I can see a large expanse of sky, even if its only over Washington Square Park. I actually felt her today, of all days, while I was sitting in Grand Central Station.

I was trying to get a few moments of escape and serenity from my boss, who was making me do all sorts of annoying little tasks like canceling her Visa card and changing her legal address, both of which are real headaches for the actual person, let alone an assistant who is trying to remember all of her boss’ personal information.

As I sat on a bench, I noticed that there was a bird twittering and tweeting away. I knew immediately that it wasn’t a pigeon because pigeon’s coo.

Actually, if you ever get a chance to hear pigeon sex, its coo-rific. It makes me die laughing. I’m not a pervert, for the record, but they used to roost right outside of my window as a child. I often convulsed in giggles when I heard them going at it in a rousing “coorus.” Get it? Coorus, Chorus? Come on people! I digress.

As I looked for the source of the sound I noticed something tiny and dark running across the floor. I almost shrieked because I thought it was a nasty New York rat. Upon further observation I realized it was a red breasted robin. Phew.

My father is obsessed with birds and he taught me long ago how to identify one. Actually, we used have a huge one that lived in our backyard in Chicago. This type of bird is also significant to me because I loved The Secret Garden as a child and Mary Lennox, the heroin of the story, was guided by a “Robin Red Breast” to the gate of her Aunt Lily’s garden and he flew around the ivy covered, overgrown  walls and kept the girl company while she planted seeds. That story was so gorgeous, both in text and on stage as a musical.

So there I was, overworked, underpaid, and sitting on a bench looking at my very own Robin Red Breast. This one was singing beautifully but upon closer inspection, I realized his wing was broken. He must have flown into the building and banged into a window or other reflective surface while trying to get out. It was so tragic because you never see anything but pigeons (AKA the rats of the air) in the city. Atleast I don’t. Then again I’m not specifically looking to identify birds.

It is a fact: This poor creature that reminded me of my childhood and a beautiful story will die. I didn’t know how long he’d been there. Perhaps he was singing for his supper. Perhaps it was his “Swan Song.” He must have been in so much pain. Maybe it’s stupid, but it made me tear up a little bit as I watched him waddle about. He even hopped over to me and just looked at me for a while, completely unafraid and uninhibited. It reminded me of how the animals had acted during my visit to the Galapagos Islands. The sea lions and marine iguanas would just sit and sun themselves on the beach. They hadn’t been introduced to fear of humans because they’ve never been hunted there. That whole trip made me feel like I was living in the Garden of Eden. The guide warned us not to touch the sea lion pups even if they approached us because the mothers would stop recognizing the scent of their young and disown them. They were so adorable. You just wanted to pick one up and squeeze it so badly. I don’t mean like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I mean a comfortable cuddle rather than a life threatening clamp of doom.

As I watched my doomed bird-friend, I felt a similar conflict. I wanted to pick him up and mend him, but as we all know, birds are ridden with disease, germs, and God knows what else. Also, who am I to think I could “mend” a broken bird wing. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. I’m not a veterinarian.

That thought reminded me of how when I was on my Outward Bound “solo” in Montana, I had decided to make a woven basket and failed miserably. I don’t know what made me think I would just naturally have the ability to do something like that. Did I expect it to be written into my homo sapien DNA? However, it was undeniably fun and it gave me something to do during the lonely days. I sort of remembered singing through the entire score of every musical i could remember and even the ones I was less clear on as I worked.

Somewhere along the way I traded simple pleasures and child-like curiosity for iPhone apps and rent checks. Some of that is just a part of growing up, but sometimes I think it wouldn’t be such a travesty if we all tried to retrace our developmental steps a bit and follow our silly impulses. Mind you, I’m not telling you to expose yourself to disease ridden urban creatures on the verge of demise, but a walk in the park to lie on the bedrock outcroppings and read clouds wouldn’t do you any harm.