A Wind in the Door

Opening Night

2008-11-18T18:40:00.000-08:00

Theatre gives me back to myself. The strange stillness between “places” and “curtain” is still a moment of grace; possibilities still whisper like ghosts across the dark stage. I feel like a ghost myself. I forget fear. It is a kind of death, to walk onstage without the weight of my own shape. It is a kind of birth, to reclaim the raw and uncomplicated right to be the bright, solid center of the universe, even if it is just for a moment, or a minute, or an hour and a half. I want to be the woman whose voice came out of me tonight. I want to walk in the world with the flame of spirit flicking above me. I want that moment of grace to descend upon my entire life, turning everything to that silence, and then—

the lights, the exhalation, and the first echoing fall of my heel on the black boards.

Observation:

2008-11-03T10:01:00.000-08:00

Why is it so difficult to get work done at home? I have taken to making the 2 hour communte from my apartment to Limerick's city centre for the sole purpose of sitting in a cafe for a couple of hours, refreshing my pot of mint tea on occasion, and writing up a backlog of continuous assessment journals for my classes that could have been written just as easily at the table in my living room back home. I could have saved myself the commute, and I wouldn't have had to change out of my pajamas and into these pesky high heeled boots... what's wrong with me?
I suppose being out in public and looking like a person puts on the necessary pressure to be as productive as I look... while at home, I will more often than not waste entire evenings reading "extracurricular" library books, listening to podcasts, taking bubble baths, "renting" mediocre movies from itunes, and checking my email inbox at regular intervals for no reason.
I need to start doing things more suitable to my status as expat-in-training, like "making weekend jaunts to the continent," and "drinking." Friends tell wild tales of their year abroad, and seem to view it in the light of the Grand Tour of bygone days... a chance to sow some wild oats and get all of the ungentlemanly/unladylike behavior out of one's system as far from the restrictions and repercussions of home as possible. Alas, my adventures thus far read more like Bridget Jones than Anais Nin. I will just have to start making things up.

A Home for the Rootless

2008-10-28T11:01:00.000-07:00

"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever." (Sigmund Freud on the Irish)

I have been living here for more than two months now, and can't say that I have settled in. If I were living in Spain, perhaps, or Azerbaijan, I might have more cause to fully adjust to my new surroundings. Instead, I am in a country where they speak what passes for my native language (or what my native language passes for, depending on how you look at it) and where the weather and the greenery and the economically depressed small-scale city nearby are all remarkably remeniscent of home. They have no root beer here, and no real peanut butter-- but I am a hardy young individual and believe that I will survive those hardships without too much undue stress. My apartment is far enough from campus (about an hour's walk) to prevent my mixing too much with the locals... and even if I had the time to do so around my class schedule it would be difficult to meet them, since my program seems to keep us fairly isolated from the rest of the University. I am on campus more than I ever was at Emerson, and our classes tend to shift and change by the week, making free time a tentative prospect. It is a relief, though, to not have a job for the first time in many, many years... being "just a student" still seems like cheating, but I expect I will get over it and enjoy my freedom one of these days. I have worked a bit more on the novel now and then to try to make up for my laziness in other quarters, but have mostly resigned myself to lying fallow and allowing the Great Potato Famine of My Soul to consume itself and blow away.

My one recreational activity thus far has been playing Brenda in the UL production of Smokey Joe's Cafe. It is really very odd to participate in such an... American art form while living so far from home. Like the weather and the dirty city and the smell of Fall, musical theatre is something that I had previously associated with Home that has a different context and meaning here. It's fun, and laid back... everything here is fairly laid back, in fact. There is a very unique feeling to the free and easy Irish attitude, however... time is fluid here, and days and appointments and assignments and what have you are all subject to interpretation. There are many smiles and not to worrys and "are ye allrights," but there's a kind of sword of Damocles feeling to it all... as though beneath the surface of all this laissez faire are wills and expectations that are absolutely intractable, and you are guided almost supernaturally into the correct action with a nod and a smile that are somehow terrifying.

I have to sign off as musical rehearsal starts in a few minutes, but I am trying to overcome my reluctance to tackle the backlog of events and adventures of the past many months... so hopefully there will be more to follow soon.

On Cleaning Slates

2008-09-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Ah, the new school year. Crisp new notebooks, freshly sharpened pencils, and lithe young ladies in Catholic School Uniforms. This feeling of a fresh start hasn't changed much since I first donned a little navy blue skirt, slipped on my saddle shoes, and scampered off to kindergarten toting my mother's old tin lunchbox. Although the scenery has changed (disappointingly, Catholic Schoolgirls in Ireland wear ankle length skirts) there is still a deceptively optimistic thrill in the air that seems to say "this year, we will write down every inspiring word. This time, every textbook will be read cover to cover... and every term paper will be written and revised a full 24 hours before it's due date. This year!"
Of course I am now too old and wise and postgraduate to really believe any of it, but it's a nice thought. I have made my own attempts at cleaning my slate, after all— trying to distance myself from the messiness of my former life by walking across Spain with nothing but 15lbs in a backpack to my name. Then, for good measure, I parted ways with the young man who had been pretty much omnipresent in my work, school and social life for the past 14 months... choosing instead an absolutely brand new squeaky clean start here in Limerick.
Alas! Almost the minute I arrived on campus, I was reminded that no matter how we try to erase our mistakes, there is No Wite-Out in the Great Essay Question Of Life.
"Hi, you must be Nora."
"Yes?"
"You know T***."
"er... what did he tell you about me?"
That's right, my friends. In an obscure master's program thousands of miles from home, not only is one of the FOUR PEOPLE in my program also from upstate NY, but he already knows me by reputation, courtesy of my first high school boyfriend.
It's not that this person actually knows much... aforementioned boyfriend is nothing if not a gentleman. It's more the principle of the thing. Here I am, imagining that I can start over in Ireland, when the truth is that pieces of my heart (ew, gross) are strewn up and down the eastern seaboard... and there's not a whole heck of a lot I can do about that. It's also autumn here, and there's no way that the smell of chimney smoke and damp, cooling earth can remind me of anything but CNY in apple season. All of my new memories must always be built on the foundation of the old ones.
That foundation sometimes feels too much like an unfinished game of Jenga for me to feel entirely comfortable... too much built up on top of pieces that despite time and distance still feel like they're missing.

Some People Really Know How to Have a Good Time

2007-07-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

Sometimes my life feels like a Michael Chabon novel— populated by eccentric but loveable characters, filled with bizarre events, riddled with zany adventures, and very, very well written. This week has been a perfect example. These are a few of the things that have happened over the past 9 days or so:

The Black Eye Story:
Open a cabinet into face at work. People disbelieve actual story, so made up various better ones. Hilarity ensues.(it looked much worse IRL, guys)

The Unsolicited Mail Story:
Am handed piece of mail by a perplexed-looking manager at work. It is addressed to me, via my job. Open it. Is DRAWINGS OF SELF, copied creepily from internet photos, sent by one of my various bar regulars. Includes sketchtastic note. Boss gets all masculine about it and calls security and the police. I begin to feel like a troublemaker.

Unsolicited Mail Part II:
Overhear managers having meeting about crazy vindictive email (re: our Finale location) sent by former customer. Overhear that said email was sent on May 20th. Date sounds vaguely familiar, as is two days after broke up with ex. Realize who email must have been sent by: Ex's CRAZY BOSS who made up stories about self and workplace, ostensibly to undermine what limited influence I may have had in ex's limited life. Talk to managers, confirm that this is indeed the case. Inform managers of CRAZINESS. Managers look partially relieved, partially perplexed at my freak-magnet abilities. Did I mention that this was the same day as Unsolicited Mail Part I?

The Wenchcapades:
Eight girls descend upon house, drink lots of rum/orange sherbet smoothies, and break into my wig collection. Several glasses are broken before we remember that it is Friday the 13th.

Swing Dancing With Christina:
Copacetic!

Finale Summer Picnic:
All of the possible hilarity
Gerri: "This is my haaat, from Paaaris."
(...it was not a hat from Paris. It was, in fact, a piñata.)

Dinner Party:
I hereby reclaim some of the possible hilarity and bequeath it to this situation. Buy hundreds of dollars worth of kitchen ware, make 5 different dishes, dress up as Stepford Wife. Send Rowan into work wearing a suit. Enough said, really. Photos forthcoming as soon as they vacate Ashley's camera and occupy my computer.

In Summary, courtesy of Finale Manager:

BJ: So Nora, how's the soap opera life?
EM: Oh, you know. Soapy.
BJ: We should translate you into Spanish and call it "¡Noramundo!"

Well, I mean... fair enough.

Call Me Ishmael

2007-07-18T19:00:00.001-07:00

I am tearing apart the room here after less than a year, and moving on to a more feminine and adult abode less than a block away. I have grown to love the neighborhood that I was so reluctant to join at this time last year. Maybe I enjoy it because, like the rest of my life, it occupies a liminal space. Here is the paradoxical territory between high class and subculture, equally populated with the rooted and the rootless.
I am beginning to wonder which I am. I value my independence more highly than most, but (again, in keeping with the grand paradox of life thus far) the need for personal liberty is often complicated by an opposing desire for stability and the depth in friendship that generally is only achieved through consistent company. Herman Melville says that "All deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea, while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore." I have spent too much of my life thinking earnestly at the expense of living earnestly, with that wanderer's fear of finding myself tied to one place, one set of people. I hope that I can keep the best elements of my rootlessness while discarding those that prevent me from living deeply in one place at a time.
I wonder what insights Ireland will add to this train of thought over the next month. At this point, I still have no idea which continent the rest of my life will find roots in— a thought that is both thrilling and somehow melancholy. I am never sure if I am running towards or away. I think possibly the solution is to live on a houseboat. Temporary permanence!

Excessive house cleaning always either makes me restless or content. This time it was both, I think. Typical.

Reilly Marriage Fever: Haiku

2007-06-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

Anna says to me
pneumonia I may have but
not this disease

toast by the old man
in the greed plaid tweed trousers:
inappropriate.

uncle's proffered friend:
instead of awkward chatter
shall we just make out?

Grandma says weakly
how nice that you all are hitched
Nora, you are next?

one thing you can say
we know how to procreate
and how to party.

Babies!

2007-06-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have been dreaming pretty much constantly since I started getting more sleep. Lately, the dreams have become so vivid that I always have a few thrilling and disoriented moments during the waking process where I cannot fully differentiate between my realities. Generally, this means something as innocuous as "Wait, do I actually own a red Honda Civic? And why was I driving on the Irish side of the road?" as opposed to after my nap this afternoon, when it became "HOLY SHIT WHERE IS THE TWO YEAR OLD CHILD I GAVE BIRTH TO IN 2005, AND WHO HAS BEEN TAKING CARE OF HER ALL THIS TIME?!" It took a few moments to calm down and remember that if I had indeed pushed an inordinately largeish-small human body out of my vagina after completing my freshman year of college, I would probably remember it rather vividly.

Yes folks, Nora has Baby Dreams. Dream analysis (a practice in which my therapist mother has an extensive background) would tell us that dreaming of babies is generally connected to one's creative progeny, whether that be (in my case) writing, music, the theatre phantom-limb syndrome I have been experiencing this summer— or (possibly in your case) birdhouse-making, culinary experimentation, or somewhat demeaning yet lucrative exotic dancing. Potato, pot— well, whatever. Not the point.

Anyway, I suppose what I am trying to say here is that the subconscious is a creepy and powerful thing. The actual reason I am blogging about this is because of my cousin Anna:
(leather jacket, third from left)
...who has been a nanny for quite some time now and is free of her shackles in approximately 12 days, and who, when given the task of picking a blog topic, chose this one. Her official nanny opinion is:
annaXXXX (10:45:38 PM): i am nannied out
annaXXXX (11:03:39 PM): the best place for a toddler is in a blog

So here (in a blog) is a picture of what my subconscious supposed a toddler of mine would look like:

Given another couple of years (and a necessary wardrobe correction) I imagine she would have looked something like this:

...and with these unsettling images of my potential progeny, I will leave you in (dubious) peace for the time being. Sleep well!

How to Win Friends and Influence People

2007-06-04T22:10:00.000-07:00

My manager told me today that he has been reading a book about improving your prospects at work and in life. This apparently involves the identification of things that you are good at, followed by doing more of them. He is apparently good at "interacting with people" and "problem solving at the macro level." This prompted me to make a list of things that I am good at:

- Being a hermit
- Creating awkward scenarios
- Dating emotionally unavailable men
- depriving myself of things (i.e. wheat products, sex)
- Non Sequiturs

I did not submit this list to my manager, although I suppose I could have. Then he could have applied his problem solving skills to discovering a way for me to utilize these unique talents in the workplace. Maybe they can install a hermitage for me behind the line, where I will write sestinas for Ernesto the dishwasher. The emotionally unavailable men who come in for their high end dessert will be given the option of dating the resident pastry hermit, who will then refuse to put out and speak only in non sequiturs. This will be an awkward scenario. Problem solved.

Seriously though, most of my occupations thus far have involved overriding my natural skills and impulses to function in a repetitive and intellectually sub-stimulating environment. Isn't that why it's called "work?" The next step up the career ladder for me is tending bar at a place that allows me to show cleavage for tips. I believe it is soon after this point that women hit the glass ceiling in the workplace. Or, if you are in Boston, The Glass Slipper?

Whatev. I will stow my post-late-shift cynicism along with the wad of dollar bills that I will be judged at the bank for depositing in the morning... esp. if I do so in my old Candies heels and that spandex minidress.

Giving it up

2007-05-25T04:33:00.000-07:00

This past month has been like a misplaced lent. I gave up gluten and dairy, followed by alcohol, followed by caffeine, followed by candy, followed by sleeping late, followed by... well, anyway. It's like a reverse If You Give a Mouse a Cookie scenario. It's the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie of the masochist set.

So what has all this deprivation done for me? Friends and strangers alike— especially and most understandably at work— look at me askance when they find out all the things that I am not allowing myself. "What's the point?" they ask. "Why would you even get up in the morning?"

I suppose that's a good question. I guess my take on it is, if you're getting up in the morning for gluten and dairy and caffeine and alcohol and anyone but yourself, you've got a problem.

I've been biking around a lot recently. Almost every day I ride past a memorial on the corner of H--- Ave. to a girl who died there in a biking accident recently. A month before that, a young man was killed in a bike accident farther downtown. Yesterday, as I rode down M--- Ave. to my night class, the whole street was blocked off, and there were fire trucks and a mangled bike and a crowd of curious onlookers. All I had to see was the bicycle and the impression of a body half covered by a paramedic blanket to know that I didn't need to see any more. I got off and walked my bike on the sidewalk for awhile, whispering Hail Marys like a crazy person according to my old flashing siren reflex. The boy on the fixed gear bike that I had been racing since the square rolled past me, helmetless, with a look of what I could only interpret as pity. He was right. I'm a wuss.

Maybe I'm giving so much up because I have been surrounded by death lately, and if you practice giving up the little things it makes the big ones easier. Or maybe I just want to look good in a bathing suit. For my next trick, I give up thinking too much.

Bad Babysitter and the Alien Vegetable

2007-05-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

During work yesterday, a friend of mine currently living in Philadelphia left me a voice mail message. "Nora!" it said. "I am working at a coffeeshop in Philly, and a girl I work with says she used to babysit you!"

...Now, this kind of thing is not unusual for me. There are always strange B-list connections like this showing up in my life. In high school, my close friend Kate's ex- girlfriend went to school half a state away with an acquaintance of mine, a connection that the two of them somehow worked out and then relayed the information back to me. When I came to college, my theatre camp best friend's middle school best friend came to Emerson too. Sophomore year, it turned out that I moved into this girl's former dorm room... and a few days after we bonded over shared living space, said middle school best friend of my theatre camp best friend ended up running into an early high school friend of mine from back home, who was visiting Boston for the weekend— and they somehow figured out the connection... and then relayed the information back to me. Absurd, yes? Get the idea?

So it wasn't the fact that one of my ex-babysitters had found her way to the same coffee shop in Philly where my ex/friend happened to be working that surprised me— it was the fact that this woman suddenly existed again outside of her role as The Bad Babysitter in my childhood newsreel. Lynn was one of a very few babysitters who made a lasting impression on me, and might be responsible for many of my misguided notions about what it means to be a grown-up. All or most of the speeding down dirt roads with windows open that I did with boyfriends in later years was done because of her, and the way she made climbing down her mother's trellis after 9PM look glamorous. Looking back, she was young— 14, 16 at most—but from my upstairs window (she lived next door) the laughter that rolled away with the crunch of tires on gravel was exactly what I wanted out of adulthood.

When she came over, she terrified me. She spent the whole time lying upside-down on the sofa, watching MTV and talking on the phone about things she would hiss at me not to hear. I think there was a boy once or twice. One time she told me that my food was made of dog poop, and then yelled at me when I wouldn't eat it. I ratted on her to my parents every time, who I think gave her a talking-to so the next time she came over we painted T-shirts and she talked with me straight about not being like her when I grew up. I listened, but those illicit still-frames of Madonna's bustier, the boy on the couch, and the long legs of the babysitter swinging for footholds as she climbed out her window were filed away somewhere to make me always slightly dissatisfied with my safe choices. I wanted crop tops and cigarettes and laughter like car exhaust trailing behind me when I went out after twilight in the summer. I was four years old and I fell asleep with the window open.

In the morning, I owned the world again. The dewy hours before 8AM were my familiar territory, and I could go next door to where Lynn's mother had her garden and pull up the Kohlrabi she grew for me on the back stretch by the nature preserve. Who knows why I ate that stuff— I was a picky kid who wouldn't eat sandwiches, yet couldn't get enough of the green alien pod things that Carla coaxed out of her raised beds. My favorite foods then were kohlrabi and fried calamari— alien vegetable and fried squid, who knows. I would pull one of the bulbs up and rinse it off at the garden hose before setting down to snap off the stalks and eat it over by where the tree surgeon had illegally buried the petrified trunks in our yard. I crunched the mild sweetness of the vegetable meat and poked at the petrified trees with bamboo twigs until they frayed or bent limp in my hand. I waved to Carla on her knees in the dirt with the big holey straw hat that scattered speckles of light across her shaded face. In the morning it was easy to be a good girl.

I Am the Cake of Life?

2007-05-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

A customer walked into Finale this afternoon to a friendly but intense (for a bakery) debate between myself and my metalhead coworker about spiritual beliefs. It had started (harmlessly enough) with me explaining my long list of excellent reasons why reciepts should be handed to the customer or immediately discarded upon completion of a transaction. Being the friendly and accepting person that I am, however, I reassured Co-worker that he was not obligated to follow my procedure, it was merely a suggestion to improve our effectiveness and quality of service.
MH: "That's like saying it's okay not to believe in God, but if you don't you're going to hell."
NM: "Well, not really."
MH: "It's exactly the same!"
NM: "Do you believe in God?"
MH: "No!"
NM: "Admirable. Most people these days hedge their bets with agnosticism."
MH: "Not me!"
NM: "What gets you through your day, then?
MH: ::perplexed look::
NM: What's the point? Why bother?"
MH: "The point is... to be here, I guess."
NM: "To be here and enjoy yourself, or be here and help others?"
MH: "Um...."

CUSTOMER: ::cough cough::

NM: How may I help you, sir?
C: I'll have a dark chocolate decadence to go, please.
NM: Would you like an existential dilemma with that?

Anyway, long bike rides and work hours apparently strengthen the idealist in me. This passage I found by Rilke sums up the hamster wheel of questions that my mind has been running on this week rather well.

"We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions," the whole so-called "spirit-world," death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God. But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us."
- Rainer Maria Rilke