Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Canada Day and a Theatre by the Sea.

Yay, Canada!! Happy Canada day!!

In honour of the country I love, I dressed up all in red and white, and Blair and I covered ourselves in Canada stickers and went to steal toilet paper and internet from the fancy hotel next door.

Unfortunately, there our plans went wrong. I had TP duty but couldn't get the cover off the dispenser to grab the roll, and so was forced to just unravel sheet after sheet into my bag. Meanwhile, Blair's laptop was still refusing to connect to any wireless network.

Luckily, there's a complimentary compie for guests to chekc their email and such on. How convenient!! Despite my not being a guest, nobody questioned our presence.

Upon signing onto my email, I learned that a war has been going on in my absence, between Fil and Kai. And what a war!

Kai, Kai, rah rah rah!!!

He's awesome!!

I was a big part of this war, it seems, absence notwithstanding. And both Mama and Kai have been fighting on my behalf, but mostly Kai.

I have such an awesome brother.

And Mama, whom I messaged, kept assuring me not to worry about Lord Doofus (my name, not hers).

Worry? Why should I, of all of us, care about him? I'm away for over a month yet, and moving immediately after I get back. I'm more worried about Kai and Mum; some of the shit he said in his last angry email was harsh, although so utterly ridiculous as to be be hilarious.

Anyways, speaking of moving, I GOT MY FUNDING!!!!!

-does happy dance-

That cuts the last tie that I'd need him for. Although I could still sue him for tuition if I chose, according to Anne. But "how will I pay" is no longer hanging at the edge of my thoughts, thank the goddess. Faith only goes so far.

Actually, that's not true. Faith does go that far. But the mundane world crashes in every once in a while.

Back to here: two other things of import happened today: the first, a heated discussion with Anne. Now, these happen quite regularly, and are pleasing to both of us, but today's was more vehement than most.

See, we were trying to explain two different things to each other from two different points of view. So, understandably, we both got frustrated. Now, normally I'd be like whatever, move on, but a chord struck deep.

It all started with her askimg whether Mama and Brian were just friends, or friends with benefits. She always wants to know a lot about Mama because I think she sees a lot of Mama in her and her in Mama and wants to know as much as possible, if that makes sense.

Now, I replied that I didn't really know and didn't really care enough to know. This led to her asking why I didn't want to know, and why wouldn't I want to know about Mama's sex life? To me, the whole situation with Mama and Brian isn't me actively evading the knowledge, it's just not inquiring further about the information since neither of them have chosen to volunteer it.

The problem lay more in what came next. See, she believes that to be close to someone is to share every detail about one's life with them, and as the other person you should want to know. No secrets, because to her that equals hiding something which equals lying which equals hurt. Her own personal issues, thanks to her history with her own Lord Doofus. Now, I definitely don't agree with this philosophy. There are some things that are private because they lose something in the sharing, and some things that just plain aren't your business. I, of course, told her this.

Then she continued the discussion by asking how I think this point of view (mine) affects my writing, since she also believes the same thing of writing. This is where things got personal and emotional for me, because writing is my passion and I know I'm an excellent writer. I snidely wanted to point out that her point of view is probably why she's not a good writer, but since I haven't read her writing and was feeling nasty, I kept it to myself. I tried instead to explain that in writing a novel, you're guiding the reader towards certain emotions, realizations and thoughts, and to do so you can't just give them all the info at once; you have to choose which things you divulge in order to further that.

Then she said nothing personal, but someone who did that was no different than a politician or anyone else looking to manipulate someone to their own devious ends. Implying (to me) that I was looking hurt those other people.

Woah, Skippy. Hold the phone. Don't take it personally? Part of me understood we had two different kinds of writing and manipulation in mind, that she had self-admitted issues about what she percieved as 'keeping secrets', even as author-to-reader. But still.

It didn't help that I've learned that absolutely everything has to have deeper meaning to her. 'Why didn't Dakota/Colleen/Mama participate more in pole dancing? That Colleen and Dakota physically couldn't, she accepted with difficulty. And Mama? She decided that having planned and paid for it, she had earned the right to sit out and watch after a round or two.

But no. There has to be more to it. WHO CARES IF THERES MORE TO IT, THAT WAS ENOUGH OF AN EXPLANATION FOR ME!

"So then I have to ask, what do you think she's afraid of?"

I. Am. So. Fucking. Sick. Of. Her. Questions.

Judgments, even. Because even though they're for her own curiousity, I want to sew her mouth shut sometimes.

Everything has to be read deeper into, and all her thoughts are assertions. You're required to defend everything like a thesis to convince her she's wrong. She'll accept a new idea, fine, but you have to back it up extremely thoroughly. Which often pushes me to become--surprise!--defensive.

I feel bad
(don't be!) about getting so pissed off at her because she's a good person at heart and has done a lot for me, so I've been suppressing these thoughts until they could come spilling out onto paper, if not spilling out with perfect clarity.

God save me from professors. And let's not forget that she often mistakes trusting her first instinct with trusting her first thought. Two very different things indeed.

But enough about her. I could keep bitching all night, but then my fingers would be too cramped to write about the Minack Theatre and Jason, the play we saw there.

The Minack is an outdoor theatre built in the 1920s into the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean. Totally awesome, and the acoustics were amazing, although by the end of the night, I was wearing 4 layers and a blanket just to keep warm. the damp had also set into my joints so that I could barely walk, and now everytime I sniffle, the mucous tastes of salt.

Cool play, too. It consisted of 2 men and 3 women playing every role of the classic (ish) greek tragedy with a comedic twist. y first encounter with Jason was when he heroically made his entrance with one leg propped up on the row above me, conveniently placing his nether regions in my face, around eye-level 6 inches away. His toga ended above his knees when he was standing normally, so let's not even talk about the heights it achieved hiked up like that.

We were sitting like third row from the stage, near the end. The seats were quite literally hewn from the cliffside. The higher ones were long benches with grass cleverly grown on them for padding (ish), but down where we were, we actually had individually carved seats (kinda).

The play itself was fairly funny (and supremely weird in that way that only the Brits have), with added creepiness and much confusion. And it continued to be funny until the last bit, where the tragedy suddenly kicks in and takes over the humour completely. It ends with Medea killing her twin babies as she does in the real tragedy of the that name.
Oh, and let's not forget taking out of the holy water the red-soaked cloths that represented her babies AND LOOKED LIKE INTESTINES!!!

Whee.

Oh, and there were amazing and strange plants growing all around there, all huge and all indescribable. I tried to take pickies to express the things that for once, words can't.

Blessed be.

Pink is Blair.

Lah.

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