Verdict, plus squirrels.

After 24 hours of melodramatically wondering where that thing came from (the 'poem,' not the squirrel), boring several friends with exhaustive speculation, and reading it a million times--I guess I'll say that though I'll never know for sure, signs point to me having written it. These signs include the giant rat, the name Henry, the fact that it is bad, and its overwhelming sentimentality.

Enough about that.


The squirrel, for those of you who are interested, got into that little rotting cage of wood because our old, 'sick' (read: negligent! Am I a bitch, or what?) landlord ripped our roof/ceiling apart about three weeks ago and hasn't been back to fix it since. It was ok for about a day, and then all this rubble started falling from the ceiling. Now I know that it's because creatures have been running around above my head. Awesome.

MEET MY NEW ROOMMATE.

can you see him?

Trance?

Apparently I spent large chunks of senior year in a coma, or drunk, or living as someone else...I don't know. I am sifting through all these files I have in a folder marked "Henry and Clara," and trying to see if there's anything worth recycling as I crack WTTAN (that's "We Things That Are Now") open again in earnest....and most of them are so unfamiliar to me that it is surreal. Not only do I have no recollection of ever seeing them before, but I literally cannot conceive of having written them.

The weirdest thing, though, is some sort of poem that is stuck in between two rough scenes in a file called "to send ben." (As if the title doesn't reveal how old it is, the date says 7/2006. Wowza.) I have NO idea where it came from. I know I didn't write it. But I just have no idea where it came from. I assume the inclusion of the name 'Henry' in it was one of the reasons I noticed it; a Google search is fruitless. I have absolutely no idea. I suppose there's a chance it could be from the novel "Henry and Clara," but I don't think so. I read it over and over and am totally, completely puzzled and weirded out. The line about the rat is something I could have written, because that happened to me once. And the line about the three-legged dog is feeling really familiar. I don't fucking know! It's making me feel really insane.

Anyway, here it is. You don't know what it is, do you?

We went to the Albany Fair

And we went into the Tent of Wonder and Horror

Saw the horse-hair bearded lady and the Tartar with his head drilled full of holes

A three-legged dog; he mostly lay in the corner

A rat the size of a pig- I think it was not actually a rat

A sword-swallower covered in tattoos

But at the end, a pair of girls

Who looked to be embracing

Arms around each other tightly, so tightly, that one couldn’t turn her head to look out of the window she sat behind

Stitched together, flesh sewn to flesh, like a cruel joke made real by the punishing hand of an unkind God

My heart broke for them

To never be apart from another

But as I looked I thought

Might I like to be so with my Henry?

If I had to be so

It would be him I would choose to be knit up with

To never part, never look away

I realized I was wrong

I looked at the girls and could see only the love that they shared

That was keeping them together

Without their love, they could walk away from each other in an instant

My friend Matt and I had the extreme displeasure to work on a show last season that was a huge piece of shit, done by unfriendly, untalented people-- the best kind of theatre! Hooray! Anyway, I just got an email from another theatre with an ad for said show in it. I shared it with Matt, and this is what he had to say:


"HOLY SHIT!!! Who let that unbearable woman back on stage. We should go and demand comps and then throw tomatoes and taunt her and then maybe that awful stage manager will be there and then we can kick her ass and maybe then she’ll smile and then I can find that lighting designer and I can kick his ass and then we will take that stupid directing couple and we can throw them off the roof of the annex and then __________ will be no more and that idiot ________ will at least have an interesting story to tell. OH man. That was a really long sentence. Its just how I feel."

And I couldn't agree more.

All's Faire

My halcyon days of ghost-blogging for The All-For-Nots are at least temporarily on hold (as is the show)...so go watch All's Faire! Some of the same hooligans are responsible for it.

this week

sort of blows. no, it definitely blows.

Also this:

This real-life Pikachu was the only thing that could make me smile during a particularly black period this evening. Let it do the same to you.