burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

Someone posted to LJ:

I'm directing a gender swapped production of Taming of the Shrew being done in Arlington on March 22, 28 and 29. We've got the men playing the women's parts and vice versa. Some people view Shrew as a misogynistic, outdated play. The experiment I wanted to try was whether by swapping the roles it becomes simply a love story between two socially maladjusted people. While I expected this to be interesting, I have been fascinated at what swapping the genders has done. In the hope that some of you will come see it, I won't say more so your own experience won't be tainted one way or the other.

I was really intrigued, so Cate and I went last night. [Verse and Vodka's website; tickets to this show via Brown Paper Tickets]

However, (a) they didn't genderswap the opening frame story (which confused me because I was expecting gender-swap); and (b) they kept all the language intact (so it's all, "your sister Bianca," etc.), which I think lessened a lot of the impact of the gender swap.

Given the LJ post, I was expecting the gender swap to do more than I experienced it actually doing. Petruchio was great -- and the genderswap enables some stuff one couldn't do in standard productions (like, I think it was the first wooing scene, Kate is sitting down and Petruchio sits on her lap, straddling her, which I think would have read much differently if it were a male-presenting person on top of a female-presenting person) -- but mostly I felt like I was just watching any other production of Shakespeare (possibly in part because my brain has gotten somewhat used to parsing people as their character even when that is ostensibly at odds with the gender I'm reading them as).

In the frame story (which I always forget exists), they put a guy in a dress, and when the drunk !lord was wanting to hook up with the "woman" and "she" was putting him off, I felt super-uncomfortable because the expectation is that the audience is laughing because they know that if the guy does get under "her" skirt he'll realize she has a penis and won't that be a terrible shock and ha ha ha -- and hey, that's a very real fear that lots and lots of trans women live with every day. I've read lots of trans women pushing back about the "guy in a dress as humor" trope, but I don't think I actually internalized it until that moment.

When I think about this play, I so want to read Petruchio/Kate as a consensual BDSM relationship, and in the first "wooing" scene it feels plausible; but then when Petruchio is keeping her from eating or sleeping it's clear that Kate hasn't consented to this dynamic and while I understand how we're supposed to parse Petruchio's plan, it makes me uncomfortable -- and as it continues with the sun/moon etc. thing on the way back, to think of it as leading up to a consensual BDSM relationship makes me think of lots of sketchy narratives wherein the guy dominates the woman without her consent and she ends up liking it (despite her expectations) and that somehow retroactively makes his boundary-crossing behavior okay.

I also didn't get much sense in this production of Kate herself coming to be sort of in on the joke -- she does during the encounter with the old man after the sun/moon bit, and Petruchio's whispering to her at some point (I forget if it was during that scene or the closing scene), but while I want to read Kate's final speech as her being super over-the-top saying shit she doesn't believe to just piss off all these other women, I didn't really get that sense from this scene.

They don't close out the frame story, and I was thinking about what the (existence of the) frame story suggests about the main play (reversals, illusions, etc.), but I wasn't really coming up with anything -- so I went to Wikipedia, as one does.

Which wasn't helpful for this specifically, but which did quote [RSC] director Conall Morrison:

By the time you get to the last scene all of the men – including her father are saying – it's amazing how you crushed that person. It's amazing how you lobotomised her. And they're betting on the women as though they are dogs in a race or horses. It's reduced to that. And it's all about money and the level of power. [...] It is so self-evidently repellent that I don't believe for a second that Shakespeare is espousing this. And I don't believe for a second that the man who would be interested in Benedict and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet and all these strong lovers would have some misogynist aberration. It's very obviously a satire on this male behaviour and a cautionary tale

I found this interesting because I know I didn't even think about the contest from that one-level-back perspective or about the implications of everyone's glee at Kate's having been tamed.

My Riverside Shakespeare (2nd Edition) says:

Northrop Frye once remarked that the Katherina of Act I is not really dissimilar from the Katherina of Act V; at the beginning of the comedy she is persecuting her sister Bianca, and at the end she is engaged in precisely the same activity---except that now she has learned how to do it with social approval on her side. (Anne Barton, p. 139)

and

the stage convention which allows the actress playing the part to show plainluy in her face that she falls in love with Petruchio the moment she sets eyes on him has much to recommend it. Heartily sick of a single life, not to mention all the adulation showered on Bianca, she is really more than ready to give herself to a man but, imprisoned within a set of aggressive attitudes which have become habitual, has not the fainest idea how to do so. (Ibid)

I think one of my difficulties with Kate's trajectory through the play is that I know so little about her pre-Petruchio. We see her fighting with Bianca, but we know almost nothing about either of them. We're told that Kate is shrewish bladdy blah in a way that suggests she acts like that to everyone and has for a while. Offstage she breaks the lute (of the tutor who's just there to woo her sister, so possibly she's not just being peevish for the sake of being peevish...). We don't really know why she's so upset at Bianca -- when she's asking Bianca which suitor Bianca wants to marry and Bianca's all, "Whichever you want to marry you can have," there's lots of room for Bianca to play that in various ways (is she refusing to answer Kate's question to provoke her? does she really desire Kate's happiness, as a plain reading of the text would suggest?) and this production just played it as a plan reading of the text, so we get no insight into why Kate is so upset with Bianca, and Bianca herself remains flat and uninteresting. (Not that I'm saying you have to stage this scene against the plain reading of the text in order to make sense of Kate's crankiness at Bianca or in order to make Bianca and interesting and/or complex character, just that this scene is one of your only opportunities to do so -- well certainly for the former; admittedly we do see Bianca with the tutors picking a favorite and participating in a ruse, so she's not entirely the flat paragon of passive virtue that the early scenes might suggest.)

My Riverside also says of Petruchio's "taming" of Kate:

he goes on assuring her, despite everything she can do and say to prove the contrary, that she herself is gentle, rational, and loving: exactly the hidden qualities in her that he needs to foster and encourage. Petruchio wins in the end not because of superior force but because he succeeds in showing Katherina both the unloveliness of the false personality she has adopted and the emotional truth of the self she has submerged. (139)

I don't buy that, because whatever he actually believes about her (and I do think he genuinely likes/cares about her), all this rhapsodizing about her is entirely enmeshed with the "taming" such that everything he says to her feels false or cheap or insincere or IDK the exact adjective I'm looking for here.

The Riverside also says of Bianca: "Once married to Lucentio, she ceases to be 'sweet Bianca.' At the wedding feast itself she reveals an unexpected streak of bawdry, willfulness, and arrogance" (140), which I thought was interesting -- I think we tend to have a fairly flat impression of Bianca (because there's not much there there), and we interrogate Kate's closing speech to the exclusion of interrogating anything else about that closing scene (and I include myself in that "we").

( more details about the performance )

So, classes started in earnest last week. Tuesday I came close to feeling like I was treading water. All 3 of my professors had stuff for me to do. Yes, summer is over. Each day of the week was progressively calmer, though.

Friday night I went to Wicked at the Opera House with Allie because a friend of mine had a conflict come up and couldn't go (and so gave me the tickets he and his girlfriend were going to use). We went to My Thai Vegan Cafe (famed for its fake meat, apparently), and I was sort of overwhelmed by the fact that I could eat everything on the menu.

I am unimpressed by my Jesus and the Gospels class, but we shall see.

On Saturday I took another trip to the Fells.

Sunday morning, Ian H. preached on the 1 Timothy reading ("Even Me! Even You...."). He opened with reminding us what a bad guy Paul was before his conversion and then talked about his own faith journey and said that often God asks us to do something and we think, "No, I'm not good enough," but God meets us right where we are.

At CWM, Anthony Z. from Interfaith Worker Justice preached on Psalm 14 ("No Not One"). Eh, "worker justice" memes make me somewhat uncomfortable, and I felt a little like it was trying too hard to fit exegesis into what was really a worker justice speech -- though the sermon I have currently tabled for that lectionary set is the least sermon-y sermon I've written, I think, so I feel a little hypocritical lodging that criticism (and as I learned in trying to write that sermon for yesterday, I don't have a good solid definition of what a sermon "is").

(Our closing hymn was "Solidarity Forever" -- which is to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and Pr. Lisa joked that hey great, she could offer this to all the churches in the South that don't like "The Battle Hymn of the Republic.")

***

After morning church was Rooftop People. I didn't really know what to expect, and it was more discussion than support group, which isn't exactly what I was expecting, but it was good.

We read Mark 2:1-12 (from whence the name of the group) and had a bunch of good conversations about it.

Think outside the box. Easier said than done when constrained by needing to not get fired, etc. The friends didn't know how Jesus would react -- they had a strong sense of what needed to be done to help their friend and so they did whatever they could to get their friend to a place where that could happen.

Were they cutting in line? Story implies that the crowds were listening to Jesus preach, not necessarily there for healing.

We talked about the fact that Jesus first says, "Your sins are forgiven," and only does the physical healing after the lawyers complain -- if the lawyers had just said, "That's interesting," would Jesus have not done the physical healing at all? I said that one of the things I was thinking about was all the disability politics I've encountered, about how physical limitations aren't necessarily inherently problematic, it's society that's the problem (people who are in wheelchairs, if buildings are wheelchair-accessible, then they're not at a disadvantage), so one way of understanding the story is Jesus recognizing that physical healing wasn't what was most needed, but that what was most needed was for the person to know, "You are right with God."
Someone else commented that in that socio-historical moment, physical infirmity was often understood to be a result of sin, so Jesus could have been understood as going to the root of the problem rather than just treating the symptoms. (I thought about mentioning the "Who sinned that this person was born blind?" story to emphasize that Jesus didn't believe in that causation model, but partly there wasn't opportunity to, and partly I felt like we all understood that and so it didn't necessarily need to be said.) Someone else commented on it as a holistic model of healing rather than focusing solely on bodily healing.
Someone else (who works in social work) commented that although we don't tell people, "Your sins are forgiven," but we do try to help people (e.g., abuse survivors) internalize the fact that it was not their fault. Someone who works as a nurse practitioner commented that yeah, we say, "It's not your fault," to people with cancer and etc., too -- and sometimes it is their fault (e.g., smokers who get lung cancer), but really, it's not our place to judge.
* cure vs. healing *
Folks who work in medicine can't necessarily "cure" people, but healing can be instantaneous. Healing is also a long process -- a lot of people self-sabotage, because okay you're gonna have this different life but "What will it be like?" Also, "What will be expected of me?"

Who are our Rooftop People? We know (from our jobs/roles as caregives) that people need help/ers, so why is it so hard for us to ask for help ourselves?

***

Autumn weather has hit!

I am considering investing in leggings to wear under my denim skirt, because finding dress pants (or even nice jeans) that fit and that I like has been fairly fruitless, plus I am not a fan of not having pockets, and women's dress pants are faily at pockets.

Future-sister-in-law sent me the final decision on bridesmaid dress -- this dress (in Wisteria -- a light purple). I'm not a big fan, but we'll see. Must hie myself to a David's Bridal and actually try one on.

Friday

At South Station, on the phone with Ari while waiting for my train, I gave money to a woman claiming to need bus fare up to Laconia.  I walk by people begging for change all over Harvard Square all the time and don't engage them AT ALL except for like a nod of the head or a "Sorry," even though I know I SHOULD, but sometimes I'll get approached by someone with some story I don't believe (though I believe the person is IN NEED -- because you don't go up to random people on the street and tell them some pathetic story unless there is something Not Okay in your life) and practice an act of radical generosity.

    When I got off the train at Norwood, I was still on the phone (duh) and my mom hugged me and (taking a wild guess) said, "Hi, Ari."
    My dad met us at the train station so he could take my mom's stuff home.  She had to pee, so she asked my dad to drive us to the coffeehouse so we'd get there sooner.  I was still on the phone when we got there (attempting to wrap up conversation while at the same time keeping an ear out in case I was supposed to be engaged with my parents' conversation).  When we got out, my dad said, "Bye, Ari."
    My mom said: "We all love Ari, even though we haven't actually met her."  ♥

The last time I saw Carrie Cheron perform, she recognized me from our conversations when she was busking in Davis Square and said that she's bad with names but remembers faces.  Before this concert I was sitting and talking with my mom over dinner, and during the intermission we were talking with the mother of one of my brother's classmates (I also got a slice of white&chocolate cake -- thumbs up).  So I wasn't ENTIRELY surprised when, when we were leaving after the concert, she said hi to me and said she'd seen me earlier.  I said I hadn't seen her in like two years.  Checking my tag, it's actually more like 3 years (almost exactly -- Nov. 13, 2006 to Nov. 20, 2009).  We talked about how I haven't seen her 'cause she doesn't so many of her shows are private shows or out in Western Mass. or something and how I didn't know a lot of the songs she played because I only know the stuff on her album.

During the show, someone in the audience asked at one point where her CD release party back in 2006 was (The Burren).  Someone (same person?) asked when she was releasing her next CD.
Carrie: "When I get some grant money."
audience member: "I know a guy named Grant."

While we were chatting, I told her that I had grown up in this town and blah blah blah.

me: "This is my mom."
CC: "Hi, mom."
me: "Sorry -- Barbara."
CC: "Hi, Barbara, I'm Carrie."

We chatted a bunch, and she hugged me goodbye.  Yes, ladyvivien, I know you're jealous :)

Edit: I forgot to mention that she played a cover at one point and from the very beginning I knew I knew it, though it took me until about the time the title was sung to remember the title -- "Angel from Montgomery" (John Prine).  Wow that brought me back to college (and made me think of anniesj, though I don't know if she's actually the person I got the mp3 from). /edit

Saturday

Scott and I had brunch at Toscanini's.  We both got the fried egg sandwich :)

He kept seeing people he knew or thought he knew from MIT, and I commented that I sometimes I feel like I expect to see people I know and then I remember that I don't know that many people in Boston and anyway in this area (off Mass. Ave. between Central and MIT) I wasn't likely to see anyone I knew.
And then jadasc and eisa walked in.  They sat with us for a bit until Scott had to leave to prep for SPLASH.
I went with him, met his brother, and then made my way back to Central Square T.  Where I saw them AGAIN.  And M-E and Nathan.

I was home for a few hours and then spent ~6hrs with Allie!

I had seen a flyer at Mr. Crepe for Hedwig and the Angry Inch @ the Arsenal and thought of Allie, so we made plans to go see it.

We had dinner at Porcini's.  Which was probably the fanciest restaurant in the area.  It wasn't bad, but I wasn't particularly blown away.
I've seen the Hedwig movie once (and wasn't in love with it) and had never seen the (a?) stage version.  I forget sometimes what a dark dark story it is.
After the show we got hot chocolate at Algiers in Harvard Square.  (I got hot orange mint chocolate, with whipped cream, because I could.)

Sunday

I got up an hour early to finish my sermon.  \o/  (Okay, I went to bed a little before 1am and got up a little before 6:30am, so I was totally not prayerful during prayertime at morning church and slept through the sermon, but...)

My mom's half-sister dragged her onto being on facebook, so she friended me and so I accepted and friended my dad (and my aunt Marian).  I've been somewhat resistant to being facebook friend with family, but given the way I use facebook these days, it really isn't a problem for me to be facebook friends with family.

On my dad's profile:

RECENT ACTIVITY
[my dad] and [my mom] are now friends.
[my mom] I thought we were more than friends ;)

Also, earlier this month my brother commented on my dad's Wall:

just curious, why doesn't your relationship status say "married"?

[my dad]: Originally, it was going to say, "In a Relationship with Golden Lion Tamarin" cause it worked with the silverback gorilla picture, but after I'd put in "In a Relationship," I found I could only end with someone already on facebook. So I just left it.

Today is the last Sunday of Year B.  Happy New Year's Eve, Church.

I haven't posted church writeups since the beginning of September.  /o\  I private-posted the backlog to to be finished in some mythical "later."  I'm not really optimistic about being any more on top of writeups in Year C, but I feel better starting with a clean slate.

Last night I went to The Donkey Show ("disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream") at the A.R.T. with L.

( Read more... )

Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd)
by Gilbert and Sullivan
Directed by Gordon Greenberg
5/15/2009 – 6/14/2009
BU Theatre - Mainstage

I knew almost nothing about Pirates of Penzance going into this (Gilbert and Sullivan isn't really my thing, so I haven't seen any of their stuff -- assuming we don't count the 8th grade chorus having done Mikado, Penzance, and Pinafore, so you saw all 3 by the time you got through junior high, but which I barely remember), but my impression in watching the show was that they basically kept the original plot and just bawdied it up with the way it was performed.

Reading the Wiki article, however, apparently there were at least a couple major plot changes.  ( spoilers for both versions )

Friday, Cate and Allie and I went to Theatre @ First's production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.  We got dinner at Blue Shirt Cafe and people were making noises about dessert, so we went to Harvard Square to get cupcakes at Sweet [website -- warning: sound], but I wasn't particularly moved, so then we went to Hrerell's and I got an "Elvis' Favorite," which unfortunately I wasn't that taken with (though I did get a coupon for $1 off my next ice cream purchase there).

Over dinner, I mentioned that Ian had said it's Shakespeare's best play.  Allie (the only one of us who has actually read the play) looked at me disbelievingly.  I shrugged, since the only thing I knew about the play was that it contained the stage direction "Exeunt, pursued by a bear."  Watching the play, once the BATSHIT CRAZY hit I understood why she had reacted as she did.

It's a well-done production (see bard_in_boston review, for example), but, yeah.  ( Read more... )

***

This was the first time I'd been in Unity Church (inroite?).

In the room the play was in, on the wall was:

...it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.
-Luke 12:32

I looked it up when I got home and yeah, not quite as universal salvation-y when you fill in the ellipsis.  Oh well.

In browsing some of the literature outside the sanctuary, I learned that Unity is an actual denomination, though it sounded a lot like Unitarian Universalism (though definitively monotheistic, and they seemed to use some Christian liturgy and do Communion and stuff).

***

We talked about various theatre goings-on, so for reference:

Spring Awakening
Through May 9
The Boston Center for the Arts (539 Tremont St., Boston)
Through May 24
The Colonial Theatre (106 Boylston St., Boston)

Looking at the Zeitgeist Stage page, apparently Zeitgeist is doing the play that was the inspiration for the musical that's playing at the Colonial (which Jessie saw and hated).

'Tis Pity She's a Whore @ the Loeb Experimental Theater
Show Times:
May 1-3 at 7:30 pm
May 7-9 at 7:30 pm

NYC's Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park is doing Twelfth Night this summer (June 10 - July 12), but Google is not turning up anything for Boston's Shakespeare in the Park for this summer.

Pirates! (Or, Gilbert and Sullivan Plunder'd)
by Gilbert and Sullivan
Directed by Gordon Greenberg
BU Theatre - Mainstage
5/15/2009 – 6/14/2009

Sat, March 21 - Fight Night: Fight Call & Violence Design, 6:30pm
Pre-show talk with Robert Walsh, Director of Coriolanus

I think it was actually the guy who played Aufidius who said the interesting stuff I jotted down.

He said that staged combat is more storytelling than martial art.

He talked about combat as being a way we communicate when words fail.

I think it was in talking about fight choreography that he talked about something (I didn't quite catch what) as Lego blocks, with which we create different physical sentences.

***

Caius. Martius. Coriolanus.

[Note: Most every performance has a free pre- or post-show talk/reception, schedule listed on this link, plus the pay-what-you-can Conversation.]

( spoilers for the play in general and specifically this production of it )

Stephen Greenblatt said directors and actors are usually "evasive," but Melia Bensussen (Director, ASP's Merchant of Venice) and Jeremiah Kissel (Actor playing Shylock) like never shut up.  It was really interesting hearing their impassioned thoughts on the decisions they made for this production and their thoughts on the play more broadly.

The other two panelists -- Bernie Steinberg (President & Director, Harvard Hillel) and Michelle Ephraim (Associate Professor of English at Worcester Poly Tech) -- seemed almost extraneous.  Though I need to email the Hillel guy 'cause his blurb on the program talked about him doing bridge-building and I obv. wanted to talk to him about that but I didn't catch him after the show.

I didn't take notes, so this is all from memory.  [Oh, and it's not necessarily obvious from the commentary, but the two ASP folks are practicing Jews.]  ( Read more... )

( gym: Wed.-Fri. )

***

I feel like I've been on summer vacation since Wednesday.

Friday was the now traditional "Light Lunch" followed by an afternoon off.  Peter and Greg walked over to lunch with us.  I picked up a small whoopie pie for dessert, and Nicki was asking me what the filling was, like was it flavored, and I was like, "Um, it's a whoopie pie... it's just cream."  Katie reminded me that we'd had a conversation before about how whoopie pies are a New England thing.  (Greg didn't know what they were, but we're used to that 'cause he spent a good chunk of time in Israel.)

Cate joined later, and some I ended up telling her about due South fandom.  I don't think I'd really realized before that CKR was in due South and that's where everyone initially knows him from.  (Yes, apparently I think of The Canadian Actor Mafia as its own fandom.)  I've never seen due South, but I was recalling that I did sporadically watch some tv show with Mounties when I was younger, and really, how many tv shows about Mounties aired on broadcast American tv in the 1990s?  Dad, do you remember anything about this?

Speaking of fandoms I'm not in...
via monkeycrackmary: Steph in Africa (on scans_daily)

Anyway, we hung out for a couple hours and then went our separate ways.  I did a couple errands -- though not as many as I should have.  We reconvened for dinner at CPK at the Pru.  Cate was running late, but we still had our food (I got the mushroom pizza.) with enough time to eat and not feel rushed.  (We ended up getting to Park St. like right at 7:30 -- minor T delays was something of a theme with me that afternoon -- but ASP never starts on time, so we were okay.)

That morning, I bumped into Layna on my way to the T and Allie at the T, and on the Green Line to Prudential I saw Meredith.

***

ASP's 4th season wrapped up with King John, which neither Cate nor I had ever seen/read before.  (And I didn't look at the synposis, opting to just go with the flow of the play)

Turns out it was really good.  Both the play and the production.  It was very modern -- people in suits, drinking martinis, brandishing pistols, etc. -- and that made SO MUCH SENSE.  And the play itself is interesting and engaging (and okay there were a few bits I could have done without, but that's usually true of me and lots of the comedic bits Shakespeare sticks in the histories).  I told Cate afterward that it was probably my favorite of the season, definitely made me excited about giving them money for my subscription for next year.  She commented that the other productions this year had schticks, like the all-female Macbeth, the Henry V with only five actors, and she was like, "See, when you have a multi-gender cast of more than half a dozen, you can do great things."  I commented that while this one also had a "schtick" (the contemporary, shades of mafioso, setting) it was more of a theme -- we agreed that this was like Titus, which was the play we saw last season and which was also awesome.  I also said that they didn't overdo it, which she agreed, and she commented that ironically, she thought if they'd done more with the schtick in their production of Tempest this season it might well have worked a lot better for her.

( spoilers )

***

As I expected, I had mixed feelings about the apartment I looked at this morning.  It's a two-level two-bedroom condo.  The woman living there is looking for someone quiet, and part of me is like, "I'm never home, and when I am I'm mostly just playing on the internet," but part of me worries that I would be on edge, worrying.  The two bedrooms abut each other, and she mentioned that for example, "If I make a late-night phone call I go downstairs" (the upper level is the two bedrooms and a full bath, the lower level is a living room and eat-in kitchen and half-bath) and yeah, that kind of quiet consideration feels maybe excessive.

It's got a nice basement I could use to store some of my boxes (though yes I know I should purge before I move) plus washer-dryer.  She has RCN wireless internet; I would need wired Internet and would like cable tv.  The bedroom is good-sized (11x14... my current one is about 11x11) and with a good-sized closet.

There's a nice little playground across the street, including checkerboard tables with attached seats.  It's something like a 15-minute walk to Harvard Square, and I could pick up the 86 (direct to my campus) like five minutes from the house.  It's near a Market Basket, plus the FoodMaster by Inman and the Union Square Farmer's Market and it's a 5-10min. walk to the 87 to Porter (Shaw's).

She rents from the absentee landlords (they're in California, but apparently there's a local repairperson who's good... and the condo was built in the 1980s and is in good shape) and was talking about a month-to-month lease, which makes me nervous, though it also provides flexibility should I decide it wasn't working out and wanted to move (and I do trust that if she decided to move -- she's been flirting with the idea of buying a place herself, but doesn't think that'll happen any time soon -- she would give me plenty of notice).

I'm not under pressure to decide SOON, which I appreciate.

Part of me feels like I should just wait until July, when the bulk of the August 1 openings will be posted.  And part of me thinks I should actually check out July 1 openings 'cause if there's something that's a great fit then it would be worth double-paying rent for a month.

***

I went to Gusti's graduation party (at the Nave Gallery at CHPC).  The official start time was 4:30, so I left my house at 4:30.  (I live about a five-minute walk away.)  It was really nice that so many of Gusti's communities were there (people from her neighborhood, people from CHPC, people from school -- including her undergrad [she just graduated from HDS]).  I actually chatted with people I didn't already know.  *proud of me*

SarahD. was talking about Adam Sandler's new movie (the Zohan one), which apparently includes Israel-Palestine issues.  I now feel like I need to see this movie.  (She also mentioned how she walked out of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.  I was so pleased.)

***

I was chatting with mjules after I got home, and it's good to have someone who knows what you're talking about when you wtf at "The Devil Is Bad" by the W's (Track 8 on Disc 1 of WOW 1999 The Year's Top Christian Artists and Songs).

Track 12 is the Supertones' "Little Man," which brought me back to the Supertones concert Tim took us to back when I was in high school, which I had totally forgotten about until now.

***

I was okay in the heat today, and my apartment still feels decent.  I am very pleased by this.  (Though I expect it will get worse as the days continue to high near 90F and it only cools off to like 70F overnight.)

Today's Lenten Labyrinth meditation:

    Here are two Holy Week reflections for this day.  The first is: how well are you carrying the cross of Christ?  Does the work of bringing justice and peace to the world, of redeeming it, fit your shoulders?  How involved are you in the sufferings of the poor, society's weak and little ones who lack power?
    The second reflection is: whatever your personal cross or crosses, are you engaged in the creative chemistry of converting them into something that that will enhance you and the world?

The reading also notes:

    "Take up your cross"; what does that mean?  In the Gospel of Luke it seems very evident.  Crosses were for revolutionaries.  They were the instruments of capital punishment for anyone who opposed Rome, who worked actively against the establishment to lift the oppression of the people.  All crosses can be revolutionary, socially renewing as they help to redeem--to make holy--the world.

---

"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
"Sin is necessary, but all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well."
-Julian of Norwich, Showings

Five good things about today:
1. [draws hearts around self and gen bff]
2. I headed next door for something this morning, and the weather was so nice.  (weather.com said Boston 10am: 36F feels like 30F)  Alyssa B-G was heading out at the same time, and I said, "I thought I was the only person crazy enough to go outside without a jacket in this weather."  She said she finds bracing cold good for waking her up :)
3. Spangler pasta (gnocchi, spinach & mushrooms & tomato & olives & sundried tomato, with alfredo with pesto).
4. After ~8hrs of sleep, I had hoped to feel more well-rested than I did this morning, but thankfully it didn't affect my day too much.
5. On my way to the T after work, I bumped into Layna -- with her Korean tutor, who says I have soft hair :)

Three things I did well today:
1. I did ~20min in the weight room this morning.
2. I called a friend, because she e-mailed me asking me to.  Which feels more like, "Yay, I got to bring some grace into the world," than an Accomplishment per se.
     Mal: Hey, little one. Understand your part in all this?
     River: Do you?
     Mal: It's what I do, darlin'. It's what I do.
     -Serenity
3. I finally sent out the Unit directory (includes everyone's office phone, home contact info, assistant office contact info) -- people keep asking me for people's contact info, and I'm happy to pull up the document, but it would be much more efficient for everyone to have the information themselves; but I keep not actually sending it out, for reasons that are unclear to me.

Two things I am looking forward to (doing [better]) tomorrow:
["anything that you're looking forward to, that means you're facing tomorrow with joy, not trepidation," as Ari says]
1. Lunch with Cate.
2. Getting to bed earlier tomorrow night than I am tonight.

---

In one of my rare moments actually logged in to facebook, the update feed informed that Gusti was attending "PASSIONS," so of course I had to click to see what it was 'cause hi, this is Gusti.

Name:        PASSIONS
Tagline:      a Passion Play for Skeptics, Believers, and the Third Millennium
Host:        HDS 2984 "Passion Play" Seminar
Type:        Music/Arts - Performance

In this new and original work written, directed, and performed by the members of Professor Matthew Myer Boulton’s “Passion Play” seminar, the four passion narratives in the New Testament gospels intertwine with contemporary voices that interpret, critique, and encounter these narratives today. With original music composed by HDS student Robert Swartz. All are welcome -- admission is FREE! Come out and support original community theater!

So I put it on my calendar for tonight.  ( INRI )