Monday, October 31, 2005

9:37 PM - see what happens when I don't get my Homestar Runner on time?!??

miscellaneous rambling things on my mind

I made hot chai tonight and the caffeine is making me somewhat less than sleepy. There's no better time to drool half-coherent thoughts into my blog for all my loyal subjects. Erm.... readers.

Tonight I've been noticing the way my arms and my body have changed since I have been training for about a month. I know that no one gets in shape overnight but... I feel buff. My muscles are getting some density and some tone, and I can see a few of the veins in my arms. It seems like I'm constantly working with my abs, just because that's the reality of trying to do this kind of work, it's lots of abs. We do separate ab conditioning, too. I've also been trying to keep up on shoulder strengthening, which is good because we're working through some of the painful scar tissue that's leftover from my surgery a couple years ago, and through some of the mental blocks associated with that injury. Right now I feel strong and competent. I'm physically exhausted pretty much constantly.

The flip side of the body stuff is that circus hurts a lot. Everyone who starts, or in my case starts up again after an absence, goes through a process of developing a tougher body and calloused skin. Right now I've got bruises that show very clearly where the ropes wrap around my arms, swollen lumps from balancing on my abdomen on a trapeze bar, and a now-healing gash on my ankle where I rushed after practicing hanging upside down by flexing both feet over a trapeze bar. My hands have adapted nicely, though, with no blister issues, which can be a big problem for people.

We had a lot of rain, but this week, autumn in Vermont is beautiful. Things are warm and the leaves are falling like cherry blossom petals in an anime about lovelorn teenage schoolgirls (or samurai). The sun is bright and the skies are clear. At night there are zillions of stars. When I travel, the stars are a great comfort to me, because I know the constellations and because the stars are the same almost everywhere I've ever been. It's like a second home. (Conversely, looking at the stars in Hawaii was terrifying; I might have a total breakdown if I ever visit Australia).

There's going to be a student recital on December 3 in the afternoon, and it looks like I'll be performing a re-invented version of the blindfolded spinning piece I did at last year's fundraiser. It's actually really nice to take something that I wasn't very satisfied with and try to find what works about it and what can be improved. My instinct was just to discard it and start over again, but this way, we're not starting from the very first step. I actually am really excited about tightening up the movement and choreography and I'm also playing with some new music..... It's lots of fun.

I'm going to apply for a job tomorrow. I'm anxious about it. I can't be unemployed forever, though, and this will help me have a bit more of a place in the community. It's good to put down some roots, even if part of my brain keeps saying, "We can't stay here forever, we can't stay here forever." I know, but we're here now, and the training is really important.

I've definitely been fluxing emotionally a lot. My dreams are really vivid, and a lot of them are about the past. I even had a bit of an online outburst at someone who's part of the Puzzle Pirates island design group, and I felt bad about that. Putting things in perspective, I had been very patient in the months leading up to this point, and I really could have used some help from the other more senior designers or the lead artist, and I did apologize, but I wish that I had done something that would have helped the team's morale instead of bruised it further. Even though I was essentially "right" about the issue, that doesn't make me feel any happier about the way things worked out between people.

I need a massage. Better yet, I need to date a massage therapist. Any takers? :-P

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

2:54 PM - mumble mumble mumble

oh crap, Tony's going to talk about feminism

There's an informal student performance/recital here at the school here in early December. Instead of trying to come up with an idea for a brand new piece, I am instead trying to revisit the blindfolded spinning piece that I performed at the fundraiser last October. The most frequent comment was some version of, "You could really see through that blindfold, couldn't you?" when in fact no I could not. As part of working on convincing people that I can't see and creating a more intentional creative quality, I'm looking to Zhang Ziyi and the House of Flying Daggers for inspiration.

I should point out that I downloaded a copy of this movie, which is not something I ever do, because usually if a movie or an album or a book inspires me, I think that it's common courtesy to support the artists and buy the product. In this case, though, I have some serious issues with the movie and I'm really only looking at Zhang Ziyi's performance in the first 15 minutes. Since martial arts and acrobatic dance are about as close as you can get without actually finding another blindfolded circus aerialist, I'm trying to watch how she convinces the viewer of her blindness with her posture and movement. The movie itself is pretty bad on several levels, and it doesn't deserve to be in my collection. Director Zhang Yimou is clearly out of his element, and probably deserves to be pummeled with a wet fish.

Here comes the feminist part that you were all dreading: When is Zhang Ziyi going to play an actual empowered female role that doesn't get subjugated by men at every turn? It's very disappointing. The whole blindness thing could have been really kickass if she wasn't completely frail, indecisive, and unable to compete against men in a fight. I don't think I've ever seen her win a battle against another main character, at least not in the films I've seen (Crouching Tiger, Hero, and now Flying Daggers). It's hard to be inspired when her roles are consistently pretty but ultimately weak and helpless. I'm frustrated because I thought she was going to be this liberating, empowering figure for my generation, and instead she's simply reinforncing both the inequality of gender in Chinese culture and the disempowering stereotypes of Asians in Western media. Thanks, kid. It's at the point where I want to write her a letter asking her to choose better roles.

Luckily, I read a story today about someone who is inspiring and able to stand up for herself. If younger generations are looking for a woman with courage and strength, Sheryl Swoopes is a good place to start.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

1:24 PM - exploring your world...

street sign of the day

Silent Way. With a smaller sign right below that says. "Dead End."

It's right next to a cemetary. I bet Halloween around here is going to be fun.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

10:48 AM - at least I didn't fall off of anything.

do these count as nightmares?

I had not one but two scary dreams last night. Both of them involved my old workplace.

In the first one, I was at my old workplace which was on a college campus, but not the UC Berkeley campus. I was some kind of a spy and my former co-worker Pam was an enemy spy. I had to obtain this strange technological device that could be used either to (explode a nuclear bomb) or (deflect the same nuclear bomb). I don't really know that it was a nuclear bomb, and I don't know how, if I had the device, the enemies were going to launch the bomb, but that's why it was a dream. I spent most of the dream skulking around trying to non-chalantly steal the device from Pam, or hiding out in a parking garage. I have a recurring theme in some of my dreams where there's a red-brick parking garage and I am hiding out from someone in it, so I have to keep hiding and going up and down staircases, and that parking garage made an appearance in this dream. Interestingly, the people chasing me in this dream's parking garage were all Asian families and grandparents; last time it was samurai. There was also an interlude where I kept leaving my messenger bag places as I tried to get to the parking garage, and the women's volleyball team helped out with that and gave me some yogurt. I knew I was quitting after I successfully returned the device to my boss, although the strange thing was that my supervisor from Berkeley was also in the dream, and he was also my supervisor, but I had to keep all of the spy stuff away from him.

In the second dream, I had to leave Brattleboro because I needed to make money, so I took a 3-month job back at the lab in Berkeley where I used to work. Pam was there again, and we were in our first office, except that she wasn't around for my first day and neither was my supervisor. They had changed the filename format and I was confused and wondering what else had changed. Somewhere in the middle of this dream I found an online chat room for aerialists and saw a video clip of two super-cool doubles acts. Soon I realized that the place that I worked was building an army of robots and robot vehicles to attack something. I rescued someone who fell out of a car and started running away with some rebel element when I woke up.

Somewhere last night I also dreamed that Fenny and Brian and I were all in a car together and discussing the obscure turn we missed in Iowa, except on the actual roadtrip that turn was in Denver, and it wasn't terribly obscure and we didn't miss it. I miss Fenny and Brian, too.

If I had to psychoanalyze my dreams, I'd say that I am getting anxious about being unemployed and I want to find a job, but I also need to process some of what frustrated me about the last job before I dive headfirst into a new one. Maybe that's why I was dreaming about work so much. I find it terribly interesting that even though I had a different office with different office furniture and new co-workers for longer than the time that I worked with Pam in that first office, Pam was the one that showed up in the dream. Twice.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

12:16 AM - Stop following me around, Whoopi!

just following a fad

I finished updating my site in CSS. Who knows, next I might actually try adding some new content, or reformatting the old blog entries so they work with the new layout. So exciting.

Furniture shopping has been a whole new experience. Today I went to the used furniture store downtown that everyone recommends, and it was actually open when I went. (Apparently they are closed on Mondays?) Anyway, the woman who worked there was very friendly and offered to give me a discount on things, even though she wasn't supposed to. She also tried to give me some helpful advice about moving to town. She said that there have been a lot of drug busts recently and that the town is "going downhill," but at the same time she has it on good authority that the locally-grown pot is some of the best anywhere. She told me pretty excitedly that Whoopi Goldberg has moved to town, but in another part of the conversation was upset about an influx of "gangsta" black people who had moved to the area. "They weren't here 5 or 10 years ago," she complained. I'm going to try to be patient and realize that I wasn't always as open-minded back when I had lived in fewer places and had fewer life experiences. I'm in a small town. People for the most part have been very friendly and welcoming, and I've found a grocery store that I like. Tofutti cuties for everyone. And apparently Whoopi shops there, too.

The only other bit of exciting news is that I might get to perform in a student recital/performance in early December. I'll have details... eventually.... and maybe I'll even be able to get video to share with non-local people. Yay!

ps. I know I am delinquent in writing or calling some people right now... please be patient with me.

Friday, October 14, 2005

3:46 PM - quite good, quite good

in search of furniture

The apartment I've moved into is quite nice, high ceilings, gorgeous Art Deco woodwork, hardwood floors, etc... This presents the problem that I can't in good conscience get nasty ugly furniture. This place is so nice that I'm considering painting it out of my own free will, since the landlord didn't do that in between tenants. It could use a good coat of paint in fresh, lively colors.

In order to reconcile the "I have a nice place" factor with the "I'm on sabbatical without a job and don't want to spend tons of money" factor, I'm going really slowly and checking out tag sales and used furniture. It's been raining almost non-stop, so there's not a lot available. The person who delivered my bed from the store suggested I check out a local place that does auctions and estate sales, and there's supposed to be one tomorrow, Saturday. I went up there this afternoon to check out what will be auctioned off so I can see what interests me ahead of time.

The estate sale... was really sad. Everything had belonged to an elderly couple and now both of them have passed away. It is very strange to see all of their things piled up, some in a makeshift structure outside, some in the auction house itself, and some appliances just covered with a tarp and sitting in the mud. I guess I haven't spent much time thinking about death and dying, and yet here were all of these artifacts of this couple, probably most of what they owned, piled up and ready to be auctioned off as bargains. I know at least one of the used furniture dealers in town goes to these auctions, buys items, and then marks them up and re-sells them. Personally it feels really disrespectful and strange to me to go looking for things and hunting for "bargains."

I think if Fenny were here, her perspective would be that it's good to re-use things that other people have used, rather than keep supporting a system that makes tons and tons of plastic, disposable, low-quality objects and then throws them in landfills. Fenny would probably also talk about keeping those objects as a way of remembering or respecting the lives of the people who had owned them before. She and I have talked a bit about the difference between the way we handle old age and death in the U.S. vs. her experiences and perspectives on the elderly and aging and death when she was very young and in Taiwan.

The estate sale still made me feel sad, and I don't think I'll be going to watch the vultures at the auction tomorrow.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

7:28 AM - who are these people?

the internet oracle

The internet fascinates me. I just took a look at my website statistics and found that by far the number one search phrase for getting people to my site is "iori yagami." Thank you cosplay community, I guess. The runner up: "dolph lundgren."

I'm a little bit surprised, but I also get hits for "gothic lolita" and "gothic lolita dress" even though I don't think I really mention those things, and "tony neal trapeze" is tied with "elf boy" for number of searches.

If I had posted last week, it would have been to say that I've lost a lot of my strength and was really only taking solace in the idea that if you want to be able to do something, you first have to be willing to do it badly. I felt weak, sore, and exhausted. This week, though, I already feel stronger and have learned to thwart one of the issues that was giving me trouble on the fabric. And that was only at open studio on Monday! It's amazing how training and stretching, if you do it consistently, can make you stronger, more flexible, and more confident. In a hurry.

My new bed arrives today, I think. I will be happy to no longer sleep on a hardwood floor. I have one final update to the travel blog that I'd like to make, but it's going to take a bit of photoshopping, so I'll hold off on that, at least until after a tasty breakfast.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

10:05 AM - now if only I wasn't sleeping on a hardwood floor...

Not only have I arrived in Brattleboro, but I've finally gotten internet access set up. I was trying to squeeze in bits of time at the public library but the competition there is vicious. Anyway, I've made it.

I think one of the saddest moments of the whole trip was dropping Fenny off at the airport in Boston. The only thing that kept me from weeping and weeping was that I was going to meet Sharon, an old friend from college, for lunch in Boston and needed to sort out using the subway. Nothing like a bit of adventure to stave off despair and sadness. sigh.

My first real class was last night and I've learned two things: 1) I'm very sore and need to get back into shape and 2) performing on aerial fabric is like wrestling with an octopus. I'm not sure how people make it look graceful, but I'll keep practicing.

Fenny's sign of the day: Belchertown.