wandering aengus

65 edgewood

2006-09-01T20:18:00.000-07:00

here in new haven!

i am so completely thrilled about this apartment. sure it's a mess right now, but we've already changed a lot of that in just one afternoon -- and by tuesday we'll have a new stove and fridge, my room will be painted, and things will be even more beautiful! seriously. this is so great. i am (...deep inhale...) intensely satisfied.

it turns out i'm living in a bigger, brighter room than i originally thought. it has amazing light in the mornings and (best ever) a door to the fire escape. i mean, it's technically a fire escape, but it's wooden and rather romantic and works like a little back porch. i love it. tomorrow the painting adventure starts. one of the walls in my room is brick, and by tomorrow evening another will be dark violet and the other two will be a sunflowery gold color. (or maybe i just picked the colors for their names: "wizard" and "orange peel".)

things are feeling so good. i foresee warm winter days with hot chocolate and mulled wine and gatherings in this house. many gatherings. the air already feels like fall.

more to come... for now, i'll leave off with the quote of the day from my mother:
Q: Is he attractive?
A (from my mom): He's symmetrical.

something wicked

2006-08-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

here are the witches:

or, more accurately, their masks. these go on top of a costume made of a long, wide black veil that drapes over the head and almost reaches the floor in front and back. glove-like hand-pieces made of ripped tights (so that different numbers of fingers -- or none -- show) are attached to each side. the effect is definitely creepy... and more than a little like a chadoor. which i didn't intend but which i think is actually pretty powerful. according to ben these witches are supposed to be victims -- not so much random supernatural figures roaming the scottish moors, but mothers whose sons and husbands have been killed in war, and whom war has deformed. in the wake of all this they're bonded by something almost supernatural, but their powers of prophecy don't come from magic, simply from a horrible, first-hand knowledge of violence: they've seen it all happen before.

of course, as the costumer, i find myself preoccupied with more banal questions like, "can they get these things on fast enough?"

i leave for NYC tomorrow -- departure put off one day due to the joys of packing, and because i've been a bit sick this week. i can hardly believe i'm going to be seeing my dear RADA friends tomorrow! that's like saying, "tomorrow you'll be in england!" well, in a way, i will be.

my mother is compiling recipes for me and the room across the hall is full of boxes -- art supplies, kitchen things, books. i can't wait to live in this house, cooking and reading and painting and seeing people i love.

the northern line

2006-08-23T07:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Miss Holdren,

Transport for London's investment programme to improve and modernise the Tube network is gathering pace. As a result, the amount of work taking place at the weekend is increasing.

If you are planning to travel on the Tube this bank holiday weekend 26-28 August 2006, please check if any of the following closures will affect you...

I'm still getting emails from Transport for London, and I still don't have anywhere near the heart to delete them.

vanya

2006-08-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

my parents and grandmother and i went to see Little Miss Sunshine today. definitely worth it. really funny and whacky and quite smart. the touching moments were actually that, instead of going overboard into cheesy. they were the right length, well judged and genuinely moving. good acting too! i really liked the scenes with steve carell's "pre-eminent proust scholar" and the son who doesn't-speak-because-of-friedrich-nietzsche. it's good to know people like marcel proust have your back in the teenage angst department.

i've made three witch masks for Macbeth -- kind of creepy, semi-mutilated looking things. paper mache built up on neutral white masks that i sliced into various shapes to get rid of the lower face. they're supposed to look like post-apocalyptic burn victims... good dinner conversation! perhaps i'll post pictures soon. but speaking of costume pictures, here are some others... the first two are macbeth and banquo (macbeth is the significantly more bloody one). he has a scottish lion spray-paint stencilled in red on the back of his coat. banquo has a coat-of-arms type X made of strips of his plaid, with a few metal studs thrown in there of course. that's sort of been the rule in this costume process: when in doubt, add more metal. the next two are the top front and top back of old siward's coat. in this Macbeth the english are sort of a more bureaucratic, semi-fascist power. so when malcolm goes for their help at the end he sort of sells out the scots, who end up having to shed their (punk rock!) scottish emblems/traditions in favor of the clean-cut, more "civilized" english practices. definitely a sour victory. (i think my friend ben, the director, got the idea by differently interpreting the macduff line, "such welcome and unwelcome things at once 'tis hard to reconcile." very cool.)

my grandmother is watching golf in the livingroom. to whoever is reading this: when i am 87, please. please. do not let me watch golf.

hello world

2006-08-18T12:23:00.000-07:00

my goodness!

SO! after two weeks of ducking and diving and dog-paddling through a completely different and yet completely familiar life, i think i've decided to keep on keeping on with this blog. not, maybe, the most momentous decision, but still. it's a quiet life here in greenwood, virginia -- and one that i spend mostly glued to the computer. so you know, there it is.

i just finished The Princess Bride, which the lovely alexandra gave me just before i left London. it is indeed wonderful -- and it moves quickly without you feeling like you're reading cotton-candy, which is nice. and now i'm 100 pages into Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which i started (or rather re-started, since England cut me off the first time) yesterday as i was waiting to get my hair cut. i don't want to let it go, but at the same time i don't know if i can read it at night without weeping. his writing is so beautiful. even when it's by a nine-year-old! jesus.

this haircut is sort of (sadly) what i've been longing for since i got back. aahhhh so long overdue. i always like the days afterwards before i've washed it when i look strangely glamorous and completely unlike myself. oh the wonders a hair-straightener can do. too bad i'm entirely lazy in real life...

viola!

um, more importantly (that is, moreso than the otherwise entirely superficial content of this post): i've started writing something! who knows what will come of it but i'm REALLY excited. it was just sort of an explosion last night. i was driving home and just felt it under my fingernails and then i got home, sat down, and wrote till 1:30 in the morning. it's something i've been talking about with alex and colleen for a while -- possibly for Red Umbrella. it's rather like Vanya on 42nd Street, but with The Seagull. a play that intertwines a cast rehearsing The Seagull with The Seagull itself. i made charts of all the relationships and who-loves-whom in the Chekhov, and then the same sort of thing only all switched around for what's going on between the cast members. at this point i'm having a ton of fun with it -- though of course it's a little strange because in my fever to get started i used a ton of my real friends' names. ah well! theatre!

i am eating miraculous hippie food (wild rice, pecan & cranberry salad made by my mother) and looking forward to new york city in nine days!

o o o o o!

2006-07-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

one week to go. i hardly know what that means!

there are, of course, a number of things i don't want to think about where Leaving is concerned. but at least there's one thing that i couldn't possibly be more excited for: my dear dear friend Alex's production of The Seagull. he started a theater company earlier this summer and this is their first show, which, i am overjoyed to say, i'll be back in time to see. i've been looking forward to this all summer, but i just got an email from him today that almost made me cry it was so wonderful. if you go to Reddleman's website (that's the company) and just look at the pictures, you'll know why. just to know that we're a whole ocean apart and both so immersed in the incredible joy of making theater. and that in less than three weeks we'll be in the same tiny town in the same tiny blackbox diving into that same joyful insanity together! AHH! my emotions are of shakespearean proportions. O THIS WORLD! see what we can do in it!

(pause for a long sigh)

Pericles rolls along as a vessel on a briny sea... yesterday was longer than the complete works of Trollope, but i do think there are going to be some lovely things in this play. i admit, as much as i'm not looking forward to leaving, i am excited about being more involved in the (directorially) creative side of things again... i'm beginning to think i really do have to do something when i get back to school. but i don't know what! as evidence of my great mental shift here, i don't really care much now if someone else directs The Pillowman (the play i was obsessed with doing in the spring -- and which i got very upset over when i heard that someone else wanted to do it). but yes... now the question simply remains, what to do?! i would love to do something wild and lovely and vast (oh, why is nothing ever quite shakespeare?), but we shall see. there shall be much seeing. indeed...

and verily i have 45 minutes before i make the journey back to the rehearsal cave. (our theater is underground, which makes me feel a bit like gollum by the end of a twelve hour day.) and so i take my leave.

my final thought. young pericles' animal -- definitely a springer spaniel. and personally, i think once matt takes over as Pericles Prime, i should just become his dog. somehow i don't think my director would take to this idea, but personally i find it lovely. can't you just see me as this? can't you? yes. yes, you can.

golden gods of glory

2006-07-13T05:51:00.000-07:00

so, basically my sister is the funniest person ever. EVER.

i just wrote her an email to tell her, among other things, that mischa barton is here at RADA for the 4-week course that just started now (our dining hall has been overrun by a flood of new blood, including the former Miss O.C. herself)... this is an excerpt from the email she (my sister) sent back to me:

so mischa is therE? it would be ebetter if she was dating ryan in real life, then i would go there to see him and probably try and rufie his drink before taking advantage of him. that is pretty cool tho, maybe i will see you in the star or us enquirer or whatever because of the paparazzzzziiiii. hhahaha sara YOU ARE A BETTER ACTOR than mischa...i dont know why you questioned that before this point...i mean dont get me wrong, i live vicariously through THE OC but she pretty much is lame...i think she is trying to broaden her horizons or should i say BARD-en them hahah with this whole shakespeare shit, i know she jsut played some mideival princess whoo ha in some movie i dont know what...hmmm its tres amuzizzzing to imagine her saying "ryan, doth thou know wherest summer has put my lipgloss?"

ahahahahaha. aaah. oh man. yeah so my sister rules okay?

we just had our Scenes presentation -- the culmination of 6 weeks of work. monologues is coming up this afternoon. this evening will mark the end of a lot of work -- but of course not the End Of All. there are still shows yet to do. we got our scripts yesterday and i'm STOKED about Pericles. of whom i'm playing one third! our director divided Pericles into three -- young, 'prime', and old -- and i'm Young Pericles, soon to grow up into my friend Matt-from-Canada and then my friend Mike-from-Ohio/Virginia. hooray! i'm missing a goatee though, which seems to be the feature of choice for my older selves. all three of us are also pirates together, which couldn't be more fun. and there's bound to be a lot of cool interaction between the different Pericles-es -- experimentation with how much each one feels the other two within him, the physical presence of the two younger selves when the older self is re-awakened... good things like that.

adam horowitz, if you read this blog, i want to say completely on an impulse, right here right now, i'm so sorry i haven't replied to your email! i'm a bad person who obviously has internet access and doesn't use it wisely. things are consistently insane (in a good way of course), but i really want to write you something Good, and i keep getting intimidated and putting it off. SO YES! if you are out there somewhere, i just thought of you -- i hope your road trip is going gloriously.

time to go and scream at leontes. i don't know if i'll ever get this right.

a list of things:
1) sandwiches in triangular plastic boxes... why haven't these made their way across the atlantic?
2) buying presents in camden market... and also moroccan food. all of it. for myself!
3) the thin red scarf i bought myself -- permanent accessory since purchase.
4) reading He Who Gets Slapped and getting ever more excited about the upcoming red umbrella reunion
5) dried mangos
6) shakespearean phrases tragically absent from most people's day-to-day conversation: 'most needful', 'many a time and oft', and of course, 'eftsoons'

tooting broadway, tennis balls, long vowels, bright nights

2006-07-03T10:43:00.000-07:00

oh what have i done?

i can't help it. it's been two weeks and i freely admit to abandoning this blog entirely. complete and utter neglect. and now i feel stupidly pressured to come back to it. freedom! there's simply so much to DO! in the best possible way! i almost never want to sit down and write about it. that makes it seem somehow over and done with. and it couldn't be more immediate, more overwhelmingly wonderfully RIGHT NOW!

i have a friend here who's going through the same sort of blah-blah-blah with his blog. he said he tries to solve that problem by writing, when he does write, only about one very specific thing. a tiny detail, a little moment, one phrase, one small circumstance from the day... no straining to cover every single thing, which is as impossible as wringing out every individual drop of water from a soaking sponge. but, as my scenes teacher bridget would say, "a vertical experience" instead of a "horizontal one." depth rather than breadth.

so perhaps i'll try that? perhaps i'll try...

today i will tell this story: Scones With Bridget and the Tale of the Rueben and Naked Boy

SO.

on saturday i had tea with bridget, my scenes teacher as mentioned above. bridget is a lovely, silver-haired, deceptively delicate looking woman with beautiful skin and water-blue eyes. she went to school with judy dench, vanessa redgrave and maggie smith when she was 16, and is friends with ian mckellen and augusto boal. her home is full of old photographs of her as a radiantly beautiful young woman, as well as yellowing victorian prints of her ancestors, and tilted snapshots of her children and grandchildren. and books. books everywhere.

lucas, one of my best friends here, and i went to camden market in the morning -- walked through the stalls of ironic hipster t-shirts and hemp & henna hippie things, past the stores full of huge spiked industrial boots and custom-made corsets (Fairy Goth Mother is a favorite), then in between the stalls of food. fooooood. huge lovely vats of goat curry and rice, bubbling in the heat -- piles of fruit and sizzling crepe pans, bowls of cous-cous and wooden carts covered in homemade doughnuts. we ate lunch (mmmmmmm!) and then proceeded, via the 24 bus, to bridget's house, a little north of camden near the belsize tube station -- in a lovely neighborhood of narrow fronted brick and white houses and hydranga bushes.

bridget's house has a beautiful, disorganized backyard garden -- a little stone pool full of water plants and newts (used as weapons of intimidation by the grandchildren), a rusting black trellis covered in ivy over a little stone path, a plastic swing, a variety of childhood lawn furtinture toppled about, a hammock, a wide stone back stoop from which to view it all. when we arrived (me, lucas, mike, mayumi, lars), she began baking scones and letting us explore her house. we brought her bread (still warm) and cheese and strawberries, and the tea was laid out in the "conservatory" connecting the house to the garden -- earl grey and english tea, milk, sugar, scones, strawberry jam, chocolate, yogurt, brown bread, strong cheddar cheese, and a kind of special bread made with one egg, hardly any flower, and a great many raisins soaked in tea.

we watched her grandchildren collect newts and comandeer mike ("who's the giant man?! will you fix our swing?") before rueben (9) declared that we were now playing "It." aka, tag. a long while of dashing around the garden and through bridget's house, chasing and stalking each other, ensued. reuben called me "quite fast for a grownup", which i consider to be one of my finest moments thus far.

we watched england fall out of the world cup after two overtimes and a shootout and amused ourselves with a rather hilarious piece of literature called The Dangerous Book for Boys. a work purporting to hold everything a growing lad needs to know, from how to build a tree house to how to talk to girls ("do not try to impress her with your knowledge of morse code and games that involve wizards"). and then the climax of the evening:

the other grandchild, benjamin, almost 7, had been wearing absolutely nothing the entire time. a fact that immediately made me judge bridget and her household favorably. of course he soon became known simply as Naked Boy, which is as it should be. late in the evening he demaded that mike ("giant man") pick him up. mike did, and then Naked Boy/Benjamin (no longer naked at this point actually) changed his mind and said "ow!" (apparent translation: "put me down i don't like you anymore.") this command was also obeyed, but the minute the kid touched the ground he burst into tears and screamed, "YOU BROKE MY SPINE!!!!" ...i have never seen someone look so shocked, so horrified, so reduced to a frightening combination of tears and giggles, as mike in that moment. bridget bundled both the boys away at that point and eventually the melodrama ceased. but oh my. YOU BROKE MY SPINE. a golden, golden moment.

that is for now. there is, of course, much much more.
there is the summer solstice at stone henge for one -- there is jess heyman's visit and the midnight titus at the globe for another. the south bank at four in the morning, the wonderful Jane Eyre at Trafalgar Studios during my mother's visit, the beauty the romance the clamour the rush the roar!

i am changing, and i am happy.

the QUEEN, man!

2006-06-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

saw jeremy irons in Embers at the duke of york last night. he's, ah, definitely still hot.

more profound comments on that to come. possibly...

(ps, oh yes! and saw her majesty in all her octogenarian glory this morning. wearing an entirely lavender outfit complete with a hat that looked like a layer cake made of summer deck-chair mesh. with a whole lot of guys in red with big fuzzy hats. YES!)

candy floss = cotton candy

2006-06-16T08:47:00.000-07:00

i can NOT believe it's been two weeks. it feels like two YEARS.

i need to start taking pictures! because honestly, i'm starting to miss people already, and -- in the words of angelo -- 'that's not good'.

sooooo, things?

i saw alan rickman in the rada lobby on wednesday. yeah, you know. just hanging out. going to a meeting. tra la-la la-la. WHAT?!! i still can't get over this place. i might go to 'the trouping of the colours' (notice the u's) tomorrow, which is a pretty fantastic thing: it's the queen's birthday (80th? or something quite large...) and there's this massive procession that involves horses and tons of red-coated guards all around buckingham palace. and i'll get to wave to hrh lizzy. you know, like the spice girls!

got tickets for The Seagull tomorrow -- will report on it soon after. it's being advertised as a particularly 'stripped down' translation with a lot of focus on the 'visceral essentials' (or something) of the text: you know, uhh, SEX LOVE DEATH MOSTLY SEX. i hope they don't lose the poetry of it, but of course i'm completely excited.

one of the guys here keeps an amazing journal that sort of winds its way around stories and images and sounds like an extended tom waits song -- i'm completely jealous of his style. it makes me want to make my own journal-attempts (this one included) way less prosaic (literally and figuratively)... but i think i've realized that when i'm active and overall-happy, i'm not as inclined to record everything -- be it in a poetic way or not. i think that's why i haven't taken pictures of anyone yet. i'm enjoying looking at everything without a lens.

the rumo(u)rs, however, are true: the coffee does SUCK.

last but not least (and colleen, this is especially for you): our groups finally has its play -- Pericles! (!!!) i'm INCREDIBLY excited. adventure, storytelling, movement, pirates, music, all things maritime! and i've had such wonderful experiences with the romances in recent years -- i think this is going to be fantastic. now to get everyone to listen to some Decemberists...

'base'

2006-06-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

first day of london rain, but mostly just london humidity. i want to go swimming at hampstead heath this weekend.

we spent sunday in regent's park -- the most lovely day. bright and hot and clear -- there was a big picnic (courtesy of sainsbury's) and i played soccer (...football) in a skirt and bare feet for ages. it was spectacular! i haven't played forever and i LOVED it. my shoulders are a little sunburned in a good way and i feel wonderful.

plans:
--gogol bordello on july 6
--notting hill thrift stores on saturday
--the seagull at the national... on saturday too i hope

slainte!

septimus, do you think i will marry lord byron?

2006-06-10T10:55:00.000-07:00

last night, i think, marked the true beginning of Good Times in Ye Olde London, UK.

we had a good day of classes, complete with Renaissance dance (the instructor is nicknamed Sweetboots. he is so fancy. i love him.) and Monologues class where my teacher is an actor named Bruce Alexander who's done some pretty sweet things... like playing Parolles with the RSC back in the day, among other things. something tells me he's a DAMN good actor. and it turns out that his son is currently in Titus at the Globe! and was actually one of the actors i thought was quite good.

i'm excited about my monologue -- Red Umbrella pals, it's from Winter's Tale! it's paulina's 'what studied torments, tyrant, hast for me?' i dedicate it fully to the genius of miss k. yates.

a group of us went out last night to see a play that our course director wrote -- and ended up acting in at the last minute as well. (it's really nice to be able to say 'a group of us' now.) it was a two woman show about the legalization of civil partnerships in the UK -- overall (i thought) very charming and witty and pretty well-acted. mostly it was nice to be out seeing theatre with people... and especially afterwards when we all went 'down the pub'. alex, i got the cider just for you -- and was singing 'johnny jump-up' in my head the whole time. though i'm thinking that particular cider must have been much more lethal than the kind i got -- which was lovely but definitely not a killer.

we went from the pub to an underground 'american style' bowling alley in bloomsbury -- a kind of hilarious concept place full of young brit hipsters drinking beer, bowling, and hanging out on a series of couches that looked like they belonged in someone's basement complete with high-school garage band and guys playing legends of zelda in the corner. they played incredibly loud sock-hop/sadie-hawkins-dance type music and we all ended up dancing instead of bowling (because it was free and, really, much more fun).

we got back to camden around 12:30 and stood around talking outside for a while. i'm excited for this new birth of lovely moods and shared stories and the silliness that only starts to happen between people when they're on their way to becoming real friends.

today was the national portrait gallery (highlights: sarah siddons, the duke of buckingham (and his calves!!), keats, the early tudor monarchs, and a bust of robert southey (yes, he has fallen off) -- who's actually something of a looker), and then the borrough market in southwark. i love open air markets -- something about walking around with a loaf of bread and and cheese just really appeals to me. and it's fantastic to know that people have been doing just that in this particular spot on the south bank for over 250 years.

my sonnet is 47. here's some, for all the people i'm missing:

So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thyself away art present still with me;
For thou no farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them and they with thee.

naught but nauts

2006-06-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

hello world!

so. it's been a little while. getting online is, i regret to say, still a bit of a feat here. the internet access in the dorms is actually not 'intermittent', as advertised, but 'nonexistent'. almost the same thing, but...

so i'm at a large, corporate-style easyInternet cafe on Tottenham Court Road -- the largest boulevard of electronics stores in the world. it's very odd, but efficient i suppose. they actually are *all* together. i don't know if there's any hope for someone in islington who wants to buy a Mac-authorized power adaptor. you must come HERE for it. anyway.

i was actually here yesterday too. and i wrote a post -- quite a long one in fact -- but the blogger stopped working (little cheap for an internet cafe if you ask me) and i couldn't put it up. in retrospect, this is actually a really good thing. it was like one of those ranting emails that you push Send on too soon then immediately regret. i'm glad this post got to sit over night (yeah yeah, i emailed it to myself; that was my mood at the time), because now, with twenty-four more hours under my belt (and a couple very nice events of today) i feel better about Things in General.

basic recap of yesterday's post and how i was feeling up till today (without, i hope, indulging in all of yesterday's murky semi-complaining):
1) classes are very good and very challenging -- but their intensity and length (we have 9am-6pm days every day, which means getting up at 7ish to take the bus from camden) have been exhausting me...
2) being exhausted, i've had a hard time entering into the rhythm of this place -- of rada, of the city, of my peers. i've felt too pressured to WORK WORK WORK already without taking some time to calm down and enjoy the fact that i'm here. it's been difficult for me, and i think many others as well, not to be in School Mode.
3) i miss my dear family and friends very much.

so -- that was how things stood yester-eve. a bit downcast, a little intimidated/stressed, mostly just over-tired. but today things have taken a turn for the better, and i very much hope they continue that way. here's the story:

it begins with a fire alarm. at 4:30 this morning. oh dear god, i thought at the time, this day can only end badly. fortunately i was wrong. as for the alarm itself -- this is what happens when the dorm bar (yes, there is an official BAR in the dorm complex -- helLO lower drinking age) is having its final night of the semester. ie, the blowout night in which EVERYTHING MUST GO. the 'things' in this case being ALCOHOL. sooo, the lovely University College of London kids were tearing the place up (it looked like a war zone when i left this morning) all night long, and apparently these revels including pulling the fire alarm. and making all the poor tired shakespeare nerds stand out in the parking lot for an hour, bewildered and miffed in our pjs.

but perhaps this small explosion actually signalled a better sort of day. because while i was still physically tired at 6 today, i felt -- for the first time really -- wonderful. and this is mostly due to the amazing and beautiful katya benjamin, the petite, lovely movement teacher who reminds many of us of sybil trelawney. (i see where this comes from, but katya's much less ridiculous and much more understanding.) we had our movement class last today, and i walked into it exhausted -- we're on our feet from essentially 9am onwards and ending the day with movement sounded like just about the hardest thing possible... but this class was fantastic! we rolled around on the floor and danced around the room to crazy fun african music that made me feel like we were all celebrating as the credits rolled at the end of the Lion King. it made everyone so perfectly happy. loopy and kind of high and covered in sweat, but happy! i realized that i've been missing this fun crazy senseless silly playful element completely. i keep telling people about the Control Group and Viewpoints and Contact Improv and getting blank looks -- but now i see that i've been stuck on those because this is what they do for me. i need Viewpoints or rolling around on the floor or dancing wildly every now and again. and more preferably just again. it's wonderful to be here learning so much technique -- but after hours and hours of controlling my body and my voice and my brain (the last of which feels full to bursting at some points), i need the crazy time! it's brilliant! we all left katya's class loving each other today, and that's something i hadn't felt this whole time.

so thank you katya.

i told her a very shortened version of all that after the class and she smiled softly and said, 'yes, at this time in the course people always need a bit of a dance.' and this is why she's lovely. she couldn't have been more right. after that i feel much better about taking on all sorts of things to come.

lots of things lots of things! i think i will stop for now... but perhaps i will end with a list -- maybe a preview of coming attractions, or just... things. who knows?

A List
1) camden market has a higher concentration of goth/industrial/punks than i've ever seen! even when i was attending the dawning regularly.
2) biopots. british grocery stores' gift to the world of yogurt.
3) The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union. this play is fantastic! and involves scottish accents.
4) i got a bit of praise from nona sheppard this morning -- just a small thing but it really raised my spirits (nona is the director of the course and a woman i would NOT mess with).
5) on saturday, the day i got here, i went to Titus Andronicus at the Globe as a groundling... and FAINTED! (and not from the gore, giles, i swear!) ohhh my. story forthcoming...

mornington crescent

2006-06-03T09:36:00.000-07:00

sitting in an internet cafe on the south bank, somewhere behind the london eye. my plane got in at 7:30 this morning london time (so 2:30 am home time) and i managed to find ifor evans hall (pronounced "EYE-for evans" said the cabbie: "something to do with being welsh") with relatively little trouble. i think it's just a regular dorm building for the university college of london -- it shows its age a bit, but the rooms are definitely nicer than any single at yale! (okay except for davenport...) but yes. nice size, trees outside the window, a sink, a desk, a closet, hooray! i unpacked and then fell over on the bed at about 10 am and was out cold for about an hour.

by which i actually mean, out COLD. for some reason when i woke up i was FREEZING. i'm pretty sure that exhaustion disables my body's temperature regulation. anyway, i then proceeded to put on waaaaaay to many clothes for the weather and go out. i always have this idea that all temperatures given in celsius are necessarily cool. celsius seems to me simply cool by nature. 22 degrees celsius should in no way translate to 73 degrees farenheit. ridiculous!

(debating over whether to apologize for the absolutely trivial and boring nature of this post. i'm feeling a little strange. i think i just like the sensation of talking to someone, which this is currently giving me. um...)

i'm not good at starting things. i'm good at being in the middle of things and getting things done but i am a horribly stunted thing-starter. i've been wandering around london all day in a hot haze, trying to get over my massive self-consciousness -- my fear that i will suddenly be in someone's way (frequent), drop something (once), or actually have to speak to someone (not as yet)! silly but true. i don't have this when i'm with someone else (haha right giles?). but for some reason solo travel seems to do this to me. and beginnings. always beginnings. i'd like monday to please arrive and happen and be over. (funny -- now i'm getting a melodramatic line from The Oresteia stuck in my head: "why must this persistent fear beat its wings so ceaselessly against my foreboding heart?" ha ha.)

i finished zadie smith's White Teeth before i left. the plane ride got me halfway through On Beauty. she is who i wish i could be if i were an author. thank god someone else out there loves forster. it's so wonderful to hear his influence coming through in her books -- she has the same way of subtly zooming in and out with the narrative voice, now telling the story, now relating ever-so-simply some universal truth, now tying that truth back to her characters and moving on. they have the same light touch -- nothing heavy-handed or moralistic, but at the same time with a beautiful sense of human goodness, or at least the possibility of it. i loved White Teeth so much i'm finding it hard to like On Beauty AS-as much, even with its directly Foresterian elements. i do love it -- i think i'm just still attached to the characters from White Teeth more.

read these books. really.

my time is running short so i guess i should go. i can't make decisions in this state! groundling tickets to see Titus at the Globe? last minute tickets for Stoppard's new play at the Royal Court? bed??? we shall see!

ps!

2006-06-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

if you want to write to me (and win my undying love), perhaps this will help:

sara holdren
c/o royal academy of dramatic art
62-64 gower street
london WC1E 6ED
united kingdom

(i am convinced that letters will arrive by owl.)

full fathom five

2006-06-01T17:56:00.000-07:00

I am going on an adventure.

Tomorrow -- June 2, 2006 -- I lift off from Dulles Airport at 2:54 pm, destination: London.

More specifically: London, England, the United Kingdom / RADA, the Summer Shakespeare Program.

Most specifically: Ifor Evans Hall, 109 Camden Road / London, NW1 9HA.

Mostly, I wanted to make this blog as a sort of ship's log (because I'm also quite enamored of nautical metaphors these days), and also to keep me from sending mass-emails that no one actually wants to read. Perhaps this way, I'll be more inclined to write -- be it a long meditation or a little snippet -- and less worried about keeping a specific audience informed and entertained. In other words: welcome to my pre-emptive rationaization for what might (will) be the completely meandering, possibly pointless, totally topical, and otherwise oddball nature of this blog!

But, meandering oddball that I am, I'm going on an adventure. Breakers astern and calm seas ahead! (...Or something equally maritime and awesome!)

That's seamanship, Mr. Pullings. That's seamanship!