Exhaustion

There was a moment yesterday while at the Tower when I went to lift my glass and I couldn’t do it.  My muscles, apparently, had finaly caught up to my brain and given in to the strain and schedule I’ve been running at this month.  I slumped back in my chair, using the wall to prop me up.  I think the posse thought I was just a bit tipsy.  But not at all.  I’m not used to feeling overwhelming sadness.  Sure, we all have a nugget of that inside us, and mine, for good reason, I think, tends to be a bit bigger than many others.  But lately, not just the last week but the past couple months, the sadness is consuming me.  I try to keep reminding myself (as do others) of how much I’ve got going for me.  And I do, it’s true.  But there’s also a point where none of that seems to matter any more.

There are moments of hope, oh yes.  Where the smile on the face and in my eyes is genuine.  Moments where I feel like me again, whatever the hell that means (obviously, not in that mood right now).

I know the weak and the sad is because my health is a bit out of control right now.  That is some comfort, knowing that once that is again under control I’ll be back on my feet again.

I know that I’m the only one that can make myself better.

But all I want is someone to hold me while I fall asleep, whisper words of reassurance and love in my ear, feed the ego a bit.

And if I wake up, I want a big ass plate of meatloaf and mashed potatoes waiting for me.   The homemade kind, infused with bits of saltines to make the meat stretch father, and fill my belly and soul wish the nourishment both are so badly craving right now.

And then, on the other hand, I just want to be done.

Random Conversations from New York

“You need to do some aura cleansing at your apartment.”

“Could I use Febreeze for that?”

Potter Passage of the Day

And then Harry’s scar burst open. He knew he was dead. It was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance. He was gone from the hall. He was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature’s began. They were fused together, bound by pain and there was no escape. And when the creature spoke it used Harry’s mouth so that in his agony he felt his jaw move.“Kill me now, Dumbledore.”

Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again.

“If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy.”

Let the pain stop, thought Harry. Let him kill us. End it, Dumbledore. Death is nothing compared to this.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, chapter 36 “The Only One He Ever Feared

What’s better than knowing you did a good show?

Having City Pages record it and put it on their blog.

Or, you can just listen to it right here.

W00t!

Look Who Got A-Listed!

I have big ideas a lot of times.  Most of the projects I never start.  However, once in a while I actually start something, and few and far between on those projects, people take notice. 

I gotta say, it looks like the Rockstar Storytellers are getting noticed. 

Evidence?  Why, we just got ourselves A-Listed in City Pages for this Friday’s show.  Here’s the text:

Let’s face it—storytelling may be the primordial art form, born at the dawn of language. However, modern performance telling, with its small but dedicated, heavily middle-aged audience, has just never managed the same level of cool as rock ‘n’ roll. But this year, a group of 10 younger local performance artists banded together to take back some of the cultural cachet storytelling deserves. Optimistically calling themselves Rockstar Storytellers, they come to the stage from a multiplicity of backgrounds, from mime to radio monologue to traditional theater to slam poetry to competitive speech. Laden with Fringe Festival credentials, the cast promises to not just twiddle your emotional dial, but to take a monkey wrench to your presuppositions about what storytelling should be. Highlights include the evening’s host, Allison Broeren, a standup comedian and co-Slam Master of the Minneapolis Poetry Slam, and philip low, a highly energetic and physical teller who’s been known to take the stage wearing nothing but boxer shorts to illustrate the transformation of a character. — Ward Rubrecht

And that?  Is pretty dang cool.