It has a name, this feeling. I have discovered it, through my blinding tears and binding fears.

It is dishonor. I am dishonored by the way people have treated me lately. I suppose it’s not a feeling that is common in the United States, because I don’t mean the distortion that some Fox News enthusiasts might summon up in their talk of war.

My guests have dishonored me. I have shown them courtesy and respect and they have not reciprocated. Now, they come here to steal from me, their host.

It is dishonor, and it shall be treated as such.

Compassion: He develops a power that must be used for the good of all. He has compassion. He helps his fellow men at every opportunity. If an opportunity does not arise, he goes out of his way to find one.

Courage: Rise up above the masses of people who are afraid to act. Hiding like a turtle in a shell is not living at all. A samurai must have heroic courage. It is absolutely risky. It is dangerous. It is living life completely, fully, wonderfully. Heroic courage is not blind. It is intelligent and strong. Replace fear with respect and caution.

Courtesy: Samurai have no reason to be cruel. They do not need to prove their strength. A samurai is courteous even to his enemies. Without this outward show of respect, we are nothing more than animals. A samurai is not only respected for his strength in battle, but also by his dealings with other men. The true inner strength of a samurai becomes apparent during difficult times.

– from Akodo’s Leadership

NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW

Hey, kid.
Good morning.
You look like an angel.
I don’t remember when we fell asleep.
We should get up, kid.
Cathy is waiting…

Look at us,
lying here
Dreaming, pretending
I made a promise, and I took a vow,
I wrote a story
And we changed the ending
Cathy, just look at me now.

Hold on, facts are facts
Just relax, lay low,
All right, the panic recedes:
Nobody needs to know

Put on my armor
I’m off to Ohio
Back into battle
till I don’t know when
Swearing to her
that I never was with you
And praying I’ll hold you again

Hold on, clip these wings.
Things get out of hand
All right, it’s over, it’s done
No one will understand
No one will understand

We build a treehouse
I keep it from shaking
Little more glue every time that it breaks
Perfectly balanced
And then I start making
Conscious, deliberate mistakes

All that I ask for is one little corner
One private room at the back of my heart
Tell her I found one, she sends out battalions
To claim it and blow it apart

I grip and she grips
And faster we’re sliding
Sliding and spilling
And what can I do?
Come back to bed, kid
Take me inside you
I promise I won’t lie to you

Hold on, don’t cry yet
I won’t let you go
All right, the panic recedes
All right, everyone bleeds
All right, I get what I need
And nobody needs to know
Nobody needs to know

And since I have to be in love with someone
Since I need to be in love with someone
Maybe I could be in love with someone
Like you

He said, “Try not to think of your theatre career as your identity.”

He said, “I’m not telling you to give it up, but make a conscious split.”

One show closed. Another opened and one was still running. The calls kept coming and the websites — the paid work, the valued work, the work of concrete value — fell even further behind schedule.

In a few months, all of this will have passed. I have deliberately extricated myself. In atonement, I have isolated myself.

In this state of trying to be less involved, I have to decide now, in this moment or the very next, my future for the next three years. Either I finish my application in January for my “terminal degree,” — and isn’t that an apt phrase? — or I wait for the next go-round in three years. Then, I will be 41. With my life less ahead of me than behind me, I start on a career of physical training. I consider myself a punctual person, but I arrived late to this understanding. In this moment, when I want to give up theatre entirely and crawl into a hole because I have nothing else to excite me, I have to choose.

Two young people are coming, ill-advisedly, to my home city. They’re newer to this craft than I am, but who gives a shit? I’ve spent ten years trying to convince people of its worth; why wouldn’t those same people hire the young hotshots for cheap over the tired, bitter curmudgeon who “overcharges?” I would, in their situation.

I am not someone who wants to hold anyone back. I loathe competition because it favors those without compassion. You must not care for your opponent if you want to win. Should art be about winning? No. In a capitalist society, however, it’s not immune.

I will give up. It is not only easier, it is the right thing to do. I am not so gifted that the world needs my art. My passion has waned, but there are many for whom the spark still burns hot. I am not so important that my absence will leave a dent. Those that understand know I am a fraud, those that give me praise do not understand.

Where does that leave me? On the couch, pressing buttons. In a chair, pressing keys. Waiting for my heart to stop, because it gave up long ago.

24 Fight Direction gigs.

Acted in 6 productions.

Became an Associate Instructor with Dueling Arts International.

Taught 5 skills tests in 6 months.

Developed 6 websites.

Sound Design in 3 productions.

Directed my first full show.

Led my first Unrehearsed Shakespeare show.

Kiss my ass, 2014. I kicked yours.

Every single night the same arrangement
I go out and fight the fight

Still, I always feel this strange estrangement
Nothing here is real. Nothing here is right.

I’ve been making shows of trading blows
Just hoping no one knows

That I’ve been going through the motions
Walking through the part
Nothing seems to penetrate my heart.

I was always brave and kind of righteous
Now I find I’m wavering.

Crawling out your grave you find this fight just
Doesn’t mean a thing. (She ain’t got that swing.)

Thanks for noticing.

(She does pretty well with fiends from hell,
but lately we can tell

That she’s just going through the motions
Faking it somehow
She’s not even half the girl she… ow.)

Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor?
(How can I repay you –)
Whatever.

I don’t wanna be

Going through the motions
Losing all my drive.
I can’t even see if this is really me
and I just want to be

Alive.

Every compromise is capitulation.

I guess I’ll write more here soon, but I see things that I don’t like.

I don’t like Into the Woods as a movie, and I loathe The Last Five Years trailer. I don’t… want these things.

So, don’t go to them. Don’t support them. And I won’t. I have the feeling that I’m really alone in my particular tastes. When I express my opinion, people get quite upset. So, I don’t express it. Then, I resent them. I say, “You don’t know me. You don’t understand me,” and because that’s somehow an insult to them, to their intelligence or their sensibilities, they tell me I’m wrong about that, too. Maybe they don’t realize how that implies that I’m easy to figure out, but it does.

I don’t feel like I’m wrong, but if no one is on my side… at that time, I have to start assessing why my opinions anger people, why I don’t have a community who can see what I see, and who want to see it. I’m not a skeptic, or a cynic, simply because I don’t accept things at surface value. Or am I?

People don’t go to theatres. Sometimes you just want to turn off your brain. Everyone can enjoy what they enjoy the way they enjoy it.

Except when I try to do that, I get branded as a curmudgeon, or a pedant, or at least an overthinker.

I help people with little things in their life, even when they really don’t need any help. When I stop because they don’t appreciate it, or because I’m overwhelmed, I’m selfish. I tell people how busy I am and they think I’m bragging. I don’t even know what to talk about with people any more. I’m starting to want to stay in my basement and never see another human being again. This paragraph makes me sound whiny, and I hate myself for writing it.

I used to love people. I still do. But it’s an abusive relationship.

I have to write this here. If I write it on anything more social, I’m vaguebooking, or being dramatic. If I keep it in my journal, I’m feeding the feelings of alienation and isolation that brought this all about to begin with.

Yes, I see a therapist. I wanted to die, so what did I have to lose? Couples counseling, too. I talk to people when I can. Since I’m so busy all the time, this is the only stuff they hear, so I rapidly become a burden. They won’t say it, but they all feel it.

I never really understood these lyrics before, but now they are plain and perfect: “I feel the pain of everyone. Then, I feel nothing.”

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses. To explain—since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation—every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.

Trin Tragula—for that was his name—was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot. And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

“Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day. And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex—just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.

– Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

I have always been the one
when trouble starts, to cut and run
I always know when a thing is done
I always know when the time has come

So, what about this time?

Why do I still linger here
Where all I do is sweat and swear?
Why have I made it my career
To dress in guilt and live in fear?

So, when is it my time?
Is this what I do with my time?

Each time I begin to find my voice
I get distracted by these toys
Where they exult, where they rejoice
I find a cage devoid of choice

So, what the hell is time?
What, in Hell, is time?

It wouldn’t be to hide my shame at all
Should I refrain from making mention of’t
Nor would I feign to write this on the wall
And join the men before me who have loved

To sit uninterrupted by the eyes
Of those incapable of thinkers pose.
Tis them, not I, who fail to realize
How fast we fail when lacking this repose.

Nature calls on one in her own time,
fickly finds philosophies forlorn,
Turns running streams of consciousness to lime:
“Become again the beast that you were born!”

But cultured thought rests not from judgment free
So, let this haven safely hidden be

SONNET SKELETON, written June 2nd

It’s not that I’m embarrassed
Or that I don’t like people
But I need time and space to think
Despite how it’s been a joke, it is true

My shitting is my business
And business requires an office
A place with a door you can shut
And a place to keep your notes.

Besides what better way to be alone with ones self
And to understand ones nature
Than to let nature take hold
Completely
And be the beast that you were born?

If what I am cannot be truly free
Then let this haven safely hidden be