FST's Metamorphoses

On the way out of Ovid's Metamorphoses at the Florida Studio Theatre, I providentially found a section of ivy just long enough to make a wreath for my head. Dionysus has something to say to me.

Probably that he enjoyed the play and found it a fitting tribute. If you haven't heard of this particular adaptation, you should know that the entire action takes place around a pool of water which takes up nearly the entire stage. The most powerful piece is of course Eros and Psyche, and not only because Eros is nude except for wings and a blindfold (which in no way hindered the actor from some truly fine choreography). That particular piece is narrated in the form of a Socratic dialogue, bringing the audience along from initial titters at Eros' nudity (he's a god, you provincial swine, get over it) to finding meaning in the interpretation of the story as the soul's journey, overcoming great difficulty, to the realization of a higher kind of love. The adaptation is superb and the performance of it here left nothing to be desired. The piece fadged perfectly, which was almost a shame because I would have loved to see adaptations of some of the other stories, such as that of Iphis, one of the earliest extant FTM transgender narratives. Extremely well-known stories, such as that of Medusa, Pandora, and Narcissus were merely (and excellently) suggested with movement and props.

Besides Eros and Psyche, my favorite piece was the psychoanalysis of Phaeton. The concept could have been executed very poorly, but I found the execution excellent. The use of modern language and analysis added to the myth rather than trivializing it, although the archetypal Jungian psychologist and her very archetypal patient were extremely funny.

In essence, the thrust of the piece is about love, which made it an obvious choice for FST to put on in the weeks leading up to Valentine's Day, but it also seemed like an antidote to the saccharine of the season.

Gallery Opening

The Ansel Adams and Clyde Butcher exhibition is up, and tonight was the opening. I went with Die Fledermaus. It was pretty okay-- I'm nervous in unfamiliar situations, of course, but I pretended to be chill and that helped. Mr. Butcher wandered over and sat down at our table. Although I hadn't been introduced to him, nor had I seen a picture, I figured he had to be the mildly famous Florida swamp photographer by his hat and mad beard, which last looked designed to camouflage with the native Spanish moss. He is a very entertaining fellow. The exhibition looks great; I encourage everyone who can to go see it.

Another Dream

Last night I dreamed I was a member of an occult superhero family.

There were just three of us-- Dad, his proper son Eric, and me, his "other son". He'd virtually adopted me when I was orphaned, and although I grew up with other foster parents, I was at his house all the time, and thought of him as my dad. My love for Eric was a little other than brotherly, though, and he returned the sentiment. Dad was perfectly cool with that.

We all had trained our psychic and occult abilities, but I was painfully aware that I was the weak point. Some trauma in my past would occasionally be triggered and leave me shaking and incapacitated, lost in memories I afterward couldn't recall. Dad was patient with me, but Eric was a little less understanding about it; we were both around 18 and patience is the virtue of the old.

(I just had to stop because a strange small object hurled itself from-- somewhere-- to land loudly very near me. It's a metal thing with a yellow resin top with the black lettering AMWA formed in a square. I looked it up; it looks somewhat but not totally like the logo of the American Medical Writer's Association. The object itself may be a pen component. Where did it come from and what does it want from me? I've never seen this thing before in my life and have no idea where it came from or how it got into my room, much less how it threw itself at me.)

Anyway, there was an attack of something, a runaway five decker bus, I don't know. I was working on controlling the bus while Dad and Eric got the people off, but anyway I couldn't manage it on my own, and I was busy being distracted wondering who in hell thought five decker buses were a good idea anyway, and when did those come about? I'd never seen one and everyone was acting like they were the most natural thing in the world. So Eric started helping me, and Dad got all the people off, and then since we couldn't actually stop the thing we redirected it away from people and habitations and eventually dumped it off a cliff. Well, Dad flipped out and yelled at Eric, and Eric yelled back, and then Dad cooled off and said grudgingly "Well, I guess it's conceivable you didn't know what you were doing," and Eric demanded to know what he was on about. Turned out we'd dropped the bus on a "Gypsy" graveyard. (Excuse me. My subconscious was being ignorant.) Eric was prejudiced against them, something that had been a big problem in our relationship since I was one. He said something pejorative and I felt threatened and shaky and then he apologized and comforted me, and I'm sure this would have gotten more interesting if I hadn't woken up. But in the interest of encouraging myself to remember my dreams I've written it all down here for your utter stultification.

Boston Marriage...

...or, Mamet does... OppositelandMamet!

David Mamet writes plays. He is famous for writing plays. In Theatreland, a land of showtunes, arty pieces about the death of the ego, catty pieces about queers like me, and carefully-constructed art of language, Mamet is the fucking king-- and he's the king of the fucking fuck play. He's king of the straight guy play, where people get dirty and say fuck a lot. Women appear in his plays only as something to complain about. Mamet's plays are film noir, without the film and without the noir, leaving only a grating attitude problem.

And Boston Marriage is about two well-spoken turn of the century Sapphists and their Irish ("Scottish, muss!") maid. It is supposed to be an ommidge (which is like porridge made with scrambled eggs and cheese) to Oscar Wilde. The dialogue is richly textured, flowery, learned, bitingly catty. Very Wildean. With the occasional line of genuine Mamet dropped in ("Evil old bitch" and "pagan slut" come to mind as a mild example) to remind us who wrote this shining gem of literacy.

I saw it at the Asolo. It closes Sunday, so if you live in Sarasota, run and see it tonight. It's amazing.

Happy Saint Sebastian's Day

Hurt someone you love* today, just like they've always wanted you to. (Thanks, Zan.)

Today I took the GRE. I conquered the verbal portion, but the mathematics did in fact thrash me and make me cry real tears, which is no shock as I haven't had maths since high school. (Which was seven years ago, if anyone's counting.) And I'm fairly happy with the essays, but I won't get my scores from them for a little while yet.

Last night I had a night terror, something which hasn't happened to me in a long time. I was overdue for one, with the amount of stress I've been under, and what with reading House of Leaves from time to time. But I'd been putting it off by only going to sleep when I was exhausted. Last night to get ready for the GRE I went to bed earlyish, and so about an hour into sleep I came nearly awake, pursued by a disturbing dream, to see a line of square flags covered in glyphs that can only be described as eldritch over my bed, illuminated in the slow dawn and fade of frozen lightning from the window behind my head. They flapped slowly in an absent indoor rainstorm. My blood pressure and heart rate slowly began to elevate, and I had time to realize I was about to become totally, irrationally, uncontrollably terrified and there was not a damn thing I could do to stop it. The rational portion of my mind tried nonetheless to get a firm grip on the rest, but there was nothing to be done, and my terror crescendoed until I could physically and actually feel my heart thundering, shaking my entire body as if to tear my chest open and explode through every artery in my body, even the veins bursting though of course the pressure would be significantly reduced there, and I had to stop this now or I was going to die. So of course I manifested an astral weapon. You know, like you do.
A battle axe? I thought. Not only is that so not me, but it only really helps if there's something you can chop astral limbs off of. So I transformed it into Excalibur, natch, and waved it around and bellowed. The terror receded and I promptly dropped back into full sleep.

There was something else I wanted to say, but it eludes me. If it loves me, it'll come back. Unless it still feels it needs space.

Until then, here's a new conversational trope that I've just made up:
"X is gonna kill Y twice in a murder-suicide pact."
This obvious hyperbole expresses the belief that X is or is about to be so angry at Y that they will lose all good sense and kill Y, then go back and do it again, and this time make it look like a suicide. The proper response runs something like:
"Forged note found on the body: Dear World, I feel so terrible about killing myself last night. I am an evil, evil person. To punish myself for my horrible crime, I have decided to kill myself. I am a wicked, bad, self-murdering person who did horrible things to make my dear friend X so angry at me when they have only ever been loving and supportive, and are incidentally also a genius, and good looking, and so I deserve to die. Farewell forever. Love Y. PS: This is for the best."
This is quite a bad joke, and in blatant poor taste, and I therefore hope to inflict it on as many people as I can.

Tonight's post is just full of weirdness and bad taste, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. It came back. I went into a coffee shop earlier and was completely unsurprised to see a man cuddling a skunk while playing chess. This must say something about my life.



*and with whom you are in a completely consensual kink-positive relationship, of course

LJ is DOWN!

Repeat, LJ is DOWN! And yet I still post! I mock you and your livejournal communities and friends-only and comment screening! I mock you I say! Mockmockmockmockmock!

oh yeah....

... and flip out and call an endocrinologist to schedule an initial visit.

Things to do tomorrow

Wake up, shower, put clothes on, check the online support forum for allies of trans people I created, check email.

Write down all the places my transcripts have to go. Go request them. Get my W2 from the Humanities Office. Go to career services and start on a CV.

Go to the internship and finish entering the governor's mansion loans from 1975 back to 1957. Call JFKU and check on the existence of my application, try to schedule an interview. Call SFSU and request a paper application, and try to schedule an interview.

With my W2, finish my FAFSA. With the FAFSA finished, finish my application for TPF. Start my essay for SFSU. Print out my essay for JFKU.

Next two weeks-- finish my ISP and write two chapters for my thesis. Finish all this application stuff, package it all, and send it off. Change my college's housing policies. Pass the GRE. Register to CLEP a science class. Then stop going quite so insane and just settle down to finishing the thesis and passing my classes.

I never thought I'd look forward to having nothing to do but a 80-100 page thesis and a full course load.

Threes

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
*Kereth
*Ker
*Entity

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
*ravanseye (I was so thirteen)
*ceirdwynluchair (in a past life)
*entitything

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
*I try to help people.
*I think about things a lot.
*I am overeducated.

THREE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
*I often screw up.
*I think about things too much.
*I am overeducated.

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
*Germanic Jewish
*Dutch V.I.
*Cherokee

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
*zealotry
*making big decisions
*irresponsible use of power

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
*water
*air
*sleep (food optional)

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
*a top hat
*a pair of boxers
*a corsage
(one of those is true)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS (or artists(at the moment)):
*the Killers and the Magnetic Fields for weird pop
*Kula Shaker and Universal Hall Pass/Splashdown for vaguely Buddhist poptronic
*Morganna MacEala

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS AT PRESENT:
*Katrinah Josephina by Universal Hall Pass
*I Thought You Were My Boyfriend by The Magnetic Fields
*When the World Falls to Pieces by Morganna MacEala (no you can't find it online. or if you can, I have sworn a mighty oath to take the head of the person who is sharing it.)

THREE CELEBRITIES YOU ARE DYING TO MEET (and/or kiss):
I'm not really a screaming fanthing either. But here they are:
*Zan Gullo, creator of My Life in Blue.
*Dan Handler/Lemony Snicket.
*Dylan Edwards, from whom I lifted this survey.

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
*Finishing a thesis.
*Going to grad school.
*Having a job that will make me enough money to live on.

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
*now
*here
*nowhere

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
*face
*back
*hands

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
*be a vegetarian (medical reasons)
*be a social conservative (moral reasons)
*be just a regular guy

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
*reading/writing
*gaming
*fencing

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
*fix my gender stuff so I can get on with my life
*get all my old friends in one place again and just talk about old times
*fix my school's uninclusive policies

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
*museum curator
*professor
*artist (okay I have to learn how to make art or something; how hard could that be? LOL)

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
*Eire, Alba, Cymry, and Angle-land
*New Zealand
*Toronto

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
*understand myself
*build a floating island
*achieve illumination

Lifted from Dylan NDR's livejournal.