identity foreclosure

i am fascinated by jargon. shop talk. language people use in a civilian setting that instantly sets them apart from the general masses. appropriately throw in the term 'identity foreclosure' during an argument, and unless the other person knows the term, any momentum in the argument is yours for the taking. that is, assuming you know what identity foreclosure is. but really, any obscure term thrown in at just the right time is an incredibly powerful tool. and a favorite of mine. but i don't like to use it without prejudice. i like to use it for good, not evil. i do not like to use terminology to cover up that i'm really talking out of my ass, although i have done so on occasion. i like when other people use new words in front of me. i'm fascinated by them, and want to make the new words mine. i think the attraction is the same greedy desire that makes me want to have movie quotes at the ready for almost any situation. it's something you can put out there, and most of the time will fly under the radar... but that one person who picks up what you're laying down: that's someone to get to know.

Main Entry: jar·gon Pronunciation: 'jär-g&n, -"gän
Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French
1a : confused unintelligible language b : a strange, outlandish, or barbarous language or dialect c : a hybrid language or dialect simplified in vocabulary and grammar and used for communication between peoples of different speech
2 : the technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group
3 : obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocutions and long words

circumlocutions? that has to be a joke.

Merriam: "hey, won't it be funny if we put jargon in the definition for jargon?"
Webster: "yeah, then we'll really feel superior."
Merriam: "kiss me, you fool!"

They begin to fuck.*

x

x

x

* - this is a stage direction from the script of Angels in America: Millenium Approaches. It is the best stage direction ever written, by any author/stage manager, in any text, published in any language, from any period of mankind.

john brown's body

i'm just sad. and i can't seem to get out of it today. it's any number of things playing into it, and none of them are anything that i can do anything about. so, what recourse am i left with? i guess moping around with a long face. what's with the long face, mr. ed?

i've mentioned a few weeks ago that i wrote something for the first time in a long time. i think i'll include it here. it helped to get it out of me before, maybe it will help to get it out here, now.
8/15/2005
i'll break the seal and start all over
amidst the laughs and the silent majority
sitting here from my perch on high
and look down on all of you
eventually
when i'm right on center
and purified from the flame
i'll watch it burn and feel the satisfaction
of knowing you helped me get here
by being my fuel.
my God it's good to be back. riding the rush of caffeine and allowing myself to feel
to create to emote on any random subject of my choice. whatever flower pricks my fancy.
a month on the page is no month in the world.
maybe this is the key to my success. maybe this pencil dancing once again is the watershed moment i've been blind to.
pick apart the hole in the well, and little by little water enough to nourish the whole world will pour forth.
i believe in me.
i know i have it in me.
i wish i could have shown it to her
but the well was dry.
i will force it open now, and i will wash myself clean in the drops that become pools and the pools that become a raging torrent to carry away all the cobwebs and tears and hurt and fear and loneliness. a water like fire that will purify and burn away the chaff. bones picked clean, white, pure. a suitable foundation on which to build the next chapter in my life. and the fruit of my labor will nourish me and one who will carry me forward.

Traveled the breadth of a continent

actually, it's more like a couple counties in the state of Michigan, but this Saturday marks the date of the MacDonald Family reunion. I believe we're expecting 11 people. That's including the latest addition, Avery. Thankfully, that's NOT him pictured above. =)

Fat Kid is excited about the reunion. it should be fun. my family is incredibly small, at least in it's current form. there are uncles we don't talk to as a matter of principle, others that we do talk to, but never see, and certainly no cousins the same age as my sister and I. so, it has become sort of a running joke that i keep dating women that come from large, loud, boisterous loving families. jumping into christmas at their houses is like being taken from a farm in Deerfield Wisconsin, and dropped into Times Square on New Year's Eve. yeah, it's exciting, and a bit overwhelming, but it's really just out of my element.

The MacDonald Family reunion will be more like any given Sunday afternoon at some people's houses. A meal, some talking, some catching up on the porch of my parents' house. No picnic area at a local metro park, no tents, no big vats of baked beans and cases upon cases of beer. it'll just be a handful of people, sitting around talking.

i can't help but feel like i've been put at some sort of disadvantage, though, because of the small size of my family. i feel like i'm missing some critical part of my personality that i envy in other people. the ability to have family that knows you better than anyone in the world. the ability to have children around you as an adult all the time, and to foster relationships with them. to learn how to be a cousin, and a uncle, and a nephew... and frankly a son and a brother. at all of these things i feel i am a failure. not in the sense that i am evil, or uncaring... i'm just vacant, i think. my family is distant from each other. more geographically now than ever before... but also emotionally. i love my parents more than anything. they were fantastic parents. i never wanted for anything. i had a mom at home when i returned from school. i had a father who coached my soccer teams, and parents who watched me play baseball and soccer. they were both there the day i scored my only goal in playing 9 years of soccer. and my sister and i are better friends now than we've ever been. but i know we can, and i want to be, closer to all of them. especially now since my sister has had a son. i want to be the uncle to him that i see some of my friends being to their nephews. i want to be the uncle he calls when his parents don't get him. i want to be the uncle that he's excited to see every holiday because i lift him up and do airplane spins with him.

so, my family is interesting. i really put most of the blame for our emotional situation on my shoulders. i'm the one who pulls away, i think. i think i don't give them the benefit of the doubt enough of the time. i think i keep myself busy enough to never really think about it... until moments like this one where i'm a little slow at work, and have the time to stop and think about it. but i think they pull away, too. it's almost like i think we both feel that there's *so* much being left unsaid, and so much that went unsaid over the years, that it's impossible to just jump into the middle of the story. so, when i break up with a girlfriend, or admit my doubt about my life to them, i'm disappointed with the results. i get frustrated because they don't immediately know what the hell i'm talking about. so, i guess i should try to start doling out the morsels more often, so there isn't a whole truckload of information to digest at once.

that great shaky feeling

it's the middle of the afternoon on sunday, september 11th, 2005, and i've just returned home from stricking all of the tech from last friday's fundraiser at St. Dunstan's. It was much more of a success than i ever believed it would be. it was a great night, and i think everyone had a great time.
so now, i have finished cleaning up all the lights and miscellaneous tech stuff from this event, and i did so by myself. which isn't that big of a deal. it was nice to be out in the Greek by myself, working, enjoying the sunshine. it allowed me a great deal of time to think. the greek theatre has been the home to some of my life's most poignant moments. there are deep emotional streaks of color that i think i'll carry with me for the rest of my life that were generated in that space. an outdoor theatre in the middle of the woods. it is beautiful.
so, it was nice to be left alone in that space with my thoughts. and some of them are haunting, some of them are extremely funny, and others just warm my heart to bring them to life again in my mind.
i'm filthy, exhausted, and starving. but damn, i feel good.

bite me, kiefer

the last 24 hours or so have been one hell of a ride.
it all started this morning at about 12:30 am with a text message.
that led to a blog that i wasn't ready to see.
the blog led me to crafting an email the response to which would rule my entire afternoon.
after crafting the email, i layed in my bed, watched 3 episodes of the sopranos, trying desperately to fall asleep.
about three o'clock i realize that sleep will not come on it's own. so, i lay there thinking about having a drink, or a warm glass of milk (of which I have none in my refridgerator). Finally I decide on 2 Tylenol Simply Sleep pills. They usually take about an hour to kick in, and don't wear off fully for about 8.
so, there i am at four in the morning, watching something i'd tivo-d long ago, trying to take my mind off the blog, and trying to convince my stomach to not be sick. there are tears, there are prayers, there is suffering.
finally i drift off to a peaceful 3 hours or so of one long, incredibly realistic dream, all of which deals solely with the contents of the blog. i also had that song-snippet stuck on repeat in my head the entire time, which usually only happens to me when i'm trying to sleep drunk. so, needless to say, my day started fully drugged, tormented by 3 hours of painful fitful sleep, and a pit in my stomach that i could not quench.
i then spent my day making a flyer for a fund-raiser which occurs friday, checking my email literally every 30 seconds (see above). Then it's off to rehearsal - THE - rehearsal (there's only one) where i am tech director.
then i get a phone call from the author of the blog.
then i get a phone call from a friend who's just broken up with their significant other.
then i hear people screaming for me from the theatre.
now it's time to run the show, teach the assistant stage manager how to use my laptop computer with the projector, both of which i've balanced perilously over a reflecting pool layered in green sludge.
then it's back home, back to the computer to email the guy at kinko's the original file, because somehow the master print I made didn't work, even though i handed him a perfectly folded, perfectly sized original... to which all he had to do is replicate.

which brings me to now. i am such an emotional wreck, i can barely figure out how to spell my first name.

gas in the exhaust manifold

i sometimes think this blogging thing has backfired on me. when i started it, i wanted my friends to happen upon it, during a search for something else, and be able to know a different side to me. one that they may not see in our day-to-day conversations. the private me. the part of me that sees things and feels things; that maybe i can't put into words face to face. the side of me that sometimes gets the feeling there is something just outside our understanding going on... there are moments like tonight when i am sitting on a lawn chair on my driveway, reading my script for Angels in America. i pause and look up at the trees across the street, and the way they move back and forth, black against the twilight sky... and i get the sense that there is some profound understanding, or something just beyond my perception. i can sense it's there, i just can't tell what it is. but i know that it causes something in me to pause, and be still before it. i can't explain it, and i have tried several times to explain it to different people. some of them just awkwardly changed the subject, some of them thought something was wrong, and i was looking for a way to bring it up. some major confession i needed to make... maybe it's just awe. maybe it's the troubling realization of just how small we all are in the scope of the universe. maybe it's God. maybe it's a need i have to be a part of something bigger.
i remember riding in michael's buick century down 28 mile road, and looking up into the sky, and trying to explain this feeling... i think i told him i felt like i was about to be sucked up into the sky... that if i could focus intently enough, or if my brain to fathom just a bit more of the universe, i would break through some wall of understanding, and peek behind the curtain and see the inner workings of the machinery of life.
now as i remember this afternoon, all these years later, it unfortunately has a very Matrix tint to it. but it's not that i think our perception of the world and life is all an intricate illusion... it's that at these moments when i have this feeling I get the sense that there are things going on beyond our perception... but just beyond. like i'm a little bit closer than normal.

whatever.

none of this was the original intent of this post. i was going to go on about how now that i've told several of my friends my blog address, and i know they're reading it, it's sort of backfired on me and now i am more tentative to write. like i'm being edited before i even start. but, i will do what i can to not let that stop me. i should be happy that they think i might have something interesting enough to say to stop by on their lunch hour and see what's new with me. so, thanks for reading. i will update away. =)