On losing The Game and quitting things in your mind.

A recent episode of Wiretap, one of my favorite podcasts, highlighted something called “The Game” which I’m sure I’ve heard about before, but can’t remember where. The aim of The Game is to forget you are playing The Game, ie, every time you remember you are playing The Game, you lose The Game. Thus because I am writing about The Game that means I am thinking about The Game and have therefore lost The Game. You, dear reader, now know about The Game and are currently thinking about The Game, so you too, have lost The Game. Are we having fun yet?

While on lunch break at work, a bunch of actors/standardized patients were sitting around a table wearing paper gowns talking about how hard it is to be actors. Someone offered that when one gets discouraged with the actor’s lot of failed callbacks and low-paying, sporadic work, the best thing to do is to quit acting in one’s mind. Don’t quit for real, just quit in your mind to take the edge off. If you’ve quit, you’ll seem less desperate, you’ll go out more, you’ll take a trip, you’ll read a book. Then when you come back from your hiatus which you told no one about, you’ll be better, happier, stronger, older and thus more likely to book the job, in theory.

I think I did something similar with my writing this winter. As a rule, I write in my journal or blog when I see something that inspires me or something interesting/funny/story-worthy happens. I write when I have something of value to contribute to this flooded cesspool of people's mindful and mindless musings. Phrases will come to me out of the stratosphere while riding my bike or knitting quietly. This winter, the phrases didn’t come and neither did the impulse to tap the keys of my undergraduate Mac with the smudged screen. I forgot I was a writer (well, a person who writes). If writing was The Game, I was winning.

I think there is a sweet spot to quitting something in your mind. You gotta know when to join back up; you must sense when you are full of things to write about or full of energy and ideas to act or create again. I missed my sweet spot. I forgot I was a writer for so long that I stopped asking the phrases to come, stopped looking for the stories, stopped observing the people around me. I’ve become more interior and self-critical, less generous and content. Certain stories are now past their time and cannot be written. Even writing this feels labored, clunky and a chore. But I writing it.* I’ve lost The Game because I remembered I am a person who writes. No qualifiers, I just write.

Scot in the greenhouse.

The bunnies on Easter morning after the egg hunt.

So what did happen during these last three months? We traveled to Iowa City to perform in The Exit Interview. Those two months proved very fruitful to us. Scot continued to write and refine his plays and cared for Kathy's greenhouse. I knitted and sewed a dress for Stephen’s wedding. We both read a lot (Scot’s favorite read was Building Stories by Chris Ware and mine was Like Life by Lorrie Moore). It’s hard to believe we met almost a year ago at the opening night of Timon of Athens at Chicago Shakespeare. We continue to inspire, delight and confuse each other every day. We saw Scot's daughter Emma dance wonderfully in a modern dance showcase and spoke to her drama class at Toledo School for the Performing Arts about being Chicago actors. I gave up Facebook for Lent. Quitting cold turkey was a great way to reevaluate how I use my time online and on social media. As I write this, I am happy to say that I don't have a Facebook tab open on my browser. Facebook is a sometime food. This past Easter weekend we celebrated with our friends here in Chicago by hosting the traditional brunch. I made a ham using Nina’s wonderful apricot and mustard glaze recipe. We selfishly hoped there would be leftovers for ham sandwiches, ham omelets and ham cookies. Ham is an anytime food. But alas, by the time everyone left Sunday evening, that ham bone was picked cleaned. We saved it for soup.

Beautiful Easter ham.

What has been on my mind the most (and perhaps why I’ve not written) is applying to school again. I’m not ready to go into all that right now, but soon. My blue and yellow sundress under a wool sweater harkens the arrival of spring in Chicago. We are sitting in the Map Room on Armitage Ave, which we thought was a coffee shop and is more a place where men day drink together. This post is a warm-up for a personal statement which I’m on a deadline to write. The blank Pages window beside this one shines white full of possibility and potential, just waiting for me to personally state something on it.

One thing is for sure, I better not tell them what a loser I am cause I think about The Game all the time.


*This is an typo from my first draft left intentionally because (1) it makes me laugh and (2) it shows the depths of depravity my writing has come to. I WRITING IT, DAMN IT!

DIY: Bloomin' Bike Helmet

Me looking CRAZY at a bike rally in my original helmet. Do not do this outfit yourself.

Leading a Segway Tour on the Stone Arch Bridge

I made my bloomin' bike helmet when I was working as a Segway tour guide in Minneapolis. After graduation, I liberated it from the "Magical History Tour" and now wear it as I ride around my beloved Chicago streets. My favorite thing about this helmet is that encourages strangers to talk to me. Usually I am riding by or stopped at a stoplight and they shout at me, "Cool helmet! or "I love that!" I guess they figure I must be some sort of eccentric who probably wouldn't mind if they add one more voice to the ones in my head. Besides protecting my brain, a helmet like this leaves an impression. I remember one day during undergrad I arrived at class and set my bike helmet on the desk. The guy next to me gasped, "You're the Flower Helmet Girl!?! I see you all the time! Whoa... I feel like I just unmasked Spiderman."

Years have passed and my helmet is looking a little worse for wear, so I decided it was time to spruce it up and create some DIY instructions to boot. You too can be FHG!

Ingredients

You'll need:

A helmet, skater style works best/looks coolest.

Fabric flowers, be aware that scrap-booking ones will bleed if it rains.

Tacky Glue

Gorilla or Super Glue

Scissors

Gems

1. Wipe down the helmet with a damp rag to clean off any dirt.
2. Pull flowers off stems and cut off any plastic centers in the petals.
3. Glue fabric flowers onto helmet with Tacky Glue.
4. Glue gems into centers of fabric flowers with Gorilla Glue. Hold for 20 seconds.
5. Get on your bike and ride into the sunset. Beware of how much attention you will now be getting because of your newfound awesomeness.

And if you are lucky like me, you'll only superglue one rhinestone to your dining room table.  Happy Easter and many safe rides to you! And seriously, wear a helmet. Own your inner dork. Mine is flower flavored.

On the people you see every day.

I prefer to imagine that my wife, a few friends, and occasionally my mom are the only ones who read what I do, though I realize that this is somewhat unrealistic.  -Chris Ware

Santa gave Scot Building Stories for Christmas. Santa said he had to share it with me.

On this rainy January day, I'm sitting in front of the window in Prairie Lights, an independent bookshop in Iowa City, caffeinating and attempting to finish a post I began last year which was supposed to be my homage to the people of Chicago before I left the city for two months to rehearse a play at the Riverside Theatre. Perhaps I am thinking about these abandoned people today because I am halfway through reading Chris Ware's imaginative and melancholic graphic novel, I should say experience, Building Stories which explores the lives and minds of half a dozen Chicagoans living in the same apartment building.

So more on Iowa and 2013 later, because there are some people I've wanted to introduce you to...

Last December, on my ride on the El to Dr. C's downtown office, my knitting was interrupted when an entire second grade class stormed through the sliding doors of the Blue line train. All the kids were yammering away loudly and bumping into each other playfully when the tallest kid in the class bellowed over the other seventeen squeaky voices, "HEY GUYS! This isn't play time. Hold onto something." I was touched by both his leadership and the genuine concern in his voice. Amazingly, the children obliged. I wish every teacher had a kid like that in their class, a kid the other kids respect or like or fear enough to do as he/she says. The best people to lead us are the people that are people just like us.

While I waited for the Doctor, his receptionist told me she was looking forward to Christmas but it was bittersweet for her because her father had died two years earlier on the day. She said to me, with tears and faith in her eyes, "My daddy loved Christmas so much and God decided to take him home on the day he loved the most." The calm faith of strangers often awakens and stirs my own questioning faith. Don't aggressively hand me a Bible on a street corner. Tell me how certain you are that God holds your father in the palm of His hand. That's inspiring.

Audrey Hepburn, photographed the year I was born.

As I waited for the train home, I swayed to the music of an accordion player in the Jackson Blue Line stop. I closed my eyes and pretended to be in Paris eating spaghetti at a candlelit cafe. It seems in my fantasies, I am eating Italian food in Paris and I'm also dressed like a mime minus the white face paint and the tear.  So basically I'm dressed like Audrey Hepburn in any movie ever and if I'm crying it's only because the food is so delicious.  After boarding the El, I saw an elderly woman across from me on the deafening train take out one of her ear plugs and silently insist that the man across the aisle use it. After an initial protestation, he too obliged. I hope they knew each other, or maybe not. That's sort of amazing too.

After arriving in Wicker Park, I saw a plump woman screaming at a jolly young hipster man in cupcake truck. Who knows why? I laughed. She stormed away angrily. He called her back and the altercation seemed to be settled when he gave her a free sweet potato cupcake for the road. A diabetes-inducing happy ending.

Earlier that week,  I was at the laundromat with a young mother and her two kids. No one wants to be at a Chicago laundromat on a Thursday night. I'm sure she was tired; she'd probably worked all day and she had about five loads of laundry. Yet she was still in a good mood and was helping her daughter with her homework and teaching her young son how to work the dryers. One dryer wouldn't stay closed, so she set up a chair in front of it and had him sit there by telling him it was his job to guard their clothes. Forget the firemen, this woman is one of Chicago's finest. The single women who have kids, no washing machines in their homes and still manage to have smiles on their faces at the end of the day. 

Even kitties can read picture books.

I asked Scot today why Ware writes such sad characters, characters who can't help but be cruel or thoughtless to each other. "Does he want us to read this and be better, kinder people? The characters seem so hopeless at times, does he think we can be better?" Scot, who has read much of Ware's work, answered, "I think it's about empathy, Ware wants us to understand that the people we see on the steps of our apartment buildings are all experiencing some sort of unique, real struggle." That seems to be a worthy goal for 2013. It seems easy to empathize with and care about the families of the victims of the Newtown shooting, but can we empathize with and care about our next-door neighbors whose names we didn't care to learn?

On the lesson learned by finding a doctor on the Internet.

I starting seeing Dr. C a year ago when I moved to Chicago. He was the first doctor on my insurance's online list of providers in downtown Chicago. He went to Harvard and received strong reviews and many awards. The first time I went to see Dr. C, I was forced to confront my own, well, not racism and sexism exactly, but what I'd call racial and gender expectations. Upon my arrival, it didn't surprise me in the least that the curvy, black woman working the front desk was, well, a curvy, black woman. It wasn't until an elderly, black Dr. C came into the waiting area that I noticed quite suddenly that I was the by far the youngest and the only white woman in waiting room which was adorned with paintings of black mothers and children. It was the tiniest of reactions, a small surprise, a reversal of a subconscious expectation I didn't know I had.

When I think of the word "doctor," a middle-aged white man in a lab coat and plaid pants comes to mind, even though surely throughout my life I've had male and female doctors of different races. My subconscious has little more imagination than a 1950's children's book about careers (which is strange, since knitter/fake patient/nanny/actress was never featured in such a book.) Understand, I don't care what race my doctor is, but I didn't expect my doctor to be black. I noticed it. So what does an experience like this mean? In Dr. C's office ( and in many neighborhoods in the still very segregated Chicago), my age and race place me in the minority. I imagine when Dr. C started practicing medicine years ago many white women would not be treated by a black gynecologist, Harvard degree or no Harvard degree.  As the years have gone on, his patients have aged with him, except for those of us new ones who wander in confusedly off the street because we found his name on the Internet.

While I could list all the reasons why I'm not racist to make myself feel better, it seems more productive to admit I found an inadvertent flaw in my social constructions of race. We shouldn't be afraid to start a dialogue with ourselves about our racial expectations or biases. How else can we confront, challenge and seek to change them? It is 2012 and this country has not only elected, but reelected Barack Obama as president.  When I think of the word "president," I see a black man in my mind's eye.  But I've never met Barack Obama. I do meet doctors, teachers, engineers, artists, scientists, lawyers, human resources managers,* business owners and psychologists. And these people are not all white or men. They do not default to white or young or male or straight, for that matter. 

When my daughter thinks of the word "president," I hope she can see a woman's face. I'd also like her not be surprised when her doctor is elderly, a woman, black, Hispanic, or gay. She'll learn that from me, that's a promise. 

*For the record, thanks to Miss Tina Le, HR managers will always be Vietnamese in my mind.

Emma's Tardis Mitts

Not to get all sentimental on ya'll, but this is my 50th post! Wooooo! Something special is occuring. I made these Dr. Who Tardis mitts for my boyfriend's lovely and talented daughter, Emma, who is a super fan of the show. I wasn't wild about any of the patterns that already existed for Tardis mitts because many of them lacked a thumb gusset, so I made my own pattern!

MATERIALS

Any 3 skeins of a DK or light worsted weight yarn in blue, black and white.
Mine use: Blue Primarily Speaking Merino Wool, Black Blue Sky Melange, and White Malabrigo Rios.
Size 4 DPN
Size 6 DPN
Stitch markers
Tapestry needle

The yarn. 1/3 from stash.

INSTRUCTIONS

PM: Place marker
K: Knit
P: Purl
M1: Make one stitch by knitting into the front and back of the stitch.

In blue and smaller (size 4) needles, cast-on 45 stitches using the long tail cast-on method. Place 15 stitches on each of three DPNs. Join in round, being careful not to twist sts.

Work for 2 inches in K2, P1 ribbing.

Round 1-4: Switch to larger needles (size 6). Continuing in blue, knit 4 rows in stockinette.

Round 5, 6: Holding 2 strands together if you are using sport weight Melange, K 2 rows in black

Round 7-8: Knit 2 rows in blue.

Round 9: Begin thumb gusset as follows...

• Needle 1: K2, M1 by knitting in the front and back of the stitch, PM, K to end
• Needle 2: Knit all.
• Needle 3: K to 3 stitches to end, PM, M1, K2

Round 10: Knit all stitches.

Round 11: K to 1 stitch before marker, M1, K around to next marker, slide marker, M1, K to end.

Round 12: Knit all stitches.

REPEAT rounds 11 and 12 three more times so that you have a total of 55 stitches.

On the final repeat of round 4, knit to marker, remove marker, K2 and then cast off 12 stitches, K2, remove marker and continue knitting Round 19, being sure to pull the yarn tightly when you come around to join both sides. (42 stitches)

Round 19: Knit

Round 20: Knit in black.

Round 21-25: Work chart (see below) by K2, then beginning with the E. My version is K2 POLICE K5 BOX K6.

Round 26: Knit in black.

Round 27-29: Knit 3 rows in K2, P1 ribbing in blue.

Cast off!

*I used the chart for the letters from Sarah's rad pattern on her blog. CLICK HERE TO USE CHART.

I embroidered the windows on the top side of the gloves using a darning needle.

Emma proudly rocking her mitts!

On blissful surprises set to good music.

I love The Mountain Goats. I've seen them at The 400 Bar in Minneapolis, a school auditorium in Durham, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the Blue Moose in Iowa City, and Second City in Chicago. The Mountain Goats are coming to Chicago to play at the Vic this Saturday. I didn't buy tickets because I was being fiscally responsible, but I still put the date on my calendar, because it seemed important to note. I kept my schedule free for a concert I was not, in fact, attending.

I always say I went to first base with Ben Folds and all the way with The Mountain Goats. They are my musical true love. When I first met Scot, he was working on his play, thank u 4 a funky time, which has a passage in it about the Mountain Goats' break-up album "Get Lonely." His character says, "GET LONELY?! I don't want to GET LONELY. I already get it. I've already got it. I don't want more." He then proceeds to delete the album (and any others that remind him of or resemble his ex) from his iTunes. I've written before about how my favorite thing ever is to talk to boys about music. So my heart exploded a little when I met a man who was writing a play that had the line, "You can't take relationship advice from Fleetwood Mac!" in it.

Fast forward four months to yesterday, Scot West picked me up from work and asked me, "So Maura, do you like winners or losers?" He had entered a contest on his lunch break telling Reckless Records why he deserved a pair of tickets to see The Mountain Goats. He won. He won't tell me what he said, but it ended with "MAKE LOVE HAPPEN"and Reckless wrote on Facebook, "We have our winner- What a story!" Maybe one day he will share with me what exactly he said, but the man loves surprises and mysteries. I do too, in theory. I, to reference When Harry Met Sally, think I am surprising when actually I am completely transparent. We are a good balance, I suppose. Here is a short play based on a conversation we had which demonstrates my lack of ability to conceal anything:

 

A very earnest girl enters holding a glass bowl full of carrots covered in plastic wrap.

A boy (or a girl, a lover anyway) enters.

GIRL:

I love you so much I got you a secret present. You’ll never guess what it is.

BOY:

I can see what it is.

GIRL:

It’s a big surprise…

BOY:

You know that bowl is see-through, right?

GIRL:

Guess! Take a wild guess.

BOY:

Is it a bowl of carrots?

GIRL:

I’ll give you a clue… it might be a vegetable!

BOY:

Yeah, I bet it’s an orange vegetable. Probably similar to a carrot.

GIRL:

It grows in the ground…

BOY:

I don’t think you understand the concept of a surprise.

GIRL:

It’ll help you see better…

BOY:

I get it, it’s an effin bowl of CARROTS.

GIRL:

Bunnies eat it… nom, nom nom…

The BOY stares blankly. The GIRL holds out bowl, smiling.

BOY:

I give up, what is it?

GIRL:
A bowl of carrots! Don’t you just love it?

BOY:

(Sincerely) Yeah, I do. Carrots are my favorite.

Sometimes things come full circle. Scot's play involved The Mountain Goats darkest album which features the song No Children which holds the lyric, "I hope you die. I hope we both die." But time moves on. John Darnielle, the band's lead singer, is now married and has a gorgeous son who he is stupid fond of. When I first saw the band, it was Halloween in Minneapolis in 2007. A lot changes in 5 years. John now writes lyrics more like, "You'll never want for comfort/and you'll never be alone./See the sunset turning red/let all be quiet in your head/and look about/all the stars are coming out!" 

 Point is, everything changes. Seasons, jobs, friends, facial hair. But sometimes, the soundtrack stays the same. Sometimes you get to listen to your band for the first time with someone new who makes you feel like the luckiest lady this side of the Mississippi.

So Saturday night, you'll find us at the Vic. Boom.

I never thought being an adult meant I would eat this much cereal.

"Let no one tell me that childhood is lived in a timeless present. Rather it is a fever of anticipations. Edwin stretched his arms greedily toward the future, bright with unopened presents. As his sixth birthday approached, he was quite unaware that more than half his life was over."

-Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser

 
I've been hounded by a dear friend for a blog post and it is certainly time to write again. Much has happened since my last post, and yet, I am not at all sure what to write about. I have settled back into a routine of sorts here in Chicago. Same apartment, same roommate, Eric. Life is much as it was before I left for Iowa City with a few differences. Audition season is slow right now and I'm hoping things pick up within the next month. For now, I am working hard for the money, taking improv classes at the Second City Conservatory, and marketing/costuming a show for the Vintage Theater Collective.

I am still working as a standardized patient (if you recall, that is where I pretend to be sick to train doctors). One week last month, I had meningitis on Tuesday, a yeast infection on Wednesday and a thyroid disorder on Thursday. I recovered miraculously by the weekend, only to be struck down by a seizure on Sunday morning. Oh, epilepsy... always sneaking up on you when you least expect it. I am currently working with the second-year medical students on the head-to-toe physical exam. This class involves me sitting in a fake doctor's office in a patient gown as three future doctors discuss how to listen to my heart and lungs with their stethoscope without exposing my nipples. There is really nothing like it. At most jobs, people are not allowed to say, "Now lift your left breast." I hear it every day.

Me at the office.

I am nannying for a new little boy in Wicker Park, who I affectionately refer to as "the 1%." A. is a very fancy, sweet baby who enjoys regular lunches at The Goddess and The Grocer and Miko's Italian Ice. At home, he delights in avocado and seltzer water. I have the guilt of the 99% on me as I order him his $6 macaroni and cheese lunch at the G&G. The hot dishes at this tiny cafe are served by weight a la carte. The first day we dined out, I only had the $6 in cash his mother had given me in my pocket. (I left my own wallet at home so as to not tempt myself to buy a meal I could not afford.) Despite asking for the smallest piece of macaroni and cheese, the total still came to $6.17. We all stared helplessly at each other as the cashier counted the contents of the "take a penny" cup and A. happily knocked over a stand of expensive toffees. The blonde, manicured woman behind me begrudgingly handed the cashier a quarter, more to get me out of her way than to be generous to a frazzled hipster. I thanked her and felt the need to explain to everyone involved that I was sent here by the boy's mother, not wanting to be perceived as a wealthy Bucktown socialite too cheap to carry around more than $6 to buy her son lunch. After this whole ordeal, A. proceeded to throw about $4.53 worth of the hard-earned dish onto the cafe floor. And yet, we return every week (with a pocket full of change.) I swear they cringe when they see me and his red stroller rolling down Damen. I will never take my own 14 month old out to a restaurant. Lil Clementine will just have to eat her pasta at home and drink her water sans bubbles.

When we aren't harassing upscale grocery clerks, A. and I love going to the dog park and reading Goodnight, Moon in Hebrew (I make up all the words, as I cannot speak Hebrew and refuse to read the book right-to-left, back-to-front. So really I suppose we read something more like Good Morning, Moon where the moon is rudely woken up by a pack of rabbits still in their pajamas.) I've become a regular at the Wicker Park playground, rubbing elbows with an Australian au pair, the homeless gentleman who play bongos at the park's entrance, and Hazel, a very cute baby who flirts with A. and wears her hair in a sprout at the very crown of her head. A. calls me "Mmmm" which is also what he calls 'milk.' Since it is I who provide him with his milk, our exchanges are quite efficient. In all seriousness, A. and his family are very nice and I'm thankful for the work.

A. and I reading Steven Millhauser

Much to my joy, I am not waiting tables this fall. The money was good, but the late nights and the erratic scheduling is simply not conducive to living a real life. A life where I can see plays, cook dinner, get up before 11 AM, don't have to wear farming clothes (okay, I still do that anyway.) I am juggling about 5 jobs, so it is a hustle to pay for rent, food and my improv classes (not to mention my yarn...). As year two begins, the hustle, while being a little less difficult to assemble because of previous established contacts, is a little less fun. Not that it was all a barrel of laughs last year, but beginning year two out in the world reminds me of suffering through sophomore year of the BFA. I start to realize why alumni of the Program would tell us how hard it is out there for artists (and everyone). Because it is hard. And people can warn you how hard it is with a sad look in their eyes, but no one is going to be able to tell you the specific way it is going to be hard for you. That's the mystery waiting for you floating out there in the world, on the backs of discarded headshots and in the air of a sleepless night spent wondering how you will ever have health insurance to provide for your unborn children.

No one ever said it would be easy. But is it worth it? All the hustle and the moving and the pursuit? Today, I say yes. Yes it is. The dream must be pursued with energy and fervor. We just went to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Part of the home burned down three times and each time he rebuilt it. Because the home was his dream and no crazy person or act of God was going to defeat his dream. And so we must be grateful for our crappy apartments and endless job interviews. We must work on our audition pieces and read plays, even though we'd much rather watch 30 Rock. We must learn to cook things that could not be perceived as breakfast foods. We must celebrate our friends' successes, for they are great indeed. And we must end this post, because we have an audition at a theater company called Babes with Blades, and who wouldn't want to see this saucy minx speak some Shakespeare with a sword in her hand?

Much love to you indeed.

Enjoying a laugh with Breana, who just closed her first season at American Players Theatre

This post is dedicated to Melinda George, in recognition of her fierce pursuit of her dreams.