Lazy Sunday...

Never.

Last weeks's "day off" was full of sailing and a late dinner (preceded by the frustrations of failed communications media). Nothing to complain of the day's activities -- just full motion and full company. Today, the dancers are invited over to the Chases' (the many Chases, Nigel this time) for a cookout on the point, with sauna and kayaks. We're about to go grocery shopping. Last night, we heard Paul Sullivan jazz (why do they seat people for this kind of thing?) with a big black woman wailing and a gawky 15 year old with an overdone operatic tone, but a nicer, looser swing once she got rolling. But after coping with a peevish and aggressive primo donno newly introduced to the cast, sitting lumpishly in the quarry with nothing to do or running around covered in a felty piece of turf, labeled an "ideal community member" (that's a big insult), and pulling 13 hour days before finally sitting down to family dinner at 9 and figuring out how to exit (not so hard, they're kind and I can yawn)...well, I'm ready for some down time. I'm ready to be with my family, to fly to Oregon, to catch up with Dara, to head out to the middlest nowhere of this middle of nowhere and sketch, alone.

Not to say that I haven't had amazing experiences. This week:

Monday's pan dance,
Tuesday's live drawing class (my first ever, probably a fuller post on this and other things to come),
Thursday's dancer get-together (hilarious game of "Celebrities," world's best guac, and the cast's good couple: "Don't diss yourself."),
Saturday's bona fide burger and better jazz.

But as you'll see, most of these experiences have nothing to do with my purported purpose in being here. Is that a so what? Or is being seen as less a dancer than anything else a real reason to feel that this is not what I came for? Well, it's not what I came for. I'm focusing more on relationships, and that's been helpful, but it's also dangerous. It's too tied to emotion, too out of my control.

I've made a list of ways I can be helpful. None of them are creative beyond the point of writing PR, but I'm good at writing PR. So I can be helpful. I'm trying to interrogate Alison about ways I can plug in; being active rather than waiting for the thing to come to me. Enjoying small triumphs (oh, but really, do I want to be the girl who's just glad she remembered to pack the emergency peanuts?) The problem is, rehearsal is not the place I'm most useful. And by the end of rehearsal, my plans to write and send a report, figure out all the cues for the dancers, etc. are essentially shot because I can't keep my eyes open, having been on the run from 6:30AM to 7:30PM.

So today (the "day of rest"), is compulsory partying and my own burgeoning to-do list, which has to be done if I am to feel at all useful, imaginative, on-the-ball. It's already rolling away from me ... but there a few causes in which I need to let it roll. To pray, to read, to speak with friends. I can't forget who I am, since it seems the project here is more and more about figuring that out in action. If you've written me, thank you. I mayn't have responded, somnambulist that I am outside the quarry, but it mattered to me, and I will write back soon.