Serious Injury: Serious Option

There is a loverly BritCom benamed Black Books that covers the antics of a triptych of wacky friends and their exploits. The introductory episode presents us with the main character, Bernard Black, owner and operator of a small bookstore in London, faced for the first time with having to do his own taxes (as his accountant, it seems, is rather suddenly on the lam from MI5). About midway through the episode, Bernard discovers a helpful clause in the instructions for completing his "accounts," which states, in sum and substance, that if the filler-outer gets seriously ill or injured, he is exempt from filing his taxes. Upon reading this, of course, Bernard sets about on a series of failed attempts to irreparably maim himself. A ridiculous notion, and obviously a formula for comedy.

But I daresay this falls into the "it's funny because it's true" category.

Somebody make me unresponsible for finding my new apartment, for the underpinnings of an entire law practice, for putting my personal life in order (Is a personal life ever really "in order"?), for healing my body and for scheduling my theatrical commitments. Somebody hit me with a brick (Patrick?), kick me in the face (Nat?) or rerupture the frail hydrostatic pressure preventing my urine from invading my ballular region (Myself?). Actually, skip that last one; there's simply got to be a better way. But the first two I'll take! I actually thought to myself last night, looking for the subway in BedSty, "This neighborhood = not so great. Maybe I'll get mugged and I can retreat into a passive-aggressive hole for two weeks until this whole apartment hunting thing blows over." Alas, 'twas not meant to be. I still have the same finsky in my wallet, and my psyche remains arrogantly intact.

That last might fall into the "it's funny because it's blatantly false" category, actually.

I can feel the edges of my psyche curling up in retreat from all the B.S. of the hunt. (Trivia tidbit: My psyche is actually a potato bug.) Yesterday I saw two places, both of a goodly size for my modest needs. The first was in crap condition, however, and they wanted $650 there and then, non-refundable and unrelated to rent or an additional broker's fee, to secure it. Lots of promises for new windows (I lived for two years with windows with holes in them in Richmond) and a working intercom, the which I could always comfort myself with as I wrote out my $1,000 check every month for at least a year. The second was a really nice place, and could have been mine for a check there and then for a month's rent, which was lower than advertised: merely $875. But I felt pressured, and so didn't take it there and then. Which was good, because come to find out the reason all the new security had been installed was because the building's only (ginormous) neighbor across the street was a mandatory acceptance homeless men's shelter. Social conscience aside, not the sort of foot traffic I wish to submit me and mine to.

Tonight bodes more of the same. Leaping from inaccessible place to inaccessible place, calling to apologize for lateness and trying to suck up without falling into a myriad of traps and pressure situations. Tonight I am aiming for three places, which I tried but failed to do last night. Hopefully they will not all be wastes of time. Hopefully, all my problems will be solved by 9:00 PM tonight. But I'm not counting on it. There's nothing I'm counting on, at this point.

Except perhaps a friend with a hobbling post.

Roller Derby? I Haven't Even MET Her Derby!

Friday last I had myself a bit of an adventure, in the lovely Garden State of New Jersey. (Oh, how I can't say enough good things about New Jersey, and all its loveliness! My God! The state's beauty is only out won by its inherent and seemingly effortless virtue! Hail unto thee, New Jersey! Hail unto thee!) Friend Kira has taken up a new pastime, and Friday night was her first official bout. That's right. Friend Kira is gone and joined the army of awesomeness that is the Garden State Rollergirls.

Seriously: Awesome. Roller derby combines many of my greatest loves--dual identities, loud music, theatre, humor, violence and women. Tough chicks, to be more specific. Ever since joining the circus, I have had a pointed appreciation for tough chicks, and these were some of the toughest I have ever seen. And their skate names rule: Skarzipan (Kira), Jenna von Fury, Slam-n-Legs, Layla Smackdown and, my personal favorite, Belle N. Somebashin'. Roller derby comes with my highest recommendation.

Kira's team is dubbed The Northern Nightmares, and last Friday they went skate-to-skate with Jersey City Bridge & Pummel, and therein did they prove themselves worthy of the gods' acclaim. (Sorry--I've been reading a lot of Mary Renault, and it has me thanking Zeus and fearing Poseidon.) Which is to say, the NNs wiped the floor with Bridge & Pummel. You may read Kira's somewhat inebriated account of the bout here. I agree with her perspective on the thing: B&P were playing at a distinct disadvantage, but playing hard nonetheless. I hope Kira feels further motivated by her contributions to the victory.

It's been very interesting hearing about Kira's progress through this experience. It's been quite physically arduous for her, and she makes no effort to avoid admitting that she's the slowest of the team, yet she has stuck with it and has a kind of passion for it that surprised me at first. I don't credit myself with an appreciation for activities that I'm not naturally talented in. (Hell of a sentence, that. Shall we try again?) THAT IS TO SAY, when I don't show any kind of aptitude for a thing, I generally cease to work at it. It's hard for me to keep up an initial enthusiasm in such cases, and this has come to haunt me in the past year. I was not allowed to quit at learning Italian, because I simply needed to speak and understand it better. I suppose I could have quit trying in my performance of A Lie of the Mind and saved myself a lot of heartache, but the alternative of phoning it in was simply not an alternative for me. I would have had a much better time of it if I could have quickly gotten past the kind of automatic self-loathing that such occasions give rise to. It's something to work on.

Kira's experience also reminds me of a kung fu class I enrolled in with Friend Mark back in 2000. I eventually quit the class, out of frustration with the structure of the school and the time demands of trying to attend it and support my acting career, and those energies quickly found some outlet in my circus studies. But the reminiscence I particularly remember from Alan Lee's Kung Fu/Wu Shu Academy was the trial class Mark and I took together. Mark is a multi-degree blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and I think while he was staying in the city he just wanted to keep in shape and encourage me toward martial arts. So I found the school and he joined me in testing it out. In the trial class, we were sequestered into our own group of two and a teacher took us through our paces. One of the training methods employed by that school is to incorporate conditioning at the beginning and end of the class, which helps both to make the simply workout more efficient and keep the muscles trim--the ideal of this lithe and quick style of fighting. So one of the first things our private teacher that day asked of us was thirty push-ups.

When I look back on it, I wonder if he wasn't being a bit soft with us. At the time, however, I remember thinking, "Did he say thirty 'push-ups'? That can't be right." I don't believe I had ever done over ten push-ups in a row before in my life up to that point. When I was young and chubby, I simply couldn't. When I got older and slim, I didn't see the point. The only physical activity I had really been interested in at that point was the common pratfall, the which really only requires a willingness to take your lumps. In college I was cast in a production of The Three Musketeers that taught me a thing or two about stamina and flexibility, but nothing of the benefits of strength. The instructor did say "push-ups," and I did end up doing them, and more.

The next day, I couldn't raise my arms from the elbow to anything sharper than 90 degrees. I looked mighty funny, I assure you, trying to eat and brush the hair from my eyes. I was borderline injured from the exertion, yet I wanted nothing more than to do it again. I knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that my incapacitation was a sign that I had done something seemingly impossible. I had transcended. I had broken past a barrier, and it hurt like hell, and it felt amazing and wonderful.

It's not every day we are presented with an opportunity to become more. Or is it? Maybe the opportunity is always there, but we only recognize it when circumstances align a certain way. Whichever the case may be, it is a cause for celebration, that effort to transcend. So I celebrate you, Skarzipan. Thanks for the inspiration. As soon as I find a new apartment, I'm going to install my pull-up bar and sign up for the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

"Do You Believe in Unlikelihoods?"

So I'm moving. Again. Since I first arrived in New York, I have moved six times. Which really isn't that bad for a struggling New York actor. Combine that with the constant travel associated with doing regional theatre on a regular basis, however, and it comes to seem a bit pointless, investing oneself in any particular place. The place I'm leaving, for example, I never really spent much time on making my own. It always seemed transitional to me. I've come to decide it's important, however, to have a home base that I care about. So this cycle around, I'm playing for keeps, and looking for a place of my own.

So the 'blogination may be somewhat lacking in days to come, in order to afford me more time to peruse the craigslist.

Much has been written already regarding the importance of an artist having his or her own space, from Virginia Woolf to Julia Cameron, but it can be easy to give such a notion lip service without actually appreciating the value of such a thing. Personally, I feel much more capable of good work when my work area is clean and clear (which creates an endless internal battle akin to that between Ra and Apep as my stacking impulse vies for dominance). It's not surprising then that occupying one's own space and taking control of it would help one feel in more control of his or her life. This is my hope, at any rate. A friend of mine in As Far As We Know signs off her emails with a quote from Flaubert: "Be steady and well-ordered in your life so that you may be fierce and original in your work."

"Il faut écrire des choses très folles en ayant une vie très rangée."

I don't speak French, so if the above is wrong: Bite me.

The first challenge is, of course, finding such a place. I don't know how it compares to other mejor metropolitan areas, but New York is certainly the worst of my experience when it comes to this process. It's akin to trying to get hired for an acting gig, actually. The supply of gigs/digs is so small, and the demand for them so large, the whole process is rendered ridiculous to the point of seeming pre-civilized. There is no point in looking ahead of time if you're looking to rent, because the day--the very day--that a good apartment is posted, it is taken. This creates a rather bloodsport, kill-or-be-killed environment, in which otherwise harmless-looking people will leave work unexpectedly and lurk around decrepit buildings with blank money orders clutched in their starving grasp. I carry a blackjack myself, just in case I see someone who looks wealthier than me approaching an available apartment.

The second challenge--which deserves just as much anxiety, really--is to, upon finding said place, make it both mine, and helpful to my work. These would seem to go hand-in-hand, but in my experience they do not. For example: I love movies. That's pretty natural for a young actor, methinks. I also have a lot of compulsive behaviors. Pretty natural, that, for a somewhat introverted thinker such as myself. Now, making the place my own in an immediate sense means setting up a nice, comfortable couch with the television prominently placed, surround-sound speakers installed about, and room for friends. HOWEVER, such a comfortable set-up, taking up so much space, makes it way too easy for me to get all habitual, then compulsive, about my movie-watching.

So it's a delicate balance, as with everything else.

Except moving, in which delicacy will get your ass killed.

One Hun Dread

This is my 100th post, which means I'm averaging about 20 per month, which would probably make Odin's Aviary the most successful journal I've ever kept ever, even if I stopped right now, never to write another word here again.



But I won't.

Special thanks, too, to my fellow nerds of Camp Nerdly for their interest in my first Nerdly post (see 5/7/07), for they did--in one day--double my readership. That's right! I had almost twenty-five new readers that day! What what! StatCounter.org almost 'asploded!

Owing to this momentous occasion, it seems fitting either to:

• Look back on the Aviary's droppings from the past, a la Three's Company's annual episode comprised entirely of weakly incorporated clips from previous seasons;

or,

• Make up for lost time on all those fart jokes I promised.

Accordingly, I shall do neither. Instead, I shall write a bit more on this concept of The Third Life(patent pending). (Thanks to Jason Morningstar for unintentionally motivating me to revisit this theme. I owe you the user manual to The Turtle Amulet.) When I began this 'blog, way back in the halcyon days of my youth--December 2006--I began it without purpose, and my first entry simply declaimed that fact in an effort to change it. Shortly thereafter, I found a subject both general enough and compelling enough to make daily writings addressing it a realistic possibility. Not satisfied with having purpose, however, I felt compelled to give it a name that I culled from myriad personal cultural references, thereby assuring that no one would have any concept of just what in the hell I was referring to when I used said name. I dubbed this subject The Third Life.

The Third Life refers to the examined life, the one intentional, with something significant in addition to working and family/friends. I tend to see the third option as something artistic in spirit, but that is a personal bias and anything can be done artfully, so I would modify that condition to exclude only "hobbies." If it's a "hobby," it ain't your "Third." Conversely, simply aiming to make something creative in nature into one's career does not qualify. Take my goal of becoming full-time in my professional acting, for example. If I achieve this aim, it does not necessarily mean that I am living The Third Life. It's not about material success. It's more about working in the spirit of truth.

Kinda dippy sounding, I know. Nevertheless, I mean it. In acting it can be pretty easy to accidentally fly through a show on automatic pilot, or act for audience response more than the truth of the moment on stage, and I see this in life as well. Have you ever felt like you were suddenly woken from a kind of zombie-like routine you were barely aware of? Have you ever driven yourself (and those patiently tolerating you) crazy with trying to please everyone, or in other cases only yourself? These are things I feel happen to me when I slip in life, when I wander off this incredibly difficult path I've chosen for myself. Some people do just fine living a "normal" life artfully, or not worrying the art to living. Me, I need to have a pursuit, an exploration, akin to religion. Not that I'm looking for answers, necessarily. Maybe meaning. Maybe something else entirely that will surprise me.

There may come a day when I stop acting. Well, maybe not "stop acting." I don't think I could ever do that completely at this point; it will live through whatever I do from here on out. But there could come a day when I cease the struggle to be an actor in the no-holds-barred sense of the role. Indeed, in the progress of building this here weblog I have more than once wondered, "Have I started this thing only to have it record the cessation of the career I began it to support?" (Yes, I use this kind of vocabulary and syntax when I'm thinking to myself. That should clear a lot up for you vis-a-vis my writing style and considerable pauses in conversation.) I frequently try to imagine myself as a teacher, or even a writer (a career that vies for that esteemed category of "Most Impossible to Make a Living At"), and fantasize that life would be so much simpler down those paths. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but at times it's hard to imagine anything being more difficult than what I'm doing now.

Inevitably, I stop for a moment in these thoughts, and look around me, and realize that there's nothing I'd rather be doing. Teaching might offer me more security in life. Writing may encourage an all-around more peaceful existence. Being a paralegal . . . well, that would still just all-around suck. The point is, I am still doing what makes me happy, no matter how miserable it may sometimes be. Maybe someday what makes me happy will change. If it does, I hope I'm up to the challenge of recognizing that.

A couple of nights ago I had dinner with a friend, a fellow actor who had just returned from a week-long gig out of town that involved some friends and a teacher he hadn't worked with in a long time. He came back energized to take his craft by the bootstraps and heave it back onto its feet, and it was inspiring. I thought about how some of the best people I have ever known, people who just impress the hell out of me in one way or another, lead these kinds of "unconventional" lives. They pursue family (blood or otherwise), career . . . and something else. However I can find it, that's the life for me.

And now I've got sea shanties stuck in my head.

Oh And Hey

If you haven't yet checked out the link to the left for BibliOdyssey, do yourself a favor. Its awesomenessitude is unparalleled.