Sunday, March 15, 2009

nostalgia

Today I'm attending an audition workshop. I put on make-up for this. It takes about an hour (I screw it up several times.)

First there's foundation, then some powder so you don't look shiny on camera, than some red for your cheeks which have disappeared under the foundation and the powder, then a touch of eye shadow so that you look even less dead, then some mascara, then clear lip gloss so that your mouth isn't buried in imitation skin colour. What a farce.


When I finished I sat in my room going over some lines. Mum came in with a book called Big Weather: Poems of Wellington which I bought when we lived there 7 years ago. She wanted to read me a poem called 'Common Oak, Europe' by Stephanie de Montalk. The poem ends with the title tree

wondering whether life would be better
as a willow oak
tulip oak
or river oak

accepting that an airy
and ornamental image
is not necessarily a substitute
for the setting of oars
and the gathering of winds
in ancient seas

knowing
that mention of European ancestry
although helpful
is unlikely to carry weight
in a garden of tree ferns. 

...

And finally, tonight is the last night of Moonlight Cinema. No more 7-nights-a-week for me for at least another year.

This all seems to tie in nicely with ideas I have about 2009 as my year of living vegetatively. I can't be screwed with this whole make-up-and-bad-scripts audition biz. It's awful. And I can't be screwed with working the ludicrous hours I've been working throughout uni and then since I returned from Europe. But, I can definitely be screwed with writing more, and learning French, and doing some theatre, and living quietly in my new Abbotsford house with a wee garden and two lovely boys. Hippiedom - or sleep - here I come.

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