Dreams.

When I'm anxious or troubled, I have vivid nightmares and remember them. Otherwise, I don't usually remember my dreams. Two nights ago, there was a car crash with a mangled bloody corpse sprawled in the front seat -- a lot of my nightmares are about the aftermath of car wrecks (I don't have recurring dreams so much as recurring settings or types of events in which the details change from dream to dream) -- and a weird trio of blond children wearing angular plaid suits and old-fashioned haircuts who were terrifying for some reason.

Last night I dreamed that J and I encountered a tiger and her cubs on a hiking trail. J ran right by her, but she blocked my path. I managed to intimidate her and keep her from attacking me. J took one of the cubs home. He was holding it in his arms, and it was beautiful and vivid with pale blue eyes. I kept telling him that he had to take it back to its mother, but he ignored me.

I don't enjoy being stressed out, and I wouldn't exactly say that I enjoy having nightmares, but there's something about them I like. They're maybe instructive, at the very least diverting.

Autoepiphany.

I think I need to get a car. Maybe not immediately, but before too long. I've been so resistant to the idea, because I hate driving, I don't want the expense and trouble of a car, and I'm opposed to car culture in general. But I live in a city with crappy public transit, limited sidewalks and poor pedestrian access to many areas, not enough bike lanes (which aren't safe anyway because they're so often used for turn lanes or parking). Am I just making myself miserable to prove a point? Is this one of those cases where I should just give in and live in the real world even if it doesn't line up with my values?

I love Austin and want to stay here. Maybe I have to accept Austin on its own terms instead of expecting it to be something it's not and consequently resenting it.

Having a car would eliminate so many little day-to-day frustrations, like having to rely on others to shop for me, or my apprehension about almost every invitation or social activity because I don't like feeling stranded and dependent on someone to drive me home. Being without a car makes it difficult for me to contemplate getting a job, it makes me reluctant to pursue a date with anyone, it makes what should be the simplest tasks feel like walking through a foot of mud. A car would also relieve some of the anxiety I feel about the heat here, because I wouldn't be out in it as much and I wouldn't be soaked with sweat every time I arrived somewhere. (Anxiety must seem like a strong word, but that's what it is. Today when I was walking to the bus in the humid 80-degree weather, my heart started racing and I thought I might cry because the air felt like summer coming and I thought, "I have to get my life together before the heat comes because once it does I'm going to be incapacitated for 5 months.")

I think the strain effects me more than I have admitted.

Now, the actual getting of a car is another story since I have no money. But I feel a small sense of relief having realized that I want one.

I Guess I Could Always Lead the Nation's Toughest Warriors.

I was thinking on my way home from school today that tonight I should make a list of things I might want to do in the fall, since I no longer have plans. Just to sort of get my thoughts together. In the mail when I got home was a flier from the Marine Corp. that says, "When you started college, you planned to change your world." And then you open the thing and inside it says, "You still can." Hm.

Heard on the Street.

Pretty frequently there will be a club or sorority or some such group doing a blood drive on campus. They bring in those big bright buses, line them up, and get a couple perky girls to nab people as they walk by: "Would you like to save 5 lives today?" The first time this happened, I didn't know what it was and I said, "Sure? How do I do that?" "Your blood donation can save 5 lives!" I muttered something like, "Not today," and kept walking. But now I always say, "You don't want my blood" -- blood banks don't accept blood from men who have sex with men -- and the perky girl's smile freezes and her eyes go all quizzical and she'll say, "Okay."

There's an area on campus, on the main mall, called the "free speech area" (the name cracks me up, as if speech is not free anywhere else), where organizations like the Palestinian Students Organization or Campus Democrats set up tables and hand out literature as kids move between classes. There's a group called Face AIDS which raises money for and awareness of AIDS in Africa. I don't want to disparage their hard work and dedication because AIDS is a big problem in Africa for sure, but it strikes me as bizarre that, when rates of new HIV infections among college-age kids are spiking and most college kids seem to have no clue what the fuss is, the only student organization dedicated to AIDS is focused on Africa. Anyway, when you walk by they say, "Would you like to help fight AIDS today?" I've taken to saying, "I fight AIDS every day." (Meaning that every sexually active homosexual man, no matter his antibody status, lives with the spectre of HIV.) Same falling smile and quizzical eyes.

I wonder what stories these kids are weaving in their brains about me.

Blog About It.

On the web site of the graduate admissions office, they say that applicants will be notified in late March whether they have been accepted or not, so when I got an email from them Thursday afternoon it didn't cross my mind that this would be "the news," and I opened it and started reading, only half-focused because I was in the middle of my anthropology homework, which scrambles my brain:

"We have concluded our review of applications for the Master of Fine Arts in Film & Video Production program at The University of Texas at Austin. We regret that we are unable to offer you admission for Fall 2009." etc.

I had to read it a few times. I was so completely unprepared for the news that I literally couldn't quite make sense of it. My first thought was "Fuck it, fuck college, the only reason I went back to finish my BA is so I could do this MFA program, so why do I need to be struggling with fossils and math now? I'll drop the whole thing, go to New York, and work on my show." That's what I would have done at 23, in fact pretty much was what I did, more than once, quit school because it was annoying and making art was more compelling. But I'm older now, as they say, and if I'm going to be homeless I'd rather be some place warm.

I settled for dropping my anthropology class. I can take something else this summer to fulfill that science requirement, something math-free. There, I feel better now.

When I got home, there was a big zip file in my inbox from A with recordings of 5 songs from his rehearsal with the band. I listened to them and cried. I'm sure my disappointment was in the tears somewhere, and my regret that I'm not in New York, but mostly I was crying because they just sound so fucking great.

I get it. The future contains infinite possibilities. I don't need another reminder.

Everybody's Happy.

T called late last night ecstatic about the show. He was on his way to the subway after the first music rehearsal and he said, "I just have to tell you this show rocks!" You know we hired, they hired, my old friend A as musical director after a lot of lobbying on my part because, well, I've always thought the show needed a musical director because of my limited skills as composer and arranger but the need it seemed to me was crucial and obvious this time since I with my limited skills am not even there. I had this strong feeling that A was the right person to do it. I thought he would understand the story, the approach, the songs. He's played in rock bands for years, he has formal training in composition, plays several instruments, has done a lot of theatre.

He elbowed his way into the score fast, seeming to comprehend the thing whole and know exactly what needed to be done in ways big and small, which took my breath away, not, I have to admit, in a good way at first, because he suggested a lot of changes, some of them pretty substantial. But he has been right about everything. I'm in awe of his talent right now.

So T staged the first three scenes last night, the first three songs. He's thrilled with A, thrilled with the new cast. God I wish I were there.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, JP is finishing the bodies in the garage. He's executing an idea T had for Mr. and Mrs. Borden who have to be hacked to death with an axe on stage. They only appear for moments, but it's the big scene, it's what the show is all about, so it's got to be great. They don't have to look completely real, but it needs to be gruesome.

T's idea was that two big road cases would be wheeled out on stage for the murder scene (you know those big black and silver boxes with oversized hinges and latches that they use to carry stuff around in for rock shows?), and when they're opened, inside are truncated but life-size dioramas of Mom and Dad made out of latex and dressed in period clothes. Mr. Borden is napping on a Victorian settee and Mrs. is sitting at a dressing table, both looking very proper and peaceful until blood starts gushing out of their heads. They are rigged with stage blood that, when Lizzie hits them with a rubber but very convincing axe, will be pumped out through pre-cut wounds in their heads. (The picture above is one of the crime scene photos of Andrew Borden dead on the sofa.)

I also talked the producers into hiring JP to make the props, because the other thing besides a music director that this show needs is great gore effects for the murders, and I just happened to know someone super-talented in that department too.

Don't Panic.

I was feeling sort of panicky yesterday. On my to-do list was a pile of reading for my human evolution class, a project that involved a bit of research and a scale rendering for my stage rigging class, study for a Spanish quiz, and a phone call with the Lizzie Borden music director in New York. I couldn't concentrate for long on any of them without the others pushing their way into my brain, so I spent about an hour in the late morning just lying on my bed with my eyes wide open trying to breathe slowly.

I have seriously bit off more than I can chew with this anthropology class. I needed one course from a list of science courses to fulfill a degree requirement, and it was the only course on the list that would fit in my schedule. Since this is my last full semester, I don't have a lot of flexibility. I knew it was a course for science majors, but the course description was a little vague about prerequisites and it's a course on a fascinating subject taught by one of the top scientists in the field, so I just decided to do it.

I was reading from the textbook yesterday morning, and seriously not absorbing ANY of it because it's so full of terminology it looks as opaque as a foreign language. So not only do I not know what I'm reading, it takes me forEVER to read it. I kept thinking I should just stop, it's a waste of time, and I have so much other stuff to do. But then I would tell myself to relax and read it a few times, maybe it'll get clearer eventually. A few times? You mean I have to read this more than once?! And round and round.

The hard thing for me to accept (and the fact that it's so hard makes me even crazier) is that I may not get everything but what I do get will be valuable. When he's not digging fossils, the professor of this course is very involved with creating interactive teaching tools. Besides the book for this course, we have a CD-ROM which is much easier to navigate than the book. Pictures! I spent a little time with it yesterday and suddenly a few basic concepts became clear, and now I feel like I have at least a start of a framework that I can hang all the esoteric information from the textbook and articles on.

It's not that I can't do this stuff. I just need to take it in smaller pieces. My new motto for life. "Don't panic!"

I finished the rigging project, and the Lizzie Borden phone call went well. He's making some big changes in the arrangements of the songs: all improvements, but it's hard to have someone else fussing with material that I created and have become very attached to. Some of those songs I wrote almost 20 years ago.