All of My Priorities

hello old friend. its been a while.

well im not so sure why i decided to come back...
actually that is a lie.
i have been spending a lot of my time outside class with a very interesting girl who digests philosophy and self-help books like candy and spends a lot of time trying to convince me to do a lot of exercises that she swears will help me rediscover my inner-artist. very lovely girl. i have been very skeptical, but i guess being around her has inspired me a bit (maybe more than a bit) to rediscover personal expression.

i guess writing to an online audience counts.

i am also recovering from a brilliant production of The Merchant of Venice that i saw at the RSC in Stratford last night. all the excitement is making me want to explode with personal expression! the play was very creative. had a Brechtian (is that even a word?) feeling to it... and what can i say I have a soft spot for plays that dont let me have any cathartic moments that let me off the hook... 90% of the other actors from the program HATED the play because the acting wasnt "truthful". i understand where they come from, but i guess i put the actor aside and let the director/dramaturg/playwright watch the play. the director of the production is known for his "none character" approach to theatre. apparently its all in the text. initially i thought "what the hell does “no character” mean?”. after seeing the production i have come to interpret it as "no actors," meaning sans touching/emotional portrayals of characters that make audiences say to themselves "oh what an incredible actor!!" which can lead to the actors’ performances becoming the focus of plays.

his approach brought the focus to the production as a whole (sound, lights, text, visual images...). i dont know much about the director and i dont know if hes a Brecht fan (id be surprised if he wasnt), but the production seemed to successfully follow through with the few Brechtian (again with this word!) concepts that i am familiar with. i was intrigued because i wasnt sure the style would work... (i have never seen a Brecht play... expect a terrible version of The Three Penny Opera) but to my surprise Merchant had an incredibly strong impact on me… stronger than any other play.

i think this is where theatre might be headed, or at least a portion of it. i guess this is the kinda stuff i want to be involved in because it appealed to the audience member within me.

ANYWAY i really dont want to bore anyone with my thoughts on theatre. im starting to grow tired of conversations about "Theatre" (imagine i said that in a very posh english accent... while bowing and gesturing with my hand). i swear there is more to me than theatre, however it is difficult to be anything BUT theatre when you are surrounded by Shakespeare 24/7 and the only people you know in a foreign city are ALL actors. but i have been able to break away a bit. pubs are always nice. and of course window shopping is always fun (look-y but no touch-y... the exchange rate makes me vomit a little in my mouth sometimes). i also love wandering around all the weekend markets.

lately, i have been eating fruit like no one's business. i am having a love affair with the small packets of pre-washed M&S green grapes! its an addiction. i guess it works for me bc i eat like a mouse anyway. dried berries, nuts, and fruit! when did i become a vegan?? im also drinking aloe juice for my digestive system and living off organic food... i feel like a walking add for a health food store haha.

now that i have run out of things to say and im growing somewhat incoherent due to sleep deprivation (not that anything i said was all that interesting anyway...), i shall retire to my chamber.

sleep tight internet community.

About as good a day as I could ask for. Pomona had a music festival. Shockingly turn-out</i> was high. And though I did not receive the requested slice of pie from the women I call my neighbors, I will not begrudge them.

I find a sort of delicious irony in, if not yielding to a course that I have long fought, than at least going along with it for appearances sake. Much like the unfortunate breaking apart of my original social circle, the unity of a group that I had come to be comfortable with has been sundered in ways that sadden me. This may be part of the greater movement that comes with actually hanging out with my older friends as my younger friends slowly become accustomed to college life and further fragment into smaller groups from high school. The one guy my own age is in Australia; despite the time differences, we talk more than ever. And I know that my work schedule doesn't really help things.

The garage door goes up. I pause my music. These disparate thoughts must hang here - recorded as is. Should I not return to this place, they can stand by themselves, as fitting an image for my weariness at the roles we all play as any.

GREETINGS FROM THAILAND!

it's incredible here. so far this week i have worked in the rehab center and giones on 2 ridiculous, like... 8-10 hour treks through the rainforest. i\i am working with a bunch of thai people who are both hilarious and awesome. i'm also working with people from belgium, england, spain, canada, and the usa. wow. 

during the first trek, it was dj, me, and mon. MON!!! my favorite thai guy. we got caught in the middle of an 11 gibbon war, which is apparently rare. on the second trek, which was yesterday, it was mon and me. we brought hammocks and took a bunch of naps cuz we were very tired. we got chased through mad pricker bushes by an enormous swarm of wasps. i painted all the gibbon markers red. oh yea... we go through the rainforest to check on the gibbons that have been released from rehab. anyways, i walked out of the rainforest literally covered from head to toe with red paint. 

we work from 630am-430am usually. today is mine and dj's day off. we are going to patong, the main city. we are also going to the beach. here at the project, where we sleep, we have a dog named cow and 3 cats names danny, meow, and mimosa. we had another dag named dem but she got bit by a snake and died 3 days ago. it was sooo sad. dj and i are actually the oens who found her foaming at the mouth and convulsing. we buried her later that day. she was very close to all the thai people here are the project so they were extremely sad. she was 11 years old. 

we work all day and then party all night here. there is an outdoor living room where we play connect 4 and rummy while drinking mad chang and sinhga, thai beer that comes in 30oz bottles. yum. roch and tum were thai boxing in pink shorts the other night, it was hilarious. and mon danced like a maniac. their favoprite music is love songs by like... guns n' roses, brian adams, enrique iglesias... it's so funny. they sing and play guitar every night. i love them all.

my favorite gibbon so far in rehab is tam. she only has 1 foot and 1 hanf with 2 fingers. we can pet her and stuff since she will never be relased back into the wild. 

how's jersey and america and stuff?

       - alex

They say that you have to spill blood while putting everything together in a computer. Last time, I was the brash and cocky 13 year old. Not only did I cut myself building my old machine, but Thea did too. This time I was determined to go unscathed; not to spit in the old custom's face, but I really like the majority of my veins and arteries. With that being said, while finagling in the innards of my case yesterday, I sliced a nice line through my left middle finger. Any thoughts of it being a shallow wound were soon quelled, but hey - despite the bleeding, or perhaps because of it, I had few further problems.

Everything is running well. It's too early to tell anything, but I feel like the last seven years of my life have been technical purgatory.

These past few weeks have been rollicking. They flew by in an explosion of laughter, friends, and fun. That is what I remember, anyway. In reality, I know that a terribly large portion was spent working. A mere fraction of that time was spent in the Faustini's car coming back up from the shore, screaming harmonies for the vocal backups to "beautiful day" at the top of our lungs. Somewhere in the world, I'm sure Bono is smiling.

I am currently in Madison, CT. One of my mom's high school friends live here. It gives me a rosy outlook for the people that I keep in touch with from Bosco - we're acquainted with their extended family and everybody gets right along. Additionally, due to a highly inconvenient law that requires online distributors to charge the appropriate sales tax in states where they have shipping warehouses, the parts for my new computer were shipped here. In what can only be called a small world, while the New York warehouse was a recent addition, the warehouse that everything shipped from was located in Jersey....in Edison. As I worked through this week, my shit was not even a mile from me and I couldn't touch it. Ah well. To say that I am excited to assemble everything when we return home tomorrow morning would be a mighty understatement.

Tuesday morning I leave for Hartford with the rest of the Travelers interns. I'm pretty excited for the trip; not only is it a chance to get to better know everybody, especially considering that the majority of them work in the NYC office, but it's essentially a paid vacation. There were some jokes made about insurance companies not posting bail for interns, but I doubt we'll get into too much trouble....