Sunday Secret

"When I think of you I forget my name and know yours all the better."

I'm currently working on William Inge's Splendor in the Grass. I am Ginny Stamper. This morning rehearsal was incredibly rewarding and wild. I had a blast. I'm also looking at the curriculum for Spring term and feeling much better about the registration process this time around. I will be taking:

Theatre and Arts for Peace and Reconciliation
Adaptation II
and hopefully, two of the following:
Reading and Writing Poetry
American Theatre Now
Developmental Psychology after the Theories
Reading the Body

I struggled a great deal this morning with my body. I was moving a lot, working on a drunken fast-paced, accelerated version of The Charleston, and it hit me how insecure I still feel, after all this time, about my body. I was going to town in heels like a crazy woman and the only things I could think about were breathing and how fat I must be to other people around me. Even so, though, the lace black slip I was wearing (along with the heels) helped me to justify the actions of my character and helped me to forget about my own insecurities and body for awhile. It was nice. I like being able to forget how ugly I feel most of the time. Don't get me wrong, I don't think actors should use acting as some coping mechanism for a problem in their life, but the fact is: sometimes a girl's just gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

after some careful consideration

I almost deleted my blog this morning but then I realized that it isn't that I have nothing significant or useful to blog about but that I don't want to blog about things that I am currently finding significant and useful. After some careful consideration I've decided that I will keep blogging. I think it can be an effective way to communicate with people I love who are far away. I also think it can help me communicate with my self, plural, in a way that will be more helpful than my time to time journal entry these days. I find myself spending a significant amount of time on a computer simply because I like to type things out. Typing is faster and doesn't require the kind of energy it takes to maintain hand-coordination when sharing hands with ten people. Despite the fact that I've never been remotely concerned about this before, I have recently developed an aversion to the idea of blogging. I have begun to think that writing about myself in a public way demonstrates some innate character flaw. I also believe this is certainly not true. Blogging can be a highly effective means of communicating one idea or amusement or realization with a group of other people in the world who appreciate that idea or amusement or realization. After all, I am a reader of blogs and don't find myself judging the bloggers responsible for their upkeep. So, in short, welcome us back to blogging.

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

"In the midst of turmoil, Max falls into a primitive, mythical realm with a community of Wild Things. The Wild Things contain and re-enact different pieces of his inner frenzy. One of them feels unimportant. One throws a tantrum because his love has been betrayed. They embody his different tendencies." -New York Times.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20brooks.html

New Home.

Pedal

Pedal.

http://artconstellation.blogspot.com/2009/08/biking-42-miles-map-practice-i-love-you.html

(the end.)

A Parting Present for the People: (Happiness)

A poem by Susanne Parker

When we are well
We will do all the things that normal people do.

We'll wear modest, stylish attire
Befitting our age. I'll have a silver chain
With a pendant made from some exotic stone,
And you'll admire it when we meet at the cafe
For a catch up chat.

I'll talk about my husband
(I'll have one of those by then)
And you will, too. And you'll tell me
How he bought a dog for your little boy.
And you'll buy my coffee but I'll leave the tip
In nickels on the glass top table. Boring little things.

I'll still remember that there are scissor
scars on your stomach, but I won't look there. And if
You glance at my jaw and it is swollen,
You won't mention the screws.
Noone will think it strange that you order only cold drinks-
After all, it's a hot day.

Before we get up to leave
Our eyes will meet across the table.
We'll only smile. Only go back
To those normal, normal
normal deeds.

Strangers will wonder how we discover so much joy
At merely being alive.

(the sister would kill us)

consumption of women; global epidemic.

Prayer by Marie Howe

Someone or something is leaning close to me now
trying to tell me the one true story of my life:

one note,
low as a bass drum, beaten over and over:

It’s beginning summer,
and the man I love has forgotten my smell

the cries I made when he touched me, and my laughter
when he picked me up

and carried me, still laughing, and laid me down,
among the scattered daffodils on the dining room table.

And Jane is dead,
and I want to go where she went,
where my brother went,

and whoever it is that whispered to me

when I was a child in my father’s bed is come back now:
and I can’t stop hearing
This is the way it is,
the way it always was and will be

—beaten over and over—panicking in street comers,
or crouched in the back of taxicabs,

afraid I’ll cry out in jammed traffic, and no one will know me
or know where to bring me

There it is, I almost remember,
another story:

It runs along this one like a brook beside a train.
The sparrow knows it, the grass rises with it.

The wind moves through the highest tree branches without
seeming to hurt them.

Tell me.
Who was I when I used to call your name?

[Reprinted from What the Living Do (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999)]

Sick day and a poem by Arda Collins

Garden Apartments by Arda Collins

It was raining a little.

I wondered if I were outside

if I would get wet.

I was in the car.

I passed a school.

I didn't really know where I was.

I had lived near here for a while.

It was a quiet, residential neighborhood,

garden apartments in the back of the town.

I parked near a driveway and turned the car off.

They were basically ugly.

It's no one's fault though.

I wondered what I would do the rest of the day.

People were running their lives from here.

They had a coffee table and mugs with writing on them.

They had the rest of their lives. It was just like the other day.

The weather was warm for the first time.

I was out walking.

A young couple came out of a house.

She had just taken a shower,

blow-dried her hair and put make up on,

and put on light-colored pants and a t-shirt.

I smelled her shampoo

when they passed, and I felt afraid of the day.

The rest of the walk was better.

It smelled like rain in the car. There was no one around.

I heard my jacket when I moved.

I thought how god loves this place;

the grass was coming in, and the crocuses.

What if someone died, or got fired,

or vomited alone in the middle of the night?

The apartments were wood on the outside.

They were stained red like the color of a picnic table.

I was so ugly, I wasn't sure I'd even be able to drive.

Pillow Talk, T-shirt and Shaking Hands: One More Reason I'm Attending Bennington

In exactly one month I will be arriving at Bennington. This morning I spoke a woman who helped me set up my college e-mail account. I successfully logged-in only to find an email reminding me that my health forms were due last week (yeah- about that-). This exact email also included a link to the following:

(From Bennington College's website)

For your listening pleasure: a collection of music composed and performed by current Bennington students and recent alumni. Spanning the genres from indie rock to Celtic to classical, it's a lively (but by no means exhaustive!) sample of what we're playing and listening to right now. The list was compiled by Sarah McAbee, Bennington College Class of 2007.

Needless to say, I'm pretty happy right about now.

What stumbling taught me (after therapy).

1. "I told a kid in kindergarten that candy canes were the bones of reject elves."

2. "You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget." - (Jessica, age 8)

3. See feeling chart above.

4. My four new favorite words to describe touch and texture: polished, knobbed, grity, and biting.

5. All dogs go to heaven.

The Constellation and The People

Please read about it here.

Scissors

Note to Self, plural, and other things:

We need this book. Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination.

And Lloyd, the Magician and myself in perfect union.

Night Poem

by Margaret Atwood

There is nothing to be afraid of,
it is only the wind
changing to the east, it is only
your father the thunder
your mother the rain

In this country of water
with its beige moon damp as a mushroom,
its drowned stumps and long birds
that swim, where the moss grows
on all sides of the trees
and your shadow is not your shadow
but your reflection,

your true parents disappear
when the curtain covers your door.
We are the others,
the ones from under the lake
who stand silently beside your bed
with our heads of darkness.
We have come to cover you
with red wool,
with our tears and distant whispers.

You rock in the rain's arms,
the chilly ark of your sleep,
while we wait, your night
father and mother,
with our cold hands and dead flashlight,
knowing we are only
the wavering shadows thrown
by one candle, in this echo
you will hear twenty years later.

"Night Poem" by Margaret Atwood, from Selected Poems II: Poems Selected & New 1976-1986. © Houghton Mifflin Co., 1987.

Follow the adventure

I am in DC with my dear friend Jenny.
Follow the adventure here.

I have graduated from school.

I will write more soon.

I am off to Bennington in the fall.

love, jessieh

probably wondering where we've been

I am trying not to document much of the "Oh, Jessieh is going to college next year" information here and until I am sure which school I am going to I do not want to write about college at all and to be quite frank college decisions and admissions things are taking up about 68% of my life right now, the other approximate 32% is consumed by the following:

• The Comedy of Errors, which opens on Shakespeare's birthday; April 23rd.
• Directing a scene-study from David Rabe's In the Boom Boom Room
• Directing a reading of a play I wrote called Page Numbers as a continuation to our (Sam and I) Humanities Project and as a benefit reading for RAINN
• Directing a reading of A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer as a benefit reading for V-DAY. Both Page Numbers and MMRP will be presented on the same night.
• Thinking about going to see Jenny on May 24th in Washington DC and almost jumping out of my skin with excitement.
• Being thrilled for her about the completion of the wall-drawing project.
• Trying to both win my school's science fair with my project on Dissociative Experiences and the Artistic Temperament and make straight As my last 9 weeks of school. I want to end with a bang!
• The Existential Crisis and Trusting In God.
• (Trying not to think about the Holocaust.)
• Struggling with food.
• Getting my beautiful little sister, Jordan (Jourdan), ready to go to prom with me in a few weeks.
• Trying to cope with the fact that my dress for Luciana in The Comedy of Errors does not have sleeves, meaning that my arms will show- which let me tell you- hasn't quite happened in a public manner in what seems to be years.
• Thinking about leaving my Studio in just 7 weeks.
• Missing Patty and looking forward to his return.
• Wanting to go to Bennington so badly but knowing that money will play a huge huge role in whether or not I can.
• Needing a vehicle and a job for summer, both of which seem to get in the way of each other. I can't get a job without a reliable way to and from work and I can't get a vehicle without having money from a job. Not to mention-the unemployment rate in SC is rising with each passing moment and last I checked it was almost 11% which is terrifying considering I will be 18 with no "real" work experience and fresh out of a high school that isn't exactly a high school. The other problem is we refuse to work around food. I cannot work with food. Ideally, I would love to be a receptionist or a book store clerk or work in a library or maybe even a department store but not food.

There is more, of course, and I will write more soon, very soon. The College decision will have to be made by May 1st.

love, jessieh