I'm ready when you're ready for me.

I am writing this blog sitting in Washington Square Park, back here in New York City, where I am, at least, semi-permanently. I'll be gone the week after this upcoming week, back in Virginia for a time, before finally completing the move to my lovely apartment in Bushwick, with its yellow walls and balcony and two incredible roommates.

What can I say about this summer?

In some ways, this summer was what I expected. I was familiar with the program, and knew many people who'd been to the Hangar, worked there, etc, and so came in with high expectations that were met and exceeded. I learned a lot about design, about working with all kids of people (not just ones with my training), about what kind of perspective and ideas I tend to have as a designer. I did a lot of shows in a short amount of time (which isn't exactly new for me), and consistently put up work that I was proud of. I learned when to bite my tongue, and when to speak out.

I spent a lot of time outside, swimming, exploring waterfalls, and haunting cemeteries. The saying on the t-shirts is, "Ithaca is Gorges", and it's true. Ithaca is both gorgeous and full of gorges. A friend and I were trying to find Carl Sagan's grave, and took a wrong turn and ended up here:

Like… basically in the suburbs of Ithaca. Just chillin'. Being majestic. No big deal.

I went to a party for the Rocky Horror cast and crew (our final mainstage, I assisted the sound designer) at a lakehouse on a transcendentalist commune. Riding boats around the lake, swimming, lazying about eating good food, waiting the sunset. I saw so many amazing sunsets this summer. One I was so amazed by I called my dear friend Barbara and left her FIVE voicemails freaking out about it, and ran halfway across the Ithaca College campus trying to get a better view.

In other ways, this summer was not what I expected at all. It was a highly emotional summer, which I suppose is to be expected when you put a lot of artistic, impulsive people together for a summer, isolated in a beautiful, strange town, but usually I am not one of the people caught up in the drama of that--this summer I was. Which would not be so strange except that, for the past couple years (really, since around the time I started this blog), I have been in what I have referred to as, essentially, my nun stage. Where my energy has gone, largely, towards my relationship with God as opposed to seeking out relationships (of any sort) with other people. Not to say that I cloistered myself away and didn't talk to anyone, no. But diving into ritual? Yes. Self-denial? Yes (insofar as self-denial teaches self-control, which I definitely need more of). And the focus of my relationships with other people mostly became not depending on them, but being there for them. Give everything, expect nothing. (if you have no expectations, you can never have a disappointment - Passion, Sondheim)

And this was very good for me, because it hugely expanded my capacity to care for and love other people. Because that is also how you love God. By loving others. And by taking the focus away from me and what I could get out of relationship, I could give so much more. And I have found myself caring much more deeply than I could before.

I could have stayed, happily, in this unofficial nunhood, but God had other plans, and through events that happened in the later part of this past semester, I felt myself being pushed towards other people. Not away from God, but towards others, towards letting others affect me more again. I think it has to do with vulnerability, about needing to be more vulnerable to care more. I think it has to do with the fact that the ego can actually be your greatest ally, if you align it right. I think it has to do mostly with the fact that there is ALWAYS something to be learned through experience, and emotional experiences with other people in particular. And, apparently, people feel more comfortable opening up to someone who has also shared their problems with them. So, in this summer, I've been moving back towards people in a way that has been wonderfully rewarding, incredibly terrifying, and astoundingly emotional. And I didn't expect that. I didn't expect to almost cry during tech. I didn't expect to be exploring and doing fun things with other people on my days off. I didn't expect that leaving people would be so hard.

Leaving Ithaca was distressing. My dear friend Barbara and I often intone, "If it doesn't hurt, it didn't matter," but that doesn't stop it hurting. I fell in love with the place, and the people. Many already in or moving to New York, but there's something about that summer experience that will never be recaptured. And with no time to process what happened, I felt like I did leaving Ghana--suddenly ejected, left to figure it out when I don't even know that "it" was.

What do I want? Where am I going next? These are questions I don't really know the answer to. I know literally, I know how I'm getting money to eat this month, I've got some shows lined up. But beyond that? I have no idea.

Well, that's not entirely true. People try to ask me these questions theatrically… I have no idea how to answer them. But the reason I'm here is not to make theater, the reason I'm here is to care for people. That I know. (that is something I tend to do through theater, but theater is the means, not the end.) And on that front, I learned a very important lesson this summer.

Many people, as much as much as they secretly want to be loved and cared for, will not accept it easily. They don't trust it, they think you must want something from them, they think they don't deserve it. (I am guilty of all of these. It's that whole, "Why is love so easy to give and so hard to receive?" question Sondheim, again, poses in Passion. I am so stubborn it took me several weeks to accept help from a friend who was offering to help me carry the absurd amount of equipment I was using for her show.) And I spent a lot of time wondering how to deal with this, with people who won't accept love (aka: people like me… I'm working on it!), and praying about this in the cemetery behind my house one day I felt an exchange of energy that can be best expressed in dialogue:

God: Love them as much as they will let you.
Me: And secretly, love them more?
God: Exactly.

I started with summer with the question of, "How do you love when you don't want to?" Confronting the situation that sparked that question further, I think it's less about love stopping or failing (after all, betrayal only hurts because you love that person), but rather that the channels to be able to give and receive love becomes blocked. And it takes a long time to open them again, and it is okay to step back and say, "I still love this person, but it's going to take me a while to be able to open those channels again. And that's okay." It's working towards being able to connect with them again. Maybe never in the way it was before, but there is still healing to be found.

I think the life of a Christian is the life of being so open to whatever love others need and are able to receive, that you have no choice but to be swept up in it. Personally, emotionally. One of my newfound friends gave me this quote, "If you search for the awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. Your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal." I think that's it. That's the kind of heart you need to have, which means you're in for a wild ride in life.

I came back to the most loving apartment possible, with freshly baked banana bread (with strawberries in it!) waiting for be on the stove. I jumped into rehearsal the day after I got back. I'm shaken on having left, but getting through it alongside others who are similarly shaken. And sitting here in the park, listening to a musical duo playing nearby that consists of a bagpiper and a beatboxer, I must admit… this is not a bad life to come back to.