Moleskin Journals

This is strange, two posts in one day. You're probably not supposed to do that.
Oh well, I'm not doing so much and it seems I can always think of something to say once I start.

Why did I major in English and take only social science classes in college and am going to grad school for middle eastern studies when I can't get my self to sit down and read a book? Even when I'm "reading" I'm constantly fidgeting, fiddling with my hair, and changing my position, it's such an effort to get myself to focus. And a good part of the time I'm just day dreaming. I shouldn't even call it day dreaming, because it's more subtle than that usually. My mind just clicks somewhere else when I'm not paying attention to it, becoming like a split screen tv, half with the page and half somewhere else, and unfortunately the somewhere else half always does better I think. And there are also the times when I'm completely gone, when I'm not even looking at the book, maybe staring at my hand or something like that, and at those times I'm nowhere close to the book.

God, I do best when I'm doing something that forces me to engage in... well, words, or whatever, things that are not so easy to engage in. It's embarrassing but recently I have become a little bit obsessed with the musical Spring Awakening and specifically with one of the actors in it -- Matt Doyle. I think I liked him when I saw the show 1) because I thought he was cute and thought he looked a little like the guy I like here in Israel, and 2) because in this one scene he has seducing another guy, he was captivating. I don't like that word, too cheesy, but he just was so strongly his part, and he made the scene electric. But anyway, after the show I looked him up online because I wasn't doing anything and saw that he had a blog and there were some videos of him on youtube. So I've been watching the videos and reading his blog (though there hasn't been any new material on either since I started) and basically he's becoming more and more attractive to me.

Uhhh, when he sings he sings with such passion. I don't know, what's the word, it's as if he's not keeping anything to himself. And his blog, though sometimes a bit wordy (like my writing ) and too formal at times, makes me like him, but maybe more importantly want to be like him.

I need to be more clear. I feel already as if I am a bit like him (I know, come on Carolyn, you're over identifying) but well, some of the things he says and the way he describes his life, it's like what I would be if I had the guts to be it. And so it's not that I want to change my self to be like him, I want to change my behavior and my circumstances so that I can be myself the way he is himself.

Maybe I'm starting to wonder if I ever could have acted.
Obviously I can't be a broadway performer like he is. But God, watching that stuff makes me wish I had at least tried it in highschool. Well, to be honest we didn't really have that option in my highschool. We didn't have musical theater like most highschools and I probably wouldn't have done it even if we had. I was never a performer, always quiet, shy. And I always thought acting was for those people who are really good at impersonations and stuff like that. But anyway, I've always had this feeling of wanting to get whatever is inside of me out. More and more I feel like I could express myself in ways that I never do. I think that's why I write.
But God, I wish I had the guts to do something that just really, I don't know, did it for me. And the idea of throwing myself into a moment, something in a script, just seems so nice. Like a what's the word....expunging? No that's not it.

(The people who tested me for ADD said I didn't seem to have trouble remembering words when I spoke. They were fucking wrong about that as they were about almost everything else.)

But anyway, last year first semester my Renaissance Drama class had actors from a Shakespearian company come to our class and take us through acting exercises. We were reading Macbeth. I was really bad in the first exercise in which we had to stage this witches scene from the start of the play. We had to make all the decisions ourselves and I don't know, there wasn't much to go on. But then later, I guess it was another class, we read through some of this one scene right after Macbeth kills the king. Two people in the class would get up and read some and the actors would give them directions and then they'd do it again and then two new people would do it. I didn't raise my hand for a while, but then towards the end of the class they chose me to be Macbeth's wife, and I felt better doing that in front of the class than I ever had in any class in college before.

I was really bad in some ways, like the first time I read the lines I usually had very little idea what the words meant and I kept making mistakes as we were reading, but I guess I was one of the few people who did it with feeling and so the actors liked me. And, once the actors stopped me and we figured out what was being said in each line, I could do it. I just had to know what I was reading, but once I figured it out, I could picture myself in a similar situation and then I would just remember how I said things then, how I had felt then. All of a sudden the play reminded me of things, made me feel things, I could see all this potential in the words. They kept me up there till the end of class (which, granted, was not so long) but I left feeling so good, like finally I had done something that I could do, and had shown people that I could do something.
I remember realizing that when Macbeth starts ranting to his wife and his words become sort of nonsensical that it was a sort of defense mechanism. That he was intentionally separating himself from her by not explaining himself, probably because he didn't think she would get it. Maybe he was angry at her because he was the one who had done the thing and was now in the bad position. Or maybe the rant was just the only way he could express his guilt and shock and disbelief for what he had just done. It reminded me of being on the phone with my sister when she was really unhappy and how she would just keep talking and talking and would completely stop listening to me. I would try to snap her out of it, sometimes shouting at her, but it usually never worked. But that is what Macbeth's wife was trying to do in that moment, trying to get Macbeth to snap out of his fog. She knows what he's doing. Well, so in one of her lines I just knew how to say it. Or, more specifically, I said it as if I had been saying it to my sister. And I know it worked.

Guess what? Do Not Call just called. We talked for just a second though, he called just to tell me that he may or may not be in Eilat when I go there this friday. Apparently he and his friend have to decide whether to stay another week or not. I hope he stays....

I just read over some of this post. It is too jumbled. Half the time I don't say what I want to say or what I do say is not clear. And when I change some of it it still doesn't work. Fuck, it's turning into my impossible to write school work. I think I'll just leave it a mess.
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I was going to stop but I don't want to. If it were my journal and not a blog I would keep going because it wouldn't matter, it would all just be for me, but I feel I should exhibit some editorial control on these posts. I don't have a journal right now though. And I've already gotten going on this.

Ok, so mentioning keeping a journal reminded me of this summer when at rough times I wrote in my planner, scribbling over the months I had not used in the beginning of the year. Typing that reminded me that on his blog Matt Doyle mentioned how he liked moleskin journals; my planner from this summer was a moleskin. Sigh.
Now you see how my brain works.

Love,
Carolyn