Disjointed Thoughts on Theatre
I’ve begun rehearsals for an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, in which I play Paris and double as Gregory. I like the nontraditional spin of the production, as Romeo isn’t male but the text is unchanged save for a few pronouns. I look forward to seeing what this show becomes. Our initial rehearsals show it is very promising. The strong cast is one of my favorite parts of the production thus far, given that the play is far from my favorite of Shakespeare’s.
One never knows what a show is going to do. One may go into something and think it will be magical, and it might be, but it might not be. Some theatre experiences are just pleasant from day one, like the shows I did at The Magnetic Theatre this summer. Some are downright magical, like Love! Valour! Compassion! a year-and-a-half ago. Some production experiences are merely okay, and others are mind-numbing. One never knows for what one is signing up, but one does it anyway and it’s always worth it for the very doing of it.
On stage, we learn that things just happen. Costumes malfunction, lines get dropped, laughs aren’t punched and accidents really do happen. Some beautiful things can take place in a moment and never happen again. Whatever happens helps form the experience.
And how is that different than whatever one does while one lives one’s life? What I’ll be doing onstage in front of an audience in November might be really good, but there might be a night when something goes wrong and casts unflattering light on me. That is actually likely. It just happens.
A few months ago I had an undergarment come off onstage along with my pants when only the pants were supposed to come off. Perhaps I was stunned for a moment, but I have not given it much thought for a while. I wonder why when things go awry in my actual life it’s harder not to be bothered by them. Sure, I need to know if I’m accidentally nude in front of an audience or otherwise going off script, but other than fixing it as much as possible I can’t do much. A moment of trial comes, the actor makes and commits to a choice and the action progresses.
Strife might come one’s way sometimes, but one chooses how one responds to it and that gives one the power to change it. Worrying and being despondent is a choice, I suppose, but it’s just extra stress one doesn’t need.
Reflections on the Vernal Equinox
Recently I observed that I am growing more positive and hopeful as I grow older. What I meant by this is that I’m not so abjectly cynical anymore, nor do I entertain spells of temporary negativity in response to my circumstances. Overall, things work out and the story goes on, and being too reactionary about this keeps one from acting intelligently and constructively within the story of one’s life.
Now it is March — the first day of spring, even, and therefore the day of vernal equinox — and unseasonably warm. So far, this has been a lovely third month in a very weird year. I’ve often said that the numeric label of a year is an artificial signifier, which I still hold true, but this year I actually made a resolution because I knew this year as it is numerically defined would be the year in which my father passed away. I didn’t make a resolution on New Year’s Eve, but, rather, on Imbolc, when I sent out an intention for healing and stability in this time of great change. I lit a candle, closed my eyes, bowed my head, uttered this softly and placed my candle on my dear friend Mary’s mantle and enjoyed a lovely celebration. Upon waking the next morning I received a vague phone call from my mother, took a hasty shower and let my car do what felt like drive itself to my parents’ house. And, just like that, my father’s life had ended. It has been about a month-and-a-half since his passing.
The only obligation my father’s death made me unable to fulfill was graduate school, but the root reason was because I harbored a lack of enthusiasm for my program. The program itself is fine, but I was advised by previous professors that I ought not pursue the program I did, yet I did try it out and my short time therein proved them right. Can I handle graduate school? Certainly, and, in fact, I need a more rigorous program to be engaged. This is a good thing! And, when someone close dies, it’s easy to think of the ways one is wasting one’s time. For me, a graduate-level course in which a classmate thinks that St. Francis was alive in the 1800s is a waste of time, and it’s best to do what I wish to do.
Therefore, theatre beckons again as my preferred avocation. It’s only been a few months since I’ve been out of it, and I feel very game for a challenge. However, I’m not acting too hastily and entering just anything. The right opportunity hasn’t come along yet, but it will.
Each day is a very interesting lesson for me, as I suppose it ought to be. I’m very stable right now. The reason I’m stable is because of the experience I gained from equanimity-challenging experiences. In this sense I feel I have aged a bit and, overall, this is a good thing. Sure, the situations that brought this up might not have been all pleasant, but they are in the past and should such matters befall me again I have a chance to respond more appropriately should a next time come to be.
One is not always handed the best of circumstances. Discrimination exists at a deep level, violence is prominent in our society, and people are simply unkind to one another. People die, and before they do they have to endure some awful situations. Yet each day holds a lot of potential for those time slices of magic. Whether a St. Patrick’s Day afternoon spent in utter joy with some great friends or an unexpectedly pleasant exchange with a stranger, life holds some wonderful snippets it is not worth ignoring.
Here’s to life and all of its costume parties, black coffee and dark humor. May growth prevail. There is a ton of dismal stuff out there, but I feel renewed in my determination to act as mindfully as I can and stop to appreciate the good things. They’re there for the noticing if one merely bothers to stop and engage.
My apartment-house’s weeping cherry in March 2008
In front of my living room window is a weeping cherry tree. I have never liked the tree too much except for two weeks at the start of spring, when it blooms and until wind blows away its pink flowers. For this stretch of time the tree’s otherwise bothersome attributes is quite worthwhile, and certainly qualifies as one of those details worth one’s notice. Given that spring preceded its calendar date, that tree has been splendid for about a week. For three years I could see the tree’s top out of each of my front windows but now that I’m in one of the downstairs apartments I only see it from my front windows, which makes it more like a little treat.
I am unsure precisely why, but the tree in front of my apartment-house makes me feel at home more than most of my belongings. I really love my home, you see — and, yes, it is home. I fear when I come to the home-buying phase I will drive my realtor nuts trying to find a character-filled 1927 house that is charmingly unlevel, updated inconsistently and punctuated by a highly specific smell of sun-kissed, wood-paneled walls come summertime. Oh, and I want to take the tree with me when I eventually buy a house.
My cats Ziva and A’Dora cuddling recently
One day I’ll grow up a little more and give up the weeping cherry tree and wood-paneled hallway and I won’t have to prop up bookshelves with scratching-posts to keep them from falling into adjacent doorways. I’m just not ready yet.
Of course, home is ultimately just where my cats are.
Fairytale
Fairytale
As I listen to you share with me
a special fairytale dream,
you carefully dissect your dream
and find no place for me.
Now you try to live your dream
and construct a bounty of joy,
so you don’t know what to do with me
and I try not to grow annoyed.
In my life you have such a special place
and I think I have one such in yours,
but maybe you just need me less
or just don’t see the discord.
If I were who I am but more orthodox
you would know exactly where to put me,
but because I’m not so heterodox
your fairytale has come to exclude me.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Absolution
Absolution
This: nostalgia for what I never lived and for chances I’ve outgrown.
Sigh: the capability of my agency nullifies no external constraints.
Well: richness is spawned from variance and dreadfully variant I am indeed.
Blah: it’s rough to keep others’ critiques of my divergence salt-drenched.
Please: I must remember not to skulk off into dimly-lit line-meetings.
Now: I am ready again to effect the trimmings of my legend my way.
This: a resolved epiphany – no, not a realization – a regular sequence.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Compound Brew
Compound Brew
Not all vintages are alike,
assigned by transformations,
realizations and affirmations
toward hopes of a better end.
Looking askance at a calendar
that reveals how far I’ve stepped
on lovely, impassioned stones
that led me where it seems I began.
Settled yet moving forward
with unabashed panache
tempered with fallability
and more realistic expectations.
Appreciating myself less apprehensive,
beginning to discern choices
before bringing them to action
and to gate-keep my responses.
Time slice varied — enthralling,
awful — ruled by daily inclination,
yet with time circumstances engendered
a consistently composed sincerity.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Hi, Autumn
Hi, Autumn
Autumn comes again upon us and again I grow pensive
in that way I do to keep from being defensive
about the year of life I’ve lived and how it’s treated me
and how I felt I evolved and learned better just to be.
The breeze reorients my flow and helps me grow
and helps me like myself more now that I know
that everyone has pratfalls and I’m making out well
or well enough to save me from my personal hell
of fragmented identities competing and controlling me
and making me someone I thought I could not be.
For some springtime bears possibility and for me it does
but I find fall more ripe, to my soul as familiar gloves
to my splintered hands which bear occasional sadness
that the whole of me utilizes to ward away madness.
Out come the cardigans, the sleeves up to my palms
and my neck waits eagerly for the multi-colored yarns
of the scarves I love to wear that help me weather
a season I adore with my personal style well put together.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Sunday
Sunday
A stroll through town with a stop for early Thai,
pangs for the ineffable with every seventh step,
and a determination to keep up a blithe deportment.
Later, a pile on the bed near tears for no reason
and a perceptive cat inclined to be a comfort
as unreasoned tears well but do not fall.
Enter a glass of sherry, a change of attire
and a challenge from the world outside the bubble
where comfort is proven learned and precarious.
Fall asleep too late with a happy smile
recognizing the ability to withstand the tides
of the mind on its daily passionate spin.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Regard
Regard
In the corner of the dug-out basement of your mind
you should happen on some self-respect.
Dust it off and make it the showcase piece
upstairs on your bookshelf or even in the front yard
for visitors thereupon to happen and remark.
Maybe the days when vanilla chai brightened all
were superior to those of vanilla vodka.
The way you were is not the way you are
and the way you are is not the way you will be,
but the way you are at any time is good enough
and the ways others are need not be copied.
Be yourself: it’s beyond sufficient
and beyond possible duplication.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
I Am He
I Am He
I am the boy who is less rough around the edges than he thinks he is,
and more valuable than he is comfortable believing.
He’s often a piece in others’ puzzles
and waits to be a puzzle for others to discover.
He feels he just fills in the margins,
but endeavors to spill into them from the center column.
He is unsure if he’s subject or object but it doesn’t much matter,
as his gaze is set on intersubjectivity.
He dances with elbows ablaze and a certain defiance
and won’t just put his feet together and do as he is told
or slow down just to make someone happy
or stay where he knows he ought not remain.
Maybe he will be someone’s destination one day
and not an accessory on someone’s journey elsewhere.
I am he who won’t be bitter,
because in his cameos he nabs some winning lines
and does not just fade into the background
even if he’s not pretty in or inclined the right way.
I am the boy who pursues, moves forward and makes it work
and if you laugh it’s by his design as the joke is his.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
Not Yet
Not Yet
The time has not yet come, my verdant friend, to talk of the other night:
of cinnamon and bacon and split infinitives, and whether your guitar lacks strings,
and when I read Lewis Carroll in your lap and you petted my cat.
For we must wait a bit, my mind cries out, to have our little chat,
as I now have many false epiphanies but little else to relate.
The time has not yet come, my verdant friend, to talk of this with you,
but, curiouser and curiouser, my mind insists I ruminate on this very important date
until I end up down the rabbit hole, running circles ’round a caucus-race.
© 2011, Joseph Barcia
