And Then I Was Awake

It's a holiday week.  Not a weekend...Independence Day falls on a Wednesday this year, so the entire week becomes some sort of strange wash.  This is not to say that I will spend much time worrying about the holiday as I continue to move my things slowly into our new apartment and pore desperately over my list of things to do as the date of my flight to Chile looms ever closer.

I would love to be the girl in orange below...any of those people actually.  Beating the heat by joining it sounds like a much better plan than braving the sweaty, humid apartment as I move my things out one-by-one.

My lengthy list is what has me wide awake at 2:30 in the morning.  I guess the good thing about this time of night is that it's the coolest that it will get during the day.  The oppressive heat makes the idea of working on anything that involves thought a complete nightmare...hence the lengthy list and ever-present insomnia.  I spend many minutes a day staring at my to-do list, trying to figure out what important thing I should tackle first.

Should I....

•Pack up my dishes and books?

•Make chorus staging templates for Moby-Dick so that I can send my scores on to San Francisco?

•Make up a scene breakdown for Madama Butterfly so that I can send a supernumerary request to Santa Barbara?

•Email Chile to make sure that someone is picking me up from the airport?

•Find a parking garage that will take my car for six weeks for the least amount of money?

•Put together a staging scheme for Figaro?

It's so hard to decide that I often just want to throw everything aside and watch old movies in front of my air conditioner, but this is simply not an option.

The list is overwhelming, the heat is oppressive.  Summer in the city...

At the beach at Coney Island in Late June

New

This is not a return to blogging.

Or perhaps it is.  Goals are sandy these days.

A year ago this week, I made a gigantic change and moved across the country to New York City.  Brooklyn to be exact.  The exact opposite of my ten-year, Southern California existence.

It's strange to feel unsettled for as long as I've felt unsettled.  Somehow it becomes normal and your brain starts to only concentrate on what will get you through the day.  The future is shifty and so you don't deal with it until it's upon you.

I moved to New York City, put my belongings in a dusty sublet, and went on the road for 8 months.

Unsettled.

It's taken a full year for this giant change to turn completely in the lock.  Having your hand on the door knob means you're only partway there, and so I've stood with hand poised all this time.  Now is the moment that I want to fully step through the door.

A few truths:

• I'm moving into an apartment tomorrow that will have my name on the lease.  This implies, if not full ownership, then the opportunity to feel that my possessions have a home in which I am fully in charge.
• I am leaving for another 6 weeks in 15 days.  In a sad admission, this is one of my shorter trips this year.
• I'm leaving a partner and a pet in my new apartment.  Roots.  I'm leaving roots.  Small, somewhat shallow, relatively unformed roots, but they are solidly in the soil.  I would have to yank swiftly and forcefully to pull them up.
• This is the first year that I can truthfully call myself an opera director.  I have three directing gigs  in the next five months.
• I miss dancing in a way that I never thought possible.  This morning, after my breakfast, I stood up in my dusty sublet and danced my way through some music and felt so alive and strong...and then so weak and scared.  Part of my full transformation must include coming back to where I started.
• This blog post is a maintenance post.  It is a test for myself to see if writing can be part of my experience once more.  I stopped writing a while ago and my creativity drained away as well.

More is coming.