What! Is! Next!

 Hoo boy, pals. It's been ages. How often do you have to blog for it to qualify as a going concern? Quarterly? Semi-annually? Well... This isn't much of a full-blown post, and I wouldn't expect one of those til April. I am deep in the chaos of directing a show that was, frankly, a huge reach of a logistical challenge even back before I lost our pre-production months to a combo of grieving and the fall play hitting some very complicated rocks, and some key production team members in the weeks leading up to rehearsals. That, along with the ongoing grieving process and the stress of a still-far-too-overloaded workload, has left me spoonless more days than not, BUT! Once we get into April, my evenings and weekends will likely be more or less my own, give or take a program review and some union bargaining committee work. (Have I mentioned that I am grateful to have a partner who is massively supportive even in the midst of her own overworked crush? I am! Hooray for gratitude!)

Then again, that'll likely stay pretty frenetic because I'm, er, well, moving to Spain. More details in the months to come, but long story short, I got a fellowship that will subsidize a research project I am actively excited about, and I cannot remember the last time I felt that. (I can, actually - it was probably during my masters thesis/coursework years)... There's a lot of daunting stuff ahead, but one thing seems to be guaranteed, and that's that Jenny and I will have at least a full year together and I'll learn a lot, and maybe even further my career and write something interesting coming out of it! Who knows! I have grown to accept that I am EXTREMELY BAD at predicting outcomes!

Anyhow. I still do think of this space as the repository for my travel videos/some photos/some thoughts (tho I'm very happy to have a non-digital Book of Days working in concert with journals to anchor me with documentation of what the heck is up in my life in the midst of these crazy years) so at SOME point, Morocco posts will be forthcoming, and then Luxembourg spring break posts, and then summer 2023 posts, and maybe by the time 2028 rolls around I'll be caught up to the start of 2024. Til then: be kind to yourselves and maybe some other people while you're at it! Take a nap! Do NOT take melatonin at 7 pm it is a bad idea do not do it. GOODBYE.

Gratitude, somehow, for 2023

Folks - what a year (bad version) it has been! This maybe-ostensibly-a-travel-blog site has been moribund and at this point we're looking at more than a year delay in catching up on travels (holy moly it's been over a year since Morocco! Big yikes in re the passage of time!) but y'know, the death of a student, death of a sister, and one of the roughest rehearsal processes of my life... it adds up, I regret to say. I'm a couple days away from kicking off the new semester/rehearsal process, and (I gotta be me!) am daffily optimistic that I'll be back in catching-up-on-posts business once the frenzy of week-one prep has subsided. Am I wrong? probably! In the meantime: did you know it's possible to be grateful even in the midst of the worst year of one's life? IT IS IN FACT VERY MUCH SO! After the jump: ye aulde annual (I thinke!) list of gratitude! For 2023! Aroo!

About Kat

When I think of her, I mostly think of her joy. When we met up from time to time in the golden age of our early thirties, she had the capacity to be giddy, flapping her hands Kermit-style and yawping in excitement over whatever we were off to - a fancier dinner than we deserved, a movie with the family, an outing in NYC or Chicago. Kat was radiant. In her last days, that radiance was sometimes all that remained - a smile pushing through exhaustion and the awful bone-thin indicators that her cancer was consuming everything now.

I find it hard, now and I hope not forever, not to dwell on how I failed her. When I was probably ten and she was probably eight (maybe we were both younger or older, everything blurs) I remember being furious at her for the cruelest reason - her wanting to play with me, to imitate whatever I was doing, to share her joy and her love with her older brother - and I shook her by the shoulders and, in my memory (I hope not in reality, but I can't give myself that grace) by the neck. In high school, in peak "pleasant in the world, shouting at home" adolescent unpleasantness, I told her never to acknowledge we knew each other in the hallways at school. I find this all alien and unthinkable now, horrifying, handily in the top five worst things I've ever done in my life.

Being who she is (or was, but I cannot imagine the universe without some sense of her carrying on through it) she somehow forgave me, even tried to comfort me when I returned to these apologies. My lungs are not large enough to contain my bewildered gratitude at us having rebuilt a friendship - one that I was, at least, smart enough to be grateful for every moment that it lasted, once we re-forged it in our twenties. We had lunch one day, a plan to give her something to look forward to after she'd told me she was dumping her crummy boyfriend. When she arrived, she nervously said "so.... I decided not to break up with him," and I - surprising her, I think - listened, supported her, told her she deserved only the best, that it sounded like she was going to advocate for herself, and that I loved her. (She did advocate for herself, and was soon single again; eventually, she met one of the best human beings on the planet and finally had someone who was worthy of her generous heart and ecstatic spirit.)

She shared our family's near-universal neurosis of immediately looking to comfort others and rationalize an upside when things were dark, even when cancer entered the picture. I joined her in that, telling others that - even as she moved home for hospice - there was a mercy in this, that the brief moment of worry that she would die in urgent care in New York had driven home how lucky we were to have time with her, that I was grateful, having lost a student suddenly in a horrible car crash just months earlier, to know that there was a window of time in which I could tell her I loved her. And that was true. I’ll never forget her eyes in moments of me telling her I loved her in these last weeks, or how her face changed when she saw I’d arrived each time I returned. It still was not, could never be, enough. Which is part of the cruelty of the whole thing - there are some people in your life who you will never be able to adequately express your love to, no matter how many days, months, years you spend letting them know.

I don't know what to do with the absence. 

I don't know what to do with the absence.

I know a bit about how grief works. And I know this will become a room that I don't live inside of. That I visit occasionally. And I know she wouldn't want me to live in that room, that she would want me instead to retain the joy, the goofiness, the celebration of stupidity and weird noises and interrupting each other at the dinner table and dancing around to the Penumbra Theatre's Black Nativity recording on Christmas Eve and her yelling "Pat Pat Pat" when she had an idea or suggestion she wanted to float, and let those memories stay a cool blessing on harder days.

I have to trust that will happen. That I will cultivate gratitude for everything she was in my life, and gratitude that I know, from her having given me the gift of saying so, that I was a lift to hers and not a burden, that I repaid some of the joy and happiness she gave to me. For now, though, that's just on trust. It's mostly loss.

This is meant to be about Kat, though, and not about my grief. She was the best sister I could have ever hoped for, better than I deserved, and I am overcome with gratitude. It doesn't make it easier. Nothing really does, not yet. But I'm clinging to that massive good thing I was lucky enough to have while I had it. And for whatever part of her is alive in the world, however she is alive in the world, I hope she knows I'll never stop loving her.

I miss you, Kat. Always will.

Scootland

 Ah, now we’re talking. The part of the UK that seems better and better to me each time I visit… Scotland. Hey, this was almost exactly a year ago! This blog catchup project is going great! Whatever about it all! After the jump: small town socialism and whisky-based socializing!

Is Dunkeld nice Of An Evening? PUBLIC OPINION IS RESOLUTE: it nice.

A pause

Hey folks,

Been quieter here than I assumed, for a lot of reasons that aren’t worth getting into, but one that I’d like to mark. Last week, one of my students was killed in a car crash; it’s been awful for obvious reasons, and I’ve had a hard time being at a physical distance from the community back home as we all grieve. I’ve been impressed and grateful to see how much the other students in my department have taken care of each other, supported each other, and generally made room for their feelings… and in a sense, being at a physical distance has probably usefully curbed my natural instinct to caretake in a way that would probably be beyond what the proper role for a teacher is, or to inject myself into a process that’s properly theirs. I don’t know! There’s no rulebook, it’s all just tremendously sad.

So, that has obviously thrown me for a loop, and things have been quiet here. In the depressing tradition of “horrible things happen back home while Pat’s away” posts, however, I did want to post a couple of donation links on the off chance that y’all are feeling flush and generous. Not to anything specifically related to the student (the gofundme for their family has exceeded its goal, thankfully, and it doesn’t feel right to open up their specific story to The Internet, and all of my [three? four?] readers) but to some causes that mattered a lot to them.

My student was gender nonconforming; had they lived, they’d have continued to be a target to the hate-fueled monsters on the right who’ve decided that the existence of trans people is a useful cudgel to wield as they try to seize power in much of the western world. (I don’t know if I’ve discussed it in this space before, but having had a solid cohort of trans students at the moment that the GOP has picked that as its “what if we were Nazis about THIS issue though” issue in the midterms has me even angrier at that diseased, vile party. If you’ve been convinced by the lies and data-torturing narratives by opportunists and their useful idiots, and you’d like to know what the reality of the issues at hand are, please reach out. Don’t be on the wrong side of this one.) I’d appreciate it if you’d consider throwing a few bones to one of the organizations doing work on this issue; Gender Spectrum is one that I’ve been told does great work, and Trans Lifeline has long been essential. Please remember there are human beings whose lives, safety, and well-being are at stake here, as there are every time politicians pick human targets to scaremonger about. Also, given the way that this student died - please push your local governments hard to push back against car supremacy to try to make a safer world than we’ve chosen in this stupid automobile-addicted era.

Okay. I will, I think, be rallying in the coming weeks to continue the ridiculously delayed updates from last summer; for this summer, suffice to say that before and after the crash, things have been a little rocky and frustrating here, but also that I’m mindful that I’m very lucky to be in Palermo and working to keep myself active during a very sad and stressful time. Hope you’re all finding ways to be kind to yourselves and seek love and joy where it’s available. Let the folks ya love know ya love ‘em. 

Rue Britania (Well… parts of it, anyway)

One of the joys of travel is getting to reconnect with pals scattered across the landscape, and whenever I get to Europe I try to make a loop to connect with my friends in the UK. (I often try for pals in Spain and Germany, but the UK is the most consistent mainstay of these dumdum trips.) Last August, I made it back to visit pals in London, Bristol, and Glasgow (with a bonus just-Pat loop in Scotland) and was genuinely surprised at how much I had… soured on England? Deets on the non-Scottish leg of this trip post-jump! 

No video for this leg of the trip, btw (the rule is: if you have an adorable toddler and I come to visit, I WILL cut a video together that includes your kid being a big sweetie, but it WILL remain unlisted and saved for Only Approved Pals’ Sharing) and only limited photos as I’m working from the road right now (Sicily: rainier than anybody expected! Details in 2028!). 

Here’s the WWI flying ace, parked in a canal in London, ok, fine, PARTS of England were nice.

Programming note

Ah, m’pals. What a vast ocean of silence this year has been! TURNS OUT running a one-person theatre department (teaching AND directing) is fairly all-consuming, and while I continue to work on getting my school to hire some additional faculty, I am presently just grateful to have survived the year, with a lot to be specifically grateful for and a lot that I want to improve on in the immediate and medium-term future.

That said, partly out of stubbornness, partly out of genuine desire, and partly out of it being a tremendously effective way to enforce my contractually guaranteed boundaries, I have once again run overseas for the summer! This might mean the blog gets a little less moribund, but we probably all know where the smart money is on that question… More rambles on this after the jump.