Review
2006. Over. Started with some black ice, a flipped truck, and a near death experience in the southern corner of South Dakota. And that was just the beginning. A year of change. The universe grabbing hold of reality, or what I thought was reality, and not only yanking it out from under me, but then transforming it into a fish and beating me over the head with it.
I finished out my year with Missoula Children's Theatre- living on the road. Arrived back in Portland and within a month moved into a downtown apartment with my brother. Enter the real world. Rent, health insurance, social life, growing up, real jobs, responsibilities.
Thinking back to my life on the road, 6 months later, I can still see in sparkling detail almost everything I experienced. I can walk through the streets of Charleston, WV in my head. I can remember restaurants we ate in, theatre's we performed in, people we met and knew for less than a couple hours, from cities all over country. Each week a new life, distinct and succinct in itself.
I look back at the second half of this year, being home in Portland, and it's all a blur. I can barely differentiate June from July or August. Sure there are events that stand out- in theatre- Oklahoma, Orestes, Aladdin; in Jobs- catering, subbing in the school district. But it's such a contrast to the road where every day stands on its own.
Still as vivid as this past year on the road was and is, sometimes I forget it was real. I've looked at the pictures over and over and over, until they are burned into my mind. Told friends, family, strangers (myself) stories of my adventures so many times that that is all they've become. Stories. Stories of memories. No longer pure. No longer mine. A different life. Someone else's. Being home I find myself falling back into bad old patterns, habits that I thought long gone. Skins I'd outgrown and shed along the roadside in the Wyoming desert. Thought processes tossed out the window in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky.
Do we ever really change? Or is it just the world that changes? The pavement beneath our feet and drifting shadows that gives the illusion of change. Like a rubber band, I snap back into shape, the old mold, as soon as the surroundings become familiar again.
Talking to Megan, my partner from the road, takes me back again. Reminds me of whom I've become and am becoming. It can't be just a dream. Live memories known only to us that haven't been made static and lifeless by being retold one million times.
I have changed. I have grown. I tell myself this because it is true and it is easy to forget.
I look forward to the New Year with excitement. Feeling the spark within me, the ever-changing self. Or perhaps it's the self that stays the same. And with every shedding of skin we get closer and closer to that which is true and always present within. I accept that change will occur. Neither good nor bad, but only what I make of it. Hard times and happy times. All necessary. I will live each moment. Treasure each instant. And at the other far end of the year, look back and see the past twelve months as a painting. Each event, each day, each change a dot of pigment. A thread. On a beautiful tapestry.
I finished out my year with Missoula Children's Theatre- living on the road. Arrived back in Portland and within a month moved into a downtown apartment with my brother. Enter the real world. Rent, health insurance, social life, growing up, real jobs, responsibilities.
Thinking back to my life on the road, 6 months later, I can still see in sparkling detail almost everything I experienced. I can walk through the streets of Charleston, WV in my head. I can remember restaurants we ate in, theatre's we performed in, people we met and knew for less than a couple hours, from cities all over country. Each week a new life, distinct and succinct in itself.
I look back at the second half of this year, being home in Portland, and it's all a blur. I can barely differentiate June from July or August. Sure there are events that stand out- in theatre- Oklahoma, Orestes, Aladdin; in Jobs- catering, subbing in the school district. But it's such a contrast to the road where every day stands on its own.
Still as vivid as this past year on the road was and is, sometimes I forget it was real. I've looked at the pictures over and over and over, until they are burned into my mind. Told friends, family, strangers (myself) stories of my adventures so many times that that is all they've become. Stories. Stories of memories. No longer pure. No longer mine. A different life. Someone else's. Being home I find myself falling back into bad old patterns, habits that I thought long gone. Skins I'd outgrown and shed along the roadside in the Wyoming desert. Thought processes tossed out the window in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky.
Do we ever really change? Or is it just the world that changes? The pavement beneath our feet and drifting shadows that gives the illusion of change. Like a rubber band, I snap back into shape, the old mold, as soon as the surroundings become familiar again.
Talking to Megan, my partner from the road, takes me back again. Reminds me of whom I've become and am becoming. It can't be just a dream. Live memories known only to us that haven't been made static and lifeless by being retold one million times.
I have changed. I have grown. I tell myself this because it is true and it is easy to forget.
I look forward to the New Year with excitement. Feeling the spark within me, the ever-changing self. Or perhaps it's the self that stays the same. And with every shedding of skin we get closer and closer to that which is true and always present within. I accept that change will occur. Neither good nor bad, but only what I make of it. Hard times and happy times. All necessary. I will live each moment. Treasure each instant. And at the other far end of the year, look back and see the past twelve months as a painting. Each event, each day, each change a dot of pigment. A thread. On a beautiful tapestry.