(no subject)
I'm home. I don't know how to feel about anything. I don't know what to do. I'm happy. I look outside and see mountain ranges and rolling hills and cypress trees dangling their raggedy beauty and fog, and it's all waiting for me to go running and walking and dreaming on. This will always be my home. I just wish it were possible to have both worlds at once: the music and markets and colleges and job opportunities of Arcata, and the ruralty and simplicity and theater group I love of Point Arena.
I went to see The Secret Garden last night, by Gualala Arts Center Theater (the one I just mentioned). It's the first musical they've done without me. I sat in the audience, eyes raised to the people I love, my body moving with the music and words, tears and joy mixed up and running through me like blood. I watched Keelyn belt out "Winter's on the Wing" with pink cheeks and alive eyes and looking smashing playing a boy as she knelt on the stage feeling for spring. I watched the chorus members glancing at each other out the corners of their eyes during tricky harmonies. I heard the backstage crew changing sets, black shapes moving in the dark, but I knew their names. They had put capes and hats on me rapidly, handed me my prop, fetched me water, wished me good luck, smiled and joked and pulled the curtains back as I walked onstage one night trembling like a broken-winged bird to make my musical theater debut.
And afterwards, it was hugging and hugging and mulled apple cider and warmth and sparkles and light in the lobby, shouting skinny children and neon flowers in crinkly plastic and swirling costumes. How can I leave this? How can I ever be a part of another theater? How can I leave home?
Because home is not the place for 21-year olds, so says the world. Go to college, use your mind, get busy, get stressed, work, have fun, be crazy, go go go. To stay in Point Arena would be to go soft, to forget the rest of the world, to stunt your growth. I wish it were OK to stay here, the center of the spider web, and venture out from here, but always coming back. Here, to Romania. Here, to Tanzania. Here, to Arcata. People don't want me to stay here -- for my own good. I have too much to offer to the world to just be here, they say.
I wish I knew what that was. I'm happy here, I am. But it's more like a deep, peaceful, fantasy happy. The land of pines and eucalyptus, of ocean and gypsy sea caves, of silence and storms, of waves and mountains, of small towns and quirky people.
I went to see The Secret Garden last night, by Gualala Arts Center Theater (the one I just mentioned). It's the first musical they've done without me. I sat in the audience, eyes raised to the people I love, my body moving with the music and words, tears and joy mixed up and running through me like blood. I watched Keelyn belt out "Winter's on the Wing" with pink cheeks and alive eyes and looking smashing playing a boy as she knelt on the stage feeling for spring. I watched the chorus members glancing at each other out the corners of their eyes during tricky harmonies. I heard the backstage crew changing sets, black shapes moving in the dark, but I knew their names. They had put capes and hats on me rapidly, handed me my prop, fetched me water, wished me good luck, smiled and joked and pulled the curtains back as I walked onstage one night trembling like a broken-winged bird to make my musical theater debut.
And afterwards, it was hugging and hugging and mulled apple cider and warmth and sparkles and light in the lobby, shouting skinny children and neon flowers in crinkly plastic and swirling costumes. How can I leave this? How can I ever be a part of another theater? How can I leave home?
Because home is not the place for 21-year olds, so says the world. Go to college, use your mind, get busy, get stressed, work, have fun, be crazy, go go go. To stay in Point Arena would be to go soft, to forget the rest of the world, to stunt your growth. I wish it were OK to stay here, the center of the spider web, and venture out from here, but always coming back. Here, to Romania. Here, to Tanzania. Here, to Arcata. People don't want me to stay here -- for my own good. I have too much to offer to the world to just be here, they say.
I wish I knew what that was. I'm happy here, I am. But it's more like a deep, peaceful, fantasy happy. The land of pines and eucalyptus, of ocean and gypsy sea caves, of silence and storms, of waves and mountains, of small towns and quirky people.