meisner - day 16

eight weeks of class. ateeightaye't.

and finally.

i can feel myself going somewhere again.

which shouldn't negate the movement i have made, just that it {perfectionistically} wasn't in this area where i felt way behind the rest of the class: in connecting to my circumstances. in feeling them emotionally. in putting that experience into the space between the two actors. so much juicy stuff has been happening with my fellow classmates and i've felt like a stale piece of bread shuffling around on stage.

until today.

i did my homework as well as i could.
with more focus than i have ever been able to give my task before.
and outside in my prep before entering, i went back to my visceral sense memory of my family photographs and just sat in the experience of looking through page after page of my family photographs.
my baby pictures.
photos of my parents as a young couple not knowing what they were getting themselves into. holding hands.
my sister on the cheerfully yellow slip and slide.
my siblings. my siblings. my siblings.
me in front of the deer cage at the stables.
my mom and me at the picnic table at presley lake.
my grandparents on both sides visiting us in alabama.
my dad in a blue shirt.
family photos.
top garden.
me in my swish holding momma cat.

a flood of images often interrupted by noises and sounds and thoughts about what i would do when i got inside the room or what it would look like working with will or what i should be feeling. and yet each time i caught myself then redirected with as little judgment as possible and slipped back into this wealth of images surfacing in my mind's eye.

and then i imagined them all burning in a fire.

i didn't start crying in the hallway. i didn't even have an identifiable emotional response, but the circumstances were alive in me. completely. my heart was racing and my body felt charged.

and that's all i carried with me to the door. i didn't know what i was feeling or how it would come out. it was this glorious surrendering of control and inside it took me to sobs it took me to shouting and it took me to laughter. exhausted. beaten. laughter.

so yesss. tonight was a victory.



currently listening to: fog - radiohead