TinyTall 2.0

Yesterday was a day of vaulting out of my comfort zone. This isn’t an entirely bad thing – in fact, in many ways it was fun (although this is about the only place I’ll admit it).

First, I went to improv class. I’ve been going to this class for the last few weeks, actually, and this was the last week of class. I’ve done improv before, in Helena, and loved it. Last night, however, we were working on “making high-stakes offers” – the idea of moving a scene forward or starting a scene with a statement that comes loaded with potential. Last week I was having problems with asking too many questions- putting too much of the scene on the other player. All my time in Helena doing improv, I tended to keep things at arm’s length… maybe because I was afraid to show too much, but more likely because I wasn’t entirely sure I could control how my emotions out.

Last night, I basically said forget it and went all-out. I used as offers things that I have experienced, that I fear, that I get passionate about. I’ve been in a creative mood the last few days (MisCon gave me a kick in the hind end about that) and I felt like I was actually making progress. Connections to those watching the scene, and I didn’t have to think about what I was saying. Finally, I just played the character. It was outside my comfort zone, but so… comfortable.

What followed after this, I have nothing but apologies for. It was the fault of being on a creative high heightened by two hours of hella fun improv.

I karaoked.

I know, I know. I’m sorry. There is a reason I don’t sing in front of people. While I was gifted with a not-entirely-unpleasant speaking voice, and at one point a tiny tiny tiny bit of musical ability on instruments, I inherited my father’s singing voice. At one point my mom asked that my dad and I just not sing happy birthday… and that would be a gift.

But, all those things known, I did it anyway. Smashmouth’s All Star, sung instead as Porn Star. Why? ’cause I was doing karaoke at a gay bar on a Wednesday night – why not?

So I’ve double vaulted out of my comfort zone. And I’m still alive!

When you think in images words can be difficult to comprehend. I’ve spent years trying to figure out how to explain that I talk so much because no matter how many words I use, no matter how descriptive, I always vaguely feel like I’m lying- or at least not getting the whole image across. I hear a story or song lyrics and compose a stage set or photograph or screen shot in my mind.

This, of course, is not helped by the fact I usually have at least two trains of thought going on in my head, painting and designing over one another. I’m sure if I really could “print screen” on my brain it would look like an odd combination of Jackson Pollock, National Geographic Photos, and impressionist designs.

Perhaps this is why I both passionately love and shy away from photography. I love it because I don’t HAVE to put words to the images. Yet at the same time I have never found nor taken a photo that fully and accurately represents what and how I’m seeing something.

I’ve wanted to write about this day/image/moment for the last year or so, but never seemed to be able to do it justice. This still isn’t perfect (far from, actually) but I figured I’d finally just bite the bullet and put this out there for critique.

Golden

Sunlight is not usually yellow or orange. Sunlight is usually a clear, almost icy blue. Touches of warmpth can be found, but for the most part “natural” light is blue. Evenings and mornings are often described as beautiful because, less hindered by an expanse of clouds or thousands of miles of water molecules, the sunlight warms the sky with tints of muted yellow, pink, and orange that for the most part hide from our daily diet of light. Flourecent lights offer only a weak, sickly color that is more green than blue or yellow.

There was one day, however, that the kind of yellow-orange you only imagine in rainbows and see in amber-gelled theater lights bathed the everyday and graced the people it saw with a sense that three hundred years ago would have been called “holy”.

It had been raining for almost a week. For five days the sky had been nothing but varying shades of dull, flat gray. The kind of gray that was not merely an absence of color, but the kind that co-opted, swallowed all but the brightest and most tenacious of electrially-driven lights.

In the middle of this soul-dampening gray, in the middle of yet another dark day, I was idly staring out of the eighteen-foot bank of ten-foot high glass looking out on nothing more exciting than construction and cars. It started not as a single ray, but a faint glow atop the lone tree in the driveway. As the light slid downwards, it seemed to gather power and intensity until everything in sight seemed lit with the kind of light that must have been reflected off pure gold in the unbroken cloud cover.

I literally rubbed my eyes. Calls went out over the radio from other employees to “come check out this sky!”

This gift lasted only moments. So intense it burnt itself out before any of us could truly comprehend what we had seen. What it was was true, complete warmpth. Light that was not harsh and demanding nor distant and cold. The kind of light that, were I an artist, I would paint in saint’s halos and lover’s faces. A sense of the true extraordinary, created with naught but pure light.

I know I haven’t been posting much. I’ll explain later.

However, this summer, I will be participating in Online Onslaught 5- http://oo5.blogspot.com/ and in order to prep myself, I’m revisiting what I wrote two years ago for OO3… and figured I would reshare and add thoughts. Feel free to add your suggestions as well!

Prompt: Photo of a beach

10pm and the café was empty. Usually at this point, it was just getting busy, full of revelers enjoying their last few hours before the cruise ship left port, or their evenings after a long day of work. On these beaches, it was very unusual to see the locals mixing with tourists- but the few that found themselves in my café at that hour had usually doffed the drunken teenagers and rude thrill-seekers, and wanted to truly understand the beauty that is my beach. For twenty-five years, I had served them all. Frozen drinks, good food, and desserts that were fit to be eaten only while watching the sun set behind fishermen just starting their evening run. That was truly heaven.

So now, here I sit. The last umbrella in the cupboard floating in the last of the mai-tai, and the last slice of chocolate cheesecake sticking to my fork. Alone, finally enjoying what my customers had been calling heaven. Funny how I never seemed to get the chance to enjoy this while they were around. It is really beautiful, but it just isn’t the same. I need loud voices shouting out to the cooks what’s next on their list. I need customers laughing at the latest antics of the birds (who, we think, had become slightly addicted to the remnants of cruiser’s watery daiquiris). I need a flour-streaked apron around my waist and waves and shouts from the fishermen. Those are the things that made this my heaven.

Paradise, however, is easily lost. When the cruise ships moved to the next island, we were left with little except pollution and poverty. I didn’t see the effects for a while- hard times are the times you want most to be around those that make you smile. After a few months, though, locals started moving away and those who did stay simply didn’t have the money to pay off the tabs they’d been running up with me on the promise they’d eventually pay me back. I didn’t really care about the money- but when they were all too embarrassed to join me in the evenings, I didn’t have much left. I sold what there was, and gave the money to the two employees who had stayed. My tickets were sitting back in the now-bare kitchen, waiting to take me off to another island, another café. I couldn’t leave this place, though. I had to see why they had called it heaven. Now, I suppose I understood.

Draining the glass and poking the umbrella behind my ear, I stood up quickly, resolving to leave and not look back. I knew I was kidding myself, though. I knew I would only be trying to recreate this wherever I next ended up. How can you really say goodbye to heaven?