Rather a ho hum sort of day so far.

Rather a ho hum sort of day so far.  I sit here at my table puffing my pipe.  No, wipe the bong-hugging hippies out of your mind; I’m not smoking that sort of pipe!  I’m in desperate want of cigarettes, or any sort of fundage with which to buy more.  So, my old briar friend must carry me through to brighter times. 

Ho hum also in light of the point that I’ve been working  (Note: that’s the regular, life-sustaining, not-very-interesting, job-related sort of work) a bit more than I’m accustomed to.  If I remember correctly, my last day off was Saturday the week before last.  I’m sure I’ll appreciate the extra days and hours immensely once I am paid, for the moment however, I find it slightly beyond tiresome.  Especially without my orange and white carcinogen sticks.

I did find comfort in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. How many ways can you call a man a penis, or tell him he’s not so very well hung? Falstaff manages it like so:

{Falstaff to Prince Hal.}  ‘Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s sizzle, you stockfish- O for breath to utter what is like thee!- you tailor’s yard, you sheath, you bowcase, you vile standing tuck!

Hal then very quickly tells him to storm to his heart’s content, catch his breath, storm some more, then once he’s tired, to listen well. 

It’s a lovely scene, and what’s more, it’s a lovely scene in one of the plays I don’t know nearly enough about as a whole. 

So yes, some comfort there.

©  Jeffrey Puukka, 2009 

Just after the daily ponder

Here’s an experience a lot of us have had.  You see [Fill in the blank] for the first time in [Fill in the blank].  As you’re standing there going on about [Fill in the blank] something about them slowly begins to eat at your brain.  That is, their general visage or persona strikes you with that sense that you aren’t saying something.  Something, moreover, that you really should say.  It would only be polite.  You’re supposed to comment.  Why?  Because something’s different!  That’s why.  You can’t quite place what is different, but you know very well that something has changed since the last time you had the [Fill in the blank] fortune to see them.  Their hair?  Could that be it?  Have they changed their hair; cut it?  Grown it?  Colored it?  Have they lost weight?  Are they wearing a brand new outfit?  Do they suddenly have blue eyes instead of green, or red eyes instead of blue? 

Well, I bring up that socially awkward scenario because; depending upon how often you visit my page/read this blogship; you may not notice that it’s different.  As of today, it’s different.  New colors, slightly new lay-out.  It occurred to me, as I was sitting in front of the window.  There I was, watching rain fall and pool upon the roof of the used-car lot’s office {which sits smack outside my living room}, it occurred to me that it is no longer winter.  Things on my little corner of the web ought to look more ’springly’.  Brighter.  Merrier.  Cheerier.  More color.  So that’s what I did. 

And you [shame, shame, shame] probably don’t visit nearly often enough to appreciate it. 

A sketch of Shakespeare; one with which I can well identify at the moment.

Now, before I bailed you out on having to figure out for yourself what had altered around here, I was sitting in front of the window, having a wee ponder.  It was today’s repetition of the always predictable daily ponder that happens after I’ve come home from work. 

It probably drives my beloved one slightly mad.  She probably feels as though I’m not interested in her, when I come home and the first thing I do is sit in a chair, seeming to stare out at nothing, lost to all living things around me. 

Yes.  It must be maddening for my Beloved one.  But I’ve come to understand there’s a reason I do it so often.  It’s a sort of rethinking of maybe useful thinking that was done earlier that day without my control.

Alright, that makes no sense!  Perhaps what follows will be just as mad, but I’ll try to make a metaphor.    

At the moment I still have no dedicated space from which to do what I used to do in my office.  That’s been the case for the last few years.  Now its not as much of a hurdle as it was six months ago because I have a laptop.  There’s not as much need for an isolated desk if you have a laptop.  However, I do miss having an isolated room.  I’ve noticed I do my best work when I have space to absorb that work, and then spit it back out at me.  The research I do for [Fill in the blank] can take over the wall.  Then, the work that needs to be done happens smoothly in that environment, because I’m swimming in a room full of research, musings, reminder notes, and so on.  And of course, when the subject that needs working-on changes, the rubbish on the wall gets torn down and replaced with new, much more important material.  Now, I don’t have such a closet or cubicle at the moment.  That means the ‘office’ tends to be world-wide, scattered, unorganized, and very much an imagined place I go to inside my head.  That seems to be where I go during the daily ponder.

I think I’ve figured it out, and I suspect it works like this… 

1.  On the way to or from work I tend to read/scribble about things vaguely similar to whatever it is I’m working toward creatively…  {At the moment, solving and building up the infrastructure of The Lab, so that it’s fit to put out work again in a year or so.} 

2.  When I get back home, I seem to be incapable of doing anything around the house until I’ve unwittingly dedicated a-few-cigarettes’ worth of time to staring out the window. 

3.  In that time, I think part of my brain is trying to pin those unorganized and maybe useless thoughts (from the bus rides) to some sort of order in my head.  In other words, I’m tacking all those articles, bits of research, musings, and reminder notes to an imaginary wall instead of a real one. 

4.  So, I sit at the window.  The two eyes in my face are watching the rain gather on the roof of the car lot’s office.  Somewhere in my mind, I’m in my non-physical office of no walls, working away, and actually—surprisingly—getting things done sometimes.

Now, I’ve had a few interesting ponders lately.  And, I suspect that soon I’ll have a much clearer understanding of exactly what I’m going to do, in my efforts towards building up The Lab.  I have a non-linear, not-very-useful vision at the moment.  After all, it’s really hard to tack a linear thing like a time-table to a non-existent {and often spinning} wall in one’s head.  It makes one feel a bit mental!  But I can tell, I can tell, I can tell that soon the eggs will be in a basket.  Then, I’ll be prepared to write a bit about what can be happening, and when.

The only thought to make a note of at the moment, is this.  As a member of the audience, as a director, as a reader, as an actor, the one artist I’ve constantly been moved by is Shakespeare.  There’s a lot of willing and ready arguments for why we should not do Shakespeare.  He’s too old, he’s been done too often, he doesn’t apply to us now, and so on. 

Wrong.  Wrong, wronger, wrongest, wrong as possible.  I’m happy they shared their opinion, but I’m choosing to ignore it.  Shakespeare, as a writer, was very, very daring.  There are a lot of contemporary playwrights who just aren’t that daring.

So, I’m sort of going to just say face it: I am who I am, and certain things about my taste don’t seem to change.  I am deeply drawn to the beauty, the brilliance of the language, and constant echoes of relevance in Shakespeare’s mountain of work.

So, while many of my daily ponders over the last year have had to do with why I should not do Shakespeare, when The Lab is up and running again, the Bard may play a big part in the work we do. 

As I said in one of my recent entries, nothing’s going to be happening right away.  I have a lot of gardening to do, in a sense.  But seeds grow, and blossom when the conditions ripen a bit.

©  Jeffrey Puukka, 2009