Hey

I'm "recovering" after the whole One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest thing.

I'm not one to go on about things ... really, I'm not. But I guess it's taken me a while to get my world back into some semblance of order.

After all, six weeks of rehearsals and three weeks of production made for nine hectic weeks around here. My kids were out of control, my house was a wreck, my husband was needy (okay, needier is probably a better word).

Since Cuckoo's Nest closed, we bought a new car. Went to the beach. I got a new job (same company but I got a promotion and a raise, AND I can work from home all the time if I want, or just whenever I want). So I've been busy, even though right after the show closed I felt like I had so much free time.

Doing that show sorta opened up my eyes a bit, on several levels.

• I realized how much I missed the theatre all these years.
• I realized how hard it was for me to balance career, motherhood (and all that jazz), with 5-night a week rehearsals, learning lines, etc. (AND going out after rehearsals, too, of course).
• I realized it's okay to order pizza for your family once a week (as you're rushing out the door to rehearsal), but twice a week might be pushing it.
• I realized that people can be pretty darn judgemental about who they think your character should be and how they think you should play her.
• I realized I didn't/don't care who people thought my chracter should be or how they thought I should play her.
• I realized there are some pretty cool people in the theatre.

Enough of that. After all, I'm not one to go on about things. Really, I'm not.

But while I'm in this mushy state of mind, I might as well bring up a poem that I had completely forgotten about...I learned it years ago in college, when doing a show called, "And the subject is...love." Get this: the whole show was about love. The subject of the show was love. Really clever title.

Anyway, it was sort of a poetry / theatre / performance thing -- a reader's theatre-ish thing. There was a poem by Carl Sandburg that I did an interpretation of that the show was sort of built around:

Little Word, Little White Bird

Love is a little white bird
and the flight of it so fast
you can't see it
and you know it's there
only by the faint whirr of its wings
and the hush song coming so low to your ears
you fear it might be silence
and you listen keen
and you listen long
and you know it's more than silence
for you get the hush song so lovely
it hurts and cuts into your heart
and what you want
is to give more than you can get
and you'd like to write it
but it can't be written
and you'd like to sing it
but you don't dare try
because the little white bird sings it better than you can
so you listen
and while you listen you pray
and one day it's as though
a great slow wind had washed you clean and strong
inside and out
and another day it's as though you had gone to sleep
in an early afternoon sunfall and your sleeping heart
dumb and cold as a round polished stone,
and the little white bird's hush song
telling you nothing can harm you,
the days to come can weave in and weave out
and spin their fabrics and designs for you
and nothing can harm you

I don't know what made me think of that poem the other day. I went back and found my script and remembered how much I loved Sandburg's words...I remember how much I loved doing the interp of that poem.

I'm not sure what that poem meant to me back then, but I'm pretty sure I didn't understand it the way I understand it now.

Good night.