A) I watch Glee and B) I cried through 78% of the last episode.

For those of you who don’t watch, and I assume that’s a large number, it was about self-acceptance. Even in the cheesiest of packages, that topic’ll strike a nerve with pretty much anyone. And I’ve been thinking about cheesiness and packaging more than usual, since I’ve been working on this play. It’s my first play (even though I’ve been teaching playwriting to teenagers) and plays have different rules. Or maybe it’s that the rules of writing have become clearer to me via writing this play. For instance, theoretically, people are paying to see this and they’re sitting through it. They’re devoting a set amount of time and they want to be moved. So you move them: you pull out your funniest circumstances, your most absurd dialogue, interesting characters people care about and want to see change. Those rules were always there, but sometimes it takes a long time to see simple and obvious things. (For instance, “Married with Children” and “Family Matters” were only sounds, TV show names, until I was an adult. Not once did it occur to me to look at the words as words with meaning.) But in theater you can be less subtle and more obvious.

So I found myself typing, “But I can’t keep running. Aren’t I too old for this?” near the end of the play, wondering whether that was too obvious, though I ultimately kept it. I was writing toward a theme: that we’re never too old to run, and that running is not running so much as it is moving, because otherwise you’re in one place - and we’re all going to end up in one place so while you’re kinetic, move. (The play revolves around two dogs who are stuck together while having sex.) What’s funny is that in my fiction and nonfiction it hadn’t occurred to me that I needed a theme. I just wrote. Often what I wrote made sense only to me, and I’d get upset when only a few people in the workshop understood and appreciated what I was trying to say. When really, it was that those few people heard what I was trying to say simply because their brains worked similarly. I wasn’t talking to enough people and I wasn’t being clear enough.

The first story I wrote in the MFA program was supposed to be about a woman who lost her spouse and tried to seduce his sister because it was the closest she could get to having him back. But it felt too weird to write. It was too close in time to my own breakup, and my ex has a sister. (A lovely one with whom I’m still close.) So instead it turned into this subtle story, and the sister thing was reduced to a hint. “I think I’m catching some lesbian vibes in this scene,” said one classmate. It was semi-well received as what it was: a portrait of a young person wandering, trying not to let on that she’s hurt and empty. While that might have been important to me at the time, it’s not enough. Eventually I plan to rewrite - either have the woman set out clear intentions to seduce the sister, or have it occur to her that this is what she’s doing, and have her react. Be appalled, have her see herself completely differently, perhaps go through with it anyhow. It’s a far more interesting story than the one I wrote. My method, before, was to bury things in sentences, and people would react to my writing by saying that it’s clearly tightly wound, careful, heavy with suggestion, etc. But sentences should unearth things, not bury them. 

To the Glee thing. I was somehow too embarrassed, I think, to write a story that said anything outwardly. So I said almost nothing. 

And there are other things. Being in this program has set me out in the middle of nowhere (the Hamptons are the middle of nowhere in the off-season) with a group of like-minded people. I’m surrounded by people with anxiety, obsessions, too much passion, not enough passion - people whose writing is made interesting and better by these things. We talk about it openly. It’s all you can do when you’re this far away from most of the people you know, and on top of that, relegated to a room, alone, to write for a lot of the time.

For my teaching practicum class, we have guest teachers every week. Last week we had a woman, Susan Scarf Merrill, teach. She was quirky and sweet, stuttering, admitting to the fact that she only teaches to force herself to see actual, live people every so often. Her brain worked in a very obvious, distinct way, and she was nearly-instantly endearing. She admitted to what she’s self-conscious about, and told us that in order to be a good teacher you’ve got to embrace those things. “I’m strange,” she said. “But it works. You have to make your strangeness work for you.” 

It was like hearing “Married with Children” as an adult. Before it was five syllables that rolled off my young tongue, something I watched with my parents. Now it evokes a state of being married, with children. The words couldn’t have been more obvious but they didn’t reach past sound into meaning. (Music was this way, too. I was technically good but never did it occur to me to feel what I was singing or playing. How did that not occur to me? Can I blame white suburbanness?) Hearing someone say, “accept yourself” when you’re an adult has meaning now that it didn’t have before. I teared up when she said it. That’s something I do: cry easily, anywhere. 

She also gave us good writing advice that somehow hadn’t been mentioned to me before: Let your characters react; it doesn’t feel real when they’re not reacting.

Note the promises you’re making at the outset, and deliver.

And on teaching children, “Bribes are good. But never more than one dollar. And never pay.”

I’ve been watching a lot of That ’70s Show and so naturally I googled videos of Wilmer Valderrama because I wanted to see him as not-Fez. 

This comment is from a YouTube clip of his interview with Jimmy Kimmel. I thought you guys might enjoy a reminder about how skin can darken in the sun and lighten in a television studio.

Grey’s Anatomy episode titles are consistently bad, and the season premier was no exception. “Good Mourning?” The writers couldn’t come up with…just about anything else?

I’m going to assume most of you don’t watch the show, because it’s not very good. I do; I’m attached to the characters at this point and there’s no turning back. So, as the episode title’s subtle pun suggests, the episode was all about mourning and grieving. I cried for two whole hours, resting only to shake my head at unrealistic long-speak that worked much better on Gilmore Girls. But for reals: Two hours. Non-stop crying.

I’ve watched myself go through the stages of grief this past week. I’ve denied, gotten angry, bargained, etc. Isn’t it funny how you find yourself repeating what other people said, co-opting the words as your own? And funnier still when those words came from a character on Grey’s Anatomy? Later today my tough-love mom told me, “Get your act together. Just get the hell over it already.” “I’m grieving, Mom,” I said. “And grieving looks…” I paused and decided to paraphrase, “Grieving is different for everyone.” I think the exact words were “Grieving looks different on everyone,” but she DVRed it so I decided to change it up a little so she might not notice.

To make up for crying for two hours, I decided to bike for two hours. Eight miles. In the process I learned that my father is in far better shape then me, which is cute. I’m really looking forward to two months’ worth of physical work, of hiking and reading and talking to new people. It’s hard to imagine two months without phone or Internet. Speaking of computers, I’m noticing the areas in which I had become pretty dependent over the years. I think using my Mac has got to be in the top five. I just downloaded Rosetta Stone, or tried to, and I have no idea what kind of files I just got. Or what to do with them. Usually I hand my computer over to Matt (half of my files are on a hard drive in my old apartment…hmmm) so I just looked over to my side, conditioned to ask for help, and there’s nothing but a pile of laundry I really should do because I’m out of underwear. That pile is not going to help me, and that sucks. If any of you reading this has downloaded a torrent for Rosetta Stone successfully, please help. One of the reasons I got into this program is because I took four years of Spanish and if they find out I only remember “Where’s the bathroom?” and “Can I have the check please?” they might be disappointed.

I just watched the last episode of Glee, which Matt deems “the worst show he’s ever seen.” It is great, actually. I’m not sure if I remember the pilot very well, but I didn’t recall it being as strong as the second episode was. I’m watching. Every scene with Will and Emma makes my heart drop a few stories.

Right after the episode was over I paused Hulu and started singing “A Case of You.” I didn’t hold a brush like a microphone in front of a mirror, mostly because I was too lazy to get out of bed. So I sat with my computer in my lap singing, “I am a lonely painter/I live in a box of paint,” which woke Mr. Scallywag up so I stopped. But then I thought, whatever cat, you scratched my face today and made me chase you down the hallway twice, so if I want to sing I’m going to sing and you can just deal with it. So I continued singing about being lonely and love touching souls while my cat buried his face in the rug trying to tune me out.

Okay, I’m off. Time to take the teeth out, marinate myself in some Jean Naté cologne, and maybe if I have time, organize my thimble collection. Night!