Halloween stresses me out a little. I struggle putting clothes together for a normal day; I don\u2019t have the creativity or skill to put a costume together.<\/p>\n
I was telling my daughters about my hardest college class \u2014 costume design. We had to draw people and match clothes. My nightmare.<\/p>\n
Keith Belli was our professor. He made the mistake of revealing to us that he hated the song \u201cThe Gambler,\u201d so we sang it every chance we got. He had so much patience and somehow I made it through with lots of tears and an A. Never underestimate the power of pity.<\/p>\n
I got to visit a dear friend from college during my recent whirlwind trip to the East coast. He made it possible for me to watch \u201cDeath of a Salesman\u201d at Ford\u2019s Theater. I almost balked because I imagined the play had to be dated. Arthur Miller wrote it in 1949, and it\u2019s about the collapse of the American Dream.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not dated. I wept through it. I should have brought tissues, because snot on sleeves is unacceptable at Ford\u2019s.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still a powerful commentary on the things we hang our lives and hopes on. One moment that stuck out so poignantly was Willy Loman saying, \u201cI feel kind of temporary about myself.\u201d Thankfully, when I was young we had a dark backyard and I had lots of time to lie there and stare at the vastness of the stars. Those were my crisis moments \u2014 and calming moments. The vastness made me critically aware of my temporality. It cured me of any illusions of grandeur; there is no proving oneself worthy in the face of such enormity.<\/p>\n
In some ways, I think of those nights staring at the stars as my baptism. That\u2019s when I died to any illusion my story was central and realized I was part of a much greater narrative. My choices have significance and consequences. The hurt and joy I bring do ripple throughout eternity, but the universe does not revolve around me. Willy Loman\u2019s response to feeling \u201ctemporary\u201d is standard American: buy stuff, worship your kids, isolate, pick fights, exaggerate your significance, bully those with less to make yourself feel greater, and, finally, despair. My tears during the play matched those of the father and son in front of me, so I didn\u2019t feel so alone grieving this life we fall into so easily.<\/p>\n
The gift of theater is letting us step back and see ourselves. We get to watch our stories, weep, laugh, wipe snot on our sleeves, and walk out a little more aware of how temporary we are in the vastness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Halloween stresses me out a little. I struggle putting clothes together for a normal day; I don\u2019t have the creativity or skill to put a costume together. I was telling my daughters about my hardest college class \u2014 costume design. We had to draw people and match clothes. My nightmare. Keith Belli was our professor. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30325"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}