Mike blogged for the first time in months so I feel like I should too.

Let’s see.  It’s 8:00 on a Thursday night, I’m a little drunk (Thanks, Azia happy hour), and I’m in my pajama jammy jams and watching Season One of Slings and Arrows, which I love so much it makes me want to explode.  It was a Christmas present to myself–Slings and Arrows, the complete series.  It was Debbie who pointed out to me that I seem to be buying myself lots of Christmas presents this month.  It’s true.  I justify it to myself by being extra super generous in my gifts to everyone else.  But not really EVERYone else.  Just…Mikey, my mom, and…  Well.  I spent $30 on photoshop magazines for my dad and so far I’ve bought Bri season one of MacGyver.  Now I need to tell her not to read this blog.  Bri, I do hope you’re not disobeying me and reading this blog.  You don’t want to ruin your MacGyver surprise now, do you?

Where was I?

How did I get so tipsy mipsy off one Sake Cosmo and an Emporer Mojito?

I feel like I can’t talk about anything important on this here blog anymore, ’cause I feel like people are watching.  You know.  People.  I don’t know who people are, but they’re out there and they’re judging me and I feel like I need to go underground.  Hide.  Call me crazy.  I’m just in this self-defensive crouch lately, and I can’t explain it.

That’s it!  That’s all I can do!  I typed all I can type and I can’t type no more.

I’m not really going to click “post,” am I?  Oh god…  Surely not…

http://minnesotaplaylist.com/magazine/2008-10-01-perry.asp

Here’s the article I wrote for Minnesota Playlist, a new online magazine that provides information and inspiration for Minnesota’s performing arts. All content is free to read, including audition notices, talent profiles, in-depth articles and essays from great artists and writers and—coming soon—calendar listings and audience reviews.

My article is featured in the first online issue.  It’s on the topic of the function of the performing arts.

Enjoy!

I’m impatient. 

I’m driving to Kansas today to be a part of Rita and Danny’s wedding on Friday.  I didn’t have the vacation time to take three whole days off work, so I’m here today, sitting, tapping my toes, itching to hit the road around 1:00 (if I manage to wait that long).  My car is washed, fueled, oiled; my bags are packed and in the backseat; I’ve got a few new mix cd’s for the journey, and I’m rearing to go.

And what a perfect day for a road trip.  Blue sky, hot, gorgeous.  My favorite thing about driving to Kansas is the way you can literally see the sky opening up as you go south.  The horizon gets wider, the sky bigger somehow.  I can’t explain it.  It’s like the atmosphere takes a breath and expands.  Driving back north, the sky shrinks again; the quality of the light changes.  I always feel my heart swell going south.  Maybe it’s because the first time I made that drive I was 18 years old, 17 actually, about to turn 18, and the world was so new and alive to me, there was nothing but possibility everywhere I looked, and everything was growing so fast.  Things are still changing, but at a slower pace now.

I’m particularly excited for this trip because every time I’ve gone back since graduation, it’s been like I’m trying to re-visit the past somehow.  There’s nothing new for me in Kansas anymore.  Every street, bar, and friend’s face is rife with memory.  And I always leave feeling sad.  Sad that I can’t go back to the way things were, and Kansas is no longer a place of growth and evolution for me.  (OK, it’s not a place of evolution for school kids either, ba dum ching).

But this time it’s different.  This time I’m going to honor and celebrate a new union between two people I adore.  Danny’s family is all flying in from Manchester; it will be a whole weekend of meeting new people, looking forward to the future, and celebrating a love that exists here and now.  I’m sad that Mike can’t come with me ’cause of his Fringe show, but I’m also looking forward to 7 hours on the open road with nothing but my thoughts, my music, and that changing sky.

Going to Kansas in unavoidably bittersweet.  But I think this one is gonna be heavily tilted to favor the sweet.  I may not even set foot in Lawrence.  Though Free State has a way of luring me with its Copperhead Pale Ale…  we shall see.

I already feel filled up.  My heart is gonna burst confetti all over I-35.  Look out Iowa.  I’m gonna bedazzle you with my glitter sauce.  Oh, joy. 

Oh big motor heart, let’s hit the road already.

Well, Bri and I finally found a place to call home.  She’s at 1209 4th St. NE, one block from Erte, the Modern, and the Ritz Theater.  She’s a block off University Ave., for a straight-shot bike ride into work, a stone’s throw from I-94 for easy Uptown access, and she’s got the most amazing porch, where I can grow flowers and herbs galore.  She’s got a great kitchen, gets a ton of light, and I can’t wait to throw our first party in her.  Here she is:

Large 2 Bedroom Apartment on Main Floor of Brick Duplex in the Heart of the NE Arts District

*Large windows
*Hardwood floors
*French doors into 1 bedroom
*Walk in closet in 1 bedroom
*Kitchen has a walk in pantry and dishwasher
*Front porch and side porch
*Yard
*Free laundry and storage in the basement
*2 off street parking spots
*Near bus stop - convenient to Downtown and the U of M
*1 block from galleries/shops/cafes

And some pics I snapped of the front porch this morning.  I’m already fantasizing about the bottles of wine that will be sipped upon it…

Now I just need to figure out my new jogging route in the new neighborhood, and I’m all set. ;) 

She’ll be ours on August 15th.

Tomorrow I go in for my first Lasik exam, and then my eyeballs are getting zapped on August 8th.   Lots of changes.  Lots of excitement.

Hi ho!

xoxo

"cause someone you don’t know
is someone you don’t know
get a firm grip, girl
before you let go
for every hand extended
another lies in wait
keep your eye on that one and
anticipate"
–Ani D.

Hi my loves.

I had a phenomenal weekend.  Had my last performances of Mom’s the Word, spent a glorious evening with Dawn on the houseboat, drinking Jameson and watching the lightening dance over the river, celebrated some dear friends’ birthdays on Saturday, and drank pink champagne on the street in honor of France’s Independence. 

On Friday night, a little drunk, a little soulful, I was inspired to go all the way back through this blog, skimming over the whole journey from my first post to here.  Did you know that y’all used to leave me comments?  What happened?  Those were the days.

What I’m thinking about is the way things pan out, and how utterly unable we are to predict it.  There’s no way I could have anticipated the awesome friendships that have come out of Mom’s the Word for me, or that freelance writing might become a viable career path for me via a tangled, unorthodox path, or that I’d be working with some incredible folks on Torch’s fundraiser next month.  That Mikey and I would still be going strong after 2.5 years; that Bri and I would be looking for an apartment to share; that I’d be embarking on year 2 of studying Arabic.  And how glorious it all is, and how it makes me think of all the other wonderful things that must be coming down the pike for me that I have no way of anticipating today.

Tonight is my last performance of Adventures in Mating.  Then the book will close on the past 5 months of theatrical endeavors, and the next one will open.  I’m already in rehearsals for the next thing (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, for Torch), which is going to by hysterical and too much fun for words.  I have an audition tonight and another next week; I’m getting Lasik eye surgery in a few weeks; I’m going to be the maid of honor in Rita Mae’s wedding on the 1st; I’m going on a full moon boat cruise on the Mississippi this weekend; Bri and I are diligently house-hunting and should find someplace suitable soon…It’s all happening.  In the midst of looking forward, I’m finding it very interesting to look back a bit too.  Laura dug up this old e-mail I sent in 2003 from Africa….reading it brought me right back there, to all that heat and dust, all that loneliness and determination.  Here it is:

Elephants on a Hot Tin Roof

Ahoy!
Thank you all very much for your delightful word-paintings of fall in
America.  And your descriptions of your various meals, which will serve to keep me salivating at least through the end of the month.
Now please allow me to describe an African rainstorm in the middle of the night:
It’s hot.  I mean, hot like the inside of a croissant, the cheese of a
fresh pizza, the oil in a pan of sauteeing, sizzling veggies…oh! sorry.  It’s hot.  You’re lying on your bed, which has become indistinguishable from a slip n’ slide, dreams seeping from every pore (feverish) and rising to hover under the dome of your mosquito net, which, were you sharing your bed with someone other than a gecko and several spiders, could feasibly be romantic in a four-poster curtained bed, medieval sort of way.  But really, it’s
just hot.  Nothing is moving except the bats scurrying (do bats scurry?  what the hell are those?) around the ceiling.  A breeze
is as distant and desired as ice cream.  When i blow on myself, my breath is cooler than the air.  I’m blowing on myself. (hey, my dad already posted my need for toilet paper on the internet, i’ve got no pride left).
And Then!!  I hear it!  I’m drawn foggedly up through a dream of shopping for a bathing suit in a mall…I start imagining there are elephants on my roof…it’s the malaria drugs…no!  god bless it!  it’s rain!!  Now, I don’t know–this could be just your average rainfall, but in the middle of the night, alone in a mud hut (if you can be alone in a zoo of mini-critters), under a tin roof, your average rainfall takes on mythic proportions.  There is wind, Real Moving Air!  I think I see the wicked witch of the west zip by my window, but it’s probably just the goat looking for shelter.
And then, I just can’t help it.  Before I’m fully aware that I’m
not actually wearing a bathing suit in the mall (i’m actually quite nek-ed), I’m sitting up, I’m fumbling for the opening of my mosquito net, I’m outside, I’m drenched, and for the first time in 6 weeks, I’m not hot.  The sun is starting to break on my right, the clouds are black on one side, pink on the other.  There’s an army of toads heading for my latrine, but i don’t care. 
No sir!  This, This is why I am here.  For this moment: this blissful,
lonely, aching, soaring moment.
And here comes host momma, Hadisa.  I guess it’s about time she’s not the only bare-breasted one.  She laughs, I laugh and scurry(taking a cue from the bats), and, because it’s sunday, go contedly back to sleep in the broken heat, actually using a sheet for coziness.
Love you all madly.
Your e-mails mean the world to me.
Wend na kond nindaare (may god guard you until we meet
again),
Mo

***************

So here’s to looking back, looking forward, anticipation, surprise, and finding yourself standing naked in an African rainstorm.

Love love.

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure,
to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer
meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for
in movement there is life, and in change there is power." –Alan Cohen

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one
dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are
relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past,
present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in
the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations." –Anais Nin

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." –Anais Nin

"Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal." –Arthur Schopenhauer

"I look up to see integrity finally won over desire." –Ani Difranco

Our city is building a bridge:

Leslie and Jeremy have a new baby boy, Hogan:

My garden is bursting with life:

I have 3 weeks of Adventures in Mating left.  Two more weeks of Mom’s the Word.  Then this cycle will wind down and a new one will begin.  The projects on my horizon are thrilling.  Summer is ripening on the vine, and I’m shedding my old skin to grow into new shapes, forms that match the moment, whole new ways of being present.  I’m surrounded by people showing me so many paths, dignity within so many paths.  And yet I stubbornly carve out my own, and trust.  The sun will pull me skyward while the earth roots me; babies will be born; bridges will be built.  These long, languid days make everything right; the reluctant sunsets fry my heart like an egg.
Tonight I’ll watch a parade and bake bread.  Feel my mind sprout new tendrils while I sleep; dream of a forest thrusting up in time-lapse.

"A garden I tend whose blossom never existed." –Pablo Neruda

How exquisite to be alive and aging and new.

A Color of the
Sky

    by Tony Hoagland

    Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,

    driving over the hills from work.

    There are the dark parts on the road

                     when
you pass through clumps of wood

    and the bright spots where you have a view of
the ocean,

    but that doesn’t make the road an
allegory.

    I should call Marie and apologize

    for being so boring at dinner last night,

    but can I really promise not to be that way
again?

    And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees,
tossing

    in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

    Otherwise it’s spring, and everything
looks frail;

    the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling
leaves

    are full of infant chlorophyll,

    the very tint of inexperience.

    Last summer’s song is making a comeback
on the radio,

    and on the highway overpass,

    the only metaphysical vandal in

America

has
written

    MEMORY LOVES TIME

    in big black spraypaint letters,

    which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory
back.

    Last night I dreamed of X again.

    She’s like a stain on my subconscious
sheets.

    Years ago she penetrated me

    but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and
scrubbed,

    I never got her out,

    but now I’m glad.

    What I thought was an end turned out to be a
middle.

    What I thought was a brick wall turned out to
be a tunnel.

    What I thought was an injustice

    turned out to be a color of the sky.

    Outside the youth center, between the liquor
store

    and the police station,

    a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

    overflowing with blossomfoam,

    like a sudsy mug of beer;

    like a bride ripping off her clothes,

    dropping snow white petals to the ground in
clouds,

    so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly
obscene.

    It’s been doing that all week:

    making beauty,

    and throwing it away,

    and making more.

Project!

Mike and I decided it was high time his backyard yielded bounties of herbs, veggies, and flowers for our sensory delight.  So we embarked this weekend on creating a garden.  I will chart our progress here through pics.  Here are its humble beginnings.  Hopefully by mid-summer it will be bursting with goodness.

We’re open to suggestions for what to plant, and how, and when.  Also, how to keep the critters away.

Composting is fun!

A ho, with a hoe:

Mikey is grooming in his weight belt:

The house, from the garden:

The garden (and tree swings), from the house:

Our first meager step towards combating rising food costs.  Let’s hear it for living off the earth!  Or at least decorating it.

Last night’s dream:

I went to a house where all my ex-boyfriends
lived together. It was kind of dark and scary. There were snakes
everywhere, and I perfected this trick where I could lay on top of one
of them (the snakes), and it would become rigid and float like a
hovercraft and I could ride it around the house like a body board, and
I was showing this trick to one of my exes, and suddenly the snake I
was "riding" lost its rigidity, became supine and snake-like again,
twirled itself around my left leg, slithered up, and bit me on the
neck. I tried to rip it off, but then it got me on the right wrist.
Finally I got it off me, but all the other hundreds of snakes in the
house started slithering towards me very slowly, and my exes wouldn’t
let me leave. They wanted me to stay and watch a movie. A movie!!

Anyway.

I
know it’s spring because I’m itchy. The motor attached to my ass is
hummin’, and all my daydreams and fantasies revolve around skipping
town, uprooting, burning my life down to the ground. Driving home from
my show in St. Paul last night, after a stiff glass of whiskey, I
started thinking about day trips, local hikes, weekend-getaways. By the
time I merged onto 280, I was quitting my job and living in my car for
the summer, traipsing around the country. By the time I got to St.
Anthony Parkway, I had re-joined the Peace Corps, this time in Yemen,
and was resigning myself to wearing a burka every day in exchange for
perfecting my Arabic. By the time I got home, I was living in an
oxygenated hut on the moon.

This happens to me every spring. A
few years ago I went with it, and drove to California and lived in a
van for a while. These days I try to find more…sensible ways to
channel the intensity of my urges to slough off every last restriction
on my freedom. So maybe this weekend I’ll roam around Minneapolis and
take pictures of My City In The Spring. Maybe I’ll try to write some of
this ferocity out. Maybe I’ll go dancing.

What do you think?
How can I escape without escaping? Give myself the illusion of bursting
free of my life for a day…and be done in time to do my show at 7:30?

I AM going to Chicago next week, I guess.  OK, I’ll focus on that.  Mini-vacation! 

And maybe I’ll get a manicure today.  Nothin’ like pretty extremities to make you feel good in your skin.

And I’m gonna try to shake that dream.  Snakes….ugh.

I spent the whole delicious day in bed, getting up only to venture
warily into the late April unseasonal snow to buy asparagus and wine,
then return to your bountiful mid-day breakfast, your strong bloody
mary’s, your insisting we make love twice. I fell back asleep as the
day swirled away out the window, melting before it hit the ground. Woke
again to drink a beer in the bathtub while I read about Barcelona and
drizzled lavender oil onto my skin. With tendrils grazing my neck and
perfect toenails as my ankle’s ambassadors to the air, I wrapped myself
in a blue bathrobe and chopped shallots, with an open bottle of
beaujolais next to the olive oil; next to the balsamic. I became that
woman who used an expensive parsing knife while gazing wistfully out
the kitchen window above the sink, listening to sexy music, standing
like a flamingo at the counter, the sole of my right foot pressed into
the inside of my left knee. I used abundant butter, filled the house
with scents of simmering shallots: that love child of onion and garlic.
Cut big chunks of green stalks, tore large leaves of basil. Finished my
book while I stirred with one hand. Went to make a little art in St.
Paul, make some people laugh. Came back to sit and realize that I felt
just right. That everything was as it should be, and the way my former
lovers’ eyes match their new lovers’ eyes in the pictures I’ve seen
makes me feel certainty and completion; the way my eyes still look out
the kitchen window while I chop shallots makes me feel at home in my
bones; and life keeps sifting down to essentials: smells, poetry, and
love. As it should. As it should.