I'm back.
Frustrating few weeks--frustrated with the powers that be. Feeling the Guinea-pigness of this year. While on one hand we Mafatoos (MFA 2nd years) are creating traditions and have input into how the program will be in the future, we also get the shit along the way.
In the first weeks back thinking mostly about the end of the year: thesis projects, research projects, internships. Wrote a proposal, then rewrote a proposal--a disaster clown play--and yesterday I just rewrote another one which is mostly about...the moon.
That seems best.
Started working this week with a mask teacher from Mexico and I feel like my training this year has just started. Moment, by moment work. Awareness, breath, openness--we're working with "Empty Masks" as opposed to Neutral masks, and so it's not so focused on Universal Man or Woman, but the person who is wearing it--you are emptying yourself of habit, of judgement, of tension.
It is profound. And it opens up the outside world to the studio so that the logging trucks and geese are part of the work as well as the walk to the chair in front of an audience. Sounds woo-woo, I know, but that's my world right now. Later we will work with traditional Mexican masks that she brought with her--devil and death masks, jaguars, old men, women with bright smiles and gold teeth.
I'm becoming an Indian--that's what Bindi Girl says. I drink tea instead of coffee, and Dal (I make a mean Dal!) and eggs have replaced my morning toast and peanut butter.
I'm still in love with the Logger and I am finally on "The Happy Jar"--if your name is on the list, you pay fifty cents for two rolls of the dice. Get five of a kind and you win the jar. When I first got here, I saw other people rolling and I asked Brenda what it was. Bless her heart, she just turned away. There are arbitrary rules about who can be on the jar. You have to be a local. A REAL local--not just a passing through student. After the last pot was won Brenda brought me the list. "You wanna be on the jar?".
I have arrived.