The Ragged End of Winter

According to all the local markers, spring has now officially begun. Cabin Fever Theater on Deer Isle has finished the run of its yearly show, Isle au Haut's town meeting was today. The equinox came and went; we begrudgingly set our clocks ahead.

This spring has revealed little in the way of delight thus far- though lord knows I am open to the possibility, and keep telling myself it is around the corner- after this deadline, or that deadline. Choosing to be highly involved on this island, even though I spend most of my waking hours working on another island, has left me generally strung out and testy. Weekends evaporated some time last year, and I answer to a host of masters. Mine was the surliest face at town meeting today, no doubt, as I picked up another dubious town honorific (by dint of being a responsible young person). Well- perhaps Dave's was surlier, but it was hard to tell, because he is sick, and had his head bowed for the duration.

And as I do the work, and get more tired, more stressed out, and my outlook bleaker and bleaker- I end up wondering "is this how it is going to be?" That life on this island will entail commuting so that I can actually make a living (but not a full time living, as that doesn't jive with the mailboat schedule), and then coming home to the many hats being an "islander" requires one to wear. Though the funny thing is, many islanders opt out of wearing any official civic hats at all. It's not suited to their temperament, or they did their bit a decade ago.

Well, maybe despite my shiny education, my youth, and rapidly diminishing naivety, civic engagement on this island is not my style. How long do you have to be involved before you can retire to the more pastoral island life? Is it just a quota of years, or is it counted in years per committee? I work with other people who give a great deal of time to the town. 60-something men, the lot of them. They are pleased to have another in their number, and they are pleased to have someone to pass the bag to as they (understandably) also want to move on from the intense duties that come with trying to keep this place going. It's just tiresome that all the bags are being passed to me. Because we suffer from a dire lack of shiny young educated naifs. Basically we have one left, and she's crumbling. I have it on good authority. There's only so much multi-tasking I can do, only so many times I can cheerfully field questions and requests and play nice until I am thoroughly drained. I am not, by nature, an extrovert.

A comrade, a comrade, my kingdom for a comrade! Right now we are blessed with the quietly incomparable Margaret, but alas, most Island Institute Fellows are loaners, and two years is the limit. She will be moving on after summer.

Remember me? I'm you, too.

When I was sixteen I left my home town on an island. Packed up, headed to a new school in the Northern middle of Maine's nowhere. To study Science and Math so that I could also study music, dance, and theater. Surrounded by potato fields, I damn near pined for the water.

Then I went to the landlocked heart of the country, in Iowa, again for theater. My Freshman advisor looked at the name of my high school and told me I needed to major in Biology, not Theater, so that I could actually get a job when I graduated. She was a philosophy professor, and that was her philosophic take on my future. Theater could be my spare time gig, my gal on the side. When I went to my advisor from birth, mom rolled her eyes and said to declare for theater, since it was what I wanted all along.

I am not blessed with a surfeit of sense. So I did. For four years I lived in a box believing that most things are possible (though perhaps not staging Artaud's Jet de Sang), rubbing shoulders with all sorts, and living for and through the work. I only mustered a semi-respectable GPA, but then the classroom never held a candle to the theater, unless the theater was the classroom. I very seldom got the roles I longed for, but I developed a rich friendship and appreciation for the girl who did (I always enjoyed her performances, but friendship came out of late nights hand washing and ironing silks when we ran costume crew together- thank you For Colored Girls). And yes, when on the last leg of that four year journey I finally got the role- success was counted sweetest for never having been Juliet. Especially because I shared the stage with her, and the other Top Girls in the program. I never did play opposite my other, dearest friend- except for scenework: Arkadina and Trigorin. It was not the right scene for us. I just cherish the one audition together for Desire Under the Elms (the only authentic Yankee auditioning, I didn't make the cut).

Later, when we all dispersed to our ends of the earth, I came back to Maine. To get back to being an authentic Yankee. Which meant I decided to turn my back on Theater, more or less. I wanted to be dependable-ish. To be fully human in the real world, not just in the black box. I wanted to finally be home. I would fit in community theater as I could: but working in theater, using the degree I was now sorely out of pocket for...? I gave up that ghost. Cause there are a lot of things in life I love. Being there to pick blueberries when they are ripe. Soldiering through the seasons; loving the light on the water, on the rocks; spending part of most every day on a boat; being within a few hours' range of my family's kitchen table. And now, Dave.

I think the skill that served me well and got me through school, was that I could make myself enjoy or take interest in most anything (except retail sales). It's a survival skill useful for only children. So I could let a big love go (it could be ravenous- four years taught me that), knowing that I would be able to pick up and put together other smaller loves. Was it islander pragmatism? Too much Chekhov in the Grinnell curriculum? What was slaving in a city for the love of theater and spending almost every minute wishing to be elsewhere compared to living and working in Maine and occasionally longing for theater?

For a decade I pretty happily repressed the whole theater thing. I figured it was completely over when I moved to the unbridged island. But then I had to get a job, and the one that showed up was in my hometown. And since I had to spend more time on the mainland, it wouldn't hurt to audition for Maria in the Sound of Music- since now the town did have theater. So I got to stand on the stage and sing those songs- catchy and wholesome, and learned by heart long ago: before I had any training; before I had built any pretense at a resume; when I was just a kid singing on a septic field because it felt so damned good to be bursting with song that it required the highest elevation on our property.

And that landed me here. Now. Two weeks out from- forgive the phrase!- my directorial debut. I will not be singing this time around- not on stage. I will have brought people to a place where they get to sing their hearts out. It's a new place for me, and it may even lead to the unimaginable- that I make a living with that theater degree. Here. In Maine.

Tonight I have survived another rehearsal- directing takes more preparation and improvisation than acting ever did.

The performance of this role lasts nine weeks, and then ends on opening night. My family and friends won't have seen even a snippet of it, just the echoes. The tunes are in my head, the acting beats in my heart, and the rhythm is in my body- but. My job is to speak, not sing; to stage, not swing. I have always loved the process- bringing the words and notes from the page and breathing life into them. So I enjoy directing. I get to be constantly helpful to a lot of people- problem solving for actors, cutting extraneous numbers, set pieces, and props to make life easier on the cast and crew, etc. I hope I solved exponentially more problems than I created, at least!

But I confess, and only to this page, that I feel slightly as I did when I didn't get the part. Turns out that while I love the process, I also love being a part of the product. One of the bodies on stage physically striving to make the thing come off. The heart bursting with song, the head wrestling with life, the soul seeking satisfaction. Part of the humanity burning under the heat of the lights.

Next year (if there is one) I will have the brains to at least cast myself in the chorus.

Over the past couple of days, I have been talking with my students about what it means to be a geek. That, original definition of a carny who would eat bizarre things aside, it simply means one who is passionate about a certain discipline- unabashedly. To the bone. On a daily basis in the course of my job I flirt with various forms of geekdom. I thrill to the Pythagorean Theorum, I deliver the goods on photosynthesis, and obviously- discuss definition drift. It's fun, more or less. But the thing that makes me scared, the thing that gives me insomnia, the thing that is so perfect so natural so mine is still that sublime black box.

So imagine all the demons that could come pouring out with this job opening. And at the bottom, the scariest.

Hope.