epiphany

I've already leaked how much resolve my great ambition has left me with ('smoker'), and I can't say my expectations are any higher than they were when I gave Santa my list ('dear santa,'), but insomuch as I've learned from the events of 2007 (and I feel a pressing need to waste my five millionth parenthetical comment to praise the economy of words like 'insomuch') , so now do I 'resolve' to learn at least as much from what awaits [to confound] me in 2008. Maybe a pithy recap of the year will help raise the red flags for me;

• January- I garner a bit of media attention from local news sources for decorating Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday cake at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Though piping tile adhesive through a pastry bag to hide the construction seams on a ten foot high plywood 'cake', I wear a chef's hat. (the year seems to start out on a high note)


• February- I design the set for a dinner theater production of 'Grease', a musical I can't say less about. What I learned; just because the director is passing a snotty comment over his shoulder as he storms out of the final production meeting is no reason to believe that the consequence of calling him a "shitty director" to his receding back will not be revisited on me.


• March- I spend most of this month recovering from and regretting the last one.


• April- I remount a production of 'Don Giovanni' which I designed for Opera Delaware to Temple University. In the new production, my surreal set steps closer to surrealism with the introduction of a predominantly Korean cast, in ludicrous wigs, singing the Italian book to a Viennese opera set in Spain.


• May- With dozens of on-line inquiries netting nothing close to a job offer, I throw myself into designing the T-shirt for an upcoming family reunion. As though I've learned nothing at all from my dinner theater experience, I make this project more expensive and complex than it need have been. I faff around on the Internet; googling myself, exposing the mysteries of my clan (finding out how horrifyingly easy it is to summon some one's mother's maiden name), and launching arms-length emails to everyone I know, bitching about my pitiful circumstance. I discover the irony lurking within my ennui and- Smack Dab is born.


• June- Most importantly, my blog brings me closer to my parents (I'm {at the time}48). They hear my voice- which is meant for everyone- and they 'get' me. What I can't convey in cards and letters, even during holiday visits with my brothers and with all those little nose-pickers around, is that as alien as I might have always seemed to them, there is no one I've wanted more to be understood by. Our almost daily email dialog begins.


• July- I'm in family therapy discussing how impotent I feel when I'm out of work when THE call comes offering work (a lot of it)- which would keep me away from an exercise we might not have been entirely through with but which would keep me heavily and happily employed through...


• August


• September


• October


• November


• December-I am again a 'housfrau' with again no expectation of meaningful employment for quite a while. The good news (for my blistered ego) is that that dinner theater has decided ('insomuch' eventually loses what it may have bought in brevity by sentences which include '...that that...')- however tactlessly my assessment offered back there in February was, it was entirely on the money; I am asked to design "Gypsy" for them this Spring. I learn that there is an extremely fine line between designing sets and drinking bourbon all day long- and to take a polite pass on designing musicals which turn my stomach. (...but I love "Gypsy"). I have a few months to put in place a more carefully measured approach for winning the new director's confidence. I 'resolve' to [as they say] "stay in my own lane", to respect a director's vision (however dull), and to resist trying to have the last word when an actor is making his grand exit. [Yeah, right].

We limp into the new year with a Matterhorn of laundry (we're in trouble, it obscures the door to the front-loading washing machine), an even more pressing need for uninterrupted trash service (that bill zooms to the top of the heap), and bad news from the outdoors for an old furnace. But I am thankful for the modicum of perspective that has succeeded in piercing this shell of self-absorption. The people I complain about the most, my family, are the ones who suffer me the best, and...anything worth having is worth the acres of confusion and turmoil associated with having it. To paraphrase a quote from somewhere- who wouldn't give their right arm to be miserable in such a lovely pink house? Maybe I've been happy all along and just didn't know it.