shake baby shake

i wrote this on the day of the earthquake.

since my summer life is a hazy halcyon landscape of perfect days, punctuated with vegetables from the backyard garden and lethargic card games on the deck and slow, sweet afternoon happy hours, i have imposed a "one activity a day" rule: going to the beach is an activity. same goes for reading a book. or watching half a season of mad men in one sitting.

so, yesterday was the day i fell asleep on a beach with a breeze and woke up with a toasted lower back. today was shaping up to be the day we did the crossword in the times that mysteriously appeared on the kitchen table, when around 2pm, nature defined the day for me.

obviously, How Social Media Is Changing The World is a favorite topic of social media-ists (media-tors?) preening behind computer screens everywhere. my first omfg moment was in june 2009, when michael jackson died and basically crashed the internet. twitter buzz far outpaced reports from any official news sources, which makes sense as twitter requires of its authors nothing more than speculation, sarcasm, and/or exclamation marks. it was a favorite party game of mine through that entire autumn to gather opinions on who else could crash the internet by dying-- it's a pretty short list, which i suppose could also be termed something like "the universe's ultimate a list." in any case, i was fascinated by the lag time between frenzied rumor and confirmation-- rather like seeing an explosion before you hear the boom. sorry, faulkner, but these days, there's the fury, and then there's the sound.

growing up in southern california, i have experienced a few earthquakes-- and by that, i mean actually just a few. (all of these people that are like ZOMG EAST COAST GET USED TO IT WE HAVE EARTHQUAKES ALL THE TIME are sort of confusing me, implying that the left coast is always a-rockin'.) they've all been small, and most of the time it takes a few seconds to be sure of what's happening. (it's like seeing a yeti in plants vs. zombies: "wait... is that?... no way, it can't be... i think it is... oh wait, it's gone. i really think it was, though!") the most interesting thing about earthquakes is how the ground rolls, as though it's changed consistency. everything feels suddenly more elastic, time included.

so when i opened my facebook today and there was a post at the top of my news feed from a high school acquaintance that said something along the lines of, "was that just an earthquake? the whole building was shaking!" i assumed she was in california. and then, at that precise second, the chair i was sitting in because to very subtly dip and roll. the mirror on my wall moved, not far, but perceptibly, from side to side. i thought i was having some sort of psychosomatic hallucination--see the word "earthquake," imagine an earthquake!-- so i asked around the house if anyone else had felt it. everyone told me it was impossible, and that there are no such things as earthquakes on cape cod.

and then the internet exploded.

everyone had something to say about it-- east coasters freaking out or celebrating (i was jumping up and down with glee at having experienced something so weird), west coasters turning on the smarm. but i was the most fascinated by that first status, that managed to get to me before the actual earthquake did. (i was not alone.) even in something as instantaneous as a natural disaster and as impossible to predict as an earthquake, we move so quickly now that there was a tiny bit of fury before the sound and the fury itself.

creature comforts

i come from a family of surfers. in elementary school, i spent hours with my dad, sitting on the overstuffed chair in front of the tv watching surf videos, which are exactly what they sound like: footage of surfers shredding amazing waves set to rock music, intercut with scenic landscape pans and shots of guys with their wetsuits peeled away from their torsos holding boards under their arms and staring into the sunset.

i myself never progressed far beyond hesitatingly crouch-standing on a foam longboard in the shallow breaks of the pacific, and even that pursuit i abandoned for fear that my fourth grade crushes would see me struggle. because, of course, all the boys that are desirable in fourth grade in coastal san diego are tan little groms in rash guards and hawaiian board shorts. out of their natural habitat, they can be identified by their quicksilver and billabong tshirts, and, in the mid-90s, their butt-cuts (ear length hair, center part. ryder strong in boy meets world. you know it.)

but whether there was a board under my feet--or, as was more often the case, above my head as i got pummelled--or not, i spent a whole lot of my childhood brining in the pacific. in the summertime, it's a rite of passage to become a "junior lifeguard," so for weeks in july and august, there are hoards of bronzed kids sprinting up and down the beach and swimming out to buoys and learning first aid under a tent pitched in the sand. at the end of the summer, there is a competition against all the surrounding junior lifeguard factions, and i always did the long distance swim, which was probably a total of 200 yards but felt like the first leg of the ironman. all of this is to say that i take to water like... a fish to water. i even played one season of high school water polo! which amounted to a hilarious life tangent. i quit to become a cheerleader. please stifle your surprise.

but i will maintain that no matter how comfortable you are diving headfirst into an oncoming whitecap, the ocean itself is uniformly terrifying. shortly after i decided that the little mermaid was my all-time favorite movie, i expanded my fascination to the more perverse or mysterious depths: the ruins of the titanic, the mariana trench, the loch ness monster. i mean, you guys, what the heck else is out there?

my roommate sarah is flat out obsessed with sharks. we had a "world's most dangerous sharks" poster in the reading nook of our cambridge apartment that i am sure will continue to occupy a place of prominence once we've relocated to new york. but even now, with the biggest national celebration of sharks beginning tomorrow on discovery channel, sharks dont thrill me or haunt my nightmares, or both.

though what advertising genius came up with using gaga's "show me your teeth" as this year's theme song? i give you one million points.

however, as befits a girl/teen/adult obsessed with mermaids (yes, still), i am petrified of ursula and her cohorts. (HOLY *#@^&*! check this guy out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampyromorphida. now you know my nightmares for the next decade). in grad school, we had a teacher whose sign-in sheets for class always asked a cheeky question, and once it was "what is your irrational fear?" i wrote giant squid, but i would like to retract that. because a fear of giant squid is COMPLETELY RATIONAL.

cut to: i am working on cape cod, and i go swimming, somewhere, every day. people are freaking out this year because there have been great white sightings up and down the atlantic side of the cape, apparently much earlier in the year than usual. you also cant go 30 minutes without seeing a seal (aka shark's filet mignon) within 100 feet of the beach. but sharks are not my concern, even despite the great white's position of prominence at the very top of our dangerous poster (is he drawn bigger on purpose? no? that's just his size relative to the other most dangerous sharks known to man? alrighty then. noted. the great white: the michael phelps of sharks. you're welcome, discovery channel.) and actually, in an uncharacteristic move, my concern is not even tentacled. (do you feel cheated for having read my octopi-diatribe? well, dont be crabby, because my fear of summer 2011 are: CRUSTACEANS!

most specifically, these crustaceans:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! have you ever seen anything more terrifying? my research (i love referring to reading a wikipedia page as "my research") tells me that these guys are living fossils and that they get up to 24 inches long from tip to tail.

as i started walking over the dunes to secret beach the other day, which is so called because it's a million miles down a dirt road after a turn off from a side-side street in rural wellfleet (so: remote), set on taking a dip in the warm bay water and reading and maybe skipping some pretty stones, i heard that immediately recognizable sound of a seven year old's shriek. "oh my god oh my god look at this one ahhhhhhhhh oh my god ahhhh it's so big!"

i crest the final dune, out of breath and with toes hot from the toasted sand. grasses are whipping at my legs and my hair is billowing and looking romantic as i survey the windswept cerulean bay. (okay, my hair is like 6 inches long, so actually it was just lashing me in the eyes.) the beach is predictably empty, dotted with maybe three umbrellas in either direction as far as i can see. and i can see quite a way: on a clear day, as they say, you can see forever, or at least as far as the lighthouse in provincetown, at the very tip of the cape.

but right in front of me, the three little shrieking boys are gathered in ankle-deep water. and they are holding BEASTS. little dinosaurs. living fossils, round, the size of medium pizzas with tails. water armadillos, or as val described them later, the ocean's mini darth vaders: two enormous horseshoe crabs.

i swam in the freshwater pond that day.

eggceptions...?

am a sucker for a good coffee/sandwich shop. one of the primary reasons i am devastated at having left cambridge is losing darwin's, the semi-famous place around the corner with sandwiches named for the surrounding streets. appropriately, since i was a resident of its namesake, i only ever ordered the magnolia-- hummus, avocado, carrots, tomato, sprouts, granny smith apple slices (!), and vinagrette. i always said no cheese but every now and then it would make it on there by mistake, so i can vouch that it's delicious both ways. so a magnolia and either iced or hot coffee with soy milk & 2-ish splendas.



or, when i lived in skagway, alaska, we frequented glacial smoothies, where one could maintain a monthly tab. i was omnivorous then, and besides, i was training for a marathon and dancing the can can four times a day, so i would get the super bagel-- garlic basil cream cheese, ham, and fresh basil. and a coffee. and sometimes a scone, since yesterday's pastries were a buck and I LOVE SCONES.



yum, scones.



anyway, in the two weeks i have been in wellfleet, i have not found a coffee/sandwich shop that suits my needs. in fact, a google search returns dunkin' donuts as the first result (@!!!@&$#@&*(@#*@), which makes my soul ache, and not just because they dont have soy milk. there's a place called box lunch just off main street that has "roll-wiches" (which are just wraps) and they're good, but the atmosphere is lacking. and man oh man, i just cant get over it! wellfleet a cute little place populated with people with time and money to spare and, i would guess, town gossip to dissect. and besides, where do youths get their sandwiches to take to the beach with them all season? kyle and i couldnt go a summer's day in high school without careening up to board & brew in the defender with some ridiculous song blaring too loudly from the speakers to get turkados or tub o' tunas to go.



all of this is a typically long-winded way of saying that i have been bringing my lunch to rehearsal and drinking rehearsal coffee and spending my lunch breaks READING BOOKS (what the WHAT?!). this amounts to a lot of coffee, a lot of reading (i started under the banner of heaven at lunch yesterday. i finished under the banner of heaven at lunch today.) and a relatively strict adherance to my self-imposed, pretty-consistent-but-in-no-way-above-temptation effort to eat vegan.



i started this effort nearly a year ago, purely for vanity's sake, since i was going into rehearsals for cabaret and knew i was going to soon be nearly naked, painted white, and in front of an audience. immediately after that show closed, i became tytania in the donkey show. she wears a lot: 2 pairs of tights, thigh-high boots, purple shorts, a cape, a peacock-feather collar, an elaborate wig, a mask-- and pasties shaped like butterflies. and glitter. then it was our mfa showcase, and you have to be skinny or nobody likes you. and now it's summer, and i want to be an actor, so for the forseeable future, it's kind of, "goodbye, cheeseburger and all of your assorted delicious friends."



but a girl has to be reasonable. last night, we were watching tim and eric awesome show great job and someone made pizza rolls and i ate them (I KNOW that the equation you are mulling over in your brain is: tim & eric + pizza rolls = omg how high were you, but the boring answer is i stay primly & prudely away like a real womp womp kill joy). they were cheese pizza rolls, and they were trashy and delicious. sometimes, i eat ramen noodles. if you have spinach artichoke dip, why then, yes, i will have just a bit. but for the most part, i'm a rabid devourer of plants and their derivatives.



EXCEPT

OMG

I CANT GET ENOUGH OF DEVILLED EGGS!



i think it is so weird, and yet, i want to eat devilled eggs all the time. the only reason i sat down to write this blog is that i had already eaten my allotment of devilled eggs for the day and i was sad and needed a distraction.



this is a brand-new obsession. in fact, i hated devilled eggs growing up. every easter, i would pluck one from the buffet and bravely put it on my plate, and every easter five minutes later i would chuck the nibbled egg somewhere into the surrounding garden. they always had dill or relish or tasted like a mouthful of yellow mustard, which still makes me gag. but in grad school, my roommate annika rocked my world with her dill-less, relish-less devilled eggs that she'd make in wild varieties-- sriracha, wasabi, barbeque-- for our parties. when she finally shared with me her two secret ingredients, which i obviously cant divulge, it was a serious passing-down-of-the-hallowed-family-recipe moment. i remember looking up at her in awe, nodding reverently at her age and wisdom and experience, dreaming of one day enlightening another deserving student as she had enlightened me.



which is totally absurd of course, since she was 22 and i was 25 when this happened, and unless i was sitting on the kitchen floor, she was undoubtably looking up at me, as very few females stare down lovingly at someone close to six feet tall. but it is true that annika opened my eyes to the wonder of the devilled egg, that it has become my late night snack or my dinner main course, that boiling a perfect egg makes me feel like a culinary champion, that sarah and i have discussed devoting a blog exclusively to our pursuit, creation, and consumption of devilled eggs, and that i have even subtly adapted the recipe to make it my very own and want to do a little dance every time i employ my own [wildly common and easily guessable] secret ingredient. most things i missed when i began what i would term my vegan-effort i can happily approximate with subsitutes, but a lady's gotta have a vice, and by golly, mine is devilled eggs!











and sometimes cheese.

i want to ride my bicycle, i want to ride my bike

last summer, after getting back from moscow and all our assorted european adventures, and before starting rehearsals for cabaret, i worked every now and then as an usher at the ART. the show was "johnny baseball" and it was all musical theater and summer and americana, and i just ate it up with a spoon, especially when i got to wear my cute little red and navy vintage skirt and a red sox tee and get complimented by all the matinee-attending blue state blue hairs. there was even a hot dog cart in the lobby, so it smelled like the good parts of a stadium, and all in all, it added up to a really straight musical (fine) or a really gay baseball game (awesome).

one day, as we were doing our post-show sweep to pick up playbills and wine glasses and forgotten umbrellas, i saw, at the end of a row, a folded bill. and i thought what everyone thinks: SCORE! life is giving me a TIP! but as i went to pick it up, i was suddenly bummed-- it was a hundred, folded in thirds, and lying there, lonely, in row L. i was actively annoyed at this hundred. i mean, if it had been a 5, i would have gone to charlie's and bought a raspberry UFO with it and toasted myself. if it had been a 10, i would have treated a friend... or had two toasts to myself. i even could have found something to do with a 20 if you really twisted my arm. but once you get much higher than that, that pesky conscience gets in the way, and i couldnt help thinking that i would be wrecked to lose a hundred dollars. that's twenty toasts to myself! or an electric bill! or, more exactly, a bike!

so i turned it in. sighingly. it was tuesday, and the house manager told me that if no one had picked it up in a week, it was mine. and the following tuesday, she called and said, "no one's claimed it!" and i skipped over to the theater and picked up my franklin in good conscience and informed everyone i met that i was going to use it to purchase a bike. and, i kid you not, a half hour later, when it was already resting leisurely in the bottom of my bank account, that same house manager called me back with dread in her voice. "i hate to do this to you, jordy, but some guy literally just called about losing a hundred last week in row L. he's coming in right now." i think i made a face roughly like this one:

but i begrudgingly returned to the theater. the guy gave me a $20 reward for finding his cash, so that was very nice of him. AND THEN... the company manager at the ART gave me a bike! there were some old ones that the theater had bought for previous cast members, and since i had made it very clear with my big mouth that i wanted a bike, they gave one to me! it was really a wonderful gesture, and i rode it all fall, especially after i came out of rehearsal on my birthday and found jared had equipped it with a basket and bell.

jared also got a bike (his, of course, was very fancy and sleek and had very skinny tires and many locks and, of all ludicrous things, a rear-view mirror) and the two of us flew all over cambridge, usually precariously holding coffee in one hand and steering with the other, until one day, as he was pulling into the theater right in front of me, he braked too hard with his front brake and went over the handlebars. it was VERY dramatic, since he also squeezed the crap out of the iced coffee he was holding, which exploded and went flying and then rained down on his head as he tried to remove his bike from the middle of the intersection and himself from his bike. i initially thought he had hit a landmine. the end result, besides me losing it laughing as soon as it was established that he was fine and that we were not in a war zone, was that he bent the back wheel. his bike stayed locked up at the theater for months after that, and thus our little bike jaunts ended, which was fine, as it was getting much too cold to go speeding into the icy harvard square headwind.

fast forward six months to me leaving cambridge to move to cape cod to spend the summer doing a farce called "boeing boeing." i took my bike (which, i might add, is probably the ugliest bike you'll ever see. if it were a child, you might say it had a face only a mother could love) into eastern mountain sports and had it spiffed up, and even got a student discount despite my harvard ID having expired three days prior. it somehow got squeezed into zach's car with all my suitcases, the mandolin i adopted from derek, and the six pack of homebrews that vince sent with me to ensure i'd be tipsily nostalgic for the glory days of grad school. and man oh man, thank goodness it did. i have been zinging all over an unseasonably cold cape, doing very important things: spending hours at the library, seeing plays, going to small galleries with lots of paintings of boats, making special trips into town to see if the general store has any tasty smelling candles (they dont). every time i try to lock it to one of the many bike racks around town, i get chastised by some stranger generous enough to remind me forcefully that no one steals bikes around here. so it just sits around this lazy little town, outside our giant, rambling actor house, or the methodist church where we rehearse, or the library, where i am probably reading vanity fair and not actual literature.

but all that being said, please dont come and steal it. id be gutted to have to walk to the beach when it finally heats up around here. and besides, its very existence is owed to the honor code.

once up on a time

when i was 22, i briefly dated a 28 year old that i met on the subway. it was one of those times where an interesting person sits near you and you keep making eye contact and you keep expecting the other person to exit and you're already beating yourself up for not talking to them even while they're still so close you are actively trying not to take out their eye with your bag as you shuffle around other passengers. and then suddenly, they stand up to go, and you're like "I AM SO TERRIBLE AT SEIZING THE DAY BLAHHHHHHHHHHH" but then you realize they arent leaving at all but approaching you and being cute and charming. and then you go on some dates for a while and it's very check-that-new-york-experience-off-your-list and you tell your friends from home about it and they tell you your life is so exactly like carrie bradshaw's and you wince exaggeratedly because you want them to know you're too cool for sex and the city and besides you're so comfortable with yourself you are willing to identify with miranda anyways but somewhere in your mind you're like yeah, that's right, if carrie rode the subway and multiplied her clothing budget by .001, this would totes be something that would be featured on an ep. you know those times, right? blerggggggggggggggg anyways, briefly dated this guy and have been reminded of it recently because on our third or so date, he made me dinner and we watched this little movie called "once" at his apartment. he lived rather near me and had a great house, but he had a roommate and i was a little horrified. i distinctly remember thinking "a roommate at 28? this is terrible. i quit this," and so that colored the rest of the night. and that was kind of the end of things for me, and i [wrongly] lumped the film in with the rest of the lackluster experience and hadnt returned to it for years. NOW! this idea that i had that people who are 28 are supposed to like be self-made millionaires with personal private estates IS THE MOST LUDICROUS THING I CAN THINK OF. (second place: ashley and i promised each other at a very skinny 16 that if we were still not super curvy in ten years we would get boob jobs. 9.5 years later, i am not sure what is more absurd: that i thought, nay, LAMENTED that i would be a rail-thin size 0 at 26 or that i thought i would be able to afford vanity surgery. if i broke my femur right now, i think i would bind it to a yard stick with some masking tape and roll myself around in a stolen office chair.) so as i edge into my late-ish 20s living in what generally amounts to an actor's flophouse (plus the usual guest of one second year harvard law student) i return to that idea and laugh/try not to cry that college kids probably think i should be a millionaire by now or something (that "something" is standing in for "at least have a job.") and i pay frequent mental atonement to the aforementioned male and wish him the best and future of not dating whackjobs with ludicrous expectations such as myself. my former self!! ive been thinking a lot about my roommates this evening because they're all in new york meeting with agents and managers and other fancy people following our MFA showcase yesterday. ive had no one with whom to drink the southern tier pale ales in our fridge or eat one of the three things stocked in our house (beans & rice, trader joe's thai veggie gyoza, and morningstar buffalo nuggets), nor did anyone yell at me as i accidentally spent four hours pounding on the keyboard i'd relocated to the kitchen counter, rehearsing the music for a new show im working on. and here we come to the other connection to the previous story! ONCE! the wonderful and charming film that i unfairly ignored so i could be indignant about twenty-something artist types living with roommates because they obviously have no money as they pursue their passion. i was going to call karma a bitch, but it's really that she has a wicked sense of humor, because it's looking like my first job out of grad school (the paycheck from which i will use to pay rent on a roommate-d apartment, i am sure) will be the new stage production of once. right now, we're workshopping it at the ART in cambridge, and it's just the most amazing thing i have had happen to me...ever? (and i have had some amazing experiences. like, one time, i dated this cute boy i met on the subway. it was SO discount sex and the city, let me tell you...)

in which i use nauseating words like "blessed" and "fantasy"

i played a hilarious joke on myself today. i rode my bike home, shivering, telling myself that i was going to enter my cozy, warm house, with its pumpkin candle waiting to be lit on the counter and the bottle of red wine shooting me come-hither glances from the kitchen, and that i was going to change into my gym clothes, turn a cold shoulder on all the comforts of home, and return through the blustery, dark cambridge streets on my bike with the broken brakes to fight law students for an eliptical exactly during what i believe is technically termed "gym rush hour."

really absurd.

since i had just come from alexander class, which teaches one to accept both oneself and others as they are in each individual moment, rather than through the lens of expectation, i decided to apply similar principles to my embracing of creature comforts, and i am now wrapped in my boyfriend's giant polar fleece robe listening to the stephen sondheim pandora station. and have no fear, i didn't leave the cab sav in its lonely cubby by the degas print and the oven. and i am distinctly not feeling bad about standing up the stairmaster.

i'm not generally someone who says they feel "blessed" by something, but if i were, i would absolutely say i feel "blessed" by the course 2010 has taken. it's been one of those vertical years, the kind that flies by day to day, but upon reflection, is stuffed with SO MUCH. since april, it's been one surreal experience after another, really culminating in october, which was like living in a theatrical blender or kalidescope or spin-art machine.

i spent two months of this year painting my body white every night. how weird is that? it was for cabaret at the american repertory theater, and the whole kit kat ensemble looked like powdery anime ghost fetish corpses. approximately. two and a half weeks after closing, the last vestiges of pigment are finally leaving the spots between my toes. not that the paint really made much of a difference, since, except for a brief trip to greece with jared in june, and a few hazy weeks in encinitas, i have spent this entire year in either boston or moscow, neither of which are what one might term "mediterranean". pasty. pasty is my exact hue. i've lived on every organic-vegetarian option in the freezer section of the grocery store down the street. i used to aim to make it to trader joe's, a mile or so away, on my day off, but then in october, i never had one of those. a day off, i mean.

since cabaret has closed, i've started rehearsals for the donkey show, which has been running in oberon since last summer. it's a disco retelling of a midsummer night's dream, and i'll be playing what jared is terming my "third giant sexual deviant role" in two months. but things are finally a little more manageable, and tonight i may even venture around the corner to the thirsty scholar for the monday night football game.

my ability to balance artsiness and bro-iness is something about which i've always been very proud-bordering-on-smug. but man oh man has this fall been illuminating. i would list my priorities after theater (professional or scholastic) in this order: sleep, food, maintaining my romantic relationship, maintaining my other relationships, fantasy football. and depending on who you ask, every single one of those priorities has suffered, but HOLY COW MY FANTASY TEAMS ARE BITING IT THIS YEAR. as a cute little gesture, i named one of them, in july, "i love musicals." i have changed my roster once this entire season: i drafted matt stafford to fill in for alex smith in my extra offensive spot the week before the jets game and his shoulder fiasco. but i forgot to put him IN the starting line up. so, on my bench, he scored 76 points and then was out for the count. sorry, people who like sports and also musicals. fantasy fail.

it's okay though (warning: cutesy wrap up in 5...4...3...2...). i think i would probably term this whole year a very successful fantasy (PUKE!)

MORE UPDATES WILL COME!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



update:
30 minutes after i posted this, still sitting in my little cocoon of happiness, wine, and musical theater, my roommate sarah rang the doorbell. she'd been to the gym and couldnt find her keys. i set my wine glass and my laptop down, stood up, tripped over the cord, and sent them both flying across the room in different directions: computer to the floor, red wine to the white quilt covering the chair behind me. these things would not have happened if i went to the gym. STANDARD

moscbow

ive been mulling this idea over for a while, and perhaps if i were snappier it would have become a punchline for a joke or something, but as it stands it's more just a vague cultural observation: i think it's very telling that russian culture, which is stereotyped (pretty correctly) as a culture in which one is always being watched by someone, champions the theater as its primary art form. there is always an audience for theater in russia, on every level-- our little adaptation of alice in wonderland that runs in the school studio theater at MXAT and seats around 120, is sold out for its whole run, through the end of may, and we actually just added a show for the employees of the american embassy. when i saw don quixote danced by the bolshoi ballet at the kremlin palace (as the actual bolshoi theater has been under construction since 2006,) there were 5,000 other people there. this was a tuesday night, to see a ballet that has been in repertory for decades. every time we venture out to see theater, the audience is so vast and so varied it's inspiring. actors take four or five curtain calls, audience members bring flowers to people they don't know and wait around after the show to continue applauding as the performers exit. and the theater spaces are everywhere here. the aforementioned kremlin palace is a 6,000 seat behemoth built during soviet times to host national meetings housed within the walls of the kremlin, past rows of police and metal detectors and coat checks; we've seen plays in old theaters, new theaters, converted churches, even an improvised theater in the very lobby of an actual theater.
but it's not just within the confines of a stage, appropriated or not, that russians are performing. it's a hugely performative culture. the women are always dressed to the nines, ready to be looked at, fully "done" in furs and spike heels and perfect makeup and attitude. there are flower stands on every corner, and people are always carrying roses they're giving or receiving, as though a boyfriend is appreciating his girlfriend's performance (yikes... take that as you will.) jared actually got self conscious the other night walking home from the show, and not because i was still wearing heavy stage makeup and had wildly teased hair. he was half-jokingly worried that people passing us would think he was a bad boyfriend, because i was carrying only one measly flower, which i had received from an audience member.
but it goes beyond this benjaminian theater of the streets stuff. indeed, that's not even an apt comparison, because there is not really a flaneur figure in moscow culture, as everyone has a distinct direction and purpose. there is no sense of leisure in moscow, no one trolling the avenues searching only for things to appreciate. there is an overwhelming sense of direction and responsibility, of seriousness, which makes the meal that i had the other night all the more surreal.
sarah's parents, who live in manhattan, were in town for the last week, and on friday we met them at their hotel after rehearsal for a drink. out came the guidebook when we decided to choose our dinner destination, and we settled on a nearby restaurant that promised a triple menu: uzbek, arabic, and chinese food. the guidebook neglected to mention that the restaurant, which was called Uzbekistan, would also deliver triple the camp.
we entered through huge, carved doors, into a tiled foyer with hookahs, fountains, and foliage. the waitstaff all wore heavily embroidered costumes, and someone led us to our table in a dining room with vaulted mosaic ceilings, carved wooden walls, gold draperies, and tables of sweets. our menus, which were enormous, had an illustration of a mosque on the front, housed under a sheet of plastic, and between the two was white sand, so you could shake your menu up into a desert sandstorm. (the wine list achieved a similar effect, with red liquid and the shape of a decanter). the menu had all your hometown favorites--whole sturgeon, horse sausage, and the ever-authentic sounding "rabbit a la arabic," which is what i ordered, and let me tell you something... it was all russian food. i think the curry powder maybe winked at my rabbit from across the kitchen. it was delicious, do not get me wrong, but our selections, whether from the uzbek page, the chinese page, or the arabic page of the menu, were distinctly russian. i will say though, in our plate of sweets that sarah and i split for desert, there was a mean baklava.
aside from the totally over-the-top but very expensive seeming actual physical space, drama in all forms surrounded us. there was an ever-changing rotation of belly dancers in elaborate costumes that made their way between the tables and were ogled by russian men eating shishkebobs and drinking vodka; there was a live band for when the belly dancers needed a break; and then there was the boozed up woman who stormed out of the restaurant in tears, only to return with three very menacing police officers, who stood about 20 feet away from her table with a strict eye on her male dining companions for the rest of their meal. finally, at the end of our meal, the drama came home: after sarah's dad signed the credit card receipt, our waitress mumbled something about his card and whisked it away. a nervous while later, she returned with the card and the manager and asked for his passport, as the signature from the receipt did not seem to match the one on the back of his card. once she was satisfied that he was indeed the same guy, she returned the card. jeff turned it over to inspect the discrepancy. the back of his card says "please ask for i.d." somehow, though, i dont think that he meant for "i.d." to stand for "interminable drama."