Mountains and Snow

"I would love to live in a little New England town," I say, gazing up the picturesque main street of Andover, MA. My older sister is less convinced.

"No you wouldn't," she says, and she knows me better than most, so it must be true. Still, I find a mystique in these little towns that dot the Northeast that my childhood was decidedly lacking. I grew up in an oppressively flat part of the country that was also, perhaps paradoxically, subject to extremely short horizons. There are some parts of the United States that I have visited that I characterize as having "wide skies." Nebraska, for example. Jacksonville, not so much. It is an expanse of low buildings that give the whole landscape a sense of claustrophobia. The road that runs through the center of my neighborhood, a broad six-lane monster, flows through an endless stretch of suburbia. If I were not familiar with the landmarks from a lifetime of traversing it, I would think it was composed entirely of recycled scenery.

Mountains long posed a fascination for me. I saw them for the first time on my first trip north, around the age of four. Somehow they left such a powerful impression that on the two later trips north that we made when I was young, I eagerly stared out the car window as we left Boston and drove north into the granite state. "Dad, are we in the mountains yet?"

"No, Aliza, that's a landfill."

In my seven years spent at camp in rural Georgia, I never grew tired of the novelty of topography. I liked land that had character, that had shapes and forms because of ancient geological processes. A world with bedrock, not the glorified sandbar of a state where I'd grown up. I'd return from every summer with clay-stained socks and bulging calves only to face the unrelenting flatness of Jacksonville, Florida, the land that plate tectonics forgot.

Snow, too, has never lost its novelty. This is my third winter north and the sight of white flakes swirling or tumbling past my window still fills me with the kind of wonder usually reserved for small children. It always feels warmer when it snows than when it doesn't, which I know doesn't make sense. Winter weather is another thing that bypasses Jacksonville entirely - as if my very presence on this earth repels powder, there has not been significant snowfall in my hometown since 1989.

So, obviously, the sight of a snowy New England hamlet is utterly irresistible.

I live in a city with artificial topography. I have taken an archeology class that taught me that this island used to roll with hillsides and valleys where Lenape tribespeople hunted and gathered, but the city has since been flattened into submission by advancing construction. On top of it rises a landscape of artificial mountains, Himalayas in the financial district and midtown bordered by foothill tenements on either side. From the window of my twelfth-floor apartment, the sky seems infinitely wide. The towers go on forever. It's not a thing like Jacksonville.

I have my mountains. They were just constructed by a different force of nature than I anticipated as a child.

My big sister takes good care of me.

She kept apologizing when we went dress shopping that none of the sample dresses fit (because they were sample sizes made for people who are not weird shaped like me) in defense of my ego. Then she took me into a salon to get my bangs trimmed so that I would not be so shaggy shaggy sheepdog and would be able to see. Then we got froyo and pedicures. And this morning she willingly got up at 8 AM on a sunday to make me eggs and coffee and send me back to the bus station.

Just saying that she is the best and you all should be jealous.

I shouldn't have to defend my art to you - but I will.

The following was actually said to me:

"Aliza, you're so smart, why are you wasting your time writing plays? You should be going to law school." 

There are a lot of things wrong with this statement, and I am going to go through it one piece at a time and JUSTIFY THE HELL OUT OF WHAT I AM DOING WITH MY LIFE.

"...you're so smart..."

Why thank you. It takes a lot of intelligence to create work that is creative, original, thoughtful, and clever - all things I aim to be in my writing.

"...Why are you wasting your time writing plays?..." 

Because to me, time spent writing isn't time wasted. My art is not a waste of time, or else, if it is, then I have been wasting my time since I could talk, considering that's how long I've been telling stories. Perhaps to the person who said this to me, a person who transferred out of Dramatic Writing, writing resolved itself into a waste of time - because this major is not one you study out of desire to make money, have job security, etc. It is first and foremost about craft. It is about learning every facet of your work and honing your talent and working until you have a voice that is capable of saying pretty much anything you want to say and telling any story that you want to tell and able to tell it well.

I have been a storyteller for my whole life, and perhaps other writers know what I'm talking about when I say there is a compulsion to create narrative. There is a catharsis in getting elbow-deep into character and plot and structure that I've yet to find anywhere else.

If you've never felt the moment when everything clicks into place and you know exactly how the story ends, then there's no point in trying to describe it to you. It's the closest I've ever come to real magic.

"...You should be going to law school."

With no offense meant to the lawyers in my life, particularly my mom, and my "favorite" uncle, I don't understand how attending law school somehow justifies my continued existence as a human being in ways that creating art that makes me happy fails to do.  I have no doubts that I'm intelligent enough for law school - but I've got no desire to go there. Not because I don't want to do the work, but because there is no way that studying for the boards would make me happier than working in the entertainment industry and continuing to tell stories.

What it comes down to is, I have to justify my art to you because you are not an artist. And I don't mean you're not an artist in that you don't draw or paint or act, because there are plenty of artists whose art is computer programming or engineering or architecture or cooking. You're not an artist, because you don't understand that this is a thing that makes me happier to be doing this thing than all the job security in the world.

And if law school is your thing? Well, good for you, but I doubt it - because if it was, if you were an artist of law, you would understand why I have to do my art and wouldn't try to tear me down for wanting to do it.

I do not have to justify my art to you. I do not have to justify my intelligence, or my drive, or my value as a member of society, to someone like you.

I'll just keep writing.

Happy Tired

I am morbidly curious to know how many miles I've walked in the last three days, but then, I sort of don't want to know. I know it's a lot. I know I've got unique but equally painful shin splints in each leg. My right arch is still hurting, which it probably wouldn't if I hadn't been on my feet for three days straight but I haven't had much of a choice. Thursday and Friday I'll have off to try and recover, but it's no big deal. One of my hips was bugging me pretty badly today and my core and ribcage are both sore for some unfathomable reason. QED, festival is hard, even on super-intern, and I've only been in town for half of it. I can only imagine that I'd feel exponentially worse if I'd been here for the whole week like the rest of the team.

Not that I'm complaining. The physical discomfort doesn't detract from the immense satisfaction I take in being exceptionally competent at an exceptional number of things. I was trained on the light board today and will be running the show lights all by myself tomorrow which I am tremendously excited about, even if it's just up and down cues forty minutes apart. I had an adventure at the post office, argued with incompetent copy clerks at Staples, and made a good impression at a literary agency while making a delivery. All of which are things that I feel good about. I've learned a bit about Front-of-House and ushering, ate really good soup, and drank essentially a sippy-cup full of coffee and life was just awesome. And for three days I have not counted calories because I'm pretty sure I walked about seven miles each of those days.

Satisfaction.

I'll write more later - I've got a lot of irons in a lot of fires right now, and I'll be updating on various projects as they get worked on. This week so far I've scarcely had a spare minute to think, let alone work on things like Like a Dog in Space or the guide. But Thursday, Friday, and this weekend are my days.

And for now?

I'm happy-tired. :)

"A long time ago, in the magical, far-off land of Soviet Russia"

I just found an unpublished blog post in my drafts bin. The sole line is now the title of this post.

It was July. 

I wonder what I was thinking then? I look at old posts, my no-love letters, where I refer passive-aggressively to people who have aggravated me. Some of them, I recall who incensed me. Some of them I don't. Some of them I took down tonight, because they were petty and mean and some bridges, once burnt, do not need to be left to smolder. (Or perhaps ought to be rebuilt?) 

Things are coming together, slowly but surely. The draft is working but I need to put in some serious work on it. Tomorrow, then. These characters come easily now (and why shouldn't they? I've lived with them inside my head for a year and a half). 

A year ago, I was on my way to the Young Playwrights Inc national conference. I go back to NYC on Saturday, and I'll be helping with the conference - but I'm not a "young playwright" anymore, and I need to make my own path. That's what this EJAF fellowship thing is, though. Learning how to put things together, how to make my own deadlines and force things to happen. 

I had a long conversation earlier about the difference between friendship and pity - I need to spend more time and energy on people whose friendship I truly value, and less time and energy on people who I hang out with because they have made themselves out to be so pathetic that no one else will pay them any mind. Perhaps it's a resolution. But then, so is no longer using question marks for anything other than actual questions. 

It is January of my twenty-first year, and I am growing up.

(Do we ever stop feeling like children, just a little bit, deep down in quiet spaces and the recesses of our hearts?)