quotes

you’re not done

That’s a good motto for all of us – find someone to be successful for. Rise to their hopes and their needs. As you think about life after graduation, as you look in the mirror tonight, you may see somebody with no idea what to do with their life. But a troubled child might look at you and see a mentor. A homebound senior citizen might see a lifeline. The folks at your local homeless shelter might see a friend. None of them care how much money is in your bank account, or whether you’re important at work, or famous around town – they just know that you’re someone who cares, someone who makes a difference in their lives.

That is what building a body of work is all about – it’s about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up to a lasting legacy. It’s about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star – because one thing I know about a body of work is that it’s never finished. It’s cumulative; it deepens and expands with each day that you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this nation. You may have set-backs, and you may have failures, but you’re not done – not by a longshot.

– President Obama at ASU

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metablog, poetry

back out of all this now too much for us

I am deeply unsettled by all my self-descriptions being spilled in a sea of HTML on this site. How long has it looked like that? I don’t want to know. There is only one thing that will cleanse the space: Auden. The last lines of the last poem I memorized for a high-school acting class, these words are one of the last connections I have to a time of unquestioning confidence.

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

Can’t be wrong.

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metablog

that’s better

What a nightmare of introspection. WordPress vomited every description I’ve ever written of this blog, simultaneously, onto the sidebar. SIMULTANEOUSLY. Young and hopeful: older and hope-weary: oldest and hopelessest, side by side, and each one of them beginning chirpily with “My name is Dara Weinberg.” Oh, it was awful. One might age, one’s perspective on one’s art might grow, develop, or wither: one might sum oneself up with less bravado than one used to: but, for the love of Blog, one does not need to be reminded of it. My slate may not be clean, but at least now my sidebar is. I am suitably chastised for having neglected both this space and the space inside my brain, and for having had no ideas for a fortnight of fortnights except survival. This is what I get.

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writing

been a long time

I haven’t known how to blog lately.

I did not write the scene that never gets written at B’s house. The next day, sleep-deprived, I wrote it, and it turned out to be the worst thing I had written all quarter. Maybe there is a reason it never gets written.

This is a lesson I haven’t learned but keep seeing: stop making rules for yourself of what to write. Write what is easiest. Stop following the rules. And making up new “rules” doesn’t count. I don’t know if this is a lesson everyone needs to learn, but I have learned the converse.

I guess this means I have to stop worrying about what kinds of comparisons are “the right” kinds of comparisons. I started a train of thought today in which a soul was like a child who wouldn’t eat and I just let myself have the thought without stepping on it because it was a bad comparison. Sometimes, the only way out is through piles and piles of bad poetry.

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workstyle, writing

settling in for the night

Two expatriate Californians, two MacBooks, two hopeless tasks. I am at B’s house on Addison writing the scene that never gets written till Friday night, trying to write it sooner by being at B’s house. B is trying to apply for a job, and thinks me being here will help. We’ll see about that.

Sitting in one armchair with my feet on the other makes me remember nights – multiple – sleeping in this arrangement, last year. That must have been at someone’s house, working on some play, but I don’t know which one.

B stacks piles of job applications across the coffee table. I blog.

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location

do not pass go

Spring: fever: after fearing it and wanting to be nowhere nearing it, I am dying to be on the move again. There, I said it. Outside, there is thunder, and every dog in the city is restless. I am, too.

Tonight, I worked a desk shift at a friend’s newly opened yoga studio, Urban Lotus, in an enormous loft at Chicago and Sacramento. (All classes free there for the whole month of May, BTW.) The light up on the second floor was so beautiful, it reminded me of Ashland, Oregon – doing yoga down on A Street with the mountains watching on either side.

It’s amazing how a simple thing like walking up a flight of stairs can change your vision. Sometimes we all need to just change the location of the scene we are playing.

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metablog, writing

it seems like

I can only write/blog in the appropriate grumpy tone which all writers should have when I am actually happy. When I’m really feeling that way, I can’t write at all. Everything is wrong – the keys, the pen, everything.

But the most disgruntled, self-serving, whiniest and most maudlin writing is better, better, better than no writing at all. Even if the posts sound like I HATE THIS NO COMPARISONS THING IT MAKES ME ANGRY WHO SHUFFLED THIS MESS otherwise.

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