I do love this, though, as well. This sudden passion to hold on. Hold on tight, tight, tight, lest it sleep away. The idea that we are standing in quicksand and we are slowly, slowly sinking and if we struggle we can rise a little, but we rest for a moment and the sinking begins again. On one level it's nice to know that I am not building things that take up space, things that become terribly obvious that no one wants anymore. I am building living art all the time. Art that exists in time and space. In the heart. But I do struggle, lest it (and I) disappear under the sand.

1. I am doing this as a sort of 'cool down' from tech tonight. Not in so much as tech has been rough, but as an intermediary between that event and bed. Transitions have become a rather important part of my life.

2. I'm in tech this week doing a play. The last time I lit a play was in 2007, so over a year now. My whole life has been caught up in dances. In the middle of this tech week for a play I've managed to see a pair of dance rehearsals live and get one on DVD. I know where my heart is.

3. I know the names of the people that have crashed into my life and directed it on this theatre path. I'm going to go ahead and name them (in chronological order). Mrs. Jean Wendt. Todd Presson. Kevin "K-Dawg" Vernon. Kellie Powell. Lucrecia Blanco. Ric Ruiz. Margaret L. Nelson.

4. I am in the business of art. I have very little patience for people that are in the art of art. Yes, make your art, yes, care about it. Some of it will be good. Most of it will be bad. These are the way these things go.

5. In the middle of typing this the E key on my keyboard became stuck. I unstuck it for it to be stuck again. This was annoying, but whatever, it's been a shitty keyboard forever and I just was using it because my real keyboard (the one that I like) is not USB and one day was simply not recognized by my machine. But here I am typing on it. Miracles do happen.

6. I agree with Mr. Clark that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I also agree with Mr. Gaiman that "candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself."

7. A good friend of mine asked me one time what I would do if there were no theatres. I told him I would build a theatre. If that was not an option, he pressed. Well then I suppose I would be a preacher. Tent revivalist, baptist. Shouting from the mountain top. Mine eyes have seen the glory.

8. Faith is a beautiful thing, and surely we need it.

9. I reject determinism outright. However I am unsure of a sentient divinity. And, even if such a being was a reality, what would cause it to care about me as an individual? Do I care about the ant (as an individual), even if I own the ant farm?

10. I do believe in you, though. In one way or another. I believe, for sure, that you are there. That you are real and vital and alive. That all things considered, at the end of the day, humanity leans towards Goodness. That Goodness (like Truth) is fundamentally unknowable, but goodness (little g) can be judged and we stumble towards it like blind children in the labyrinth. We may quake at the minotaur's roar, but we press on. Press on. Take my hand, and I will take yours.

11. All of my 'deep thoughts' are essentially a privilege I enjoy. That privilege of being male, middle class and white. (You all don't know what it's like!)

12. I actually owe some of my greatest friendships in life to playing Magic or Dungeons & Dragons.

13. There is nothing on this earth quite like a pretty girl leaning her head on your shoulder.

14. I feel a deep and personal shame that I cannot build beautiful and functional things with my hands.

15. I am sick to death (hyperbole / actually unable to sleep at night, stomach cramps, overwhelming anxiety) of chasing people down for my goddamn money. When I provide a good or a service (sometimes both) I expect recompense. This is the way that society works. Contracts are the basis of our peaceful existence. Without this there is just, "Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?" And sooner or later that what are you going to do turns to violence.

16. As a result I have become increasingly interested in the workings of business, taxes and accounting. Numbers have started to grow on me in a very profound way.

17. At the beginning of this year I assigned channels to my books to keep track of income and spending. A merging of this new-found interest (obsession) with the way that I'm used to thinking about numbers (channels and dimmers and whatnot).

18. The first girl I fell in love with I made up. While there was a real person in real life who existed, I just went ahead and assigned her a personality despite indicators that might have suggested otherwise. I have been chased by this phantom for quite some time now, but I think I may finally be high enough level to turn it.

19. As I grow older I am constantly amazed at the flexibility and subtlety of my own emotions. How I can feel closer to people years and miles away than to the people right in front of me. That the way that I feel about people right in front of me can change from day to day. That my faith in them can bend, can break, can be re-forged. Can be tossed aside or picked up. As a youth it was all fire and burning and right now, go go go! There were no old friends. I am remarkably excited about growing old.

20. I have arthritis in my right knee. I have been told that it is a viral type. Which I was not aware of until I contracted it. I believe this reveals elements of my natural self-centered nature. I do not believe it is catching (either to my other joints or to you). As it has started to hurt pretty bad this past week I have been thinking about getting a cane.

21. Northern Illinois University is starting to take a hold on me that I never thought it would. Nostalgia is a blessing and a curse.

22. I have fantasies of buying a house here in Chicago and building a life there for the next thirty years while I pay for it by changing the technical elements of the dance industry from the inside out.

23. I also have fantasies of retiring to a small college town where I would teach days, drink wine at night, and run a gaming store on the weekends.

24. I love comic strips on a visceral level. I love that they combine image and text. That they are short and direct and sometimes can rip free of the hinges of the medium and float out into the realm of poetry, of pure and beautiful art. But still, at the end of all of that, just be a couple of pictures with a couple of words. Truly art for the common man.

25. Spanning back to my mother getting married while I was in high school and moving me out of town my senior year to the annual moves throughout my college years to the couple of months I spent homeless followed by the endless list of deadbeat, immature and ignorant roommates I've had sense I have (at best) a shaky relationship with the concept of home. However I cling to it as a man who cannot swim clings to the self-inflated live vest in the unlikely occurrence of a water landing (however unlikely, here he is, wet and terrified). I always feel like the rug may be pulled from underneath me. I want to cling to something, to you, usually. But when you're not there, when I loose my grip, when you let go, well this part has caused me to begin to question my ability to judge the character of those around me and have begun to need proof (pudding, I say!) and reassurance in a way I never used to. I do not know if it is a lack of self-confidence or trust. A shoe shine and a smile are no longer enough for me. I want action. Deeds, not words. You can, in fact, get farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.

Hitch myself a ride
My thumb raw from the cold
Feeling the ache in my joints
Wondering if this is getting old