On your bike!

First public outing of the script tomorrow.

Okay. Holy shit. I am so nervous for this my fingers are blue at the tips. All of my blood feels like it's stuck in my heart, pounding about like kids runnng wild those first two minutes in a bin of bouncy balls. Funny thing is there are really very few people coming to the reading. Funnier still is that the whole point to this was trying out a development process I hadn't done before, and that is exactly why this is terrifying. Bit of a control freak with the work stuff. Okay, all stuff. To some extent. Fuck. But the point is that it is VERY VERY early to have people in. The point is that we get people in right frigging now so that the audience is always as key a component as the rest of it. Michaela talks to them the whole time- best to have bodies as soon as we can. I know all of this but my sense is disconnected from my swooning courage just now. Holy word.

Thanks, those who can attend tomorrow. So many of my Red Deer College comrades. What troopers we be. Some Fort Yorkies, thanks lads. True it was short notice. Barf, it feels like my birthday- will anyone even care...? And twisted that I'm making it so much about me. I am made up of who I know anyway. Used to have a friend who purported that individuality is just an illusion. That we are all one big beast anyway. This is in harmony with my belief system, and yet I let this kind of fear, self-doubt and insecurity eat my head. Fair play, I suppose. This same friend once poo pooed me when I wrote him advice that contained my version of his words, rephrased through my filters. Hid behind a wall of haughty condescension when the mirror he had loaned me was too much for him to look into. We are the same beast, I do the same.

Good things. Focus on strong points. Well... I have admired Mr. Hollingsworth's ability to serve the story before all else these past two months. Seeing him helm a rehearsal with the caliber of artists he works with is holy shit stupendous. I strive to be more like that. Story above all. I will focus on that to get my juvenile ego to take a time out.

Aw, but good christ, people are scary. Petrifying because of how beautiful, how desirable, how like and unlike me you all are.

I think of the first time I heard Thomas King speak live: it was at one of those Pages Books "This is Not A Reading Series" thingers at the Gladstone. Margaret Atwood was up there talking with him, provoking him, probing him. He admitted, right out to a roomful of adoring (and scary) strangers "I guess I just want to be loved." I felt less lonely with that. Less pathetic. There sat my hero, just as human and squishy as I am. I would never have guessed.

The turnover from partial draft to first outing has taken place over six days. I wish now that I had express-posted the draft to Monica's mom, Madeline. I know that it is the best way to honour her and her experience. I also know that it is she who will ultimately decide whether this play is deserving and so I want it to be in really good shape. The peak of this would be to bring it to her community, my mom's community, where my cousins and aunties live. She and I are working to get my arse out there to do a workshop series with a youth group she juggles. So blessed that a life goal is in the works to be realized. That it should be through collaboration with her is impossibly right. Recently she emailed me this...

"As for a play regarding Miss (Money) Monica I feel that it would be an honour and this would be good for our communities as well."

Still, she has yet to read the writing. I wish she could be with us in the room tomorrow.
Feels that's how it should be.

How to sleep before a day so big?

Ooo, if anyone knows a bike like this one, please let me know. We need it for the show.