Stream of Consciousness
J.D. Salinger Dies at 91. R.I.P.
I survived the miseries of high school by being schmartsy. It helped that my dark period in literacy (marked by Sweet Valley Kids, Twins, and Babysitter’s Club) hit me when I was 9. When I entered high school at 14, not wanting to call attention to myself, and finding most of my colleagues petty with their need for boyfriends, attention, what have you’s, I used intellectual snobbery to make up for my insecurities. I started reading “real” books as opposed to the romance novel drivel that my classmates preferred. Jessica Zafra was the main protein of my bitchery, and then there was Holden Caulfield in Catcher of the Rye. I found comfort in his criticism of “phonies”, it served as my prozac because I wasn’t psychologically damaged enough for medication.
Several years and a lit-related degree later, I figured that if ‘Catcher’ were published today, I would have dismissed it as another published blog. Still, it served its purpose, it was the one friend that I felt understood me when nobody else did. I know that other angsty, angry teenagers feel the same way.
Thanks J.D. Salinger, for being one of the few highlights of early high school. While my books and outlook on life have changed, that never will.
Good Old Glory Type Days
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2pMjztGHnM]
The video above comes from the off-Broadway production of Glory Days, a musical about five boys who reunite at their old high school.
It has been over a year since I graduated college.I have been blessed in being kept busy, if not with theatrical rackets but with ESL teaching. I’ve been blessed, and am very thankful for having been spared months on standby or the job crunch especially in these difficult times!
It’s gonna be the first summer of my adult life, and for a minute I missed the prospect of having three months idling around. Then I remembered that since becaming active in theatre, it’s been a few years since my last idle summer! My last few summers were committed to one production or another, and they’ve hardly been idle. I can’t say I complained. Productions are exhausting but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was a good kind of exhaustion that tucked me in at night. ‘Sides, in that heat, I got aircon I didn’t have to pay for!
So here’s to the summers I missed, and the working summers to follow!