Delayed reaction

Things have been good on this end. Sweetie Tanya closed to a jam packed, sold out, wedge them in with a crowbar show on Saturday. We'll be doing it all again in May, at the Exit Theatre Mainstage, so the usual bittersweet feeling of a show ending wasn't present. We're not done, we're just taking a vacation before making the show even better.

The next project is getting the CD made, and I go into rehearsal for "The Riches" in a month. I need to do some space negotiating for this fall as well so that I can work on getting the rights for a show that Dylan Russell will direct.

So much for my slow year.

You can stop laughing at me now.

No one believed me when I said that this would be my year for doing LESS, but I have turned down a couple of projects! I just didn't expect Sweetie Tanya to do THIS well and it's kind of gloriously ganked my expectations for 08.

That said, I had an odd experience last night. I was coming home after Radiostar, and on my little two block walk from BART to my apartment, I had a wave of fear crash over me. I had my pepper spray in hand, as I've done for the last couple of months, and the streets were clearly empty all around me. As three cars approached, though, slowing down along side me, I started to feel a kind of scrabbling terror. The word "drive by" popped into my head, even though we don't GET drive-by shootings in my part of Oakland. They were all approaching a red light, and I knew that. Still, my heart began to race. The light changed, and like a scared rabbit, I got home, eyes darting about and my hands clammy.

I got inside and pondered my reaction. A delayed reaction to the mugging? Certainly. I knew this would happen at some point. Irrational fear, triggered by walking home in the dark on the same street, at the same corner where I got assaulted. Totally logical, but I still don't like it. I've never had fear as part of my landscape. I've walked halfway up Manhattan at 2am, carefully staying to well lit streets, without even the slightest fear of my life. But now I'm getting it a block from my apartment.

Moving won't fix this. It's part of me now. I just hope that last night won't become a common occurrence.