Wicked was awesome! I knew that it would be, but the woman who played Elphaba, the wicked witch, was amazing! When Juni and I went to go see it in LA the actress didn't quite hit the high notes the way that we expected. She did them, but then didn't hold them out like Idina Menzel in the original Broadway soundtrack. When Nick and I went to see it on Friday the actress, Teal Wicks, hit the notes and held them. It was spectacular. I was grinning so much that my cheeks started to get tired. I'm going for an encore session of Wicked tonight with my family. We're taking my mom to see it for her birthday. I'm very excited. It was just so good that I had to see it again!

While we were at the theater on Friday I got myself a nice shirt. Now I have a shirt from when I went with Juni and one with Nick. Haha maybe I'll get another one tonight from when I go with my family!

No, I did not make a transformation into a white girl with light brown hair. This is just a model. But I am the proud owner of this shirt! I think this is about the same color as the last one that I got, but oh well. I must really like the color. If they have them, I think I would like to get a mug so that I can drink my hot water and sing Wicked while waiting for calls at work. Ahh... what a life.

At the Bart station waiting to go see the play. Can you see how excited I am already?

With the mob of people around we couldn't really get a good picture in front of the sign. Tonight I'll try to have the man at the door take a picture of my family before the play starts...provided we aren't late. Being late to musicals seems to be a trend in our family. We're always running for the door. It's a good thing I can run in heels!

It was a pretty full and satisfying weekend. On Saturday my dad, Nick, and I went to the Foothill band review to watch Christopher march and then headed out to a Cal game. I don't think that Nick knew how competitive high school marching was or how fast I can walk when I need to get somewhere in a hurry. Hahah. It was fun though, tiring, but fun. This post would have been up yesterday, but I was trying to upload a video that my dad took of the band. After waiting for five hours with still no result, I gave up on the video. Photographs will suffice.


Moving on...

Lately, I haven't really been inspired to write anything. I am a writer who cannot write. I've been reading Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose to help boost my desire to start writing again. It may be working since I am at least starting to blog more often. I was telling Nick that I've been doing some literary cheating in the last few weeks. He was a little confused by my statement. I'm a believer in the "to write, you must read" concept. It's just that I haven't really found a book to settle down with. I picked up Chekhov, read two pages and then put him back down. Picked up March by Geraldine Brooks, read half a book--reshelved. Picked up Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, opened it, read the first page and then put it back. And the list can go on. Literary Cheating.

As a way to try to get out of this reading and writing funk, this weekend I picked up a book at Borders called The Writer's Idea Book by Jeff Heffron. So far it is really good...hah hah! Until I cheat again. It's basically just a book full of writing prompts and advice. I thought that the introduction was really inspiring. Here is a passage:

Writing is an act of hope.

It is a means of carving order from chaos, of challenging one's own beliefs and assumptions, of facing the world with eyes and heart wide open. Through writing, we declare a personal identity amid faceless anonymity. We find purpose and beauty and meaning even when the rational mind argues that none of these exist.

Writing, therefore, is also an act of courage. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page? How much easier is it to surrender to materialism or cynicism or to a hundred other ways of life that are, in fact, ways to hide from life and from other fears? When we write, we resist the facile seduction of this simpler roads. We insist on finding out and declaring the truths that we find, and we dare to put those truths on page.

To get ideas and to write well, you have to risk opening yourself. In her book When Things Fall Apart, Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön writes of this risk:

When we regard thoughts and emotions with humor and openness, that's how we perceive the universe...We begin to find that, to the degree that there is bravery in ourselves...and to the degree that there is kindness toward ourselves, there is confidence that we can actually forget ourselves and open to the world.

There must be that softness, that openness. Rather than making us weak, it makes us confident and fearless. The more confident we grow the more open we can allow ourselves to be. If you can write even when your life seems dark and bleak, even if all you can write is "Life sucks," then you have the hope and courage necessary to keep moving, to persevere as an artist. In perseverance you will find your creative self.

You should have seen my eyes when I was reading this. My little blue and pink pencil with the star top was underlining like crazy. I think I was getting giddier and giddier as the passage went on. Even just rereading it now for typographical errors made me a little happy. See, "to write, you must read" is in the works already. I'm writing about how wonderful this passage is. Even if the rest of the book is a flop, which I seriously doubt, I have gained so much from this page-long introduction for the purchase to be worth it. Now that is an intro if I can say so myself. What an impact it made.

Works Cited:
Heffron, Jeff. The Writer's Idea Book. Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 2000.