#fridaywriteday

But my wrists stayed delicate, like bird bones. Even now, they hold me up through plank, downward dog, my unsuccessful attempts at crow. And I am always shocked.

But this is just the surface, you see? They carry more than my body, more than its curves and muscles. Every doubt, every diet, leaning on architecture not meant for this. Even minutes spent on the scale add up when it’s a habit.

(If my bones were suddenly hollow, would the lower number count?)

I surround it with rage, sometimes, often. Directed at an industry, a society, too many conversations with my mother, anger is easier. It’s more public, less personal. More reflective, less exposed.

It’s less. Like I am supposed to be.

They have weirdly soft noses, really truly like velvet - until they eat something wet and sloppy, like bran mash, and then they’re GROSS.

I started riding at the age of eight. I’m now 28. I’ve been riding for more than 2/3 of my life at this point. When I think about that span of time, the years of sore muscles and dirt and itchy hay and kisses and toes stepped on and sweat and joy, it feels like at some point it crossed from hobby or job or thing I love into an irrevocable part of my being.

They have awkwardly prehensile upper lips.

When they lay their ears back for no other reason except to be cranky in the general direction of another horse. Like, come on asshole.

Last week, I got on a horse bareback and just stood in the ring petting her and talking to another instructor. It is the most deeply, instantly relaxing thing to get on a horse.

A fair number of horses have an itchy spot right at the base of their neck, just above their withers. They do the FUNNIEST things when you scratch it - twisting their whole neck to the side, bobbing their head, flapping their upper lip - and they always look so affronted when you stop.

My favorite horse at camp was a cranky spotted Appaloosa named Thomas. He was the first horse I ever fell off of (age 11, individual canter) and I have always been a contrary motherfucker, so there we are. He had this terrible scruffy excuse for a forelock and an awkwardly rectangular face and I loved him with a ferocity I don’t quite have words for.

During a riding lesson at the age of 17, my instructor put up three jumps in a line (2’ crossrail, one stride, 2’ vertical, bounce, 2’ oxer) and sent me over them without reins or stirrups. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to flying.

A few days ago, one of the horses at the camp I’m teaching at turned her head and blew snot directly onto the back of my hand.

When I was 20 and spending a semester in Rome, I went out to a barn each week to take a horse named Giga on walks while she was recovering from a leg injury. Her owner told me that Giga was a cranky bitch (her actual words) and that I shouldn’t be offended if she didn’t like me. The second time I came to the barn to work with her, she came cantering across her paddock and stuck her head over the fence to greet me. (Trust me when I say the feeling was mutual.) I’ve still never experienced an automatic love affair quite like this one, but it broke my heart in two to leave her.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was a horse at camp named Winston who I absolutely hated. He was cranky and often downright mean, a nightmare to ride, and had a reputation for biting everyone he could reach. No one could stand him. The camp director made a rule in the middle of the summer that one person had to hold him while the other helped a kid up to avoid anyone getting bitten.

But here’s the deal: I watched our barn director cultivate a relationship with a similar horse by showering him with love until he started responding. So I thought hell, why not try it with Winston. I spent time with him whenever I had the chance - bridling, tacking and grooming, getting a kid on, even when I saw him in the pasture. It took some time, but honestly? Not that much. Maybe two weeks into my unadulturated love fest, he relaxed just a little. Three weeks in, I didn’t need another staff member to hold him while I got a kid up. Four weeks in, he pricked his ears and whuffled at me everytime I walked by his stall. I came by my love for Winston the hard way, but we got there all the same.

You have to bring your best self to the barn. If you don’t, more often than not you’ll end up on your ass in the dirt.

I've been teaching in this huge wide-brimmed hat this summer. None of the horses have given any indication that it's weird or flappy and scary. One day, I forgot my hat on my way into the ring and someone had to bring it to me. The horse my kid was riding leaned away from me hard when that hat wasn't on my head. Suddenly, when it wasn't part of my head, it was disembodied and terrifying.

When you blow gently into a horse’s nostrils, they’ll generally blow gently right back at you.

Emily is scared of her horse. Of horses in general, really. Her number one fear seems to be interacting with the front of her horse: she doesn’t want Patches to lick her, sniff her, breathe on her, or even look at her. Once she was on her horse, she screamed a little as soon as Patches took a step but also immediately told me, “This is fun!” It was, honest to god, the strangest and funniest combination I’ve come across in a kid. She was distracted for most of the lesson, vacillating wildly between freaking out when Patches turned her head (…while Emily was the one turning her head) and telling me all the things she wanted to do. But we persisted. We didn’t get off the lead rope, but I got her to steer on her own and sit up straight in the saddle, both of which were big accomplishments. When the other riders in the ring asked us if we wanted to play a game, I took the out immediately. This is a kid who will progress at a different pace and at different things, so let’s play a water game and stop pushing for a few minutes.

Just before the end of her lesson, Emily said to me, “I want to stay on this horse forever, but I’m afraid she’ll look at me!”

The other rider, Ally, is on the other end of the spectrum. She’s maybe twelve or thirteen and has been coming to camp and riding the same horse (Dippy) for five years, one of those campers who only gets to ride at camp and looks forward to it for the other ten months of the year. She’s tall, awkward, and gangly – this is a girl who has definitely not gotten control over her own limbs yet – and she has the Frida Kahlo eyebrows with which I am deeply familiar.

I saw Ally twice this week. On day two, I made her stand up in her stirrups and pulled her lower leg around until she understood how it affects your balance. Then I just took her stirrups away entirely. This, somewhat unsurprisingly, had a huge effect – one I didn’t consciously think about before I did it. See, she has these aforementioned legs that are too long for her body. Even with the stirrup leathers on the longest hole, her stirrups were a tad too short. But when you have a girl who is all leg and you take her stirrups away, suddenly the whole balance of her body changes. It was like having a different rider.

When she got off, she said to me, “I’ve ridden Dippy for five years and I love her, but you’re the only instructor I’ve had who teaches me anything.”

You have to teach the rider in front of you.

Different days have different success stories. Some days the victory is getting on your horse. Some days it’s trotting without stirrups or learning how to canter. The range of victories and the paces at which riders achieve them are the addicting part of teaching riding, the part I forgot about. It’s a thrill to be back here, even if only for a few short weeks.

My favorite days, favorite lessons as an instructor are the ones where my riders think I’m crazy. I give them an exercise or a new adjustment to their form and they try it once half-heartedly, fail, and look at me like, can we do something else now? This is too hard. Those are the days I tell my riders, “You can do it. I have faith.”

Many moons ago, when I was but a wee stage manager, I attempted to explain my job using a metaphor. It really didn’t work as an explanation for civilians, but every theater person who’s ever heard it has absolutely loved it.

Here it is: Let us imagine a production as a solar system. The director is the sun – they’re the center of it all, they bring people into orbit and set their course. Actors, designers, technicians – really everyone else – are the planets and asteroids. They’re what makes the solar system a solar system instead of a lone isolated star.

The stage management team is gravity. We’re the connective force that keeps everyone together and orbiting around the sun. If we’re doing our job well, you never notice us. If we’re doing our job wrong, it can have pretty catastrophic effects.

Occasionally people say something to me like, "Stage managers should get awards!" Every time, I cringe. I don’t want an award. I want people in the industry to know I can be counted on. I want to be someone whose name comes up when people are talking about competent stage managers. That’s all. Please don’t give me an intentional spotlight.

Stage management requires long hours. Everyone knows this. We’re the first ones in and the last ones out. We’re frequently sending emails and fielding phone calls outside of work hours. I signed a contract recently that specified that overtime pay begins after 52.5 hours in a week. In some ways, it can be a thankless job.

Writing about love can be difficult.

I was walking out of the theater the other night past patrons on the sidewalk and was struck with a very specific feeling I get from time to time. It’s somewhere between a feeling of belonging, the joy of living your dream, and (let’s be real) smugness. I thought to myself, not for the first time, that the day I stop having that feeling will be the day I need to get out of theater.

Sometimes I’m sitting in a group of technical theater humans and the conversation turns to aging in the industry and what job everyone eventually wants to end up in. Very often, younger stage managers talk about moving into production management or some kind of management-based full-time job with salary and benefits. They talk about wanting to get out of the freelance grind and the exhaustion of always hustling. Eventually, someone turns to me and says, "What about you?"

What about me.

"This is it for me," I tell them. "This is all I’ll ever want."

It’s probably easier to say that since I spent almost two years production managing and missed being in a rehearsal room desperately. I missed actors and their weird vocal warmups. I missed the adrenaline rush of calling a show. I missed watching a director help an actor find their way into a scene and a performance worth remembering. I missed all the late nights and the tech bruises and the weird jobs you end up with when you’re running a backstage track. (Dump a bucket of water on an actor and strategically place seaweed on their head and shoulders. Move an actor’s lower half two feet to the left during a quick change so they don’t get run over by a roulette table on wheels. Crawl out onstage and hide behind a 5’ tall rose to hand off a prop an actor forgot.) I missed the joy of opening night and the bittersweetness of closing. Writing about love can be difficult, but feeling it for theater has never been hard.

But I know this with a certainty I have about very few things. This is it for me. This is all I’ll ever want. This is Living The Dream™ and I’m thankful for it every day.

All summer, the humidity stuck like molasses to my skin, like a blanket, like caramel caught halfway between liquid and solid. My glasses fogged the moment I stepped outside, smothered into blindness by the shock of it.

Between 1am and 2am lives a suspended time, too late for most people, not too late for us. The night is quiet outside our bubble. Like a blackout – you feel isolated until the light comes.

redandorangeandyellowandredandyellowandorange down           they           fall Nothing feels more like renewal than trees shedding their skin like snakes. Like phoenixes before the ash.

How deep inside yourself can you go to find joy? Go there, go now.

What do you think Christmas is like for the colorblind? Monochromatic, loud, but quiet, at last, when the morning comes.

Spindly tree arms shivering in the wind look pathetic, look lost, look stripped of their purpose. It’s a magic trick, diverting your attention like a magician to the hand where nothing is happening.

It’s spring now. The trees haven’t found green yet, I always forget how long it takes for them to find their way back from death.

Dying scares me. Not in an immediate way, but the process. The slow drip, the stalactite reaching down.

I’m afraid in the future tense. (Hereditary, tidal, the stalagmite reaching up.)

How could hands forget what they learned for the first time six decades ago in a twin bed in a dormitory during a hot, dry summer in wine country?

Flowstones are composed of sheetlike deposits of calcite or other carbonate minerals, formed where water flows down the walls […] of a cave. Though flowstones are among the largest of speleothems, they can still be damaged by a single touch. [Geology, 2006]

I remember every ounce of that summer like it’s weighing on my back still.

Home, home, home, like a campanile echoing.

Flowstones are also good identifiers of periods of past droughts, since they need some form of water to develop […]