kafka on the shore

I ushered at a performance of Kafka on the Shore, adapted for the stage, at the Steppenwolf Theater last night. In 2005, I read and jumbled its plot up in the swampy area of my brain reserved for Haruki Murakami's whimsies, complicated ice cream-based desserts, and early twentieth century Russian music - i.e. the place where nonsense goes to die - so my memory provided no guidance for me as I watched. There's a fifteen year-old runaway, a library, a cat-killing Johnny Walker, an old dunce, a trucker, and lots of faked sex. The stage was spare and almost all deep blue. I haven't seen this many Asian actors on a stage since David Henry Hwang's Yellowface. I'm not sure I got anything out of the play except for a sense of Murakami's weirdness. The alternating story lines made almost no sense together in the adaptation. But I don't care, I still liked it because my reaction to theater is usually just visceral: I like seeing makeup on your face!

I met some characters too. Not characters in the play, but characters in the Beverly Cleary "Gosh, he's such a character!" sense of the word. I stuffed programs sitting next to a funny young man with an angular face who wore a suit. He told me he worked in a spy store. I said, What the hell is a spy store? He said, Think of something a spy would have, and we sell it there. I said, Shoes with daggers that come out of them. He said, Well no, we're a kid-friendly store. Turns out he was talking about the "Boring Store," which is a place about a five-minute walk from my house. It's the storefront for 826 Valencia's Chicago off-shoot. This young man, Patrick, said he tutored kids in creative writing and was applying to graduate programs in creative writing himself. He also said he moved to Chicago from Indiana to try to be an improv actor. He wasn't obnoxious like the improv actor who subletted a room from AS - that guy just got stoned and drunk with his 22 year-old friends every night to prepare for "psychadelic improv" and would do things like fall asleep sitting upright on the couch with his mouth wide open, cradling a two-thirds empty jug of Western Beef brand whole milk. Patrick was friendly and funny, and he tore tickets while I passed out programs and said, "Watch your step! Enjoy the show." over and over again. He had funny mannerisms that endeared him to people. I studied them. He said, "Howdy!" really loudly when taking their tickets and gesticulated in slapstick ways (e.g. he flicked the ticket with an exaggerated motion of his index finger when telling patrons where their seats were located)and most people walked away from him with a smile. We sat together during the show, and then I left during the post-show Q&A and I'll never see him again, but it was nice to have made his acquaintance.

Throughout the show, a man seated in the aisle seat of the back row - therefore, the seat closest to the position from which I was handing out programs - kept making eye contact with me and smiling. I smiled the smile of a diligent usher back at him. At intermission, he stopped me and said, "Do I know you?" I said I didn't think so. He said, "Are you an actor?" I said, "No, I'm a lawyer, which is pretty close." (I am repeating it on my blog because I thought I was pretty clever for saying that.) He said, "You have such a nice voice!" I said, "Well, I'm sick," and then returned to my seat. (I am sick. I have a flu or a cold or something. My voice is hoarse and low(er) right now.) The man was probably fifty and was trying to con me. After the show we chatted some more. He demanded to know my occupation and my educational pedigree. Eyebrows were raised at the latter. Then he handed me his business card, said he was a voiceover and stage actor, and invited me to a screening of an MFA thesis short in which he played the starring role. I demurred. When I got home, I looked at his website. He is indeed a voiceover and stage actor. I'll never see him again, but it was nice to have made his acquaintance.

Ah, more of the same. These days I have been thinking lots and lots and lots about my crushing loneliness. And this is not a call for compassion, since I don't feel too terrible about the crushing loneliness. I am treating it as an experience, which is how I get through everything, because experiences are always good to have. Also, I am not alone in my crushing loneliness, as almost all of my close law school friends have scattered themselves far away from one another and feel, I think, as bereft as I do, except for RA who could not give a toot because she is warm and happy in sunny Chiang Mai, God bless her. One side effect of the crushing loneliness I've already written plenty about: feeling happy about making even passing connections with people. I met Patrick and Mike, and then I biked home in a rainstorm somewhat happy to have some more weird people to think about to fill my night.

Another side effect of my crushing loneliness is my renewed readiness for adventure. It seems to me that if I have the opportunity (and the funds) to have an adventure, I would have only regret if I did not seize that opportunity. So I had the opportunity to visit my Bavarian man this winter, and I just bought myself an extremely, extremely expensive ticket from Chicago to Munich that lands on Christmas day at 9:40 a.m. He is spending Christmas day with his sister's family, which means I will be wandering around Munich by myself on Christmas from 9:40 a.m. until 8 p.m. after not sleeping on a ten-hour flight. It's either going to be a nadir or an epiphany, or just really boring. As an angry preteen, I fantasized about spending Christmas alone - Home Alone really resonated with me for this reason. In this fantasy, I would sit on a bus bench in a drizzle and would watch the shapes of lonely people emerge and recede into the fog. And then one of those shapes would become Eddie Vedder, and he would be mysteriously stuck waiting for the same suburban bus as me, on Christmas, and we would fall in love, and it would be passionate and epic and obscured by sheets of rain. You think I'm joking, but this was my actual fantasy. Anyway, I get to live it in about six weeks in Munich, except with Harry instead of Eddie. Which is a little petrifying, but it's not like I can think of anything better to do. Harry, the Bavarian, is 36, a civil engineer in the medieval town of Regensburg, a post-hippie, a Jimi Hendrix fan, an avid bike-commuter/-tourer, and a Luddite in the extreme. He smelled so bad after his bike rides that I could not stand to be near him when we traveled together in Ireland. On my last full day in Ireland, in Letterfrack, it rained most of the day but cleared up for a sunset that was a majestic sweep of purple and pink across the western sky. Harry paused us where we were and stared at the sun - straight at the orange sliver of the sun - five long minutes until it dropped below the trees. I chastised him for the sake of his retinas, but that's just what he liked to do. I am excited to be going to Germany.

A third side effect of my crushing loneliness is that I am taking more pleasure at the economy of being alone. For example, I like to make a pot of gruel at the beginning of each week and store it in individual serving containers and slowly spoon my way through the gruel throughout the week. My co-workers make fun of me ("Gruel again?" they say, as they head out to pick up Potbelly sandwiches for lunch), but I like knowing that each meal costs me about $1.20, and I have plenty of patience for eating the same thing every single day. Gruel, by the way, is usually chili or pea soup or lentils or some other healthy legume boiled to mush. I am absolutely certain that the eight-pack of paper towels I bought in September will last me until next September. My things are compact and tidy. I know the image of an old single granny pushing around her cart filled with single-serving meals is just about the most pathetic thing one can conjure, but I am not that old yet, and it's not that pathetic yet. Check in next year.

Other news: I got an Ambien prescription and, despite my distrust of psychotropic medications, am taking the first one tonight. My band is playing its first show on Saturday at a punk club in Logan Square and I have been practicing all week for it. I have some misgivings, but I have learned that it is best to keep negativity off this blog; so I will rant to you next time I see you about the disconnect between appearance and reality vis-a-vis Salacious Crumb. A case I am assigned to is on trial right now, and it is making me think that employment discrimination law is just about the dumbest, fakest shit ever. Was he fired because he was white? Or was he fired because all his employees didn't trust him [because he was white]? One is permitted if what is in the parentheses is silently understood, the other is not. Is one outcome any better than the other? The weather was up last week, then way way down, and has stabilized this week at cold and wet. A black man is president, I bought a space heater, and my mother writes to say that my dog is too stupid to move from the lawn when it rains.