And so it is...

Okay.

The last two days at school have been rough. UGH! All of us are going through emotional rollercoasters in our minds. Please understand that our training is very difficult to verbalize and is somewhat unexplainable. It's as if someone is shaking up my brain...all sorts of memories, experiences, feelings, responses are all being tossed like a salad. This really is like therapy...in an extreme way. Except therapists want to 'fix' you. I don't know if I am going to be emotionally better or worse after this program. But for the emotional cost (let alone the 3 G's), I'd better be a ignant good (shoot). I thought this summer would be intense as far as scheduling and classload workload, but the emotional brainload is a mu- (as my grandaddy would say, by the way, it's is 84th birthday tomorrow...Grandaddy what is you DOIN having a birthday!).

I digress. So I had basically an emotional explosion yesterday and today (UGLY) during exercises in Viewpoints class that tend to bring all that out. But I am NOT done, and I don't feel permanent relief from them. This is not uncommon, many of us have had these outburts. It is wonderful how all of my classmates (we have become thick as theives and this is week 2) support on another as we go through this. Our instructors are all geniuses, but for lack of better words, they are totally f-ing our heads up. For real. I have never seen more adults cry and fall out within a matter of days in my life. But, they are messing our heads up in a good way, I guess. The whimsy and liberation of last week has worn off, and this second week is more ugly, tough, and painful. As my Viewpoints teacher says, "whatever happens, you must move forward, and push through." So that's what I am doing. I guess.

Today I discovered in Meisner class during an exercise (which is one of the most essential and nourishing acting techniques there is), K. Todd Freeman (google him if you don't know, he is an insanely talented and revered actor and member of the Steppenwolf Ensemble !) told me that I use laughter and smiles that may not be genuine to cover up "the ugly." I disagreed and told him that I felt like they were genunine but then he said "at times it was genuine and other times, it seemed to be covering up other stuff. (HA! You have no idea K. Todd... )I've gotten so good at doing this that I don't even realize when I'm doing it. So we had a chat after class and he said...I want the real Rhonda, I am trying to figure out who that is. (Me too K. Todd, me too, shoot.) Being told that from a few directors, including the infamous Runako Jahi (sigh), I am challenging myself to show the meat of me and to not use my Rhonda defense mechanisms to deal with them...but WHOA if there isn't alot of meat. But, to once again quote the viewpoints teacher Alex, "If you bring your life into your art, you will have art in your life."

Word.

Here is a quote shared with me by one of my wolfschoolmates by Rilke:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ...

Don't search for the answers,which could not be given to you now,because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future,you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

R. Marie