I just noticed that i'm coming up on the 100th blog marker. That's unbelievable to me. It seems like only yesterday I was *trying it on*; looking for a voice. i wondered what kinds of thoughts and ideas would lend themselves to the format. And now - oh how we've grown! Ha ha ha. But these are my favorite writing pieces I've ever done.
I'm not certain of this, but i believe that it's the uncertainty of readership which creates the blog's wonderful tension. I write from a place of not knowing whom, if anyone will actualy read it. I know that some people read my blog regularly, such as my mother - but I'm never sure of anyone else.
The blog then is addressed: To whom it may concern. This is my message in a bottle. Volkofsky described my writing as a plea to be understood. And though I shuddered from embarrassment at the time he said those words, I've come to see that he's 100% right. If anyone cares to hear me, then I shall keep talking.

i made the decision to spend the summer in new york. I know the impact of this decision will be felt long and profound for the duration of my existence, and so i'm not even really considering it. That would just freak me out too much. We have begun rehearsals of Shivah Proper. I have not undertaken a theatre project nor so much as held a script in my hand since 1998, when i was doing THE ALL GIRLIE LIVE CLOWN REVUE. It was during our final week of rehearsals that i was mugged and beat up on the Williamburgh bridge, and my clown I put away after that. My next live appearance was a Muay Thai match on my 30th birthday, in which I hit one of my friends so hard in the face that his mother climbed into the ring and screamed at me that I was a bad man and I must leave her son Hanson alone. This poor woman was so angry that she was shaking.

Today I began the work of learning the text of the play. I sat in a coffee shop most of the morning, putting off the the inevitable first breaking of ground that would eventually be a vast underground chasm of words. That's what learning a script bears the greatest resemblance to (yeah i know, thats a preposition: i don't give a shit - it's my blog). The first sentence begins:

No one lives. Forever. Anyway.

Pacing around Kirsten's apartment, I engraved the words into my quick access storage-brain. And that was the the spade's first cut through the grass and clay. As I move along further down the first monologue I reach the point that I can recall the entire first five lines. I find that I've dug a tunnel: I begin to add shoring in the areas that are weak. I go back and work over and over on the more complicated word groupings. It's like I'm adding a fourbyfour here and there (don't want a catastrophic cave-in). Some dust and plant roots fall from the earthen ceiling onto my head, but it seems to hold.

I'm asking myself: How do I make it shine? This role has only ever been performed by Volkofsky himself. The very words he wrote are now coming from my mouth. It's as if we are melding into one being. I have to give myself over to his direction entirely. I've never tested a friendship so.

The last few days Volkofsky and I have gone to play baseball at a riverside park in astoria. We take turns pitching to one another, each of us trying to outjunk the other with interpretations of victorian era pitches. We attempt knuckle balls and exaggerated sidearm breaking balls. Some Dominican kids came along yesterday and challenged us to a game of three on three. That's a concept that doesn't really work, unless you love to run. I had rollerskated to the park and so I had no shoes to wear. Each time the biggest of the kids nailed a pitch into the deep outfield, with a resounding KLINK from the aluminum bat, I tore off through the field after it, all the while trying to watch out for broken glass. Those kids thought i was some kind of wild old dude.

Lately i've thought the same thing myself.