Sarah Rainone is not for sale.

Bother

I got a landline because my iPhone doesn’t always get reception in my house. I don’t know the landline number. No one knows the landline number except for my father and he doesn’t call me because though he would really like to talk to me, though few things would please him more than talking to me, he does not want to “bother me.”

Despite this, I get approximately 10 calls a day. Calls inviting me to donate to the fraternal order of police! Or to A-OOGA, claim my free cruise! Sometimes they’re just wrong numbers and the people on the other end tell me things like, Go to the doctor, Mary! Or, I’m not sorry about what I said!

I used to let the phone ring. But the ringing bothers me. Now I pick the phone up and blast the TV or music.

It’s a small comfort.

Okay, gotta go now. Sorry if I bothered you with this post. Sorry if I bothered you with my existence. I won’t be calling you anytime soon, you can be sure of that.

2.

Dustbutt charleyhorse, eating the lines of chalk upon this prairie plain. Come on up, ye olde drivers. There’s more where that came from.

Once I had a lung, a lung, a lung.

Sucking on salt, dripping back, dripping back. I’m not quite so facile as I seem. Pretending is the fruit of youth, but what then of the old? Haven’t we had enough, Aileen? HAVEN’T WE HAD ENOUGH?

There is a table, and upon it, detritus. It’s days like this where I wonder: Will I ever feel that spark again? Will I ever be worth a penny? Will it always just be ebb and flow, whenever I think I’ve crested, the water brings me back down and reminds me of all that I did to tarnish what I’ve been given?

There aren’t enough quotation marks, said the idiot. I don’t like the people! I want to see myself in the people! If I can’t see myself in the people, how do I know whether I exist or not? Why are they so unhappy? Why are they so unpleasant? Why aren’t they better at friendship? Why isn’t the world a better place?

I have no patience for the idiot, or for the story I’m telling, or for my rage, or for the way I’m feeling today. It seems I’ll feel this way forever. And maybe I will. I’m so sick of smiling. I’m not that way, and I never was, but you pushed your tale of thorns so hard that I felt as if I should be.

Shellacked Jesus, whipple blood, St. Lucia’s eyes upon a plate, may I make confession? We don’t do that here. We don’t…

But I want to. But I need to. But I am mind-crunched always with the feeling of What did I do? What did I do? And still, and then, and now, I wake up with nails in my hands and a feeling that everything as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be MY FAULT world without end amen.

Eat your soup, it’s Sunday, the family comes together feeling something of the old country that you never knew. And your grandparents weren’t strange to you then, but they are now. Such vast distances between you, you are another animal altogether, sometimes you wish they stayed so you could have been born with a different kind of mind.

But, no. You’re content with complexity. In the revision you feel something akin to softness for the idiot. Still, who told her she could speak?

Free yoga class for improvisors!

Hey improv friends, some of you may know that I’m training to be a yoga teacher. With Harold and Lloyd auditions coming up, I thought it would be a good opportunity to practice teaching by workshopping a little yoga class for improvisors on Thursday evening 6:30-8:30 (probably at Simple). I’m thinking a mellow hour-long class, followed by some meditation at the end and, if people were interested, we could jam after, trying to put what we learned into practice. Or we could just chill out and you can ask me questions and stuff. It would be free (though if people wanted to help pitch in for the space, that would be very cool of you) and I will incorporate some poses/ideas that I think will be useful for auditioning and improv in general: breathing, calming the mind, paying attention.

If you’re interested, please email me at rainone842@gmail.com. Please let me know if you 1) have any yoga experience so I can plan the class accordingly 2) have your own mat. The class would be a vinyasa-style class (we’ll be moving in sync with our breath.) I’m still learning how to teach and need to practice, so you will be helping me as much as I hope to help you. A bit about my experience: I’ve been practicing yoga since 2001 and doing improv since 2008, and it’s exciting to see how the two really complement one another. Let me know soon if you’re interested so I can secure a space. I’m going to keep it small, but if you have a friend who you think will be interested, tell them; and if there’s a lot of interest maybe I’ll do one on Saturday, too. Thanks, guys, and best of luck in your auditions!

1.

Not writing the essential. But as it comes fragments washboard literature prevails. I’ve come so far, said the dove, how can I just sink back into the muck?

Well, says her father, perhaps you might consider where the energy lies.

little magnetic fields keep the birds in line—honing, always honing and what if you put them in a box

STILL THEY KNOW

Maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s, you know, not. Transferred back in time to that room where things felt “maybe it’s me after all.” Thanksgiving, the whole family was downstairs but you were lost in reverie, in him in yourself but you didn’t think so then. there had to be an object.

Croaking frogs tumble tumble, if there were a fee to cross the bridge would you pay?

New page new glories a bowl-type haircut is something that befalls better men. Put it all aside you can’t keep everything sometimes the right word finds itself after the wrong one is spoken.

All there are is words here, it doesn’t even matter what you see. If there were no light we would all just be sound and movement, try it sometime, you may like it.

Cliches encroaching a milky space, this shouldn’t be anything but what it is, why the concern for moving people this way and that perhaps it’s better if we don’t try to fix, rig the system and all that.

My mother is watching last night a man tried to pull me out of my skin a shimmering a weight a low voice pulling me further away from where I lay it’s happened before

No, I said this time. No trickery no playing around in your world I’ll stay in mine I’m done with parlor tricks that is not the way. I woke and he was gone but the shimmering remained and was I scared maybe a bit I wasn’t alone after all But what I wanted more than the experience was the sleep was the normalcy let things shake out as they must and I have things to do tomorrow.

Not a denial but rather a standing firm in my stance.

I have a body after all.

We are not to speak of such powers But what of the rejection—can we speak of that?

Only in shrouds

Lost in the garage overlooking tall trees the people there were so far away and bad, maybe, you sensed it was as if a field separated you and you had such vantage and your grandfather’s books (The Dunwich Horror: its pride, its shame, it’s wet) beckoned and what’s to stop you from just being what you are

Dip into darker places let the music wheel you and all that, who’s got time for other people’s problems you’ve got a paycheck let the rest dangle. Dangle. Blonde girl and her rat box. This is what you’ve lived for this is your calling and this is the stuff of dreams temporality memory the only constraints, no error all invented by us anyway

Not our kind of place, she said.

Not yours, but mine.

Later, she’d learn.

There is an idea there, he said, if not what’s typically perceived as a song.

Set you free and why just fill in the lines they’ve drawn for you. Form formless form wandering.

Souls on ice.

The sculpture garden in the dark looks ominous perhaps it’s time to pick up the pace move briskly through the willows end of world landscape painted trees this is what you have eyes for, children, this can be done anywhere Big Bad Wolf Big Momma shaking if only he were here right now to see your tendrils as if it were the shoes

As if it were the shoes

A key, a garden, a gargoyle in some film you can’t remember. Canada, Australia, England, some place where they spoke the language but it was colder, greener, old. You watched and thought, The mystery is mine.

Little girl, eyes ripe for revision.

All the U.S. Presidents as improvisers

nicolemarietherese:

iamachilles:

A follow up to a previous post. I spent way too much time on this.

Read More

I didn’t read the list yet, I only checked the John Adams one.

2.    John Adams: A little frantic, but plays intelligently. A better teammate than he is an improviser.

Achilles did a good job. I approve.