I just had an audition for "The House of Yes," directed by Tiffany Lennon. It would be great to get in; I really like the play (at least the parts we read to try out) and Tiffany is awesome. I felt pretty good about the audition. What I always say is that I don't really have a sense of how good I am as an actor; I just know that I like being in plays, so I'll audition and read from the script and hope to get in, and it's much easier from that point. Whatever technique I gleaned from many years of acting instruction is either gone or ingrained.

After auditioning I ran into Mara Gustafson, whose I foot I stepped on a few days ago. I enquired after the foot, and she surprised me by enquiring after Alyssa. I was quite taken aback, actually, because I don't really think of smiling and being friendly and talking to me as part of her repertoire. Funny how my connection with Alyssa alters the way people like her and Christine Smallwood act towards me, even if only in one instance.

I've been thinking (this is about the attacks again) about what it means that we're experiencing all of this from a college campus. On one hand, the events of the outside world have had no concrete effect on us (apart from those on campus who have lost loved ones), and our sanctity as a community has not been violated in any way. However, there is an earnest and pervading attention to the events that grows in magnitude as we interact with one another; the sense that most everyone is thinking about the same issues is inescapable. And although we have little contact with the harsh realities of the incidents, our level of participation in a society is such that two, three, or four times a day we meet in organized groups where some mention of the attacks is almost inevitable. Furthermore, there is a wide range of intellectual and emotional responses which we are in direct communication with, as each professor either muses on the events with specific regard to his discipline (the film and media studies class had a three-hour discussion of the television coverage; our African dance teacher led us through a series of slow, introspective movements as he sermonized on the need to be thankful for the present moment as we dance for hope and solidarity) or throws open a forum for discussion in more general terms. It takes a significant news story to shake up the campus, but when it does the ripples flow freely and reverberate off one another. While the reaction of the campus community in some ways seems artificial, there is something very touchingly organic about it as well.
I don't know what the situation were be like if this occured when I was at home, say, over the summer. I would probably have had the opportunity to discuss it with friends, and of course with my family, but I wouldn't have the kind of continuous exposure that I get, even without watching television or listening to much radio, from being on this campus. My mom said she spent yesterday afternoon discussing it with students, mostly on an individual basis. I don't know about my dad: surely he is involved somehow in whatever sort of community gatherings are taking place, but he doesn't have a workplace or anything like that where there is a real and present community.
I am astonished too at how much this has overwhelmed my thoughts; even though I at first was willing to strike it from my mind so easily. It took a while to know how to begin to comprehend this. I'm beginning to agree that things indeed will not be the same. Ester asked how long will it be before people feel alright making jokes. Funnily, our first reactions were humorous: comparing this to a Hollywood blockbuster, or making fun of Bush. A difference between this and the movies, for me, is that there was no introductory development of the characters or the human interest stories: instead we are plunged right into the catastrophe. What a way to start a movie; just begin with the disaster and work from there. As Aijung's shirt says: Story begins with explosion.

well you can laugh at this sentimental story
but in time you'll have to make amends
the sudden chill as lovers doubt their immortality
as the clouds cover the sky, the evening ends.