Inspiration. Take 2.

What have I figured out while I've been in Europe? It has been a long two months...but it is very difficult to believe that it has actually been TWO MONTHS. That is more than 8 karaokes missed. That is longer than I hold most jobs. That is longer than the amount of time to rehearse and open a play. TWO MONTHS. And, though I dedicated an extremely long and self-interested blog to it earlier, I still have not really decided for myself what I've learned...or gained...etc. Until recently, I hadn't been able to accumulate everything together. To form a coherent idea of it all. As a playwright, I like to take several themes and ideas, and put them in a blender, so that throughout the play, these ideas are mixed together and present in everything. And now, I've figured out, this is what I must do with this whole big "experience." So, to put into words exactly what it is I have learned....

1. How to drink. I have done plenty. PLENTY of drinking. At cafes by myself, at cafes with friends, in hostel rooms, at bars, outside, on the steps of Sacre Couer, EVERYWHERE. This is easily the top thing that I have done in Europe. Easily.

2. How to be more outgoing. When you don't have any friends, it gets lonely. You gotta make them. I now know how to say hi to someone I've never met before and possibly will only talk to for 5 minutes. It's no big deal. This is a huge realization.

3. How to make good theatre. I haven't seen any "theatre" since I've been here. But I've learned a lot. And what I've discovered is that there's plenty of room for the old, tried and true plays. There's plenty of room for reading a huge library of plays and finding the one that really rings true to you and producing that. But that's a bit too narrow for this large world. Instead, what I'm interested in is producing all sorts of new plays, good or bad, but just producing them. This is a project I will be starting when I get back to Seattle.

Now...how to put these all together? For the past month I have practically lived at the bar in the hostel. It's been an amazing experience and it is unlike any bar I've ever been to. My long term goal, which I am going to work on as if it is a short-term goal, is to start a bar in Seattle which would have space to produce these plays that I want to produce. I am confident that this will be the best drinking, friend-making, and culture-mixing place in Seattle. And I'm going to be honest. I'm no longer tied down to the idea of living legally whatsoever, so whatever steps are necessary, I might be taking them.

If anybody has any input or ideas or helpful hints on how I can make this happen...I would love to know. I know that my ideas are very idealistic, and in reality, there is a lot more effort I need to put into this...but this idea is incredibly exciting to me, and I wanted to share it.

In the Form of Song.

(i know it's emo...and i know it's not very good. deal with it.)

As we wake up every morning to the sunlight streaming in
And we feel the night before sticking to our skin
we will remember what we said and what we did or didn't do
just as if it only happened so that we could review

let me tell you, i'm forgetting
i can't seem to get your image out of my mind
and if i see you, and i fall apart
i'd rather fall apart than ever go blind

walking with these memories down the street we've walked so many many days
we can feel it in our feet and bones waiting for the traffic to stop both ways
let's not mention the bad, it only makes us sad
let's stick to all the good things that we've had

let me tell you, i'm forgetting
i can't seem to get your image out of my mind
and if i see you, and i fall apart
i'd rather fall apart than ever go blind

All that i have wasted while looking through you into tomorrow
and if i had more to waste, i'd throw it all away to follow
but i've lost every last bit of me, and i need to get something back
even if you still see something good in all the things i lack

let me tell you, i'm forgetting
i can't seem to get you out of my mind
and if i leave you, and i fall apart
i'll come back to you anywhere, anytime.

Top Songs
1. The Mountain Goats - Love Love Love
2. Built to Spill - Carry The Zero
3. Brand New - Millstone
4. Dinosaur Jr - In a Jar
5. Band of Horses - I Go To The Barn Because I Like The

in short

athens. serbia. new york. seattle.
always possible to change. no timeline at present.

The End or The Beginning?

It's 10:20 PM on the 14th of October. In 8 hours, I should wake up so that I can take a shower and make sure I am packed up in an hour, catch the metro to the tram which will take about an hour to get me to the Barcelona airport to board my 11:10am which will fly me to Dublin, taking about 3 hours, getting me there at 12:30pm, where I will wait for five hours to catch my flight to New York, which will take about 7 and a half hours, dropping me off at JFK airport at around 7:30PM New York time. There I should catch the subway to a hostel, which would take roughly an hour, and find a night out on the town with some other travellers, returning me to the hostel at who knows what time. I will then spend the next 3 and a half days in New York. Then I should catch the subway at about 4:30PM on Sunday the 19th to catch my flight to Sea-Tac airport, which will arive at 11:32 PM Seattle time on Sunday the 19th. Then I should meet up with my brother who will drive me to Olympia, taking approximately 1 hour and 9 minutes, where I will spend the night. The next day, the 20th of October, we should drive to Anacortes, taking 2 hours and 34 minutes. Then I will stay in Anacortes until 8:30 PM when I drive back to the University District of Seattle, taking roughly an 1 hour and forty minutes and arriving at the Irish Emigrant at roughtly 10:15, where I will be until somewhere around 1:45am on the 21st of October. Between 10:15pm on October 20th and 1:45am on October 21st, I will have approxomately 4 drinks, and I will exit for a cigarette break every 15-20 minutes. Over that period of time, then, I will smoke roughly 15 cigarettes. Then, I will go to some friend's house and spend the night on the couch, falling asleep at possibly 3am, but accounting for jetlag, I would approximate it at 5:15am on the 21st of October. There I will sleep for roughly 6.5 hours, waking at 11:45 am on the 21st of October. I should then make the 1.66 hour drive back to Anacortes, accounting for some lunch on the way home, arriving at roughly 2:15 PM on October 21st. From that point on, I should stay in Anacortes til a) I have some money or a job prospect, and b) i have a place in Seattle to live.

Either this scenario will take place....or else, I will skip my flight, catch the next flight back to Athens, find a job, and begin my new life.

We will see in the morning what has happened. I honestly don't know right now.

I'm only listening to a compilation of my Top Songs right now. And mostly only Miss You by The Rolling Stones.

The Ouzo Diaries

fuckin hell. i can't...i can't even write. i've been trying to put together one of these little blogs for the past week or whatever and...shit. i just can't do it. let me see if i can try to explain why. ummmmmm. yeaaaaah. pericles. alright. there we go. i've got it. the reason that i can't write a blog, is because the past two weeks of my life have been a gigantic inside joke. it's come to a point where conversations barely happen anymore. all we do is continue on the long running joke. and it's been some sort of...heaven.
their names are el and ken. 1.2.3. hi el and ken. and i've spent nearly every waking hour of the past 11 days or so with them. we're a strange incestuous little family. there's leo (that's me.) paris (that's el) and our kid cyprus (that's ken). i feel i should introduce these friends of mine, who i wish you all could meet. but sadly, desperately sadly, they will remain halfway around the world. and most likely, we'll never see each other again. it's difficult to fall in love with two people in two weeks and then say goodbye forever. isn't it? of course, i exaggerate. but it's not too far off the mark. here. here is the song that i've heard probably over 30 times in the past week.

Oh she made us drinks, to drink
We drunk 'em, got drunk
And then I think she thinks I'm cool
She gave me a wink, I winked back
And then I think that, we hit it off something proper like...

[Chorus (T-Pain):]
I like the bartender
(Oh if you're lookin' for me)
I'm at the bar with her
(Uh-huh, OK)
I like the bartender
(Yeah if you're lookin' for me)
I'm at the bar with her
(Oh uh-huh, OK)

okay. you see, i was meant to leave this place 6 days ago, but el tried to play music in order to make me stay. to change my flight for the 2nd time. and when she played that song, and danced along to it, ken and i just could not stop laughing. not that we ever can. it was so perfect. it was such a perfect image of our lives.

sort of like my leaving athens, this post was merely because i felt like i have to. i do hope my brain recovers...but for now, i'm happy just laughing.

top songs
1. t-pain - bartender
2. rolling stones - miss you
3. burial - ghost hardware
4. grizzly bear - knife
5. neutral milk hotel - two headed boy

Staying & Going

It's happened again, Jenny.
I've gotten myself stuck again.
Not that I'm complaining. Not that I would ever complain.
But here I am, still in Athens.
It's like Barcelona, but with even less to do. It's just purely relaxing, you see.
I just can't bring myself to give it up.
Every night I drink countless ouzos at the hostel bar downstairs, on top of countless beers. And I suppose I, too, have become a bit attached.
So attached, I suppose, if you would like to use that word, that I had to pay $100 to change my flight.
Silly. I know.
But I didn't want to go to Rome anyway. I was just leaving Athens because I thought to myself "I probably should leave Athens." It wasn't out of any desire to leave, just the notion that it's what people do. They leave.
Maybe it's my physical incapacity to bring myself to go.
The booze has weakened my resolve.
The cigarettes have weakened my voice.
And the beds have weakened my back.
What will I do when I return to America and am unable to drink copious amounts of alcohol every night and stay up til 3,4,5 in the morning?
On that note, I must say, I recently realized that what I'm doing is giving up.
It's true, Jenny, that's what I'm doing.
I had decided within the first five days in Paris that I would give up, and I somehow stuck to that conviction rather than the first: that I should live in Paris.
Things are going to be quite different when I step off that plane onto Seattle land.
I said my goodbyes. Only to return again.
But that's me, isn't it. That is, I think, the perfect definition of me.
The one who comes back.

Top Songs:
1. The Mars Volta - Tetragammaton
2. Band of Horses - The Great Salt Lake
3. The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning
4. The National - Mr. November
5. Interpol - Obstacle 1