(no subject)

:
With less than a week before our production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg opens, there is a great deal of work that the producer must do.  Schedules have to be coordinated.  Wardrobes and set designs must be approved.  Tickets must be assigned and distributed.  This close to deadline, there is very little room for error.  Many priceless eggs must be juggled in variable gravity.

As an epicurean, I am consciously aware that one should avoid a short-term indulgence if it would only cause long-term suffering to come back in manifold.  

I want to say that it was the stress of my daily affairs that prompted my indiscretion, that I am too hard on myself for wanting as I manage every little monad of this affair.  I know in my heart of hearts that doesn't excuse my outburst.  It was unwarranted, the result of three-hundred little things all going wrong, each of them a single sting of an ant, but in sum they are greater a poison than I could abide.

Heaven above, what an outburst.  I daresay if E___ hadn't left the room, I would have physically struck her.  Thank the Buddha that I didn't. I can already feel the karma of the last few days weighing upon my shoulders.

Last night, I dreamed of being ten thousand years old.  I dreamed of flouting heaven's law.  I would let my rage swell within my breastI would wrap my mighty coils around the pillars of heaven and constrict them until they toppled, and I would bring down the sky and sink the earth.  My tail would carve canyons.  My teeth would sunder mountains, my breath would despoil the fields, my bellow would tear this land apart.  They would have to send a hundred champions to take me down. Hammers that weight five-hundred tons would strike my skull until I was blinded with my blood and my rage.  A thousand spears of peachwood and lightning would pierce my sides.   My back would bristle with more arrows than there are stars in the sky.  It would be a glorious pain, a tremendous agony. 

It would be something to feel.

. . .

I still dream of O___.  Well, not of the real O___, with whom I shared a bed.  I dream of someone who really never was.  I dream of warriors and misanthropes and bohemians and blowhards.  I dream of wearing the glory of an angry and jealous god, to have wonderful comtempt for the lessers who fear me.  I dream of standing in the shadow of such a person, with a string around my neck that is tied to their finger, to enjoy the cake of slavery.

I am a paradox. I am the once and future chameleon, destined to blend with my environment. I am the novelty of the golden fantastic, designed to be singular and amazing.  I want to be recognized yet also be taken as familiar.  The two impulses are an uncomfortable coupling.

When I woke this morning, the sun was in the sky and the night was over.  There are three hundred ants yet to be stepped upon, and so little time to do it all.