This last week

This last week has been amazing. One week ago I started with my first day at the theatre for my Ethnography project, I was nervous and excited, and they made me feel like a welcome guest, showing me all of the little intricacies that make the theatre work, less than two minutes after I got there they were cracking jokes, offering me coffee and discussing where I was to go during the show. I left several hours later overwhelmed with excitement and as soon as I was in the street and had put a bit of distance between myself and the patrons of the theatre I did my little jumpy dance train wreck sort of thing, I got a few stares but didn't mind, I felt the need to share my emotions with the world an the jumpy dance is my preferred method.


On Sunday I spent time with friends. I went with one of my friends to visit with another who was on her lunch break at work. It was nice to just hangout and talk while walking around New York. This little adventure reconfirmed my belief that I don't get out of the FiDi often enough. I then spent several hours in meetings, not as much fun, but they made me feel productive.


I worked on a project all day Monday (and also did laundry, gotta love having clean clothes to start off your week), Tuesday was school and writing things for midterms, Wednesday saw me back at the theatre.


Wednesday was even more exciting and nerve wracking than Saturday. I was worried that they might all have gotten over their interests in myself and my project, that they would not be as interested in showing me things, or being interviewed, or that they simply would have forgotten I was coming and I would not be allowed in. 


All of these were wrong, I entered and was allowed to just go in without an escort, where I was quickly thrown into a group of people who were all waiting to be interviewed, and behind me I could here the others arguing about were I would go. Even more than the first time I visited, I felt like a new foreign toy that one of the kids had brought home, and subsequently every other kid was interested in. Most of the kids wanted time with the new toy, some just wanted to stare at it and ask others questions about it, and others still just wanted to prod it see what it was made of.  I did not mind being that toy. Wednesday involved much more for me, I felt as if I had been accepted in and it was decided I was worthy of truly seeing their lives. More people talked to me, asked questions or answered mine. I followed one of the SMs during part of the run and watched the set changes,  the prop set ups and all of the back stage magic, at intermission I was lucky to be privy to what seemed to be a rather selective and hilarious exchange with one of the actors. I then watched the rest of the show while sitting at the conductors side, here I was told stories, advice information, and all other sorts of things that are hard to categorize. Talking with the conductor really made me understand a whole lot about theatre, and the world in general. it was brilliant.


Thursday was all preparing for Friday, Friday was all preparing for Haunted House, and Saturday #2 was all about sleep. 


I learned and did a lot this week, and one of the things I learned is that the most passionate people often seem the most child like to others, yet they tend to hold great amounts of wisdom. 


I would rather be wise, passionate and child like, than old, frumpy, and foolish.

The introduction to the book that I will probably never write.

Hello. My name is Robyn. The friends I had in High School call me Robs, Roby, or Mamma Robs. The friends I have in College call me Birdy, my friend Jake calls me Danner, and my dad calls me Junior. No one else calls me Junior, because if they do, I will punch them in the face and they know it. The exception to this is an old friend who once upon a time mentored me in the art of stage-managing youth theatre. He worked hard to earn the privilege of calling me Junior though, so don’t get any ideas.

Now that you know who I am, let me fill in other details of my life that I often find fruitless to give out. I am currently 19 years old, I was born and raised in Arizona, I had mediocre grades in high school, I love theatre, I played soccer until I broke my foot, then I kept playing until I had surgery, then I auditioned for a play. I got into that play, that was my freshman year in high school, theatre has been my metaphorical security blanket ever since. I have what people often refer to as issues of concentration, where as I have come to refer to it as issues of getting bored with mundane stupidities. I also am a self proclaimed socially awkward person, with a good ability to determine the character of other people. As I have gotten older I have found that my train of speech more closely follows my train of thought than when I was younger, and that I honestly don’t give a crap about censoring my grammar. It sucks, I know. Either I didn’t pay attention during grammar lessons when I was younger, or the grammar lessons were simply few and far between. I also love ending sentences with prepositions. And starting new ones with the word and.

It often takes me hours to fall asleep at night due to the swirling mist of random thoughts, ideas and stories that filter through my brain. During the day however I tend to make feeble attempts to filter these thoughts into words to be placed on paper. As a general rule of thumb, I don’t finish what I start writing, and I am not very good at it. However, since I was a small child I have found that starting to write out my silly thinks often removes the think from my head making room for the other thinks. How crazy must I seem right now? I am jumping all over the place, breaking several rules of writing and providing little information in return. That is not true. The first two points were true, yes, but the third is not. You see my ramblings provide a sense of what is to come in the following pages (assuming I ever finish them) and an insight into my brain that I am fairly certain many a psychologist will attempt to explain as some weird pathological thing. Anyways, back to my story that doesn’t read like a story.

I have one full sibling, a sister who is two years older than myself, and then a collection of half siblings (four in total to date) who are all much younger than me and not currently old enough to read this, therefore they cannot be offended by my collectively naming them. I grew up primarily with my Fantastic Father, my Strict but Supportive Step-mother, my Sassy Sister, and my (currently) Smaller Sassafras half sister, who seems to have inherited equal parts from my older sister and myself. While this information is meek, scant and generally lacking it is all you will get for now. I hope that you will suffer through this introduction to what I like to think of as “the good part.” The following pages contain everything from stories, poems, songs, plays, doodles, quotes, conversations and thoughts that I have managed to put on paper over the last few years of my short life. They collectively contain an insight  into who I am as a person, and how I perceive the world, culture and people around me. Most of what you will find behind this page are half ideas incomplete in their presentation, however I think they are good ideas and my paranoid self is going to warn you right now, if you attempt to steal, use, borrow or modify any of them with out my permission, you will end up regretting it. Remember that part at the beginning where I mentioned punching people in the face? Pointless pause for those who have decided to relocate the afore mentioned passage in paragraph one…. Moving on. I will implement that mentality of mine with lawyers, legal jargon and bad publicity for you. Now that you understand my terms and conditions for allowing you to continue reading please, do continue.

Everything is split up into to categories, such as poems, essays, quotes etc. and each piece is dated, or given an approximation of when I put it down on paper. This should give you an idea of my age at the time. Also, interspersed throughout the works are my random and rambling commentary to help you better understand what I was thinking when I originally wrote it, or what I am thinking now whilst editing it into one collection.

Sections, From my moleskin, From my notebook, essays I faked my way through, and the grade I got, poetry, songs, plays, quotes, extra doodles and “art.”

This post is random, I know. I wrote this over the summer while house sitting. It was dark, and scary and I was alone in someone else's unfamiliar home. For the most part I wrote everything in this passage as it cam into my head, therefore most of it either makes no sense or is completely random. I was reading through it however and most of what I wanted to include in my book I have added to this Blog, or intend to add to this Blog. I copy and pasted this word for word from my notes, with the exception of removing my last name from the second sentence. Because I have pridefully refused to edit this post there are several mistakes and areas that make no sense what so ever. Good. This is how my mind works, embrace it or move on. Part of me is also thinking that I will delete this post at some point over the next few days, so don't be surprised if it disappears. Also, sorry it is so long. I like to ramble. In fact this excerpt came from a document entitled, Ramblings of an Inarticulate Teenager. (I wrote it back when I was still a teenager.)

Notebook doodle #2

Here are some notebook doodles from the last few weeks. None of them were actually drawn in my notebook, but all of them were drawn in class!

Pink Gel Pen on New York Times (randomness from Is/Pal. last week)

Irrigating the desert.
(We were discussing advancements to irrigation in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom, I threw the pyramids in out of habit. Two weeks ago in His. of Af.)

Dinosaurs, Super Boy, Hatshepsut and Wegener.
(I apparently had Next to Normal stuck in my head while focusing on these notes. This is three class periods of doodles from the first two weeks of His. of Af.)

Yeah, so these are more of my random doodles for you. I may be posting some of my actual class notes later this week, and when I get some time I may actually right something!! Who knows.


Thanks for "reading,"
Birdy (-:

New section/Notebook doodles

So I have decided to create a new series of posts dedicated to things you might find in my notebooks. Most of these will focus on doodles, but some may be notes on the topic, or notes for myself. This just seemed like a good way to give everyone who is not me insight into how my mind works at various points in my life. While I do think it is rather narcissistic of me to assume that anyone actually cares about my notebook doodles (or really anything I post on here),  I shall submit them to the universe, allowing my narcissism to win this round.

For the first set I have chosen three doodles from the notebook that is right in front of me.

Az v. NY  (during Hist. of Africa last week)

To clarify, it says... NY- "Damn it's raining again." "I know, lame"
AZ- "AHH it's raining!" "Oh my god! Oh my god! It's wet!"

Monotheism v. Polytheism (during World Civs. first semester Freshman yr.)

I'm fairly certain the Professor described monotheism as being a large creature that ate everything else up, I don't actually remember though.

Magic Carpet (during Hist. of Africa while watching video on Islam today)

Self explanatory I feel.