Winding up the year

The end of the semester, in brief: after a lot of panic about Dan not knowing his music, our eval song went very well and I passed (he didn’t, but that’s OK because he’s only taken one semester of the class and he’d have to take another semester anyway).  My scene with Dan S was fairly solid by the time evals came around, but we botched it badly in the room, and both failed.  That’s also OK, because as a musical theatre major going to London, I don’t actually need to pass my acting evals.  It makes no practical difference in my life at this point.  I needed to pass my MT evals or change majors (or schools), and I passed, so it’s all good.  I might petition to reevaluate in acting, though.

I shipped the car home and flew myself.  Saying goodbyes was awful.  I had a huge long talk with Brendan before I left, about him, about me, about relationship which is weird as **** and very hard to define…I think that, of all the people I know at Syracuse, Brendan is the one I have known in previous lives.  He actually agreed, which made it all the more likely.  It was a beautiful conversation, a most heartbreaking goodbye.  I fear for him and I want to get it signed in writing from him that he’ll take care of himself while I’m away.  He agreed that sign a contract with me, but he’s still thinking up what my end of the bargain is to be.  No other goodbyes were as hard — Danny and I have done this before, we’re good at separation and we know it doesn’t change anything.  The Tenor cast finally had our cast party the night before I left, and saying goodbye to them was rough, but I had written the important ones train letters, which I’ll post in here (or at least some of them).  I have been well on the path to getting over Robbie since shortly before Thanksgiving, so saying goodbye to him wasn’t so bad…I said everything I wanted to say in my letter, I gave it to him, I gave him a hug, and I bade him farewell.  And that was that.

Still sad.  But perhaps sadder still — I find that I don’t miss him at all.

Since arriving home, my time has been quite busy.  I did go to the Dreamworks event with Barry.  It was fun.  We got along well.  But I just don’t return his interest, and I think he could sense that.  I haven’t heard from him since, except that a couple of days ago he forwarded me a conservative article online.  I didn’t even know his politics.  That’s a good sign that this was not a good idea anyway.

My cousins are beautiful and growing up.  Evie is a complete person, almost four, very perceptive and talkative and fun.  She adores her little brother far beyond the realm of normalcy in older children with infant siblings.  Solomon is very cute and cuddly but he’s four months old, he’s not doing much yet.  Except drooling.  He’s really good at that.  Elana I haven’t seen much of, but the one time I did see her she insisted that I carry her around until my arms got too tired.  That made me very happy.  She’s sweet, but she’s not as purely innocent of all ill-will as Evie.  As Evie put it, "I like to play with cousin Elana, but sometimes she hurts my feelings."  Elana isn’t always nice to Evie.  Sarah, at 13 months, is almost walking!  She’s utterly adorable.  An intrepid little explorer with bright eyes and an impish grin.  I had no idea how much she’d grown until I saw her.  I hope to see her again soon.

I have also seen a lot of my LA friends, now including Kevin from Harvard.  Yesterday everyone came over here for a random party that was emphatically not a belated birthday-party for me.  Elisabeth brought me a gift anyway, a beautiful little statue of a fairy with stained-glass wings a la Tiffany lanterns in purples and pinks.  She brought a tall pink candle as well, to put behind it, so that the light will catch in the wings.  It’s beautiful and it’s very me, I couldn’t love it more.  The party was a whole lot of fun.  I didn’t chase everyone out until 12:30, because we started singing showtunes at about 10:15 and that, of course, I found completely irrisistable.

The other thing that’s going on right now is Tyler.  I mentioned him in my last entry — he’s one of the guys I met at Harvard.  Somehow we wound up staying in touch, and last week he sent me an email saying that he hoped we’d have time for a full-length conversation in the near future, because he wanted to get to know me better.  We’d been talking over IM.  I suggested that we might try a phone conversation instead, and Monday night we wound up talking for three hours.  He stayed up until 4:15 AM to talk to me — he’s in New York.  Every day since then he’s made a concerted effort to get me on the phone for as long as possible…we’ve had a couple of other very good conversations since then.  He’s quite special.  He’s…quite special.  I don’t know exactly what’s going on.  The only thing that makes emotional sense here doesn’t make a whole lot of intellectual sense, so I don’t trust it.  I need to talk to Elisabeth.  She’s coming over later.

I’m sure that there will be more on Tyler to come.  He has abruptly become a huge part of my life, don’t ask me how.  I’m not complaining.  In fact, I have a kind of splendid joy.  He wrote in his livejournal right after our first conversation: "4:19, but that was entirely worth the 3 hours."  And his mood icon claims he felt "rejuvinated." What’s going on here, what’s going on here?  …something special.

–Aichai