I took a very zen approach, I think, to the big birth day itself.
I worked and played online with friends in the morning. I posted the blog post for the day before. Then I went to the pool and steam room that is in the building I am staying in (and part of why I chose this place). Well steamed, I was ready to head out. No rush. Present to what is in the moment.
I met Manar and Marrianne at their place. Manar and I went for a quick bite. I asked for fish and chips. They were so totally good. Maybe I was just super hungry… dunno, but I think they were super extra fantastic. Flaky and flavorful with great batter and crispy fries. Stop thought. Taste. Savor. Release.
I only wish I hadn’t had to rush the savoring… but there was this amazing play to get to!
The play was so very, very, very good. Constellations by Nick Payne.
I loved it on many levels. Beautiful clean set design. Lovely lighting. Both added without subtracting or being boring. The acting was really, really good. Both actors had to shift fast from one multiverse version of themselves to another maintaining enough self-sameness but also indicating difference. It would be hard not to do it badly. What is this about, you ask? Well, it is described as:
One relationship. Infinite possibilities. A story of love, honey, and a quantum multiverse. Moment by moment, can everything you’ve ever and never done exist in the same vortex of reality? Elegant and playful yet profoundly moving, Constellations blends the everyday and the ethereal, the actual and the imaginable, revealing that every outcome may only be the first link in a chain of cosmic consequences.
And the lick the elbow thing was hilarious. It was a bit like watching a Philip Glass song at times – richness in the repetition.
There were parts that tugged at my heart with a strange familiarity, having recently had my heart badly broken and left wondering if it wasn’t so in some other universe (and wanting very much to be in THAT one having THAT experience).
I didn’t care much for the costumes. But I guess they weren’t there to attract or detract, really. And I loved the slightly sloped stage. I forget what that is called. …ah, I looked it up. It is called a rake stage. It must have really taken some skill to ballroom dance across that slope! They made it look easy!
I loved the scene setting moments where they froze in time, like a snapshot of that moment beginning (or ending) and the sense of the flow as if the end of one is the beginning of something that happen simultaneously or previously. And I liked how the ending moments started getting interspersed and meaning built slowly over time as more context presented itself. You had to fill in the gaps and come up with different stories about things until more information made it clear what was indeed happening. They pulled it off pretty smoothly, given how awkward that could be.
I was once engaged to a phenomenal theater director. He was so good at making a play sexy and alluring – drawing you in and yet also giving those Brechtian moments when you have to stop and realize you are in a theater watching the play – catharsis disrupted. Moments of self-awareness. This play did that very effectively and very, very briefly without being pedantic. Very smooth.
I saw this lovely poster on the Tube. Look at the eyes.
After the play, we cabbed it to the Wellcome Museum for Death: A Self Portrait Show. I had seen the poster, (posted in earlier post, see image small here) and I was eager to check it out. I also really loved it. Being present in the moment through this experience as well. Allowing it to be momentous.
Here I am turning 40. It feels like rounding a corner on a phase of life. Death is that much closer. I want to look it in the eye without fear and with a heart full of love at the peace death offers. So while it may seem morbid to go to an exhibit on death for my birthday, for me it felt real, a humble acknowledgement of the shadow side underneath celebration: it is all so temporary so we should glory in it – until death – which is so very permanent.
Our relationship with death is so different now that it is so much rarer in the first world. And many of us haven’t seen much of it or it feels abstract compared to our ancestors from even just 100 years ago. I wish we had a healthier appreciation for death being part of the cycle of living… and I think it very fitting to be exiting one phase of my life, entering another and visiting an exhibit on death. It made me very happy. Thank you for humoring me, Manar and Marianne. I think we all enjoyed the infographic on a wall at the end, depicting the number of people who had died from which causes over the twentieth century. Really mind-blowing to see.
We closed the evening with vegetarian Indian at Marianne’s favorite place. Dinner was yummy. Nom nom nom. I heart Indian. Nom Nom nom… complex flavor….nom nom nom, presence.
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