the last few days...

...have been largely tired. Had a productive work-day on Sunday followed by an unfortunate rehearsal in which half of the cast cancelled at the last minute (this is becoming somewhat of a trend and deeply worries me, as the writing of the show is nearing completion but its becoming difficult to block because of people not being able to make times). This was followed by re-living breakup for the third time, followed by much agony, despair, and watching of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Monday was pretty good, more work for Friday and a great meal at Jenna's that ended up lasting until 4 in the morning. Jenna and I are co-directing Romeo and Juliet next year, largely to spite people (but not really!). We are going to do it traditionally, meaning *fully* traditionally, 3 hours long with no interval, vendors and disruptions from the audience, and an all-male cast in full Elizabethan garb. I am excited for it because it should let me both play with concepts of what an audience is (standing? eating? talking?) and allow for some proper indignation and divineness on the love story. Modern productions automatically have audiences on the side of the lovers, and short of setting it across the Israel/Palestine border I think it would be difficult to really get that effect with modern audiences. But I think St Andrews, for all it is ostensibly a liberal blah blah blah place, will be suitably shocked to see "the greatest love story ever told" be between two men. Shocked but forced to accept it, because its traditional, and we're an old university, and we like that sort of thing, but my god! Or, as Jenna puts it, "shocked, but kinda turned on".

Tuesday went on a Sustainable Development fieldtrip with the Masters class, which my dissertation supervisor recommended, to see a museum in Kilmarnoch housing an art exhibition entitled "Radical Nature". It was interesting, but pictures would have been just as good (as a matter of fact, the best bits WERE pictures) and it wasn't really worth driving 2.5 hours in either direction and wasting a day of work to go see, although it was good chatting with the SD Masters students.

Today after class (biology--fisheries and marine protection zones, yawn) went rock climbing with Robbie (ex-roomate) in Dundee for the second time, which was loads of fun again. Now, after a quick spell of work (preparing for a History presentation of Friday, on Richard Jeffries, author of 'After London', an early postapocalyptic fiction), heading to a dinner/reunion for the Julius Caesar cast. Theme is 'Italian food'. I am lazy. I am bringing garlic bread and wine.

Have a poem--bad attempt at nature poetry:
"Sunlight makes shadows of the tops of the apple trees,
Climbs into the cracks and disheveled places,
Makes its mottled home in twisted spaces.
The lizard supines languid on a rock
The quaver-nosed hare quivers in his home, watching for a hawk.
The wood waits poised in a breathless quiet kind of entropy,
Self-assured in its secret cycles."