Reverb12 Day Seventeen: Surprise.
Staying with Daily Angst today:
The most surprising thing that happened this year was…
Off hand, the first thing I think of is voters in my state of Maryland by referendum upholding equal marriage rights for homosexuals. I honestly didn’t think the electorate had the political and moral will to do it this year. Outside of President Obama being reelected, this was probably the most important news for me on election night.
My surprise at this close result is not due to me finding Marylanders immoral per se. But up until the vote was called here in favor of homosexual marriage rights, every single other similar statute across the nation that went to direct referendum lost. I think 36 of them in a row. Inertia seemed against it passing here.
Also, hate groups and other biased and bigoted institutions are well financed and hold great sway over electorates voting on gay rights. I think such groups have been successful mostly by playing on fear, but also because of the fact that even those who are conscientious about voting for office holders don’t often pay attention to the so called “ballot issues”. Those who do tend to pay attention often are the most rabid supporters of any given cause. I feared that the anti-gay sentiments everywhere would be enough to ignite a defeat of this referendum.
I’m relieved that I was wrong. Turns out the desire to provide homosexuals in Maryland with the same rights as other people was, (just barely) stronger than the desire to suppress them. I was moved by this turn of events and quite proud of the citizens of Maryland for making this historic choice. I was proud to be one of those that voted in favor of gay marriage. Nonetheless the result surprised me, and was in fact probably the biggest surprise of 2012 for me.
Reverb12 Day Sixteen: Adult Choices
From DailyAngst:
Being an adult means making your own choices. What choices were the hardest to make this year?
Hard choices are sometimes things that make your life better, not worse. My difficult choice was a simply and productive one, but against the grain of my day to day.
Early this year I chose to join a local writers group. It’s the first time I ever been in one. (I know, I know.)
Why on earth should this have been hard? One reason I have already alluded to; I had never done it before. Yet what else about this choice to move in a different direction with some of my time and my writing made doing so difficult.
It isn’t the idea of people reading my writing. People have read my writing before, both fiction and non-fiction. So while having it reviewed right away did take some getting used to, that isn’t what made the choice a difficult one. The difficulty lie in the fact that it was counter to my inertia.
I like people sometimes. And some people I like all of the time. But compared to the average, I am not the most social person. I rarely hold my own events, and when I do they are poorly attended. I am rarely invited to things other people hold, and when I am for a while, they tend to dismiss me without reason, based on their own superiority complexes. (Many of my recently but no longer best friends in nearby West Virginia have done this to me in the last year.) So I’m not out and about with people often, except for when I am in a play. I’m not used to it. Throw in to hurt I have suffered in the times I have tried to do so, and you see why I was reluctant to take on a new group of people.
And I mean cold. As in I knew nobody even casually in this writing group when I first showed up hoping to improve my writing and make some friends. My writing has improved somewhat, and the jury is still out on the friends part. I honestly don’t know if any of them consider me a friend at this point or not. I know that I am eccentric, at times awkward and usually reserved in the meetings as a whole, so there would be plenty of reasons for them to be unsure of what to make of me, even after nine months of attendance. I may not be sure for a while.
But it is for all of those reasons that making this new effort back in March as a difficult decision for me to make. So why did I make the choice to join this group?
Part of the answer is in today’s prompt; being an adult means making your own choices. It was a point in time wherein I had decided as an adult can, that a change in direction was needed. That what I was doing wasn’t working and that despite the uncertainty involved in this new venture I had to at least subject myself to it a few times, so as to say I had attempted to extricate myself from the rut that perceived was forming in my life. Adults make choices about their lives, and though difficult, joining the writing group is a choice that I don’t regret making.
Reverb12 Day Fifteen: Friendship
What was it like for you to be a friend to others this year? Did you rekindle an old friendship? Strengthen a current friendship? Make friends with someone you didn’t think was “your type?”
It would be difficult to get into too much detail about how I was a friend this year without breaking confidences and identifying people who want to remain anonymous. I can say in a broad sense, however, that a particular friend of mine has been going through a rough time this year, and, if I am to believe them, I have been able to be a force for good in their life as they navigate certain mazes.
I’ve known this person for years. Sometimes it would be years between times we would see or speak to each other, but a bond remained. That much was clear when we did speak.
This year we began to communicate far more often as their complicated situation descended upon them. I was moved when I learned that I was one of the few people (at that point in time) to be told about what was going on. Not because I value secrets or think it makes me special. But because it is indicative of the type of trust that exists between two people when they value every aspect of one another. When you know they have you back should it ever be needed, and that you have theirs.
Which I did in this case. But I did nothing spectacular, other than being there, and letting them know I loved them. (Though in this world, it may be.) I merely provided for them what they, as the beautiful person they are, had provided for me in the past. When despite their own situations, they offered me support.
Through this, I feel that our already strong friendship got even stronger.
It’s the lack of heroism in my entire relationship that makes it all the more moving to me. For while I would go to great heroic lengths for this person, I have never been asked to do so. It is the nature of just being present. Asking how they are. Seeing them when I can. It reaffirms that it’s really the simplest, everyday things that build the strongest of bonds between two people, not the grand, earth shattering gestures. Sometimes we give such moments to others and sometimes they give them to us. But great love can be shown in tiny moments, and I have felt privileged to be both on the giving and receiving end of such things with this very important person in my life.
Reverb12 Day Fourteen: Family Role
Did your role in the family shift or change over the past year? How? Why?
In a sense. I do think that in many ways my relationship to much of my tumultuous family has taken a step back or two in recent years. There are tiny branches of my family with whom I get along, but each year there seems to be something that happens which encourages me to take on a less active presence with the whole, and a more specific presence with said branches.
In many ways I never fit in with most aspects of my family. Growing up I was either judged, chastised or ignored by many members of it. Little respect was shown to me by several members of the family when I was a child, and it never really corrected itself as I entered adulthood. I used to love big family gatherings, when I suppose I wasn’t aware of just how factional we could be. (Or perhaps before we all become so factional.) But now, and in the last few years, I have not only accepted but at times embraced my position as the outsider.
I grew weary of trying to figure things out with every single person, or try to bring things together with everyone in a less depressing way. Now I just accept that my large family doesn’t get along in many ways, and I just cherry pick those who’s company I enjoy, and those I do not. Family is family, but I’ve decided not to try to pursue it as a whole anymore. If there is little understanding and little desire to understand who and what I am, so be it. Sad in a way, but less painful then trying to be a part of this Waltons type of situation that was probably never the case to begin with.
I have the certain siblings, and the certain children of the certain siblings that I enjoy the most, for better or worse, and who seem to enjoy me. That is sufficient these days.
Reeverb12 Day Thirteen: Best Photo of Me
Please post your favorite picture of yourself from 2012, self-portrait or otherwise!
Me, as the Duke of Buckingham before his execution.
Does it count if the best picture of me in 2012 was taken as I portrayed someone else? It counts today. Here I am in what is not only one of the best pictures of me from this year, but one of the best of any year. Probably because it is in medias res as I do something I enjoy.
This summer I was in a local production of Richard III. I was assigned the role of Duke of Buckingham, key ally to the evil Gloucester as he plots his illegal ascension to the English throne. I wasn’t thrilled with the role at first, as I find it is often a throw away part, despite it having among the most lines in the play aside from Richard himself. Usually Buckingham is played as a lap dog to Richard, with little depth. I was determined to change that with my portrayal.
Instead, I played him as a man who essentially wanted to be left alone to his own devices. A man who was weary of all of the civil war and even more weary of court life. In Richard he sees a man determined and strong enough to assert a solid peace over the land. A peace which will allow Buckingham to at last go back to his lands and live out his life free of distraction and interruption. So he make use of his talents and influence to help Richard become king.
Until Richard crosses a line, and, well, Buckingham is done with that.
The picture above is during Act V during one of the few monologues that isn’t Richard’s. He comes to terms with having been wrong about Richard, as well as having played a game that he lost in a tragic way. A loss that, in the scene you find in the photograph, he accepts and perhaps almost welcomes. He’s done, and he knows he’s done. He embraces the irony of being executed on All Soul’s Day, and walks off with a bit of a smile after this moment.
I am quite proud of this performance, and of this scene in particular. In it I found and used shades of other Shakespearean characters. Hamlet. Richard II. A bit of Lear, even. I don’t know if this show constitutes my best performance ever, (as a few people suggested), but this photograph no doubt constitutes one of the best pictures of me in performance mode, and probably the best picture of me overall from 2012.
Ty Unglebower 