I like my shoes, too!

I ended up going to a single Fringe event this weekend; my workload was so extensive, I just couldn’t carve out any additional time for other events. I’m such an old lady. The play (4:48 Psychosis) only began at 9:30pm, and I was like, “That’s so late! Why would anybody start an event that late?!” Even on weekends, I’m in my pajamas by 9:30pm. As they say in the junior high vernacular, I’m so gay.

I was going to take my camera, but then I decided against it, because it began pouring when I left the house. Also, I knew it’d be pushing nightfall by the time I arrived at the theater downtown, and my hands are too shaky to allow me to take good pictures in the dark. Well, I regretted my decision almost immediately, because a huge-ass rainbow appeared in the sky as I drove away from my apartment. And I couldn’t photograph it! I’ve always been a shutterbug, since the time I got my first camera (a Kodak Disc camera) in 6th grade, but lately it’s been more of a compulsion. I almost feel tense and anxious when I see beautiful and/or interesting things and can’t photograph them. I need to just fucking relax and savor life without hiding behind a camera.

I stopped for gas and as I filled my tank, the light—on the opposite end of the sky from the rainbow—was so lovely…a kind of luminous buttery gray. One of my favorite things in this world is walking or driving into a dark, menacing, storm-heavy horizon while the sun burns behind me and ignites the landscape. The contrast of an illuminated landscape beneath a dark, roiling sky is so gorgeous. And that’s kind of what I was seeing on Saturday, when I cursed myself for not having my camera.

The sky thrilled me again later, in DC, because it was a fragile shade of pink glowing behind a series of cranes (this was in a section of the city undergoing intense revitalization; luxury condos are springing up right and left—hence the cranes). What a great shot that would’ve been—those black cranes against that glowing sky. Ah, but what can you do?

So I went to the theater, drove around for a bit in search of parking, and ended up snagging a space like three blocks away from the theater. As I walked along, buried beneath my umbrella, some dude lounging against a wall hollered, “Hey, I like your shoes!” Huh? Well, obviously the guy has good taste, because I was wearing my awesome black platform sandals—the kind that could do some serious damage to someone’s bare foot or balls. And yes, after thanking him for his compliment, I did point out to him that the shoes could do some painful damage, with my unspoken meaning being, Dude, you’ll be spitting yo’ nuts through yo’ grill if you try anything. He agreed and said something like, “But the shoes are really you.” Uh…thanks? What an odd thing to say to a stranger passing by you on a dark street. How does he know what’s me and what’s not? Still, the whole thing made me smile.

The play was great—delightfully in-your-face experimental. I kept casting sly looks at some of the other audience members, because they looked very… yuppyish. They looked like McMansion-dwelling, SUV-driving denizens who were fidgeting uncomfortably in their Prada loafers. I just wondered how they really felt about this strange, chaotic, profanity-laden, borderline-incoherent play about mental illness. Not that McMansion dwellers can’t appreciate avant garde theater, mind you! Really, I’m just glad that people were willing to come out and support this show—and all the Fringe shows—rather than snubbing it as being too unconventional. Let’s hope the Capital Fringe lives to see another year.


song heard most recently before posting: Exposed to Love—Exposé