Conversations with Shehe

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to blog… Theater is a very time consuming degree, minor or major! I was really honored to get to be a part of a Metro production like Nickel & Dimed (N & D.) But it took a lot physically out of me. I was sick for both weekends of the production. I learned a lot. I also made some really close friendships, and became indoctrinated into the theater world. I cannot take the time to put it all together other than to say, I will never be the same again.

Currently I am also in rehearsals for the Director One Acts, Called “One Act to Live.” My ten minute play is directed by Erica Johnson, and my fellow actor is Christina Uhl. Both of which were in the N & D production. There has been a deep synchronicity to this piece and I can’t wait for you guys to see it. It is called “My Boyfriend’s Wife.” IT has universal themes of love and loss that I think everyone will be able to relate to. Tomorrow we have a full dress rehearsal. Friday I have a rehearsal for my Acting III class, so even though we don’t have classes, with theater, school’s not really done for fall break.

So on the list for this week is making up for my Incomplete last fall in History & Systems. I have a paper to write and a test to study for.

For Acting III I have a notebook to complete, a take home test, a show review to write, and a script to memorize.

Needless to say, this week will be busy despite the time off from class.

I’ve fallen in love with the new Theater that opened this past weekend, Hollywood Theater. They have something that I have always wanted. Reserved Seating. Now the food concept isn’t new. The Movie Tavern is still the same price a s a regular theater, plus food & drinks. Hollywood charges $5 more for the box seating & food/drink seats. But I truly like the idea of NOT having to wait in line hours ahead of time to get the seats I want.

I saw “Planet 51” with Debbie & Cory & that was fun. Then I went on my own to see “2012.” Loved them both. I plan to see Assassin on Wed. when it opens too. I am just a movie junkie. I haven’t had time in the past several months and it’s been nice to see the movies this weekend.

My mom has paid for a plane ticket for me to Florida for the holidays. I am leaving on the 28th of December. They live a couple of blocks off the ocean front between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. The place is called Hallandale. Apparently the condo that my brother bought with his wife is in the tallest building in Florida. They are on the 48th floor, of a 52nd floor complex. I hear the view is spectacular.

A friend has talked to me about publishing with a national distribution co-op that caters to Barnes & Noble. We’ll see what pans out with that.

I also recently reconnected with my friend Jim Trader who has started his Astrology business with “Jupiter Rising.” He does readings often over at Witches Brew. I had a single question for him, because of my feelings about the future. Simply put. I wanted to know precisely “when” I was leaving for grad school. The simple answer was “Not till 2013.” Now for those of you who have been really following the whole story over the past few years know this is WAY off of my original timeline.

There are a few practical reasons that this is going to be delayed.
1. All of the Ph.D. programs require my GPA to be a minimum of 3.5 or higher. Mine is currently a 3.3 I need to retake several of my “C” classes (one a semester) and do last grade stands. This is a thing that Metro does which allows you to retake classes and make it as of the previous grade never existed. But since my financial aide has run it’s course, I will only be able to afford one a semester on my own. This is fine since I am EXHAUSTED.
2. Health- I need a rest. I am getting sick with migraines FAR too often. I have never fully recovered since the mold incident in Littleton. I still have to use an inhaler too often for my comfort because prior to that I almost never had to use one. If grad school is even harder than this, I am going to need my strength. For God’s sake I have to carry around a gas mask!
3. GRE- I need to take time to study and get as high a score as possible not necessarily for Masters, but PhD program and scholarships. The Cost for Masters tuition is a cool 100k.
4. Nest Egg- Financially I need some $$$ to have to fall back on during my 3 year stint in the Masters program. Right now I have nothing. I have a lot of support here in CO, but I can’t stay here for the next leg of the journey. I need to save $$$ to move out there, travel, food, rent, because I will be doing internships during the Masters level that is the equivalent of a full time job while also doing school.

I am tired, bone tired, and exhausted. I have been doing this for 5 years now and I need a break, a real one. I am not the average person who can work, do school, and just plug on… I have dire health consequences and my body is telling me its time to take care of it, not just my brain/education. There is an imbalance and I need to correct that.

Ok… I’m tired now. Time for bed before that hollow feeling returns.

I love you all.

Namaste’

Your Manea Always

Hello? Is anyone even on here anymore who still reads this? Or rather who still cares to...?

Time for another Manea update…

Ok… how about JUST this past weekend! For starters!
1. Friday Night Steel Magnolias: I got off of work went to Steel Magnolia’s for the last time and Jennifer (one of the cast member playing M’Lynn) made EACH of us these cute little memorabilia books! Each page dedicated to a character on the inside and on the back were the production cast, the flier and a place for autographs… I was really touched. We had a pretty decent crowd… and Julie was there(one of my friends from the Denver Women’s group(DW)) was there…
2. First Friday: After the play Julie and I headed for First Friday at Tracks. The place was packed by the time we got there… a light snow was falling and it was cold but it was not hurting business for sure! Saw Myann & her GF from DW, a couple of folks from the other groups I am in, and made the circuit around the rooms to give Julie a tour of a night in the life of a Manea… (she did ask for it!) Julie commented that she noticed that it wasn’t just that I wnet up to people and said something, but that other people approached me also… re-ran into a girl I made friends with in Feb…Kaly. She introduced me to her friend who is pagan and jewish, fondly refers to herself as a Jew-witch. We talked about DF and going this year… Kely & her friends are all nursing students. Then Julie and I ran across some cute gay boys doing a little improve runway show… turns out that they were the managers of Tracks and also the woman joining them was the promoter for BAD (Babes Around Denver). So I gave them my card and they were happy to find out that I am a chalk artist. Seems that they want to do a Japanese/Tokyo theme party for PRIDE and I suggested Godzillia coming through the floor in chalk art… one of the boys squeeled in delight and said they would be calling me… NICE!
3. Saturday Malvira the Prophet Rehearsal: It was on campus, Laura gave me a ride which was a huge help and I got to have lunch which was nice. We got done just in time for me to catch the lightrail back home and get ready for the LARP.
4. Saturday Night Dark Mirror LARP: SO the big game was Carnival, a 13 year re-occurring party for the Toreador Vampire Clan that was put on by the Denver Kindred. Julie wasn’t sure if she was going to go or not but she slept in all day and was ready to drive me over there. We had dinner at Sunny’s and I got “dressed up”. Normally my character “Jane Doe” dresses in goth black pants and a tye died T-shirt. Now she was in a black pant suit… totally NOT her. Jane is a Brujah fighter character… not a diplomat… but she’s very friendly even though she has fangs that won’t retract and a scar on her left cheek that is permanent. Well things went FABULOUSLY… she made a very cool contact who is going to make weapons for her by a master sword maker! Things ended around midnight, we went to the Village Idoit after wards and got home about 3am.

I made a deal with my body… If I wake up with-out an alarm in time to make it to sacred circle… I’ll go.

5. Sunday Morning: 9am- I had some really cool dreams, but in the end I had parent’s who were trying to take away 2 toys from me and my sibling… and I was maybe 7 or 8 years old in the dream… and I got so mad at them for trying to do so that it woke me up. I looked at the wall… 9am… and I could hear Laura getting around upstairs. I was wide awake… I guess the universe decided I was going to go sleep deprived for the day.

6.Sacred Circle at People House: It was a larger than normal attendance. There were 3 new faces, the rest were regulars for the most part. And PETE was there. Now Pete is not always there but he’s been coming for a long time. He’s quite a character. Normally I just laugh at how people in the circle react to him, or groan myself depending on the day and the mood I’m in. To a new person, Pete sounds somewhat enlightened, intellectual, deep even… to a person who is a bit more sensitive to energy and knows how to read people, he is obviously arrogant, with superiority issues, and completely out of touch with his ability to empathize with other human beings. BUT this group is the kind of place where he is welcome, warts & all… this is true for everybody… because one of The Circle’s main tenants is that no one tries to “FIX” anyone else. There is an acceptance for which I love the group as a whole and People House. So… Pete was in fine form and was stomping all over people’s personal buttons, for which several of us had to stew quietly and deal with ourselves and our emotional responses to Pete’s diatribe of the day. My way of dealing was to write a poem. I had energy building, and it needed to GO somewhere and the poem was a perfectly safe place for it to go. When I was done Rick, who sat to my left, asked if I was going to read it, to which I replied, simply & firmly…. “No.” Twice. So Pete pressed me again, in a way which the question was to “see” if I COULD be in the present with an off the cuff no writing, just speak it poem… My internal thought was not to throw pearls before swine, but my answer was a lot more nice than that, with a story about loosing poetry and I didn’t really want to do that. Someone pointed out that I was sidestepping… and I didn’t disagree. THAT’s when the bomb was dropped… Dave… who is an older man who’s hard of hearing… scoffed at me and Pete and everyone in the circle and said that he felt that people weren’t being real or genuine. I really didn’t expect my response. I totally emotionally lost it. I had to leave and go cry down the back hall by myself. I pride myself on being genuine and talking about the death of my poetry and how I felt about it, and how magickal it is to me is very serious. To hear from a friend that to was essentially crap… (even though it was a general statement, not a personal one) was taken personally. It was like I had no shields. I let out all the tears as silently as I could until I was able to speak and breath somewhat normally. Then I came back and sat next to Rick who patted me on the back, Laura fetched tissues, and I was asked how I was doing… I expressed how much the comment hurt and why. Pete went back to asking questions and the group was very supportive, protective… I was thanked for being so vulnerable. Funny how that subject has come up a lot for me recently. Later on Dave hugged me but we said nothing. Pete never looked at me nor sought me out afterwards. I didn’t really expect him to.
7. The Ordination of Clyde as a People House Reverend: Initially when I woke up… I had completely forgotten until I was in the Sacred Circle and it was brought up. GOOD THING THE DREAM WOKE ME UP! I really love the universe as my secretary sometimes. It was a beautiful ceremony… there was a particularly awesome pert where everyone participated in the apostolic laying on of ands. It was so cool, touching, amazing. Later on in the ceremony people were allowed to add blessings and I read my poem called Dignity & Grace (see my website for the poem @ www.poetrypoem.com/manea ) and added Clyde’s name in it. I think he was a bit overwhelmed! Then there was food, and conversation & merriment. Clyde mad a passing comment about cutting hair… but he meant shaving it with a buzzer! After a bunch of people left his wife started buzzing him, people too turns and I had to finish off the job since I do my own every week. It was a bonding moment for sure. I shared the poem with Mark (because he asked). Sat with him and Wendy… and have been enjoying getting to know them better. Then I FREAKED when I saw the time and realized I only had 30 minutes to get to the theater. I promised to help clean up in exchange for a ride…
8. The END of the Day, Malivra The Prophet, a Staged Reading by Bill Thompson:
It was a very deep and dark reading fill with poets, street people, sanity, insanity, prophecy, etc. I was overjoyed to see two of my classmates in the front row. Turns out they were confused as to if I was at the reading or at poetry, and wound up at the right place afterall! (thanks for coming ladies!) It was a very intense play.(staged reading actually)

So last week I was chewing gum and found something “hard crunchy” in it.. spit it out, didn’t think anymore on it. Then Sunday I had something stuck in my teeth, needed some floss or something to get it out… went to look in the mirror to see what I was doing and found a piece of one of my teeth was missing!

SO…

Tomorrow I will be at the Dentistry School in Aurora at 8am waiting in line with the other hopefuls to get in when they open at 9am. It’s $65 for the assessment and X-ray, and if it’s a simple tooth extraction or temporary filling, then it’s an additional $70, for a grand total of $135 due at the time of treatment.

SO…

There it is, and I’ll go from there…

Namaste’

Manea

So the director, Kat (yes ANOTHER one!), sent the email with the callback to the women she wants to read with one another to find out who is going to do what for the show.

WHOOT!! I'm in!

The call back is next Saturday, 12:30 pm

if you want to see my audition it's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITghjLzQU_E

A friend of mine who has been an actor for many years watched my audition today and told me that I did VERY well. She let me know that for only learning the lines that morning, most people don't do as well as that after a lot of training/practice.

First audition, and I nailed it...lol

Thanks for watching, reading... joining me in the adventure.

Namaste'

Manea

Check out my poetry site.... the top 20 or so are the most recent ones:

http://poetrypoem.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?sitename=manea&item=all

Please make comments and let me know what you think!

Also I will be publishing a new poetry book this year so let me know which ones you think should make it into this year's book!

Opening show is tonight! 7:30pm It's called "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever." Here is the website: http://theatre.theeproject.org/

The show runs every weekend between now and December 21st. For those of you with kids, there are 2 matinee shows Sunday Dec. 14th & 21st at 2pm Tickets are $3 off if you buy in advace at the website above. The Theater is called the West Colfax Event Center (Kipling & Colfax, next to Disguises.)

December 4th is my birthday, so I would love it if as many of you could make it next weekend (Dec.5th & 6th). I will be playing multiple roles because I am the understudy for the minister in the play that weekend.

I hope you had a great turkey day, fall break, etc... I hope to see you guys at the play and if not have happy holidays!

Namaste'

Manea

The ONLY reason I have time to write this is because I am at work… So I am just going to have to post this by bullet point because I really don’t have the time to write it all down as I want to.

1. I have been going full tilt since I got back from VA…
2. Turns out I was being influenced by my dead uncle’s feelings while I was there. To make a long story short, I got in an argument between the living and the dead over the spreading of my uncle’s ashes. In the end my Uncle Ernie (the live one) agreed to help get my Aunt Kim and my cousin Denver, to fly out to Colorado to spread the ashes… and when he announced this out loud, I felt my Uncle George be at peace.
3. I reconnected with My Aunt Tusy…she lives in South Carolina and is trying to move out to New Mexico… she gave me her and my cousin, Gigi’s numbers. That made me very happy.
4. So far, I have a 97 in my art class
5. I have a make up test for my abnormal class on Monday…
6. I am going over to Cynthia’s tonight and meet up with Rose and we are going to have our little Samhain ritual with our ancestors. Cynthia told me to choose 5 ancestors… I am leaning towards my Chinese and Philippine heritage lately, so I am going to go with that. I have a bottle of wine I have been saving since this summer, with blueberry and pomegranate. The veil between the worlds has been very thin this year and I would like some personal closure with it.
7. I have 3 rehearsals this weekend for the play, Saturday, Sunday and Monday… I have to have all of my lines memorized by Sunday.
8. Monday I have to have my 3rd art piece done, Squat… the parking angel.
9. Saturday night I am going to see the play “Haunted” which is being put on my a friend of mine. It’s the last night and it’s about haunted places in Colorado & the theater it is in is also said to be haunted… Debbie and I are going…
10. I’ve signed up for classes next semester… three are theater type classes, Acting 2, Performance with Voice (my teacher from Acting I, Dr. Wygant), and Oral interpretation with Lorraine Scott, the director of the play I am in. There is also a one point project I am doing for psychology which is going to be a literature review on Language & behavior…
11. I actually got to clean up my room and do laundry this week… mundane but a huge accomplishment for me.
12. I was totally surprised this week when I got a thank you card from a girl I was kind to in the hall a few weeks ago. She made me a darling card which said that I made a huge difference to her by giving her chocolate and a note, and that I really helped her during a very dark moment. PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS… you never know what a difference it can make.
13. I helped one of my roomies this week with some good ol’ Manea advice and it has helped make a huge difference in her communication with her SO…I was glad I could help.
14. I got to talk to Dr. Crawford’s Dream Analysis class today about my Uncle George’s death and the dream I had 4 days before he died. It sparked a lot of conversation and the class and I really enjoyed it. Doing stuff like this looks good on my Vita for grad school.
15. I posted 11 poems on my poetry website this week. I am in DIRE need of performing poetry. Things have gone downhill at the Merc for Friday night open mic and I haven’t really found something to replace it yet. I need to do more public video poetry.
16. Change is in the wind in the Psychology department… but it’s all good and about the growth and organization for the future and that we are looking to possibly look to doing masters degrees at metro if President Jordan can get approval from the state.
17. I need to get all my Sniffy the virtual rat labs done before Tuesday and study for the test in Learning on Tuesday…
18. Psi Chi is having their induction ceremony on Nov. 20th… that was one year ago for me.
19. I voted for Obama. I have hope again… but I am worried what W. is going to do before he leaves office to get things “done” before the next administration.
20. I saw the movie “changeling” with Angelina Jolie in VA… I liked it… and one of the poems I wrote and loaded up was inspired by it.

Ok so I have 50 minutes and work to get done… ttyl… thanks for reading and being my sacred witnesses.

Namaste’

Manea