Norfolk, VA.

June 23, 2010. Norfolk has been lovely. The city, yes – I will talk endlessly about this city if prompted, so maybe don’t do that – but this trip in particular has been absolutely necessary. It has been spiritually cleansing and reaffirming. And also liquor-soaked.The hotel room, as I have been thinking of it and calling it, isn’t a hotel room at all, but actors’ quarters for the transient professional actors who come through Virginia Stage Company. This entire honeymoon party (eight of us) have been able to stay here because of our good friend Julie Franklin, who works as an ASM (or perhaps as an SM, I’m not exactly sure. It’s also possible she’s an MS, an SMA, and possibly an SAM, although I’m pretty sure that it is I who am SAM, and I have some really disgusting food to aggressively sell you.) And the food! Remarkable. I love shellfish, and I have been swimming in it. Both literally and figuratively, I guess – the water off the bay is very warm, and I escaped getting sunburnt only by the grace of a full-body radiation suit.

Have you tried Rogue’s Chipotle Ale? It is a great first beer of the evening, and a not-so-great last beer of the evening. I will advertise:

I lost my brand-new sunglasses because I am fundamentally a horrible person. The upshot, however, is that the process of tearing apart the room looking for them led me to a miniature diary that was behind the dresser. At first I thought it was a passport, but no – a cursory inspection of the first page let me know that this was some person’s private notebook and that the right thing to do was to return it to the dust and shadows.So I read it cover-to-cover. And back again.

It is beautiful. I feel horrible, prying this way – particularly since there was just enough information there for me to find out who this person is (she’s an actress living in NY and LA, and yes I’m going to mail it back to her. Anonymously, though.) But she tells a story of the last day of one of her relationships, and the story is just achingly beautiful in its sadness and its weird symmetry. I want to include this scene in something, certainly in a modified form, and I am soliciting suggestions as to whether or not this is ridiculously inappropriate.

I am also soliciting suggestions for a tattoo. I have finally committed to getting one at the ripe old age of 100 gazillion. It will happen this summer. Rachel has suggested something mythological, as that seems to be what I tattoo all my plays with. Mara suggested a quill. Brian suggested a wine logo. I’m not sold on any of these ideas, although if I could find something that was mythological and visually interesting, I might do that.

There is more, there is always much much more, but I’ll stop here. I have so many things to say right now I might break whatever words I try to use. Tomorrow, however, I will be back home and back to the daily grind, which is comforting.Little by little. Meanwhile there is this, which was in a storefront window on the way to breakfast this morning:

(UPDATE: Sunglasses were lost, and now they are found. All is as it should be.)