November 29 – Day 73

Today was a multiple cups of coffee day. I was exhausted all morning and was even more uncoordinated than usual in ballet, but it was so worth it. Last night I witnessed the theatrical marathon that was world famous Lithuanian director, Eimuntas Nekrosius’ four and a half hour adaptation of Goethe’s Faust. It was… sick. - I am running out of adjectives! Damn it, they just do not have theatre like this in the States! - How do you explain something that churns your insides and makes you gasp for air, something that changes the rhythm of your heartbeat and makes you skip through the snow all the way home, smiling to yourself until the corners of your mouth feel as though they might pull in two? It was that moment – like falling in love for the first time, when every time you think of that person the floorboards of your insides fall out, when you giggle spontaneously to yourself and have the uncontrollable urge to jump up and down on your bed squealing with delight. It was that moment, only it wasn’t about a lover. It was a play and it killed me a little. Seriously, how did I get here? How did I get this opportunity? What did I do right and can I thank someone, somewhere a million times over for showing me what this life could be like? The play was difficult. It was epic and it demanded the utmost attention. It was highly stylized and yet completely destructured. It challenged conventional images and conventional storytelling but was still precise and accessible. If it is not obvious already, this trip has been one giant metaphor for me and every time I think I get it, every time I think the world is clear, I see something else and develop a sea of new questions. This art is hard. This life is hard. This thing called love is hard. But if love were easy people would have gotten bored with it a long time ago and we would never know what it means soar over the rest of the world carried by that first time high.