Crawling out of the smoking crator of my rage...

Wow, yesterday was a bad day. An angry, upset, yelling kind of day. Apologies to anyone whose feelings I hurt by focusing my rage on that Facebook breast cancer meme. But yesterday was not a good day for that meme to be in my world. Due to certain things I've had to deal with recently, I am a little too aware of cancer, thank you.

So, on to nicer things. It occurred to me the other day that despite my ravenous need for protein, there are not many forms of non-animal protein that I like. You'd think with the particular quirks of my metabolism any and all protein would be glommed up, but while I guess I can eat these things, I don't really enjoy them, and I don't feel satisfied afterward. Still, I am trying to experiment with reducing my meat intake at least a little for the sake of the environmental and of my pocketbook. Having failed to really enjoy soy, lentils, or really any kind of bean, I have turned to chickpeas to see if I can teach myself to like them. I found a recipe on Stonesoup called Butter Chickpeas that seemed like it might taste like my favorite Indian dish, chicken tikka masala. I didn't have garam masala, though, so I had to make it myself out of various spices I had in my cabinet that I knew garam masala often contains. Don't know how different it was from the intended dish, but while it didn't come out too badly, it wasn't what I wanted. I did a little research and found out that it was a spin on Butter Chicken, which is a dish similar to and commonly mistaken for tikka masala. Which explains it, and makes me want to find a real tikka masala sauce recipe to cook chickpeas in, because that I think I could get behind.

Also, have sought comfort in blog-reading, including some I haven't checked out in a long time. I remember why I stopped reading Tomato Nation. Back when I started reading as a little nipper all the way back in, like, 1999, her entries on this humor pop-culture-and-quirks-of-life blog used to be all essays-- I called her an "essayist" way back when I didn't know the term "blogger" --posted once weekly. And I read faithfully all through that time. But by about 2007, they started becoming little snippets of stuff and less like complete, coherent pieces. More like a personal blog, which I guess the site was, than like a column, which I kind of wanted it to be. Not that they weren't interesting, but they were usually way shorter, less substantial, and harder to follow. I dropped off not long after that point. I'm trying to give it another try for old time's sake, and I still enjoy the old essays, but the new still is a little tougher to get into.

And that's all the positivity I can must for now.

Antigonus as Leontes's punching bag, emotionally and physically

I have developed a character trait for Antigonus that I really feel is helping build him. His role is often the person who wants to do the right thing, but wants to maintain respectful and correct behavior in the course of doing it as much as possible-- while his wife Paulina is the hothead, who is willing to throw all propriety to the winds in the service of standing up for the right, Antigonus is more moderate, more concerned about the consequences of rash action. Therefore he must be a steady, reliable personality with a kind of inner strength, and I wanted a way to portray that.

I had a gut instinct that in our scenes of confrontation that Leontes should shove me around and rough me up, which I should take without resistance or complaint. I realized I wanted Antigonus, in keeping with his explicit actions in the rest of the play, to be the one who tries to absorbs all Leontes's acting out on his bad feeling, so as to protect other people from having to do it.

Have you ever found moments in your life where you were doing really badly, and you had a person that you seemed to take out all your bad feeling on because they felt safer than anyone else? Like, you want to vent your upset somehow, and if you did it to anyone else, they would resent you and judge you for it, but that one person you knew would bear the mistreatment and be able to forgive you for it? I want my Antigonus to be that person for Leontes. He sort of offers himself to be Leontes's punching bag, both physical and emotional, so that other people who cannot bear it as well will not be victims of it. He feels that if the king has to vent his rage somewhere, he is the safest target for it, and better him than Paulina, or the child.

So when I am in the scene with Leontes's upset, we have been having him manhandle and push me around, because Antigonus will not shove his liege lord back, and will not condemn him for it afterward. Even in the state he is in, he will not just physically hurt a woman, or a baby, so Antigonus becomes the only acceptable target. And Antigonus is willing to bear it to spare the others. I feel like it dovetails nicely with his willingness to sacrifice himself to save the child. He is the sort who puts himself forward as the one to absorb all the strife and suffering so that others do not.

It feels pretty good. It feels like it fills out the character for me.