I'm not really functioning at the moment. I keep staring at the screen and failing to actually come up with a full thought to put down. What am I thinking about? I'm sad to be leaving here. i've really grown attached to Vilnius. With all it's faults and backwardsness and annoyances it's still lively and charming. And funny. And i really would like to come back. Maybe open up a hotdog stand. I said goodbye to the cast last night. We had dinner and i introduced them to Tequila, which they all seemed to enjoy. They gave me a couple gifts and they cried--neither of which i expected. one of the actors told me that he felt that I was truly a great actor. i have no idea what he was basing this on, but he seemed amazingly sincere about it. It's a quirky place with quirky people. And I value quirky. Sure you want to slap the collective city around sometimes, but, that's just part of the deal.

I like the pace here. it is slow. mellow. and there's just a comfort about that. Which surprised me. I've lived my life beying ambitios and impatient and angry, and to be immersed into a place which is so totally opposite of that whole manner of living is...theraputic.

I dream here. literally. When i sleep usually, I have no rememberances of any dream. none. and here i do. I rob banks. I go camping. I run races. i have fantastic fights. And sail. And save people. And it's wonderful.

I've been reading books here--easily, comfortably. I often lack the patience and focus to read. or else i go on a rampage and forcefully rip through books at great speed--not really enjoying them. probably not even really absorbing them. But conquering them.

Yesterday I finnished this david mammet book on acting called true and false. And it struck me what he said about good acting it true about life too. (it isn't the first time I've realized the two are closely linked, but it's the first time in a while). the words he used: simply, honestly and bravely--they struck me this time. I've often searched for strength or power in my life--it's a bad habit, i know. It's an angry habit, and i have no idea where it started. But simplicity and honesty yields great strength. And I don't think it ever occured to me to live my life that way before. And maybe I'm babelling. And maybe I'm being overly dramatic. but it just felt like a great big smack upside the head to me. freeing. And it's beautiful. And I just want to share it.

In Annie Hall, Woody Allen says that there are only 2 states life can be in: the horrible and the miserable--you should be happy when you are only miserable. i like that line, and i try not to agree with it. But for all the time that I have been miserable, and the occasianal times when my life has been horrible, i can't help but think that maybe i just needed a vacation. I think it's an American fallicy that there are many ways to unwind--there aren't. There are many ways to repreive, to delay, to ignore, but to unwind, to actually make progress in allieviating the stress and confusion and and mire that we cary with us, there is no substitute for space and time in an environment that doesn't constantly make us think of our own lives. It's amazingly simple like that. And so hard to do. I may never be able to stay at another job for longer than 9 months. 2 days a week and 10 days a year is the bare minimum of free time needed to avoid complete insanity. And life is just too short for that.

No trip to Lithuania is complete without that one good "time I got arrested" story. Luckily I've been able to take care of mine. That's right. I got arrested in Lithuania. How cool is that?

Okay, so US got a serious ass-whoopin' by Poland. They're still winning this thing. i mean, it's just the world cup. And, i mean, it's only soccer. We're winning it. It's all part of the strategy. We like being the underdog. We like being underestimated. Because then it hurts even more when we take you down. We don't just like winning, we like it to sting. We don't play the whole, whiny-boy, frilly, style-points, BS Soccer. We play like americans. Run fast, kick hard, play hurt. Why? Because THAT'S how you do that. Reinventing the sport like only americans could. You're watching history here people. History.

Watch Mexico go down like a 2-peso Tiajuana whore tomorrow.

(Now try to picture how well this kinda talk goes over with the Lithuanian people. it's hillarious.)

Oh, and I'll be living with TMFSanders when I get back.

Also, USA is going to beat the pants off Poland in World Cup action tomorrow and advance to the next round. The US team is so badass. Wait, am I actually paying attention to soccer? What's up with that? GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooal!!!!

hehe.

Lithuania is a strange place. Vilnius is very familiar somehow--less foreign than Poland, even. It's a lot like a small city in Pennsylvania that you just accidently overlooked that was settled 600 some years ago with cobblestone streets and where they aren't into lawn care. They speak Lithuanian here one of two surviving Baltic languages--very old, and very complicated to learn and speak--they basically conjigate every word in a sentence into one of 16 some forms, and then add conjugated prefixes at the front to, you know, further complicate it. But I do like listening to it--it sounds like a language, surprisingly enough, and it can really be pretty.

The cities in Lithuania (well, the two I've seen) are very laid back and cultured. Good restaurants and Cafe's. All the best clothing and cosmetics shops. Nice relaxed happy people. It's very enjoyable--very familiar somehow. But then there's a lot of the have nots--the older culture that survived comfortably under communist reign, that can't figure out how to navigate capitalism. Lots of old ladies begging (their pensions cancelled by a government trying to improve itself rapidly without sufficient funds), a shocking number of people living at the dump, children pulling cons on the street. And there's a lot of people who get by just barely.

But change is painful. And that's always going to be true. On the upside, you see money pouring into the cities to take advantage of the great opportunity here. (And there is amazing opportunity for prosperity). The future looks very prosperous for this country and these people. And you try not to look too closely at those who got trampled on the way. As sad and sickening as that is.

And maybe the pace. That really laid back way that things get done--slowly, casually--maybe that too will be a victim of the shift. Maybe we'll see people working too much and running arround in SUVs in a few years. It isn't hard to immagine. I hate to think that that is the destiny for every city on the planet--that there isn't room for diversity and a spectrum of life choices--but maybe that's just wishful thinking. Maybe Human's Nature, driven by competition and greed is in direct opposition to entropy. Maybe people just heat up. Bouncing off each other with more and more collisions at smaller and smaller intervals.

Hopefully not. But I'm not placing bets.

The play is kinda sorta falling apart. Or rather, it is becomming not a play. It will be a series of dances. And nothing more. Because we can't get even one rehearsal with everyone there. And it's aggrivating. And I know it's a contradiction to my whole rant above, but it's an example how you can be too laid back. Half the cast comes to work, and they are serious and good about the work they do, but the other half...well, isn't. They don't call and say they won't be there either--they just don't show up. And it's nothing short of painful. You can't plan around it. And you can't work through stuff, only to have to rework it 2 or 3 more times when the other people decide to show. And Paul and I shake our heads. And we stare at everyone in disbelief. Because we know that we are not the ones that will be on stage in a week and a half. We will not be embarrassed (at least not publically). And we look to try and see some small glimmer of panic in their faces, and there is none. And it's just the way it is here.

Sweeden will have to wait a week--the performance date changed. But it will be great when I do get there.

For some reason, when I try to post, things crash.

Then I leave so I don't go on a rampage in the Lithuanian internet cafe.

Things are amazingly good. Jazz fest last weekend in Kleipeda--a 750 year old city on the Baltic Sea. Stockholm next week. The play is comming together nicely, albeit slowly.

Praying this posts.

Miss you all. Z.