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.