Gratitude: 2024!

Folks,

Life continues to be dingdong nonsense (in a mostly-positive way, personally!) and so this blog has been moribund. I'm fixin' to get a better handle on my schedule in the new year - some better boundary-setting around work, some better habits in my down time, less "setting up a home AND 20 hours of language study a week AND cultural adaptation, AND big old research project" and more "sometimes listen to music and journal and cut together video and blog and whatnot." But y'know, this blog is a testament to intentions gone unfulfilled, so we'll just see about that.

Til then, though, it's time for my favorite tradition over the past 8 years or so, which is: a year-end list of moments or articles of gratitude that linger with me! As always, it's a not terribly organized/methodical "what comes to mind" list (sometimes prompted by glances at my calendar or book-of-days, sometimes just what emerges when I let my mind wander freely) but I like the annual marker of things for which I want to retain my gratitude even when, as in 2023, a year can be truly awful as much as it is anything else. After the jump: many things!

1. Seeing an email about the postdoctoral fellowship I'd applied to, opening the PDF on the linked page, and feeling a mild panic response as I realized I hadn't prepared to get the award.
2. Minutes later, video calling Jenny on WhatsApp, assuming her phone would be off; she woke up and her blend of half-asleep joy and disbelief and confusion and overwhelm will live in my memory for e'er.
3. King's Day, early January, deciding to go to bed early as we were suffering from jetlag, and then hearing music approaching from down the street, gradually realizing that the Poblenou King's Day parade was passing right by our window - an early exposure to the celebrate-in-the-streets culture of what would become my home town later this year
4. A rhyming memory: leaving our home in Nou Barris in May to march along with the correfocs to close out the weeklong neighborhood fiesta. Watching kids dance under umbrellas of fire, grooving to the drum corps' rhythms, covering our faces as fireworks shot directly into the crowd. Joy.
5. Beachside fireworks for Mercé (on the heels of a downtown correfoc with more smartphones than fireworks, hooray for Tourism)
6. Ordering lunch at our corner cafe and receiving a friendly slap on the back from our server, who has since become a "hi, how ya doin'?" pal in the neighborhood
7. Our favored cafeteria owner's good-natured ribbing at my terrible-but-not-bad-for-three-months-of-study Spanish
8. Our favored cafeteria owner offering us umbrellas for the walk home when it started raining, saying we could just bring them back the next time we stopped by
9. Walking into a theatre scholar's home for an introduction to the history of musical theatre in Barcelona, faced with an envy-inducing wall of books and a fabulously comprehensive improvised lecture
10. Delivering my own little baby lecture on musical theatre history in America to an eager, generous audience of performing and visual arts students from an area high school, figuring out in real time how to navigate the task and having a few bonus conversations afterward around careers in theatre
11. A too-short but thoroughly-delightful coffee with Barcelona's unofficial archivist of musical theatre (and organizer of the local musical theatre awards), getting another perspective on the post-Franco history of the scene. Toni rules, let's hang out with Toni more in 2025!
12. Shrinking into my chair with a big fat swollen heart as one of my students interrupted curtain call at LMC's spring musical to deliver a valediction to me as I prepared for this shift overseas. Teaching is madness, and community college teaching is its own (imo thrilling-at-least-in-the-classroom) form of madness, but holy cow if you want a job where the sense that you're making a difference can counterbalance all the administrative nonsense... teach, you pickles, teach.
13. Having our first standalone Acting 2 cohort ask if they could do a full-class enesemble Chekhov scene in addition to their partner scenes for the semester-ending showcase performance, and watching them all play and explore and bounce off each other with a growing sense of engagement and spontaneity. NEAT!
14. There are too many scattered memories of this throughout the spring of 2024 to count, but seeing students in rehearsal or acting class suddenly trying things out, embracing the Anne-Bogart-embarrassment-embracing ethos... it's good, folks
15. Relatedly, learning how many graduated students came back to support their old classmates, or how students picked each other up during challenging moments - having started teaching during the 3-students-in-an-acting-class post-pandemic rebuild era, realizing that we've built a culture for the department has been a slow-dawning source of joy this year.
16. A long early-January walk from Altafulla down to Tarragona with Jenny, Ferran and Natasha, full of life conversations, nature, contemplation, a SLIGHTLY miserable mile or two of full-sun exposure down an objectively-lovely beach, and a moment when I got myself turned around and had to leap over a gap on a ledge over the sea. Big no thanx 2 gap-leaps imo.
17. Meeting Jenny's godson and his siblings/cousins at a massive gingerbread-house-building gathering, getting to swap language practice in the absolute first stages of "Pat needs to get his act together to get over here"
18. The absolute fastest overnight in NYC visiting the Slovakian embassy (don't worry about it) and getting to see Monica and Dan and their outrageously wonderful kid Bryn. PALS IS GOOD TIMES FOREVER!!
19. A frenetic spring break trip to Barcelona, signing a lease and helping Jenny move her things into what would become our place.
20. First time seeing Jenny performing onstage in Catalan (she was sick as a dog but great FOR THE RECORD)
21. Getting to see the production of Our Town that Jenny was performing in last fall when Kat passed (they dedicated a performance to her, something that still makes me cry!) and having the play that I know so well wash over me with a fresh shape thanks to a more European "what if we take it apart and put it back together" approach. Who knew Wilder played well with Kae Tempest?
22. A whirlwind trip to San Francisco/Oakland to see Chris and Torie in the spring, knowing it could be a while before I get to revisit that land that I love so much, and see my brother on his own turf.
23. A too-short (theme for the year!) but very-rich reconnection with my friend Nicole and her husband David, cooing over their gorgeous garden and laughing nervously about how buying a home in the bay area means you really do have to think about growing your own food to make ends meet...
24. Helping our amazing lighting designer for the spring show strike lights, talking about my grant and the direction of the program, grateful to have some time to BE grateful about having a pro-of-a-pro in to help show how it's done
25. Sitting on the stage while chatting with John, one of the largest-hearted guys it's been my fortune to know, and a total rock star of a scenic designer of these past couple of years, as we discuss what a nightmare The Lightning Thief is to stage
26. Signing the paperwork to transfer ownership of my car back to my parents. Friends: the car-free lifestyle is a mercy for which there is MUCH to be grateful!
    
27. A dazed long-layover sojourn in the Istanbul airport, downing Turkish coffee and guzzling savory treats while reflecting on the pivotal shift I was in the midst of taking.
28. A jetlagged morning intently assembling a record player and stereo setup for quiet mornings of no screens (typing this is reminding me to have more such mornings)
29. Waking up in our place in Barcelona, padding out to the living room while Jenny slept in, and walking out to our miniature euro-style balconies overlooking the plaça below, in wonderment at the kids playing, parents having coffee at outdoor tables, and old folks out for walks catching up on life. Oh I missed city life.
30. First visit to the Mercantic in Sant Cugat, browsing idly with Jenny as we sussed out how our aesthetics fit around each other's and worked out how to slowly put together a place that feels like us
31. Surprising Jenny with some replacement shelves for the curb-picked bookshelf that is already busting at the seams (and with more books incoming from this Christmas trip, big whoops to us)
32. Wandering the streets of Girona, thinking of my dad as I saw the swim of cyclists and cycle-shops (and anti-tourist-cyclists graffiti!) and eagerly anticipating his and mom's visit to come.
33. Jenny racing to join me at Furiosa, and a long walk home post-movie chatting about the wild vision of George Miller
34. Back in the states for visa purposes, a whirlwind hug-and-hot-dogs stop with Kate and Stuart and their family - a shockingly successful stop for a post-flight jetlag-swamped trip with two (2) small kids in tow. PALS IS GOOD.
35. Chatting with my barber of... must be almost a decade at this point, breaking the news that I was shifting from "I'll get a haircut whenever I'm back from Michigan" to "well I'm gonna be in Spain now..." and realizing how lovely it is when people who don't have to be excited for you are excited for you!
    
36. A more recent pre-Christmas memory: Jenny meeting my beloved old boss Brian (still the best I expect to ever have) and getting the best, most amazing life-upload updates, even if it's profoundly illegal that he has children who are both out of college AND getting married.
37. My first €3 screening of a film at the Filmoteca Catalunya. Arts funding: IT IS NICE ON SO MANY LEVELS
38. Mnemonic at the National Theatre. Transporting and urgent and a joy of a thing.  (Echoed weeks later with The Years at the Almeida, which was shattering and cathartic and wonderful.)
    
39. My improvised London film festival bopping between the BFI Southbank and Prince Charles Cinema sucking up as much cinema as I could handle in a week or two of solo time before Jenny joined me. (Full-day Soviet War and Peace? Hating Last Year at Marienbad but mostly loving Celine and Julie Go Boating? Loathing Wild at Heart? Swooning in memory and sensation at 35mm Moulin Rouge and 70mm Lawrence of Arabia? Ticking off more Tarr with The Man from London? Falling hard for Charulata? IS FILM CULTURE GOOD???)
40. Westminster Evensong, thinking of dad and mom yet again, and only realizing as we stood to file out that I was sitting directly beneath David Garrick's memorial stone
41. So many London memories that it's hard to break them apart: St John's for a casual but delicious lunch, several off-the-charts Indian meals, and the pure joy of long walks through the city
42. The realization around the table at orientation that these fellow scholars were all brilliant, and all incredibly down to earth, generous, curious, unassuming good people. Instantaneous love for a crowd who live where my heart likes to live.
43. CASTELLERS SEMIFINALS IN TARRAGONA. Going from "this is terrifying and I don't understand the scoring rules" to "interesting strategy, I obviously would have built four towers of six people instead but you do you" over the course of an afternoon. (It never stops being terrifying for the record.)
    
44. Italy with Jenny's family is jam-packed with too many memories, but watching sunsets while eating rustic/delicious dinners up in the mountains is the ambient memory that is gonna stick for AGES. Stack that up with a late-night walk with Jenny from Trevi back to our hotel in Rome. Holy smokes this year is a legit embarrassment of riches.

There is so much more that I could get into here: an amazing Spanish intensive teacher from Mallorca this summer, who taught the invaluable lesson that "In Spanish, courtesy is implied," working with a student mentee on his college applications, meeting the incredible people working with the embassy and cultural/educational programs, seeing two of the musicals I'll be writing about as part of my research fellowship, getting to know the amazing archivist at the Institut del Teatre, attending the musical theatre awards and landing two seats over from the woman who won best libretto, presenting/workshop-leading at a mediterannean research conference, running two 10ks, Friendsgiving, hosting pals for dinners at home... But I've already broken my rule about "one memory per year I've been alive," and am very grateful to realize I don't think that's going to get harder as time goes by.

Obviously, there is much to be angry, grieving, and actively on the warpath about as we flip into 2025 - personally, politically, globally, ecologically, you name it - but I am grateful to have this habit of refilling my gratitude tanks, to realize that a year can deliver an absolute overload of gifts even in seasons that I remember feeling stressed and miserable during. And I am mindful that keeping these tanks full, and keeping this mentality active and alive, is what we all need in order to fight down the absolute creeps and monsters who want to deform the world, who thrive on despair, and who rejoice in agony. Let's whomp em good, and let's indulge in the rebellious practice of joy along the way. Remember: the Nazis loathed the leftists who made delighfully fizzy comedies that ridiculed them, not just because of their political content, but because joy in the face of fascism puts the lie to its hateful deceptions.

On to the new year. Love to y'all, and more (PERHAPS, PENDING HONESTY) soon!