It’s So Quiet: An Ode to Timestamps
Part of the Invisible Diaries series:
Week 6 / Day 4
I was super slow getting up and moving today, unfortunately. I woke up at 5:15am and then proceeded to lay there for another half-hour, before relocating to the couch to check some early-morning emails on my phone. I finally decided to get up around 6:40am to take our dog, Chloe (or Chloe-Monster, as I like to call her), outside. I got on the treadmill, showered, and put on some make-up on my face – there are a lot of web-based events, meetings etc. that I need to attend today.
It is now 9:11am. I have been in front of my computer for about thirty minutes. There is the hum of varying electrical things drawing power, but it is very quiet – there is nothing to keep me company but a spunky red squirrel we named “Lenny”, who is trying to steal birdseed from our deck. I have at least another hour or so of this utter peace before my spouse gets up and it’s Chloe’s breakfast time. Saying that just made me realize that I have had nothing that resembles coffee or breakfast yet. I need to fix that…
Okay. Now it is 9:28am. I have my coffee and breakfast, and I am indulging my bad habit of eating and working at the same time. I want to try and get through some emails before a Zoom reading of some plays written during the semester by students in the playwriting. I am supposed to be in two places at the same time: this reading and (coincidentally enough) a dramaturgs’ network event.
I sat down to watch the plays and then switched over to the d’n event. Attending that event was interrupted by an LMDA situation I needed to take care of so…
…moving on to putting out fires!
Fast forward and it is now over twelve hours since I started writing this post (9:21pm to be exact).
The rest of my day became a mess of meetings and phone calls. Some of the highlights were an impromptu conversation with dramaturg Mark Bly, a conversation with one of my Theatre Studies students at SUNY New Paltz, an LMDA 2020 Conference meeting, and ALL THE GROCERY SHOPPING. Ugh… that is my least favorite thing to do now. So, of course, we wait until we need ALL OF THE THINGS – which then means we are out shopping for groceries for 3 hours. I hope we don’t have to do that again anytime soon. I see people without masks and I cringe.
I am tired, and tomorrow is going to be a long day: first meeting at 8:30am, last meeting ends at 6pm… with a thirty-minute break somewhere around 11:30am. So, I am going to leave you all with a picture from the drive back home from the grocery store. This stretch of road (28 in the Hudson Valley, going from Kingston towards Woodstock) sometimes feels like the longest road ever, and sometimes it goes really quick. It is such a strange road – trees, businesses, trees. And normally it is busy – but, in the Covid-19 era, it now looks like this:
Martine Kei Green-Rogers is an Assistant Professor at SUNY New Paltz and President of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.
Her dramaturgical credits include: The Greatest with the Louisville Orchestra; Four Women Talking about the Man under the Sheet and Silent Dancer at Salt Lake Acting Company; Fences and One Man, Two Guvnors at Pioneer Theatre Company; Clearing Bombs and Nothing Personal at Plan-B Theatre; Sweat at the Goodman; productions of King Hedley II, Radio Golf, Five Guys Named Moe, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Gem of the Ocean, Waiting for Godot, Iphigenia at Aulis, Seven Guitars, The Mountaintop, Home and Porgy and Bess at Court Theatre; The Clean House at CATCO; Hairspray, Shakespeare in Love, UniSon, Hannah and the Dread Gazebo, Comedy of Errors, To Kill A Mockingbird, The African Company Presents Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream and Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Headshot photograph by Joe Mazza.
Other photography courtesy of Martine Kei Green-Rogers.