Random - Chicago Theater

So I went to a play that a good friend was performing in last night. I hadn't seen her perform in over two years. She is tall and regal and beautiful in her subtleties on stage.

But I couldn't get over the theater they performed in. It was a renovated funeral home. Except it wasn't that renovated. They still had the long stand that they put the caskets on for viewings. They just put some cushions on it for a bench in the lobby before the doors opened. You could totally tell it was a funeral home. One big long room pretty much made up the whole of the building.

And get this: we went backstage after the show and the dressing room is a small, narrow room in the back of the building with tile floors and a long table with a lip around the edge. And a drain that goes to the floor, where there is another drain. It's the room where they embalmed the bodies. The table they used was still there. No freaking kidding. I couldn't get over this.

For some reason, I found it more interesting and amusing than morbid or creepy. Perhaps you will find this weird, but Michael and I love to go walk through cemeteries. We do it during the day, and we love picking the cemeteries that are really beautiful (like the one across from the Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie). One of the things I love about cemeteries here in Chicago is that little ways that people chose to commemorate the dead often portray the culture or demographic that they were. Asian or Spanish or Italian. We are always surrounded by life and death, and all of us together, in a mixing pot. I think it's beautiful.

I'm not your Emily Dickenson or anything, but I think acknowledging the dead and the lives they lived, even if it's summed up in one epitaph on their tombstone is important. It helps put things in perspective, and it helps me feel better about dieing myself one day.

Lastly, this past week was Day of the Dead. I really think it's a beautiful holiday. So I wanted to share some Etsy DoD works of art.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59195841/frida-kahlo-dia-de-muertos-skull-flowers

http://www.etsy.com/listing/59278008/dia-de-muertos-reproduction-from

http://www.etsy.com/listing/49249075/day-of-the-dead-still-life-with-poppies

http://www.etsy.com/listing/49031349/dia-de-los-muertos-card

Random Angle

So I follow about 15 blogs. Almost all of them are people I know personally or by second degree. But there are two blogs that I happened across once and was charmed enough to favorite them. As I was perusing through my blogs today I noticed that one of the two that I don't know was writing his last post. Rather, his wife was writing the post for him. He had died of cancer, rather unexpectedly from what I understand, just a few days before. I was shocked at how unexpected and terrible this was, and was deeply saddened by it. Even though I didn't know him at all, I just knew a few of his writings, it still affected me.

As all life affects us, I believe. Whether we know a person or not, thier story or brief encounter with us can change us. I deal with this every day, working at a psychological center. I am the person that a new client first talks to when coming to our center. And before that client can make an appointment, I have to know why they are seeking therapy. After talking to hundreds of clients over the past year, I have been trying to figure out how I might be able to learn or grow from these stories. Hundreds of stories. Each one different, each one with sorrow and pain, and each one seeking help. I feel honored, in a sense, that they could talk to someone that they know absolutely nothing about, and tell that person their deepest secrets on the first conversation. That is certainly something I would have trouble doing.