Loading...There comes a point in planning any trip where you look at the map of where you’re going and realise that soon all that laminated plastic will be concrete and stone in front of you and the reality of what you are about to do becomes nearly overwhelming. I remember before I drove, or rather was driven, around the country right after college unfolding the gigantic map of the US and highlighting routes throughout it, swimming in the endless depths of the continent in front of me astounded that I would soon be seeing it unfold in front of me for real. I had a similar moment when I was trying to identify the best route from the airport to our hotel in Venice and was staring at the Streetwise map trying to make some sense of the odd series of numbers and letters and colors which describe the nautical public transit route. Suddenly, as I traced the question mark of the Grand Canal with my finger, my stomach filled with butterflies as I realized that, before the month is out, I will have been to and returned from this impossible city suspended on it’s rotting wooden poles and the mixed blessing of a tourist economy. All the destinations that now only exist as markings on the map will exist as moments in my mind and I will be able to say that this is somewhere I have been, this is something I have seen, this is a place that I can claim in some insignificant way as my own. I’ll be a little older and a little broker and maybe know something about the world that I don’t already or maybe my feet will just hurt and I’ll have some cool pictures of glorious urban decay. At any rate, expectation will give way to experience and I’ll be on to the next thing- as impossible as it is to imagine now. Meanwhile, we have a list on the fridge that seems to get no smaller and a list of projects at work that will require coverage and the days on the calendar keep getting replaced with big red X’s as Valentine’s Day and our flight to Frankfurt grow nearer. The one advantage of a life in theatre, though, is the sure knowledge that, no matter what, the day will come when the curtain goes up and everything comes out in the wash one way or the other. Mostly, I’m so f*cking excited I can hardly breathe.
