"Everything starts today."
-- Guster, "Keep It Together"
--
Last week, our fearless director got a piece of metal lodged in his foot, pried it out, and then took a canoe trip. Apparently the wound had not closed yet, and the red streaks that appeared yesterday meant there was some kind of septic infection, which took him out of rehearsal early last night...and prevented him from coming in today. We rehearsed with our touring manager in the AM and the artistic director in the PM, which can always be a good or bad thing (pshaw, you know directors...). It turned out to be a good thing: Hems and haws were hemmed and hacked, bilked blocking unclogged, the smoothest surfaces wiped clean and buffed. Re-opening fresh wounds is better than picking at old ones.
Plus,--always a plus, friends--we finished early.
And yet, no matter how damn good we get, the fluffy shapes on the drops, the gawky costumes and hokey music (sounds like an 80's teenager playing with synthesizers and Midi, the grand ol' ClipArt of sound) jolt us back from thoughts of art and remind us: It's children's theatre. Get the laughs, old man, and do your prats and bric-a-bracs, pop in and out like it's your job, ha ha, and in the end, put smiles on invisible faces...
...And be sure to collect your paycheck on Friday. Ha-cha!
--
There's a crazy fireworks show on the river this Sunday, I hear, though there is danger in the water.
Watched Memento and a Philip Seymour Hoffman flick called Owning Mahowny last night. Good stuff, need I say more. Got some Liz Taylor, Jeff Daniels, and Emma Thompson (et al) on the docket for this afternoon and tonight, tomorrow and the holiday, with microwavables and boilables to keep me going: improvements on impoverishment.
Here's to two days of freedom, a three-day weekend, and one week of work.
--
I wonder if the best people in life are the ones who stay near to you all the time, or the ones who you'll forget for now and remember in ten years when you all end up living in the same block of blocks. Maybe they're just the ones you don't have to call every once in a while to know how they're doing. Or maybe they're the ones who will make you feel like no time has passed the next time you clink beers. I wonder, and I don't know.
Is there such a thing as a deist friend, a clockmaker who ticks your relationship into pendulum hum-drum, walks away in the trust of time, then comes back to tweak, to tick and talk?
(What? I need a weekend.)
8.30.2008
8.29.2008
Wallet
"...he's a basement man..."
-- Stephen King, On Writing, about the true identity and locale of the Muse
--
My wallet is bursting at its leftmost seam. No, not from cash, but from receipts, business cards of places I want to frequent (and, you know, call manically), and age. If the wallet is really a metaphor for a person's means, well, the opposite is true, I suppose: Stuff tends to escape rather than coalesce and burst, and my metaphorical wallet is imploding. To mix the metaphor, let's say it's dying of hunger, or running on an almost-empty tank. To complicate the matter, let's add my car into the jumble, for it is my car, in fact, that has an almost-empty tank, and it is the dying wallet who has dropped the ball, if I may add another layer.
(Boo-hoo, I'm poor. Whatever. I do this for the art.)
At the end of the week, I've got a wasted wallet, an echoey gas tank and a set of dropped balls. Hooah...
--
Now with library memberships in Ohio and Kentucky, AND a newborn Netflix account, my life will soon be filled with movies. With a future like Memento and There Will Be Blood, catching up on flicks seems wonderful.
-- Stephen King, On Writing, about the true identity and locale of the Muse
--
My wallet is bursting at its leftmost seam. No, not from cash, but from receipts, business cards of places I want to frequent (and, you know, call manically), and age. If the wallet is really a metaphor for a person's means, well, the opposite is true, I suppose: Stuff tends to escape rather than coalesce and burst, and my metaphorical wallet is imploding. To mix the metaphor, let's say it's dying of hunger, or running on an almost-empty tank. To complicate the matter, let's add my car into the jumble, for it is my car, in fact, that has an almost-empty tank, and it is the dying wallet who has dropped the ball, if I may add another layer.
(Boo-hoo, I'm poor. Whatever. I do this for the art.)
At the end of the week, I've got a wasted wallet, an echoey gas tank and a set of dropped balls. Hooah...
--
Now with library memberships in Ohio and Kentucky, AND a newborn Netflix account, my life will soon be filled with movies. With a future like Memento and There Will Be Blood, catching up on flicks seems wonderful.
8.28.2008
Haven
"...anything that has light does not belong to me."
-- Jose Saramago, Blindness
--
The Cinci libraries are becoming my refugee camps, and like a native displaced, I roam for comfort and provisions to get me through the boredom occupation. Not that the place isn't hopping--it's just that I'm not. I'm okay with that, really, as long as there's a clean, well-lighted place I can go and chill and get books and movies for free. A library is a college without classes, a bookstore without prices, a coffeeshop without caffeine. No offense, Blockbuster and Borders, but the casa de libros saves me and my funds. La casa es mi casa, or something like that.
What I mean to say is, I got myself a card at the Main Branch (a classy joint), smeared signature on the back strip and all, and I may or may not have just checked out five DVDs.
--
Late-night snacked at Skyline last night with Sara before she left for Chi-Town, and the upcoming weekends are filling up: Saturday forays are in the works, escapades to Dayton, Columbus, and Lexington, a kind of friendly Bermuda Triangle. Knowing cities is like knowing friends or knowing books on your shelf. Or, you know, local library branches.
--
Shot north from Kentucky after rehearsal last night and found myself at the dumbass end of a major delay. Some poor wretches had flipped cars into each other about a mile up the road, just past a series of dangerous entrance ramps (I-75 travelers, take note, said the hovering traffic copter man). While I waited to back out and exit via the entrance, I called about twelve people I hadn't talked to in forever. Good choices can be made in idleness.
-- Jose Saramago, Blindness
--
The Cinci libraries are becoming my refugee camps, and like a native displaced, I roam for comfort and provisions to get me through the boredom occupation. Not that the place isn't hopping--it's just that I'm not. I'm okay with that, really, as long as there's a clean, well-lighted place I can go and chill and get books and movies for free. A library is a college without classes, a bookstore without prices, a coffeeshop without caffeine. No offense, Blockbuster and Borders, but the casa de libros saves me and my funds. La casa es mi casa, or something like that.
What I mean to say is, I got myself a card at the Main Branch (a classy joint), smeared signature on the back strip and all, and I may or may not have just checked out five DVDs.
--
Late-night snacked at Skyline last night with Sara before she left for Chi-Town, and the upcoming weekends are filling up: Saturday forays are in the works, escapades to Dayton, Columbus, and Lexington, a kind of friendly Bermuda Triangle. Knowing cities is like knowing friends or knowing books on your shelf. Or, you know, local library branches.
--
Shot north from Kentucky after rehearsal last night and found myself at the dumbass end of a major delay. Some poor wretches had flipped cars into each other about a mile up the road, just past a series of dangerous entrance ramps (I-75 travelers, take note, said the hovering traffic copter man). While I waited to back out and exit via the entrance, I called about twelve people I hadn't talked to in forever. Good choices can be made in idleness.
8.27.2008
Rains
"Well before I catch you complainin / That it hardly rains at all / Let me stop to lock my top / For fear of it falling harder."
-- Jason Mraz, "No Doubling Back"
--
The rains came to Cincinnati today, and the air feels gray but fresh, like a new bag in the vacuum cleaner. We continue to block in the basement, breathing air released from cracks in old books, literary worms of artistic intent cavorting and hokey-dokeying for children in the future. It's like prostitution, except you're paid on salary, and your boss isn't allowed to call you "ho."
--
With a little bit of luck, I will get a lease and a library card soon: requisites of residency.
-- Jason Mraz, "No Doubling Back"
--
The rains came to Cincinnati today, and the air feels gray but fresh, like a new bag in the vacuum cleaner. We continue to block in the basement, breathing air released from cracks in old books, literary worms of artistic intent cavorting and hokey-dokeying for children in the future. It's like prostitution, except you're paid on salary, and your boss isn't allowed to call you "ho."
--
With a little bit of luck, I will get a lease and a library card soon: requisites of residency.
8.26.2008
Props
"See I'm a down-home brother / redneck-undercover."
-- Jason Mraz, "Curbside Prophet"
--
My Ichabod Crane hat makes me look like a cross between Napoleon Bonaparte and this asshole. It's also a size too big for my "small head with a flat top" (compliments to the script) so it folds down my ears, like Disney's ferocious feline rey Prince John.
But the real scandal is the book, a manual from 1923 for Gregg Shorthand written both as a textbook for stenographer-women types and especially nerdy '20s men. Already, the binding is splitting into whitish threads on the worn inseam of this bizarre book, after only one rehearsal. Rehearsals, PS, run from 1-9pm in the basement of a Kentucky library (oxymoron, perhaps?), far from the racks and stacks, in the dry-wall corner by the smokers' exit. It's a space that makes me hate the awkward silence when the air vents shudder and halt.
The irony that we are slowly destroying this prop book from the early latter century in a library, believe me, is not lost. It is found, my brethren, found and mourned.
--
Hitting a bar tonight with one of the actresses in the troupe in an attempt to feel the city "nightlife," my perception of which until now has been limited to leering black men menacing a local convenience store, which I entered only because I needed some Marlboros. In any event, $2 beers and a hearty crowd will perhaps be fun, though large groups of unknown people make me less likely to hug the mugs.
Just watched Black Snake Moan and loved the rooty Southern sketches. Also, Sam Jackson on bluesy strings--awesome.
--
Living in a house with six women is good if only for one thing: Not much needs cleaning.
-- Jason Mraz, "Curbside Prophet"
--
My Ichabod Crane hat makes me look like a cross between Napoleon Bonaparte and this asshole. It's also a size too big for my "small head with a flat top" (compliments to the script) so it folds down my ears, like Disney's ferocious feline rey Prince John.
But the real scandal is the book, a manual from 1923 for Gregg Shorthand written both as a textbook for stenographer-women types and especially nerdy '20s men. Already, the binding is splitting into whitish threads on the worn inseam of this bizarre book, after only one rehearsal. Rehearsals, PS, run from 1-9pm in the basement of a Kentucky library (oxymoron, perhaps?), far from the racks and stacks, in the dry-wall corner by the smokers' exit. It's a space that makes me hate the awkward silence when the air vents shudder and halt.
The irony that we are slowly destroying this prop book from the early latter century in a library, believe me, is not lost. It is found, my brethren, found and mourned.
--
Hitting a bar tonight with one of the actresses in the troupe in an attempt to feel the city "nightlife," my perception of which until now has been limited to leering black men menacing a local convenience store, which I entered only because I needed some Marlboros. In any event, $2 beers and a hearty crowd will perhaps be fun, though large groups of unknown people make me less likely to hug the mugs.
Just watched Black Snake Moan and loved the rooty Southern sketches. Also, Sam Jackson on bluesy strings--awesome.
--
Living in a house with six women is good if only for one thing: Not much needs cleaning.
8.22.2008
Seeing
"...he simply stretched out his hands to touch the glass, he knew that his image was there watching him, his image could see him, he could not see his image."
-- Blindness, by José Saramago
--
Having hit every tick on my scribbled list of places to see in the city, I made my way yet again to the library I used yesterday. I say "used" because I walk in, ask for a day pass, and puddle-jump from vacant computer to vacant computer, searching sites and slowly--to let time pass, to kill time as it passes--taking care of banal business. I need work to start, stat.
I am willing to admit to many personal failings, and one of them is how I handle myself so desperately in relationships, especially when I'm bored and alone enough to get anxious. God, I can be a menace. Best to stay quiet, sometimes, to qualm, to kick yourself into neutral and coast, to fall from the branch and feel the wind of gravity cooing and cooling your mind, to remember where the earth is. Best not to nudge, silly boy, but to feel a fresh book's smooth binding, to watch the leaves dally in the wind, to remember there are four seasons and they all come and go, entrances and exits, and you must be a swinging door (and all that) for your own sake. And for the other.
--
Sara showed me the haunts yesterday and we caught an indie flick at the Esquire. Woody Allen's new one, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is actually pretty good (much better than Melinda and Melinda), and I left the cine and the night fulfilled.
Spent most of today at an art museum in Eden Park and in the park itself, wandering in flip-flops in search of shade. A group of actors rehearsed in the amphitheatre down the hill and I ate my McDonald's on the grass by a tree and read more of Blindness. Watched a woodcarving exhibit video in the museum and was amused to see a field trip of grade-schoolers pointing and peering at the works, checking off each tick on their scavenger hunt lists. I wonder how much I'm still a kid, a bright-eyed first-timer in an immense place of art and life and zips and zaps, just trying to see all there is to see.
--
"That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind."
-- Blindness
-- Blindness, by José Saramago
--
Having hit every tick on my scribbled list of places to see in the city, I made my way yet again to the library I used yesterday. I say "used" because I walk in, ask for a day pass, and puddle-jump from vacant computer to vacant computer, searching sites and slowly--to let time pass, to kill time as it passes--taking care of banal business. I need work to start, stat.
I am willing to admit to many personal failings, and one of them is how I handle myself so desperately in relationships, especially when I'm bored and alone enough to get anxious. God, I can be a menace. Best to stay quiet, sometimes, to qualm, to kick yourself into neutral and coast, to fall from the branch and feel the wind of gravity cooing and cooling your mind, to remember where the earth is. Best not to nudge, silly boy, but to feel a fresh book's smooth binding, to watch the leaves dally in the wind, to remember there are four seasons and they all come and go, entrances and exits, and you must be a swinging door (and all that) for your own sake. And for the other.
--
Sara showed me the haunts yesterday and we caught an indie flick at the Esquire. Woody Allen's new one, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is actually pretty good (much better than Melinda and Melinda), and I left the cine and the night fulfilled.
Spent most of today at an art museum in Eden Park and in the park itself, wandering in flip-flops in search of shade. A group of actors rehearsed in the amphitheatre down the hill and I ate my McDonald's on the grass by a tree and read more of Blindness. Watched a woodcarving exhibit video in the museum and was amused to see a field trip of grade-schoolers pointing and peering at the works, checking off each tick on their scavenger hunt lists. I wonder how much I'm still a kid, a bright-eyed first-timer in an immense place of art and life and zips and zaps, just trying to see all there is to see.
--
"That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind."
-- Blindness
8.21.2008
Plots
"That cunt don't got no need to spend money! Why she spend money! She wasn't spozed to spend no money! Can't believe that cunt!"
-- Young man in a Jack Daniels baseball cap, smoking outside the Campbell County Public Library, KY, talking on a cell phone and watching me enter
--
I made it to Cincinnati.
The house I'm in is drab, as sketchy and full of holes as the neighborhood: Hardwood flooring that creaks with each breath, no A/C, the stairway dark and dank as a logger's woolen socks. I just bought a floor fan, a shower curtain, and a bit of freedom today, mashing gas up and down I-75, memorizing exits, feeling more and more like an ant in a dingy, dirty anthill.
The first Cincinnati-ite I observed as I left the exit ramp last night was a Bojanglesy black man with gray hair. He was wearing tattered bits of clothing, straddling a rickety bike on the curb, and yanking/dragging/towing behind him a large lawnmower covered in a purple quilt. He gave me the finger as I passed (me, Asian and gawking, of course), and I thought, My God, what is this place?
Positive slopes: I get my own bathroom, being the sole male in the house (no worries, the ladies are all at least thirty...I think...and as keen and kindly as you'd like). Privacy is prime, complete with a deadbolt and a window opening onto a fire escape, the second level of which is mine, all mine, perfect for late night cigarettes or people-watching. Rear window? I think so: The barrio, as I said, is sketchy (dead-grass lawns, intimidating walks, shale-eyed children darting in and out of rows of parked cars, fat mommas and skinny poppas watching apathetically from the collapsing front stoop of grungy, decaying houses) but it's interesting, too. It may be a week before I stop glancing over my shoulder whenever I walk to my car, but I'll get used to it, I'm sure. The night and the day, and the first day...and it maybe wasn't the greatest, but it was still good.
--
Picked up a copy of Blindness in the Dayton Borders because the film trailer looked so damned good. It's translated from the Portugese, so tenses fade from past to present and back again, which slows my pace. But it's good--sexy good.
Had dinner and drinks with McMullen before making the last leg. I look ahead, but see in the rearview mirror the choice I made a few months back. I wish I'd moved to Chicago...
--
Work starts Monday. I hit dinner and maybe a flick (there's a shiek indie-film theater about two miles west) with Sara tonight, explore on my own tomorrow, navigate the 'Nati with Tory on Saturday, and perhaps skidoosh out to Columbus on Sunday for the night.
Accomplished: Met the theatre office folk when I picked up my new script; Plotted directions and locations of about a dozen local haunts worth a look-see; Hit up libraries downtown and across the river in KY; Raised my impressionable, whimpering spirits.
Probably, now: Get back "home," nap to dream, read, write, and assemble the room.
--
I made it to Cincinnati.
-- Young man in a Jack Daniels baseball cap, smoking outside the Campbell County Public Library, KY, talking on a cell phone and watching me enter
--
I made it to Cincinnati.
The house I'm in is drab, as sketchy and full of holes as the neighborhood: Hardwood flooring that creaks with each breath, no A/C, the stairway dark and dank as a logger's woolen socks. I just bought a floor fan, a shower curtain, and a bit of freedom today, mashing gas up and down I-75, memorizing exits, feeling more and more like an ant in a dingy, dirty anthill.
The first Cincinnati-ite I observed as I left the exit ramp last night was a Bojanglesy black man with gray hair. He was wearing tattered bits of clothing, straddling a rickety bike on the curb, and yanking/dragging/towing behind him a large lawnmower covered in a purple quilt. He gave me the finger as I passed (me, Asian and gawking, of course), and I thought, My God, what is this place?
Positive slopes: I get my own bathroom, being the sole male in the house (no worries, the ladies are all at least thirty...I think...and as keen and kindly as you'd like). Privacy is prime, complete with a deadbolt and a window opening onto a fire escape, the second level of which is mine, all mine, perfect for late night cigarettes or people-watching. Rear window? I think so: The barrio, as I said, is sketchy (dead-grass lawns, intimidating walks, shale-eyed children darting in and out of rows of parked cars, fat mommas and skinny poppas watching apathetically from the collapsing front stoop of grungy, decaying houses) but it's interesting, too. It may be a week before I stop glancing over my shoulder whenever I walk to my car, but I'll get used to it, I'm sure. The night and the day, and the first day...and it maybe wasn't the greatest, but it was still good.
--
Picked up a copy of Blindness in the Dayton Borders because the film trailer looked so damned good. It's translated from the Portugese, so tenses fade from past to present and back again, which slows my pace. But it's good--sexy good.
Had dinner and drinks with McMullen before making the last leg. I look ahead, but see in the rearview mirror the choice I made a few months back. I wish I'd moved to Chicago...
--
Work starts Monday. I hit dinner and maybe a flick (there's a shiek indie-film theater about two miles west) with Sara tonight, explore on my own tomorrow, navigate the 'Nati with Tory on Saturday, and perhaps skidoosh out to Columbus on Sunday for the night.
Accomplished: Met the theatre office folk when I picked up my new script; Plotted directions and locations of about a dozen local haunts worth a look-see; Hit up libraries downtown and across the river in KY; Raised my impressionable, whimpering spirits.
Probably, now: Get back "home," nap to dream, read, write, and assemble the room.
--
I made it to Cincinnati.
8.18.2008
Fortunate
"...Those now dead I declared more fortunate than the living. And better off than both are those who never existed, for they have not seen the wicked work that is done under the sun. Then I saw that all toil and skillful work is the rivalry of one man for another. This also is vanity and a chase after wind."
-- Ecclesiastes 4:2-4 (paraphrased, probably)
--
My dog is lying on his side on the coffee table, asleep again at a quarter to eight. It is morning. My sister woke my other sister to take her to volleyball practice, and that sister in turn woke me up. It was five-thirty. We all woke the dog. Ajax stumbled, sleepy, up the stairs to watch us depart, one by one, hurrah-hurrah; then his eyes dropped and his body followed, mind and weight pulled by gravity to carpet fuzz. When I came back, he followed me to the basement, where the attractive coffee table waited. He grows chubbier with each breath, flopped there on the red wood, his mirror self reflected in the plastic glaze, his tail thumping at the sight of some phantom mongrel.
It's my last day at home. This time tomorrow, I look to traverse happy Iowa, with all its soppy, stinking fields, a country sunrise shooting massive windmills of goldenrod in the reverse twilight of cornflower-blue dawn, green tractor stacks, pale paint peeling off billboards, road signs for "Smokestacks and Silos National Heritage Area," "James Garfield's Birthplace," and "The World's Largest Truck Stop" at Exit 284 (the highway's halfway house).
And cheap, cheap gas: under $3.40, in most places. Smirking and maybe singing, I will drive for hours.
--
What does it profit a man to be religious? I like to think I'm a man of words and not just the Word, a guy who digs the God stuff but passes the stuffing...and all...and the term "religious" always tasted like Saltines to me: stale, salty, common. Sure, my family gave up cable and boycotted Disney in the name of All Three; soon enough, though, we took the TV channels back and stocked up on the classics. While we make an effort to hit our pew every Sunday, we always walk in late and giggle about it afterwards. We don't lift or lay hands, we don't garble into God-speak, we don't show pictures to the passing public outside abortion clinics. I stopped going to youth groups in the ninth grade, gave up prophecy yarns earlier than that, and earlier still, decided that the Greatest Being probably cared more about candor and simplicity of spirit than rituals that rust and formulae of feel-good salvation. Pop your zits, pass the cigs and tip the wine, I say, curse loudly and make love proudly, but remember that the Big Guy doesn't like it when you stomp on other people's toes, so say zippadee-doo-dah to yourself and your buds, love the world and the people you meet, stick to the streets, plant some plants, savor all you see and smell, love your dog and stay awake to take long drives, shit and sleep like everyone else, stare the pit in the eye and find a way to grin, and remember--you ought to be glad, because you're the biggest small thing that ever existed.
That's hardly a motto (sounds kinda like a country song in places), but it'll do.
-- Ecclesiastes 4:2-4 (paraphrased, probably)
--
My dog is lying on his side on the coffee table, asleep again at a quarter to eight. It is morning. My sister woke my other sister to take her to volleyball practice, and that sister in turn woke me up. It was five-thirty. We all woke the dog. Ajax stumbled, sleepy, up the stairs to watch us depart, one by one, hurrah-hurrah; then his eyes dropped and his body followed, mind and weight pulled by gravity to carpet fuzz. When I came back, he followed me to the basement, where the attractive coffee table waited. He grows chubbier with each breath, flopped there on the red wood, his mirror self reflected in the plastic glaze, his tail thumping at the sight of some phantom mongrel.
It's my last day at home. This time tomorrow, I look to traverse happy Iowa, with all its soppy, stinking fields, a country sunrise shooting massive windmills of goldenrod in the reverse twilight of cornflower-blue dawn, green tractor stacks, pale paint peeling off billboards, road signs for "Smokestacks and Silos National Heritage Area," "James Garfield's Birthplace," and "The World's Largest Truck Stop" at Exit 284 (the highway's halfway house).
And cheap, cheap gas: under $3.40, in most places. Smirking and maybe singing, I will drive for hours.
--
What does it profit a man to be religious? I like to think I'm a man of words and not just the Word, a guy who digs the God stuff but passes the stuffing...and all...and the term "religious" always tasted like Saltines to me: stale, salty, common. Sure, my family gave up cable and boycotted Disney in the name of All Three; soon enough, though, we took the TV channels back and stocked up on the classics. While we make an effort to hit our pew every Sunday, we always walk in late and giggle about it afterwards. We don't lift or lay hands, we don't garble into God-speak, we don't show pictures to the passing public outside abortion clinics. I stopped going to youth groups in the ninth grade, gave up prophecy yarns earlier than that, and earlier still, decided that the Greatest Being probably cared more about candor and simplicity of spirit than rituals that rust and formulae of feel-good salvation. Pop your zits, pass the cigs and tip the wine, I say, curse loudly and make love proudly, but remember that the Big Guy doesn't like it when you stomp on other people's toes, so say zippadee-doo-dah to yourself and your buds, love the world and the people you meet, stick to the streets, plant some plants, savor all you see and smell, love your dog and stay awake to take long drives, shit and sleep like everyone else, stare the pit in the eye and find a way to grin, and remember--you ought to be glad, because you're the biggest small thing that ever existed.
That's hardly a motto (sounds kinda like a country song in places), but it'll do.
8.16.2008
Perspectives
"It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to."
-- Salinger, that cooty old hermit
--
http://kendavenport.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/halftime-shows.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-toeLrBGmI
Who knew joining a semi-lame online social network (LinkedIn.com) would yield this? The guy who runs the Davenport Theatrical Enterprises in NY is now the boss of someone I worked with in Edinburgh. Through her, I found his "Perspective," a blog touching on everything from intermission practices to front-page marketing strategies. I mean, it's not terribly hot shit in the massive porcelain bowl that is New York, but it's interesting and useful; Horace would approve.
Gotta love these networks, eh?
Also found out about another social network (Broadwayspace.com) that is a kind of Facebook for Broadway somebodies. I imagine most of the members are mere fans or big-stage hopefuls who go to shows almost as much as they are kicked out of auditions...yet again, it's a fine site for fourteen-year-old Indiana fans of Idina to join her "official" fan club, read her "official" blog, and, of course, order "official" Broadway gear (hats and nipple tassels and whatnot). Maybe it began as Broadway's only-us response to MySpace, but in the Land of Equality, any social network is bound to go the way of the I-thought-this-was-only-for-college Facebook.
Gotta hate these networks, eh?
--
In other news, BestMusical.com just told me "my musical" is Altar Boyz.
Okay.
--
Went to Wheatfields last night, a snazzy, swanky country restaurant (Cracker Barrel meets Chicago bachelor pad) and burned the mag stripe on our D&B card playing sweet boxing and bowling games. Now it's off to the Air Show to feel jet-engine roars in our chests, the soaring screamers of the U.S. military: F-15s, the Thunderbirds, et al. Talks about an Imax trip have begun.
-- Salinger, that cooty old hermit
--
http://kendavenport.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/halftime-shows.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-toeLrBGmI
Who knew joining a semi-lame online social network (LinkedIn.com) would yield this? The guy who runs the Davenport Theatrical Enterprises in NY is now the boss of someone I worked with in Edinburgh. Through her, I found his "Perspective," a blog touching on everything from intermission practices to front-page marketing strategies. I mean, it's not terribly hot shit in the massive porcelain bowl that is New York, but it's interesting and useful; Horace would approve.
Gotta love these networks, eh?
Also found out about another social network (Broadwayspace.com) that is a kind of Facebook for Broadway somebodies. I imagine most of the members are mere fans or big-stage hopefuls who go to shows almost as much as they are kicked out of auditions...yet again, it's a fine site for fourteen-year-old Indiana fans of Idina to join her "official" fan club, read her "official" blog, and, of course, order "official" Broadway gear (hats and nipple tassels and whatnot). Maybe it began as Broadway's only-us response to MySpace, but in the Land of Equality, any social network is bound to go the way of the I-thought-this-was-only-for-college Facebook.
Gotta hate these networks, eh?
--
In other news, BestMusical.com just told me "my musical" is Altar Boyz.
Okay.
--
Went to Wheatfields last night, a snazzy, swanky country restaurant (Cracker Barrel meets Chicago bachelor pad) and burned the mag stripe on our D&B card playing sweet boxing and bowling games. Now it's off to the Air Show to feel jet-engine roars in our chests, the soaring screamers of the U.S. military: F-15s, the Thunderbirds, et al. Talks about an Imax trip have begun.
8.15.2008
Anniversary
"And miles around they'll say that I / Am quite myself again."
-- A. E. Housman, "XVIII" in A Shropshire Lad
--
I found Ajax, squatting with his pudgy butt of curls nastying up a chess set, chomping on a white bishop. It's the last of a litany of things I've had to swipe from his jaws: candy wrappers, dirty undies, chocoloate mints, a pair of sandals, and a running total of eight socks. When you're home alone with the dog, you are zookeeper and nanny and thief, and maybe automatic pitching machine and reconnaissance drone, too. It makes me wonder what kind of father I'll be, when the cute little being in my charge has logic and wit on top of sass, decibels and instinct.
Ajax just found a shard of the last biscuit I gave him, and is merrily gnawing away. Today's tiny victory.
--
Dad made that chess set, incidentally, in high school. It was his senior wood-shop project. Each piece he carved and painted by hand, the squares he stained and set and shellacked until smooth. The whole contraption (the board itself serves as a kind of lid for a box on legs) has moved with us everywhere. It was originally a gift for his mom, but because she had no room and never played, she begged him to take it back once he had a wife and kids. Apparently the box separates from the stand, but I've never seen that happen. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey's black monolith, the set has simply been there, through every move, guarding our living rooms like a rook.
We use it for storage, mostly. Board games and Mom's scrapbooks fit nicely in the box, and unless someone is actually using the playing surface for a game, it becomes a kind of open-air junk drawer. Right now, compliments of the house pup, the black army lies wounded and scattered, framing a discarded notebook and a deck of cards (still in a perfect stack, curiously). As I look at the carnage on the board, I remember where the notebook and cards came from: we played Spades two nights ago in the basement. Ajax nipped and yiped at our heels while we dealt and doled through each trick.
--
It's my last Friday at home and my parents' 23rd anniversary. To celebrate, we'll run into O-town for din-din and gaming at D&B's, bumping through the cobblestone Old Market on the way. It's the city of Brando and Fonda and the Union-Pacific's golden spike, a growing Heartland metro for concrete centers and ethanol factories and farmland tributes: not a perfect district for the streetwise artists, jazzy bumpkins and pock-cheeked retirees and farmers who somehow found themselves here, but the way they see it, "You've got to find yourself somewhere, sometime."
-- A. E. Housman, "XVIII" in A Shropshire Lad
--
I found Ajax, squatting with his pudgy butt of curls nastying up a chess set, chomping on a white bishop. It's the last of a litany of things I've had to swipe from his jaws: candy wrappers, dirty undies, chocoloate mints, a pair of sandals, and a running total of eight socks. When you're home alone with the dog, you are zookeeper and nanny and thief, and maybe automatic pitching machine and reconnaissance drone, too. It makes me wonder what kind of father I'll be, when the cute little being in my charge has logic and wit on top of sass, decibels and instinct.
Ajax just found a shard of the last biscuit I gave him, and is merrily gnawing away. Today's tiny victory.
--
Dad made that chess set, incidentally, in high school. It was his senior wood-shop project. Each piece he carved and painted by hand, the squares he stained and set and shellacked until smooth. The whole contraption (the board itself serves as a kind of lid for a box on legs) has moved with us everywhere. It was originally a gift for his mom, but because she had no room and never played, she begged him to take it back once he had a wife and kids. Apparently the box separates from the stand, but I've never seen that happen. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey's black monolith, the set has simply been there, through every move, guarding our living rooms like a rook.
We use it for storage, mostly. Board games and Mom's scrapbooks fit nicely in the box, and unless someone is actually using the playing surface for a game, it becomes a kind of open-air junk drawer. Right now, compliments of the house pup, the black army lies wounded and scattered, framing a discarded notebook and a deck of cards (still in a perfect stack, curiously). As I look at the carnage on the board, I remember where the notebook and cards came from: we played Spades two nights ago in the basement. Ajax nipped and yiped at our heels while we dealt and doled through each trick.
--
It's my last Friday at home and my parents' 23rd anniversary. To celebrate, we'll run into O-town for din-din and gaming at D&B's, bumping through the cobblestone Old Market on the way. It's the city of Brando and Fonda and the Union-Pacific's golden spike, a growing Heartland metro for concrete centers and ethanol factories and farmland tributes: not a perfect district for the streetwise artists, jazzy bumpkins and pock-cheeked retirees and farmers who somehow found themselves here, but the way they see it, "You've got to find yourself somewhere, sometime."
8.14.2008
Hits
"I have been trying to write a haiku for you... / I'm trying not to try too hard."
-- Tally Hall, "Haiku"
--
My car is now my own--title, insurance, all of it. Watch, now it crumbles...
Because of limited CD space on the visor sleeve, many CDs have been reduced to circle scraps of scratched tracks. It kills the ear to pop in an album and hear the musicians skipping, clipping words like bad teenager poetry, wrangling rhythms, needling the tunes. So I spent before-lunch and after-lunch re-burning on blanks. With one more roadtrip looming, my musical arsenal needed replenishing.
(That, and I've also grown to wonder why the hell I included certain songs on a travel mix MP3 CD. Sorry, random Disney songs and America's Greatest Hits, but Tally Hall and Ditty Bops are moving in.)
--
I also made a mix CD for someone else--the first time I've done that in years. And my feelings (pardon the pun) are mixed: At once, I'm happy to share the juiciest tracks in my collection, but then I second-guess each one, like I'm choosing an IMF team or something. Is this one really worthy of the number-one slot? Should I pick an instrumental piece for track two? Doesn't this song make you want to fall asleep, and if so, why is it between rock and reverb? Are the Moody Blues ever okay to ignore?
And above all concerns: How true must I be to my actual taste? What if it tastes like shit to someone else?
"Trying not to try too hard?" asked the frog to the toad.
--
On the assertive end, I figured car insurance rates and was surprised to get some low quotes. If I stick with my online bank, the basic package is cheapest, ideal if I can promise myself not to get into freakish auto tangles. These real-life matters make me feel responsible, like dabbing cologne behind the ears instead of under the chin, or steering impulses to eat at Panera. (In other news, the Bacon Turkey Bravo might be the best sandwich I've ever tasted.) Anxiety rips at the door, but I'm trying to stay together, weightless, calm. I just try to see these things for the simple hurdles they are, no more than handing in bibliographies and paying dues.
And the car is mine. That helps.
-- Tally Hall, "Haiku"
--
My car is now my own--title, insurance, all of it. Watch, now it crumbles...
Because of limited CD space on the visor sleeve, many CDs have been reduced to circle scraps of scratched tracks. It kills the ear to pop in an album and hear the musicians skipping, clipping words like bad teenager poetry, wrangling rhythms, needling the tunes. So I spent before-lunch and after-lunch re-burning on blanks. With one more roadtrip looming, my musical arsenal needed replenishing.
(That, and I've also grown to wonder why the hell I included certain songs on a travel mix MP3 CD. Sorry, random Disney songs and America's Greatest Hits, but Tally Hall and Ditty Bops are moving in.)
--
I also made a mix CD for someone else--the first time I've done that in years. And my feelings (pardon the pun) are mixed: At once, I'm happy to share the juiciest tracks in my collection, but then I second-guess each one, like I'm choosing an IMF team or something. Is this one really worthy of the number-one slot? Should I pick an instrumental piece for track two? Doesn't this song make you want to fall asleep, and if so, why is it between rock and reverb? Are the Moody Blues ever okay to ignore?
And above all concerns: How true must I be to my actual taste? What if it tastes like shit to someone else?
"Trying not to try too hard?" asked the frog to the toad.
--
On the assertive end, I figured car insurance rates and was surprised to get some low quotes. If I stick with my online bank, the basic package is cheapest, ideal if I can promise myself not to get into freakish auto tangles. These real-life matters make me feel responsible, like dabbing cologne behind the ears instead of under the chin, or steering impulses to eat at Panera. (In other news, the Bacon Turkey Bravo might be the best sandwich I've ever tasted.) Anxiety rips at the door, but I'm trying to stay together, weightless, calm. I just try to see these things for the simple hurdles they are, no more than handing in bibliographies and paying dues.
And the car is mine. That helps.
8.13.2008
Scripts
"The earth...turns...around. Like a rotisserie."
-- Ichabod Crane, in Kathryn Schultz Miller's stage adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
--
I've just highlighted lines and scribbled basic character analysis (circles of concentration, approach/avoid/standing, tactic-victory units, discoveries and beats) for the two scripts I received from the Children's Theatre. It's going to be fun; I can tell already that kids are going to love this. It's been a year or so since I last read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but plowing through it again is a pleasure. I'm playing Ichabod, after all.
The stage conventions we follow are similar to reader's theatre: Actors pop in and out of characters with hats,warping face and voice, making their own sound effects. You push a gate open, and you mime and creak. Your dog attacks someone, and you growl. And so on. It presents a crazy challenge. The style asks not for subtlety but almost over-the-top characterization. I imagine it's more about extremes and Vaudevillian virtuoso, diving into decisions, ambidextrous acting.
The second show, An Algonquin Cinderella, has me playing a young brave, the middle sister, and the Strong Wind. This last is a sort of godly, princely presence who falls wistfully--cloud over sky, gusty gusto--for the "rough-faced girl." It has the meditative, ancient tone of many culture-driven plays. It's a far cry from the prat-falling Ichabod and the almost melodramatic travails of Tarry Town, but it promises intrigue and childlike wonder, magnificent as feet feeling soft moccasins for the first time, gliding over twigs and roots in a fresh but foreign forest.
C. S. Lewis (the overly quoted and unquotable, sure, but the hell with it) once said that he enjoyed writing children's stories more than mature fiction because he could "put more into them and, thus, get more out of them." I hope doing children's theatre makes for something similar. I think it will be: Children laugh more, wander in awe longer, appreciate with Zen-like impulse the joy and twinkle of the moment.
--
Just today, I settled payment limbos and committed my Cincinnati address to heart. It's a different script, sort of, and I'm the playwright and director and lead, an odd conglomerate marching into life's living production. I'm stepping on a well-worn road, I know, in tracks of defined and daring tread; still, with the nerves and nay-saying come highlighted words and scribbles to myself, convention for contention, and the through line of action deserves to be heard. Someone seems to pat me on the shoulder, chuckling, confiding that all things work for good, and that no one needs to worry or work. Just recite, play, and hold out your hand.
-- Ichabod Crane, in Kathryn Schultz Miller's stage adaptation of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
--
I've just highlighted lines and scribbled basic character analysis (circles of concentration, approach/avoid/standing, tactic-victory units, discoveries and beats) for the two scripts I received from the Children's Theatre. It's going to be fun; I can tell already that kids are going to love this. It's been a year or so since I last read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but plowing through it again is a pleasure. I'm playing Ichabod, after all.
The stage conventions we follow are similar to reader's theatre: Actors pop in and out of characters with hats,warping face and voice, making their own sound effects. You push a gate open, and you mime and creak. Your dog attacks someone, and you growl. And so on. It presents a crazy challenge. The style asks not for subtlety but almost over-the-top characterization. I imagine it's more about extremes and Vaudevillian virtuoso, diving into decisions, ambidextrous acting.
The second show, An Algonquin Cinderella, has me playing a young brave, the middle sister, and the Strong Wind. This last is a sort of godly, princely presence who falls wistfully--cloud over sky, gusty gusto--for the "rough-faced girl." It has the meditative, ancient tone of many culture-driven plays. It's a far cry from the prat-falling Ichabod and the almost melodramatic travails of Tarry Town, but it promises intrigue and childlike wonder, magnificent as feet feeling soft moccasins for the first time, gliding over twigs and roots in a fresh but foreign forest.
C. S. Lewis (the overly quoted and unquotable, sure, but the hell with it) once said that he enjoyed writing children's stories more than mature fiction because he could "put more into them and, thus, get more out of them." I hope doing children's theatre makes for something similar. I think it will be: Children laugh more, wander in awe longer, appreciate with Zen-like impulse the joy and twinkle of the moment.
--
Just today, I settled payment limbos and committed my Cincinnati address to heart. It's a different script, sort of, and I'm the playwright and director and lead, an odd conglomerate marching into life's living production. I'm stepping on a well-worn road, I know, in tracks of defined and daring tread; still, with the nerves and nay-saying come highlighted words and scribbles to myself, convention for contention, and the through line of action deserves to be heard. Someone seems to pat me on the shoulder, chuckling, confiding that all things work for good, and that no one needs to worry or work. Just recite, play, and hold out your hand.
8.12.2008
Days
"It was a morning like other mornings and yet perfect among mornings."
-- The Pearl, by John Steinbeck
--
My mornings are slow to start, gradual awakenings like a tide or early Windows boot-ups. Ajax is the usual catalyst, gnawing at my laundry basket in search of delicious socks to rip, or burrowing into my blankets in search of the same. He shocks me out of dozing with his stupid cuteness. It's always just in time for lunch, too, and I roll off my pillow with a poofy bedhead and strange images in my head, faded Polaroids of my dreams.
Dreams, by the bye, have been wonky: full of zest, exotic colors, parades, and a healthy dose of Eros, mixes of textbook plot twists, jolly deus ex machinas, sensors and feelers haywire at home. Sleep has become my artistic outlet--sleep, and this blog.
--
Never before have I written letters by hand and mailed them every day. But I do it now, happily, as naturally as peeling oranges or tying a half-Windsor. I do all this each day: I write my heart in looping script, etch something new on the cover of these blank white cards, stamp the envelopes, add the same addresses, walk a block to the silver box with the horizontal slot. I'm sending hugs thousands of miles eastward to the girl with swimming pool eyes, reaching into clouds to stroke Celtic golden hair, remembering lotion scents and quiet smiles, the sizzle of holding hands. That prompts me to write to her, to draw for her, to open up and whisper with my pen.
--
My mom started work at a local optometry shop yesterday. She thrived on the challenge, never having worked on eyesight before, and loved the towers of illuminated frames and the educated gossip, eye-doctor lingo, the white coats and promise of nameplates and parking spaces. But her heart, she says, is a mother's heart, one that returns to her children and loathes the work that takes her from her home. "I look at women with careers and children, and I think, I can do that, too, I want to be like that," she says. "But when I can't make dinner for my family and we have to go to fast-food, I feel awful. When the house is a mess, I don't want to leave until it's clean. What career can I have? Dad is okay with whatever I want to do, as long as it makes me happy." She frowns at a spot on the wall, her eyes damp, her fingers absently touching her eyebrow. "I guess that's what I'll do for now."
She quit her job today.
--
I realize that I don't know the answer to most of the things I wonder about during a day. My mom says that's what life is: a collection of days when you ask a million questions and get one, maybe two, answers per day. "Ever since I can remember, I've never had time to think. Trying to find out my purpose is something I don't do. If I'm going to go to school, what do I see myself taking? I've been asking myself a lot of these questions lately. I don't know. I don't know if that's funny, or ridiculous. Nothing sounds right. Earlier today, I made up my mind that I'm going to quit my job because I want to be here. That's one less thing to worry about. That's what I should do. A week from now, I'll see people with careers and families, and I'll think, 'I'm just staying at home: wasting away. I know I can have a career, and I have to prove that to myself.' I guess because all I see is me, sitting at home. I have to constantly remind myself that I made this decision, and this is why."
Touche, mother mine. I think she's coming around to existentialism via post-feminist social theory.
Or maybe, two of her children are moving away this month. A nest that is usually full is losing 2/3 its contents. Such questions and concerns are contagious: I now feel kind of bad about moving away.
I have to constantly remind myself that I made this decision, and this is why.
-- The Pearl, by John Steinbeck
--
My mornings are slow to start, gradual awakenings like a tide or early Windows boot-ups. Ajax is the usual catalyst, gnawing at my laundry basket in search of delicious socks to rip, or burrowing into my blankets in search of the same. He shocks me out of dozing with his stupid cuteness. It's always just in time for lunch, too, and I roll off my pillow with a poofy bedhead and strange images in my head, faded Polaroids of my dreams.
Dreams, by the bye, have been wonky: full of zest, exotic colors, parades, and a healthy dose of Eros, mixes of textbook plot twists, jolly deus ex machinas, sensors and feelers haywire at home. Sleep has become my artistic outlet--sleep, and this blog.
--
Never before have I written letters by hand and mailed them every day. But I do it now, happily, as naturally as peeling oranges or tying a half-Windsor. I do all this each day: I write my heart in looping script, etch something new on the cover of these blank white cards, stamp the envelopes, add the same addresses, walk a block to the silver box with the horizontal slot. I'm sending hugs thousands of miles eastward to the girl with swimming pool eyes, reaching into clouds to stroke Celtic golden hair, remembering lotion scents and quiet smiles, the sizzle of holding hands. That prompts me to write to her, to draw for her, to open up and whisper with my pen.
--
My mom started work at a local optometry shop yesterday. She thrived on the challenge, never having worked on eyesight before, and loved the towers of illuminated frames and the educated gossip, eye-doctor lingo, the white coats and promise of nameplates and parking spaces. But her heart, she says, is a mother's heart, one that returns to her children and loathes the work that takes her from her home. "I look at women with careers and children, and I think, I can do that, too, I want to be like that," she says. "But when I can't make dinner for my family and we have to go to fast-food, I feel awful. When the house is a mess, I don't want to leave until it's clean. What career can I have? Dad is okay with whatever I want to do, as long as it makes me happy." She frowns at a spot on the wall, her eyes damp, her fingers absently touching her eyebrow. "I guess that's what I'll do for now."
She quit her job today.
--
I realize that I don't know the answer to most of the things I wonder about during a day. My mom says that's what life is: a collection of days when you ask a million questions and get one, maybe two, answers per day. "Ever since I can remember, I've never had time to think. Trying to find out my purpose is something I don't do. If I'm going to go to school, what do I see myself taking? I've been asking myself a lot of these questions lately. I don't know. I don't know if that's funny, or ridiculous. Nothing sounds right. Earlier today, I made up my mind that I'm going to quit my job because I want to be here. That's one less thing to worry about. That's what I should do. A week from now, I'll see people with careers and families, and I'll think, 'I'm just staying at home: wasting away. I know I can have a career, and I have to prove that to myself.' I guess because all I see is me, sitting at home. I have to constantly remind myself that I made this decision, and this is why."
Touche, mother mine. I think she's coming around to existentialism via post-feminist social theory.
Or maybe, two of her children are moving away this month. A nest that is usually full is losing 2/3 its contents. Such questions and concerns are contagious: I now feel kind of bad about moving away.
I have to constantly remind myself that I made this decision, and this is why.
8.11.2008
Soft
"We played better last week."
-- A middle-ager on my dad's softball team, after a 16-1 loss
--
Maybe it's because I'm watching the Olympics all the time now, but I was sad and unimpressed as I sat and watched my dad's softball team lose last night. I used to love watching my dad play (back when he was young and spry, back in the hey-day of slow-pitch, when nothing got past him at short and he was always due for a double), but something changed. It seems like there are two kinds of men who play softball:
- Young yuppie goons with new wives and new babies, watching, bored, from the aluminum bleachers, with tons to prove and tons of attitude, lean as beef jerky and about as respectable as tuna;
- And middle-aged former softball players with hair as gray as their bicycle shorts and guts like bleached watermelons, guys who wear Terminator-style shades and jeer at each other about "old muscle" and "how's about a 401-K, Dan?" (That last one is no joke--I actually heard it at a church softball game and made no effort to hide my confusion.)
Softball games--at least the ones I've sat through lately--tend to pit the young yuppies against the middle-agers, or the middle-agers against themselves. Either way, it's enough to make me vow never to play softball. Ever. It's a twisted, slow-moving whirligig of stupid machismo, as clumsy and frustrating as actually trying to grip a softball properly in a baseball-sized glove. It feels like the Great American Pasttime stripped of its dignity--baseball as the patient etherized on a table--carelessly thrown together and expanded.
That's not to say I don't respect the sport, or that my father plays it every year, but it does seem a muddy reflection of what it ought to be. It's not even a proper workout: sluggish sluggers galumphing to base one, harumphing to base two, leaning like creaky rickshaws around base three, and walloping a victorious stomp on home, as if the journey was hard.
It wasn't hard, friends, fans, yuppies and middle-agers: it was soft.
--
As we drove home from the field in Council Bluffs, we took 13th Street back through Omaha and were startled to see, in the middle of the street, a distraught woman in a white and red sash walking at the cars. Brakes squealed and cars swerved, but no one honked or yelled at the woman, perhaps out of respect for the calamity that showed on her face. I've never seen a face so sad, except in low bars and on ancient masks. And she just walked slowly and parted the flow of traffic, making eye contact with drivers, silently asking why they didn't just hit her, just back right up and give it another go. We called the police, who took at least fifteen minutes to show, and by that time she had left busy 13th for a residential road on a hill, where she collapsed, catatonic, in the middle of the street, breathing only because that's what her body had to do. People popped out of houses: they were wrapped in blankets and jackets (but it wasn't cold) and they crept to the curb to peer as policemen and paramedics poked and prodded, prompted and petted. But the woman stared into the sky as the sun set in red, sad eyes crying upward tears, and we drove away as she was lifted on a stretcher, and the silence in our van was heavy as sand.
-- A middle-ager on my dad's softball team, after a 16-1 loss
--
Maybe it's because I'm watching the Olympics all the time now, but I was sad and unimpressed as I sat and watched my dad's softball team lose last night. I used to love watching my dad play (back when he was young and spry, back in the hey-day of slow-pitch, when nothing got past him at short and he was always due for a double), but something changed. It seems like there are two kinds of men who play softball:
- Young yuppie goons with new wives and new babies, watching, bored, from the aluminum bleachers, with tons to prove and tons of attitude, lean as beef jerky and about as respectable as tuna;
- And middle-aged former softball players with hair as gray as their bicycle shorts and guts like bleached watermelons, guys who wear Terminator-style shades and jeer at each other about "old muscle" and "how's about a 401-K, Dan?" (That last one is no joke--I actually heard it at a church softball game and made no effort to hide my confusion.)
Softball games--at least the ones I've sat through lately--tend to pit the young yuppies against the middle-agers, or the middle-agers against themselves. Either way, it's enough to make me vow never to play softball. Ever. It's a twisted, slow-moving whirligig of stupid machismo, as clumsy and frustrating as actually trying to grip a softball properly in a baseball-sized glove. It feels like the Great American Pasttime stripped of its dignity--baseball as the patient etherized on a table--carelessly thrown together and expanded.
That's not to say I don't respect the sport, or that my father plays it every year, but it does seem a muddy reflection of what it ought to be. It's not even a proper workout: sluggish sluggers galumphing to base one, harumphing to base two, leaning like creaky rickshaws around base three, and walloping a victorious stomp on home, as if the journey was hard.
It wasn't hard, friends, fans, yuppies and middle-agers: it was soft.
--
As we drove home from the field in Council Bluffs, we took 13th Street back through Omaha and were startled to see, in the middle of the street, a distraught woman in a white and red sash walking at the cars. Brakes squealed and cars swerved, but no one honked or yelled at the woman, perhaps out of respect for the calamity that showed on her face. I've never seen a face so sad, except in low bars and on ancient masks. And she just walked slowly and parted the flow of traffic, making eye contact with drivers, silently asking why they didn't just hit her, just back right up and give it another go. We called the police, who took at least fifteen minutes to show, and by that time she had left busy 13th for a residential road on a hill, where she collapsed, catatonic, in the middle of the street, breathing only because that's what her body had to do. People popped out of houses: they were wrapped in blankets and jackets (but it wasn't cold) and they crept to the curb to peer as policemen and paramedics poked and prodded, prompted and petted. But the woman stared into the sky as the sun set in red, sad eyes crying upward tears, and we drove away as she was lifted on a stretcher, and the silence in our van was heavy as sand.
8.09.2008
Explorer
"The people are very docile, and for the longing to possess our things, and not having anything to give in return, they take what they can get, and presently swim away. Still, they give away all they have got, for whatever may be given to them, down to broken bits of crockery and glass."
-- from Christopher Columbus' account of the discovery of the Bahamans, Friday, October 12, 1492
--
Feeling docile today, liable to be led, to learn. I want to see some art, perhaps, and wander through a museum of genius, fondling masterpieces with my mind, turning them over, seeing how they tick. I want to see brilliant theatre (good luck, young Omahan) and presently swim away, happy for no specific reason, just having been assured of the presence of smart guys and gals in the world who make stuff out of nothing.
--
Watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics last night. Stunning: an LCD scroll unfurling a still-moving floor showing us the universe in flux, a globe raised from the flats with dancers suspended on its sides as if drawn by a separate gravity, 2,000 tai-chi masters in perfect unison and concentric circles molding space and time, dancers in LCD suits changing colors like leaves in the quickest autumn, and--my favorite--gunpowder dancers making feng shui strokes as they move. With Eastern stillness, ripshit technology and tamed pyrotechnics, the Chinese have shown their artistic chops. Cheers.
--
"Broken bits of crockery and glass" the Bahaman shoremen traded to Columbus. Only goes to show, you know, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold," and so the drunk man on a hill sets his bottle down carefully, "knowing that all things break." But you piece it together, these shards of nada, and make mosaic love with a wall. Forlorn pieces fit together, people find people, and while the gravedigger puts on the forceps, the barber can give you a haircut.
Speaking of which, I'm due for a trim. My hair has reached critical mass, mad-scientist-or-maybe-composer status, and it's time for a shave and a haircut (two bits), to make my head look smaller once more. I'm like a nerdy Asian lion, I swear. Small mammals and flyers take note: nesting grounds abound on my noggin.
I dare myself to do it.
--
Time to draw, write, seal and send today's letter. It's like mailing faith in small bundles, trust in little baskets of words, love in ribbons and frills. Forgive the silly Cake-isms today (two bits), but I believe she'll come back to me.
-- from Christopher Columbus' account of the discovery of the Bahamans, Friday, October 12, 1492
--
Feeling docile today, liable to be led, to learn. I want to see some art, perhaps, and wander through a museum of genius, fondling masterpieces with my mind, turning them over, seeing how they tick. I want to see brilliant theatre (good luck, young Omahan) and presently swim away, happy for no specific reason, just having been assured of the presence of smart guys and gals in the world who make stuff out of nothing.
--
Watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics last night. Stunning: an LCD scroll unfurling a still-moving floor showing us the universe in flux, a globe raised from the flats with dancers suspended on its sides as if drawn by a separate gravity, 2,000 tai-chi masters in perfect unison and concentric circles molding space and time, dancers in LCD suits changing colors like leaves in the quickest autumn, and--my favorite--gunpowder dancers making feng shui strokes as they move. With Eastern stillness, ripshit technology and tamed pyrotechnics, the Chinese have shown their artistic chops. Cheers.
--
"Broken bits of crockery and glass" the Bahaman shoremen traded to Columbus. Only goes to show, you know, "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold," and so the drunk man on a hill sets his bottle down carefully, "knowing that all things break." But you piece it together, these shards of nada, and make mosaic love with a wall. Forlorn pieces fit together, people find people, and while the gravedigger puts on the forceps, the barber can give you a haircut.
Speaking of which, I'm due for a trim. My hair has reached critical mass, mad-scientist-or-maybe-composer status, and it's time for a shave and a haircut (two bits), to make my head look smaller once more. I'm like a nerdy Asian lion, I swear. Small mammals and flyers take note: nesting grounds abound on my noggin.
I dare myself to do it.
--
Time to draw, write, seal and send today's letter. It's like mailing faith in small bundles, trust in little baskets of words, love in ribbons and frills. Forgive the silly Cake-isms today (two bits), but I believe she'll come back to me.
8.07.2008
Sit-Com
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
-- The "Jesus Prayer," ref. in Salinger's Franny and Zooey
--
Sharon and I talked this morning about judgment, the Christian kind. I told her about the Huron catchphrases from this summer ("Don't judge me," "Judging that," "Face-check yourself," etc.) and the oddly enthusiastic ways actors bite each others' backs. We judge; we face that. We admit to judging and we laugh about it...not that it makes it okay, but hey, self-awareness is a virtue, too, and don't you forget it, you know? Christians, we bastions of humility, ironically cannot conceive of a world in which Christians judge other people. Having played the victim throughout history, we think we can keep wearing the badge without performing the duties.
My sister told of her recent missions trip. Our mother befriended another mother, who took upon herself the mantle of instructing Sharon in the way she should(n't) go. The woman sounds like a winner: snappy condemnations and rather invasive peerings ("We have to talk about some of those artists on your iPod," por ejemplo) ought to put her at the right hand--the gavel hand?--of the Father.
What bugs me about suburban Pharisees? The lack of self-admonition. No one is very impressive if you strip everyone down with gossip and judgment, so the only thing for it is to strip yourself down and say to a grayed world, "Here I am, take me or leave me."
Judge not, we were told. Judge not, we must remember.
--
Having said that, I'm writing this in the dining room, and twenty feet behind me, some banal TBS sit-com keeps my sisters and mother company during their leftover lunch. I'm judging that. As laugh tracks punctuate and forks scraping plates syncopate, this mildewy midday music fills me with the urge to purge, Lord help me.
This gives me a bad taste in my mouth to say it, but I'm the kind of person for whom face-checking is good but hardly sufficient. I need mood-checks. Lord help me.
--
Ajax, now a master of the "sit-come" routine, has learned to roll. His testicles may be gone, but he's made up for it in gusto: in an excited stupor, trying to grab my nose, he claweed my cheek and dribbled a little on my chest. It was nasty. He also shat in my room during the night, and I woke early (thinking I smelled awful) and showered before going back to doze. As I was re-turning in, I saw the happy little pile and laughed. And cleaned it up, of course.
Just goes to show that in rising as in falling, everyone's shit still stinks.
--
New York's not my home, but sometimes I wish it was. Six states and three weeks... And the weeks shall be strong. My FB status no longer proclaims it, but my blog shall whisper: I thoroughly miss Miss Devereux. The wind can carry whispers, too; in fact, it may be easier.
In the back yard, my mother's flowers lean against the wood fence like beautiful bums, waiting for a bus of bees; the weeds have overgrown the grass, laughing in the breeze; the trees are full of themselves; and the clouds are too far away to touch.
I am gone, though I am here.
-- The "Jesus Prayer," ref. in Salinger's Franny and Zooey
--
Sharon and I talked this morning about judgment, the Christian kind. I told her about the Huron catchphrases from this summer ("Don't judge me," "Judging that," "Face-check yourself," etc.) and the oddly enthusiastic ways actors bite each others' backs. We judge; we face that. We admit to judging and we laugh about it...not that it makes it okay, but hey, self-awareness is a virtue, too, and don't you forget it, you know? Christians, we bastions of humility, ironically cannot conceive of a world in which Christians judge other people. Having played the victim throughout history, we think we can keep wearing the badge without performing the duties.
My sister told of her recent missions trip. Our mother befriended another mother, who took upon herself the mantle of instructing Sharon in the way she should(n't) go. The woman sounds like a winner: snappy condemnations and rather invasive peerings ("We have to talk about some of those artists on your iPod," por ejemplo) ought to put her at the right hand--the gavel hand?--of the Father.
What bugs me about suburban Pharisees? The lack of self-admonition. No one is very impressive if you strip everyone down with gossip and judgment, so the only thing for it is to strip yourself down and say to a grayed world, "Here I am, take me or leave me."
Judge not, we were told. Judge not, we must remember.
--
Having said that, I'm writing this in the dining room, and twenty feet behind me, some banal TBS sit-com keeps my sisters and mother company during their leftover lunch. I'm judging that. As laugh tracks punctuate and forks scraping plates syncopate, this mildewy midday music fills me with the urge to purge, Lord help me.
This gives me a bad taste in my mouth to say it, but I'm the kind of person for whom face-checking is good but hardly sufficient. I need mood-checks. Lord help me.
--
Ajax, now a master of the "sit-come" routine, has learned to roll. His testicles may be gone, but he's made up for it in gusto: in an excited stupor, trying to grab my nose, he claweed my cheek and dribbled a little on my chest. It was nasty. He also shat in my room during the night, and I woke early (thinking I smelled awful) and showered before going back to doze. As I was re-turning in, I saw the happy little pile and laughed. And cleaned it up, of course.
Just goes to show that in rising as in falling, everyone's shit still stinks.
--
New York's not my home, but sometimes I wish it was. Six states and three weeks... And the weeks shall be strong. My FB status no longer proclaims it, but my blog shall whisper: I thoroughly miss Miss Devereux. The wind can carry whispers, too; in fact, it may be easier.
In the back yard, my mother's flowers lean against the wood fence like beautiful bums, waiting for a bus of bees; the weeds have overgrown the grass, laughing in the breeze; the trees are full of themselves; and the clouds are too far away to touch.
I am gone, though I am here.
I-55 S
"Living there, you'll be free / If you truly wish to be."
-- Willy Wonka
--
Woke when we wanted to, then trained and cabbed it down to Navy Pier for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at Chicago Shakespeare, their late morning matinee. Charlie Buckett was less than extraordinaire, but Wonka and the supporting cast (complete with Umpa-Lumpa scene changer Matt, decked out in striped lab coat and zany glasses) were terrific. For eats, I tore two pieces from a loaf of Hawaiian bread for breakfast and we hit Mi Tierra off Belmont for margaritas and lunch specials. I made a long solo trip on the red line back to my car, got lost west of Lake Shore Drive, and eventually found I-55 South, and thus I-80 West...and thus Omaha.
Long drives feel shorter if you call them "long." Shorten the drive, and you jinx it all: two hours feels like four, eight feels like eighty. Your phone and your music are your portals, but you're held within trapdoors at 75 mph, struggling with a tricky right wheel and a seat that never quite accepts your ass. You're liable to get testy with yourself and any caller who tries to rescue you. It's like Melville said of sailors who fall overboard: you feel "awful lonesomeness" as the world heaves and rolls past, and it seems you've been left behind, slapped under glass, made to watch your life within and without yourself. The lone rover's appreciation for empty roads and carefully painted sunsets leaves you with each mile marker, each green tantalizing tag goading you one mile closer to a home that never seems nearer. The frustration is harsh, a callous to mind and soul.
Being tired doesn't help, either... It's like heading south, downwards on a map, like falling down an atlas to a road that isn't where it ought to be. But the descent must end, hitting a perpendicular line running parallel to your journey. Y-axis, X-axis, and a positive slope.
Things get better, is what I mean. The stars, for instance, would plunder your breath tonight, and sell it to mother night.
--
Ajax spurted into welcome mode when I came down to the basement, where he and my sister were watching The Client, an underrated movie.
Plan: sleep until sleep becomes underrated. Then: hit Ctrl + Alt + Del, repack boxes long-distance, and feel a hug across the miles. Things get better. Positive slope.
-- Willy Wonka
--
Woke when we wanted to, then trained and cabbed it down to Navy Pier for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at Chicago Shakespeare, their late morning matinee. Charlie Buckett was less than extraordinaire, but Wonka and the supporting cast (complete with Umpa-Lumpa scene changer Matt, decked out in striped lab coat and zany glasses) were terrific. For eats, I tore two pieces from a loaf of Hawaiian bread for breakfast and we hit Mi Tierra off Belmont for margaritas and lunch specials. I made a long solo trip on the red line back to my car, got lost west of Lake Shore Drive, and eventually found I-55 South, and thus I-80 West...and thus Omaha.
Long drives feel shorter if you call them "long." Shorten the drive, and you jinx it all: two hours feels like four, eight feels like eighty. Your phone and your music are your portals, but you're held within trapdoors at 75 mph, struggling with a tricky right wheel and a seat that never quite accepts your ass. You're liable to get testy with yourself and any caller who tries to rescue you. It's like Melville said of sailors who fall overboard: you feel "awful lonesomeness" as the world heaves and rolls past, and it seems you've been left behind, slapped under glass, made to watch your life within and without yourself. The lone rover's appreciation for empty roads and carefully painted sunsets leaves you with each mile marker, each green tantalizing tag goading you one mile closer to a home that never seems nearer. The frustration is harsh, a callous to mind and soul.
Being tired doesn't help, either... It's like heading south, downwards on a map, like falling down an atlas to a road that isn't where it ought to be. But the descent must end, hitting a perpendicular line running parallel to your journey. Y-axis, X-axis, and a positive slope.
Things get better, is what I mean. The stars, for instance, would plunder your breath tonight, and sell it to mother night.
--
Ajax spurted into welcome mode when I came down to the basement, where he and my sister were watching The Client, an underrated movie.
Plan: sleep until sleep becomes underrated. Then: hit Ctrl + Alt + Del, repack boxes long-distance, and feel a hug across the miles. Things get better. Positive slope.
8.05.2008
Chi
"It's my kind of town, Chicago is."
-- Frank Sinatra
--
Left Hillsdale early this morning, cruising south with the sun to my left, feeling ready as the rain I drove through in Indiana: fresh, smooth, pattering, in beat with Jason Mraz and beebopping and scatting (as Zach would put it) to the rhythms of a new life unfolding. I had this moment of, My God, I just might be on the cusp of living the life I want to live.
It's a good feeling. For the first time, I feel cool and collected, confident with every possession I own in the trunk and backseat of my car. All that is Me comes with me wherever I go. I pull into parking lots, and when I lock up my car, I am keeping safe all the material things I have chosen to keep in my life. I discard and accumulate at will (said the nerd, biting his lip).
--
Hit Chicago shortly after noon, zipping north on Lake Shore Drive with the sun to my right. Grabbed a hot dog at the Superdawg ("Hiya! From the bottom of my big beef heart!" reads the custom-made napkin) and retired to Matt's cozy abode, chatted with Missy about Huron haps and mishaps, future plans and suchwhat. Hit the blue lake--delicate azure rays and waves like those on the Chicago shore make distances disappear in a heartbeat, and a phone call on the sand is like a hug and a whisper that tickles your ear deliciously--and swam for a time, watched the sun set over buildings as a ridiculous teenage lifeguard in a dinghy called at us to stay close to shore. In a little bit, we'll grab some Mexican eats and hit the streets. Tomorrow is breakfast and Willy Wonka at Chicago Shakes, then a shortened home trip to a Bellevue sunset and a family dinner.
The Life, man, I'm telling you. Sometimes, I feel like I'm living it.
8.03.2008
Atlantis
"I turned the corner when I met you."
-- Jimmy, Thoroughly Modern Millie
--
The 60th season at the Huron Playhouse is over. We loaded out the last of our rented equipment at BGSU, under a microwave sun, with eyes so fuzzy from tears that they felt like tennis balls. Last night, sans bed frames, walls and privacy, we crammed mattresses into two rooms and slept like Tetris blocks. I curled into a fetal position, symmetrical with another, smiling quietly in the midst of sleeping friends. We came, we worked, we played. I have the distinct honor of having played in all five shows this season.
Woo, theatre. Woo, life.
--
The last few weeks' worth of mosaic pieces has been beautiful. Now, with moments for reflection and free minutes for relishing latent joy, I step back and see: like pencil doodles on Post-It squares, or torn stubs on a board of colors, or a pair of beautifully enhanced eyes--the most honest, demure and pretty eyes in the world, the choicest sapphires on this golden earth--gazing back with fixed affection...the gymbols align, the vanishing point reappears within a winning sunset's horizon, and the lights on the beach don't seem too far away.
Gatsby gets his green; Huck has himself; Chris has his smile.
--
Before every show this season, I uttered this tiny prayer to the Highest: "In this fake life as in real life, enjoy the show."
--
I'll send all my lovin' to you. I get by with a little help from my friends. Please don't be long.
--
Now, in a dim hotel room with frolicking friends on bouncy beds, I feel on the cusp of something wonderful: not just one something, but Many Somethings, all aiming at one constellation. I'm glad to go, but I can't wait to be back.
-- Jimmy, Thoroughly Modern Millie
--
The 60th season at the Huron Playhouse is over. We loaded out the last of our rented equipment at BGSU, under a microwave sun, with eyes so fuzzy from tears that they felt like tennis balls. Last night, sans bed frames, walls and privacy, we crammed mattresses into two rooms and slept like Tetris blocks. I curled into a fetal position, symmetrical with another, smiling quietly in the midst of sleeping friends. We came, we worked, we played. I have the distinct honor of having played in all five shows this season.
Woo, theatre. Woo, life.
--
The last few weeks' worth of mosaic pieces has been beautiful. Now, with moments for reflection and free minutes for relishing latent joy, I step back and see: like pencil doodles on Post-It squares, or torn stubs on a board of colors, or a pair of beautifully enhanced eyes--the most honest, demure and pretty eyes in the world, the choicest sapphires on this golden earth--gazing back with fixed affection...the gymbols align, the vanishing point reappears within a winning sunset's horizon, and the lights on the beach don't seem too far away.
Gatsby gets his green; Huck has himself; Chris has his smile.
--
Before every show this season, I uttered this tiny prayer to the Highest: "In this fake life as in real life, enjoy the show."
--
I'll send all my lovin' to you. I get by with a little help from my friends. Please don't be long.
--
Now, in a dim hotel room with frolicking friends on bouncy beds, I feel on the cusp of something wonderful: not just one something, but Many Somethings, all aiming at one constellation. I'm glad to go, but I can't wait to be back.
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